The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-06-21 00:00:00

fhtibuh tf.vrrespimbtrd.

St state that wt ic not at all tit°
o".rvoisso :Ml' Correspondent t opinions

Daring the next week or ten days. London will te
rat its gayest. It may in4red with truth be said that
the Shah of Persia is the lion of the 'mason. la order
to do all houour to her illustrious guest, Queen
&timed from Balmoral before the time Eh( At had
been originally fixed for her 'sojourn in Scotland, and
nothing has been left undone by the younger members
of the Royal Family to oonvince the Sovereign of
Persia that he is cordially welcome to this country. A
banquet at Marlborough House; a reception in State
I y the Queen at Windsor; an entertainment of on.
esrpassol splendour at Guildhall ; inspections of
h Arsenal end Portsmouth Dockyard; re-
views of treacsoa in Windsor Great Park anti of iron-
,-lads at Spithead ; a State 1 all at Buckingham
Palace ; visits to the Interactional Exhibition,
ft the Royal Albert Hall, and to the Crystal Palace;
*reception at the Foreign Office ; inspecti me of the
Tower ant of the London flocks; journeys to Lila r.
pool and Mat:tam ester ; such are a few of the engage'
'route marked, vut for the Shah between the time of
Ma strive' and the closing days of the present month.
his Majesty is te,t the only Imperial visitor who has
1 ttely land-d upon our shores. Forty-eight hours
before the "kirg of kings" was borne up to tows
I um D seer, the Ce trewitch and his wife, a young, r
'ter of the Princeea of Wa'es, dropped anchor at
Woolwich is a very molest yacht. They ,were yes
te-ive d by the Prince and Prineese of Wales, and have
been the guests of their Royal Highnesses at Msrl-
torough House during their stay.
From what I can gather by communication with the
elficials of the Houses of Parliament, there is every 1
season to believe that both branches of the Leghslature
w,ll this year Ise released from their duties at an earlier
.ate than bee been costomary for several sessions peat.
One camas for this belief is the forward state of the
. 4h:flutes ; another is the fact that there is eu great
teeasure iuvolving a multitude of details to engage the
attention of tither of the Howes. When Committee
.4 Snoply is driven up to a late period of the sossion,
t here is no help but to sit on until tae money is voted,
oud es en after that our coastitutioral forms pre-
terite a certain number of days during which it is
to cessary for the Appropriation Act to ocsipy the time
• f Parliament. 'ibis measure through, there is
is chance for the consideration of anything else,
;So that the sooner the estimates are done with and the
totes embodied in the afureeaid Act, the more is the
It tie of winding up the legislative business of the year.
The lest week of July is now confidently stoken t f as
he probable date of the prorogation, and should this
rovecorr, ct, it will be earlier by nearly a fortnight
I tan 'in any other year during the lifetime of the
j resent Parliament. In 1869 the prorogation took
',lace on the 12th of August, in 1870 and 1872 upon the
,ala and in 1871 as late al the 21st. In the days of
Lord Palmerston the session seldom ran into August,
I ot it generally began several days earlier than it has
vi late years. For instance the session of 1871 did not
tmmence until the 9;h of February, while one of the
!coat laborious during L:rd Palmerston's Premiership
- -that of 1860, was opened as early as the 24th of
January.

Few cordl grations have created more general regret
Ulan that which utterly destroyed the Alexandra
Palace last week. There aprears to be little doubt
; apecting the origin of the disaster. It may be re-
: :cumbered that about ten years ago the beautiful little
t lapel of the Savoy, between the Strand and the
Thanne, fell a prey to the flames through the negli
p vice of a workman who was repairing the elaborately.
carved roof. Then Warwick Castle, the handsome
church of St. Mary Magdalene at Paddington, Can.
t rbury Cathedral (which was happily saved), and the
Alexandra Put:ace have been suceessively set on fire in
s similar way. Is it too much to expect that the pre-
c utioo, tuken in an ordinary dwelling should be
olverved when hietoric edifices of priceleee value, or
property valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds, is
placed under the care of workmen for repair.?
What should we say if we heard of the total
destruction of the National Gallery, of the British
Museum, of the Tower of London, or of Westmin.
eter Abbey, through the came Cause as that which has
la.:1 the Alexandra Palace in whoa ? And yet there
sic ms to be no guarantee against either of these
calamities, if the roof of any of the buildings required
the attentions of a plumb-c. Many papers have
spoken out strongly cn this subject, and it is earnestly
to be hoped that we shall hear of no more catastrophes
such as those above-mentioned, every one of which
might have been avoided. Much sympathy is expreated
for the unfortunate stall-keepers, many if whom had
gone into debt in order to start in business at the
Palace. A fund has been opened for their relief at the
Mansion House, and the Directors of the Crystal
Palace at once volt:I:tee:el to organic a fele for their
bandit.

