up in the Balkan Peninsula. At midnight, on the 13th inst., the King of Servia, either obeying some impulse from without, or determined to profit by the preoccupation of Prince...

pleads provocations. One of these, a violation of his frontier, is believed to be either an invention or an accident exaggerated into an outrage. Another, "the tariff war," even...

most impressive of the Scotch speeches as yet delivered. He remarked on the sobriety, as well as the steadfastness, of Scotch Liberalism, and congratulated himself on this...

P ARLIAMENT was dissolved on the 18th inst., and in most districts the days for the new elections have been fixed. It is greatly to be regretted that they are spread over so...

case.

Churchmen in reference to the decision which he had felt it his duty to take to put by the question of the Scotch Kirk, Mr. Gladstone went on to hope that the Tory foreign...

unreservedly to the Sultan, has withdrawn from Philippopolis pending the decision, and has requested aid from his Suzerain against Servia. The object of this move would appear...

a Minis- terial programme. It is a weak affair. On finance the Ministry acknowledge a deficit, and promise reductions, but threaten also to increase indirect taxation. On the...

by Lord Rosebery in reply to an address from the Scottish Liberal Club, presented to him on Friday week. He expressed strongly his belief that, disappointed as many Scotch...

some importance, in relation to a recent controversy, —namely, that long before there was any Pall Mall agitation, Sir William Harcourt had determined to press through the...

a rumour that M. Gr6vy's re-election in December may be seriously contested. He is elected by Senate and Chamber sitting together, and must by law receive a clear majority of...

a very bitter attack on Mr. Gladstone and his Government, repre- senting him as unworthily evading the declaration of his own views on Disestablishment ; and Sir Michael...

Bur- mese ships, with the materials for blocking the Irrawaddy, were snapped up by the steam launches ; on the 17th inst. the Minhla Forts, which were bailt by an Italian...

Liberal or Anchor banquet, at which he made an amusing speech. Referring to the Conservative dinner going on at a little distance,—at which Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was...

pigeons to be destroyed by so cruel a method as that of feeding them with grain steeped in spirits of wine ? The result has certainly been great torture, and a very lingering...

of the Times be true ? He declares, on the authority of Polish Relief Committees, that 34,700 Poles, men and women, have already been expelled from Prussian Poland under circum-...

in Birmingham last Monday, on behalf of Mr. Broadhurst's candidature for the Bordesley division of Bir- mingham, and in answer to the remarks of the Tory candidate for...

in Tuesday's Times, avows that he is, as we supposed him to be, wholly opposed to what is generally understood by Disestablish- ment and Disendowment ; bat he adds a very...

ference convened by Dr. Parker to consider the subject of Disestablishment on Thursday, the leaders of the Nonconformist Party denied all responsibility for the Liberationist...

defending Free- trade and the older Political Economy, says the refusal of man- kind to accept those doctrines every now and then makes him reconsider himself, and ask if they...

to log.

very interesting letter on "the Land Question from the labourer's point of view." The main drift of that letter is that, even admitting England to be no longer a corn-growing...

sufficient reply to Mr. Bosworth Smith's outburst against Mr. Gladstone, in yesterday's Times, for not committing himself, as Dean Oakley tells us that nothing would induce him...

THE ELECTIONS. T HE Parliament of 1880 died on Wednesday ; but its epitaph cannot be written, for no man knows, or thinks he knows, exactly what it did. It will live in history...

I T is quite clear that nothing which Mr. Gladstone can say or do will please the Tory Press, or, indeed, what Mr. Glad- stone so happily called the " Temporising Press" in his...

T HE excellent tone of Mr. Bright's speech on Tuesday in relation to Disestablishment will, we hope, act as a sedative to the sensitive nerves of Liberal Churchmen. Not only...

I T is quite impossible to defend the King of Servia. We wish well to all the Balkan States, to Slays as well as Greeks, to Servians as well as Bulgarians ; but King Milan's...

T HOUGH it may be doubted whether the Elections of next week will be a crisis in the history of the nation, there can be no doubt that they are a crisis in the history of the...

W HEN M. BRISSON says that the situation created by the recent French Elections has no analogy with what is happening in other Parliamentary countries, he states a fact the...

T HE British Government, since 1852, has never quite taken its eyes off lliandelay. Twice for considerable periods it has had a Resident there, and when the Resident found his...

M R. COURTHOPE, in the interesting little book which we have elsewhere noticed, commits himself, with some re- serves, to Macaulay 's view, that" as civilisation advances,...

[TD THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR. "] SIR, — Mr. Shaw, writing in the Spectator of November 14th on the Scotch Disestablishment movement, says "that the Church Defence meetings,...

THE CHURCH DEFENCE MOVEMENT. [To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR." J am one of that large section of the Liberal Party which - has always desired that the question of...

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR. "] SIB, I infer from the private criticism of a friend of mine that my playful reference to Mr. Chamberlain in my letter to the Spectator last...

