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nr fjttbim ComsjMitknt,

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nr fjttbim ComsjMitknt, rwe deem it right to state that we do not at all times ttentify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.] The gathering together of the eagles was the subject of a Scriptural simile which applied to the approaching destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman legions under Titus. The symbol of the Roman power was an eagle, and the same bird of prey is adopted in our own times as being typical of the strength of most of the European nations. France places it at the head of her standard; So does Germany; and so alst > do Austria and Russia, the two last mentioned Powers giving their birds a double head. The advance of the Russian armies upon Con- stantinople, and the watchful attitude of Germany and Austria irresistibly suggest the truth of the saying in Holy writ—" Where the carcase is, thither shall the eagles be gathered together." Many a vicissitude has the Turkish capital witnessed since it first rose upon the shores of the Bosphorus more than 2,000 years ago. Its history extends back very nearly as far as that of Rome itself; it was taken successively by the Medes, the Athenians, and the Spartans; it re- pelled a formidable attack by Philip of Macedon it was captured by the Romans and laid in ruins by Severus was reformed by Constantine, rebuilt by Justinian, attacked by the Saracens, assailed by the Russians, taken by the Latins, recovered by the Greeks, and was finally besieged by the Ottomans, under whose sway it foil. Travellers approaching it from the sea have described the impression produced upon them by the magnificent appearance of this great and important city. In fact, in this respect, it occu- pies a position which may well be said to be unique. London stands upon the Thames, Paris on the Seine, Vienna on the Danube, Rome on the Tiber, St. Petersburg on the Neva, Lisbon on the Tagus, Berlin on the Spree, Madrid on the Manzanares, but not one of them is, like Constantinople, open to the sea. Upon one side of it there is the troubled and cloudy Euxine, on the other the bright ^Egean, right in front of it are the gleaming waters of the Bosphorus, close at hand is the Sea of Marmora, joining, through the Straits of the Dardanelles, the broad rolling waves of the Mediterranean far away in the distance. The sun, as it shines upon the glittering mosques, and lights up the picturesquely-turned minarets of the city, produces an effect upon the traveller as though he were gazing npon one of the Bcenes of Oriental romance pourtrayed in the "Arabian Nights." It is only when he lands, and makes his way amid the squalid alleys of Stamboul, and threads his path amongst the common-place bazaars at Galata, that the spell is broken. The tinsel splendour has dissolved; it has faded away as a phantom of the night; and like the baseless fabric of a vision has left not a wreck behind. Dear to our overworked legislators is the time- honoured Twelfth of August. The very mention of the date reminds them of wide wastes of heather, ranges over miles of moorland, wild Highland scenery, and pure mountain air. It tells them of those high latitudes in far-off Sutherland and Caithness, where, when the days are at their longest, the sun does not sink below the horizon until eleven o'clock at night, and then dis- appears amid a sea of light and glory. The Twelfth is the day when grouse shooting begins, and soon after the dim grey tinge of dawn is seen in the east, the birds are falling fast under the fire of enthusiastic sportsmen. They have been released from the Palace of Westminster, to which, unless under very unfore- seen contingencies, they have bidden good-bye for six months—a period when the vast building will be in the hands of the painters and the decorators. All Ad- ministrations, of whatever political creed, endeavour to wind up the business, so that the members may get away within a day or two of the long-anticipated Twelfth. The session may run on to the 15th or the 16th, but the business transacted is merely that of necessary routine, such as the passing through its various stages of the Appropriation Act. This, as its lame implies, appropriates to the various departments f the State the several sums which Parliament as voted for their maintenance during the next welve months. If any balance remains it must be epaid into the Treasury, and nothing which has been oted for our service can be applied to another with- the consent of the House of Commons. If, for nstance, the War Office found itself with a surplus of ;100,000, and the navy wanted just that sum to com- pete an ironclad, the money could not be handed over rom one to the other without the authority of Parlia- nent. The recent departures of troops for Malta did not an forth those stirring scenes which are associated th the memories of 1854, when war having been leclared, it was known full well that many of the jallant men who then set out would never return. Thousands of them left their bones bleaching upon the r>1 is of the Crimea and although these wcci gather-id upaad interred in one "¿j,.st ceme- tery near the then terrible fortress of Sebastopol, the fer..V^n aol-imn* And t-Kfi .li-cxLyizuj m.ir;i: .r:atiifwlav toll a story of neglect and of desolation; The wind, ?