The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-12-19 00:00:00

• Our foOon Corrtspanbent.
INVe deem It right to stato that we do not at all din*
• Identify ourselves with ouz Correspondent's opinions]

The people of London are preparing for Christmas
with all the energy by which they are generally dis-
tinguished. The shops are full of good things, physi-
cally and mentally, and the purveyors vie with the
publishers in offering all kinds of attractions to those
who are fortunate enough to have money to spend in
their pockets. As the celebration of this festival is
not confined to any one class of the community, the
assistants in the establishments of the provision
chants more especially find themselves very busy just
now; and there is a great run upon the illustrated and
illuminated literature with which every year the season
seems to be increasingly associated. We shall now be
looking out for those loads of lolly and cypress from
the country which will decorate many a drawing.roont
and parlour here; and the railways will have td put en
all their force to accommodate the augmented traffic
which Christmas brings. The lines that acne the
home counties advertise excursions to Lonion enabling
those who avail themselves of the advantages offend
to look in upon one or two of the pantomimes
on Boxing Day, and to attend sores of the ornate
services in the churches on the following Sunday. With
the butchers and the poultry merchants the great object
of solicitude is, of course, the weather. Let it be dry
and bracing, and there will be rejoicing both at
Smithfield and at Leadenhall, for then the meat looks
at its best, and moreover will remain longer in a state
of preservation. But if the atmosphere be damp and
muggy, it mskes all the difference in the appearanee
of this clan of provisions, and should there not be as
ready a sale as had been anticipated by the enter-
priming tradesman, he suffers a serious loss through
his stock being left upon his bands. This year, after
the shops have closed on the Thursday night, they
will not reopen until Monday morning, and this fact
Is pregnant with meaning to all who will have large
consignments of perishable goods on hand.

The conductors of the Cattle Show were this year
more fortunate in the weather than they were twelve
months ago, when one of our oppreseive fogs invaded
the rut area of the Agricultural Hall, and, combined
with the gee, nearly stilled scores of splendid animals
which had been bred and fed with en much care. The
attendance of the public on some of the shilling days
was very great, and on one day 23,600 persons
paid for admission. The fact of the Prince
of Wales taking the first prize gave much satisfac-
tion at Sandringham, and the visitors to the Hall
were no less gratified when his Royal Highness and
the Duke of Edinburgh came up to town, and made the
tour of the exhibition. There was a good deal of push-
ing and crowding, as there generally is when Royalty
moves about, but the people can hardly be blamed for
that, and the charges of rudeness so freely brought
against the masses on these occasions are totally un-
warranted. They are always glad to see the represen-
tatives of the reigning House interest themselves in
those engagements which typify the enterprise and
spirit of the nation; ai,l, casting aside all formalism,
are anxious to give Royalty a hearty welcome. The
popularity of the Prince of Wales is undoubted, and
he is warmly greeted wherever he appears. This year's
Smithfield Show was rather smaller than it has formerly
been, owing to the enforcement of a rule that no
aalintal shall be exhibited there which has competed at
any other show within a month. It ha.s frequently
happened that a splendid beast, after carrying every-
thing before it at Birmingham, where the exhibition
comes off immediately preceding that at Islington, has
been brought direct to London, and repeated the pro-
cess. The smaller breeders complained of this as giving
them no chance, and now the capitalist has to make
his choice between Birmingham and London, for he
cannot compete at both.