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."1 SIR,—M. Jules Guerin has sent me the official " Bulletin de l'Academie de Mddecine," containing, in extenso, the report of the famous...

[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR. "] SIR,—The opposition to Lord Justice Fry's scheme for the reorganisation of the-London University is commonly attributed to a jealousy of...

THE LIBERAL MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.* MR. COITRTHOPE is an excellent critic, and there are hardly more than one or two individual criticisms in the pages of this plea-...

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR." SIR,—Permit me to correct an error the Rev. J. A. Galbraith has made in the Spectator of the 14th inst., when referring to my paper on "...

lives of Dr. Carey, and he deserved many, but this is the fullest and the best. Though his external history was uneventful, though he was not a man of genius, and • Th. Life of...

DORA GREENWELL'S name is probably known but little to the public generally. She lived a retired life, and it cannot be said that her literary labours were of a kind to interest...

WE are very glad to include in our list of Scotch local histories a new and abridged edition of the late Dr. Robert Chambers' invaluable Domestic Annals of Scotland. That...

Picturesque Europe and Picturesque America are now appro- priately followed up by Picturesque Canada. Nor can we bestow higher praise on these volumes than by saying that they...

poem, it furnishes a fresh proof that the literary ability which has marked two generations of the distinguished Phanariote family to which the author belongs is in no danger of...

FEW people can discourse of the dangers and difficulties which beset candidates and agents at elections with more knowledge than Mr. Loader, who was election-agent for Sir...

(S.P.C.K.)—A pretty book with three pretty illustrations, written for children, who, we doubt not, will find themselves much interested in the story ; it is told very cheerily...

Own Mechanic." Vol. IV. (Ward, Lock, and Co.)—Here a man may learn, if only Nature has given him hands (by which we mean some- thing more than extremities furnished with ten...

Boy's Annual, edited by Edmund Rontledge, and Routledge's Every Girl's Annual, edited by Miss Alicia Leith, each of them ex- cellent in its way, and happily adapted for its...

GIFT BOOKS. The King's Service : a Story of the Thirty Years' War, by the Author of " The Spanish Brothers," &c. (R.T.S.), is an interesting and well-constructed story...

the Sunday Magazine, edited by the Rev. Benjamin Waugh (Isbister and Co.)—may be mentioned together. Both are so well known, that mention is really all that they need. Good...

older children, is Our Darlings. Edited by Dr. Bernardo. (J. F. Shaw and Co.)—It has a special reference to the good work with which the editor has identified his name. With its...

H. C. Adams, M.A., with eight illustrations (Griffith, Farran, and Co.), is another boys' book, not likely to attract so many readers, either from the interest attaching to the...

volume in a handsome volume of more than eight hundred quarto (or are they " elephantine " octavo ?) pages. It contains seven serial stories, most of them begun and finished in...

(J. Hogg.)—" The stories," as stated in the Preface, "are founded upon autobiographical materials, supplied by the heroes themselves, with here and there a passage quoted or...

of President Grant's Life. By William M. Thayer. With Portrait. (Hodder and Stoughton.)—The author is already favourably known as the writer of the Lives of Abraham Lincoln and...

an appropriate one for this very melancholy story, said to be one ",of a real life." The "stillness" is that of Christian resignation, the lesson of the tale. Beyond a short...

have an old complaint against Lord Brabourne in the choice of his subjects. He has a certain leaning—which we cannot praise—to the horrible. In former books he has introduced...

self. (T. Fisher Unwio.)—M. Vambery has written this story of his adventures expressly for young readers, and prefaces it with a chapter in which he commends it to them. It must...

Fellowship in. Manchester Cathedral at the Time of the Burial of the late Bight Rev. James Fraser, D.D., Bishop of Manchester, to which is added a Letter from the Dean to an...

Henry Frith. (Cassell and Co.)—Mr. Frith takes us back to the days of Queen Elizabeth and King James. His story opens with the abortive rising of Essex, and it takes us down as...

A. Henty. (Blackie and Son.)—Mr. Henty encloses one of the military stories which he knows—and, indeed, has good reason for knowing—how to tell so well, in a frame which, in...

is a story of a little girl who is sent adrift in a boat by the trick of an idiot, in revenge for a beating, by which her father had punished some mischievous proceedings on his...

With a Preface by Alfred Marshall. (Longmans.)—The experience of Professor Marshall as a lecturer on Political Economy at Cambridge has convinced him that the two remarkable...

Sons.)—These three "yarns" are good specimens of Mr. lienty's excellent faculty of story-telling. In the first we have a story of the French war, in which Mr. Henty boldly...

Co.) —This is a sufficiently good story of the usual military type. Cuth- bert Cumberbatch is the son of a retired officer whose own career has been unluckily cut short by an...

have eight stories in chronological order, beginning with Christopher Columbus's discovery or rediscovery of America, and ending with a sketch of Mango Park's travels in Africa....

SWANWICR. — On the 1501 inst., at Bournemouth, Frederick Swanwick, of Whittington, Chesterfield, aged 75.