Mr. Lowe made one of his most inopportune and irri-
tating speeches among the Civil Engineers this day week, —an entourage in which he always seems to be in high spirits, and where his freaks generally get him, like Tony Lumpkin, snubbed by his friends. In proposing the toast of the evening, "The Institute of Civil Engineers," he said that he happened to have a little bit of engineering of his own on. hand which occupied a good deal of his attention :—" The fact is the Joint Stock Company of which I am one of the directors has made a call upon the shareholders, and they have demanded a poll. Under these peculiar and painful circumstances, I trust you will make every allowance for the shortcomings of the agitated individual who now addresses you." As at this time Mr. Lowe's match-tax had already excited a good deal of serious alarm among the poor East-End match-makers, this rollicking jocosity in treat- ing the difficulties of his situation was not thought in good taste, and increased the prejudice against the Chancellor of the Ex- chequer. For the rest, his speech was, as usual, a Maguificat addressed to Civil Engineering, and a skit upon that classical education through his thorough mastery of which Mr. Lowe has become what he is. He spoke of the loss of the Greeks at the battle of Marathon, at which it was said that only 192 Greeks. were killed, with more than Mr. Cobden's contempt for the ancient world and its doings,—as if the Greeks and their civilization and victories were not of vastly more importance to the world even of to-day than all the doings of all the hosts who fought at Worth or Gravelotte. Marathon, be the number of Greeks killed what
it may, was a far greater event in the world's history than Sedan. Mr. Lowe's almost grovelling worship of the steam- engine is quite bizarre.
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