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Press, Volume LVI, Issue 16933, 7 September 1920, Page 6

No one can look through a London paper nowadays without being struck afresh by the fact thnt in the phrase of "The Times," '-'England is changing hands." A large proportion of tho great country houses and estates have been sold in tho past few years by those in whose families they have been for perhaps' centuries, the chief reason for their disposal, which is now proceeding more rapidly than at any previous time, being tho pressure of war and post-war taxation. Among the latest historic properties to come into tho market are the mansion and estate of Eden Hall, in Cumberland, which ,havo been in the possession of the Musgrave family for 460 years, tho present house having been built about 200 years ago. Eden Hall is, of course, best known for its traditional association with the famous "Luck of Eden Hall," a beautiful goblet of Venetian glass, believed to be of early 14th ccnAury workmanship. According to legend, it was secured by the seneschal of the Musgraves from a party of fairies whom he surprised dancing round it on the lawn. Ho refused to give it up, whereupon the Queen of the Fairies warned him that "If e'er this cup shall break or fall Farewell the luck of Eden Hall." To enquire how a goblet of Venetian workmanship came into the possession of the fairies would be to carry investigation into the truth of the legend* altogether too far. The "Luck," it may bo added, is still unbroken. It is true that Longfellow's translation of a ballad by the German Uhland on tho subject leaves it in shattered fragments as the result of a drunken revel by the then owner, but that was merely poetic license.

At a time when, if it were not that compulsory notification of influenza cases has l)een dropped, a good many people might be developing a "scare" at tho wide spread of the disease, a certain amount of gloomy interest attaches to the belated report of the British Registrar-General on tho great epidemic of 1918-19 at Home. In 1918 the deaths directly ascribed to influenza numbered 112,329, equal to 3129 pe,r million of tho civilian population. "No such mortality as this has ever before been recorded," says the report, "for any epidemic in this country since registration commenced, except in tho caso of the cholera epidemic of 1849, when tho mortality from that cause rose to 3033 per million.'' Tho total

deaths directly attributable to influenza during the 46 weeks from June 23rd, 1918, to May 10th, 1919, in which the epidemic ran its course, amounted to 131,4-16, or 4774 per million. Influenza also, of course, increased largely the mortality from respiratory diseases and affections of the heart. It is noted that in earlier years the disease was less serious for patients under 55 years of age, and more so for those above that age, but the ICIS epidemic violently reversed that position. "Those under So died in appalling numbers, these over .55 seemed to be relatively safe.'' It is doubted whether ''so sudden and so complete a change of incidence can be paralleled in t!:c history of any other disease," yet medical testimony g'jes to show that the influenza of 1918 was essentially the same as that of former years. No explanation of the change that has yet 1.-ecn attempted is satisfactory, though it is supposed that it was duo to a change in the infecting organism. No reference is mnde in the report to the possible connexion commented upon by doctors between the severity of the disease and the rationing of the population during the war, which meant that largo numbers were less fitted physically to resist attack than they would have been otherwise. "We are left face to face, as the medical contributor cf "The Times" remarks, with the question still pnanswered: "What are the causes which from time to timo endow a comparatively harmless malady with ferocious strength, enabling it to destroy it:-, thousands of victims?" When that problem is solved, wc may, as the writer suggests, be able to protect ourselves against another such calamitv.