NEWS OF THE WEEK

SERIOUS riots occurred in Paris on Sunday and Monday. A crowd of Anarchists were attending the funeral of one of their number, M. Conrnet, in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise on Sunday, when an inspector of police asked them to put away their red flags. They refused, and in the consequent scuffle the police were so severely handled that it became necessary to charge the mob with the bayonet. No one was killed, but a number of mourners were injured, and on Monday the Anarchists made another procession to the cemetery. The police had orders to tolerate banners, but not flags ; but the Anarchists, some of whom were armed with revolvers, defied the orders. The police did not attack again, and the day passed off quietly ; but the temper of the Extreme Party was very bad, and they declared in all their papers that the people had been massacred, and they threaten that on Monday next, when all Paris will attend the funeral of Victor Hugo in the Pantheon, they will display the red flag and take the consequences. Fortunately, the number of troops under arms will be large, as the Chamber has voted that the funeral shall be a public one.

There is no evidence that the great body of workmen desire a collision with the authorities. They are not Anarchists, and have recently refused to send Anarchist delegates to international meetings. The Chamber, too, supports the Government; and in an Order of the Day, passed on Tuesday, by 388 votes to 10—the Extreme Left not voting—has exhorted it to be firm, and "make the national flag respected "; but the situation is difficult. The Anarchists provoke armed attack ; but at the same time, the Government, though it must maintain order, does not want either to shed blood or to lose the votes of the Ultras just before the General Election. There is no knowing how the populace of Paris will act if any one is killed ; yet the Anarchists may compel the Police to call upon the soldiery. The popular temper has not risen yet, however, for the Municipality on Wednesday accepted a mild resolution condemning the police for " violence" by only 36 votes to 25. Had the people been excited the vote would have been 50 to 11, and the police would have been declared " murderers."

The Paris correspondent of the Times, who is a clever man, with a weakness for pretending omniscience, professes to know all that passed in the recent interview between Prince Bismarck and Lord Rosebery. According to this account, the German Chancellor was as brutally " frank " as usual, and gave Lord Rosebery three distinct slaps in the face. He told him that the English must quit Egypt, where they had "raised the most formidable difficulties and caused the most bitter deceptions," and Egypt must be neutralised " under a strong and popular Khedive," probably Halim, the French nominee. The Suez Canal must be internationalised and confided to the Khedive, England having only "a preponderance in maintaining the independence" of that water-way. Moreover, Russia mast not be "strangled" iu Asia, and Germans must be allowed "liberty and equality" in commercial competition with Englishmen. It is difficult to understand what object Prince Bismarck can have in thus avowing hostility to Great Britain, which, by passively supporting an alliance between France and Russia, could bring "unnumbered woes " on Germany; and the narrative has evidently, as indeed the Times admits, been largely coloured by French influence. It begins to be evident, however, that Prince Bismarck is savage with disappointment at something Mr. Gladstone has done—it may be with the peace—and is not disinclined to risk a quarrel with his Government to gratify his enmity. That is not statesmanship, even if he thinks Lord Salisbury would make an alliance with him. He is making the quarrel popular in England, and alliance impossible.

Sir Stafford Northcote spoke at an open-air meeting at Braunton in North Devon on Whit Tuesday, and denied in very vehement language that he had ever opposed the grant of the franchise to the new electors. He gave an account, which was by no means candid, of Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill cf 1867, representing it as from the first a Bill founded on the principle of household suffrage which it now incorporates. He never hinted that Mr. Disraeli only " educated " his party to listen to that Bill by weighting it with a lot of counterpoises, such as plural voting and the rest, which he trusted to the Liberal party to remove, and which the Liberal party did remove. Sir Stafford forgot that in 1866 Mr. Disraeli and all his friends had violently assailed the Liberal Reform Bill for its Democratic provisions ; and he contrived to forget that no sooner was Mr. Disraeli's Bill,—as amended by Mr. Gladstone,—passed, than Liberals took up the extension of household suffrage to the counties, and urged it year after year, to the great chagrin and discouragement of the Tory Party, who, on one excuse or another, always deprecated that step. Sir Stafford's representation that the Tory leaders,

by their resistance of last Session, had compelled Mr. Gladstone's Government to grant an adequate Redistribution Bill,—

though they knew all through that it was the great object of the Liberals to pass the largest Redistribution Bill they could persuade the Tories to accept,—seems to us still more disincr

0ennons.

