Papurau Newydd Cymru

Chwiliwch 15 miliwn o erthyglau papurau newydd Cymru

Cuddio Rhestr Erthyglau

5 erthygl ar y dudalen hon

our fimkit Coraspoitaf, :

Newyddion
Dyfynnu
Rhannu

our fimkit Coraspoitaf, ('e deem it right to state that we do not at all times 1 ntify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.] The metropolis is beginning to reawaken into a more | active life than that which it has manifested during the past few weeks. In these matters the experience of one year follows that of another with the utmost regularity. No sooner has Parliament been prorogued than legislators take wing; and 80 far as the capital is concerned, there iB for some time a suspension of that active life which has been monopolised by London duricg the previous six months. They are off to Al- pine mountains, to Norwegian fiords, to Rhenish vine- yarde, and to Lombardian lakes, doing their best to enjoy the change and the fresh air which the recess brings. Satiated with polities during the preceding hall year, they now endeavour for awhile to forget there are such things. By the end of October, however, ten weeks have elapsed, and political life in Great Britain begins to move again. Cabinet Councils have recommenced, and Ministers have to think of the legislation which they intend to present to Parliament in the coming session. Lord Mayor's Day is close upon us, and there is some speculation as to what the JPremier will have to say to the Chief Magistrate of the City of London. Provincial towna are busy with political meeting?, in some places assuming the character of vast demonstrations, such as those which both parties hav,A both held in Manchester. The municipal elec- tions in the corporate boroughs are also invested with a certain degree of interest outside their own bound- aries. In short, there is a general revival of animation, both social and political, as we get into November. The Prince and Princess of Wales have returned from the Continent, and their presence is very welcome to the people of London in what is called the dull season. DuU enough it is in the metropolis in November—the month of which Tom Hood wrote that there was no sun, no moon, no morn, no noon" —and when often enough a stifling fog, sweeping up from the dank marshes of Essex, settles down upon the heart of our national life, blotting out the light and vitiating the atmosphere. The Prince and Princess are welcome in London because, as his Royal Highness expressed himself a few months ago, when he opened several toU bridges, they were always too glad to do everything in their power to advance the interests of the inhabitants of the capital. The Prince;'a birthday, the 9th of November, will be spent at Sandringham, where a distinguished company will celebrate the completion of his 38th year by the Heir to the Throne. Years may come, and years may go, but the lega terms of our forefathers go on for ever. What has been known for eight centuries as the Long Vacation has once more come to an end; and the lawyers are assembling in their chambers in the Temple and in tbe different inns—Lincoln's, Gray's, and Clements— for the opening of the Courts on the 3rd November. That is the beginning of the legal year, and a noteable day it if. If the weather be fine-a consummation most devoutly to be wished at this period of the year— this ceremony attracts a considerable crowd in West- minster Hall-for that ancient structure is still the seat and centre of our legal life. The New Law Courts are gradually rising on the north side of the Strand; and in the meanwhile the business which is to be trans- ferred to the new structure when completed, con- tinues, as for centuries past, to be transacted in the law courts which are scattered over various parts of London. Some are in Westminster. hall. others in Lincoln's inn, others againat Guildhall, Bed-lion-court, and Basinghall-street If a country suitor wanted to find the Admiralty Court, he would have to explore one of the entrances to St. Stephen's hall and find his way up a winding staircase. The Lords Justices of Appeal sit somewhere in one of the rooms belonging to the House of Lords. So far, the dream of having all the legal tribunals of London under one roof has not been realised; but every brick added to the stately Palace of Justice in the Strand hastens its IDealization. The Lord High Chancellor of England is the most exalted of all our judicial functionaries. His salary is £10,000 a year, namely, £6,000 as the head of the law, and JB4,000 as Speaker of the House of Lords. This is double the allowance granted by Parliament to the Prime Minister, or to &nT, of her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, The Lord Chancellor is the legal adviser of the Cabinet, in which select circle he has the privilege of a seat. He ranks next after the Archbishop of Canterbury as the second subject of the Queen outside the Royal circle. He has the distribution of a large amount of the ecclesiastical patronage of the Crown, is the head of the Court of Appeal, the keeper of the Queen's conscience, and the custodian of the Great Seal. At the beginning of Miehaelmas Term, at his private residence, he receives the Lord Mayor elect, and con- veys to him the expression of Her Majesty's gracious approval of the choice of a chief magistrate which has been made by the citizens of London. The city, it may here be stated, is the only municipality in the kingdom which goes through the form of submitting its Mayor for Royal approval. The "loving cup," dressed with flowers, is passed round; and the civic company having taken their departure, the Chancellor receives the Judges, Queens' Counsel, and serjeants at break- fast Thtjn a procession is formed to Westminster Hall, where his lordship formally opens the Courts of Law, and the legal machinery of the country is set in motion for another nine months. On a fine day this procession is very well worth seeing, and a crowd of considerable dimensions assembles in Westminster Hall to see the judges pass into their respective courts. The splendid Transatlantic steamer Sarmatian, which conveyed the Princess Louise and the Marquis of Lorne to