The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1888-06-09 00:00:00

LONDON CORRESPONDENCE?

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

If one chances to be in a country road at any I
time during the summer from the earliest days
of June, he is almost certain to meet young men
enjoying the beauties of the scene in one of two
equally healthy and pleasant fashions. Bicycling
and walking are the two ways in which the
athletic youth of this age most largely disports
himself, the former carrying off the palm for its
continued and ever still-growing popularity.
When this particular sort of locomotion on
wheels was first practically introduced, and that
is really only a little over twenty years ago, it
was prophesied as speedy a downfall in its
popularity as it had had a rise, and by many it
was treated as if it were simply one of those
passing fashions to which the pleasure side of the
world is often subject. But as machines were
improved, the popularity of the sport increased,
and from that day to this it has gone on becom-
ing more. This is a fact upon which the rising
generation of England deserves to be congratu-
lated, for a pastime has been provided for them
in bicycling which is at once healthy and
pleasure-giving, and which affords them an
opportunity they would not otherwise possess
of seeing the varied beauties of their own
land. When one says that "they would not
otherwise possess" such an op.portunity, it might
be taken to mean that walking is excluded from
the calculation, but that is not so, for it must be
admitted that the majority of people like to be
carried rather than to carry themselves; and
although " cycling " might seem to come within
the latter category, yet it is locomotion on wheels,
and the ground can be got over more swiftly and
with much greater ease by its means than on
foot. But walking is a glorious exercise which
deserves every encouragement.
Scientists have often told us that one of the
most interesting and instructive parts of their
study lies in the unexpected fashion in which a
cause which is calculated to lead to a certain
result often developes an effect which had not
been reckoned upon, and which could scarcely
have been foreseen. Students of social pheno-
mena must frequently have the same experience,
and one of such cases has curiously enough been
presented by the pastime of cycling, which has
3ust been named. No one would have imagined
that, because of the growth among young men of
a particular fashion of enjoying themselves,
battered sign-posts all over the country would
be re-furbished and re-painted, and neglected
roads be once more made fit to travel upon. Yet
this has been the case. For a long period after
the introduction of railways and the lessened
amount of travelling by road, the highways and
by-ways throughout the country did not receive
all the attention that had been accustomed to be
paid to them while those silent monitors, the sign-
posts, were Llowed to drift into a state of decay
which rendered them not merely useless but
positively dangerous. The growth of cycling
changed all that, for as the roads became once
more largely used, and especially by strangers to
a district, not only was their repair more closely
looked after but the direction-posts were
seen to. And that has not been the
only consequences directly traceable to the
same cause, and yet that could not
have been foreseen when the sport started
on its race for popular favour. Many an
old inn on the roadside which dated its
downfall from the ceasing of the coaches to run
has had a new lease of life granted to it by the
passing to and fro of the myriad bicyclists who
are now to be met on all hands.
Whether it is due to the earlier hours which
are now being kept in the House of Commons, or
to some other cause, about which partisans might
differ, the fact is patent to all who are behind
the political and journalistic scenes that the
popular interest felt in the proceedings of
Parliament has of late shown decided signs of
decrease. Partly this is a matter which is one
of opinion, but partly, also, it is capable
of being tested by figures; and it is the
fact that less messages are being sent from the
House of Commons Just now than at any time
for the last ten years, and this despite the cir-
cumstance that the number of newspapers in
this country has within that period distinctly
increased, and that the service of telegrams to
journals of all kinds is better organised and
more extensive to-day than it has ever been. Of
course, it is to be considered that in matters of
parliamentary as of other business the interest
which is felt outside is not necessarily an index
to the value of what is being done inside, and
still more forcibly it may be argued that the more
talk that takes place the less work there is likely
to be done. But, whatever may be the expla-
nation, there is no getting over the fact, and the
fact is so striking, and from some points of view
so strange, that it deserves record.
If it were not that we are so frequently treated
to glaring examples, it would be hardly possible
to believe that human nature is so gullible as it
is often proved. Some of the oldest and simplest
swindles which have been exposed so often that
one is almost ashamed to lay them bare again,
constantly finds victims. The confidence trick,"
the painted-bird trick, and the ring-dropping trick
—like the three-card trick—continue to flourish,
despite every exposure, and there is another,
