The news from Macedonia this week is vaguer than ever,
which means, we fear, not that any real improvement has taken place, but that the Turks have been more successful in suppressing news from the centres of disaffection. In all probability, however, no single event of any great moment has taken place, for such things cannot be concealed. Meantime it is clear that in well-informed circles in Vienna—the focus of all Balkan news—there is no little uneasiness. It is said that the plot to blow up Salonica was revealed by the rats, which, being greatly disturbed by the necessary excavations, swarmed into the streets, and thereby provoked inquiry. The prescience of rats before an impending danger is an article of faith with sailors, and it is quite possible that the rats of Salonica may resent disturbance, as the rats of Clerkenwell were recently said to have done ; but this is just the kind of story which watchmen who ought to have noticed the preparations, but neglected to do so, would invent. There must have been either treachery or bribery at work in Salonica to allow of strong buildings being destroyed from below, and we are not surprised that alarm is felt even in Constantinople, where the blowing up of a mosque might easily produce a massacre. The police so far, have entirely failed to trace the quarter from which the dynamite was obtained. The Bulgarian Ministers declaie that its manu- facture in Bulgaria, as alleged, is impossible ; and very few shipowners will carry dynamite without strict guarantees as to its destination. Are there any quarries near Salonica where it could have been stored without exciting suspicion
