7 APRIL 1888

Page 1

It is not probable that Prince Bismarck will depart, or

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that the Emperor will permit his departure. It is an interregnum, in reality, and the Prince would only return with the neat Heir, who attended the Chancellor's birthday-dinner...

The programme laid before the Chamber contained hints of a

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very advanced policy. The Cabinet profess to expect the support of all sections of the Republican Party, and to be specially "impartial ;" but they promise "a forward march, a...

The French, who know M. Floquet, think the programme extremely

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Radical, and the Reactionaries and Opportunists have, it is believed, resolved to turn the Government out as soon as the Easter recess is over. They have, in advance, elected M....

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

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UROPE was excited on Thursday by a statement, I originating in the Cologne Gazette, but obviously official, that Prince Bismarck had tendered his resignation to the Emperor. It...

There has been another crisis in France. On Friday week,

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M. Laguerre, General Boulanger's agent in the Chamber, pro- posed that the House should consider the question of Revision on the following day, and was supported both by the...

NOTICE TO ADVERTISERS.

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With the "SrEcraroa" of Saturday, May 5th, will be issued, gratis, a SPECIAL LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, the outside pages of which will be devoted to Advertisements. Advertisements...

* it * The Editors cannot undertake to return Manuscript, in any

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case.

Page 2

Mr. Chamberlain addressed a private meeting of the Executive Committee

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of the National Radical Union on Thursday at the Grand Hotel, Birmingham, arguing that the time had come for Liberal Unionists to withdraw from the Liberal Association of...

Mr. John Morley opened on Wednesday a new Liberal Club

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at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and made a very vigorous speech, though his chief deliverance had a decidedly partisan ring in it. In the morning, he declared himself a moderate Liberal...

At the public meeting of the wine and spirit trade,

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held on Thursday at the Commercial Rooms, Mincing Lane, a resolu- tion was passed by a large majority approving Mr. Goschen's surtax on bottled wines, and suggesting its...

The precise relation of General Boulanger to the Ministry is

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not known, but the idea appears to be that if elected on the 15th inst. by the Nord, the Cabinet will repeal his sentence by Bill, and offer him the Ministry of War. M. Floquet,...

Mr. Morley was also very severe on Mr. Goschen's finance,

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declaring that Mr. Goschen (who paid off seven millions and a half of debt in the last year) had created a false surplus by his last year's suppression of a part of the Sinking...

Sir Michael Hicks-Beach made a good speech at Bristol on

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Tuesday, in opening a club at Clifton which is called the Salisbury Club. His Eton education had taught him, he said, one good lesson, to avoid holiday tasks, and hence he had...

In the evening speech, Mr. Morley twitted the Tories with

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their complete right-about-face on the Bradlaugh question, and on the question of the Closure, with relation to both of which matters they had been converted to the Liberal...

Page 3

This year is the hi-centenary of the English Revolution, and

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it is proposed to celebrate it by holding an exhibition of pictures, statues, medals, and relics connected with the Stuart family. They are extremely numerous, and the...

Mr. Chamberlain, in acknowledging on Wednesday an address of congratulation

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from the "Mutual Peace and Arbitration Union," which was read to him as the successful negotiator of the provisional Fisheries Treaty between Canada and the United States,...

Miss Cobbe has had a little controversy with Professor Ray

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Lankester in the Weekly Dispatch, on the subject of M. Pasteur's reckless,—we ourselves should say, mad,—proposal for poison- ing the Australian rabbits with the bacteria of...

The war between Italy and Abyssinia has ended for the

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moment in a singular kind of truce. The King brought up a powerful army of 90,000 men to attack the Italian positions outside Massowah, but perceiving them to be too strong,...

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If the Irish people are the origin just now of

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most of our political woes, not so much in consequence of their personal failings as of their unfortunate taste in Parliamentary repre- sentatives, they at least repay us by the...

It is quite evident that the country gentlemen are not

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going to revolt against the County Government Bill. Their tone in all the meetings of Quarter-Sessions reported this week is one of depressed acquiescence, only two speakers out...

Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

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THE COMING CRISIS IN FRANCE. A Ministry like this, which has, moreover, an excitable Chauvinist for its representative in Foreign Affairs, and M. de Freycinet as head of the...

