The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-05-29 00:00:00

IJllur Youhn Graspogent.

[We deem it right to state that we do not at all thee
identify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.

Between the date of the Queen's leaving for Scot-
land on the 21st instant, and the time of Her
Majesty's return at the en a of June, the life of the
London season will be practically compressed. It
virtually began with the opening of Parliament by the
Royal Commissioners on the 20th, and by the time we
witness the closing days of June a great deal will have
been done; for when July sets in the days become

hot and dusty, and the nights close and stifling, and
those who are enabled to do so begin to turn their
_ _ _

attention towards making preparations for their holi-

days. Now, therefore, is the period to see London at
its brightest and its best. The trees in the parks are
clothed with the greenest of verdure, all suggestive of
life and
,beauty for a short time only. In about a
couple of months, should we have a summer like
_

those of the olden times, the scorching heats will have
rendered the leaves dry and shrivelled, the trees will
have become white with dust, and the foliage having,
_ _

like all other things terrestrial, advanced into the

stage of decrepitude and approaching that of decay,
will fall an easy prey to the first summer gale that

may chance to pass over the land. But while the
season lasts it will undoubtedly be made the most of.

Garden parties by day ; balls, Concerts, and receptions
by night—such will be the round of existence with
many a noble and aristocratic family in the British
capital. And when it is over, those who care to
wander by the Italian lakes, or who prefer to stay at

home and by our own sea-side listen to the deep
diapason of the waves, will enjoy the quietude and the
repose all the better from having passed through such
a round of life as that which is experienced ,by those,

who, in London society, make the best of what the

season brings.
During a brief interval of peace in the long war
between England and France which lasted the greater

part of the three-and-twenty years between 1792 and
1815, there was a great gathering at Fontainebleau, in

- , -
which many illustrious Englishmen moved freely

about in the salons. Then, as now, English horseman-

ship was world famous, and the most famous hunter
of that day was Mr. Assheton Smith. He was one
of the company assembled at Fontainebleau on this
occasion, and when Napoleon arrived, he hurried past
Lord Erskine, one of the greatest of our lawyers,
in his haste to at once make the acquaintance of
—in his own words—" The celebrated horseman

_
Smith." Diplomatists, men of letters and of
science, generals, lawyers—all must wait to be
introduced to him until he had seen the mightiest
hunter of his time. Admiration for the noble qualities
of the horse was coupled with admiration also for his
rider. That the English people have a strong fancy

for the best specimens of the horse which can be

brought together is nowhere more abundantly proved
than at the meets of the Coaching Club and the Four-

in-Hand Club during our brief summer in London.

The trysting-place is invariably hard by the Magazine,
in Hyde-park; and, en a fine day, with about thirty
coaches, each with four horses, the sight is really a
magnificent one. Competent critics are there to note
the quality of each "turn-out," and the roans, the

blacks, the greys, and the bays, each find admirers.

Sometimes the Prince of Wales may be seen on the
box of one of the coaches, and he is always certain to
be warmly cheered. The vehicles, after assembling
at.the Magazine, slowly file away between the tens of
thousands of spectators either to the Alexandra
Palace, to the Orleans Club at Twickenham, or to the
Crystal Palace at Sydenham, where the members of
the Club take luncheon. But, in whatever direction

they may go, north or south, the cavalcade is always
regarded as one well worth seeing, and full of deep
interest to all classes of the English people.
Parliament very speedily got to work after
_it. was

fully constituted by the members of the new Ministry
taking their seats; and the programme of legislation
sketched in the Royal Message will give it ample
occupation until the usual time of rising in the middle
of August. When it gets properly into the line of

_
its duty, it will be found that the work of law-giving
for a great empire is no sinecure. The hours are long,
and the labour is hard. The Speaker is in his chair
ten or twelve hours at a stretch, and with a brief
interval for repose is in the chair again. The time
is now at hand when, morning after morning, the dawn
will be seen stealing over London before the House
of Commons adjourn. Upon the topmost height of
the Clock Tower, when either House is sitting, the

electric light is seen burning brightly during the short

hours of darkness, and it can be seen to an enormous
distance in the western suburbs of London. A way-
farer upon either of the bridges turning in the direc-
tion of St. Paul's Cathedral about two o'clock upon any
of these fine summer mornings, may see the dim grey
tinge of dawn gradually breaking the darkness behind
the massive dome, throwing the golden cross into bold
relief against the background of an amber sky,
awakening once more into light the murky waters of
the river, and as it slowly makes its way westward,
turning the electric light upon the Palace of West-
minster into a ghastly glare no longer useful for
the purposes of illumination, and by its presence
only conveying the idea that untimely hours are
kept by Parliaments in modern times. Sun-
rise from the top of a mountain is a splendid
spectacle; sunrise in London on a clear mid-
summer morning is a suggestive one. The city
which is being lighted up for another day has behind
its walls more than three millions of people who are
asleep; and upon hundreds of them the sunshine is
falling for the last time, for on an average more than
two hundred residents of London are every day
gathered to their fathers.
Twelve months have passed away since Sir Garnet
Wolseley, who has now returned from the Cape, went
out to that dependency. He had only just come back
from Cyprus, the administraticn of which he had been
organising amid what Mr. Tennyson has so graphically
described as—

