NEWS OF THE WEEK.

ORD WOLSELEY has succeeded. He has forced his J

way to the Nile, and opened direct communication with Khartoum. On the 18th inst., the day after the battle of Abou men, Sir Herbert Stewart resolved to make a single continuous march of twenty-three miles to the Nile, and so prevent the re-formation of the enemy. Starting at two o'clock, he marched through the afternoon and night; but the exhausted condition of his camels delayed him, and at daybreak on the 19th he found the enemy, probably 5,000 strong, ready to attack him at a point five miles this side of Metemmeh. He threw-up au entrenchment, and ordered a halt for breakfast ; but the Arabs, among whom were many of the Mahdi's own troops or " dervishes," threw in a continuous fire, under which men began to fall fast. The General himself received a bullet in the groin, and fell, the correspondents of the Standard and Morning Post were killed, and some seventy more were wounded. Sir C. Wilson, therefore, on whom the command devolved, constructed a redoubt to shelter the wounded and the baggage ; and with less than a thousand men, on the afternoon of the 19th, resumed the march to the river. The Arabs attacked the advancing square furiously, but the British were as steady as automata ; the place of each man who fell was silently filled up, and the heavy fire withered the charging forces. The Arabs literally fell "in lines," and not one reached the square, which, before nightfall, was at Gubat on the river, a little south of Metemmeh, and nearer Khartoum.

Gnbat was entrenched, and on the 21st, or 22nd —the accounts differ—Sir Charles Wilson, being joined by four steamers from Khartoum which had been hovering about Metemmeh, and by somo hundreds of General Gordon's negroes, made a reconnaissance in force against Metemmeh. The village was found to be defended by loop-holed walls, and garrisoned by a large force, in part sent down from Omdurman, commanded by an Emir, All Moussa, reputed for courage and fanaticism. The General, therefore, decided that the loss of life would be too great, and returned to the entrenchment. He dispatched Captain Pigott to inform Lord Wolseley and request reinforcements, and leaving Colonel Boscawen in command of the entrenchment on the river, started with two steamers and the Royal Sussex for Khartoum. Captain Pigott found the Desert free, crossed it in four days—a splendid ride—and on the 28th Colonel Redvers Buller, with 1,000 men, had started from Korti for Gnbat.

The intention is, it is believed, to storm Metemmeh, and turn that post into a depot, to which, if General Gordon will consent, the garrison of Khartoum may bebrought down. It is quite possible, however, that General Gordon will refuse, declaring that a Government shall be established in Khartoum, and that the Mahdi shall not have it. If he takes this course, it may be unavoidable to enter Khartoum in force, and fight at least one needless battle with the Mahdi, who is either ruling at Omdurman, or is encamped just outside it. In the former case, General Wolseley may retire from the Soudau late in February ; but in the latter all available force must be coucentrated at Khartoum ; the Desert must be cleared from Suakim to Berber; and the duration of the campaign may be indefinitely prolonged. Lord Wolseley, it is believed, inclines to withdraw the garrison of Khartoum ; but General Gordon is an unknown quantity in the arrangements, and is governed by ideas not limited by English interests. In any event, the resolution of the Government to abandon the Soudan to its own inhabitants holds good, and will, we believe, be approved by the English people. Men who can fight like the Soudauese can govern themselves if they please ; and if they do not please, must just take the consequences of their own wilfuluess. We might as well be asked to govern the Kabyles of the Atlas, or the people of the Arctic Regions.

We hope after this experience we shall hear less of the incompetence of the " new " English soldiers. Wellington's men in the Peninsula were disorderly roughs compared with the lads who, under Geueral Stewart, marched across 200 miles of desert, bore a distressing lack of water without flinching, fought and won two battles against enemies eight times tlwir own number, and as brave as themselves, killed as many as themselves, and wounded twice as many more, lost one-fifth of their own total by death or wounds, broke into ringing cheers at the sight of the Nile, and though almost sleepless for four days, begged on the filth to be allowed to storm Metemmeh. The plain truth of the matter is, that whenever circumstances allow us to maintain rigid discipline, to keep the men entirely from extra drink, and to harden them with work, the English soldiers are better than they ever were. It is the worrying, yet relaxed, discipline of English barracks, the overplus of liquor obtainable, and the want of occupation which makes the men deteriorate. No brigade of conscripts would have crossed the Bayuda, for the, officers would have wanted more mea, the men would have been half-hearted, and the physical distress from want of sleep and water would have found out the weak point of all conscript armies, the existence in them of thousands who dread and detest soldiering.

