The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-04-27 00:00:00

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Our fellVOlt Contsponkltt,

[We deem it rllt to state that we do not at all times
le,tiltify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.]

On an Easter Monday, or upon anr holiday, or upon
either of the free days on which the Tower of London
is thrown open to the public, an enormous crowd sur-
rounds the entrance gates of that ancient fortress.
Probably few of the multitude which then surges to
and fro on Tower-hill, looking down upon the dark
lines of wall, upon keep and turret, battlement and
scarp, bastion and ballium, chapel and belfry, draw-
bridge and moat, upon the pacing sentinel and the
still solid ramparts, the leads and the ca,semates, upon
the once formidable portcullis and the yet existing
counterscarp, realise the truth of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's
declaration that the story struck into stone upon
the walls of the Tower is the story of a nation's
highest splendour, its deepest misery, and its
darkest shame. There it stands, as it has stood for
centuries, half a mile below London Bridge, a palace,
a fortress, and, a prison united into one. On one side
of it flows the deep tideway of the Thames, its surface
studded with the maritime wealth of allsnations ;
whilst landward are the busy marts of men—the
everlasting roar of traffic now taking the place of the
martial music of the past, the roll of drum, the deep
sigh of the captive, the blast of bugle, the roystering
revel, the mustering of the garrison, the midnight
assassination, the State execution, the groans of the
victim tortured by the rack or the thumb-screw, the
pageant of a royal entry, and the laughter which is sure
to' be one of the concomitants of a bridal feast. Travel-
lers up and down the river, of whom there are tens of
thousands every week, invariably gaze upon the
scarred and wrinkled walls and ramparts of the Tower
as they glide past. Right in front, and standing out
directly in view of the passengers upon the bosom of
the crowded stream is the Traitor's Gate, clinging to
which is the terrible tradition that whosoever passed
under its gloomy portals never again came out alive.
This gateway was used for the purpose of conveying
state prisoners into the Tower, often to avoid any de-
monstration which might have been made at the land
entrance. The stern and silent river was a fit pro-
totype of the fate which awaited the doomed victims
of a feudal tyranny—the stern decree of an unbridled
despotism, and the silence of death which followed. No
visitor to London from the country would think
of returning home without seeing the Tower, the
Armoury and the Jewel-house, the stairway clown
which Lady Jane Grey went to execution, the block
at which Anne Boleyn prayed a few minutes before
she was beheaded, the scene of the smothering of the
young Princes, the dungeon in which Sir Walter
Raleigh was immersed thirteen dreary years, and the
hall in which state trials were conducted, files of
armed men standing round about the judges, And
from other lands, notably from the United States,
people wander over the Tower of London with a
curious interest in a building which has outlived
many a more noble specimen of architecture, and
seems an anachronism in the midst of the life, the
liberty, the wealth, the energy, and the civilization of
the great City.
Now that Parliament has separated for the recess,
the people who come to London for the purpose of
spending a week or ten clays at Easter, have ample
opportunity of going over Sir Charles Barry's Palace
of Westminster, a very different place indeed from the
Tower. The two edifices have, indeed, but one point
of resemblance, and that is, they stand on the Middle-
sex side of the Thames, their basements being washed
by its waves. But while the Tower is typical of all
that tells of tyranny and thraldom, of unscrupulous
autocrats upon the throne who ground down the
people, and while its very object was to overawe the
citizens of London, the Houses of the Legislature
embody a story of long and continuous struggles
for popular rights until at length, England,
to use the eloquent words of Mr. Bright,
has become " the home of liberty, the mother
of free Parliaments." In the entrance halls of Lords
and Commons the visitor will see many a fresco pour-
traying an historic scene in a civil war or a peaceful
revolution. To the great body of thinking Engll-h-
-men, this splendid pile is full of interest—the wool-
sack and the episcopal bench, the cross seats, and the
galleries in the Lords; and in the Commons the
Speaker's chair, the mace, the seats occupied by the
men most distinguished in political warfare, the gang-
way and the division lobbies, to and from which mem-
bers have so often filed to settle the fate of an adminis-
tration. Just now the triumphant shout and the
ringing counter-cheers are no longer heard. The
Commons have adjourned to the 6th ot May, and the
Lords to the 13th, longer holidays than usual, because
of the lengthened pre-Easter sitting.
The disturbance of the balance of power in the
Mediterranean was the main reason assigned for call-
