BRIEF NOTES ON A NUMBER OF THLNGS.
IT would be almost worth while, if only " for the fun of the thing," to bring before Mr. Speaker the case of the challenge which is said to have been transmitted to Mr. Roebuck from the Count de Ligny. Mr. Roebuck, it must be admitted, has been very severe upon the Emperor of the French; and the chivalrous Count de Ligny, it is reported, has sent an invitation to the honourable and learned gentleman to come to France for the ex- press purpose of enjoying the Count's hospitality and pistols. Of course the Count had no eye to his own aggrandizement and promotion. He as little thinks of any such contingency as Ra- leigh did when he laid his cloak in the mud under the feet of Queen Elizabeth. But we look beyond the personal dispute. The Count de Ligny has evidently insulted Parliament : to call any Member to account for words which he has spoken in his place in the House, is a breach of privilege ; and it is a fair question to put to Mr. Speaker, what shall be done in the case ? Probably Mr. Speaker Denison would see the propriety of sending the Sergeant-at-Arms to take the Count into custody, and bring him to the bar of the House. And it is not to be doubted that the Emperor, in his magnanimity, would assist the officer of the House of Commons by promoting the extradition of. the Count. For the present Speaker is a rigid upholder of the forms of the House. If, when Lord Palmerston was in office, Mr. Denison was thought sometimes rather remiss, he has now become one of the most vigilant of men in the chair. He stopped Mr. Osborne's quotations of speeches made "during the same session of Parlia- ment." In vain did Mr. Osborne represent that he was only going to,quote speeches as they appeared in print out of the House No ; ' it was not according to the rules of this /louse." It is not that the Speaker limits himself to the subordinate orators. Earlier in the same evening, the Chancellor of the Exchequer began to make an explanation about the Cagliari, on the motion for the third reading of the Indian Loan Bill ; whereat Mr. Speaker set him right. Immediately afterwards, Lord Palmer- ston rose to explain ; whereupon the Speaker told him that " there was no motion before the House."
These are only some out of many occasions on which Mr. Speaker Denison has avenged any charge against himself of being remiss. Now if he intends to follow out that course, and rigidly to enforce those rules which he has been said to ignore or neglect, he may incur some unpopularity, but he will put a stop to much irregularity and much idle talk.
The architecture of London is to be further improved by joint- stock interests. Two great hotels, the Westminster Hotel and the International, are to supply the place of modern patrician palaces. One is to adorn the wilds of Victoria Street ; the other is to absorb the Lyceum Theatre and to command the approaches of Waterloo Bridge. The hotel is the club of society m transitu ; but its capabilities have never yet been developed. Comfort, Cost, and Exclusiveness, have be& the partners, or Cheapness, Dirt, and Discomfort. Wanted, a place giving all the ap- pliances of home ; at a clear tariff, though with choice of se- lection for various classes ; and perfect order, combined with per feet freedom of arrival and departure. The want is the natural result of the incessant locomotion of society ; and if it be met by a supply, the product in profit must be self-reproducing,—for good inns will inerease travelling.
But we shall never deem hotel reform complete until there is a connected system of hotels for the whole kingdom, giving the habitual traveller a familiar home, an available address, and means of communication wherever he goes.
The eclipse occasioned general disappointment in London, from the bad arrangements made in the upper regions. Smoked glasses are all well enough, but smoked clouds are by no means avail- able as optical instruments. The little boys who sold glasses about the streets were quite superseded in their trade; and the Crystal Palace Company, which offered telescopes for the Million, did not succeed in concentrating all the eyes of Argus upon one tube. As usual, the " emergency " found our practical English people very little prepared, or preparing over-much. The crowds i who went wandering in search of glasses that must have proved unequal to any actual demand might have seen more if they had stopped at home and viewed the phenomenon in the natural dark mirror offered by the surface of a cup of treacle.
The authorities of the Stock Exchange have permanently " posted" a gentleman who was a defaulter of the most de- liberate order. Is this legal ? Even to libel a man once, as a means of revenge, is a moral assault unjustified by law; but to renew the libel every instant,—and the monument in dishonour of the memory" amounts to a perpetual renovation of the libel,— is a sort of aggression unknown to our habits. It may be said that the law does not reach the defaulter; but is that a sufficient ground for introducing Lynch law ? If Lynch once makes good a footing, he mayexercise his jurisdiction in unexpected modes ; he is a " rough customer ' in finance as well as other things. The best answer is, perhaps, that the well-known Judge is no stranger on the Stock Exchange.
