NEWS OF THE WEEK.

AMORE peaceful tone has prevailed this week, and securities have risen, but as yet there is no justification for the change. The Russian Government has explained nothing, and the British Government has withdrawn nothing, and both States continue their preparations for war. A letter has been published, in which the Czar declares that war would be deplorable, but it appears to be unauthentic ; and all messages from General Komaroff increase the importance of the " re'grettable incident." He has not only occupied Penjdeb, but has set up what he calls "a provisional government" there,— that is, has appointed a Russian officer to govern the district. It is difficult, under these circumstances, to perceive on what the hopeful feeling rests, and it is 'possibly only the reaction afterstrain often perceptible before war breaks out. The only reasons for hopefulness are that negotiations continue, and that Russia has expressed, as is reported, her readiness to accept some line of delimitation which would leave her Penjdeh, but make the Zulficar passes definitely Afghan. There is as yet, however, no official confirmation of this supposition, which is probably wholly baseless. Certainly the Foreign Office knows nothing of it.

Mr. Gladstone on Thursday, in reply to Sir Stafford Northcote, stated that he feared there would be some delay in receiving answers either from Sir. P. tiumsden or the Russian Government as to General Komaroff's acts. The Government did not know how far the Russian telegraph in Asia had been extended ; but feared that eighteen or twenty days might elapse before General Komaroff could be heard from. That appears an excessive time to allow, and there is a suspicion that the Russian Government hears news quicker than it will admit. Mr. Gladstone further stated that the story about the cession of Penjdeh was without authority, and that the numerous conversations between Lord Granville and M. de Steal had been of an unofficial character. He declined, in answer to other questions, to give any information whatever, and-is evidently determined to await the Russian explanations. If they are unsatisfactory, further negotiations should be short and decided, as the country grows weary of . mere words. It is right even to exhaust patience while there is hope of peace, but still the exhausting point may be reached.

The Viceroy of India evidently considers that war is inevitable; though, in deference to the Government at home, he awaits final orders before making any formal announcement. He has, as our readers are aware, maintained complete secrecy as to his communications with the Ameer, and as to the prospects of the impending struggle,—a secrecy in which we are fain to believe he has been assisted by a determined exercise of his legal Control over the telegraph. On April 15th, however, he received an address of welcome from the Municipality of

Lahore, and as Sikh opinion is of importance, be uttered some grave sentences. "Coming fre-hly," he said, "from au important interview with the Ameer of Afghanistan, whose dominions have, so far as I have been able to ascertain, been the scene of an unprovoked attack," it had been a great satisfaction to him to find India so loyal ; and though it was impossible " to say how the present grave crisis would end," they might be sure that if war broke out, " it would be in spite of the most anxious endeavours of the Indian Government, and in defiance of the most moderate and conciliatory conduct on their part." Those sentences, if Lord Dufferin were sovereign, would mean war within forty-eight hours ; and although he probably feels a little the atmosphere of desire for war which is all round him, he is a strong man, with a great knowledge of the Russian Court, and with more information as to some facts in the situation than ho thinks it prudent to reveal. We must not forget that we have a regular Envoy in Cabal, with many agents, though in deference to Afghan feeling he is a Mahommedan. He probably receives much more news than a European would ; and as to great facts, it is usually accurate, though the Envoy would probably be content with too little legal evidence.

The Daily Telegraph published on Thursday, with great pomp of headings, a telegram from its correspondent at Vienna, in the following words :—" Vienna, April 16th.—The Russian answer to the British Government, forwarded to its Ambassador in London, contains the following passage I am charged by the personal commands of his Majesty the Czar to beg you to make known to the Government of the Queen that, in the opinion of his Majesty, a war would be deplorable for the two countries, and his Majesty hopes firmly that a prompt and simple (facile) arrangement will be established.' The Russian Ambassador in England has telegraphed the following reply to St. Petersburg The English Cabinet has given a good reception to (" donne un bon accueil it ") your Excellency's communication.' " On Thursday evening, Lord E. Fitzmaurice denied that the letter had been received at the Foreign Office. Whereupon the Telegraph of Friday coolly remarked that it was coming. As, however, the paper gave not only the words of the message which has not come, but the text of a reply which had and could have no existence, its explanation is a little absurd. Letters are not answered before they arrive.