ing out the Reserve Forces of England at the present
time, and while the Channel Squadron often consists
of only four ironclads, the British Fleet in the Medi-
terranean is always the strongest in the world. The
protection of our vast trading interests is one of the
reasons for this, and another is the maintenance of our
maritime supremacy. The sommerce of the whole
globe has an instinctive tendency to flow into this
great inland sea; and the produce of America, the
wealth of Asia, the riches of Africa, and the treasures
of the antipodes are borne across its surface. Its
name implies that it was the centre of the world as
known to the ancients; and the ships of Carthage and
Egypt, Tyre and Sid ea, Rhodes and Troy, Ephesus
and Athens, Corinth and Argos, Syracuse and Rome
were all accustomed to find their way aoross it.
Amongst the inhabitants of the Mediterranean islands
have been found some of the handsomest specimens of
the human race, and its climate is about the most per-
fect in Europe. Two thousand years ago there stood
at the foot of Mount Vesuvius a town which was to
Rome what Brighton or Hastings is to Londo —a
favourite watering-place, where the citizens could en-
joy freedom from the fatigues of business and the
strife of politics. It commanded a delightful view
of the Mediterranean, then as beautiful and as
bright, as blue and as sunny as it is today.
On the 23rd of August, 79, whe& the activity of
Pompeii was in full swing, Vesuvius, without warn-
ing, sent up a tall column of smoke; suddenly a
pitchy darkness came over the scene, and in a few
hours the town had been blotted out for ea er. A
shower of stones, scoria, and pumice fell upon the
city, which thenceforward became a black level
smoking plain, sloping to the sea, which had rolled
- back from the land, as though affrighted. Every living
soul in the place was killed; and sixteen hundred years
afterwards the city was disentombed just in the con-
dition in which it had been overwhelmed by the
volcano. Even the prints of chariot wheels were
still in its streets, and the marks left by the cups of
those who were drinking on that fatal day were
yet upon the counters of the refreshment bars.
It was an awful incident in the history of a town
which had been called into existence because its situ-
tion secured in an especial degree the balmy breezes
of the Mediterranean, BO full of life and health to-day
to those who gaze upon its changeless surface from the
orange-groves of Nice and Mentone.
The troubles upon the Continent do not seem to
have materially affected the preparations for the
opening of the Paris Exhibition, which has been
'fixed for the Ist of May. That is an historic date,
for our own Exhibition in Hyde Park was opened on
that day a very long time ago, and many a similar
gathering since has first displayed its riches to the
public in the month of May. After nearly thirty
years, and with exhibitions in almost every city of
any pretensions, their novelty has worn off; yet
if the people of the French capital are wise, and act
moderately in charging for what their customers con-
sume, A very large number of excursionists are likely to
find their way to Paris this summer. It is charged
against the people of Vienna that in 1873, their enor-
mously high tariff deterred a considerable proportion
of visitors from going there. But Paris is a place
with two millions of inhabitants, and is certainly not
restricted in its accommodation. There is no town in
England in which announcements of apartments to let
are so numerous, and there ought to be no difficulty in
any number of people finding board and lodging in a
place of such size and capabilities. A fortnight in
Paris affords material for interesting reflections for
many a subsequent year.
The proposed application of Greek fire to naval
warfare seems a fitting sequel to the employment of
torpedoes. It was during the Crusades of the middle
ages that this destructive agent first came into general
notice ; but, like red hot shot, was abandoned with the
growth of modern civilization, as partaking too much
of the barbarous ages which sanctioned poisoned
daggers and arrows. Yet one of the latest ideas is to
throw a jet of crude petroleum upon the deck
of an ironclad. Scorched by the flame, and
smothered by the smoke, the crew would be com-
pelled to retire from the working of th 3 guns,
when a launch with a spar or other torpedo could
approach and blow the ship completely into the
air. It has been estimated that such a jet could be
• thrown three hundred feet with accuracy, and that a
single gallon of petroleum would render a hundred
square feet of surface uninhabitable by man for a time
sufficiently long to enable the torpedo to do its deadly
work. Competent authorities have, however, pointed
out that it would be impossible for a barrel of petro-
leum to approach as near as three hundred yards in
the face of the long-range artillery now mounted on
- ship-board, and even if it did, and the deck became
uninhabitable, the Gatling guns could be swung into
the rigging, and deal terrible execution upon an ap-
p• oaching launch.

From the navy to the army is a natural transition