OUR LONDON LETTER.

Press, Volume XXIV, Issue 3218, 23 December 1875, Page 3

OUR LONDON LETTER.

[from our own correspondent.] London, October 29th, 1875. There is little or nothing stirring in the social or political world, and for news and discussion we are almost entirely thrown on the utterances of our leading statesmen, who, as is usually their habit at this time of year, are "starring" it in the provinces at agricultural meetings, laying of foundation stones, &c, Sec. To these speakers the Admiralty Fugitive Slave Circular has been a godsend, and without this egregious blunder they would have bad little to talk about. Though the circular has been withdrawn, the question is far from being set at rest, and there is a rod in pickle for the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Foreign Minister, between whom the responsibility of the outrageous document lies, which will be smartly laid on as soon as Parliament meets. The Admiralty has been particularly unfortunate. Blunder after blunder in this department, either on the part of the lords themselves or of their subordinates, have followed each other in rapid succession. The first mishap was the sinking of the Vanguard ; then followed the Fugitive Slave Circular ; then the unfortunate Admiralty minute on the Vanguard court martial ; and finally the Serapis, after months of costly preparation for the Prince of Wales' voyage to India, was, at the very last, reported to be unfit for the purpose, owing to the serious priming of her boilers. However, the chief engineer of the navy was despatched across the Continent to Brindisi, and at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute the boilers were patched np, and the Serapis was enabled to continue her voyage to Athens, on arrival at which port she distinguished herself by carrying away a couple of anchors and running into two vessels. The Vanguard still lies at the bottom of the Irish Channel. All efforts to float her have been unsuccessful, and, with the exception of the removal of her lower masts, no fnrther attempts will be made to raise her or any of her heavy stores until the spring. Xn journalistic circles much dissatisfaction is felt at the open favotitism extended to the Times by the present Government. Thai paper is kept au courant with everything that goes on in Downing street, while the staunch upholders of conservatism, the Standard, th. Pall Hall Gazette, and thej Hour are com* pletely ignored. As an instance of this, th< _Pl<N«*]Bpecial correspondent was the only on« allowed on boird the Serapis, bnt the | ol Wales, to give him his due, has a yer