General Komaroff, in a despatch sent from Askabad on the 10th inst., declares that he was threatened by the Afghans, who moved their positions till they commanded the left flank of his camp. He asked them to retire ; but the Afghan General refused, alleging English advice. General Komaroff thereupon " marched his detachments against the Afghan position, still counting upon a peaceful sett.ement of the difficulty ;" but, being received with artillery, was compelled to accept battle. In a subsequent despatch he mentions that the Afghan loss was greater than his first estimate—it is said to have been nine hundred—that the survivors fled to Herat, and that, "in order to prevent anarchy, a provisional administration is being organised in Penjdeh." This last sentence means, of course, that Penjdeh has been annexed, "provisionally," for General Komaroff would only place Russians in power, and would not care about anarchy in a small district without troops. The despatch concludes by stating that there is no necessity for a forward movement at present ; but it has been followed by another stating that the General is about to " inspect " his outposts. That means his absence when inconvenient inquiries arrive, and may also mean an intention to seize the Zulficar Passes.

When the House of Lords met again on Monday night after the recess, Lord Granville expressed his deep sense of the loss the House had suffered in the death of Lord Cairns, and read

part of an affecting letter from Lord Selborne—himself kept away by the death of Lady Selborne, through an illness similar to that which had carried off Lord Cairns—lamenting his inability to pay personally a heartfelt 'tribute to Earl Cairns's " great qualities and great virtues, for which nearly forty years' constant intercourse on terms of friendship, never interrupted, might perhaps have qualified" him. Lord Salisbury spoke warmly of his own personal loss ; and Lord Coleridge, in a few eloquent sentences, expressed his deep sense of Lord Cairns's devotion to the public service, and bore testimony to his complete disregard of the importunity of friends in considering the legal appointments best fitted to serve the State. Lord Coleridge stated incidentally that he himself had pressed on Lord Cairns the wisdom of promoting the late Mr. Benjamin, a man of the -very highest legal attainments and capacities, to the Bench; but that Lord Cairns refused "on grounds which I cannot help admitting were at the time urgent and forcible, and would by most be held to be conclusive." Lord Cairns in this matter had, said Lord Coleridge, " acted against his own wishes, and on the purest and most patriotic motives."

Not only to Lord Cairns and Lady Selborne, but to the Lord Mayor of London, the East winds of this keen spring have

brought sentence of death. Alderman Nottage died last Saturday, after only two or three days' dangerous illness ; though it is understood that for some years his constitution had been weakened by an exhausting, though not immediately dangerous, complaint. It is a century and a third since a Lord Mayor died in office ; and yet, strangely enough, in the four years between 1750 and 1753, no less than three Lord Mayors died in office, a rapid succession, considering that the gap before another event of the kind should take place was to be a hundred and thirty-two years. Alderman Fowler, the late Lord Mayor's immediate predecessor, has been chosen to preside during the remainder of the year for which Alderman Nottage had been elected,—an extremely wise and popular choice.

In Ireland an even more sudden death has occurred, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Sir Edward Sullivan, having died last Monday without any previous illness at all. He was, indeed, transacting business at the Castle on the very day he died. His perfectly unexpected death is attributed by the Times to gout in the stomach, and by other papers to aneurism. Sir Edward Sullivan was made Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1865, Attorney-General in 1868, and Irish Master of the Rolls in 1870. He had only been Lord Chancellor of Ireland for a year and four months, having accepted the Great Seal in December, 1883. He was by common consent one of the greatest and most lucid of the Irish lawyers, and was as clear and decisive in his judgments as he was careful and profound. It is not yet known who is likely to succeed him in the Lord Chancellorship.

