The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-10-30 00:00:00

Cyr yooon Corresponbent.

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

Horace has told us of a time, far back in the history
the earth upon which we live, move, and have our
being, "when the fishes were found in the trees, and
the deer struggled in the waters." It would be saying
too much to declare that the period has returned ; but
in those stormy days of gale and fiord which charac-
terised the second half of 0 etober, if deer were not
struggling in the waters, live stock of various descrip-
tions certainly were. From places in the north, which
look oat upon the turbid waters of the German ocean;
from the flit countries in the midlands, where vast
numbers of pehple are far removed from the sea, and
whose ideas of flowing water are based upon the as-
pect of thin and sluggish streams; from the tempest-
beaten coasts of East Anglia; from the " genial clime
al—the sunny south ; " and from those western lands,
where, if it be rain at all, they are sure to get it fresh
from the Atlantic—the story has been the same. Im-
mense destruction to cattle and to crops; houses
wailed away; bridges lifted bodily from their abut-
ments, and tumbled into a roaring torrent; people
flying for their lives, and in some cases actually losing
them; farmsteads standing in the middle of lakes; the
trees peeping here and there above the surface of
the rushing streams; and over all a heavy brooding
sky looking down in fitting melancholy upon the
gloomy scene—all this has been told at the length of
columns in the newspapere. Occasionally there would
be a break in the continuity of the pelting pitiless
downpour; and the storm-cloud, having spent its force
upon the helpless landscape, might seem to be upon
the point of dissolution. But as the shades of evening
settled ripen the land, and the the sun went down
behind masses of wild and lurid cloud, the deluge
would be renewed; and the windows of Heaven, once
more opened, would discharge their contents upon the
drenched and soaking soil. It must have struck many
of your readers that although they may have remem-
bered equally heavy rains, the accounts showing the
inundations of low-lying lands testify to the presence
of a greater body of water than would have been found
upon them thirty years ago. There is no doubt that
this is the case. The arterial system of drainage which
is now such a feature in our agriculture carries off the
water from the upper lands almost as rapidly as it is
deposited upon them; this drainage is turned into
the nearest rivulet, or sometimes even into the
highways or the bye-ways adjacent to the fields
—places which were never intended to be such
receptacles. Therefore, in times of flood, the water-
courses are called upon to receive considerably greater
quantities than was formerly the case; they find it
impossible to do so; tiny streams are converted into
mountain torrents; and the nearer they approach the
valleys, the more certain are they to convert those
valleys into inland seas. The system of arterial drain-
age is uquestiOnably a good one, but no adequate
provision flail been made for carrying away
the great
body of water which it must inevitably produce.
The most ancient of our Consistory Courts—that of
the Arches—has ceased to exist as possessing an inde-
pendent jurisdiction, and the Dean thereof, Sir Robert
Phillimore, will take his place as one of the judges of
the High Court of Justice. The Arches Court was
chiefly one of appeal from inferior tribunals within
the province of Canterbury; and derived its name
from the church of St. Mary-le-Bow, in Cheapside,
where it was formerly held, and whose top is raised
on stone pillars built archwise. Appeals from
the Arches Court again lay to the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council. The venerable
nature of the institution may be gathered from
one fact. When our forefathers created the Court of
Arches, they fixed the salary of the Dean at the mag-
nificent sum of five-and-twenty pounds per annum.
This must have been long anterior to the days of Oliver
Goldsmith, whose hero was " passing rich on forty
pounds a year." The singular part of it is that,
although the rean of Arches was a judge who was
often called upon to define the most important points
relating to church doctrine, this stipend of less than
ten shillings a week was never increased, but was
regularly paid down to the extinction of the tribunal.
But the dean combined with his office the post of
Judge of the Admiralty Court, and that means an in-
come of £4,000 a year.
The burgesses in the corporate towns of England
and Wales who will prcceed to the election of councillors
on the Ist of November, will exercise a right that has
existed in one shape or another from the earliest times.
Corporations are stated by Livy to have been of very
high antiquity amongst the Romans, by whom they
were introduced into other countries. Plutarch
tells us that they were planned by Niaree in
order to break the force of the two rival factions
of Sabines and Romans, by instituting separate
societies of every manual trade and profession.
Municipal corporations in England are described
by Cowell as bodies politic authorised by the