tolerable sense of English fair play, and on his attention being drawn to this piece ol favoritism, Dr Russell, the gentleman ie qnestion, has been forbidden to write about the doings on board the SerapH or to furnish any information to his paper, until his arrival in India. A banquet was given at the Alexandra Palace on the 25th instant to the survivors of the historic six hundred who rode into the Valley of Death at Balaklava that day twenty years before. For the last month the work of hunting op the remnant of the gallant little band from different parts of the country has been going on, and all the well-known old sayings—"familiar in our mouths as household words"—and doings connected with that magnificent blunder have been doing duty over again in all tho papers. Lord Cardigan's " Here goes thirty thousand a year !" as the order to charge was received ; poor Nolan's death scream as his horse bore him|back through the charging columns ; the French General's exclamation. " (Test magnifiquc, mats cc nest pas la guerre" —we have had it all over again. It is a story though that will bear repeating, | and the well worn tale has been on everyi one's lip* during the last few days. Nothing was spared last Thursday in the efforts to do honor to the survivors. At one stage of the preparations the rather awkward contingency of more men turning up than are " known to have ridden back from the jaws of hell" twenty years ago, presented itself ; but the claims of each man were thoroughly sifted by the committee of management previously to being allowed, and of the one hundred and thirty who sat down to the banquet each was undoubtedly one of the immortal six hundred. It is satisfactory to learn that as a rule these heroes have not fallen into want. Amongst them there are several adjutants and drill instructors of yeomanry and volunteer corps, a yeoman of the Queen's Guard, a commissionaire, a mounted policeman, several prison warders, five Chelsea pensioners, and one man still serving in the Bth Hussars. Of the rest, a large majority are employed as railway servants, and next come clerks, valets, and grooms ; there are a few well-to-do publicans and shopkeepers, one journalist, one master of a workhouse, one sexton, and a tragedian. This last is Mr Pennington, who has acquired some celebrity aa an actor. After the banquet he recited Tennyson's stirring poem on the charge of the six hundred with magnificent effect. Florence Nightingale and Mr Tennyson were both invited to the banquet, but neither were able to attend. The former excused herself on the plea of ill health, arising from oveT work ; and the Poet Laureate, while regretting his inability to be present, promised that he would "drink a cup of wine on the 25th to the health and long life of the fine fellows." Poets—Horace, Byron, Moore, and Tennyeon—always it appears drink their wine in "cups," not in glasses like ordinary mortals. The French Chasseurs d'Afrique, who came to the reßcue of the Light Brigade, and covered their retreat, were represented at the banquet by Baron de Grancey, the military attache to the French Embassy in London, who happens to be a Chasseur d'Afrique himself. Some little difficulty in the arrangement was experienced beforehand, concerning the choice of an appropriate air to be played after the toast to " Our gallant allies," and the matter was privately referred to our friends on the other side of the water, who, in reply, suggested " Roland & Roncevaux," an air which, it appears, has been adopted by the French navy as the National Anthem ; and " Ronald a. Roncevaux" was accordingly played. This may be a bint to you in the event of you entertaining any French ships of war, and it is with this object in view that I mention the circumstance. Baron de Grancey, in replying to the toast, most unexpectedly concluded bis speech by calling upon the company to drink to the health of "that dear and beloved Princess, her Royal and Imperial Highness the Duchess of Edinburgh." France is at present most assiduous in paying court to Russia, and I fancy her representative at the banquet must have received a gentle hint on the subject from his superiors. Curiously enough, the 25th instant was the anniversary of the battle of Agincourt as well as of Balaklava, and the 21st was the 70th anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar, of which glorious victory nine veteran officers are still survivors. While the recollections of our gallant struggle in the Crimea have been thus stirred afresh in our minds, the worthlessness of the object for which so much precious blood was freely spilt has been simultaneously forced upon us. Turkey, at the present moment, is more thoroughly rotten than she was before the Crimea war. Her Go vernment is shamelessly corrupt, her coffen are all but empty, her financial credit if exhausted, and it is impossible to squeeze any more money from her, over taxed and groaning population, a portion of which an in open revolt. In this position she repudiates her debts, and as the bulk of her loam have been raised in this country, the blow falls heaviest upon us. The Turkish bondholders have been coolly told that in futun only half of their claims will be recognised and great is the lamentation thereat. Rache weeping for her children, and refusing to b< comforted, is a joke compared to investor! in " Turks" of the present day. They bav< meetings every day, at which they call foi interference, to the extent of an armed occu pation of Turkey even, on the part of th( joint Governments of England and France These are merely the ravings of the Britoi who has lost his money. England anc France can do nothing. Turkey simp]] pleads in forma pauperi*, and asks fo breathing time to carry out improvements ii her administration, and all that is left to thi Turkish bondholder is to try and practio a little of those cardinal virtues, patience and resignation. There was a report tha the Sultan had offered Mr Gladstone £50,001 a year to establish a sound financial systen in his country; but Mr Gladstone ha written stating that there is not a vestige o truth in the ridiculous canard. Altogethe foreign loans have fallen into bad repute and bo flagrant has been the financial mis conduct of Honduras, Paraguay, and Costi Rica, with regard to their loans, that th Ministers representing those states at ou court have been excluded from the list o guestß invited to the civic banquet on thi approaching Lord Mayor's day. The holder of " Turks" cry out for the exclusion of th Turkish Minister, but I do not know if-th sins of his country will be thus visited npoi bis head. When I last wrote a war with Chin seemed imminent, but I am happy to sa; that all the demands of our Minister at Peki have been complied with, and hoetilitie averted. With the barren result of th Crimean war so vividly before our eyes as i is now, the nation is more than ever avers to plunging into costly hostilities, if it cai keep out of them with honor. And if w needed another lesson it comes to us frou the Gold Coast. It was supposed that th recent war with the Ashantees would bay opened up trade, but by the latest account from that region we hear that the roads ar more completely closed than ever, and hel by a powerful tribe called the Djuabins, wb have worsted the Ashantees in conflict, an assumed their habits of hostility to foreig intercourse. So that, notwithstanding a the money and valuable lives expended i: the late campaign, it is, in military phrase ology, and as far as the opening up of th country is concerned, a case of "as w were." Sir Charles Wheatstone, the distinguish, pioneer in electric telegraphy, has just die in Paris. Like many inventors, be spran from a comparatively humble sphere. H began bis career aa a musical inßtrumer maker in the province., and it was whil working at this trade that be was led ml making certain experiments in sound whic brought him into contact with Faraday. E now turned bis attention to the productio of acoustic figures and experiments in _ measurement of electrio velocity and tt duration of electric light. Before long J was advanced to the Professorship of Exp rimental Philosophy at King's CoYleg and a Fellowship of the Royal Societ land as far back as June, 1836, 1 demonstrated the Telocity o. electrici by sending a current through nearly fo

