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LETTER FROM THE QUEEN TO MISS…

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The SOCIETY for the EMPLOYMENT…

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BURNING OF THE HYGIENIC EXHIBITION…

AGRICULTURAL PROSPECTS.

MR. JUSTICE FRY on the VICTORIAN…

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MR. JUSTICE FRY on the VICTORIAN ERA. At Stoke Newington, on Friday evening in last week, the annual meeting of the local "Mutual In- atruetion Association of the Society of Friends was held. After the report had been read, the President of the year, Sir Edward Fry, reminded the audience that nearly thirty years had elapsed since he had last addressed the association, in 1854. At that period the great palace of glass for the Exhibition of 1851 had been taken down, and the popular idea that its erection was to inaugurate an era of universal peace rf the (!rimeany w the commencement Crimean War. Subsequently other great SSffi iv°iTed' both EUR°P« and America, coufiicts which we can already perceive to have been overruled for great good, inasmuch as the American Civil War gave the death blow to slavery in the United States while the Franco-German War, and the brief preceding contest with Austria, estab- lished German unity, set aside the weakening influence of the many petty princes of the old regime, and shattered the dangerous and demoralizing preponder- ance of France under her military Napoleonism. In one direction, however, there was retrogression. Poor, unhappy Ireland is now in a worse condition than 30 years ago, though strikingly resembling, in many re- spects, her condition as described by the poet Edmund Spenser, who held the office of Secretary to the Royal Deputy for Ireland, a Dosition similar to that of th* late Lord F. Cavendish. In a book on Ireland, written by him nearly 300 years ago, and from which Sir E. Fry read extracts, were, passages narrating almost exactly the same evils which are now the curse of that island, such as the prevalence of crimes of violence, the difficulty of getting juries to convict evil-doers, and the prevalence of venality and perjury; so that, even at that distant period, some persons so despaired of Ireland s regeneration that they expressed a wish that it could become altogether a sea pool." Turning to literature, the lecturer observed that neither in poetry nor history had any greater leaders arisen during the thirty years than Tennyson and Grote, who about 1854 were the recognised heads of these departments. But in science it was very dif. ferent. Here great changes and vast strides have been made. Electricity in particular has assumed a mar- vellous and most promising position. Darwin and the evolutionists have wrought a revolution which has been attended by a sort of panic in the religious world. But this panic has already in a great degree subsided, after a brief duration, as compared with the similar religioaa panios which followed the discovery of the earth's motion round the sun and, in our own century, the revelations of geological science. For, whether the work of crea- tion had taken place by immediate action, or with very gradual developments, by the slow operation of natural environments and influences, in either case there was nothing to militate against the glory and wisdom of the original Creator, but the contrary. There is, how- ever, of late a tendency towards materialism in many minds, a tendency to exalt matter beyond intellect or soul. For himself the lecturer felt, at least as certain, if not iaore so, for his own consciousness, of the reality of intellect as of that ef matter. Scientific men talked about "molecules" and atoms," things, by the way, which, even to them, were so far matters of simple faith, for they had never seen a "molecule," or an "atom," though he (the lecturer) did not deny their existence. But he felt it a striking fact that he, like others, was conscious of the same person- ality, the same individual consciousness now that he had 30 years ago; although, meanwhile, according to the physiologists, the material portion of his existence had completely changed every seven years. Hence there was to be experienced a being within us separate from matter. But tho materialists, in order to account for ii.tellectual and spiritual influences, had assumed for their "atoms" and "molecules" various powers of development or of capacity. Well, on this principle, if you chose to put or infer anything virtually intel- lectual into matter, why, of course, you could after- wards get it out or infer it out of matter again. In concluding his interesting and instructive ad. dress, Sir Edward Fry recommended his younger friends not to be too discursive in their pursuits but to remember that a well-educated man has been defined as one who knows some- thing about everything and everything about some- thing "-that ip, one who has a fair, general, and a profound special knowledge. Hence the audi- ence were advised to adopt courses of lectures or studies of single subjects, rather than desultory attention to a variety. Also it was observed that in literature the best books are generally the oldest as the Scriptures, the classics, and the poets, divines and thinkers of bygone ages whereas in science the reverse holds good, the best writers being the newest and latest. A hearty vote of thanks was unanimously accorded to Sir Edward Fry for presiding on the occasion.

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ILADIES' SANITARY ASSOCIATION.

THE WAR WITH INSECTS.

FROZEN ROBINSON CRUSOES.

ICURIOUS BEQUEST TO THE JEWS.

ELECTRIC FISHING.

THE RECENT FLOODS IN MISSISSIPPI.

A FORTUNATE AERONAUT.

EPITOME OF NEWS.

THE MARKETS.

^STrSLUSbnt.

THE ASSASSINATIONS IN DUBLIN.

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SIR F. ROBERT'S MARCH FROM…