Mr. Theodore Martin's Life of the Prince Consort
has already become immensely popular, as indeed it
could not help being, after having been brought out
under the personal revision of the Queen. It forms a
fitting companion volume to those already issued by
her Majesty's direction under the editorship of Sir
Arthur Helps, describing the Royal life in the High-
lands, and the Prince Consort's early years. Mr.
Martin has, thus far, only brought his biography down
to 1848, leaving the history of thirteen eventful years
still to be written. That period includes the religions
controversy caused by the appointment of Cardinal
Wiseman in 1850, the opening of the Great Exhibi-
tion in the following year, the establishment of the
French Empire, the war with Russia, the Indian
Mutiny, and the beginning of the Civil war in the
United States. It was on the 27th November, 1861,
that the news arrived in this country of the seizure of
the Southern Commissionere from the English mail
steamer Trent by an American man-of-war, and
never shall I forget the burst of indignation which
the intelligence created. The press and the
people cried out for war; Lord Palmerston, thou in
his 78th year, was not behind in giving effect to the
national sentiment, and a very strongly-worded
despatch was drawn up at a Cabinet Council demand-
ing the immediate surrender of the Commissioners,
and submitted to the Queen. At that time the Prince
Concert was in his usual health, and on the
despatch being read over he suggested some verbal
alterations, toning down the severity of the language,
while firmly adhering to the demand. This was
acceded to by the Ministers; but none of the party
then assembled at Windsor Castle imagined that by
the time the steamer conveying this despatch could
have made her way across the Atlantic the Prince
Consort would be no more. No one who is old enough
to remember that Christmas of 1861 will ever forget it.
The funeral took place on Monday, the e3rd of
December, amid the muffled peals from the bells, the
firing of minute guns, and with the flags of the
shipping in every port flying at half-mast. At the
special services, which were held all over the
kingdom on that day there were very few who did
not appear with some sign of mourning. It
was the most melancholy Christmas that had
been known in these islands for many a year, and no
one could help thinking of the widowed Queen,
wrapped up in her unutterable woe. It proved the
greht shadow of her life, and what a blow it must have
been we now see more dearly than ever by the light
of Mr. Theodore Martin's well-written

The determination of the Government that Great
Britain shall be represented at the American Inter-
national Exhibition will give general satisfaction. The
Executive of the United States sent us an invitation,
and it has been accepted. It will be held in Philadelphia,
the " City I,f Brotherly Love" in 1876, to celebrate
the centenary of American Independence. Living as
we do a hundred years after the attempt of King
George 111. to keep our Transatlantic colonies in
subjection to this country, we canaot but now see
how utterly hopeless such an enterprise must have
been. The Americans are determined that this
anniversary shall be a big hing, and there is no doubt
that large numbers of our countrymen will seize the
opportunity to cross the ocean, and to see a tew of the
wonders of that colossal land. They will not confine
their attentions to Philadelphia, but will give New
York a look-up, as well as Washington, and
Richmond, for four years the capital of the Southern
Confederacy. In the great central hall of the Capitol
of Waehington the visitor will see two large paintings
illustrative of the battles of Yorktown and Saratoga,
where the colonists were victorious, and which did so
much to pave the way for independence. The guide
generally manages to hurry the Englishman past these,
not caring to let the guest contemplate his country's
humiliation. In like manner the Frenchman who is
shown over our own Houses of Parliament is not
ostentatiously conducted into the painted hall, where
,and those magnificent frescoes of Maclise, peurtray-
ing the meeting of Wellington and Blucher after the
battle of Waterloo, and the death of Nelson on board
the Vidor)/ at Trafalgar. I may say that those who
go to Philadelphia will see a picture rarelr presented
in this country, where towns are built without any
pretence to system or rule. The city is laid out with
the regularity of a chess-board, and the numbering of
the streets and of the houses is so arranged that it
is impossible either to go wrorg or to lose time in
Stifling any particular plate. Most of the streets; are ,
exactly alike, And the houses are of one uniform '
height. Such a picture of Quaker-like simplicity is
not often witnessed.

There is a run upon. the circulating libraries just
now for two works of a widely opposite character.
One is the " Diary of the Shah ;" the other is the
"Journal of Dr. Livingstone." In the first case the
Imperial author went for a long holiday, and elabo-
rated his impressions after his return to his Palace;
in the reconil, the writer left home and friends to en-
counter years .4 fatLmerand hardship in unknown
lands, and to do battle with privation in the name and
for the sake of geographical science. The Shah's pro-
duction is very interekting, and it is evident that he
must have been a very industrious observer of men and
manners during the short time he was on his travels.
Sometimes his conclusions are a little wide of
the mark, as for instance when he tells his
people that if any one offends the police here,
he is immediately put to death; but the pages of the
book contain an ample fund of amusement for the
Christmas season. The feelings with which pt.;.,e
Livingstone's journal will be perused are of a different
kind. Amid all his hard work and his toilsome
marches, he was an indefatigable chronicler of what
he saw, and his entries only terminated with his
physical inability to hold the pen any longer. The
story of his last hours, of his being carried across
rivers and over wild and uncultivated tracts when in
the last stage of exhaustion from dysentery is a very
affecting one, and on reading it laie only wonder is
that he did not succumb years before.
cientifie men h&ye been In a snit, of anxiety to