The Fenian dynamitards have made another effort to do mischief, this time with some success. About two o'clock on Saturday, three men, of whom two are believed to have been dressed as women, made three separate attempts on public buildings. One left a parcel on the steps leading to the Crypt under Westminster Hall, a second deposited a similar one "just within the entrance of the House of Commons," and a third placed his package between two of the racks in the Armoury of the Tower. The parcel on the steps was seen by a policeman, who with great courage carried it up to Westminster Hall, where it exploded, blowing a great hole in the floor, four feet deep, injuring two policemen seriously, and a Mr. Green who was looking on, and shattering some of the stained-glass windows. The parcel in the House of Commons tore-up Mr. Gladstone's seat, destroyed some heavy balks of timber, flung some seats up to the gallery, excavated the floor, so that "tons of brickwork and masonry have poured downwards through the hole," and did considerable injury to the roof. The parcel left in the old banqueting-room of the Tower injured that room and the neighbouring Council-room, twisted the rifles stacked there, caused a fire,—which was, however, speedily extinguished,— and wounded two girls of nineteen, and two children. The total damage is 'estimated at £20,000. The experts believe that about six pounds of dynamite were used in each parcel, but are perplexed as to the method of ignition. They reject the notion of the fuse, and see no trace of any machinery. It is clear that some contrivance acting slowly was employed, as the miscreants left the Crypt steps and the House of Commons in safety.

they suspect of being the agent employed to blow-up the Tower. He is an Irish-American, gave a false address, and in public gives an indifferent account of himself. It is believed, however, that he has made fuller statements to the police, which have placed them on a track they consider hopeful. There is, however, only a chance of the detection of the criminals, as they are unwounded; and informers are alarmed by the fate of Carey, and by the unreasoning detestation they have to face. The explosions have had, however, the good effect of arousing American indignation. The Senate of the United States on Monday passed, by sixty-three votes to one, a resolution utterly condemning such crimes, the solitary exception being one Riddleberger, presumably a German, sent to the Senate by the "readjusting," that is, the repudiating, party in West Virginia. A Bill, moreover, making the manufacture, sale, or storage of dynamite for such purposes felony, and punishing the collection of subscriptions for purposes of outrage, will, it is believed, pass the Legislatures of New York and Philadelphia. A Treaty for the purpose would be a readier instrument, as under the Constitution all Courts must recognise it; but we welcome the rising of healthy sentiment in the Union with sincere pleasure. It may one day extend to Ireland ; but at present Mr. Parnell delivers address after address without one word of reproof for the dynamitards, and his audiences do not punish him for the omission. Yet if the relatives of the injured attempted reprisals, Ireland would ring with denunciations of British brutality and wickedness.

The Bishop of Exeter (Dr. Temple) is to be our next Bishop of Londcn ; and we believe that the Government could have made no better choice. Dr. Temple is eminently a strong man, as well as a good man, lie went to Exeter the most unpopular of Bishops, and will leave it one of the most popular. He is a vigorous administrator, and the diocese of London needs vigour. He is also a very impressive preacher, and it is not all vigour that can be impressive. Yet, in such an inert population as that of London,—inert we mean for all spiritual purposes,— impressiveness is one of the great conditions of success.

On Monday Mr. Parnell addressed a very large meeting of the people of Clare, at Miltown Malbay, after cutting the first sod of the West-Clare Railway. Mr. Parnell made absolutely no reference to the disgraceful conspiracy which had resulted in the dynamite explosions of Saturday, though it is next to impossible that what had happened two days previously had not been telegraphed to Miltown Malbay before the meeting. It is, however, part of his system to ignore what it is neither convenient for him to condemn nor safe for him to approve. His speech was of the usual kind, beginning with a vindictive reference to Mr. Cliff...m.1 Lloyd, then denouncing those who are tempted by "the Father of evil" to take possession of a farm from which another Irishman has been evicted; and finally assuring the farmers of Clare that every penny spent by them in supporting evicted tenants would be worth thousands of pounds to them hereafter. Nay, he went further, and twisting the text of the New Testament to his purpose, declared that the farmer who is tempted to take a farm from which another has been evicted by the landlord, ought to repent himself and " put the bulk of his fellow-countrymen in the position to say that there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repenteth than over ninety-nine just men who need no repentance," where the sinner who repents appears to be the man who prefers Boycotting others to being Boycotted himself, and the just men who need no repentance are those who have always Boycotted others without mercy.