The inauguration of a Drovere' Institute by the
Lord Mayor deserves a word in addition to the brief
paragraph whi h a_ppeared at the time in some of the
Lendon papers. Up to within a few years the men
for whose elsecial bereent the institution has been
formed, were probably atneugat the most ignorant of
soy to be found in the metropolis, but the Loudon
City Mission heartily took up their cause, and as its
e 6 tee were ai.:ed by those of similar organizations, a
great improvement was speedily effected. During the
Cattle Show week in December of every year, • very
Interesting feature is the special service held in a
chapel near the Agricultural Hall for the spiritual
Instruction of the drovers. The Bareness Burdett,
Contra has long interested herself in the condition of
thee men, and by her ladyship's aseistance, the
dr tvers have now a place which they can call
ezeltiftively their own, for the purprise it of recrea-
tl. 11 aml ainuatmerit: Few can have any idea
of the wearisome nature of their duties, and of their
lxe,g and toilsome journeye in all weathers—come.
times through bleak and iuhoepitable ref.ione amid
torrente of rain ; at others through lovely sunlit scenery,
which unfortunately they are linable to appreciate.
Or.e of the most difiieult task, of the drover is to get
hia tired cattle into London in time for the market on
Monday morning, and suppoeing them to have come
from any of the southern counties, it is often hard
for them to master the slight incline of new Black-
biers Bridge. In the early houre of the morning I
have often seen that broad thoroughfare entirely mono.
polieed by scores of jaded cattle, lying down in all
directions, and apparently exhausted after the long
Sunday tramp. The droter and his dog then have to
try all their powers of persuasion and frequently other
means to induce the wretched animals to rice and con.
tinue their journey. Anything to soothe the hard lot
of the drover is entitled to public support, and I was
seLd to see the Lord Mayor open the institution with
all the eclat of civic dignity.

Hitherto, most of the submarine call s have been
laid by the Great Eastern, but last week a party of
scientific gentlemen assembled at ?di'wall Docks to in•
erect a new vessel which has just been constructed for
laying telegraph cables. She is not a handsome-looking
ship, but is said to be admirably adapted to her purpose.
The vessel, which is 350 feet in length, 5.5 feet beam,
sal 36 feet in depth, was then takins in 1,500 miles
of cable belonging to the Western Telegraph Company,
which is about to lay 2,500 miles of wire along the eiPt
caret of South America. Within a day or two of the
visit of which I have spoken, the ship, named the
11 "per, accompanied by a consort called the Great
Northern, left the docks, and after calling at Plymouth
and taking stores on board there, soiled direct for
Pernambuco, where the laying of this long line of
ocean telegraph, which in to be monied out in three
sections, will begin.

Sir Rude FreresAbiOU, which Lail for to timely
object the extinction of the Zanzibar slave trade, hew
not been quite so abortive as the first aonouncements
led the public to fear. True, the reigning Sulfa, of
Zanzibar refused to comply with the demand, male
upon him by the representatives ef Groat Britain, and
even left unauswei ed the filial communication of cur
savoy. Subsequently he posted a proclamation re-
minding his pe pie that the import and export of staves
were perfeetly legal under the Treaty of 1845. It ix,
however, a remarkable fact that PhICA the return of Sir
Beetle Freon, not A single clove has f the Caßtmrt
H tre at Zanzibar, the traders evidently having a
wltiltimnie dread of the British liquadron crideing off
the coast. Although, therefore, a definite rettlement
has not been arrived at, it it eatiefactory to know that
eve not altogether failed, and that for the
pa.mt the inhuman traffic hoe been etepperi. Sub-
nerinent and even more patiefactory refmrt, chow
ao, the Snit an of Zanzibar, either finding it 'mons/tilde
to continue the clove trade, or convinced by the &roo-
m( eta of Sir Bartle Freres, has even eigned a treaty
ph thug an end to the traffic. The foment slave
me rket at Z tanibar hoe, therefore, been closed. This
it a great triumph in the cause of humanity. The
next field of SillallAr °per ttions en the part of the Go-
vestment will probably be the Fiji islands, at present
the centre of an extepive slave traffic in the Pacific
Oc an. The majority of Um people are in favour of
amieration to Great Britain, ard niesisures are now
limier the conehleratii,n of the Foreign Office aleph a.
vie a to our assuming the p •otectorate of the Wands.
An important movement was inaugurated throughout
the metrofsiii, last Sunday. All pecla arid denomina-
tions into which the religion, world of London is
din ided, united in a common action for the benefit of the
frmds of the metropolitan hospitals. The plan had been
pas vionsly tried with ti11,e134 is, many large provincial
tonic% and elthough it haebe..o ny.ler ilisviteeton in the
pavital during the past two years, this was the first MCA.