Sir Stafford Northcote made the usual attack on the foreign policy of the Government, speaking, indeed, of their "malignant folly in turning against everything done by their predecessors,"—which was strong language for Sir Stafford, and very unjust language,—and lie described his opponents' whole policy in Egypt as one of purposeless expense, incurred only that the English troops might return again " with their tail between their legs." Further, he appealed to the electors to bring back the Tories to power, that they might put everything straight which the Liberals had made crooked. If this means anything, it means an appeal to the country to authorise the Tories to annex Egypt, conquer the Soudan, and quarrel with Europe, if Europe is inclined to quarrel over such a policy. That is a very big policy, indeed ; but Sir Stafford does not put it forward plainly. He only asks for leave to gain for our forces in Egypt the glory which their valour has deterred, bat which the " malignant folly" of the Government has thrown away.

Sir Stafford Northcote's speeches on Thursday were in the same strain with his speech on Wednesday, and attributed a

great many "thumping lies" to his opponents. But what in the world did he mean when he said that Mr. James Lowther had never proposed any policy which would have had the effect of raising the price of bread? "I can tell my friend who interrupted me," he is reported to have said, "that if he says Mr. Lowther wishes to raise the price of the people's loaf, he is altogether wrong." Well, Mr. James Lowther certainly said be wished for a fixed duty on corn,—we believe it was a fixed duty of five shillings a quarter. If that was not intended to raise the price of bread, of what use was it ? If it was so intended, then, though we are quite sure that Sir Stafford Northcote did not intend to deceive, somebody has told him a "thumping lie" as to Mr. James Lowther's policy.

The little war in Canada has ended in the complete victory of the Dominion Government. The Indians looked to the Half-breeds for " light and leading," and upon Riel's capture Poundmaker offered terms. They were bluntly refused, and he was required to surrender unconditionally. He accordingly came in on the 26th with thirty other chiefs, and was, with seven of his companions, imprisoned, they having been guilty of murder. The remaining chiefs were sent back to the Reserve, with instructions to report themselves once a week till further orders; and the rebellion is over, probably for ever, as the completion of the Pacific Railway, now expected in a few weeks, will bring clouds of settlers. The Dominion is greatly pleased with the affair, which has enabled Mr. A. P. Caron, Minister of Militia, to display both his energy and his power of organisation, and indeed, both are creditable to him. He ventured, like the earlier officers of the American Colonies, to rely upon volunteers, and found their courage and dash quite perfect ; while as against undrilled men, their training was sufficient. We hope, however, that lenity will be shown to the Indian', who, though inconvenient, have rights.

The correspondent of the Times at Hong Kong declares that in the event of war between England and Russia, China would make a desperate effort to reconquer Manchuria, the province captured by Ignatieff in 1858. The Chinese could, says the writer, bring the whole army employed against Tonquin, 130,000 men, to the North, to support a Northern Army even now cantoned along the border of Manchuria ; and the combined force under English officers would reconquer the whole valley of the Amour. The prospect has a certain attraction, because the loss of the valley involves that of the ports, and would leave the Russian Fleet in the North Pacific, always an object of anxiety to our own Admiralty, in the air, with no dock and no coalingstation ; but Russia would not thereby be much weakened. St. Petersburg would hardly feel the blow any more than she felt the sale of Alaska to the United States. Moreover, an alliance with China would require very strict stipulations as to her mode of warfare. She is too apt, when really in earnest, to erase hostile populations.

