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®ar fjitkn Coraspntoiil

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fjitkn Coraspntoiil 0 (We dlem it right to state that we do not at all tfcues Identify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.] Early in the year 1854, when it was seen that war with Russia was inevitable, some lines appeared in Punch, pointing to a famine of candles, and one stanza was to this effect The war with Russia, people say, Will render scarce our tallow fat, We'll make it up in another way, And bring some home from Kalafat." Now be it known that just then the name of Kalafat was very familiar in English ears. Standing en the Danube, directly opposite the fortress of Widdin, it was strengthened by the Turks, under Omar Pasha, when they crosscd the river on the 28th October, 1S53. In December Prince Gori.sehakoff, with the Russian armv. determine I to storm their entrenchments. The conflict^ lasted from the L-t December to the 9th Januaryj 1S54, when the Russians were corbelled to retire. Therefore, the reputation of that Danube town stood very high, although it was perhaps difficult to discover why we were to draw our supplies of tallow from it. The present struggle between Russia and Turkey does not so much affect our stocks of tallow candles as the prices of wheat. No war panic since the repeal of the Corn Laws has created so sharp and sudden a rise in the price of wheat as that of the r-t month. Speculation commenced in the beginning In of April, when the fact began to be recognized that Russia really meant to fight. The declaration of war raised the excitement in the grain trade to a climax, and prices went up with a rapidity almost unexampled. In New York the rise was even greater than in this country, for it was over 30 per cent., and. this is of particular significance at the present time, when we must depend to a considerable extent upon America for our supply. Southern Rus- aia has long been described as the granary of Europe, but that is now closed by the supension of the naviga- vl tion of the Danube, and we ase cut off from the ports in the Black Sea by the war precautions in the Bos- phorous. There is also the possibility that even on the reopening of the Baltic, the shipments may be limited by the continuance of hostilities. We may, it is true, look for an increased quantity from India, but not to such an extent as materially to affect quota- tions especially as our granary stocks are very light, and Aiuerica has not much to spare. Will a saying u. :en quoted in the country dis- tricts, now turn out to be true of "up corn, down horn," that is to say, if e price of bread is increased, that of animal food will be di- minished. It is likely enough that the saying just quoted was coined in the old and happy days when the cattle plague was unknown, and when there was no idea of meat reaching its present rates. Meanwhile it may be noted that the price of another necessary of life—coal—has steadily fallen since 1783, when there was such a panic over the threatened exhaustion of our coal beds, that the House of Commons appointed a Committee of Inquiry into the matter. The opening of the Royal Academy on the first Monday in May marks a distinct stage in the pEogress of the London season. The preliminary banquet always takes place on the previous Saturday evening, when our most distinguished statesmen, Scientists, artists, philosophers, and literary celebrities meet at the hospitable table of the Academicians. Since the Academy has been removed from the National Gallery into its own quarters at Burlington House, the exhibition has been improved in every way. There is more room and more light, and the public who throng thither can inspect the best works of our native artists without any of that inconvenience to which they were subjected in the structure which overlooks Trafalgar-square. A marvellous shilling's worth is that of the Royal Academy, for by the pay- ment of that familiar coin, the visitor may take his own time to wander through galleries filled with the productions of the most eminent painters of our age. For those who revel in what are called the Old Masters, there is of course the National Gallery; but for the brightness and freshness of to-day certainly there is nothing like the long ranges of pictures at Burlington House. country visitor to London who knows not Hy ? See it on an afternoon when the its height, and the spectator wMl wealth of the British capital. 1 by the Criterion, for a con- the Green Park and is a double line of 1 wo w ,1V ,1<.41'1.1(;0 seem to take the mind back to far-off times when the old quicksilver mails bowled merrily through hill and dale an occasional sIJÎll and the breaking of a passenger's leg being known only in the adjacent country town! Those were the days before the land had been covered with longitudinals over which express trains now rush along the valleys at a speed. faster than the wind, and anterior to the time when the shrill whistle of the locomotive aroused the echoes of the leafy arches of the silent forest. The iron horse it has been said, weighs! down all sentiment, and certainly his voice is now heard in sequestered spots where the quiet was so profound as to suggest the idea that it had up to that time been unbroken since the creation. So those who are sentimental, and to whom time and money are not much of an object, assemble in Piccadilly on those bright summer mornings, leave that fashionable thoroughfare behind them as the sun is shining upon the gold and the fancy work of the stately towers of Westminster, think no more of* the hurrying crowds, or of what the poet Gray has called their ignoble strife," and are borne joyously through the green