NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE speeches made at the annual banquet to the Ministers at Guildhall were this year not very striking, but they had a certain interest of their own. The French Ambassador, the Comte de Jarnac, responded for the Diplomatic Body, and ex- pressed in felicitous English " feelings of no ordinary cordiality," both on the part of his Government and himself. More than thirty years ago he had sat in that Hall representative in a minor .rapacity of " a sagacious -King " and an "illustrious Minister," and it seemed like a dream to him to sit there " amidst that unaltered .splendour, no unworthy type of your time-honoured institutions." The sons and successors of old friends, Lord Aberdeen, Sir Robert Teel, Sidney Herbert, were around him, filling their predecessors' posts, with his still earlier friend, the present Prime Minister, at their head. The whole speech was in that tone, and without a defect, except, perhaps, that it betrayed a leaning towards a particular party, which we do not now-a-days expect from Ambassadors. The note of Mr. Disraeli's reply, which we have carefully analysed elsewhere, was cordial acceptance of the cordiality of France, and it was evidently comprehended. The other speeches were common-place, the Lord Chancellor only promising some more law reform, and admiring the confidence secured by the Judges of the land ; and Lord Salisbury, who answered for the Lords, saying that the guarantee of that House was, that it was a symbol of those ancient institutions which the people loved. Many " a statesman's lance has been shattered 'upon that unyielding armour." Considering that the Lords Always yield to any popular demand, is not that rather a poetic figure ? Is it not truer to say that many a statesman's lance and many a demagogue's pike have passed through that caoutchouc cuirass, which arrests nothing, but closes up after every wound apparently uninjured?
