NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 159, 8 December 1874, Page 4

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

[From the Spectator , September 26.] The newspapers have continued to appear during the week, but they have not contained news, unless letters on Indian Archaeology, the reports of meetings of Associated Chambers of Commerce, evidence about the Thorpe accident, reiterated for the fourth time, and ecclesiastical mares’-nests concerning Electors of Saxony who have been buried for hundreds of years, can be properly so termed. There has been a Congress in Belgium, which must surely be generic rather than specific in its character, its title seeming to imply that it is its mission to classify the subjects of all the other thousand congresses of our age, and reduce the mighty maze to something like a plan. It is called “ The International Yarn Congress.” It met at Brussels on Tuesday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs being chosen honorary president, and its object is said to be to establish a “ uniform system of numbering and classifying yarns ” —surely a very requisite, but also a very difficult task. The yarns of the different sorts of Congresses, though all of them too long, are so different in kind as to make satisfactory classification a very hard task. Perhaps the yarns of the International Congress of Peace and Fraternity are the longest and thinnest, those of the International Working-men’s Association the harshest and brittlest, and those of the International Statisticians the driest and fuzziest ; but it would puzzle the wisest of men to classify such yarns as those of the International Postal Congress, the International Congress for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, International Congress of Orientalists, the International Congress of Meteorologists, and a hundred others. We hope, however, that the Congress for Classifying Yarns will not add to its own difficult work by also spinning them. We regret to hear that Mr Disraeli’s visit to Ireland has been postponed, and we still more regret the cause—a sharp attack of bronchitis, caught during his visit to Scotland, which has led his physician to forbid his making any long journey or speaking in public for some time. It is a great loss. Mr Disraeli has had Ireland on his mind for a long time—auy time for the last forty years ; and even lately, in “ Lothair,” he candidly acknowledged that Irish questions take a great deal of considering. But after forty years of considering, it is quite certain that speaking in Ireland, on Ireland, and to Ireland, he would find something very original, certainly suggestive, and perhaps even sublime, to say. It is especially to be regretted that he cannot go now, because there seems to have been a general understanding, extending even to the Fenian and philo-Fenian parties, that he was to be respectfully and even kindly received ; and these truces of good-humour, in which sweetness and light prevail, are latterly as rare in Ireland as a whole month of sunny weather. However, it remains to be hoped that the attention Mr Disraeli may have been giving to Ireland in view of his visit may yet affect in some degree the policy of his Government. Though the Church has been disestablished, Ireland suffers from a “ weak Executive ” and an “absentee aristocracy.” These ancient grievances hang heavy on Mr Disraeli’s “historical conscience.” Now is his time to redress them. A correspondent of more than one of the morning papers, Mr E. P. Flower, has been descanting with great force and good sense on the absurdity of bearing-reins, a part of the harness which has no effect on the horse except an irritating one, and which, when a “ gag bearing-rein is used,” as it is now more and more frequently in London, is a simple instrument of torture. The truth is that the popularity of bearing-reins is due almost entirely to grooms and coachmen, who have an ignorant liking for that uneasy motion of the horse’s head which it induces, and which, they think, imposes on the world as “fire.” Now a very large number of the class of selfmade rich men, having no knowledge of their own of horses, are completely in the hands of their coachmen and grooms, and yield an implicit faith, therefore, to the efficiency of the bearing-rein. If a few long-haired gentlemen or ladies would just try how far it would add to the freedom of their own movements to have their back hair fastened tight down to the small of their waists, they would form a better notion of the delights and utilities of the bearing-rein.

Sir Stafford Northcote made a sensible speech, in distributing the prizes of the Devon County school. He enlarged on the difficulty of doing any good in a work like education by mere legislation, without the active help of local effort; but he warned the county of the prejudices which are apt to mark local feeling, and especially Ihe silly prejudice against turning a puny and miserable classical school into a good, sound, second-grade school. Good cider, he said, was a great deal better than bad champagne, but people are too ambitious to see it. That is a very apposite remark, and goes to the very heart of the chief difficulties with which the expiring, but wise and energetic Endowed Schools Commission have had to struggle so long. The Emperor of Germany has been well received at Kiel, where he has been present at the ceremony of christening a new ironclad, and has given it the name of Frederick the Great. The Emperor must have a larger faith in the power of mere words than the master of so many legions usually cherishes, if he really said, as he is reported to have said at the banquet, that the Navy had gained both by the construction of the new ship Friedrich der Grosse, “ and by the name which had been bestowed upon it.” “ Words are living things,—have hands and feet,” said Luther ; but the German Emperor seems to propound a greater parados, and to suggest that words are rams, big guns, and iron-platings. Perhaps, however, after all, he only meant what Luther meant, —that words have a sort of life of their own, and when livingiy used can pour life into others. And this may be true even of the name of ‘ Frederick the Great.’ It may really put a newlife into the big machine, that its officers should be conscious that it answers to that historic name.