15 DECEMBER 1877, Page 2

On Wednesday, at Grantham, Lord John Manners, the Post- ,

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master-General, was even more bellicose in his oratory than the Secretary for War in the Scotch capital. Ile attacked the pro-Russian or anti-Turkish Press,—whichever it pleased to call itself,— as that section of British opinion which was most likely, by misleading Russia, to embroil Great Britain in war with Russia, and declared that though " peace , might be obtained on the conditions laid down in Lord 7' Derby's despatch of the 6th May," yet if unfortunately the sword should be unsheathed, then "it should never be again returned to the scabbard until it was entwined with the laurel of unquestioned victory and the lily of lasting peace,"—a stilted and not very fortunate variation, we think, on the closing lines of Miss Edgeworth's drama for children on King Alfred and , the Danes and the burning cakes, which ends with a resolve of the good King's "never to sheathe the sword against these robbers,"—

"Till dove-like peace return to England's shore, And war and slaughter vex the land no more."