The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-01-02 00:00:00

GUT yonbon Coutspanbott.

Ewe 4em it ilght tQ state that we gig xiqt at all tiaaps
idy,utity Outlel.veoWl p.tir (3.4rroeP,O,li.dPAYl.oP,illtPAs.:3

It is recoxcled of a country visitor to the taptropoXis
that, having been soddenly e.ropped in Cheapside, and
wishing to cross that busy thoroughfare, he decided to
pause until the crowd had passed by. Minute after
minute fled away, and still the multitude surged
through the buitling street, one stream setting to the
east, and another to the west, and neither showing i
the slightest disposition to diminish. At last our
friend exclaimed, "Wherever do all the people corne•
'Trom ?" e might have had equal ca. to put the
qugstioudind he visited all or any of t ectropolitan,
rigrics deilitg.the late severe frost. T.e land surface
of these lungs of London is varied with ornamental
waters, Kensington Gardens possesslng the Round
Pond and the tong Water, Hyde-park the Serpentine,
St. James's-park the pretty little lake which is such
a favourite resort of summer oarsmen; while" the
several parks of Regent, Finsbury, Victoria, and
Battersea all have pieces of water which are the delight
of the skater in frosty weather. Well, in every one of
these places there were thousands of persons,
who seemed to stay there the live-long day, and
to remain far into the night, when—the -scene
was lit up by the lurid glare of scores of torches.
Very weird and singular was the spectacle, as num-
bers of skaters, gliding over the smooth surface of the
ice, carried flambeau in • their hands, which darted!
hither and thither through the darkness like so manyt
.JVill-o'-the-wisp's. Butte any one who made the tour,
' of the Parks, the question where all the people Canto
from could not but recur. You might have left the
City, and II-Amassed no diminution whatever in the
volume of its traffic. The passengers by the Under-
ground railways were as numerous as ever; the
omnibuses were as fall as usual; the Stock Exchange
was crowded; the suburbs were alive with acts vity ;
the places of amusement were well patronised; the
central transept of the Crystal Palace visas thronged
by those iv ho had assembled to see th.e Christmas
pantomime; and yet London eoula spare tens of
thousands for the parks, all thoroughly enjoying them-
selves as though life had no careei for them, and they
were all provided with a
,stufficient store of this
world's goods. If the Queea holds a Drawing room,
or the Prince of Wales a lee; if the Lord Mayor goes
in state from the Mansie;n House to the Guildhall;
if Sir Garnet Wolseley sto be presented with the
A reedom of the City; if tie Duke of Edinburgh goes
to the Cattle Show—in short, if there is any out-door
sight to be seen anywhere, there you will find the
London crowd. In such lam immense population there
must be a very lare:P Isumber poeeessing an income
not compel them to work, and they are
always on the watch for anything in the shape of
- ont-door spectacle which may give variety to their
- existence.

Boxing-day is a time sacred to the production of
Christmas pantomime. Before even it was made a Nu*
Holiday by Sir John Lubbock, it was universally
observed as a day of cessation from work, hnt. now.
with very little exception,.people nal not, nen.iler
they spin" on the 26th of December. Three years ago
the American "case," in which our cousins claimed I
don't know how many hundred millions sterling as
=sequential damages arising out of the Alabama
ravages, arrived in this country on Boxing-day, and
complaint was afterwards made in the House of Com-
MOllll of the delay which had taken place in issuing such
an important document to the public. Mr. Gladstone
exoained that it was found utterly impossible to get
the Foreign Office printers to work on Boxing Day—
the thing had been tried, but it was found to be
utterly impracticable. They did not even con-
descend to make excuse with one accord—they did
not deign Ngive any excuse at aIL Work on Boxing
Day! Perish the thought! A blue-book was wanted
in a hurry, was it? Would Mr. Gladstone like to
have it at onee, or wait till he got it? Very impor-
tant, was it? Very well, let Mr. Gladstone go and
set up the types himself. Such were the criticisms
directed against the idea of working on Boxing Day,
and tke printers proved omnipotent. The morning
papers have generally very little news to publish on
Boxing-day, and the evening journals, very sensibly,
don't publish ; but the employes of the morning papers
have to turn up as usual, both on Christmas Eve
and Cluistmas Day—not all of them, however—
and so to avoid the danger which would arise
from being short-handed, columns upon columns
of matter have been previously prepared, in order
to fill up the gaps in the pages. Matter which at
any other time would have been treated with con-
tempt, and cast into the waste-paper basket, is now
eagerly secured, for it is generally felt that it does not
much signify what appears in the papers just then, as
nobody reads them. Then why publish at all? asks
the curious reader. Simply because there is a tradi-
tion that if with the exception of Sunday there is a
break in the continuity of the issue, it cannot be called I
a daily paper. The Barisian journals take life much
easier. They appear neither on Christmas Day nor on
many of the Saints' days in the calendar.
A damper has been thrown over the warmth of this
year's Christmas festivities by the terrible disaster on
the Great Western Railway, and the Bignall-Etill
Colliery explosion. These two occurrences destroyed
fifty lives on Christmas Eve, or very nearly as many
as were lost by the foundering of the La Flake.
An Oriental traveller passing through London might
be inclined to wonder where we placed the statues of
those great men whose names stand out in bold relief
in our historical annals. Where is Shake-peare, Milton,
Byron, or Shelley? Where is Newton or Bacon?
Where is Mansfield, Blackstone, Coke, or Selden.
Where is Marlborough, Drake, Raleigh, Howe, Duncan,
or Jervis? Where is Sheridan or Burke, Pitt or Fox,
Curran, or Wyndham? The most conspicuous statue
in the metropolis is that of Lord Nelson, in Trafalgar-
square. It crowns a monolithic obelisk, and is 18 feet
high, the work of a very worthy sculptor now dead—
E. H. Bally. The granite column which supports
the much-knocked-about old hero, cost, with the
statue itself, D/8,000—a sum which4Was certainly not
ill-spent in perpetuating the memory of the greatest
nave commander who ever lived. Thea we have the
Duke of Wellington oo the, top of Constitution-hill,
and in front of the Royal Exchange. But, as a rule,
we do not seem to take to the erection of statues on
an extensive scale, and genie of those which we really
do possess are anything but imposing in their appear-
ance. The statue of Sir Henry Havelock, for instance
at Charing Cross, is not worthy of a name which bore
so distinguished a part in the suppression of the
'lndian mutiny.

