The British public is grown so palled "by news, that
during the week we have heard from day to day, that " there is nothing in the papers ; " and yet the miscellaneous news is full of inci- dents, vicissitudes, and great movements. While Parliament has been discussing the most important laws, while empires on the Continent are shaking with the throes of their own disorder, we lave plenty to engage our attention in other matters in every stage of society. We are sending out Lord Elgin to recover in China the ground which has been been lost by his brother. Our officials have discovered. that the gun-boats, made in a hurry for the sudden needs of war, are rotten throughout ; partly because authority winked at the use of bad timber rather than interpose any delay, and partly because the routine which demands no- thing but " heart of oak" for our ships demands that we shall make them of wood that we have not, while setting aside excel- lent woods that we may have from many parts of the world. Tt is the same sort of trust in mechanical routine which has led to most of our railway " accidents," another being this week re- corded on the Great Northern Railway. It is the same trust in routine which has occasioned the great fraud of Pullinger in'the Union Bank,—reported at length in a subsequent column, Wand treated elsewhere.
And, to come back from small to great—base to high, we have this week a new discussion apropos to the visit of the Prince of Wales to Queen Victoria's loyal and expecting subjects in Canada. The report that the Prince was going suddenly, " at the end of the week," proves to be a vision of fancy ; suggested, no doubt, by official arrangements which have been completed this week; and it is now understood that the Prince will not go before the first week in July.
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