Mr. Herbert Gladstone, in his speech at Leeds on Tuesday, referred to this speech of Mr. Parnell's, and exhorted his hearers not to let their just wrath at such speeches relax their determination to put an end to the wrongs of Ireland, but rather confirm them still more in that determination. "Because some Irishmen behaved detestably, because many of them did not rise up to their duty as they considered they ought, that is no reason why justice should not be done to those behind them." It is really a great reason why justice should be done to the Irish people, that so many of the Irish representatives do all in their power to travesty and exaggerate Irish claims. A misrepresented people are even in greater need of justice than a people whose

representatives are scrupulously accurate and fair. The habitual distortion and caricature of their claims is a mere measure of the mischief produced by the long withholding of their rights. On the subject of the renewal next Session of the Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Act, Mr. Herbert Gladstonesuggested that it would be very well to extend at least some portion of that Act to Great Britain, and so to strengthen the law against secret perpetrators of outrage in this country,— a suggestion on which we have written at length elsewhere.

Sir Stafford Northcote spoke at Exeter on Tuesday, at the fourth annual dinner of the St. Thomas's branch of the Exeter Working-Men's Conservative Union, and in doing so pleaded guilty to the accusation that had been brought against him,— that whenever he addressed his Devonshire friends, he seemed to be talking to a family party. We cannot ourselves see the justice of the remark. Sir Stafford Northcote seems to us to say much the same sort of things to the Devonshire Conservatives that he says to all other Conservatives,—neither more confidential things nor more exciting ; and if such a speech as that of Tuesday was a family-party speech, we can ally say that the family party appears to be a very dull party, like the Conservative Party itself. Sir Stafford Northcote promised that the Government should be brought to -a "heavy reckoning" for all the fighting in Egypt, which they had held out hopes of avoiding, and which Sir Stafford Northcote believes that they might have avoided by earlier and prompter action. He was also determined to press all their Colonial sins on the Government, and to take them to task for their misunderstanding with Germany. The endeavour of Sir Stafford Northcote to find a new Conservative line was something like the fishing which is carried on by a trawling-net. Whatever he could fish-up he did fish-up, turned it over, asked himself if he could make anything of it against the Government, and if he could not threw it back again into the sea. It was a speech of feeble Oii/32/111/i gc.dheruin reproaches, and of a very miscellaneous character indeed.

Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain delivered speeches to their constituents in Birmingham on Thursday, which were received with the usual enthusiasm. Mr. Bright began by warning the people how easy it is even for a great Democracy to commit errors and transgressions, which are in some respects even worse than the errors and transgressions of unpopular Governments, because there is no appeal to any external power which can reverse the consequences of the error. He instanced the sanction given by the United States to slavery, and the sanction given by France to the war in Tonquiu. Mr. Bright appealed to the people to make the election of 1886 as new and remarkable a starting-point for a better policy as the elections of 1832 and 1868 had been, and to do something worthy of the abolition of slavery by the Ten-pounders, or of the Education Act passed by the housholders of. the towns. He thought that in Scotland and Wales the Church might be disestablished,—for this he held that the time would be ripe,—but for the Disestablishment of the English Church he did not think the time would arrive in the next Parliament. He hoped further for the thorough reform of the Land-laws, for the diminution of expenditure on the Army and Navy, and for a policy of peace. The condition of France had been described by M. Pelletan in these words :—" They enjoyed a state of peace, soothed by occasional acts of rapine." We had not had much of the state of peace, but we had had plenty of the soothing due to acts of-rapine ; and he hoped to see these put an end to. Further, Mr. Bright deprecated the attempt to draw closer the bonds between England and her Colonies as a move in the wrong direction, which only loads the British Government with responsibilities for which it is quite unfitted, and which successive Administrations have found themselves hardly able to bear.

