Beyond the special activity devoted in the Foreign Gibe to
the Turco-Russian difficulties, or in the Home Office to the cholera, the ceaseless activities of the country do not exhibit any special or striking evidences this week. Administration is seasonably represented by the tour of Mr. Gladstone to ancestral regions in Scotland, and the addition to his honours by the presentation of civic "freedoms." The Opposition is represented by the poli- tical silence of Mr. Disraeli, in the midst of his Royal Buck corps. Trade, by the raising of the Bank of F.ngland's rate of discount to 4i per cent ; a move Which everybody expected. Our inventive mechanics, by the burning of Scott Russell's **tory, with the mo- del of the greatest ship, at Millwall. 8ome,reinnifestations are of a more painful character. The iatempted suicide of an aged voter at Barnstaple, detected in corruption and perjury, shows that natural feelings may still survive in the electoral breast, if the system would give them fair play. And the lengthened in- quiry into Birmingham Gaol and its management discloses the continuance of illegal and tyrannical practices which were sup- posed to belong to an obsolete system—still continuing in a town which boasts of being in advance of the age, and has especially been the scene of reformatory experiments as successful as they were creditable. Prisoners had been tortured under the Go- vernor's orders, and the register had been softened by an assisting surgeon; but the "Visiting Justices" had left the practices to be- come notorious, and to be arrested only by a Government Commis- sion of inquiry !
