NEWS OF THE WEEK.
rilHE week has been full of festivity for everybody except the
Prince of Wales, who has been worked off his legs. The Sultan has been " entertained " at Windsor, at the Crystal Palace, at Guildhall, at Spithead, and at the India House. At Windsor his reception was rather rapid, half an hour being allowed for presen- tations and five minutes for lunch, but every honour was paid him, and his little son—who, we beg leave to remark, is not the "heir," though he will one day be Sultan, the throne passing in succession to each eldest male of the House of Othman—was kissed and petted prettily. At the Crystal Palace thirty thousand well dressed men and women cheered him to the echo, refused to hear Titiens sing "Ii Bacio," fought for eatables like roughs at Greenwich Fair, and nearly trod one another to death in a stampede towards the fireworks. The utter brutality with which big women trod down little ones was a thing to mark, and but for a policeman who closed a door, and so stopped a crowd swarming down the staircase, fifty lives might have been lost. At Spithead the weather was less complaisant to Her Majesty than usual, but the Sultan received the Garter—which, by a rule of the Order, cannot be given to a "heretic,"—from the Queen's own hand. At the Guildhall everything went off well, and the Sultan is said to have even been seen to smile, quite a novel event in his career. On the whole, I reception has been well though unjustly managed.