LORD SALISBURY AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

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S IR miaFrAEL HICKS-BEACH, in his speech at Bristol on Tuesday, dwelt on the great debt which Englishmen in general and Conservatives in particular owe to Lord Salisbury for...

Page 5

THE NEWS FROM BERLIN.

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P RINCE BISMARCK probably knows his own busi- ness best, but to outsiders his present struggle with his new master seems a little injudicious. It is quite true that the feeling...

Page 6

MR CHAMBERLAIN AND THE LIBERAL lTNIONISTS.

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M R. CHAMBERLAIN'S speech at Birmingham on Thursday, in proposing to form a new Association of Liberal Unionists as seceders from the Birmingham Liberal Association, where the...

Page 7

PROFESSOR DICEY ON THE NEW JACOBINISM.

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literature of Unionism :— " Departure from the severe and fixed rule of impersonal law, enthrones the capricious reign of popular favouritism; the old evil of privileged and of...

Page 8

THE PARTITION OF AFRICA.

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S OME day or other, the Powers must for the second time partition Africa on scientific principles. If they do not, we shall have as much blood shed on the Niger and the Zam-...

Page 9

THE REORGANISATION OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY.

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"91HE fortnightly show of the Royal Horticultural 1 Society was held for the first time at the London Scottish Drill-Hall, James Street, Westminster." This unpretending bit of...

Page 10

THE MOUNTAIN-ACCESS AND FOOTPATH BILL FOR WALES.

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M R. BRYCE, whose Mountain-Access Bill for Scotland has been blocked in three Sessions, has apparently kindled enthusiasm in other parts of the United Kingdom. It is evident...

Page 11

THE "OPTIMISM OF HUMAN NATURE."

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TON LIDDON, in preaching on the Resurrection in his which selected the really best and highest side of our Lord's life on earth for its most emphatic hopes, would have been...

Page 12

THE LANGUAGE OF ANTM A TB T HE universality of the

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idea that animals can talk, and that some few human beings have acquired their lan- guages, about which Mr. F. G. Frazer discourses in this month's Archceological Review, is...

Page 13

THE CLERICAL ADDRESS TO MR. GLADSTONE.

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[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—My friend Mr. Essington is anxious to know whether there are other qualified signatures to the clerical address on Home-rule. There are...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

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THE GLAMORGANSHIELE ELECTION. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Perhaps you may doubt the correctness of your inference from the Gower election in Glamorganshire, when...

THE NEW CONVERSION SCHEME.

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[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Stu,—You draw attention in your issue of March 31st to the small amount of New Three per Cents. as to which dissent to tfte Chancellor of...

Page 14

THE MAINTENANCE OF GIRLS.

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[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—In your article on" The Maintenance of Girls," you seem to have adopted the common statement about the doom of certain 800,000 girls to...

THE WINE-TAX.

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[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:] Sin,—Let us grant that "sparkling wine is a luxury on which 20 per cent. is not too high a tax." But then, why should it be only that...

EMTN PASHA.

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[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In your excellent review of "Emin Pasha in Central Africa," on March 24th, you say :—"Emin is spoken of through- out Dr. Felkin's...

THE PENSION QUESTION.

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[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR."] SID,—There is one circumstance connected with the present pension system of which I do not wish to make too much, but still I think it should...

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I see that in

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your issue of March 31st you reproduce the cases of pensions quoted by Mr. Jennings in the House of Commons, with the very natural remark that "if they cannot be fully explained...

Page 15

POE TRY.

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SPRING IS NOT DEAD. I. SNow on the earth, though March is well-nigh over ; Ice on the flood : Fingers of frost, where late the hawthorn cover Burgeoned with bud ! Yet in the...

BOOKS.

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ROBERT ELSMERE.* THIS is a very remarkable book, though by no means a very remarkable novel. It is more like an imaginary biography than a novel, but an imaginary biography full...

Page 16

THE ARAB AT HOME.*

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IN 1876-78, an Englishman, with Arab tongue and dress, but disguising neither his nationality nor his faith, went down with the Mecca caravan from Damascus to El-Hejr, six or...

Page 18

GENERAL GORDON'S LETTERS.* 'hi's little volume does not add materially—though

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it does add a little, as we shall presently see—to our knowledge of General Gordon's life, or of his views of the men with whom he fought and communed, and of the events quorum...