« H sweeps in from th« ?"*♦ aotiarn ia the fate of those who tell m that sanamnutrx straggle, for Mr. KingIake has told 118 that that war cost the vtsHora who engaged in it the live* of three-quarters of a million of men But the regiments who have now gone out to Malta have departed more upon a summer cruise than npon an expedition which is likely to encounter the onslaught of an opposing army. They will tread upon historic ground in that well-known Mediterranean island. In days long ago it was held successively by the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, and the Romans and here it was that St. Paul was wrecked in the year 62. The apostle has told us that the barbarians showed us no little kindness, for they kindled a. fire, and received us every one because of the rain and because of the cold." Aftdr St. Paul had massed away, Malta was taken by the Vandals, by the \.rabs, and by the Normans it becaaae a part of the ossessions of the Houses of Hohanstaufen, Anjou, ud Aragon; it then passed to the Knights Hos- itallers, was occupied by the French for two years, id finally ceded to Great Britain by the Treaty I Paris in 1814. Standing 60 miles south of the Ulian coast, it is looked upon as one of the most im. irtant of our possessions in Europe, and its docks and bres are found of immense service in repairing and fitting the vessels constituting the British squadron •the Mediterranean. I he palatial hotels which, during the last twenty ars, have risen in various parts of London, have ded materially to the improvement of our capital. ou find them now in all tquarterø-the Great estern at Paddington, the South-Eastern at Charing- pss, the City Terminus at Cannon-street, the fosvenor, at Pimlico, the Great-Northern at King's- the Midland at St. Pancras. The latest addition the number is the Imperial, at the eastern end of the jlborn Viaduct, close to the new station of the mdon, Chatham, and Dover Railway, and exactly posite the church of St. Sepulchre. A few of its ndows, but not many, overlook the gloomy prison- rtress of Newgate, which, standing as it does almost thin sight of the shadow of St. Paul's, is the greatest e-sore in the City of London. We all hope to see it moved some day, planted out in the clear, and its ,e, now of enormous value, occupied by public build- 58 which would be a credit to the metropolis. As to e Imperial Hotel, the kitchens and laundry are at e top, where also is a steam engine which works the t whereby the inmates descend and ascend. The rangements to prevent fire are very complete. There a very extensive view of London from the upper mdows. A very splendid hotel is also to be con- ducted in Northumberland-avenue, the new thorough- re which occupies the site of Northumberland House, lel enables the converging traffic at Charing-cross to it on to the Thames Embankment. There have been few Sessions of Parliament of late ears so utterly devoid of interest as the expiring ne so far as political contests are concerned. Since he year opened there have not been more than a .ozen elections, some of these have been unopposed, ,nd those which were contested, did not awaken very nuch excitement. For this there are too reasons-first he absorbing attention devoted to foreign affairs md secondly the consideration that the gain or the .oss of a seat makes no appreciable difference in the valance of power in the House of Commons. When a jrovernment has a steady working majority of fifty TOtes, it takes a very long time materially to pull it lown. It is when the Administration depends for its ixistence upon the fidelity of a majority of less than a lozen that party feeling rises to pitch when a vacancy iccurs in a great constituency. Many of us remember he contest which took place in theWest Riding of York- hire in 1849, when Jr. Edmund Beckett Denison and iir Culling Eardley were the champions of the respec- ive parties. There is a tradition that when the West hiding speaks, Yorkshire speaks and when York- hire speaks, England speaks. At that time the tVest Riding was one constituency, whereas, it s now divided into three—north, south, and east. Che battle was a fierce one, and