The effort made by Sir R. Cross on Thursday night to defeat the Egyptian Loan Bill, which, if successful, would have turnedout the Government, collapsed rather ignominiously. Sir R. Cross's point was that the Bill ought not to be passed until the country had before it the result of the Conference on the Suez Canal ; but Mr. Gladstone showed conclusively that the two questions were not related. If the Bill were not passed, Egypt would be bankrupt. Well, assume for the moment that negotiations about the Canal were to be mismanaged, or even that the Government meditated some dreadful plot in connection with the Canal, was that a reason why Egypt should be made bankrupt P This was unanswerable ; and after an infinity of little speeches by little men, Mr. Chamberlain undertook that the Convention on the Canal should not be signed until the House had discussed it, whereupon Sir S. Northcote declared that this was the object of the amendment, and it was withdrawn. There never was a chance for it ; but the Opposition lose no opportunity of repeating their dislike to the whole Egyptian policy of the Government. It is a pity the forms do not allow them to draw-up a comprehensive anathema, vote upon that, and be done with dividing. However, the Reform Bill advances.

Lord Derby has inserted in his Bill allowing the Australian Colonies to federate themselves two extraordinary clauses. One of them permits any federated Colony to withdraw at its own discretion from the agreement, and the other permits its Legislature to override, so far as it is concerned, the past decisions of the Federal Council. It is difficult to conceive the object of these amendments, which will be distasteful to every Colony,

except, possibly, New South Wales. The first is a distinct acknowledgment of the right of secession, and had it existed in the Canadian Act, would have dissolved the Dominion almost before it was. formed. The other would be fatal, as we read it, to any plan for raising a Federal Debt, or forming a Federal fleet. Any Colony could diminish the security for the Debt, or withdraw part of the means voted to pay the fleet. A country must assume that it intends to remain a country ; and the very object of the Bill is to make of Australia a country. If there is any danger latent in that object, surely the theoretical sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament, which is in no way abrogated, would be sufficient toavert it.

M. Ferry has explained, in letters to the Times' correspondent. in Paris and to the Times itself, that he has been guilty of no treachery whatever. He laid all the facts connected with his negotiations with Pekin before M. Brisson and M. de Freycinet at the earliest possible moment. They have deceived the Chambers, if anybody, not he. There is, however, no evidence of deception. The new Ministry are evidently amazed, like everybody else, at Chinese action, and are therefore distrustful, and prefer to ask for credits and send reinforcements, including a new Commander-in-Chief, General de Conroy.

The tone of the Continental peoples upon the possibility of an Anglo-Russian war is not, on the whole, unsatisfactory. The Germans, who all discuss politics like soldiers, still jeer at Mr. Gladstone's meekness ; but belief in English decision is beginning to appear, as is also the permanent dislike to Russian success. This is much stronger in Austria, where Hungarian feeling accentuates the bitterness of comment on Russian aggressiveness, and leads to a hope that England may succeed. The French, though at first inclined to rejoice that England had heavy work on hand which might make her position in Egypt embarrassing, now perceive that they will be left by a war face to face with Prince Bismarck, while the Italians remain as before upon the English side. The comments of the newspapers of Europe upon the whole situation are, however, much influenced by the feeling of the Jewish community, who hold most Continental newspapers in pawn, and who are disposed to desire peace. They detest Russia as a persecutor of their race ; but then they also detest losing money, and a general fall in State bonds throughout Europe means much temporary loss to the Jews. In Berlin they say the catastrophe, if war breaks-out, may be unprecedented ; but they forget their losses of 1860. The whole Jewish world then believed that Austria would crush Napoleon—and Italy.

The news from the Soudan is still happily without interest. Along the Nile from Dongola the few troops are resting, much bored, but not attacked ; and not, it is stated on the authority of Lord Wolseley, suffering from the climate. The dry antiseptic air of the Desert acts, in truth, as a remedy for the effects of heat and bad water. At Suakim nothing is happening. The railway is being laid at the rate of two miles a week, and it takes 500 men to guard each mile; but attacks, though constantly expected, do not come, and it seems to be ascertained that Osman Digna is in the hills, at a place called Erkowit, almost abandoned by his followers. The general belief, supported by many facts, is that the accounts of different skirmishes, especially of the battle of Abon %lea, have filtered slowly down through the tribes, and have produced the impression that it is useless to fight the English, who are not only brave men, but magicians. It is reported on all hands that the Mandi is harassed by internal dissent ; and it is believed at Cairo that, after a severe battle, he recently lost El Obeid. If that is true it is important, as El Obeid has been his Medina, and he must regain it before he moves Northward.