Admiral Hobart contributes to Blackwood's 3fagazine for this month a paper on torpedoes which should be carefully studied by every one interested in naval warfare. The Admiral is the only man alive who has commanded a fleet attacked by able European officers using the most scientific torpedo-boats —this occurred to him in the Russo-Turkish war—and his opinion is, therefore, of high value. He is convinced that while the fixed torpedo, which is nothing but a submerged mine, may be of the highest value for defending harbours, the prevalent dread of the torpedo-boat is nothing but " a scare." It is difficult to use in action, in face of the fire from Nordenfeldt guns, and it cannot be used against a ship at rest. Such a ship would be encircled by boats connected by a submerged wirerope, which overturns and sinks the torpedo-boat, the latter, from its tremendous speed, being as liable to be capsized by an obstacle as a railway-train. Admiral Hobart defended himself in this way with perfect success, and gives the most comical account of a gallant Russian officer, who, when half-drowned by the capsizing of his boat, stuttered out, as his first inquiry, "Why the devil did not the ship blow up ?" The theory had mastered him completely; but though a brave bowler, the batting beat him. The French Admiralty has got hold of a Stuff, too—a composition, according to the Telegraph, from the cocoa-nut fibre—which closes up perfectly after a shell has gone through it, and may make even a torpedo innocuous.

Victor Hugo died on Saturday, at the age of 83. He was the last of the great Frenchmen, the last of the men honoured and even loved by the whole country without distinction of party, or school, or religious prepossessions. We have attempted an estimate of his genius elsewhere, and need only mention here that the Chamber has voted him a public funeral, which takes place on Monday, and has affirmed a decree secularising the Pantheon, now a Church dedicated to Ste. Genevieve, in order to admit his remains. The decree offends the Catholics, who might, however, remember that no law can affect a function of the Church ; but it was voted by four to one. No priest attended Victor Hugo when dying, and he belonged to no Church ; but he left behind him a paper in which he asked a prayer from all souls, and asserted his belief in a God who. answers prayer. He was, in fact, a Unitarian Protestant by conviction; and it is a curious fact in his history that his mother, a Voltairian, registered him as a Huguenot at his school in order to avoid his attendance on Catholic services. He made an ample fortune by his excessive and continuous labour, and leaves behind him £200,000, besides copyrights for which the bookselling world of the Continent will compete. It will be long before France finds a voice which, like Victor Hugo's, can utter through the world her multitudinous and mixed qualities, her greatnesses, and her littlenesses all pell-mell.

A shrewd writer in the Times, who signs himself "A Conservative," endeavours to weigh accurately the political disposition of the new voters. Ho comes to the conclusion that they are "quite as likely to be Radical as Conservative," and that they will be greatly influenced by vague hopes of bettering their condition. Our own enquiries tell us the same tale, wherever the country Nonconformist clergy are powerful ; but we imagine the differences between localities will be very marked. Is it not, however, almost time to give up this vain guessing, and inquire scientifically, after the fashion Darwin adopted with his worms. Suppose a square inch is surveyed. In other words, suppose three clever agents in Lancashire, Devonshire, and Norfolk ascertain each in a single Hundred exactly how the people are inclined to vote. That will not tell us everything, for they will vote under the ballot, and the British peasant is secretive; but it will tell us a great deal.

In the Convocation of the province of York, speeches have been delivered by the Archbishop and by the Bishop of Manchester to prove that there is no evidence of any change of mind in Archbishop Tait during his last illness in relation to the toleration of Ritualism, or of any compact between him and the Bishop of London as to the presentation of Mr. Mackonochie, after his deprivation of St. Albans, to a cure in East London. Doubtless those speakers were quite accurate in their facts, but the inferences which these facts suggested are erroneous. Archbishop Tait doubtless promoted eagerly in one part of his life the mischievous Public Worship Regulation Act, and in another part of his life was greatly disgusted with the use actually made of it. But the change of mind which took place in him as to the moral effect of that Act took place long before his mortal illness. As Canon MacColl shows, in an admirable letter to this week's Guardian, fully a year before his death he had learned to regret greatly the prosecutions which took place under that Act, and had determined that, so far as he could prevent it, these prosecutions should cease. And assuredly he was well aware of Bishop Jackson's intention to present Mr. Mackonochie to the living in East London, and heartily approved that intention. Archbishop Tait was far too considerable a statesman to doubt that, in spite of his own formerly hopeful view of it, the Public Worship Regulation Act had failed, and failed disastrously.

