The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-08-28 00:00:00

our yonbon ritrtspzithtut,

Me deem it right to state that we do not at all times
Identify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.)

Twenty years ago the people of this country were
much better acquainted with the geography of Eastern
Europe than they are to-day. The area and boundaries
of the Black Sea, the relation of the Danubian Princi-
palities to the Porte, the course of the river Dnieper,
the position of Montenegro, the importance of the
preservation of Turkey as an independent Power, and
the magnitude of our interests in India, dependent as
those interests were, to a great extent, upon keeping
Russia properly in check—all these were discussed,
and to a considerable degree understood by a large pro-
portion of our people. Then, when the struggle
in the Crimea came to an end, and other events forced
themselves into prominence, tha incidents of the
Eastern question were gradually forgotten. We had a
formidable mutiny to put down in India, and not
long afterwards came the four years' Civil War in
America, which absorbed so much attention here.
Five years after that conflict had been closed, came
the mighty political ehanges upon the Continent, and
now that the world is watching the preparations for
the next gigantic wrestle of the nations, that wonder-
ful Eastern question again comes to the front. We are
once more talking about Herzegovina, Servia, and
Bosnia, and speculating whether the Turkish
Empire will be able speedily to extinguish the revolt
which has been kindled in its dependencies. This
new current of thought seems almost like the re-
opening of a chapter in life which had been
long ago closed. Once more are the shores of the
Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, the advance of Russian
Influence in Europe and Asia, the decadence of the
Moslem, and the possible contingency of his collapse,
topics for discussion and in one way, of anxiety. A
man soon becomes nervous when he sees anything
going on likely to affect his own interests; and
although we have long regarded with apathy the pro-
gress of the Civil War in Spain, the possible dissolution
of Turkey is quite another matter for us. The death
of the "sick man," to use the words of the late
Emperor Nicholas, would mean a general scramble for
his effects, and that there would be a desperate quarrel
amongst the scramblers, there can be no doubt. Our
stake in the East is so great that to human vision it
would seem impossible for us to keep out of the fray.
Still, we can do nothing at present. There have been
Insurrections in Turkish provinces before, and these
have been put down. It required, however, all the
efforts of Omar Pasha to do this, and no one can affum
that the Turkish Empire grows stronger with the
advance of time. With a splendid climate and a
fertile soil, it might, with energy and skill, be made
the Garden of Europe. Its vast natural resources,
practically inexhaustible, are allowed to go un-
developed because of the constitutional indolence of
its people. It has been given to but few lands to pos-
sess such advantages as those which have been unap-
preciated by the Turks.

Travellers upon the Great Western Railway must
have often had their attention attracted by curious
deserted towers standing at intervals along the line.
There they are, like so many solitary sentinels, their
eternal silence strongly contrasting with the rush of
the expresses to and from London. It is doubtful
whetier, at this time of day, any considerable propor-
tion of the travelling public know much about the
scheme of which these are the ruined memorials.
Yet these towers tell you that a great engineer designed
a plan for doing away with the employment of steam
in railway locomotion; that he built these erections
at vast expense with a view of establishing a pneu-
matic road; that if his calculations had been carried
Into effect, the invention of James Watt would have
been so far modified, if not altogether superseded, that
fire and water would no longer have been necessary to
the rapid conveyance of passengers and merchandise.
The air, economised and employed according to these
purely scientific principles on which Brunel relied,
would have been all-sufficient. But steam was not so
easily beaten by the atmosphere; the locomotive won
the day then; and neither the pneumatic principle, as
sought to be carried out upon the surface of the earth,
nor the aerial plan of making passages in balloons, has
done anything to shake its victory.
Any one taking up a collection of Hindoo or Persian
proverbs, and comparing them with those of our own
language cannot but be struck with the contrast be-
tween the eastern and the western mind. Our own
are practical, unpoetical, hard, thrifty, and colourless.
Those of the east are imaginative and allegorical, the
imagery is taken from Oriental scenery—the birds that
inhabit the palm groves, the wild beasts that grapple
together in the jungle, the- alligator, and the snake.
The manzo is the tree of their proverbs, and not the
oak; the wild deer and the elephant take the place of
the horse and the ox in the English adage. The melon
and the tamarind replace our apple and our peach.
Instead of saying as we do that the weakest go to the
wall, the eastern proverb would run something like
this: "Whether the melon fall on the knife, or the
knife fall on the melon, it is the melon that suffers."
When a man ruins himself by his own folly, the Persians
say, "He has set fire to his own beard," and the
foundation of it is this: there is an old Persian saying
that men with long beards are generally fools. A long-
bearded man, reading this proverb at night, felt
annoyed, and at once resolved to shorten his. Se he
cautiously applied the lamp to it. The beard blazed
up like straw, scorched his hands and face, and thus
proved the truth of the old saying.

