Litchfield enquirer., 1878-05-16
Bishop Williams.

oA6uOH VAAAoAAS' s-r =
 The following, taken from the Hartford Evening Post is what the Boston correspondent of the Springfield Union has to say about Blsh-- op Williams as he appeared ina Boston pulpit:
 A stalwart man is Dr. John Williams, the Episcopal Bishop of Connecticut Hisphysque is tall and massive, square and erect frontage like Doric temple His head is noble piece ofstatuary, and he carriesit, standing or sitting, as slightly observatory atop lordly mansion.
 When he breaches he should have platform for his position, instead of snch a goblet-shaped pulpit as saw him squeezed into in stylish
 Back Bay church. Phillips Brooks has no such confinement at Trinity, but a slight book-rest
 on a broad, level stage, on which, however, he
 enacts no dramatic attitudes; and in other chur-
 ches with the regulation pulpit he breaches at
 the reading desk. If the Lord makes clerical
 giants, churchly architects should not make them
 absurd by any such pillory punishment. Bish-
 op Williams is a strong, d-fashioned preacher
 of the didactic kind, his thoughts and sentences
 packed like cord d-wood in solid precision, great
 ly innocent of any rhetorical ambitions, march
 ing straight onward to the end of his discourse
 in the calm self -poise of one who speaks with
 authority 1 suppose him to be of course, and
 parexcellence, what in church circles is known
 as 'sConnecticut Epscopalian," but what
 this distinctively is, cannot say. Itisnt rltua-
 listic nor technically evangelical; not low, nor
 six stories high, with Mansard. It isn't broad
 nor painfully narrow. But it is very respect
 able and doesn't like any nonsense.
 WIFE-BEATING.-Wi beating exists in the
 upper and middle classes rather more, fear,
 than is generally recognized; but it rarely ex-
 tends to anything beyond an occasional blow
 or two of not dangerous kind. In his appar-
 ently most ungovernable rage, the gentleman
 or tradesman somehow manages to bear ID
 mind the disgrace he will incur Ii his out
 break be betrayed by his wife's black eye or
 broken arm, and he regulates his cuffs and
 kicks accordingly. The dangerous wife beat
 and labofng 19cfa Glasses Golfers, pGdders,
 and weavers have long earned fer themselves
 in this matter bad reputation, and among
 long list of cases before me, reckon shoemak-
 CTS, stone-masons, butchers, smiths, tailors, a printer clerk, bird-catcher and a large
 number of laborers. In the worst districts of London Gas l have been informed by one of the most experienced magistrates )four-ffths of the Wife-beating cases are among the lowest class of Irish laborers-a fact worthy of more than passing notice, had we time to bestow
 upon it, seeing that in their own country Irish men of all classes are proverbially kind and even chivalrous toward women. There are also various degrees of wifc-beating in the diff 1CIC1ll lOCdlIIlCo. HI IL SOCS beyond a severe ''thrashing'' with the fst-a sufficiently dreadful punishment, it is true, when inflicted by strong man on woman, but mild in comparison of the kickings and tramplings and ''purrings" with hob-nailed shoes and clogs of what we can scarcely, in this connection, call the ''dark and true and tender North" AS MT. Serjeant Pulling re- marks: Nowhere is the ill-usage of women so systematic as in Liverpool, and so little him dered by the strong arm of the law, making the lot of married woman, whose locality is the kicking district of Liverpool simply duration of suffering and subjection to injury and savage treatment far worse than that to which the wives of mere savages are used" It is in the centres of dense mercantile and manufacturing populations that this offense reaches it's climax. In London the largest re- turn for one year Gin the Parliamentary report on brutal assaults) of brutal assaults on wo- men was 351. In Lancashire with popula- tion of almost 2,500, 900, the largest numbers 750,0 900, there were 113 cases. In the West | Riding, with 1,5O0, 900, 152; and in Durham, with sos, ,666 no less than 267. Thus rough l ly speaking, there are nearly five times as many | wife-beaters of the more brutal kind, in pro- 1 portion to the population, in Durham as in l London. What are the conditions of life | among the working classes in those great l ''hives of industry of which we talk so proud l 1y? It is but justice that we should picture | the existence of the men and women in such | places before we pass to discuss the deeds | which darken it. They are lives out of which l every softening and ennobling element has l been withdrawn and into which enter brutal | iZing influences almost unknown elsewhere. | They are lives of hard, ugly, mechanical toll | in dark pits and hideous factories, amid the | grinding and changing of engines and the l fierce heat of furnaces. in that Black Country l where the green sod of earth is replaced by | mounds of slag and shale, where no flower | grows, no fruit rpens, scarcely bird sings l where the morning has no freshness, the even- ing no dews where the Spring sunshine can not pierce the foul curtain of smoke which | overhangs these modern cities of the Plain and where the very streams and rivers run discol- ored and steaming with stencil like Styx and | Phlegethon, through their banks of ashes. If l God made the country and man made the town" we might deem that Ahrimanes devis- ed this Tartarus of toll, and that here we had | at last found the spot where the Psalmist might seek in vain for the handwork of the Lord.-Frances Poacer C066e i1a Contemporary Reoieoo.
 THE MODERN RIFLE.-Beyond all contradic tion, the increased power of defense is to be ascrbed to the perfection of the modern ri- fie. Its long range, its accuracy, the rapidity l with which it can be loaded, have made it the | most formidable weapon that ever was invent ed. Walls whose defenders are armed with it may be literally said to be unapproachable by an enemy. Its fire is perfectly desolating Nothing can live on the exterior slopes of works when they are swept by it's bullets. The dogged courage of the Turks has been the means of demonstrating what modern rifles can do. We believe that in the attack on the lines of Plevna on the Czar's birthday every thing that the bravest soldiers could do was done by the Russians in their endeavors to take the redoubts. Not only did they fail but hardly any of them Gin some cases not man) got away unwounded. It is worth re- that it was in the darkness after the close of that eventful birthday, that Skob- eleff succeeded in getting into the GravitZa and the other two >redoubts. One reason of his success was that the wern-out Turks thinking the struggle over for the day, had, except small guard, retired from the works But we think that probably another reason may also be adduced-namely, that the guard which was left on the alert could not see the enemy at distance, and therefore could not take aim It is hardly too much to suppose that, had there been light to distinguish the assailants at moderately long range, the men on duty could have checked the attack until | their comrades could have returned to their | posts As A cOrollary on this observation we