NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE event of the week has been the demonstration in Man- chester in honour of Mr. Disraeli. It was a very striking affair, thousands assembling to welcome him at the station, and 40,000 .attending a reception on Tuesday in the dancing saloon of the Pomona Gardens, in spite of the heavy rain. Mr. Disraeli was there enthroned on a high platform, and received deputations and addresses, like an American President, from all the towns of Lan- eaahire, saying to each as it passed a few words of thin and perfunctory congratulation. The line of address usually was to -assert that Mr. Disraeli had realised the promise of his writings, had defended the Monarch and the multitude, had helped to preserve the Church, and had been " a great and consistent champion of con- stitutional principles ;" and the line of answer usually was to thank the borough for having elected a Tory, or to predict that it would .do so. Mr. Disraeli seemed greatly pleased, describing his recep- tion as "an honour unparalleled in the life of any public man ;" but his speeches, the one on Wednesday excepted, were singularly boneless. We cannot find a sentence in any of them which we could quote in a paragraph like this, and locally even Wednesday's speech has been declared a disappointment.
