The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-07-13 00:00:00

eur Nortbon Corrtsponbott.

(Ws dent 'I right to state that we do not at all times
tdeutifj our:elves with our Correspondent's oplig,z.3

Many illustrious visitors come to London in the
course of the season, and during the past few weeks
the capital has been xceptionally favoured in this
way. Scarcely had the Crown Prince and Princess of
Germany gone back to Berlin, than Prince Frederick
Charles and his daughter the Princess Louise Mar
garet arrived, and were the guests of her Majesty at
Windsor Castle. The Princess has been betrothed to
our own Duke of Connaught, and it is expected that
the marriage will take place in Englard early next
year. The name of Prince Frederick Charles is as-
sociated with the military renown of Prus.ia in
receat_years,..and--more especiallr with the invest-
ment of Metz in the autumn of 1870, when
France and Germany were engaged in the most
tremendous conflict of modern history. Scarcely had
the Emperor Napoleon made Metz his headquarters,
when Prince Frederick Charles, at the head of an
army of 200,000 men, advanced against the fortress,
which up to that time had never been captured by an
enemy. The Emperor, thinking it prudent to retire,
left the command of the army to Marshal Bazaiue,
who fought a desperate battle at Gravelotte, and was
then shut in by the vast force which the Germans
brought up and drew like an iron girdle round the
city. The attempts to break through it were un-
successful, and on the 27th October, 1970, Metz sur-
rendered with its garrison of 173,000 men. Frederick
Charles, known as the "Pied Prince," from the fact of
his wearing an Hussar uniform, was then free to move
on to Paris, and to assist in the reduction of the
French capital. No sooner had he and his daughter
left Windsor on their visit to the Queen, than the
Grand Duke and Duchess of Hesse arrived, the
Duchess being, as your readers will remember, our
own Princess Alice, the second daughter of her
Majesty, and who attended with such care and
devotion her father, the lamented Prince Consort, in
his last hours. The Grand Duke and Duchess have
come over here for the enjoyment of what, in the
great Fatherland of Germany, is regarded as a luxury,
namely, a breeze from the sea, and at once selected
Eastbourne as the place of their sojourn.
How strange are the courses of history has been
once more illustrated by some of the decisions come to
by the Congress at Berlin. Most of us know, from the
researches of our schoolboy days, that between the
years 1529 and 1545, Austria was terribly harassed by
Turkish invasions, and that one of these incidents
was the investment of Vienna by an Ottoman army
of 300,000 men. The Poles came to the relief of the
beleagured city, and compelled the Turks to raise the
Beige. In after time, Austria, to her eternal disgrace
joined Russia and Prussia in the partition of Poland,
which took place in 1-72, and took from her former
friend the province of Gallicia. A day of reckoning
came for Austria when in 1859 she was driven out
of Lombardy, and again in 1866, when she ceased to
be a German Power, and was compelled to cede
Venetia to Italy. Singularly enough, Austria is
now called upon by Europe to act as a kind
of policeman over two Turkish provinces, and to
occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Turkish
invasions of the Austrian dominions are at an end,
and now Austria all but in name annexes a very
large slice of the territory of her old antagonist. A
more heterogeneous race of peoples than those ruled
from Vienna can scarcely be gathered together else-
where upon the surface of the globe. Gallicians and
Bohemians, Silesians and Moravians, Styrians and
Tyrolese, Istrians and Magyars, Croats and Tran-
sylvanians, Slays and Czechs, form one of the most
incongruous collections ever governed from the same
capital. Fortunately, they have provincial diets or
parliaments, or if the whole of the representatives of
these nationalities were to be brought together under
one roof, the comfounding of tongues which took
place- at the Tower of Babel would witness its ante-
type in modern Europe.
As regularly as the early days of July come round,
the camp at Wimbledon is organised, and volunteers
not only from all parts of the kingdom, but from
the colonies as well, compete for the prizes
which are offered by the National Rifle Association.
Numerous have been the vicissitudes of the volunteers
on these annual occasions of their camping out. Some
years, as in 1,368, they have had to endure a tempera-
ture tropical in its intensity; at other times, as in
1875, the plain of Wimbledon is flooded with an
excessive rainfall, and the common is more than
ankle-deep in water. We can now afford to look
back with complacency on the panic which in 1859
called the volunteer movement into existence, there
being in those days an apprehension of an invasion on
the part of France. Whether there was any well-
grounded fear of such an invasion, history will pro-
bably never record, for the late Emperor Napoleon
was not a man who was in the habit of entrustiug
secrets of this kind even to the most confidential
adviser. But the scare of that day has worked for
good, and in giving us a citizen army of practised
marksmen, has materially contributed to the main-
tenance of our position in the counsels of Europe.
London has been described as a capital in which
extremes meet, and in many senses this is true.
Within a stone's throw or the Palace of Westminster
is the gloomy convict prison of Millbank, where stern
penalties are exacted for those breaches of the laws
which are made in the palatial pile raised by Sir
Charles Barry. Nearly apposite Millbank, with the
Thames rolling between, is Lambeth Palace, the
residence for centuries of successive Archbishops of
Canterbury. Surrounding its quiet courtyards, its
quaint archways, and its ancient gates, are associations
which carry the mind back ages and ages in the annals
of this country. What for instance can be more
suggestive than the memories that cling to the
Lollards' Tower, now mantled with ivy, standing
silently amid the rush and roar of life that now mark
the existence of the populated world around it?
Lambeth Palace is just now the scene of a most
interesting gathering, for there the Pan-Anglican
Synod is assembled, and this includes a gathering
of prelates from all parts of Christendom. From
the antipodes themselves bishops have come to
take measures for strengthening the Church, and when
they are not met in solemn council they find ample
stores of interest in the great city to whioh they have
come.

