The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-10-02 00:00:00

our yoOnn gorrespoubtut.

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

There is a tradition in many parts of the country in
the populated town as well as in the remoter rural
districts—that there is always a grey horse on London
Bridge. I remember that this was told to me more
than thirty years ago, and that to my childlike
imagination there was constantly a spectral quadruped
keeping silent watch and ward upon the chief thorough-
fare over the metropolitan river. There was the
typical grey horse night and day, summer or winter, a
gaunt and ghastly contrast to the living stream which
incessantly flowed past him. By and bye, however,
the truthyas revealed, namely that so enormous was the
traffic over London Bridge, that there must of neces-
sity be not one but many grey horses everlastingly
upon it. In truth there is no place within the whole
wide area of the British capital where you
can obtain a better idea of the magnitude
of the place than upon London Bridge. Take your
stand at noontide at the base of King William's
statue, just at the junction of Gracechurch and
Cannon streets, and look straight in front of you
towards the southern shore of the Thames. Pouring
over the bridge you will see four streams of vehicles—
two running north and two south, while the pavement,
nine feet wide on either side, is crowded with pedes-
trians. There they go, most of them looking neither
to the right nor to the left, each intent on his own
business, no one giving another the time of the day,
for of the vast multitude always on the bridge, very
few meet again. That little man in spectacles, hurry-
ing along with carpet bag in hand, is anxious to catch
the Antwerp steamer, and twenty-four hours hence
will be studying the agriculture of Belgium. The
seedy-looking individual in muddy high-lows hastens
down the steps to Allhallows Pier, for he is about to
settle at Rotherhithe, and will not often visit this part
of London in future. Others are on an exploring expedi-
tion to the Borough High-street, or to the "Elephant
and Castle ;" indeed, there are a thousand ways in
which, once off the structure, people shape their
course. Take up your position there at any given
hour of the day, and you will see a living stream of
people, but every day you will find that they possess
different faces. They are here to-day, but gone to-
morrow; yet such is the immensity of London that
years may come and years may go, but the tide of
humanity upon its principal bridge flows on for ever.
London Bridge, however, wide and spacious as it is,
and great as its accommodation, is found inadequate to
the demands upon it, and it is to be widened. The
decision of the Court of Common Council to effect
this by means of iron girders and new masonry has
been objected to on the ground that the symmetry of
the structure will be destroyed; but in this instance
the useful will supersede the beautiful.
The course pursued by the rulers of Egypt in exe-
outing works of which an excessive overflow of the
fille shall be prevented, and the surplus floods kept
back in reservoirs against the time when a low Nile
will render them useful, might well serve as an example
for other countries. Floods and droughts may be re-
garded as being as much a part of the settled law of
nature as the rising of the sun or the going down of the
same; yet we make neither storage of the one, nor
provision for the other. The time will come when the
surplus water of July 1875 would be found very
valuable in dealing with such a drought as that of
1870, and when the great quantities of water which then
ran to waste would be almost worth their weight in
gold as agencies for irrigation. Yet it is questionable
whether much has been done towards storing that
which plays so important a part in the economy
of physical nature. Still, although no year
of the present century has witnessed so many
storms in such different quarters of the world,
there has been many a time in which tempests proved
much more destructive. There was a dreadful inunda-
tion in Hungary, Austria, and Poland in 1813, and
during that year the rising of the Danube cut off and
destroyed about 2,000 Turkish troops. About the same
time 4,000 lives were lost in Poland, and in Silesia the
French army suffered greatly. In 1829 the Vistula
broke through the dykes of Dantzic, destroying 4,000
houses, 10,000 cattle, and a large number of people.
The Scottish highlands were visited by weather so
severe that the Spey and the Find-horn rose 50 feet
above their ordinary level. In 1830 the dwellings of
50,000 inhabitants of Vienna were laid under water.
In 1810 the floods in France were so terrible that the
Loire rose twenty feet in a single night. But it is not
often that inundations have so generally prevailed
throughout the world as has been the ease this year.

One of the social measures of last session which is
likely soon to have important results is the Artizans'
Dwellings Act. The medical officers of some of the
most crowded parishes have already reported to the
local authorities on districts to which they recommend
that the new statute should be applied; and the ves-
tries have in some cues shown a disposition to move in
the matter of their own accord. There is little doubt
that the Act needs to be applied with equal degree to
all parts of the metropolis. Right under the shadows of
Tyburnian mansions are rookeries of squalor; nor is the
City itself free from the presence of abodes of wretched-
ness and poverty. The name of the measure would
indicate that its intention was chiefly to benefit
mechanics and artisans. Yet there is a lower class
still—the poorest of the poor—whom the mere removal
of the competition of unwholesome abodes will not
enable to pay more for better places. They are to be
found in every large town; and any effort to improve
their dwellings would deserve success, even though it
did not command it.