London is said to be fast becoming the handsomest
city in Europe. There are probably few things that
would conduce in a more important degree to justify
and confirm such an opinion than an intelligent and
tasteful utilization of the large number of its burial
grounds within its area. The greater part of a gene-
ration has passed away since these places were closed,
and it may be confidently asserted that in all of them
the vast majority of the graves have become nameless
and incapable of identification. A dense living popu-
lation is entirely shut out from large open spaces in
favour of the departed, in whom the public of the pre-
sent day have no interest, and whose relatives must
have ceased to entertain anything more than a vague
recollection of them. In many of these disused
churchyards, Time and Nature have done a great
deal to render the old enclosures attractive. There
are grassy slopes, and shady avenues, and leafy nooks
and corners, in which, with flowers instead of tomb-
stones to look upon, the thousands around might find
quite a pleasant rural retreat from their close and
stifling homes. There seems something incongruous
in the aspect of long rows of gaunt and spectral head-
stones standing in the very heart of a great and busy
city. You are confronted with one of these at the
south-east corner of Blackfriars Bridge, with its enor-
mous rush of traffic, and again at the very entrance to
the Waterloo Railway Station. Far more in accordance
with the associations is the plan now adopted, of form-
ing tastefully laid out cemeteries at a distance from the
town. If you travel to the Crystal Palace by the high level
line of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway,
one cannot but be impressed with the peaceful situa-
tion of the vast cemetery of Nunhead. There it is,
overshadowed by yews and cypres3es, and ornamented
with shrubs and flowers, right out in the midst of the
quiet scenery of Surrey. As you ascend the gradient
towards the Palace, carry your eyes into the extreme
distance, and you will see in the dim haze the cathedral
dome of St. Paul's, the stately towers of the Houses of
Parliament, and scores of steeples dotted here and
there amid the miles of streets and the myriads of
houses. But not a sound reaches the spot from the
populated plains of that noisy Babylon. The silence is
unbroken by the echoes of busy life, and in the long
summer days
"The trees are white with dust that o'er their sleep,
Wave their broad curtains in the south wind's breath;
While underneath those leafy tents they keep,
The tong mysterious exodus of death."

- -
Those who intend to visit Philadelphia next year on
the occasion of the Centenary of American Indepen-
dence will find it one of the healthiest cities in the
world. This is due in a great depree to its excellent
house accommodation. It contains more dwellings in
proportion to population than any other city. There
are no tenement houses; every mechanic may have a
dwelling to himself at a moderate rental; and even the
poorest are able to obtain separate quarters. Philadelphia
was so named as the City of Brotherly Love it may
with equal truth be called the city of Homes. Its in-
habitants now number 850,000, and this is vastly more
than any place in the United Kingdom outside Lon-
don. Our two largest provincial towns are Liverpool
and Glasgow, the one with a population at the last
census of 493,000, the other with 477,000. Philadelphia
is rich in historical associations, and those who go there
next year will find it a city ef much interest. There
the Declaration of Independence was first read on the
4th of July, 1776, there the first Congress assembled,
there the Convention met which settled the constitu-
tion of the United States, there the first President
lived, and the Congress continued to meet in the
Quaker city for several years prior to the removal of
the seat of Government to Washington. The city con-
tains over 400 churches. The sun shines upon a
different world now from that upon which the Bola rays
fell in 1776; King George 111. and Washington have
long since joined the multitude "where the wicked
cease from troubling and the weary are at rest," but
the most enthusiastic dreams of Washington could
scarcely have pictured the America of to-day. After
passing through a civil war unexampled in its magni-
tude, it has become in the co e of a century one of the
most powerful and enterprising nations upon the sur-
face of the globe. In a hundred years it has made
more progress than many peoples make in a thousand.
"Westward therco, urse of empire takes its way," and
there is certainly room enough upon the vast prairies of

that colossal country for a development of wealth and
energy such as the world has never yet looked upon.
A visit to the Royal Academy in August brings you
face to face with a crowd of a very different character
to that which you see there in May. In the earlier
month you come upon what may be truly termed
"fashionable London," but these have now taken wing,
and their places are occupied by a considerable propor-
tion of excursionists from all parts of the provinces.
Railway companies offer such facilities to the travel-
ling public now, that for a sovereign or five and twenty
shillings you may have a ride of 500 miles. With a
five-pound note, the result often of long and careful
saving, a good many of the lower middle classes
manage to spend a week in London. The same thing,
according to the French papers, is now going on in
Paris. Just now the Boulevards are a sort of no man's
land, on which the confusion of languages is really
worthy of Babel. For whereas London is the resort
of merely emcursionists from the British Isles, Paris is
a really cosmopolitan place, in which the holiday
makers of all nations assemble and meet together. The
Boulevards, as your readers know, are streets planted
with stately trees, and as some of these are of great length
a most pleasing effect in perspective is produced. Nearly
every other house is a café; and upon the pavement
in front of these, which is as broad again as any in
London, there are tables and chairs, where, underneath
the branches of the trees, the Parisians sit in the long
summer evenings, read newspapers, talk politics, and
sip absinthe. A stroll along one of these at sunset gives
you an idea of a city whose population may be said
truly enough to be gregarious. In contradistinction to
Philadelphia, it is the city of no homes. The word is
unknown in the French language. All classes are
represented in that animated crowd. There they are—
talking, laughing, gesticulating, reading, and enjoying
cool drinks, which they imbibe slowly and thoughtfully
through the agency of a quill. Take your seat at one
of the tables and ask for a given quantity of eau de vie,
say a litre. Instead of bringing you that exact quantity,
as a waiter would in England, the garcon, sets a full
decanter before you, and you help yourself. If you
think this a free and easy way of transacting business,
you find when you come to settle your bill that the
lines marked upon the decanter's side specify with the
utmost nicety the diminution which has been made in
the contents. There can be no mistake about it, and
you are inclined to think that the plan is a good one.
At all events, you are disposed to regard Paris as an
exceedingly jolly place, and one in which ten days or a
fortnight can be very agreeably spent.