The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-06 00:00:00

TOWN TALK.

(From the TVestern Mail of Saturday.).

LONDON, Friday Evening.

Writing, as I do, immediately before the close of the
Derby week, my thoughts are not unnaturally of the turf
turtj. Insomuch that, when I turn from the triumph
achieved by French in glorifying the black jacket, gar-
nished with white sleeves and red cap (Lord Falmouth's
colours), by deo2rating it with the blue ribbon, as he rode
past the umpire's ctl.2'ir, throned on the pigskin upon the
back of Kingcraft_whe:l I turn from that supreme mo-
ment of 1870 to the Court, 11:t me say, or to Parliament,
by way of relieving you from t 1!... risk of being bored by
,
another disquisition upon the delight. of Epsom Downs—
'
-.
I find myself almost by necessity direct/7)k your attentions
now to the fact that the King of the Belgial: dined the
other day with Mr. Chaplin ; now to the circtunsta.:lce that
Tom Brown (meaning Tom Hughes. ,M.P. for Frome) )1°
just taken to the new role, for him, of racing reformer
wholesomer, fresher breezer than has ever before blown
across the Downs—the ups and downs—of Epsom, and of
other great sporting localities, we may be quite sure of this,
has been latterly setting fairly, steadily, irresistibly, there,
in the way of systematic improvement. It is one of those
great social problems for which we are all bent upon dis-
covering and energetically working out a solution. In
this direction, at any rate, we are sanguine of, at
last, achieving the hitherto despaired of feat—squaring
the circle. Namely, by henceforth so arranging matters
upon the turf, that all shall be on the square in the ring-
Duelling and pugilism have each, in turn, died out among,
our lesser and viler institutions, during a comparatively
few years within the range of our own immediate recol-
lection. With a little perseverance in the efforts now
making for the reform of turf arrangements, the time
may yet come when the black-leg and the welsher may be
remembered with the dodo and the dinornis as amongst
the extinct species of animate creation. _

The coming of the Easter holidays startled the Legisla-
ture into the recognition of the need there was for the
toils of the session being hastened. A supplementary, and,
therefore, a still sterner reminder as to the lapse of time,
comes to them in the recurrence of the annual recess at
Whitsuntide. All that has as yet been accomplished has
been the passing, at length, through the House of Com-
mons, of the Irish Land Bill, added to the passing
through both Houses of the Naturalization Act, and of the
Peace Preservation Act as applied to lfeland. It seems
almost hopeless, at this advanced period of tis: session,, to
look forward to anything more of considerable iimportance'
being accomplished in the way of practical legislation. Mr.
Forster's Education Bill can hardly be expected, even by-
himself, to be carried in the teeth of the energetic oppo-
sition which is threatened to it through all its various•
stages in both Houses, until it is perfected at last into an
enactment. Then again, there is the Ballot Bill, introduced'
by the Government—the which will have, I fear, as.
gracefully and as ingeniously aspossible,to be withdrawn as
a hopeless. achievement, at any rate, for another twelve
month. Of the Licensing Bill and of the Mines Regula-
tions .Bill, of the Real Estate Intestacy Bill and of the
Savings Banks Bill, of the High Court of Justice Bill and
of the University Tests Bill, the prospects can be anything
but satisfactory or encouraging to the Ministers of the
Crown especially entrusted with the responsibility of their
furtherance—to the Lord Chancellor, that is, and the
Home Secretary, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Even the earnestness of our serious-minded and zealous
Prime Minister has failed in the attempt to cram the work.-
of three sessions into one. Self-sacrificing though the'
House of Commons may be, it has found it simply im-
practicable to do without its holidays at Easter and at
Whitsuntide—as impracticable as to hold sittings on those
red-letter days in the calendar, the Derby and the Oaks•

The politico-literary sensation of the week has been
Bluckwood's onslaught, not with tomahawk or boomerang,
but rather than that with bludgeon and knuckleduster, on
the "Lothair " of the right hon. gentleman the member
for Buckinghamshire. Sir James Graham, once upon a
time, spoke in the House of Mr. Disraeli as the Red Indian
of Debate, who loved to decorate his belt with the scalps
of his enemies. There cannot, at the same time, be any
doubt about it that the member for Bucks has, in his clan,
had to hold his own against all comers. And hithertor
whatever else may be said about him, he has somehow"
contrived to hold it ! He has sqrvived the biography of
him, penned with a laborious intermingling of dullness
and malignity, by that Randal Leslie of the world of
letters, Mr. Thomas Macknight. He will, just possibly,
also survive the bully-ragging he has received, within the
last day or two, from the hitherto faithful Maga-6
bully-ragging reminding one of the rare old days in the
history of that emperor among magazines, when the
hands of young John Wilson and of young John Lockhart,
were,against every man, if the hands of every man were
not against them in the sheer instinct of retaliation. It seems
like bad taste, to say the least of it, the reference to
" old do," and the talk about " the tinkling as of bells"
being audible when next Mr. Disraeli, on rising, uncovers
address the House.! That last apparently graphic touch
betraying; by the way, the hand of one unfamiliar with
his theme, Mr. Disraeli being one of the very men in
the House of Commons who, on rising to address it, never
have to uncover, seeing that he sits there, as a rule, with-
out his hat, that is with his hat carefully put away (on his
first entering the House of an evening) under the central
portion of that front bench, to the left of Mr. Speaker, set
apart for Mr. Disraeli, as Leader of her Majesty's Oppo-
sition.

