28 MARCH 1874, Page 2

The annual dinner of the Institute of Civil Engineers was

marked by speeches from Mr. Hunt, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Carnarvon, and Lord Granville, all of them happy in their way. The Lord Chief Justice said the Engineers reminded him of the happiest and most profitable days of his professional career, and inspired by the recollection of his railway briefs, de- clared that engineers had carried their blessings to every part of the habitable globe. Lord Carnarvon again said that the Ashantee War had been called an Engineers' War, and he only wished the future policy on that coast could be handed over to them. He should be very glad to see them exercising their functions there. Their skill had reproduced for the British Government the magic mirror in which the Tartar Prince saw all that went on in his States. As Under-Secretary he had received the first message by the Atlantic Cable, "blurred as if it had been washed out by the sea ;" and his first duty as Colonial Secretary was to receive at 9.45 a.m. a telegram despatched from Sydney at 10 minutes past 11. We hope his second was to " wig " all the signallers concerned, for the message ought to have arrived 10i hours before, and there must have been delays in the repetitions.