The Church Association seem to have had a very stormy anniversary this year. The party of persecution were very loud in their demands for a policy of action, for more prosecutions, for attacks even on the Bishops if necessary ; in short, for war to the knife with all protectors of Ritualism. But then a great quarrel arose as to whether this cry did not proceed chiefly from the very men whose income was swelled by the costs paid in these prosecutions. A very scandalous sort of discussion, fall of mutual recriminations, took place, and, in the end, the partisans of the blood-thirsty policy seem to have been left in a ridiculous minority. Even the Church Association is aware that its various prosecutions have all redounded to the advantage of its foes, and have done nothing but harm to itself. The Irish Party, as it is called,—it might better be called, we think, the anti-Irish Party, so fatal is its policy to the true interests of Ireland,—would do well to study a speech, to which the Liverpool Daily Post has done good service by calling attention, delivered by Mr. Nicholas Flood Davin to an audience in Montreal, on the last anniversary of St. Patrick's Day. In it he claims for Ireland an undeniable share in the British Empire, and insists that those Irishmen who aim at making themselves aliens in that empire, are undoing all the work which so many great Irishmen have contributed to do. "Are our people," asks Mr. Davin, "going to make themselves aliens in an empire for which they are pouring out their blood, which they have built up, and which is, therefore, in part an Irish Empire P Is it not madness to throw away your birthright purchased at so great a price ?" The answer is, of course, that if they are to become aliens in that empire, it must be at least their own doing. Never was there a time when there was so little excuse for them in so separating themselves. Never was there a Government which did so much towards extinguishing the wrongs of Ireland, or endeavouring to unite the Irish and the English in a true union. But, of course, if dynamite outrages of Hiberno-American origin are to be multiplied in our cities, and the policy of obstruction is to be deliberately pursued by the so-called Irish Party in our Parliament, in order that a final alienation of Irish from British feeling may be brought about, it is impossible to doubt what the result must be. Why do not orators of Mr. Davin's stamp arise in Ireland and wrench Ireland from the grasp of the cold-blooded politician who now rules her with a rod of iron P

We have various illustrations this week of the temper of the extreme Irish Party. Mr. T.D. Sullivan, speaking in County Carlow last Sunday, is reported to have described Mr. Errington, M.P. —who spends much time at Rome, and is rightly regarded by the Pope as well informed as to the aims and temper of the British Government and as to the state of Ireland,—as a "poison-bearing enemy, a spy, and a miserable tool," and to have asserted that he is paid by the Government out of the secret-service money. Mr. O'Brien said on the same day at Tulla that the British Government was coming to Ireland, as usual, with a small bribe in one hand and a big whip in the other. The bribe is the Land Purchase Bill, and the whip the Coercion Bill, as Mr. O'Brien calls it. Of the two, he said, be preferred the Coercion Bill,—of course because, in his opinion, it tends to disunion, while the other might tend to union. These are the statesmen who pose as the Irish patriots of the present day. If we could but find a few Mr. Davins amongst the Irish Members, men of this calibre would not command the popularity which they undoubtedly enjoy.

