The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-05-31 00:00:00

means of gathering immense assemblages together in
Hyde Park, the roans and the greys, the browns and
the hays all coming in for a share of admiration from
the respective critics of the teams. The Coaching
Club was the first this season to lead off; but the
weather was unfavourable, the programme having been
spoiled by drenching rain. It was not so with the
Four-in-Hand. The sun at length, after many a night
of frost and many a day of tempest, shone out with
summer splendour; and amongst the vast throng
which the weather and the horses had brought together,
were the Empress of Germany, the Prince and Princess
of Wales,. the Crown Prince of Denmark, the Duke
and Duchess of Edinburgh, the Duke and Duchess of
Teck, and other members of the Royal family. After
the meet the distinguished visitors drove off to the
Summer exhibition of the Royal Botanie Society in
Regent's Park, and later on the Prinoe and Princess
of Wales paid a visit to the Empress Eugenie at
Chislehurst.

The Wnitsuntide holidays come this year at a time
when, after such a prolonged spell of winter, those
woo seek recreation and amusement should be able to
depend upon something like genial and settled weather.
The days will not be far from their longest and
brightest; London is full of attractions to those who
would like to enjoy an excursion to the metropolis;
while the country is just now in all its glory, and
inviting the jaded atveller in the town to spend
a few hours away from the bustle and the smoke,
out among the fields, amid the greenwood and the
gorse, where the leafy arches of the woods echo to
the songs of innumerable birds that have found a
hobae in the luxuriant foliage of forest trees. It is no
matter for surprise that amongst an enormous popula-
tion like that of London the Bank Holidays of Easter,
Whitsuntide, and August are eagerly anticipated on
account of the facilities which are then afforded by rail-
way companies for a run into some rural retreat in the
~orne Counties, or to the sea-side. Mr. Richard
Swiveller was accustomed to set great store by a "sniff
of the briny;" and to the smoke-dried townsman
nothing seems to be so invigorating as a bath of sea-
air upon the shores of the English Channel, or upon
those coasts open to the more braeing breezes of the
German Ocean. London is too far from the sea to get
any of its atmosphere impregnated with that health-
giving saline which the great waters send in upon the
land; hence the appreciation by its people of the sea
when they are enabled to get near it. There, how-
ever, is the Thames to remind them of the restless,
ever-heaving northern ocean to which it is perpetually
seeking to hasten. It is a mistake to call the sea,
as is too commonly done, a watery waste and an
aqueous wilderness. It is, on the contrary, the world's
fountain of life and health, without which the grass
would perish from the mountains, the forests would
crumble upon the hills; and although we may have
lived far distant from its shore, may never have
gazed upon its majesty, or listened to its eternal
diapason, we can never forget that we are surrounded
by its liberal stores, and that the wealth of the world
is represented upon its rolling waters.