NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE week throughout the United Kingdom has been one of gloom and suffering, but not of anything that the nation has cause to be ashamed of, or which was in any sense unworthy. The only complaint that can be justly made as to the way in which the news of General Buller's failure to cross the Tugela—described by us below—was received is that it was taken a little too hard, and that our people were inclined to magnify the event, and to behave rather as if they were face to face with a great crisis, than merely in the presence of a most keen disappointment. The country behaved as we are certain it would behave if it received a really staggering blow, and this fortitude was real and not in the slightest sense theatrical. Still, those who gauged the situation accurately and saw it in its true proportions could not help comparing the national attitude to that of a fond mother who will show all her pluck and anxious courage when her son has had a spill in the hunting field, but is by no means in any real peril. We know that she would show no less brave a heart if her son were actually at death's door, and that there is nothing sham about her set lips and determined gaze, but yet we cannot help grumbling a little at her demeanour being too heroic and at her taking things too much to heart.