lanes of Kent, or along the undulating knolls of Sussex at a time when vegetation is at its richest, and before the blending shades of greenery have either been "nipped by the wind's unkindly blast," or "parched by the sun's directer ray," embrowned by the scorching heats of July and August, and waiting only for the first westerly gale of autumn to strip the leaves from the trees, and to cast them drooping and withered to the ground. The Registrar-General has been furnishing the public with some interesting statistics showing the effect of commercial prosperity or adversity upon the marriage- rate. For several years previously to 1866, trade in all its branches was good, and in that year the marriage-rate was equal to 17 in every 1,000 of the population. Then came the disastrous financial panic, and with it a decline in the marriage-rate. This con- tinued until the end of 1870, after which it increased year by year until 1873, when coal and iron ran up to such a. price, blast furnaces were in full operation, and the greatest activity prevailed in the mining and manu- facturing districts. Since then it has again slowly de- clined. and the marriages of 17fi, in the last quarter nf which the prices of wheat and vegetables were rising, showed a falling off from those of 1875. Still, like the poor, marriage is an institution which shall never cease out of the land and it is recorded that during the siege of Paris, when the city was prostrated by bombardment and by famine, people married and gave in marriage very much: as usual, as though no enemy were thundering at the gates, and starvation did not reign in the streets of the capital. The discoveries of Dr. Schliemann on the site of ancient Troy have been followed with much interest by the scientific world, as well they might be, con- sidering that they tell of the existence of a place which was a scene of life and energy more than three thousand four hundred years ago. It was over 1,500 years before the Christian era that, according to Blair, Scamander arrived in Phrygia, and laid the foundations of the city the story of whose siege has been famed through- out all the ages of the world. At that time, according to some writings, the children of Israel were groanin^ under the Egyptian bondage, and while their task' masters hastecrthem over the construction of those very Pyramids which throw their vast shadows over the land to-day, Scamander was laying the basis of a city whose name has been as enduring as that of Egypt herself. To some minds there is a strange fascina- tion in unearthing anything which pre.sents them with evidence of an existence in a long-past epoch. To this hour the streets of Herculaneum retain the impres- sions of the chariot wheels which rapidly moved over them eighteen hundred years since, when the place was overwhelmed in an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The scream of the cormorant is heard over the spot which marks the desolation of Babylon and upon the site of ancient Nineveh no voice is now heard but that of the melancholy wail of the bittern; but upon the banks of both the Euphrates and the Tigris antiqua- rian research has been at work and has carried the mind back to events which took place thousands of years ago, long before enlightenment and civilisation had spread westward to the European continent. If the question, lvhat went ye out to see" has been put to those members of the Municipal Council of Paris who have lately been over to London on a visit, thc-reply is at once obvious and ready. They saw a great deal during the few days they were in the British capital—its underground railways and its underground theatres, its docks, its public buildings, its immense practical works, such as the main drainage [jumping station at Crossness, and its arsenal-for Woolwich, being comprised in one of the metropolitan boroughs, is really a part of London. Nothing could more forcibly illustrate the great contrast between the two cities than an inspection of such objeats by the Municipal Council. The Seine, as it floiws through the very heart of Paris, is about the width, the depth, and the clearness of the Thames at Richmond, and in the centre of the stream, right opposite the Palace of the "Tuilleries, are baths and washhouses. Imagine such institutions upon the yellow tide at Blackfriars The river steamboats on the Thames are very matter- of-fact structures but if you went from the Pont la Concorde to St. Cloud, about the same distance as from London Bridge to Kew, you would be pla#ed under an elaborately'fini. heel awning as a protection from the rays of the sun. Pass along the Paris Boulevards on a summer evening, and you will see vast numbers sipping their absinthe underneath the shadows of the trees; in London such a spectacle is utterly impossible. Indeed the difference between the two is that the English capital is one of business, and the French capital is one of. pleasure and this is as perceptible in the hue of the two rivers which intersect the cities as in the contrast between the grimy dome of St. Paul's and the gilded dome of the Invalides, or between the pleasant open air trips of the Paris Circular Railway, and the bard stern tunnelled journeys which are made upon our own underground lines.

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MR. CARLYLE ON THE CRISIS.

EXTRACTS FROM SPEECHES AT…

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JONES v. THE GREAT WESTERN…

TERRIBLE DISASTER AT SEA.

CHOLERA IN INDIA. '

--;WAR NEW S.

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THE BURNING OF THE STEAMER…

THE EARL OF DERBY'S REPLY…

A CURIOUS. SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY.

AMERICAN HUMOUR

iltisrcflaneous Intcdigcna,