On Monday, the Prince and Princess of Wales left Dublin for Cork, and in passing Mallow had to run the gauntlet of a Parnellite demonstration against them, which gave rise to a rather unpleasant collision between the police and the Parnellite party,—who, by the way, in their procedure are certainly not obeying Mr. Parnell's injunctions to be respectfully neutral. Mr. O'Brien, M.P., Mr. Deasy, M.P., Mr. Harrington, M.P., and others did their best at Mallow to organise a demonstration against the Prince within the precincts of the station. That, of course, was not to be permitted; and it is asserted that Mr. Harrington. M.P., was rather roughly handled by a policeman in the struggle, and this, of course, has given rise to a whole brood of Parliamentary

questions and protests. However, the station was cleared without any broken bones ; and at Cork, as in the slums of Dublin, there can be no doubt that the Prince of Wales has been extremely well received, wherever the Irish people were let alone and not zealously drilled by the envious lieutenants of Mr. Parnell. All has been done that could be done to obtain hostile demonstrations against the Prince, with little success. Ireland is not hostile to the Throne, however hostile it may be to the Parliamentary Union.

The visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to Ireland has already produced some anecdotes worth noting, though perhaps none so funny as that of the young lady who apologised, after the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to Galway, for her not having answered a letter by the plea that she had been "so knocked about by the royalties, she really did not know where she was." The old woman who exclaimed, on the occasion of the visit of the Prince of Wales to the "liberties" of Dublin, "Glory be to God, he's been in Elbow Lane !" (the name is felicitously suggestive of the locality) is worthy of being chronicled ; so, we think, is the following incident, which we give in the words of a correspondent :—" The Prince and Princess were nearly due, and the streets were packed with people. I took my stand in College Green, holding on tight by a lamppost. Close beside me, at the edge of the kerbstone, stood a woman bent with age, miserably clad, with snow-white hair. She held a meagre paper of pins and a few boot-laces in her wasted hands. She was the barest figment of the hawker-beggar, whose existence is a constant struggle or compromise with the police. The crowd thrilled with expectation, the Royal cortege came-up, without the distracting rapidity that is the London pace for Princes, and, as the carriage for which we were all looking passed my lamp-post, the eyes of the Princess of Wales fell upon the figure of the old woman beside it. A quick look of compassion—the pity that has no disdain in it—passed over the Princess's face, and then a swift, bright smile. The next instant she was gone, and the old woman, down whose wrinkled cheeks tears were stealing, stretched out her hands (with the pins and the boot-laces in them) in the attitude of fervent prayer, and said, with passionate earnestness,—` May the Lord lay (leave) the crown on your beautiful head until it's as white as mine, and only take it off to put one of His own in the place iv it !' " The House of Commons have been spending their time rather lavishly on the discussion of the names of the new political divisions of the counties, during the last weeks before Easter and the ten days since the House resumed; these have been chiefly spent in debating very eagerly whether a county division should be called, for instance, South-West Blankshire, or the Blacktown division of Blankshire, and deciding now in favour of one name, now of another. There are cases, especially when the subject of debate is a question of appearance and of general effect, when a name is a matter of great moment; but we can hardly persuade ourselves that when the question is one of the name under which an electoral division containing some 50,000 people shall be generally known, it matters very much how the issue is decided. If a rose under any other name would smell as sweet, would not a populous electorate under any other name than the one actually adopted confer a power as substantial ? However, there is, perhaps, a good reason for keeping note of as many of the historical associations with which any division of a county is connected, as it is possible to keep note of ; and, therefore, in sympathising with Sir Robert Peel and the Speaker in their very natural wish to have the division of Warwickshire in which Tamworth is situated, called the Tamworth division of Warwickshire, instead of the Coleshill division,—Tamworth recalling the great Sir Robert Peel, who sat for Tamworth after his rejection by the University of Oxford, and Coleshill recalling no great name,—the Government were no doubt right. The name of Tamworth was, therefore, reinstated in the electoral roll-call by 143 votes against 17.