was watched .11 over the land. The voice of the West Riding was hen given against the Government of the day, and his verdict was soon afterwards endorsed by the louse of Commons itself. We have nothing like uch exciting contests now, nor does occasion arise for uch a struggle over a seat as was then witnessed. There are more excursions associated with the uigust bank holiday than with any other of these istitutions. Easter and Wliit-Mondays see a good lany; but August is the time when people think tore about going away, and when a variety of attrac- ons is offered unto them. Londoners are invited by ictorial advertisements and by printed descriptions > select one out of a host of routes to the seaside; the dwellers in the country, who would like to spend a day in the metropolis, find that they are enabled to do so at a remarkably reasonable rate. The conse- quence is that at such a time the residents in the capital pour out of it by every avenue, and the people from the provinces come in. You meet them in large numbers in the principal thoroughfares they find their way in thousands to the Zoological Gardens, or inspect the art treasures of the South Kensington Museum, or besiege the entrance gates of the Tower of London. The holiday is made so com- plete in London that most of the dining halls and restaurants are closed, so that if our country Liends have not taken the precaution to bring their dinners with them, they must fain be content with Bath buns and light confectionery, and must think themselves well off to get even those. There is another reason why the August holiday is looked forward to and appreciated more than the others. It is very well known that several months must elapse before the next comes. The largest interval of all separates the first Monday in August from the 26th December, when the recreations are of a widely different character fl" those which are sought upon a warm summer afternoon. Often as disputes between capital and labour have arisen in this country, we must all be thankful that we have never witnessed anything like the scenes which have spread so much uneasiness throughout the L'nited States, and have resembled a condition of civil war. When we read of fifteen persons having oeen killed in Chicago on the same evening that seven hot their lives in San Francisco, and reflect that this was only a specimen of what had happened in many other parts of the Union, it seems difficult to uuder- that all this turmoil arose from the determination or the railway companies to reduce the wages of their employes by ten per cent. There seems a disregard for human life in the course adopted by the rioters, and in she means taken to quell the disturbance, which can -(arcely be comprehended in this country. There has been on view at the Alexandra Palace the little boat, ten feet in length, in which an adventurous captain and his wife braved the perils of three thousand miles of ocean, and at length arrived in safety off the beetling crags of the iron bound coast of Cornwall. Many of us have been upon the restless surface of the English Channel, or have crossed the Irish sea, or have looked out upon the turbulent waters of the German Ocean, but the whole of these heaped together could not give the slightest idea of che mighty Atlantic. Eternally rolling between the eastern and the western hemispheres, and with a more fi rmly established reputation for storms and violence than any other ocean in the world, it seems to be waging a perpetual war upon the land against which its billows beat, and many a stately vessel has gone down before it's merciless onslaught. Where art thou going, gallant ship, With sails before the wind" might have been asked of many a noble liner as in the olden days she set out from New York or Liverpool to brave the perils of that tempestuous western main but not only sailing ships, but swift and powerful steamers, have time after time succumbed to its attacks, and rone down Defore the fury of its angry surges. Smaller in dimensions than the calmer wastes of the outspreading Pacific, it is infinitely more terrible to 'he mariner. But the foaming waters which have engulphed iron steamers fitted with every scientific appliance for encountering its dangers has been safely traversed by a little boat, which must have ;-e"med like a speck indeed amid its tumbling hills and its never-resting valleys. Fifty days upon the storm-tossed ocean, with the waves mounting to the distant sky, and with water, water everywhere" seven weary weeks, it must have been difficult for lie occupants of the tiny cockle-shell to realise the n cture presented in the visions disclosed to St. John in the Isle of Patmos—"And there was no more sea I"

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