NOTES AND QUERIES.
How did Mr. Osborne find time to collect all those pleasant stories about conventual' wine-cellars—putative " cells " ? It was sup- posed that his voice was drowned in the Admiralty, buried under the responsibilities of office : but out it comes, bursting from the dull drone of the conventual debate like a young horse's neigh above the grnmblings of the farm-yard. Yet if so busy with our wooden walls, how could he manage to rake up all that erudition of gossip? Because he likes it. Henry Brougham, as Romilly once said, can find time for everything; and most of us can find time for what pleases us. Brougham Chancellor could rush from the woolsack to the dissecting-room ; Osborne loiters among the shadows of con- vent life, delighting to prove them not the devils they were said to be. And it is observable that some literary leisure is a privilege of the Admiralty Secretariat. In the days of the last war Mr. Croker could find time for Quarterly Review articles; the present Secre- tary publishes his chefs-d'reuvre "in his place in Parliament."
Who is to blame for railway accidents ? "Somebody must be,' everybody cries ; and yet when any specific person is brought up, the jury or the judge is pretty sure to acquit him, and to hint that somebody else ought to have been in the dock. The true culprit is always' somebody else. Thus, Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Latham, the °Seers on the Norfolk line,—who disobeyed the orders of their superior in prodeeding along a part which had been unexpectedly cleared of snow, and thus disastrously encountered their superior in mid career,—are acquitted, because, as the judge points out, that superior -was himself disobeying his orders. The ease pre- sents two features of 'railway management which are incessantly producing accidents. First, the arrangeinents are not made abso- lutely, but are always considered to be subjected to change at the discretion of individuals; secondly, there is no absolute subordi- nation of one officer to another, and consequently there is no sense of absolute obedience. Hence the utmost levity in receiving orders and in disregarding them. There never can be exact order until there is not a single person who does not at once recognize his position as subordinate or superior to that of any given man in the same employ. It is so in the Army ; and the universal sub- ordination secures at once concentrated responsibility, instant obe- dience, and unbroken effioienoy.
If any one could authentically inform us how the King of Prussia came by the bruise which has laid him on the bed of sickness, it might possibly throw some light upon the position of Prussia in Eu- rope. Great political events often spring from comparatively simple physiological causes, and the pathology of crowned families has not unfrequeutly infected nations. Not long since' we heard of a distinguished person, not in Prussia, whose habit it was to be shut up in a pavilion in the afternoon or evening with two bottles of brandy, and to issue forth at a much later hour to wreak his anger upon anybody who attempted to assist him in the difficult and dangerous task of reaching his own bedchamber. The courtiers and official persons at Berlin, however, affirm that the accident which has happened to the King was entirely caused by his short- sightedness. He ran against a bough, and hurt his head so se- riously as to be laid up with a low fever. Such consequence from so slight a cause indicates a morbid condition and an irritated temperament. How much might the physician do to improve the position of Prussia; and therefore of Germany! how much might the secession of a healthier frame to the Prussian throne contribute in restoring affairs to smoothness and good working !
The Duchy of Parma has undergone a fate as capricious as that of the smaller branch of Bourbon which has supplied its latest Princes. When Napoleon was in his glory, he amused himself with turning the Duke of Modena into a King of Etruria, and on the subsiding of the great conqueror the King of Etruria also sub- sidedinto a Duke. His dominions of Lucca were absorbed by Italy in 1848; but Parma, previously a royal asylum for Na- poleon's widow, reverted to the dispossessed Duke of Lucca, who managed it so well-that he kept it in a state of siege ever sines
1848, and was himself governed by his viceroy—a Yorkshireman, whom he made his Prime Minister. Some anonymous person has out the gordian knot of Parma's difficulties with the assassin's knife. Who is the assassin ? The question is more interesting, perhaps, to history than to the police of Parma • where mourning for the Duke would be a mockery, since his death appears to have introduced a new and a more hopeful regime. Princes profess a horror of revolution ; yet it is to be noted that they have not unfrequently encouraged it. Russia is with reason suspected .of promoting revolution in various parts of the world; and other princes, by the concessions which they make on extreme compulsion, put a premium upon revolt. Even Kings of Naples listen to reason when they are in the hands of a mob : the King of Prussia became constitutional while Berlin was in the hands of its own citizens ; and the Royal Family of Parma reforms its ways at the dictate of a murderer!
An Indian newspaper reports, that the votaries of Juggernaut at Muhes, near Serampore, are "merged in grief" by the total de- struction of the car, which was burned down on the 7th of Febru- ary. This places an important sect in an embarrassing position.
i Had they insured? It is a subject worth the consideration of those who have the custody of reliques. The power of the insur- ance-office, indeed, to restore a destroyed relique, may be questioned. Still it would be some satisfaction to have the equivalent in money. The " Odekuries," or those sacred custodians who had a proprietary interest in the vehicle of their god, might perhaps feel their own grief much solaced even by that which an insurance-office could supply. "Existing interests" would be saved by such a precau- tion as insurance ; though there is this great doubt whether the institution could be restored by any exercise of carpentry. What would be the statistical proportion of devotees throwing themselves under the wheels of a new ear, as under the old and venerated vehicle ? An important qtiestion for Hindoo Toryism. If a man will not sacrifice himself, a fortiori he will not sacrifice his money. If devotees will not die, certainly they will not pay. Does the fortunate arson cut the gordian knot of the Juggernaut question, which has so vexed serious gentlemen in our own coun- try? If it does, the example might be useful. It would be painful to destroy any genuine reliques to sacred memories; but of course there is the utmost reason to doubt whether the most sacred of all occurrences in this world are truly represented by those obscure structures and objects in Syria which are described as reliques, and about which Europe is just now proceeding to: war. The Juggernaut example might not be useless. A joint- commission to inquire into the authenticity of the reliques might precede a joint-commission to abolish apocryphal objects, which; small in themselves, give rise to such great and disastrous conse- quences. A Juggernaut burning in Syria might save much of our present embarrassment to future generations.
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