At the General Assembly of the Established Church of Scotland it was mentioned by Principal Tulloch that 1,192 petitions against Mr. Dick Peddie's Disestablishment Bill, signed by no fewer than 649,881 persons, had been presented to Parliament, while only 92 petitions, signed by 1,655 persons, had been presented in its favour. We fear that this hardly represents the actual proportion of Scotehmen who are opposed to, and in favour of, Disestablishment; but at least it shows how very considerable a force there is against the party of action. Again, the vote by which the General Assembly of the Established Church carried Dr. Cunningham's proposal to refer to the Presbyteries an overture opening the pulpits of the Established Church to ministers of the other Presbyterian Churches, shows how completely the three Churches are united in doctrine and worship. We cannot help thinking, then, that some solution of the question of the Scotch Establishment of the nature suggested by Lord Aberdeen ought to be possible, though we cannot pretend to see any sign of approximation between the two parties. In fact, we fear that there is a certain kind of religions superstition growing up on one side in favour of total abstinence from State aid, like the superstition in favour of total abstinence from alcohol; while, on the other side, there is a sort of moody resentment against those who entertain any such superstition, and who think themselves justified in looking down on the recipients of the old endowments. We wish with all our hearts that some common understanding between the two parties,—who are really moved more by imaginative cries than by solid differences of conviction,—could be arranged. But we are not very hopeful. Nothing seems more impassable than various imaginary political lines. On Tuesday a fine bust of the poet Gray, by Mr. Ramo Thornycroft, was unveilel in Pembroke College, Cambridge, where Gray had passed a considerable portion of his Cambridge life, and where he died. Mr. Gosse,—who bad originated this memorial,—Lord Houghton, Sir Frederick Leighton, and Mr. Lowell all spoke on the occasion, Lord Houghton describing Gray as a poet of " sentiment and form," though not as a poet whose poetry sprang from any " great height of imagination or any great depth of being, or even from that kaleidoscope of verbal fancy which delights in an infinite variety and succession of development." Perhaps Sir Frederick Leighton described Gray's genius better, because more vividly, when lie spoke of Gray's " elevated, and grave, and shadowy " moods, and asked if any one could find elsewhere such "subtle faculty and gentle might"? "Nature knew him for her lover, and unsealed to him her inmost secrets." "A fuller charm breathed for him out of the meadows and from the mountains lost in antique gloom, and let in a new day. That gloom was turned before his eyes to glory. The new dawn was at hand. The path was clearing for Turner, for Constable, for Crome." In a word, Gray so interpreted natural beauty that the painters learned to find in nature a new mystery and a new inspiration.

Mr. Russell Lowell made, as usual, the finest criticism of the evening when he said that he admired Gray not the less, but the more, for the commonplaceness in the sentiment of his most popular poem. No great poet could help striking the note of a commonplace sentiment if ho wished to speak to all men and all ages. When Homer described Andromache as smiling through her tears at the child, he appealed to a commonplace sentiment in mankind, but none the less mankind had loved and remembered this passage for three thousand years. There is a Spanish proverb, said Mr. Lowell, which rebukes those who ask for something better than bread. Those who asked for something better than bread might well be discontented with Gray, but for his part he was quite satisfied with him. Gray had satisfied him in his youth, and he satisfied him still in age. And 'Mr. Lowell is, right. It is the rare expression given to universal feeling, and not at all the rarity of the feeling itself, which discriminates the poet who pleases all tastes from the poet who pleases only a few.

If there is no misunderstanding or error in Mr. Harrison's letter to Friday's Tunes,—and there does not seem to be much room for anything of the kind,—Mr. Herbert Spencer has not used him well. To aid and abet the republication in the United States of Mr. Harrison's controversial essays against Mr. Spencer, without Mr. Harrison's leave, and to interlard them with hostile notes, is hardly what we should have expected from Mr. Spencer. It is hard enough that the publishers of the United States should republish English works at pleasure, but it is still harder that they should republish them accompanied by hostile criticisms to which their authors have not consented ; and this could not have been done without Mr. Spencer's co-operation. We are astonished at the unscrupulousness of an author whom we should have described as nothing if not scrupulous in such matters.

The anti-Semitic movement appears to be still strong in Austria. Great efforts have, for instance, been made to defeat Herr Schauer, the leader of the agitation, who sits for Waidhafen, in Lower Austria. The journals of Vienna, which aro chiefly controlled by Jews, naturally detest him, and of late there has been an agreement never to mention his name. He was considered, therefore, a beaten man ; but at the election on Wednesday it was found that 292 secondary electors had voted for him, against 113,—or, in other words, that he was elected by nearly three to one. The incident is of little importance ; but it shows the lingering strength of a feeling which in Austria is a compound of old Catholic animosity and modern irritation at the power of wealth. In Prussia the agitation seems to be dying away ; but in Russia and Roumania it revives on the smallest provocation, and always expresses itself, as it used to do in England, in direct physical violence.