miles of copper wire. The circumstance of Sir Charles Wheatstone _ death has given rise to a controversy respecting the rival claims of England and America to the first invention of the electrio current as a means of communication, but the honour indisputably lies with England, although Morse, the American, was an almost conttmporaneoug and quite an independent worker in the samo field. The Pandora, a ship fitted out this summer for Arctic exploration, at the joint expense of her commander, Captain Allan Young-, and the late Lady Franklin, and which left Portsmouth a short time ago, has unexpectedly returned;, in consequence of having been too late in the season. She brings news of the Alert acd Discovery np to the 27th of July, having found a packet of letters left by those ships in n cairn on tho Carey Islands. Captain Nares' despatch to tho Admiralty is written in n hopeful strain. He say 9 the season has been a particularly open one, and that there was every prospectof attaining a high latitude. All were well on board both ships. The Pandora will make another attempt next year. The Duchess of Edinburgh was safely delivered of a daughter this forenoon, and the official bulletin states that both are well. The King and Queen of Denmark are expected her.i shortly, and are to stay on a visit to the Princess of Wales until December, when they will return to Den mark, accompanied by her. Our Queen is still up in the Highlands, and has been affording some of the radical papers material for a few sensational paragraphs. The father of her "faithful attendant," John Brown, has just died, and her Majesty, accompanied by the Princess Beatrice, not only attended the funeral in person, but followed the hearse for a considerable distance on foot. It is> contended by some that John Brown's father was hardly as great a man as either the Duke of Wellington or Livingstone, and yet at neither of tho funeral obsequies of these two men, who deserved so well of their country, was her Majesty present. Commodore Anthony Hoskias, accompanied by his secretary, Mr Carter, has left England for Melbourne to assume the command of the Australian station. The Admiralty has telegraphed to the captains of H.M.B.S. Dido and Pearl to proceed to Melbourne to meet the new Commodore. Oo the arrival of the Sapphire at the station, the Dido is to return home via Cape Horn to be paid off. Assistant-Paymaster Perry, who was secretary to Commodore Goodenough, has been specially promoted to the rank of paymaster, in consideration of the warm appreciation expressed by the late Commodore of Mr Perry's conduct. A large screw steamer of 2750 tons gross, named the Zealandia, was launched a few days ago from the yard of Messrs Elder and Co, Govan. She is the first vessel of a new line of mail steamers to run between San Francisco, New Zealand, and Bydney. During the month of September vessels carrying emigrants for the Government of New Zealand sailed as follows : — From_ London: The Avalanche, for Wellington, with 225 souls ; Soukar, for Canterbury,224 ditto; Waitara, for Bluff (Otago), 216 ditto j Brodich Castle, for Auckland, 299 ditto. From Plymouth : Waitangi, for Canterbury,, 224 ditto. From Glasgow: Nelson, for Otago, 410 ditto. ————————————————————______M_-i_—a