Althoueh the voyage of the Valorous to Disco
is not to be compared with interest with that of
the three years' cruise of the Challenger round
the world, some of the scientific reaulitms
important.
When researches in the northern seas are highly tan
When the two come to compare notes, will it be found
that the occupants of the deep in northern and
southern latitudes differ so much as do the inhabitants
of these widely-varying climes? What affinity do the
crustacea of Greenland bear to those of the shores of
New Guinea? What resemblance do the marine
animals of the Equator bear to those that are fished
up from the waters upon which icebergs float, and
where instead of the fierceness of a vertical sun, the
sold rays of the Aurora Borealis give strangely-brilliant
hues to the unrelieved expanse of eternal ice? These
and a host of other questions will occur as one thinks
of the ground which has been covered by the researches
of these two ships, to the great delight of our scientific
men.
One reason why a Prorogation of Parliament is
always such a dreary ceremony is the reflection that
some of the members then upon the benches and
inscribed upon the roll of the House of Commons may
never darken its portals again. It is not so long ago
that her Majesty commanded the Royal Commissioners
to release the lords spiritural and temporal, the
knights, citizens, and burgesses, and the Commissioners
for shires and burghs in the House of Commons from
their attendance at Westminster ; and since that death
has laid its hand heavily upon both senators and repre-
sentatives of the people. Three members of the Com-
mom; were carried off in about a fortnight—all from
the Ministerial ranks. A party with a large majority
always pays a penalty in this way. In the last Parlia-
ment it was the turn of the Liberals to suffer in this
manner ; and in one year alone—l think it was 1870—
every M.P. who died was of this shade of politics. As
a rule the rate of
.rnortality amongst the Lords,
although numbering fewer by 150, is considerably
higher than that in the Commons.
Mr. Scudamore, in his " Day-Dreams of a Sleepless
Man," has spoken of his wanderings through London
when most of its population is in bed, and particularly
mentions his having refreshed himself with straw-
berries at Covent Garden at three in the merning.
I need scarcely say that this delicious fruit is not the
only product of the vegetable kingdom obtainable at
Covent Garden even at that uncanny hour. The huge
piles of vegetables deposited at this central spot are
ealculated to excite astonishment in the minds of those
who forget for a moment the colossal size of London
and the number of its people. Covent Garden is
indeed one of the places which country cousins en-
deavour to " do " during their fortnight's excursion to
town: just as they go to Billingsgate to note our
supply of fish, to Smithfield to see how we are off for
meat, and to Leadenhall to ascertain what are our
prospects so far as poultry is concerned. Yet all these
combined give but little idea of the marvellous daily con-
sumption of food by three millions and a half of human
beings. For every market there are a thousand shops
of butchers, poulterers, greengrocers and fishmongers,
all doing their best to furnish the vast multitude of our
people with the necessaries of life. Every one of the
inhabitants of London has a mouth to be filled every
day, and how this is done can best be understood by a
glance at the long lines of carts laden with provision
which roll into the metropolis with the early hours of
the morning. During the Franco-German war it was
known to be impossible for two great armies long to re-
main at one place, seeing that five or six hundred thou-
sand men would very soon swallow up the supplies of
a very extensive district. Yet here is a place with a
population equal to that of the whole kingdom of Scot-
land, producing little food in itself, but perpetually
drawing towards it hundreds upon hundreds of tons of
animal and vegetable food. There is no failure in the
supplies, and although an occasional death from star-
vation is reported in the newspapers, it is only from
the want of money to purchase food, and not through
any lack of food itself.
The experiments with the 81-ton gun have been
Watalea 'alth keen interest not only in our own but in
other half:lThëñ wetvent to war with -Russia
1854, it was considered very good work on the part of
artillerists that some of our heaviest guns were capable

of throwing a solid shot 961bs. in weight. What sort
of a figure would that make alongside the
1,2501 b. shot thrown by this latest of the giant
productions of the Woolwich Arsenal? Why,
in the days when we were so absorbed over
the investment of Sebastopol, not even the
most sanguine of our scientific men could have fore-
seen a time when a cannon ball weighing more than
twelve hundred pounds could be sent spinning
through the air. War is evidently a diffetent game
now from what it was at the beginning of the century
which is now becoming grey with years; and even
Napoleon, with all the irresistible force of his genius
might well hesitate now to cross the Alps with such
monster pieces of ordnance in his train as those which
have been lately proved at the butts at Woolwich.
The name of the month of October is suggestive of
the falling leaf, and of the waning glories of the
autumn. Before the dim grey of the rising dawn has
chased away the shadows of the last night of
September, many a fierce equinoctial gale has swept
over sea and land, scattering the white-winged ships,
and stripping the forest trees of the last remnants of
their foliage. Farewell now to the long summer days
and to the still nights; for the hour is coming and now
is when the silent sea, upon which so many tourists
have gazed with delight will be lashed into foam by
the furious blast of winter, and the murmuring brook
and mountain rill will be converted into rapid rushing
torrents. Some of the most disutrous gales which
have visited these islands were tre products of the
manth of October. The Royal C'harter, for instance,
' w..s beaten to pieces on the coast of Anglesey in an
October storm, and the gallant ship which had braved
the perils of ten thousand miles of ocean was destroyed
in sight of home with a loss of four hundred and fifty-
nine lives.