Sir John Lubbock, in opening the Shrewsbury Free Library last week, delivered a lecture on the effects of education, in which he attributed,—no doubt rightly,—the singularly marked decrease noticeable of late years in the crimes of the young, to the influence of education, and ventured to anticipate that the great readers of the future would be not the lawyers and doctors, but the labourers and mechanics. That anticipation, however, he grounded on the theory that what tires the body leaves the mind fresh and in need of exertion, and that what tires the mind leaves the body fresh and in need of exertion. We have our doubts on that question. At least we are quite sere that a good deal of hard mental work has much the saute effect as hard exercise, and does not leave the body fresh or in need of exertion. And we greatly doubt whether a hard-worked body will leave the brain fresh for serious work. Perhaps Sir John Lubbock himself is the best example of a mind hard-worked in one department, remaining quite fresh for other departments of labour. Not only does he attend to his ants, look after his bank, represent a University in the House of Commons, plead on all occasions for the representation of minorities, lecture on leaves and insects, and open public libraries, but he is a great reader as well, gathering-up all the newer threads of botanical and entomological science, and never losing an opportunity of recording an excellent joke. He finished his Shrewsbury lecture with a very good one, which had the additional merit of serving as an apology for not prolonging his remarks. ‘• I always remember," he said, "the story of a traveller in New Zealand, who, revisiting a native village after some months' absence, and missing a well-meaning but rather long-winded Maori, inquired after him, and received the mournful reply,—' Ali, ho gave us so much good advice, that we had to put him to death mercifully.' " What a warning for the Social Science Association, which, if it should ever establish a Maori branch, will hardly even get the benefit of the qualifying adverb.

A notice that Mr. G. W. E. Russell, M.P., Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board—who has taken a very active part in the inquiry into the dwellings of the poor—had proposed to give a breakfast to some of the unemployed in East London, excited deep misgivings in the suspicious nature of Lord Randolph Churchill, who on Thursday put a highly hypothetical question to the Attorney-General to this effect,—Whether, if the candidate for Fulham (the constituency for which Mr. Russell is to stand) gave a breakfast to the poor of St. George's-in-theEast, and the candidate for St. George's-in-the-East gave a breakfast to the poor of Fulham, such reciprocity of action would not be an obvious evasion of the Corrupt Practices Act ? Sir Henry James very wisely replied that when the circumstances suggested had occurred, he would give his best attention to the question, and answer it. But is it necessary to allow questions of this absurdly hypothetical character ? Mr. Russell's benevolent desire to give a comfortable meal to the unemployed is perfectly consistent with that severe purity of electoral principle with which he is credited by his friends. Lord Randolph Churchill has suspiciousness enough in him to suggest ns many such questions as it would take up all the time of Ministers every evening to reply to.

The North-Anzerican Review for March, 1885, in a defence of vivisection, based chiefly on what the writer is pleased to call moral grounds, cites a passage from a French Professor's recent address in the Paris School of Medicine, which the author of the article (Professor Noah Davis) is not able to adopt. The passage is very instructive as to the natural affinities of the school which goes furthest in the advocacy of vivisection ; and we should like the English apologists for the practice to consider it carefully :— " The true ground of our vindication is that if once we permit moralists and clerics to dictate limitations to science, we yield our fortress into their hands. By-and-by, when the rest of the world has risen to the intellectual level of France, and true views of the nature of existence are held by the bulk of mankind, now under clerical direction, the present crude and vulgar notions regarding morality, religion, divine providence, deity, the soul, and so forth, will be swept entirely away, and the dicta of science will remain the sole guide for sane and educated men. We ought, therefore, to repel most jealously and energetically all attempts to interfere with the absolute right of science to pursue her own ends in her own way, uninterrupted by churchmen and moral philosophers, forasmuch as these represent the old and dying world, and we, the men of science, represent the new." We wonder under which class of views the world would be most likely to die out,—the religious and moral views, which have hitherto kept down not only crime but selfishness, and kept society from corruption ; or the dogmas of modern physiological science, "the sole guide for sane and educated men," to which piety seems a sort of imbecility, and supernatural restraints are empty !superstitions.