A day in the country! The London papers are now
giving publicity to many an appeal for help towards
enabling poor children belonging to ragged schools
and similar institutions to spend a few hours away
from the overcrowded neighbourhoods in which they
spend their lives. When the city proper—that is, the
municipality between London Bridge and Temple
Bar—was rebuilt after the great fire 200 years ago,
these who laid it out certainly did not waste much of
their space. In the narrow streets, more especially those
leading down to the Thames, which are overshadowed
by tall warehouses, the rays of the sun can seldom
penetrate except at the time of the meridian, and the
only open spaces are the churchyard attached to the
city churches. The poor little children who live
and move and have their being in the very heart and
centre of the City of London, and who wander amid
"street and square, and alley bare, with their growth
of human need," hardly ever see a field, except at
such times when they are taken out for that "day in
the country," for which the charitable appeal for as-
sistance. he mossy dell and the running stream,
the waiving foliage and the song of birds are welcome
enough to those who on one day out of the long year,
through the kindness of the benevolent public, leave
the smoke, the heat, and the dust, and are conveyed
"out amongst the fields and far from town," where
for a few brief hours in their uneventful lives they
can be brought acquainted with the truth, that if the
great city was made by man, the woods, the forests,
the rivers, and the glades were all the creation of a
Higher Power.

The above reference to the manner of the recon-
struction of London suggests the improvements which
have been made in this respect with the march of Time.
The rapid growth and extension of the city in all direc-
tions shows in the manner in which it is carried out that
We are less utilitarian than our ancestors, and that we
appreciate gardens, trees, and open spaces. There is
a tradition that in the inetrep .us, even in the City itself,
there are few streets in which a tree is not to be seen.
The famous tree in Cheapside is well known, and right
under the shadow of St. Paul's, in the churchyard there-
of, there are several trees. In every new street which
is now made, young trees are planted, and in existing
thoroughfares the process of tree-planting goes on at
the rate of hundreds every week. Another quarter of
a century and London will be a series of pleasant
groves, and the sighing of the wind through the
abundant foliage will not leave the generation of that
time such strangers to the country as we are now. In
some parts of London, even at present, snatches of
rural scenery are to be descried on a clear day. Turn
off Holborn into Russell-square, and look northward;
there you may see the Earl of Mansfield's beautifully.
wooded grounds at Highgate, standing out like an
oasis surrounded by a desert. And just now, the time
of hay-harvest, let the south wind's breath pass over
the sleeping city in the night, and those whose duties
calls them forth will find it laden with the odour of
the hay.field. It may be detected in grim courts
which seldom see the sun, and lingers in the silent
Streets until it is chased away by the smoke which,
ascending from a myriad chimneys, tells of the begin-
ning of another day of active life.
Readers of the money articles in the papers will find
the quotations of Egyptian bonds given as regularly as
those of the Metropolitan, Railway. The securities of
one of the most ancient of lands are in the same column

with those of a great modern triunsph of engineering.
Babylon and Ninevah, Assyria and Persia, Tyre and
Sidon, Thebes and Memphis, Carthage and Palmyra,
have one after another departed from their ancient
glory and lost their influence; but here is Egypt still,
a powerful factor in the world of politics. The country of
the Pharaohs seems to retain an interest undimmed by
the lapse of centuries, and conspicuous amid the rise and
fall of empires. To the capitalist and the financier, to the
statesman and civil engineer, the land of Egypt, so
often mentioned in the old Testament, has claims of
the highest importance; and proposals all more or
less ambitious, but not necessarily impracticable,
follow each other in rapid succession. For thou-
sands of years has that mysterious river the Nile
annually overflowed its banks, leaving behind it a
rich alluvial
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agriculturist to dispense with all other kinds of
manure. Near the many mouths of this wonderful
stream are enormous expanses of land, barely
covered with the salt water of the Mediterranean, but
going by the name of lakes, and it is now proposed to
let the Nile into these lakes. By' this means it
has been shown that a graat tract of adjacent marsh
land can be silted up and reclaimed, thus converting
it into a part of the fertile soil with which Egypt is
blessed. Thanks to its mystic river, Egypt even as it
is yields generally a large surplus of grain for export,
and by the reclamation of such a vast quantity of
land as is herein suggested she would add to her own
prosperity, and be a benefactor to the world in pro-
ducing more food for its ever-growing population.