Mr. Chamberlain, after a graceful reference to the gallantry of Colonel Burnaby, whose death he deplored, and after challenging Mr. Parnell to join in the denunciations of the dynamite outrages, went on to regret the deficiencies in the reform of Parliament., especially the plural votes left to a few like himself, the monopoly of representation given to the rich by the absence of any provision for the payment of Members, and the exclusion of manhood suffrage. He hoped that the attempt to impose a Theistic test on Members would be dealt with soon, perhaps even by the present Parliament ; and he ridiculed Sir Stafford Northcote for trying to wheedle the agricultural labourers into making no use of their rights when they get them. He advocated a Local Government Bill under which the rural communities would have power to acquire laud aud use it for the 'benefit of the villages ; and gave some interesting details of what Lord Tollemache has done on his own estate in this direction. Further, he advocated a graduated income-tax, asserting that the poor pay taxation to the amount of 71 per cent, on their means, while he himself pays ouly 6 per cent. on his ; and he insisted that the breaking-up of the great estates must be the first great step in Land-law Reform. The speech was a little too much the speech of the agitator of the future, rather than of the Minister of the present.

This day week Mr. Trevelyan, in speaking at the opening of the Edgehill Training College for Female Teachers, expressed his satisfaction that the College was to be made an undenominational one on a Scriptural basis :—" That he believed to be a very brief but perfectly accurate and adequate description of what, putting aside their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, he believed to be the religion of Great Britain. It represented an education of religion and morality which, if they were left to themselves, nineteen-twentieths of the Protestant parents in England, Scotland, and Wales were satisfied with for their children. It was because he believed this, and because he thought that it was not recognised sufficiently in the Bill of 1870—which, in his opinion, perpetuated and sanctioned differences that existed elsewhere than in the hearts of the people— that he, as a young man, left her Majesty's Government ; and everything that be had seen of the working of that truly great measure confirmed him in his opinion." So far as we understand Mr. Trevelyan's drift, he thinks it better that, during the hours of religious teaching, children should be educated together in a truncated creed, the real significance of which may not be examined into or explained, than that they should be educated separately in creeds of old historic growth, even though the parents strongly prefer the latter method, for which, as he admits,the Roman Catholics, and, as we believe, many of the more earnest Protestant Churches, eagerly contend. Surely what he contended for in the Bill of 1870 was virtually the destruction of all denominational schools and their supersession by State-aided schools of what may be called religious compromise. We do not call Mr. Trevelyan's action in that matter the true sort of Liberalism. Rather was it the Whig Liberalism that discourages all eager personal convictions.

Italy alone, among the larger Poweis, is upholding the policy of the British Government in Egypt. The Premier, Signor Mancini, on Thursday assured the Chamber that an agreement existed between Italy and England ; and that, although no treaty had been signed, the policy of the two countries would more in parallel lines. It appears to have been agreed that Italy should occupy Assab, opposite Aden, and Massowah, the port giving entrance to Abyssinia. The Italians are inclined to seek their share of Africa in this direction, and to employ in the work a considerable force, no less than 1:s000 men being held in readiuess. England can work with Italy more easily than with any other of the Powers ; and the Italians are, next to the Greeks—who also work heartily with us—the most numerous of The colonists in Egypt. lathe event of a real struggle with France —which Power, however, has now l00,00() troops lying at the mercy of the English fleet in Algeria and Judo-China—the adhesion of the great Italian ironclads might prove of serious importance. The Italians are rapidly tilling Buenos Ayres, where, in the city at least, they possess a clear majority, and make patient, industrious, and reasonable colonists. With the convict labour they will employ they may make of Massowah a fine port.