know whether the expeditions sent out to note the
Transit of Venus across the disc of the tun, were
fortunate so far as the weather was concerned ; and
it appears that in most c-ases,good observations were
made, and excellent photomjaphs of the phenomenon
taken. For at least twelve' months preparation for

this event hr.i been in progress, and parties of
astronomers jcgrusyed to the uttermost parts of the
earth in order s witness it. As the transit took
place between toe hours of two and six on a mid-
winter morning, to far as these latitudes were con-
cerned, the spectacle VIM lost, and those who desired
to see it had to take up their positions in
Madras, Egypt, Siberia, Melbourne, and other
places equally inaccessible to the great majority
of Englishmen. Great importance has been attached
by astronomers to a transit of Venus, for more than 200
years pest, and it was in the transit of 17&t that
Captain Cook, the well-known circumnavigator, set
out on the first of his voyages round the world. Even
those who take but little interest in astronomy would
regret if a whole year's trouble and expense were
rendered fruitless through bad weather. Of course if
the sky is covered with elouds neither sun nor planet
can be seen, and all the discoveries which science has
yet invented are powerless to drive the clouds away,
and the best mustebe made of an untoward occurrence.

Dr. Lyon Playf air, M.P., a man speaking with some
authority on such a matter, has been addressing a Con-
ference at the Society of Arta on the Pollution of
Rivers, and has declared that means may be taken to
prevent it. When this heading is seen in the newspapers
it is passed over by the great majority of readerg as
being of little or no consequence; and in Loadon no
doubt it does not command that attention which is
bestowed on more exciting topics. But the pollution
of the streams in some of our rural retreats is a fact
which cannot much longer be ignored, and the Society
of Arts has petitioned the legislature to take measures
for putting a stop to it. The appearance of the brooks
and rivers which now wind through some of our land-
scapes is very different from the time when Tennyson
wrote his Song of the Brook :

"I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling.
And here and there a snowy flake,
Upon me as I travel,
With many a silver water-break,
Above the golden gravel.
I draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimminwriver ;
For men may come, and men may go,
butt flow on for ever."
The description given by some of the speakers of
the present condition of our rustic streams by no means
agrees with the chaste language of the poet laureate,
which I have quoted, and it would appear that the
waste water from chemical manufactories and metal-
liferous mines is in some places poured wholesale into
the rivers, discolouring them for miles, and not only
an, but poisoning the fish. Man might put up with a
sentimental grievance, like the spoiling of a land-
scape, but the destruetion of an article of human food
is another affair, and many will sympathies with the
endeavour which the Society of Arta has made to put
an effectual stop to the practice.
The raising of new statues is not to be confined to
perpetuating the memories of poets and statesmen. Mr.
Thomas Cubitt, who made Pimlico, and developed
Ruston, and was one of the most enterprising builders
London ever had, is to be immortalised in white
marble. His statue is to be set up in Ruston Square,
hard by the great terminus of the London and
North Western Railway. At the same time the
square itself is to be beautified. New railings, flower
beds, fresh shrubs, and ornamental walks, are rapidly
taking the place of neglect and decay. The cost is to
be defrayed by subscriptio a. which is expected to
realise £9,000. The rule in those metropolitan squares
which have any pretension to respectability is for the
occupier of every house in it to contribute one or two
guineas annually towards the cost of keeping the en-
closure in decent order. In return for this each sub.
scriber is supplied with a key, so that he might enjoy
his walks at pleasure. The general public do not get
the entree, of which some are inclined to complain, but
I think without just reason. If the urchins of the
reighbourhoodcould work their will upon the place, it
is clear that the square would very speedily become
unfit to be seen.