Another three-volumed novel from the industrious pen
and fertile brain of Mrs. Gordon Smythies has just corns
into my hands, under the title of " Acquitted." Seeing
that it is some time since the last fiction, by the author of
" Cousin Geoffrey," and of so many other fictions, made
its appearance, an eager welcome, I doubt not, will be
accorded to her new work, the publishers of which, I ob-
serve, are the Messrs. Tinsley, Brothers. Mr. Swinburne'e
new poems, recently announced as almost immediately
forthcoming under the symbolical name of "Before Sun'
rise," are for the most part, it would now appear, reprints
from the periodicals, among others, from the pages of the
Fortnightly. Signor Mazzini's contributimas to the current
number of that publication, out but now with the rest of
the magazines for June, is whimsically "Addressed t:),
the members of the (Ecumenical Council at Rome,
about the last people in the whole world who are
ever likely to glance at it. The new half-penny paper, en-
titled the Morning Latest News, is " out" during these lest
few days, and by reason of the parallel horizontal lines of
the telegraph running through the letters of its own title
or heading, looks, for all the world, as if it had been
" scored out" by an after-thought. I hear of the possible
issuing of the Tablet before long as a bi-weekly. Under
its new proprietorship its success is understood to have been
remarkable and sustained.

Ending where I began, with a reference to the DerbY,
I can't help commenting upon two rather mal-apropos anti'
cipatory comments upon it—one in Punch, the other in the
Telegraph. The former, that is Mr. Punch, like almost all
the rest of the world, counting for certain upon the
triumph of the favourite, remarked, as he thought, PO"
phetically, that the winner of the race was on his native
heath, and his name was Macgregor—poor Mac, as every'
body pretty well knows by this time, being, when the race
was run, just simply nowhere. As to the Telegraph 4
equally confident vaticinations, they coupled themselves
with the 999th salaam or kotoo before the presence of the
People's William—the oracular utterance of that gee",
organ [mind, I don't spell it Orrgan] of the many-headed
running, upon the eve of the Derby, to this effect, that
there were two at this moment foremost, unapproachable,
and unconquerable in England, to wit, Mr. Gladstone grid
Macgregor. "As it fell upon a day" (the very next daY)
not, as the second line of the famous couplet would have
it, "in the merry month of May" (as the Derby Del,
ought to have been), Mr. Gladstone was there for the 61.5:
time in his life upon that "peculiar Wednesday," Nviv
nessing a battle of the First of June, in which, to el
wonder of all England, FrEnoh won the victory (I h 5
almost said, to one universal cry of " Lord, How !)--,1
not second best, but a bad fourth, being poor, doomed
Macgregor.

Mr. 'Archibald M'Neill, brother of Lord Colonssl'
and one of the principal Clerks of Session, died °-
~
Thursday morning, after an illness of some ,duratiol,''
Mr. M'lNTeill was a member of the Society of Writers °
her Majesty's Signet, having been admitted to that 130 di
in 1829.
EXTENSION OF THE METROLITAN RAILWAY F IThi4el
WESTMINSTEER TO BLACKFRIARS.--The service of
trains having been performed throughout the week
fair regularity, the amount of traffic has nit Wre,
sponded to the expectations formed. In the first
the trains run at intervals of not less than ten minutes, l'';0
in many instances passengers wishing to travel betwr
Westminster and Blackfriars have been detained for !Ile
wards of 20 minutes waiting for a train. Considerifi;
that the whole distance can easily be walked in 20 mililll,y,
and that ten minutes, including stoppages, are taken vfil
the train in traversing the distance, the length of intertell
between the departure of the trains is sufficient to it,
against the use of the railway route by persons jour the
ing to and from the City in a hurry. Then, too, tpr;
fares are excessive between Blackfriars and Westinins ;re
the rates for first, second, and third-class passengres the
respectively fourpence, threepence, and twopence. " Tay
wile rates by omnibus from Charing-cross to the Bank are °to
twopence, the fare for boat from Westminste_
London-bridge is only a penny. Under these cireVi'ic
stances it is not surprising that the City-bound I%ce
should not patronise the Underground route. In the 'Ai
of the competition with which it has to contend the 0110
chance for the Metropolitan District Extension lies
quick and frequent trains, and low fares.—Observer.