NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 149, 25 November 1874, Page 3

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

OUR LONDON LETTER. (From a correspondent of the Press.) October 2nd, 1874. The Marquis of Waterford, who apparently inherits some of the family eccentricities, is said to have offered the Great Western Railway Company liberal compensation for all losses if they would only afford him the opportunity of seeing two trains, empty, of course, run into each other at express speed from opposite directions. The Great Western Company did not think the game worth the candle, and refused to do anything of the sort ; but had his lordship only known when the affair was coming off he would have found that the Great Eastern Company were able to gratify him. Had he been at a certain spot on the line between Norwich and Brundall on the night of the 10th of September he could have witnessed the desired spectacle without paying anything at all. and with the more thrilling accessory of full instead of empty trains. At Brundall station, between Yarmouth and Norwich, the line becomes single, and the up night mail from Yarmouth should pass the down express just before reaching that place. If, however, it arrived at Brundall without passing the express, it remained there for orders from Norwich. At Norwich, if the express was twenty-five minutes late, it was the rule to order up the mail from Brundall, and of course if the express arrived in the meantime to detain it until the single line was clear. Considering what was at stake, a heavy responsibility rests on the directors, who allowed the safety of the trains to depend on a happy-go-lucky system like this, where everything rested on the clear-headed-ness of one or two overworked men, without any mechanical check, as in the “ block ” or “staff” systems. For years it answered, but at last there came the inevitable break down of so flimsy a measure. On the night of the 10th ultimo the express from London was late as usual, and the night inspector at Norwich ordered up the mail from Brundall. Within the next two minutes the express arrives at Norwich, and through some misunderstanding between a telegraph clerk, the night inspector, who had ordered up the mail, and another inspector, it is sent on down the single line, up which the mail is now whirling. The mistake was discovered just too late, and the consternation at the station may be imagined. The inspector who had ordered up the mail was, according to the witnesses at the enquiry. “ like one paralysed with horror,” and another official tore off his coat and rushed down the line in a futile attempt to catch the express. All in vain. No human power could now avert the catastrophe. There was nothing to be done but to prepare for the worst. Carriages were lighted, the country scoured for surgical aid, places provided for the reception of the dead and dying, and all these provisions were actually being made while the victims were sitting in life and health, and utter unconsciousness history of such disasters never has there been so weird a feature as this,. The crash came, and it was heard for miles around. The two engines, from their positions afterwards, must have reared up perpendicularly, and then fallen over backwards. The inex-

tricable confusion of tortured humanity and debris was something: appalling. Altogether in this terrible catastrophe twenty-five people have been killed, and about seventy injured. The coroner's jury have found verdicts of manslaughter against the nightinspector who ordered up the mail from Brundall, and the telegraph clerk who sent the message. The moral blame, however, is not removed from the directors of the company by this finding, and Punch, in a clever cartoon last week, hits the right nail on the head. He is depicted pointing towards a number of railway employes, and confronting a pompous looking director, to whom he remarks with severity “No, no, Mr Director, they’re not much to blame. It’s your precious false economy, unpunctuality, and general want of system that does all the mischief.” It is due, however, to the Great Eastern Company to add that a second line between Norwich and Brundall was actually being made, and that part of it had already been completed, and notice for its inspection been given to the Board of Trade ten days before the accident. “It never rains but it pours,” is an adage which seems to apply more particularly to railway disasters than to any other occurrence—except suicides perhaps. Since the Brundall catastrophe accidents on the railroad have been of almost daily recurrence, and in one no less than twenty people were injured.