Page 19

MILITARY GEOGRAPHY.* MILITARY geography, always an interesting study, has become

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much more so than formerly, because the lives and limbs of such a large per-centage of the European population,. and the fortunes of great as well as small States, depend upon...

Page 20

THE MAGAZINES.

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THE people of the United States since their great war have become less sensitive to criticism, and will probably receive Mr. Matthew Arnold's comments in the Nineteenth Century...

Page 22

CURRENT LITERATURE.

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The most notable paper in the April number of the Century Magazine is an article by Mr. Henry James on Mr. R. L. Stevenson, which, though somewhat heavily embroidered with smart...

Page 23

The Silver Trout. By Sir Randal H. Roberts, Bart. (W.

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H. Allen.)—This is a collection of slight—very slight—stories and papers reprinted from the Field and Land and Water. The stories are not remarkably entertaining, and the papers...

There are some good general articles in the new number

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of the Sunday at Home,—in particular, Mr. Richard Heath's "Paris at the Time of the Reformation," and "Marguerite Leroy : a Leaf from the Journal of a French Pastor," and "The...

The Scots' Magazine for April is sufficiently Scotch, and not

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too clerical. We notice as eminently readable, articles on Robert Blair, one of the two poets of Athelstaneford, "Scotch Music," and "Reminis- cences of a orthern...

An Unknown Country. By the Author of "John Halifax, Gentle-

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man." (Macmillan.)—We have in this volume some of the latest as SOL118 of the wisest and kindliest writing of Mrs. Craik. She went in the late summer of 1885 with some young...

In the new number of the Woman's World, Princess Christian

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explains, with admirable lucidity, the aims and aspirations of the British Nurses' Association, which seeks to unite into something like a Mutual Protection Society the 15,000...

Bishop Forbes : a Memoir. By the Rev. Donald J.

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Mackey. (Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co.)—The late Bishop Forbes, as a Scotch Tractarian who, even when a Bishop, got into what he himself terms "a sad mesa" owing to his views, and...

There is a want of life about the Sunday Magazine

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for April, although the serial stories by Dr. George MacDonald and Mr. Farjeon are readable, and Archdeacon Farrar is suiting his papers on the Catacombs admirably to the...

Life of Robert Burns. By John Stuart Blackie. (Walter Scott.)

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—This is, on the whole, the soberest, most sensible, though perhaps least original, book that emeritus Professor Blackie has ever written. There is in it comparatively little of...

Commons and Common Fields. By T. E. &mutton. (Cambridge University

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Press.)—This is an essay written for the Yorke Prize at Cambridge in 1886, and contains a great display of learning without much enlightenment on the early history of common...

Page 24

The History of Newbury. By Walter Money. (Parker and Co.,

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Oxford and London.)—Newbury, the New Town, seems to have grown up in very early English times near Spinx (now Speen, a mile and a half N.W. of the town), a station at which...

Pontefract. Edited by Richard Holmes. (R. Holmes, Pontefract.) —This is

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the second volume of a selection of historical records re- lating to Pontefract, and contains the "sieges of Pontefract Castle, 1644-1649." The second siege is made specially...

Two little books on therapeutical subjects may be mentioned together

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:—The Turkish Bath. By Frederic C. Coley, M.D. (W. Scott.) —Dr. Coley explains the action of the Turkish bath, and gives some practical recommendations, though he very properly...

Bandobast and Khabar : Reminiscences of India. By Colonel Cuthbert

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Larking. (Hurst and Blackett.)—This volume is, in the main, a pleasant and unpretending account of sport, especially tiger-hunting. Interspersed are some sketches of Indian men...

A Month on the Norfolk Broads. By Walter Rye. (Simpkin

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and Marshall.)—This is a pleasant little book, illustrated ornamentally with drawings by Mr. Wilfrid Ball, and practically with maps of the rivers and broads. The crew of the...

Rustic Walking Routes in the London Vicinity. By W. R.

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Evans. (Philip and Son.)—This volume gives the particulars of forty-three walks, each of the proposed routes being described by a map and printed directions, telling the reader...

Appleton's Atlas of the United States. (Appleton and Co., New

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York.)—This atlas gives us two maps of the United States—(1), Eastern ; (2), Western—and thirty-eight county maps of the States, with a descriptive text, in which are also to be...