NEWS OF THE WEEK.
ON Monday both Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli made public appearances, though on very different occasions. The Prime Minister received at Aberdeen the present of the freedom of the city in a big besealed and beribboned document, which was attached, amidst great applause, to his hat, after which he made a political speech, specially honorific to Scotchmen, and argumenta- tive with Irishmen. Mr. Disraeli celebrated a harvest-home at Hughenden with an elaborate High-Church ritual, attended by his Bishop, a rural dean, and eight clergymen, who performed a full choral thanksgiving service in a church brilliant with masses of crimson and yellow autumn flowers, and before an altar loaded with fruits, flowers, and sheaves of corn,— after which Mr. Disraeli, adjourning to the tents in his own grounds, made favourable mention of the Queen, and was encouraging as well as admonitory to his own farm labourers, whom, greatly to his credit, he appears to educate almost as care- fully as he educates his party. These speeches diversify the week, Mr. Gladstone, as usual, supplying the solid, and Mr. Disraeli the light entertaining element ; Mr. Gladstone apologizing gracefully for the very light political crop which had been gathered in, and Mr. Disraeli becoming conventionally thankful for the excellent yield of Hughenden manor and its farms. Not quite inappropriately, Mr. Gladstone paid an earnest tribute to " the Aberdeen granite," while Mr. Disraeli was praising rose- gardens, or recommending his labourers to take example by one of their number who had paid his rent out of the sale of his own greengages.
