The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-01-02 00:00:00

our yonbon Corrtsponbent.
(We dFem it right to state that we do sot at all timoll
Identify ouaelves with our Con-espondent's opinions.]

Never a new year begins but there are a
number of people ready to preach on the vanity
of human wishes and the fruitlessness of good
resolutions. For as every New Year's Day comes
around the number of these latter which are
made and broken must be very large, and must
'give sufficient text for many of the sermons on
the subject which we annually hear. But it is, ,
after all, the number of those which are made
and kept, and not of those which are made and
broken that most affects the well-being and
happiness of the world. Eventhe best-intentioned
and purest-minded of men may resolve to do
more good than lies in his power, but the harm,
such as it may be, that is worked in this way will
not bear comparison with the good which is
'effected when a man of indifferent character
forms an excellent resolution and keeps it. There
are maby such resolves made at the opening of
each year, and a considerable proportion bear
fruit. It is not easy to estimate the exact
value of any social institution, but one which
gives men an opportunity to look carefully
at the past and to resolve well for the future is
certain to be productive of good. Many of the
worst men that have lived have been brought to
a sense of their condition by being forced to con-
sider the whole of their past; and even those
who, without being positively bad, are only
negatively good, find their footsteps strengthened
by the process of retrospection, which goes on
with most men at the opening of each year.
It is a singular instance of the difference
between the social institutions of two peoples,
parted by no sea and thoroughly united under
the British flag, that Christmas Day should be
the great festive celebration of the English and
New Year's Day of the Scotch. Christmas has
always been the favourite south of the Tweed,
and when the Presbyterianism which had its
main strength in the north held sway in Eng-
land during the war between King and Parlia-
ment, and attempted to prevent Christmas being
kept in its old fashion, the difllculties
which were encountered were found to be in-
superable. But where Presbyterianism has re-
mained as the religion of the majority of the
people the old dislike of Christmas as a relic of
pre-Reformation times has remained, though it
may be believed that it is not so strong as it
was. Yet New Year's Day is still, and is likely
to remain, the great winter festivity of Scotland,
and the scene on the evening before when crowds
remain in the streets waiting until midnight,
and uttering the loudest and heartiest good
wishes as the hour is tolled which ushers in
another claimant upon the honours of time and
the rolls of history, has often been described.
Even in London the scene, though not so strik-
ing, is noteworthy. On a fine New Year's Eve
the large open space before the west front of St.
Paul's is occupied by a large number of persons
who listen to the chimes which tell of the death
of the old year, and eagerly wait for those which
tell of the birth of the new, and who, imme-
diately these latter have begun, stream away to
their homes in various parts of the City, cheery
with the thought that a fresh year has so
auspiciously commenced.
• Scarcely if Christmas goes by but there is
some disaster to be recorded, which carries
grief to many a home, and the terrible colliery
explosion at Mardy, in South Wales, with its
tale of seventy-seven victims is the latest of a
dread list. Looking back only a dozen years, it
needs but little effort of the memory to recall
the railway disaster near Oxford in 1874, and at
!Arlesly in 1876, and the fall of the Tay Bridge
in 1879, easch of these sacrificing a number of
victims within a few days of Christmas. There
is aalways more general attention attracted by a
railway accident, or the loss of a ship than by a
colliery explosion, for all of us feel that it
might some day be our own lot to be mingled
in such a disaster as either of the former,
but the chances of our being involved
in a mine explosion are too intangible to be
appreciable. For this reason it may be feared
that as much sympathy is not felt for the rela-
tives of the victims in the latter cases as there
is in that of the former. People are apt to
speak of a colliery disaster which in-
volves the loss eof anything less than
150 or 200 lives as a comparatively small affair,
'kr they do not quite realise the extent of misery
which is caused when the bread-winners of half
a village are swept away.
There needs some special feature to arouse
public attention in an unusual degree in order
that a due amount of sympathy may be evoked
:in the case of a colliery explosion. When such
terrible disasters have occurred as those at the
Hartley or the Oaks Collieries some 20 years ago, or
when miners are imprisone dby the falling coal and
a life and death struggle goes on as the rescuing
party try to hew their way to their perishing
comrades—as was the case with a noted
explosion in South Wales nine years since—
the compassionate feelings of the British public
are thoroughly aroused, and money pours fcrth
like water to aid the sufferers. But even when
comparatively a small number of victims has been
found, the need for help is great. If one could
miry see a colliery village immediately after an
explosion, the heart would be opened and the
purse-strings too. A gentleman who was at
Mardy on the day of the funeral describes the
scene as weird and distressing in the extreme—
not" the less weird and distressing because lamen-
tations, prayers, and words of comfort were all
couched in what to him was a strange language.
The dirge-like effect of one of the Welsh hymns
was by him almost inexpressible in words; and
'there would be but little need of a special appeal
for help if only one verse of it could have been
heard by the general public.
The recent discussion upon the stability of the
tunnel of the Metropolitan Railway which runs
under Euston-road has reassured travellers by
that line, but has been provocative of some
serious considerations to passengers generally.
It is not always remembered that bridges and
tunnels are liable, like everything else of human
manufacture, to wear out or their materials to
decay ; add it is only when there is a point
raiSed, such as that which the Metropolitan
Company has recently had to consider, that
people realise that bridges and tunnels cannot
be expected to last for ever, any more than
engines, or carriages, or the rails themselves.
The engineer of a little local line, which was
being laid out a couple of decades ago, was
asked why he took such obvious pains to endea-
vour to avoid the piercing of tunnels and the
erection of viaducts, and he replied that he
wished the line to stand as long as the world
itself. He perceived what outsiders often ignore
—that brick and iron are not ever-durable, and
that, strong as they may be at first, the time
must come when their day of usefulness will be
past. There is no reason, of course, to be
alarmed, but there are a great many old brick
bridges on our various railways and it may be
hoped that a constant and careful watch is being
-kept to emzuro thoir oto.bility_
In suburban London there have lately been
'held various sbirees in connection with the
annual distribution of prizes to the local schools
of' art, and the reports which have been pre-
sentee are generally most favourable. There
can be no doubt of the immense strides which
the cause of art has made in England during the
last few years, and the great central institution
at South Kensington, with its branches in almost
every town in the country which is gaining
importance, has had a leading share in this
result. Time was, and that not so very long
ago, when art cultivation in England was
at.. its lowest point, and it might have
seemed almost impossible to raise it to
any appreciable height. Some of our country-
men refuse to believe in the improvement even
now, and Professor Seeley, in an article lately
published, has expressed the opinion that Eng-
land is far behind Continental nations in this

