11 AUGUST 1877, Page 3

The Bolton Liberal Association on Saturday visited Hawarden, and tried

to " draw " Mr. Gladstone, but he would not be drawn. It was a fine day, and he wanted to out down a tree—an English- man, says a cynical Frenchman, on a fine day always wants to kill something—and he accordingly out down an ash fifteen feet in circumference at the base of the trunk. The people looked on and admired—which was wrong, for they cannot replace the tree—and at last a vote of thanks to Mr. Gladstone for the use of the park compelled him to speak. His topic was the expediency of diminishing the difference between country and town, which he believed might be accomplished by giving the town purer water, abolishing smells, and diminishing smoke. He believed these things to be possible, even the last, for he had lived forty- six years in London, and found that fewer " blacks " came in now than when he began to live there. We fear Mr. Gladstone's windows look westward. If he will only throw his eastward windows open for a day or two, ho will find that even if there has been improvement, the " blacks " are still so bad, that curtains are receptacles of soot and flowers will not live.