171 h on collections were made eimultaneo...-_,
pro Ted, are to be divide I betw en about 60 institutions,
devoted to the relief of phy ..al suffering, and the
wstem of distribution is bisvil upon the last three
years expenditure of each hospital In appropriating
the fund, accounts are taken of the income derived from
endowments, realised property, and legacies exceeding
£l.OO. Thus each institution would receive from the
general balance a elm in proportion to the r -cognition
of its mints of the charitable public. The weather was
favourable, and the attendances at most of the places of
worship was exi,ee tingly good. There was a great
.rudh at the morning service at St.. Pants, for it had
been announced that the Prince and P. incess of Wales
would be there, although not in state. The Lord
Mayor, the Sheriffs, and the Aldermen were present,
ho wryer, in their official capai ities, and were their
state robes. To three who have been instrumsntal in
organieing an " Hospital Sunday" in London, the
unanimity with which all creeds joined in the move-
ment moot have been extremely gratifyirg. North-
ward is Highgate and Holloway, southward in Lam
beth and Norwood, eastward in Shoreditch and
Spitaltields, and westward in Belgravia and Mayfair,
the bells of • hundred steeples summoned crowds of
well-dressed wrrshippera to give of their aril-stance to
the alleviation of into and the aliatement of edseasee ;
and from the splendid pile comprising St. Taomas's
H..s3.ital where it overlooks the Thames oppoelte the
Houses of Parliament, to the most mu lost of kindred
institutions, it may confidently he anticiptted that the
noble work which each has in hand will lung feel the
benefit of an experiment which was co heartily joined
in throughout London.
A few days ago a new alderman of London was
elect. d for the ward of Farringdon Without, in
ce,sion to the late Sir James Duke. Unlike the alder-
men in the citiea and boroughs of England and Wales
generally, who sit for six 3. me, the aldermen of the
metropolis are chosen for life. The city is divi led into
twenty-five wards, each of which is represented by an
alderman. In one of the wards—that of Bridge
Without—there are no inhabitants, and, as its duties
are comparatively light, it is, as a rule, assigned to the
senior member of the Court. It is from the ranks of
the alderman exclusively that the Lord Mayor in
selected; in other baroughs the choice is extended to
the councillors. The ele tion does not, however, depend,
as in many places, upon the strength of political parties
in the chamber, but it is invariably regulated
by seniority. One condition iii that the gentleman
chosen shall have previously served the office of Sheriff
of London and Middlesex. On an average, a new
alderman has to wait ten years before be reaches the
mayoralty; thns, Sir Sydney Waterlow and Mr.
Alderman Lusk, M.P., who is next on the list, were
both elected in 1863. The court in which the aldermen
meet is one of the eights of Guildhall, and is a very
handsome apartment, far more elsborstely decorated
than the chamber in which the common councilmen
are accustomed to tolerable. Each member of the
court has his own neat, with his name printed on a
little bra-ss plate at the back, and when a chief magis-
trate goes out of office, Lis coat of arms and the date
of his mayoralty are emblaz ined in artificial lights let
into the ceiling. No country visit e. to Loudon should
return home without being shown over Guildhall by the
courteous official wino performs that duty.
I saw a report some time ago that the gaol of New.
gate was to be removed into one of the suburbs, and if
the rumour is not true now, a time will probably come
when this idea will be carried out. The lend occupied
by this gloomy fortress, et inding in the very heart of
the busiest city in the world, and within a stone's throw
of St. Paul's Cathedral, has risen enorniondy in value
since the construction of the prison, and the apace oc-
cupied by its rows of cells, its dismal court-yards, and
Its monotonous corridors is now worth a fabulous sum.
As one improvement after another is carried out In
London, it may well he expected that the queotion will
b.. asked why an immense f rison-fortreee, whose massive
walls are black with the accumulated emoke of Agee,
.hould be allowed to fill such a prominent position in
the centre I the city, lithe object of architecture is
to convey at a glance the character of a building, the
architect of Newgate succeeded admirably, for no one
could possibly mistake it hr anything but what it
really is.

- • which,

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