Mr Gladstone has contributed to this month’s Contemporary Review a striking paper on “ Ritualism and Ritual,” which is attracting a great deal of attention, and will be read with the greatest interest throughout the country. Ritualism is the bone of contention, which of late years, more than any other source of difference, has divided our Church against itself, and while it is a term which has been so often in men’s mouths, no one seems to have known exactly the definition of it. With some people it meant anything tending to an imitation of the Roman Catholic ceremonial, with the covert object of paving the way for the introduction of the Roman Catholic doctrine itself ; with others it was whatever they disapproved of in the form of public worship, and to a few it meant the high road to Sacerdotalism. On such a perplexing subject the deliberately expressed opinion of a clever man like Mr Gladstone may be expected to shed some light, and the article will be eagerly read. Ritual, Mr Gladstone points out, is founded on the Apostolic precept, “Let all things be done decently and in order,” and is “the clothing which in some form, and some degree, men naturally and inevitably give to the performance of the public duties of religion It is the use and adaptation of the outward for the expression of the inward.” Having given his idea of what Ritual is, be thus deals with the perplexing consideration of its limits :—“ It is difficult to fix a maximum of ritual for all times and persons, and to predicate that all beyond the line must be harmful ; but it is impossible to fix a minimum, and say up to that point we are safe. No ritual is too much, provided it is subsidiary to the inner work of worship ; and all ritual is too much, unless it ministers to that purpose * * * Nothing can make ritual safe except the strict observance of its purpose, namely, that it shall supply wings to the human soul in its callow efforts at upward flight. And such being the meaning of true ritual, the measure of it is to be found in the degree in which it furnishes that assistance to the individual Christian.” To the question, “ What is Ritualism”? he replies :—“ It is unwise undisciplined reaction from poverty, from coldness, from barrenness, from nakedness ; it is overlaying purpose with adventitious and obstructive incumbrance ; it is the departure from measure and from harmony in the annexation of appearance to substance, of the outward to the inward ; it is the caricature of the beautiful; it is the conversion of helps into hindrances ; it is the attempted substitution of the secondary for the primary aim, and the real failure and paralysis of both.” It has often been alleged that Mr Gladstone has a strong leaning to Romanism, and that he is a Jesuit at heart ; but the most bigoted Protestant should find reassurance to the contrary in the following remarks Mr Gladstone makes when, after touching on the Romanising tendencies of Ritualism, he denounces the chance of any effort to Romanise the Church and people of England as “ utterly hopeless and visionary.’—“ At no time since the bloody reign of Mary has such a scheme been possible. But if it had been possible in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries it would still have become impossible in the nineteenth ; when Rome has substituted for the proud boast of semper eadem a policy) of violence and change in faith ; when she has refurbished and paraded anew every rusty tool she was fondly thought to have disused ; when no one can become her convert without renouncing his moral and mental freedom, and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another ; and when she has equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history. I cannot persuade myself to feel alarm as to the final issue of her crusades in England, and this although I do not undervalue her great powers of mischief.” In its sense of “ overlaying purpose with adventitious and obstructive incumbrance,” Mr Gladstone applies the term ritualistic to anything—architecture, industrial productions, dress. Touching this last, he falls foul of his country women most ungallantly, though it is in sorrow rather than anger that he chides them thus—“ Take again, sad as it is to strike for once at the softer portion of the species, the dress of English women, which apart from rank and special gift, or training, or opportunity, is reputed to be the worst iu the European world, and the most wanting, alike in character and adaptation. * * * Who shall now compete with the awakened English woman for the house of hair built upon her head, or for the measureless extension of her draggled train ?” He is equally hard on his countrymen in general, and considers that, in regard to the perception and observance of the beautiful, “the British people ought probably to bo placed last among the civilised nations of Europe.” The concluding sentence of the article is as follows —“ The best touchstone for dividing what is wrong, and defining what is right in the exterior apparel of Divine service will be found in the holy desire and authoritative demand of the Apostle, that the Church may receive edifying, rather than in abstract imagery of perfection on the one hand, or narrow traditional prejudice on the other.’, And here one leaves off with an unsatisfactory feeling that, though there has been a great deal that is interesting, with brilliant flashes here and there of Mr Gladstone’s undoubted genius, the writer, just when he was wanted to give us something tangible and definite, has provokingly kept on the safe ground of generalities,

The Marquis of Ripon has become a convert to the Church of Rome, and while his secession from our Church has caused considerable stir amongst certain circles in England, it is probable that there is more joy in Rome over him as a nobleman gained, than a heretic saved. The Marquis was Grand Master of the Lodges of the Freemasons of England, a post which with his change of faith he of course resigned, and the Prince of Wales has accepted the Grand Mastership, an appointment which is said to be very popular with the members of the craft. Mr Disraeli’s visit to Ireland, which I touched on in my last, has been unfortunately put a stop to by a combined attack of bronchitis and gout, and there is a general feeling of disappointment on both sides of St George’s Channel, It is to be hoped that the obstacle is merely temporary, and that the visit is only deferred, not abandoned. Cardinal Cullen and the ballet girls in Dublin have been in turn rousing each other’s ire and indignation. One of the scenes in the opera of “ II Talismano,” now being performed at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, represents the interior of a Roman Calholic chapel, into which a procession of ballet girls, dressed as nuns, enter. The idea <-f a nun being represented by a ballet girl, whom he denounces as “a stumbling-block for the fall and ruin of the unwary,” was too much for his Eminence, and he forthwith issued a pastoral, couched in the bitterest language, forbidding Catholics to visit the theatre. Now there is no reason why the calling of a ballet girl should not be an honest one, and there are many cases where their earnings are almost entirely devoted to the support of aged parents ; at any rate the career is one of temptation, more to themselves than to others, and they are naturally furious at the way they have been denounced from every Roman Catholic pulpit in the Irish metropolis. Their indignation, however, at being termed a “stumbling-block” reminds one, with a smile at the recollection, of old Mr Weller’s fury when he was called a “ vvessel o’ wrath.” The obnoxious scene has now been omitted ; but in doing so it is probable that the manager has consulted his own pocket rather than the sensibilities of Cardinal Cullen.

