The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1866-07-31 00:00:00

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

1.-FITE DAVI TRUCS prolonged to 2nd
August, and then to be follovred by a four
weeks' armistice, assented to only on the
conclusion of preliminaries of pea, might
readily be mistaken for the " beginning of
the end" of the Continental War. But it is
far otherwise. '1 he very Reuters that bring
us intelligence of the arrival of Count
Karyoli with the peace prelimingries on
which he and Count Bismark had agreed for
the acceptance of Austria, announce the
defeat of the Bavarians in an engagement
which has just taken place betwixt them and
the Prussians, near Wurtburg , after another
fight near Gerschiern, in which one division
of the Prussians had been victorious over the
tith Federal Army Corps, and after more
fights in which other divisions had also been
victorious, and had repulsed the Bavarians
near Helmstadt and Roubrunn and else-
where on the road to Wursburg, between the
rivers Taber and ain. [We like to bring
our readers acquainted with the geography of
the war, since the largest maps are to be had
for twopence.] These affairs appear to have
resulted unfavourably for the Bavarians, who
suffered serious losses from the needle-gun
picking off their officers, in whom their main
losses consisted ; and the lest we have heard
of these belligerents is, that the Prussian
army is now three-quarters of a mile to the
west of Wurzburg, and the Bavarians at
Rottendorf, a quarter of a mile south of it.
Thus the war as betwixt Prussia and the
Minor German States is still carried on; and
we confess we have heard more than one
eager politician (for there are even in Dorset,
Wilts, and Somerset, people who, like the
measuring tailor in Addison's Spectator, take
up their heads fully more about foreign than
domestic political exclaim "and serve them
right" The Minor States, though siding
with Austria, failed to come to her support
in her hour of need, and now they are paying
the penalty of the grand maxim divide et
inspera. which Bismark of Prussia knows so
well how to apply. The old Shaksperian
adage

"Re that will not when be may,
When he will, he shall base nay,"
Applies to them exactly. So Prussia, although
negociating with Austria on the assumptiont
of leaving her henceforth out of the question
and out of the Germanic Confederation, an
independent power, though shorn of her
imperial and military prestige, and reduced
to a lower level than she has ever yet owned
in the political balance of Europe, reserves to
herself the task of coercing the other members
of the Federation until she can constitute
herself their dictator, whether as an influence
apart, or as an integral portion of a system
whereof she may be the central sun, and the
Minor States the satellites. Whether this
result may be the most desirable for the peace
of Germany; whether it is this, that in the
mind of Fatherland, is destined to realise
that notion of 'German unity" for which
the Emperor Frederick Barbara's& is about
to start from his long sleep and shake his long
and ever-growing beard, we know not—but
so it is that whilst preliminaries of peace with
Austria were signed at the Prussian head-
quarters of Nikolsburg on Thursday—Prussia
still prosecutes the war with Bavaria, W ur-
tumberg, Baden, and their smaller allies, and
pushes them to extremities. Baden, it is
thought, may obtain terms, but Bavaria will
inevitably be humiliated, and the free territory
of Frankfort chastised. All in fact depends
on the tone and temper of one man, and that
one is M. de Bismark ; that man of strong
will and resolute daring, before whose obsti-
nate determination it appears as if nothing
could stand.

11.—THE ATLANTIC CABLE IS LAID.
With quiet precautions, which contrast
stroi gly with the fuss and excitement
expended on former efforts to solve this great
practical problem, at five o'clock, English
time of Friday, July 27th, the cable was
completed between England and America.
Conversations and messages were henceforth
freely carried on until a request was trans-
mitted to cease signaling, in order to admit
of the splicing of the shore end of the cable in
Trinity Bay (Newfoundland). And this
being accomplished, Mr. Latimer Clark, the
electrician, commenced testing the cable
previously to taking it over from the com-
pany by whom it has thus successfully been
laid; and, whilst we write, and as our papers
are passing into the reader's hands, a nieces.
lion of messages, et the huge ransom of £.20
per 100 words is, no doubt, throbbing from
the heart of the new world to that ol the old,
and vice versa. A London correspondent
remarks that although we cannot have the
substance of what passes in Congress any
evening published in this country until the
following morning, the Americans, on the
contrary, will read "Proceeding, in the
British Parliament of this day" in their after-
noon papers! They will read in their
newspapers at "Four o'clock," in fact, that
Parliament met at six." This, as everyone
knows, arises from the difference of time;
American time being some seven hours later
than our own. Notwithstanding the enor-
mous, and it might almost seem prohibitory
tamift of words, applications for messages
have been pouring in. The wire will be
opened to the public and the messages sent
exactly in the priority in which they are
received.
III—TER daily papers have made us ac-
quainted with the details of the Hyde Park
demonstration of Monday, and the subsequent
disturbancee and riots during the week ; but
as one who ass in the thick of it MI on Monday
evening, our London Correspondent seeks to
oorreot some of the misrepresentations of the
London press. Our journals, having mostly a
partisan character on one side or
.other, have
puts party complexion on. this affair which be.
lons to it only in a very toconsiderable degree
—the one side to coat a stigma on Refonsees,