The preparations for the Arctic expedition are being
pushed forward with great energy. It is singular
what a fascination the subject poese,ses for those who
have sailed the Polar Seas with Parry or Beechey,
Ross or Franklin.. They tell ue that only those who
have set foot withia the Polar regions can describe the
fascinations of that seeeele land. Melancholy as are
the great barren wastes, they nevertheless exercise a
life-long magnetism upon all ho have once penetrated
into them. The leng winter, evith its terrible cold and
dismal darkness, was disagreeable, but even it had
some compensations. They eare to describe hree,
when night fell upon the weira land, and the faint
stars dimly twinkled through the mist, the glories of
the
_aurora would stiddenly illemine the gloomy
heavens with brilliant and beautifn; colouring. The
snowy plain)a- eplendidly lit up, and the ice
mountainjeeleem to be on fire. And when the
longe-elliht of winter is overpast, how welcome
is /the first glimpse of the sun ! The moon
ses with a brilliancy unknown in southern
yttitudes, and sontinuously circles round the horizon
:without setting. Certainly the cold is sometimes
intense, and Dr. Kane has recorded how, upon one
occasion, his best spirit thermometer registered one
hundred degree below fseezing point. Still the
suffering from such weather is not so great as it would
be were such a wave of Arctic atmosphere suddenly
to pass over this country. The human temperament
rapidly adapts itself to the altered conditions of life.
People in those regions are blessed with an extraor-
dinary appetite, and the dietary of the Esquimaux
shows what a large quantity of food is necessary to
support life at the Pole. Ten pounds of solid food
per day is quite an average bill of fare. Such a con-
sumption of nutritive matter cannot but fortify the
constitution against the effects of the piercing
weather.
When Christmas has departed, the London shop-
keepers display their wares in the most appropriate
manner for New Year's Day. If the weather be not too
unpropitious, large numbers of residents in the Home
Counties run up to town, and make the tour of the
shops in the principal streets. The railway companies
offer facilities by running excursion trains, and these
are eitensively patronised. It must be confeesed that
the West-end streets are then the principal places of
resort. Our country COLIADS turn their backs upon
the city thoroughfares, and admire the attractions of
Regent-street and the Quadrant. To walk up and
down those broad and ample pavements, to look in at
the windows, to admire their varied contents, to note
the latest fashions—and perhaps to buy a bonnet of
a lady speaking with a French accent, and calls her-
self "madame,"--such is the delight of many of our
visitors. But the shops are not everything at such a
time as this. It is only in London that pantomime is
produced with anything like magnificent spectacular
effect, and amongst the crowds that fill gallery, pit,
and boxes, is atconeiderable proportion of those pro-
vincial visitors whom we are always eo glad to see,
and to make comfortable while they remain with us.
Few peers have passed away amid more general
respect than Lord R.onsilly, who died on the day
before Christmas Eve, within s few days of com-
plettng his 73rd year. His father, Sir Samuel