Canada eleven months ago, was selected to bring her Royal Highness back, and it is understood that the Princess has come home for some months to avoid the severities of the Canadian winter. The nowspaper special correspondents, who last year ac- companied the new Governor-General and his wife to Canada, took with them everything possible to ward off the effects of hard weather. Overcoats lined with expensive fur, and the warmest of wraps, comfortem, and rugs, were amongst the artioles of their outfit. Wh n they arrived in the Dominion they found to thai* surprise a considerable part of our great western tcriit rie enveloped in a close and not very whole- some s-tmosr-here known in these islands by the term 01 "muggy. The temperature was exception- ally mild, in fact; and on their return to Eng- land the specials found our islands plunged into an Arctic winter, It was far colder in England than in Canada for our navigable rivers were frozen over; and the Thames above bridge was one mass of ice. Bat there is no reason to suppose that the »ppr< •» hing ason will be so mild in the Dominion as its predecessor; and that is the chief reason why the Princess Loui e, by the advice of her physicians, has come homa f- a '3W months. It is not often that we get it colder in the United Kingdom than in Canada at this time of the year; and with all good wishes for the health f a deservedly-popular member of the Royal family, it is hoped that the Princess Louise will obtain the relief from the change of air which it is the object of that change to secure. The Metropolitan Board of Works, which has its office in Spring Gardens, hard by Charing Cross, may well be called the Parliament of London, so far as the capital is concerned outside the civic boundaries. For the city itself there are the Courts of Aldermen and of Common Council-the Upper and Lower Chambers of civic legislation. Bat the Board of Works has virtually the control of the interests, social and material, of three millions of human beings. Last session it promoted in Parliament a bill for the con- struction of a high level bridge across the Thames be. tween Tooley-street on the south and the Tower on the north. The House of Common's Com- mittee, however, rejected the scheme. A few day's ago, deputations and memorials were re- ceived by the Board of Works which represented a very prevalent feeling in tha east end of London. It is a rei arkhble fact that oi-e-tbird of the population of the copital lives to the east of London Bridge, and this vast trading and wording community is put to I constant loss and inconvenience by the difficulty of srossing the river. There is no means of doing so sxcept by a ferry; and what the east-end people com- plain of is that while they have had to contribute to- wards the liberation of the toU bridges higher up the stream, they have no bridge at all, and a plan [aid before Parliament for supplying the undoubted want is rejected. As commercial London grows, the centre of gravity shifts towards the east more and more and it is a somewhat incongruous fact that over a million people In the capital live upon the banks of an unbridged river. The wayfarer in Ludgate-hill, as he moves hither and thither of an evening, may often hear the bells of St. Paul's, which were put up twelve months ago, after the Cathedral had been without them for 200 years. They send out their chimes over a rich and busy piece of the metropolis. The City engineer has told us, in his report issued a few days ago, that the roadways under the control of the Corporation cover an area of 468,000 square yards, and the footways 328,000. The Bingularly large propor- tion which the pavements bear to the carriage ways is accounted for by the numbers of courts and paved spaces from which wheeled traffic is excluded. It seems that within the past thirty-five years nearly 400 out of the 834 streets and thoroughfares of the city have undergone alteration. The little space in which the Lord Mayor is King has been practically recon. structed. The city is now at once the newest as well as the oldest section of the metropolis, nor is it with- out its open spaces, of which the last and the most attractive are the Temple Gardens. When Parliament assembled on the 5th December last for its special pre-Christmas Bitting, it was ex- plained to the members of the Legislature that the Afghan war-then in progress-wail the cause of their being summoned from their homes at that inconvenient period of the year. When Parliament was prorogued, more than eight months afterwards, a paragraph in the Queen's Speech announced the successful termina- tion of the campaign and the conclusion of the Treaty of Gandamak. Events have proved that a treaty with a barbarian State is a very different matter from one with a civilised Power. The Treaty of Vienna, to which the representatives of the great European nations set their hands and seals in 1815, remained binding nearly forty years. The Treaty of Paris, signed in 1856, lasted 21 yeara. But this Treaty of Gandamak, come to with the Afghan Ameer, was virtually set aside by his people within three weeks after its completion had been officially announced to Parliament by her Majesty. Meanwhile, it is satisfactory to know that our troubles in Zulu- land are over for the time, and the disbanding of the expedition is welcome enough to those of the English people who ask to be excused if they are unable to feel much interest in a struggle which is going on 7,500 miles away. Whatever the merits of the war may have been, it would seem from the cap- ture of Cetewayo, and the break up of his powerful military organisation, that the Natal colonists now need no longer to live in chronic terror of savage raids. Cetewayo seems to accept his fate with a con. siderable degree of equanimity. It would be a strange termination to his career were he shipped off to St. Helena, the scene of the last years of a very illustrious exile, whose military power, like that of the Zulu king, had been beaten down by Great Britain. A "INDECENT PHOTOGRAPHS."

LLEGED "INDECENT PHOTOGRAPHS."

HEROISM AT ISANDULA.

CUTTINGS FROM AMERICAN PAPERS.

EPITOME OF NEWS.