The Blandford and Wimbourne Telegram. — 1883-06-08 (Blandford, Dorset, England)

COUNTESS.  Particulars reached Milan on Saturday of a sensational suicide which has just taken place at Intra, a small town on Lake Maggiore. It appears that the Countess Eliz do lio,off, wife of a Russian nobleman. exiled for complicity in secret political agitat on, has for the last month been occupying apartments in the Grand 'Hotel de Pallanza, in that town. On Thursday she threw herself from the fourth storey of the hotel on to the pavement below, and was killed instantaneously. The unfortunate lady was 44 years of age, and very wealthy.  Lord Randolph Churchill is a man of indomitable spirit and some tact. This Session he has three times been laid aside by illness; but he returns to work the first m dnent he can with the same feverish and often misdirects) 1 activity as ever. The Conservatives snubbed him, and repudiated him a few weeks ago, but he is on perfectly good terms with them again as well as with himself. No man in the House has attacked the Parnellites with such bitterness ; yet the Parnellttes rather like him than otherwise. He has done nothing to forfeit his chance of a'place in the next Conservative Government. He has been independent and even insubordinate, but the same was true of Mr. Chamberlain. His health is much neer° likely than his character to hinder his political advancement. Baron Henry de Worms is not an over-wise man; his Parliamentary reputation is not based upon either prudence or good taste. But even from him one could scarcely have anticipated so foolish or impudent or indecorous a question to the Government as that relating to the supposed refusal to appoint the Duke of Albany to the Governor-Generalship of Canada. No doubt the Duke wished very mach to go. He has an honourable ambition to engage himself in real work. He is a thinking man and capable of affairs. Although weak in constitution, he has been stronger of late, and it was the opinion of some of his medical advisers that the bracing climate of Canada would upon the whole benefit his health. There were not wanting some precedents for the appointment. George the Third's sons were not very clever men, but one or two of them filled public positions in the colonies with considerable credit. Bat the Queen was against the scheme. She did not wish to part from her youngest and favourite son. She was apprehensive on the score of his health. Her Majesty's feeling on the subject no doubt relieved the Premier from a difficulty. Estimable and trustworthy as Prince Leopold is, his Viceroyalty might be a serious difficulty to a Government. Even Viceroys occasionally require scolding; they always require to be kept "well in hand." But the Queen's son could not very well be scolded, and it would be a delicate matter to keep him in hand. Possibly the balance of advantage is in favour of drawing the line at sons-in-law of royalty for such appointments. Mr. Gladstone is ageing fast, and it is mere blindness to palpable facte to pretend not to see it. When the Caesar who ruled Prance as le Grand Monarque grew bald and put on a periwig, monstrous perriques became all the fashion, and so the wig his come down to our day. Much in the same way, Mr. Gladstone covers his declining energy with °magi. ,nal outbursts of passionate speech-making. He flames out with his dl eloquence, and the world says that, like another Moses, his eye is not dim nor his natural force abated. But it is only L3tlig XlV.'s wig instea I of his natural locks. False heir cannot long pass for reel. Mr. S. Smith, the Liberal member for Liverpool, gains ground in public opinion, not among his constituents only, but in the country at large. He made a speech the other day in Liverpool, in which he summed up lucidly the three causes which produce the present block of public businese. They are these : The multiplication ot 1 mil business, which ought to be thrown on local bodies; the loquacity of members; and, above all, the definite wish to obstruct on the part of those who, naturally enough from a party point of view, de-ire to ksep back Liberal measures. The result of the Liberal party ineeting has not been pronounc il enough to raise any false bows of improvement. Ills generally believed that things will soon go on in the old groove as before. The arrogance of the Directors of the Underground Railway has received a signal illustration, and it is to be hoped a signal check, in the course of the proceedings before the Select Committee on the Inner Circle C ompletion Bill. The instruction of the House to the committee was to make the removal or mosification of the Embankment ventilators, a condition precedent to the granting of the powte s required for the completion of the remaining portion of the Circle. The company threw down the gauntlet by declaring that either the instructions to the committee must be practically disregarded or they would withdraw their Bill. Their object was plain, they wish to make the public boon involved in the fulfilment of their great work dependent upon their being allowed to have their own way about the ventilators. In other words, they wished to bully the public into compliance, or to punish them for non-compli dice with their behests. Fortunately, the Select Committee have done their best to thwart them in one part of the programme. Tney have recommended the granting of extraordinary facilities for the Corporation and the Metropolitan Board of Works to obt tin Parliamentary powers for the removal of the ventilators, or, in other words, for the revocation of the authority under which the company erected them. The company may, no doubt, continue to sulk and decline to re-introduce their Inner Circle Bill. But it will only be " cutting off their nose to spite their face," The great thing is to show them they are not always to have their own way, p owerful as they are.