The Prince of Wales’ pecuniary position has been for some time freely discussed. It was said that he was deeply in debt ; that the sum amounted to .£600,000 ; that the late Premier had been consulted on the propriety of an appeal to Parliament for assistance, and had set his countenance against such a course ; that the Queen had then come forward and freed her son from his liabilities, &c. All these statements, and many others, were widely circulated, not onlj throughout the country, but also on the continent, and freely commentedupon, sometimes in a style most damaging to the character of the Prince. At length his Royal Highness has deemed it necessary to put a stop to all these rumors by candidly making a public statement of his affairs. He has about £IOO,OOO a year—an income far short of that enjoyed by many a private individual in this country, and within this amount the Prince admits he has been unable to keep his yearly expenditure? From £IO,OOO to £20,000 has been annually required in addition to keep things going, but these sums have been regularly paid, and have been drawn from the Prince’s private property, the accumulation during his minority of the revenues derived from the Duchy of Cornwall. Thus the worst that can be said of the Prince’s affai rs is that he has to a certain extent been living on his capital, but with regard to the millstone of debt hanging about his neck, gossip has been about as accurate as gossip generally is. For the last twelve years he has been the representative at our own court and at foreign courts of the Royal House of England, and a great deal of expense has been incurred by him in fulfilling the duties which properly belong to another personage. Neither from the country nor from his private resources should the means for defraying these extra expenses be drawn. We have received by telegraph the result of the International Rifle Match at New York between the Americans and the Irish, the former winning by three points. One gentleman made a capital bull’s eye, but unfortunately it was on the wrong target. It is needless to specify his nationality. A terrific gunpowder explosion took place this morning at five o’clock on the Regent’s Canal in the north of the metropolis. A barge containing powder blew up, creating fearful havoc amongst the adjacent buildings, many of which are complete wrecks. Two men and a boy who were on board were blown to atoms, and a lady died from fright. But the full extent of the calamity is not yet known, and it is feared that several other deaths have resulted from the explosion. The shock was felt for a radius of four miles. Your correspondent can vouch for the fact that he himself, living at a distance of about two miles and a half from the scene of the disaster, awoke with the idea that a severe earthquake was going on. The consternation and panic in the neighborhood were excessive. People in their night-dresses rushed out of their houses into the streets, and to add to the general confusion the animals in the Zoological Gardens, which are close by, set up a terrified howling. The neighborhood presents the appearance of a town after a bombardment. Such a terrific explosion has not been felt in Loudon or its vicinity since the memorable one at Brith. Emigration to New Zealand has been renewed on an extensive scale. The season for Canada is over, and for the next six months the emigration agents will direct their efforts almost exclusively to New Zealand. There is no difficulty about tonnage, and altogether ic is expected that about 8000 emigrants, almost entirely of the agricultural class, will be shipped every month, for the next halfyear, to your colony. The Agent-General for New Zealand is preparing a shipment of game and insectivorous birds, to be consigned to the Acclimatisation Society at Hawke’s Bay, and a similar shipment will shortly be despatched to Canterbury. COLONIAL ITEMS. The Anglo-Ausfralian in the European Mail writes:—l find, from a return issued from the office of the Agent-General for New Zealand, that up to June 80th, 1874, 39.825 emigrants had been forwarded to New Zealand, and as about 9,000 more have been sent since that date the total number of emigrants despatched to New Zealand is not far short of 50,000. This great number will be further increased by nine ships fixed to sail in this month (October), and sis or seven to be laid on in each of the months of No vember, December, January, and February, which are likely to make a grand total of 60,000 souls forwarded during about three years—a very sufficient number, one would

