At home, the national life shows itself in many of
its accustomed forms ; and upon the whole the display of the week is creditable, notwithstanding a tarnish here and there. Sheffield, for example, shuffles. Its most active men attempt to inveigle it into a Rus- sian-Radical position and its more pliant men connive for the moment in a demonstration from which afterwards they shrink or dissent. A meeting called by a requisition with the signatures of twenty-two Councilors is attended by five of those Councillors, three of whom disclaim its very objects. Real promoters of the meeting, however, possessed the platform and the attendance, and triumphantly carried propositions implying that nothing has been done against Russia, that Lord Aberdeen is holding back the armies, and that Austria is coming in to divide the spoil! So fir as this meeting goes, Sheffield takes its stand upon the settled eon- elusions of ten years ,back, subsequent circumstances notwithstand- ing; the marked absence of Kossuth himself unheeded, the actual protest of impartial men who had wavered for a moment con- temned. Meanwhile, Mr. Peel has been reconciling official votes against the Ballot, &v. as well as he may with the popular feeling of his constituents at Bury ; Mr. John Macgregor has been laying his Parliamentary balance-sheet before his constituents at Glasgow; the Marquis of Downshire is inventing new farmers' prizes for practical encouragement in Ireland, where O'Connellisnz is on the decline; the Countess of Haedwicke has been gracing the colours of the Cambridge Militia; Sir Charles Knightley and other veteran agriculturists have been proclaiming their studies of improved farming at Northamptonshire. While such forms of old life are going on, the British Association has been ap lying the lights of high seience to'the practical questions of the
such as Mr-Brown's and other gentlemen's explanations on
ma! coinage ; Mr. Danson's statistics on corn prices ; Mr. Ash- worth's and Mr. Clay's details of the Preston strike ; and Mr. Scott Russell's exposition .of improved shipbuilding.-; 'while Pro- fessor Owen's sinuous disquisition on the doctrine df development intercepts a new form of quasi-seientific scepticism, and-reconciles the Old Testament with new science: all done in the great mew hall of commercial Liverpool.
