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

TO W N TALK.

(From the IVestern 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
turfy. 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'e
colours), by decorating it with the blue ribbon, as he rode
past the umpire's chair, throned on the pigskin upon the
back of Kingcraft—when I turn from that supreme mo-
ment of 1870 to the Court, let me say; or to Parliament,
by way of relieving you from t 1 risk of being bored by
another disquisition upon the delights of Epsom Downs—

I find myself almost by necessity directing your attention,
now to the fact that the King of the Belgians dined the
other day with Mr. Chaplin ; now to the circumstance that
Tom Brown (meaning Tom Hughes, M.P. for Frome) has
just taken to the new role, for him, of racing reformer. A
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
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 Ireland. It seems
almost hopeless, at this advanced period of the session, to
look forward to anything more of considerable importance
being accomplished in the way of practical legislation. IVIr.
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
Mouse 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
Blackwood'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 3
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 daY,
had to hold his own against all comers. And hitherto,
whatever else may be said about him, he has somehow
contrived to hold it ! He has survived the biography 0f
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 Ma9a"
bully-ragging reminding oue 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 II"
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 OPP°-
sition.
Another three-volumed novel from the industrious Pen
and fertile brain of Mrs. Gordon Smythies has just come
into my hands, under the title of " Acquitted." Seeing
that it is some time since the last fiction, by the author
" Cousin Geoffrey," and of so many other fictions, uo'cle
its appearance, an eager welcome, I doubt not, will he
accorded to her new work, the publishers of which, I eh,-0
serve, are the Messrs. Tinsley, Brothers. Mr. Swinburn,
new poems, recently announced as almost immedietel3r
forthcoming under the symbolical name of " Before Sin;
rise," are for the most part, it would now appear, reprint°
from the periodicals, among others, from the pages of t
Fortnightly. Signor Mazzini's contributions to the curren",
number of that publication, out but. now with the rest
the magazines for June, is whimsically " Addressed t°
the members of the (Ecumenical Council at 13,°rne'e
about the last people in the whole world who go.
ever likely to glance at it. The new half-penny paper, e t
titled the Morning Latest News, is " out" during these lss;
few days, and by reason of the parallel horizontal lines °,
the telegraph running through the letters of its own title
or heading, looks, for all the world, as if it had beei
" scored out" by an after-thought. I hear of the poesiaih
issuing of the Tablet before long as a bi-weekly. ITnuea
its new proprietorship its success is understood to hay.e bee
remarkable and sustained.
Ending where I began, with a reference to the Del
I can't help commenting upon two rather mal-apropos ah,he
cipatory comments upon it—one in Punch, the other in
Telegraph. The former, that is Mr. Punch, like almosttro
the rest of the world, counting for certain upon
triumph of the favourite, remarked, as he thought, Iriya
phetically, that the winner of the race was on his naet'i,
heath, and his name was Macgregor—poor Mac, as eyr e
body pretty well knows by this time, being, when the 11,5
was run, just simply nowhere. As to the Te/fgrafves
equally confident vaticinations, they coupled therase the
with the 999th salaam or kotoo before the presence of a
People's William—the oracular utterance of that s;a
organ [mind, I don't spell it Orrganl of the many-he ~at
running, upon the eve of the Derby, to this effect, ttPlO,
there were two at this moment foremost, unapproach3a
and unconquerable in England, to wit, Mr. GladstoneciPy)
Macgregor. "As it fell upon a day" (the very no't ,bnve
not, as the second line of the , famous couplet would
aj
it, "in the merry month of May" (as the Derby ot
ought to have been), Mr. Gladstone was there for
the wit'
time in his life upon that "peculiar Wednesday, the
nessing a battle of the First of June, in which, tr° had
wonder of all England, French won the victory (10--
almost said, to one universal cry of " Lord, 11°W_,,,ed
, not second best, but a bad fourth, being poor, d 0
Macgregor.
^ 00101/5117

Mr. Archibald M'Neill, brother of Lord 001°''
A. a
and one of the principal Clerks of Session, "Aletioll•
Thursday morning, after an illness of some dilrArs to
Mr. M`Neill was a member of the Society of Writebodi
her Majesty's Signet, having been admitted to that
in 1829. o,og
EXTENSION OF THE METROLITAN RAILwAIt
WESTMINSTEER TO BLACKFRIARS.—The service Corte.
fair witb
trains having been performed throughout the wee'porre"
fair regularity, the amount of traffic has n3t, :;10,cel
sponded to the expectations formed. In the fir3bL tou
the trains run at intervals of not less than ten nainn,w-;yeen
in many instances passengers wishing to travel bet
lir
Westminster and Blackfriars have been detained I,°Arpriug
wards of 20 minutes waiting for a train. Cons,
that the whole distance can easily be walked in 200101 l
:,
and that ten minutes, including stoppages, are talcee'ro
the train in traversing the distance, the length of 0 tell
between the departure of the trains is sufficient toper
against the use of the railway route by persons Pur tbe
ing to and from the City in a hurry. Then, to°, ter;
fares are excessive between Blackfriars and Westin
the rates for first, second, and third-class passenCil, the
respectively fourpence, threepence, and twopence. 'OO
rates by omnibus from Charing-cross to the Bank aster to
twopence, while /the fare for boat from Westmincor
London-bridge is only a penny. Under these Siren
stances it is not surprising that the City the
Puke
should not patronise the Underground route. In tbeoaW
of the competition with which it has to contend t 111,„ is
chance for the Metropolitan District Extension 11"
quick and frequent trains, and low fares.—Observer.