The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette. — 1858-05-04 (Dorchester, Dorset, England)

DORCHESTER WORKING MEN'S MUTUAL IMPROVE. !LENT SOCIETY.—On Tuesday evening Mr. John W. Cole, a working man, delivered a lecture—the last of the present season in connection with the Dor. cheater Working Men's Mutual Improvement Society —at the Townhall. The subject selected was "Joan of Arc," and the address throughout displayed great industry and research on the part of the talented lecturer, who was frequently applauded during the delivery. The Rev. Frederick Perkins, of Dorford Chapel, presided, and the attendance was numerous and respectable. At the close votes of thanks were given to the lecturer and to the chairman. For some days past the weather in the neighbour. hood of Dorchester has been very stormy, and at times the atmosphere has been singularly cold. On Wednesday night a heavy thunderstorm passed over the town, lasting with much violence for some time, but we have not heard of any accidents resulting. On Friday afternoon there was a fierce hailstorm, the hailstones, which were of unusual size, making the streets quite white. Mr. Henry Turner, from the Dorchester Grammar School, has just been elected to a Scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge. Mr. Turner is, we understand, the 6th pupil of the present Head Master, the Rev. T. R. Maslow, who has been successful in obtaining Foundation Scholarships at the University of Cambridge.  It is expected that the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, the very popular Baptist minister of New Park Street Chapel, Borough, will preach at Blandford in about a fortnight. A field at the back of the Wesleyan Chapel, calculated to accommodate 5,000 listeners, is, we understand, being made ready.  The meetings of the Rural Deaneries in the diocese of Salisbury are now in the course of being held. The subjects proposed by the Bishop for dis• mission are the following The expediency or inexpediency of altering the Liturgy. 2nd. The extension of foreign missions. 3rd. The Abolition of Church-rates Bill. 4th. The Bill for legalizing the marriage with • deceased wife's sister.  TRZ POLITICAL Firs' 01 THE DOIRIZT Cwaoincid. —A correspondent, signing himself " Tickler," publishes in the Sherborne Journal of last week, the following letter :—" Your shrill oontemporary is at it again, but this time like shorn. door fowl agape in the pip. The snick upon the Whig Member of the Comity—  "Wino from the heart, and faithful to Its Sr.. I" —evince' pretty plainly the purity of its inspiration and the charity of its designs. "Quidnunc" I see used by the writer in his eccentric remarks upon the Bernard trial, in his desire to prove bleak white. " One who knows everything" is close upon the meaning of quidnunc I think—not the wise and learned, content to know a little, but he who knows the taste of a frost bitten parsnip, the true sense of toleration, the tricks that young Achilles played his old tutor Phcenix, the fly in turnips, and the smut of wheat, and believes himself en unpolluted son of Adam. Such is the quidnunc that apes to be the vehicle of the opinions of the Tory men of Dorset, and such a man! He has acquired in his vocation that habit of hypocrisy which pretends to discern evil in the exercise of the most harmless and amiable amusements, and, if need be, will brazen it out with even scriptural quotation.; but, as the Scotch say, its all a "lee.' Observe the hypocrisy of the turn given to the fact that Mr. Portman chose to attend Mr. Morrell's sale of fox hounds—' It is not on that point, however, that we wish to take Mr. Portman up," says this liberty-granting 'Chronicle' to a gentleman who smiles at Tory monopoly of time and pleasure, concluding in the same article with— "He will be memorable as a disastrous County Member, thug Mr. Portman, if, after destroying our hunt, he should succeed in destroying more tarred objects also." Was e'er prophetic sound so full of fou ? Objects egad—sacred objects! Is a church. rate an object I—only so, we believe, in the brilliant literature of the "Dorset County Chronicle." "Our hunt" may be an "object" when under weigh, and a very charming "object" it is without the aid of fife or fiddle; but why, after Lord Portman's dignified disavowal of maline prepenee in this hunting matter mix objects so incongruous without the "object," the political capital, to which as a lover of fair play I "object." There is something, however, in this sneer—in these offensive allusions , beyond what the mere vulgar words give. But I will not meddle with Whig or Tory chances at a coming election; I take up the hunting question only, and I affirm that Mr. Portman did not destroy the Dorsetshire Hunt, The Hunt, if destroyed, has , committed suicide. Pride and politics have done it, or morbid sensibilities. Me. Farquharson withdraws from the country because, being Autocrat here, he says it is his will to do so. All honor to that fine old Englishman, even to his prejudicee A man who has ridden for fifty years and more to hounds has a moral right to be prejudiced; in fact, prejudiced men are as common as blackberries in September. The county character would need "bush" were it not for its dear old prejudice ;—then bravo prejudice! it helps to make up identities; so prejudice did it, not Mr. Portman. Mr. Ferquharson did not really want, nor need he care about the few coverts in question, and in his own honest heart—if we could take out the prejudice for a moment—he knows it. Then go you with your own thin cackle into your path, "Dorset County Chronicle ;" step not between sportsmen and gentlemen; your ways or not their ways—your pretensions are indefensible. Countless absurdities are promulgated, we know, by writers ( ! !) of your fashion, and "malicious intention" has sometimes a pestilential influence; still, I very much question, in ' the case in point, if the worthy portion of your readers will not agree with me, that your Fife is sadly out of tune, and you sense diseased in the head.