23 APRIL 1864, Page 3

6 friend of Mr. Childers is quite angry with us

for calling him a middle-aged man. He is, he says, only thirty-six. We thought he had been four years older, and readily admit that in the present House of Commons, filled as it is with old and middle-aged notabi- lities, a man of thirty-six is really youthful. He is only thirteen years older than Pitt when he became Premier. Mr. Childers was returned for Pontefract without opposition, and made a quiet, sensible speech, in which he said that the Government till a very little while ago did not know whom it had for friends on the Continent, but he hoped "prospects were brightening," for "we .certainly knew that between this country and France the same good feeling exists as heretofore."