Ireland is the place where law comes to its greateatperfection, as we might expect from a country where there is so much lid- gawn and so much natural wit. As we might suppose from the fertility of the land, the undergrowth of law. is somewhat re- dundant and irregular, and the Irish Police Court is sometimes overgrown with a species of wit that is wild. and dreary. During the riot at Dublin between the boys that were rude to the Police and the Police that sabred the boys, a Captain Bernard, of the King's County Militia, remarked to a friend, " Here is a row : I hope the — police will get their heads broken !" Some police- men swore that Captain Bernard said so ; the Captain was ready to swear that he did not ; but he was not allowed to take the proffered oath. The Magistrate applauded the Police for "stating the case fairly " against this gentleman ; declared that he " never saw anything like misrepresentation on the part of the Police "; but treated all Captain Bernard's disclaimers as self-evidently un- true. The result of the case was, that Captain Bernard was gravely convicted of using language calculated to create a breach of the peace, because he had made a kind of " aside " to a friend. on the breach of the peace actually going on ; and, with pleasant consistency, after having been convicted, he was literally sen- tenced to be dismissed. Perhaps if one of the sabre-outs had been proved against him, he would have been pronounced not guilty and sentenced to imprisonment.
A correspondent challenges us to defend one of our institutions —the British chimney-pot. He denies the necessity of any such `article to disfigure the tops of houses, and he maintains his opin- ion in the face of London and all its smoke. His reasons appear to us to be rather imperfect ; they are nothing more than the practical experience of his own country (for he is an American) and the rules of art in our land. We English have always been accustomed to chimney-pots, and we consider them to be essential architectural ornaments. Look at London from one of our noble towers ! Our friend alleges that the utility of the excrescence is disproved. by the fact that the chimney-pot is often used close by buildings or other chimneys which are still more elevated. The secret of good construction, he says, lies in the shape of the flue and its adaptation to the house ; good ventilation caries away smoke, without any need for the superfluity above. All that is wanting is the hole ; abolish the chimney-pot, and the architect is relieved from that great encumbrance. A. model house built by an American gentleman at Birkenhead is offered by our corre.. spondent as evidence in our own land. Englishmen, however, will cling to the chimney-pot • uncertain whether its removal might not endanger the stability of some other institutions.
An ingenious and agreeable author is recommending the cli- mate of Algiers as the best of all for patients labouring under pulmonary disease, and the recommendation is circulating in quo- tations and extracts. It may be the best. The transit is easy, the cost not great, living cheap, scenery beautiful, and climate deli- cious, offering instant relief to the labouring lungs and life-breath to the whole system. We have been told something of the same kind respecting several other places,—Devonshire, Madeira, Egypt, Montpellier, Naples, Nice, and Australia,—all tried without ar- resting the curse of England, and often with aggravation. the recent conclusion is, that consumption is less a specific disease than a failure of the vegetative system, and each ease developing the deficiency needs to be treated on its own symptoms. Any patient will do well to consult, not books, which cannot visit him, but his own doctor.
Luckily, the political state of France, and of the English visitor in French territory, will operate as a caution, not in preventing visitors to Algiers, but in hastily rushing to the promised resto- rative.
The spectator may sometimes play the part of the go-between, and a graceful opportunity offers itself. The Derby Government has many of the requisites for a Ministry, but it lacks one crowning qualification. It has possession of place ; it has the measures which Lord Palmerston left on the Treasury-bench, and which can be made as good as new; it has quite enough Liberal Moderados to make up a good Cabinet; but it wants two things— it wants a majority in Parliament, and a Premier. If Lord Pal- merston no longer has his majority, he has quite enough of " Pal- merston's Own" in the present House of Commons to convert a minority in possession into a majority: and he is a Premier with- out a Cabinet. Put the dispossessed things together, and you have completeness : annex Palmerston to the Pakmgton-Stanley.Cabi- net, reunite him to his measures, and reconcile him to their im- provement, and you have the very thing wanted.
The ancient story of Paris and his apple has had a modern revival in Stuttgard, the fair little metropolis of the kingdom of Wurtemberg. As the Augsburg Gazette tells us, at the post- office of the town of Stuttgard arrived a parcel filled lace and silk and jewels, and addressed to " The most beautiful lady in Stuttgard:" The postmaster—strangely forgetful of some lady whom he ought at once to have recognized by this description— did not know what to do with the parcel, and in his perplexity he applied to the Wurtemberg Government to have the question set- tled. Thereupon, says the story, a Cabinet Council was summoned by good King William ; and it was decided, after lengthened de- bates, that a commission of ladies should be appointed to solve the question. This was done : when all the ladies came to the final ballot, not two votes were recorded for the same person; so, ac- cording to the latest news, the parcel is still with the postmaster.
New times, new ideas • new ideas, new language. Di demand- ing the removal of refugees from the frontiers- erflier neighbours t France, says the Moniteur, has only asked what she has accorded at the request of Switzerland in the case of the Neuchatel fugi- tives, of bpain when she asked France to " interner " the Carlist refugees. This is the new " great duty " which France calls upon states to recognize—the duty of " internation." It seems to be all that Imperial France remembers of " international" law.
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