respect. This contention of the learned profes-
sor has aroused the patriotic wrath of the Lord
Mayor of London, who, at a recent soiree of the
kind which - has been referred to, asserted his
strong disbelief in it, and urged that this was
not the time to make such a statement, seeing
how greatly English art and English taste had
improved and promised to continue to improve.
The right hon. gentleman's remarks were re-
ceived with loud applause by those present,
among whom were many who had distinguished
themselves with pencil and brush; and the in-
fluence of our various art schools ought to be
sufficiently great to ensure that such an opinion
as that which Professor Seeley expressed shall
not receive any support in the future.
Relics of a most curious kind are often being
discovered in various part of the country, and,
as they often tell an interesting story of the
past, tiley are worth more careful preservation
than is often given to them. In some of our
towns—even in the smaller ones—museums have
been founded in which is deposited anything of
interest that may be found in the district.
Flint arrow - heads, bronze "colts," Roman
weapons, Norman coins, Tudor monuments—all
are to, be discovered by careful search in remote
Ones, far from the stream of commercial life to-
day, but important in their own several fashions
• .

.

centuries ago. A very little expenditure is
needed to secure several such curiosities in all
our older towns, and if it were once generally
understood how great an aid to the popular
understanding of history is a collection
of this kind, it would be more fre-
quently seen. Boys at school, to whom
the tale of the Civil War, for in-
stance, only represents so many pages of their
task-books, and who have never been made to
realise that there was once a time when orga-
nised armies of citizens fought year after year
to settle a grave constitutional question, find
their interest aroused and their intelligence
quickened when they have pointed out to them
some field in which one of the many engage-
ments took place, and are shown weapons which
have been used in the fight and long buied, which
have been dug up in the neighbourhood they all
know well. By such means, history, both
national and local, may be made to live; and
those whom distance prevents from often visit-
ing the British Museum may find in their town's
collection much to interest and instruct.

There are local relics of various kinds, and a
morbid feeling which is implanted in the breasts
of most always secures an extra amount of
attention for those which have been connected
with some memorable crime. Prominence has
been given within the past week or two to an
instance of this, for it has been recorded in a
large number of newspapers that the handcuffs
which were used upon the arrest of Thurtell for
the barbarous murder of Mr. Weare in Hert-
fordshire some sixty years since, have just
been presented to a local institution for
preservation. Perhaps the sentiment wllich
is attached to the keeping of such relics as these
is not a particularly admirable
.one, but the
crime with which they are connected was suf-
ficiently memorable for other reasons, besides its
peculiar atrocity, to deserve recollection now.
Thaekeray in more than one of his writings
refers to it in a manner which shows it was out
of the common category of such offenccs ; and
a remark made by one of the witnesses at the
trial gave Carlyle the opportunity for framing a
new word. The witness stated, in defining the
social position of the victim, that "he was a
respectable man—he kept a gig;" and Carlyle
therefrom coined the elpression, " Gigmanity,"
to represent a certain social phase upon which he
cast much ridicule, and for which he conceived
he could find no such fitting phrase. The recent
unearthing of this relic calls attention, there-
fore, to the fact that two of the greatest men in
English literature which this century has seen
did not hesitate to draw illustrations from the
crime with which it was connected. A. 1-41 L.