which is to be often seen at country markets
and fairs, out of which many a dishonest man
secures a good livelihood, and that is what is
commonly known as "purse faking." The
modus operandi of this particular swindle must
be known to every reader. A travelling vendor
of purses, filled with assurance and possessing a
glib, tongue, offers his wares for sale at half-a-
crown each, confessing as he does so that intrin-
sically the article is not worth the money, but
professing to drop certain coins inside which
make it much more valuable. To all appearances
he does so, but even if it were not, one would think,
obvious to the dullest mind, that a seller could
not afford to give a buyer three or four
florins for one half-crown, any person ac-
quainted with one of the simplest and yet
most effective forms of conjuring is aware
that, to the practised hand, the " palming " of
coins is almost ludicrously easy. Even an
amateur conjuror can hide coins in his hand
while presenting an apparently open palm, and
the class of swindler who haunts the country
market places with purses to sell is very far
from being an amateur at this kind of work.
The "Academy headache" is a well-known
complaint during the period that our greatest
annual picture-show is open, and a discus-
sion has lately been going on as to what
is really its cause. The most general answer
would he that the muscles of the eye
grow fatigued by long concentration upon
the many pictures hung on the walls, and that
that fatigue communicates itself to the brain.
But to that it is replied that no one ever heard
of a "National Gallery headache," though the
great collection which is housed at Trafalgar-
square attracts a constant stream of visitors,
especially from the provinces, who are deter
mined to pee every picture that is there. The
argument is drawn from this (iliac, clic) neada,iio
undoubtedly felt by many a visitor to the Royal
Academy is due to the garishness of much of
the modern style of painting. The tone of the
whole is pitched in too high a key—music
and painting are so allied that in these days
it is fairly allowable to apply an illustra-
tion from one to the other—and the con-
sequence is that first the eye becomes
weary, and then the brain grows depressed. It
may be that with time the colours of such
pictures as pass from to-day to our descendants
will soften into harmony, but it may be also that
the colours employed will altogether fade, and
that the future will know little of the paintings
that delight—and often tire—us to-day.
It is doubtful whether harm rather than good
is done by taking notice in the columns of a
newspaper of what it is the fashion to call "fool-
hardy feats," but even at the risk of increasing
the at traction of these for the semi-insane persons
who perform them, a protest ought to be
raised against the growing number of
such performances. There are many people
who seem to think there is something clever
and courageous in feats of which crossing the
Atlantic in an open boat may be taken as a type.
But even when success follows the attempt, those
who have achieved it can only be considered as
desperate gamblers, who for the sake of a tem-
porary notoriety stake their lives upon a chance,
and who would be best rewarded by being left
in the obscurity from which they ought never to
have emerged. It is difficult to speak with any-
thing like patience of the attempt that
is sometimes made to elevate such persons
to the position of her. A man who
attempts to cross the Atlantic in an
open boat, or who enters a cage of wild animals
without previous training, or tries to swim a
dangerous channel, and all hr the mere sake of such
Jape as the exploit may bring him, plays a reck-
less game, for which he ought not to be praised
even if he wins, for his hardihood deserves cen-
sure whether he gain or lose.
Net always is it that a list of Royal honours
gains such general approval as that contained in
the " Birthday " Gazette last published, for .in
this distinctions were given not merely to men

Who had made a mark in official life, but to
those who had earned the admiration of
their fellows by devotion to science and
art. The art chiefly honoured on this oc-
casion was music, Mr. Charles Hallo and
Dr. Stainer receiving knighthoods, a distinction
each has most worthily earned. Sir John
Stainer, as organist of St. Paul's Cathedral for
sixteen years, a post he has only receritly re-
signed because of weakness of eyesight, is better
known in London than in the provinces; but
Sir Charles Hall's name has long been a house-
hold word with musicians the whole county
through. " Halle's band," as his orchestra has
for many a year been called in the North of
England, is atimired in every great centre of
population, and its fame will certainly not be
lessened by the honour now awarded to its chief.
The Crown, as the fountain from which all such
distinctions flow, strengthens its hold upon the
affections of the people by recognising in such a
fashion as this, everything which gives artistic
enjoyment. Painting has been comparatively
recently honoured in the persons of Sir Frederick
Leighton, Sir John Millais, Sir James Linton,
and Sir John Gilbert, and music in those of Sir
Arthur Sullivan, Sir Charles Hallo, and Sir John
Stainer; and it adds lustre to the ancient honour
that it is thus borne by the men who, by the
brilliance of their brain, have compelled the
admiration of their countrymen. A. F. .R.