imagine, to develope your resources and increase your public revenue. Two letters have appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, signed Charles Fell owes, in which the writer aims at showing that the course of New Zealand finance is inflated. The AngloAustral ian in the European Mail says—- “ The letters are certainly what may be termed ‘ wakers,’ and calculated to do some mischief.” Mr Hall, of Sydney, is now in London on business connected with the San Francisco Mail Service. The following is a list of the ships and number of immigrants forwarded to New Zealand during the month ending August 31st last by the Agent General for that colony:—Hydaspcs, for Auckland, with 347 souls; Nelson. Marlborough and Westland, 382; Soukar, Wellington. 414; Howrah, Wellington and Taranaki, 387; Pleiades, Canterbury, 319; Auckland. Otago (iom Glasgow), 357; Assaye, Auckland, 340. Total, 2496 souls. THE ST. LEGER. The European Mail says Mr Launde’s Apology won the St Leger on September 16th very easily from Leolinus (2), Trent (3), and ten others. During the morning a report was current that the horse had pulled up lame after taking her exorcise gallop. At one time 50 to 1 was laid against her, but this price was soon reduced, and at starting 4 to 1 was the longest figure obtainable. Slumber upsf’t a warm favorite in Cachmere for the Bradgate Park Stakes, and Thorn won the Cleveland Handicap easily. Lily Agues lowered the colors of Lilian in the Queen’s Plate, and Celibacy beat Fontarabia, Instantly, and two others in the Corporation Stakes. George Frederick was struck out of the St Leger at 9 7 a.m. on the day of the race. Betting was 5 to 1 against Apology and Trent, 6 to 1 against Feu d’Amour, 7 to 1 against Gleualmond, 8 to 1 against Leolinus and Atlantic, 40 to 1 against Blantyre, and 50 to 1 against Rostrevor. They would have got away at the first attempt but for the hanging back of Boulet, and after one or two trifling failures the flag fell to a rather straggling start, in which Blantyre was first off, and Gleualmond last, but the latter, being in bis swing at the time, was soon up with his horses. When fairly in action Boulet took up the running at a good pace, followed by Scamp and Atlantic (who pulled tremendously), Blantyre going on next in company with Leolinus and Feu d’Amour ; and clear of them succeeded Rostrevor and Glenalmond, the three last being Trent, Apology, and Volturno, the latter of whom was out of the race from the commencement. So apparently hopeless likewise appeared Apology’s chance, that several bets of 10 to 1 were laid against her in the ring, in addition to one of 30 to 10 for a place as the lot streamed up the hill about half a mile after starting. At that point Blantyre and Scamp had disappeared from the front, leaving Leolinus and Atlantic second and third, but the latter began to roll on making the descent, and after nearly blundering on his head at the mile post Chaloner pulled him up as soon as possible on finding that he had again broken a blood vessel, which will account for his figuring so far in the rear after passing the Rifle Butts. Along the wood side the pace slackened a little, and the lot drawing close together came round the Red House turn in a body. After passing the half mile post Boulet’sbolt was shot, and resigning the lead to Leolinus, the latter was joined soon afterwards on the whip hand by Apology and Trent, who kept close company from the Rifle Butts; and close up with them at the heels of Leolinus (who was inside) lay Rostrevor, Feu d’Amour, Blantyre, Scamp, Glenalmond (who met with a disappointment at the mile-post when Atlantic dropped back), and Lady Patricia so closely packed together that there were scarcely two lengths between the lot. Before reaching the bend, however, Mr Merry’s pair. Lady Patricia, Rostrevor, and ITeu d’Amour were disposed of, and the issue was left to Leolinus, Apology, Trent, and Scamp, who entered the straight all together. John Osborne thereupon took Apology to the front, and shaking off Trent before reaching the distance, she headed Leolinus at that point, and galloping on with the race in hand, won with great ease by a length and a half ; Trent, who got rid of Scamp below the stand, finishing five lengths behind Leolinus and as far before Sir J. Astley’s horse, who was placed by the judge. Sweet Violet finished fifth, clear of the others, who passed the post in a body pulling up, headed by Blantyre and whipped in by Lady Patricia, the last of all, as a matter of course, being Atlantic, who walked in a long way behind. St Leger course : time, as taken by Dent’s chronograph, 3mins 16secs. Net value of stakes £4600.

Some first-class racing took place at Doncaster on September 19tb, when the meeting of 1874 was brought to a conclusion. A really splendid finish took place between the stable companions, Leolinus and Peeping Tom, for the Doncaster Stakes, the former, after apparently being beaten some distance from home, getting up in the last stride and winning by a head. The Doncaster Cup was easily won by Lily Agnes, notwithstanding the verdict of the judge being only a neck in her favour. The Westmoreland Stakes is noticeable for the success of a veritable outsider in Lambskin, whose starting price was 20 to 1, and with the victory of Boulct in the Don Stakes the meeting closed.