"The blaze upon the waters to the east,
The blaze upon the waters to the west,
The blaze upon the island overhead."
At a Cabinet Council held on the 24th May, 1879, it
was decided to send Sir Garnet Wolseley at once to
the Cape, with supreme military and civil authority.
The announcement was made to the House of Com-
mons on Monday the 26th and on the following
Friday, the 30th Sir Garnet started for his destination,
On the Sunday, the let of June, occurred that
calamitous incident in Zululand by which the Prince
Imperial of France lost his life. Sir Garnet Wolseley
went out to South Africa to settle the Zulu question,
and there is no longer any opportunity for a warlike
policy on the frontiers of Natal. He has added the
adjustment of the difficulties at the Cape to his con-
duct of the campaign in Ashantee, and his Govern
ment of Cyprus—services for which the distinction of
the Grand Cross of the Bath would be a just recogni-
tion. Sir Garnet has already the Graud Cross of the
Most Distinguised Order of St. Michael and St.
George, which was conferred upon him in 1874, after
his return from Ashantee.
When Elihu Burrett made his walk from London to
the Land's End, for the purpose of writing a descrip-
tive sketch of the journey, he had not been many
miles out of the capital before he had to pass Pembroke
Lodge, Richmond Park, at that time occupied by the
late Earl Russell, then her Majesty's principal
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The learned
blacksmith painted in vivid language the beauty of
the place and its surroundings—a fit abode for the
veteran statesman in the eventide of his days, and in
the closing years of a long political life. There is no
spot within an easy distance of London where the
loveliness of an early summer can be more strikingly
depicted than at Richmond. Standing on the
hill, hard by the "Star and Garter," and over-
looking the valley of the Thames, the scene is one
of the most picturesque in the south of England. The
metropolitan river there makes its way not between
miles of houses, under stately bridges, and past
gigantic docks, as when it slowly winds its
course through London, but the circuitous stream
intersects a landscape replete with sylvan attractions,
and combining hill and dale in pleasing variety. The
aspect of the country is that of a piece of splendid
patchwork, through which the Thames finds its way
like a stream of burnished silver. It is one
_of the
prettiest pictures which nature presents in a
county that is so full of them in the county of
Surrey.
The fund for raising a memorial to Sir Rowland
Hill,'which was taken up soon after the death of the

postal reformer in the autumn of last year, amounts to
thout £16,500, and may be considered closed. About
£2,000 will be devoted to the erection of a
statue in the City, and to a small memorial
in Westminster Abbey, where Sir Rowland was
buried; and the remaining £14,500 is to be applied
as the nucleus of a benevolent fund for the
help of aged and distressed post office servants.
Two sites have been suggested for the statue; one
beneath the portico in the old General Post Office, in
St. Martin's-le-Grand, and the other in the open
space at the south east corner of the Royal Exchange,
facing Cornhill. The former is looked upon as the
preferable and more appropriate of the two, and
measures have been taken to obtain the sanction of
the Government to the proposition. The statue will
be of white marble, eight feet high, with a suitable
pedestal; and a number of sculptors have been invited
to send in designs and models for it.
According to a Rhenish paper, in no previous May
has there been so great a diversity of opinion as now
exists respecting the prospect of the vintage this year
in tie Ithine provinces. The Committee of the House
of Commons which sat two sessions ago to inquire into

the incidence of the wine duties in this country,
elicited much valuable information on many matters

surrounding

the production and consumption of wine,
so that the anticipations of the vintage would be fol-
lowed with some interest now. On the one hand it is
confidently predicted that there will be hardly any
wine at all pressed this autumn, and that the little
which can be made will be inferior in quality; while
others assert that, as to quantity, there will be a good
half vintage, and that the quality will depend upon
the weather of the next few weeks or months. A
satirical writer declared some years ago that "the
month of May had set in with its usual severity."
That severity appears to have been experienced in
some of the vineyards upon the Rhine—the "sacred
Rhine of the Germans "—for instances have occurred in
which the branches were completely frozen, and the
leaves, which were green at eventide, have in the
morning been withered and shrivelled upon the
ground.

Last year there was an excess of moisture; this
year, thus far, there has been a great lack of it.
Twelve months ago the valleys were converted into
inland lakes, and the hill-side rills into mountain
torrents; not only were out-door engagements
seriously interfered with, but the harvest itself was
spoilt because there was so much rain. Now, from
the North of Scotland to the South of England, from
the Wash to the Mersey, and from the wild Lanca-
shire moors to the coasts open to the German Ocean,
the country is dry and parched, and the land is
seamed and cracked in all directions through want of
water. The long spell of rain ended in September,
and then a dry period set in which has made the rain-
fall for the winter and the spring very far below the
average. Sometimes there is much of wisdom in the
homely proverb 3 coined by our forefathers, who told
us that "drought never bred dearth in England."
That then must be the consolation of those who have
had occasion to lament the absence of the normal
quantity of rain during the past four months.
Lovers of Cricket have now an opportunity of judg-
ing of the kinds of play practised by the professionals
of two very different British dependencies, for there
is a Canadian as well as an Australian team in Eng-
land. Last year cricket matches, like all other al
fresco engagements, suffered terribly from the wet
weather; and when a game extended into the third
day, it was seldom that it could be finished. There
was no such a score of unfinished cricket matches
since 1860. It is not so now; and both Australians
and Canadians are enabled to show their skill at
batting, bowling, and fielding without any of those
unpleasant interruptions from the elements which
marked the cricket season of 1879.