king's charter to have a common seal, one head officer,
and members who were able by their common consent
te era!, t or receive in law any gift within the compass
of their rights. Corporetions were formed by charters
issued by the kings of England to various towns, first
by Edward Confessor. Henry I. granted charters
in the year 1100; and succeeding monarchs gave cor-
porate powers, extending them to numerous large
communities throughout the realm, subject to tests,
oaths, and conditions. What was familiarly known as
the Corporation and Test Act was passed in 1661, and
repealed in May, 1828. The municipal bodies of Eng-
land and Wales were placed upon their present footing
in 1835. With respect to the dignified offi eof alder-
man, I may add that it was created in London in 1242,
and that by an Act passed in the reign of Richard 11.
in 1394, the metropolitan aldermen were chosen for
life, instead of annually, as before. That Act is still in
force in the city of London, which is divided into
twenty-six wards, with an alderman for each. A
London alderman takes from eight to ten years after
his election to work up to the Mayoralty, rotation and
not the will of a political majority being the rule.
It is not to be wondered at that the members of the
French Acadein' y of Sciences were desirous of paying
a tribute of respect to the memory of so distinguished
a man as Sir Charles Wheatstone, whose name will
be associated with the development of the telegraph as
Long as history endures. The electric spark which the
genius of Wheatstone put to such practical use has
completely revolutionised the life of civilization. The
world's news of a few hours previously is now photo-
graphed day by day in the broad sheets of our journals;
and a London merchant thinks little more of asking a
luestion at Calcutta or New York than of communi-
cating with one of our own provincial towns. What
happens in Melbourne or in Sydney one day can be
known in England the next, although 12,000 miles of
sea may roll between them. But Professor Wheatstone
did not merely call electricity into practice for the
transmission of intelligence. If he had done this alone,
he would have made his name immortal, but he in-
vented machinery for that transmission which sends
the words along the wires at a speed truly marvellous.
The Wheatstone instrument," as it is called,
despatches its messages at the rate of 120 words a
minute, or two in every second of time Were the tele-
graph a cumbrouely-working agency, it could never
have fulfilled its mission ; . but it performs its labour
with extraordinary celerity, and for this we are largely
indebted to the man who died last week in Paris.
The meeting of the Emperor of Germany and the
King of Italy in the splendid city of Milan is one of
the most suggestive incidents which the world has wit-
nessed for a long time. United Germany
and United
Italy were represented in the persons of the two
Sovereigns who responded to the enthusiastic shouts
of the multitude that gathered densely under tne
shadows of that magnificent marble cathedral which is
the pride and glory of the stately city of St. Ambrose.
Owing to the faultless Italian atmosphere, the marble
is as pure now as when it was first placed in position,
which is more than can be said of the Portland stone
of which our own St. Paul's is constructed. How
many of those who gathered in the streets of the ancient
capital of Lombardy paused to remember the previous
meeting of two Sovereigns there? One of them was,
indeed, the game—Victor Emmanuel, but he was King
merely of Sardinia when in July, 1859, he rode through
the city of Milan with the late Emperor of the French
after the defeat of the Austrians. What changes
have been witnessed since It is only sixteen years—
not a very long time in the life of a man—a mere speck
in the history of a people. Italy was then a phantom;
Germany a geographical expression. Yet the former
is now consolidated, and the latter is a huge military
Power in the heart of Europe. The Emperor of that
day died an exile in England; and Maximilian, the
dispossessed kuetrian Governor of Lombardy, came to
a violent death in Mexico only eight years afterwards.
The letters which have been brought home by the
Pandora, from those who are engaged in the Arctic
Expedition, were read_ with the greatest interest.
They seemed like messages from another world; from
a region where there is no voice heard but the crash of
ice-floes when the short lived Midsummer lam lights
up the sterile scene; from a clime where vegetable
nature finds it impossible to fight against the frigid
atmosphere; and from a land where the big polar
bear, could he speak, might well declare, in the words
of Alexander Selkirk, that he wa.s " eoeserch of all he
surveyed—his right there was none to dispute." Long-
fellow has written of man's "sailing o'er life's solemn
main ;" but the Arctic Ocean must be a solemn
main, indeed, without much life to enliven its
dreary solitudes. It must have been a heavy dislt-
polutment to the gallant captain and crew of the
Pandora to find the 6,000 miles between So tthampton
and San Francisco barred by only fifty miles of ice—
net such ice! as solid as a rock. There was nothing
or it but to tarn back, and while preparing to set out