Lord Ripon is being warmly welcomed, not only in Ripon, but in the whole North of England. At Leeds, on Wednesday, he was received by the Liberal Club, and made a speech describing the work of his Viceroyalty. He found himself at war with Afghanistan, and there was imminent danger that if we departed the country would fall into anarchy ; but he had so arranged matters, that there was a strong Government at Cabul, and that our relations with Afghans were never so friendly as at present The condition of the finances when be landed was not satisfactory, though the alarm had been exaggerated ; but after taking-off from two to three millions of taxes, and establishing Free-trade, he had left the Treasury, as was acknowledged by the Bombay Chamber of Commerce, in a sound and healthy condition. He had enlarged the area of education, and felt that if educated men were produced their aspirations must be gratified by a larger share in the administration of their own country. He was sure that the Indians were competent to administer their own municipalities ; and he had endeavoured to increase their power of local self-government, though he did not intend to give up or to relax the central control. There were now in Bengal 170 elective municipalities ; in the North-West, 97; in the Punjab, 12:2; in Madras, 24; in Bombay, 45; and in the Central Provinces, 61 ; or ;d9 in all,— of which nine-tenths at least had been created dining his reign. He believed that it was not only England's duty, but England's necessity, to make the Indians " pai takers of our civilisation ;" and that to attempt to rule 2:.0 millions of people by the sword alone was " blustering folly."

Piedmont has been visited this wiuter with a kind of hurricane of avalanches. Some cause still not traceable, but possibly connected with the earth-sbakiugs in Spain, has loosened the snow in huge masses, so that one after its fall was found to le a mound forty yards high by two hundred long. This was, killed forty persons, while a similar one from the same mountain buried twenty-nine more. Entire lists of villages have been overwhelmed, and valleys like the Val d'Aosta choked-up so that entrance or exit is impossible. Not one Alpine village has escaped some loss ; and large bodies of soldiers are employed in merely cutting ways through the snow to carry relief to the wretched inhabitants. In some instances entire families have been destroyed, and in others the few survivors have gone mad with grief and fear. No calamity more dreadful has struck a mountain community in our time, or one so curiously exceptional. It is as if the avalanches had been fired from a Gatling instead of, as usual, from a title.

A remarkable lecture, on the causes of agricultural and financial depression, was delivered on Thursday week in Edinburgh, at the Institute of Bankers, by Mr. George Auldjo Jamieson, who emphatically agreed with Mr. Dillwyn's opinion, given at Swansea on the previous Monday, that one of the causes of depression is due to the over-production of Limited Liability Companies,—Companies which Mr. Jamieson described as "invading all the avenues of commerce, bustling the rich merchant and manufacturer, the man who combined his own skill and his own capital,—aud going on swelling the current of production, careless alike of whether the goods are needed or whether their manufacture is remunerative." lie held that the withdrawal of a large quantity of capital now invested iii these Limited Liability Companies must precede the revival of trade, and that this withdrawal would cause a-temporary fall of wages, without which he did not see how commerce could revive, lie attributed a great deal of the depression to the Protective tariffs of foreign countries, and what he termed the defective Free-trade of our own. But on this last point he did not fully explain himself, only stating that " Free-trade, in the sense of the unrestricted exchauevof the products of labour in the best markets which alone benefits the operative class, had as 3-et been conspicuous only by its absence." What, then, ace the restrictions which prevent this exchange of the products of labour in the best markets, so far as they depend on causes which the British nation can remove ? We wish Mr. Jamieson would supplement his very valuable lecture V explaining more fully what he refers to under this bead.

We omitted last week to notice a rather remarkable and satifactory phenomenon in Wales,—the extraordinary enthusiasm with which a Jesuit Father was received at Denbigh during Ow Temperance Conference of the week before last. On Wednesday, the lath, Father Bernard Vaughan addressed the Conference in the Drill Hall in a :Teed) of certainly very unusual ability and of elaborate finish,—in fact, in an oration of the kind which is now almost a thing of the past. But that, even at a Temperance Conference. a Welsh andience,—Protestant beyond what it is easy for us in London to onderstand,—should he described in a Welsh paper as " rising ,,z,v..se and cheering ia the most demonstrative maunor, the excitement being very great" after a :Jesuit priest's spee..11, tells more of the rapidlygrowing mildness of religious prejudices in the United Kingdom than any incident we have ever chronicled. In truth, the speech was a very eloquent one, and doubtless delivered with all the practised elocution of a master. But twenty years ago even such a master, if avowedly a Jesuit, could not have charmed al audience of Welsh Protestants.