stances were the cause of the development of fresh industrial centres, and of the opening up of new markets and increased productions. There was a general increase in activity in trade in Manchester, Birmingham, and the Irish linen factories, both in home and foreign orders and at good prices. Machinery had to a large extent superseded the former kind of hand labour in numerous manufactures; but it was shown that the effect had not been disastrous to the people who were employed. With respect to inventions, an instance may be taken from one by which the lower class of hosiery goods was produced, and in consequence of which it was stated that while the labour which formerly cost 1s. 6d. had been reduced to 2d., the output had enormously augmented and the average earnings of the operatives had greatly increased. Indeed, the condition of the working-classes was better than at any previous period. All the mills were working at full time, and many of them had more orders than could be completed. New manufactories were being rapidly built in various districts. Prices of raw material and of articles of consumption were rising in all our markets; and the shipping trade was active, because, although the carrying power of the railways had enormously increased, those railways brought goods regularly and rapidly from the interior, for conveyance from our ports. Among the prominent topics of the year were those relating to agricultural improvements, and they were closely associated with the name of Mr. Mechi, a London cutler and dressing-case maker, whose cheap razors and "magic strop" were advertised all over the kingdom. Mr. Mechi-who became a prosperous tradesman, and was afterwards alderman and Lord Mayor of London-bought an estate at Tiptree in Essex, and there carried out very costly and interesting experiments in drainage, and the application of sewage matter as manure to the land. His guests at the annual meetings and harvest-homes at Tiptree Hall usually included many of the nobility and gentry who were interested in agricultural improvements. Mr. Mechi said that "if far mers followed his plans the ox which went up to market on Monday would be back with them again in manure before Friday." His plan was to form reservoirs of liquid manure from animal and vegetable refuse and land drainage, and to distribute it over the poor land by means of iron pipes. His experiments were able and interesting, and he brought very poor, cold, and wet land to a high state of cultivation; but the experimental farms at Tiptree did not pay, and eventually Mr. Mechi, having spent a large sum of money, died poor, assisted however for a very short time by the contributions of his friends. The name of Mr. Mechi could not very well be omitted when questions like these are before us; his ingenious and persevering experiments had an important bearing, not only on agriculture, but on "sanitation." Meanwhile the Sanitary Association was doing its best to arouse public attention upon the subject of the water supply of London, and the defects of a bill introduced by Lord John Manners for regulating that supply in some particulars. At this time the proposal was openly made that the government should "buy up" the water companies, and consolidate the whole machinery of the supply under an authority directly responsible to parliament. Sanitary topics spread themselves over large areas of time and space-and they are worked by large numbers of hands; but a word is also due to Mr. F. O. Ward's labours in the cause of pure water for London from the chalk hills, and the devotion of the refuse of towns to its natural use in fertilizing ground set apart for the growth of grain, fruits, and flowers. The open-air and other reunions of Mr. F. O. Ward for tasting hill-top water and fruit grown on ground fertilized in a manner which was then rather new to the minds of the multitude, were among the most brilliant and agreeable of the year 1852-3, including some of the foremost names in "society," literature, and art. The building of Sir Joseph Paxton and Messrs. Fox and Henderson in Hyde Park, which was the admired scene of the Great SCIENCE AND ART TOPICS-PUGIN-TURNER. 3 vote the surplus derived from the Great Exhibition to the erection of galleries and museums for the promotion of arts, manufactures, and commerce. The money was therefore expended in the purchase of land at South Kensington for the new national Science and Art Galleries. Exhibition of 1851, became, when that exhibi- | by her majesty, and were empowered to detion of "peace" was over, a sad bone of contention. Lord John Manners peremptorily closed the building at the end of the term, and the plan of making it a winter-garden for London did not excite any very great interest in the mind of the general public. Many of the trades-people in Piccadilly and the neighbourhood strongly opposed the idea of retaining the building on its original site, saying that the concourse of visitors blocked the streets and spoiled their trade. Others urged that, as the building covered nearly twenty acres of grass ground and necessitated the trampling down of about as much more, with a disagreeable pollution of the Serpentine (from which the effluvium was said to be very bad), it was very undesirable on sanitary grounds to keep the edifice where it was. In fact this crystal palace of peace was the subject of more warfare than any human being would have thought possible. It must not be supposed that London alone took part in the fray. The provinces joined in it, almost every town having a pet scheme of its ownone of these being that the building should remain where it was and be made a "centre" for the granting of diplomas in art and technical knowledge. At public meetings the Duke of Argyll, Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Harrowby, Lord Palmerston, Baron Meyer de Rothschild, and other distinguished public men, came forward to support the proposal for keeping the palace in Hyde Park. A working-man sent £20 to Lord Shaftesbury in aid of the movement; but the general public after all were apathetic, and Lord John Manners and his colleagues held that the government were pledged to its removal. There was at first a chance of its being laid down in Battersea Fields, which might have been a good conclusion; but the subsequent history of the palace is well known. The noticeable point is that in these discussions the idea of technical education on a large and dignified scale, and as a national matter, followed so easily in the wake of ideas which belonged strictly to the original Exhibition itself. The royal commissioners had been constituted a permanent body by a charter granted Early in 1852 a name great in art, and of even more than national interest, had come prominently before the public. The death of Pugin, the centre, or more than the centre of the great Gothic revival, was interesting as well as mournful in various ways which need not be dwelt upon now; but Turner, who was in a more direct manner a national benefactor, claims distinct and extended notice. He was, in several respects, a very remarkable man; perhaps, like Pugin, not altogether sane. He was born in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, in 1775, was the son of a barber, and received a very poor education. His extraordinary natural gift with the pencil made him noticed by kind and discerning friends, and it befell that at twelve years of age he was exhibiting two drawings at the Royal Academy. When he was only twentyfour years of age he was elected an associate, and three years afterwards he received the full honours of an academician. In 1807 he was elected professor of perspective, but as he was vulgarly illiterate and quite incapable of communicating knowledge this came to nothing. When he died, in a small house at Chelsea looking on the river, it was found that he had bequeathed to the nation the magnificent collection of pictures now to be seen in the National Gallery, and a fortune of about £200,000 for founding an asylum for decayed artists: a scheme which was frustrated owing to some legal technicality. Turner left more--and more splendid—work in landscape than any artist that ever lived. He travelled much, but used to say that the finest sunsets he ever saw were in the Isle of Thanet. During the season he might be seen on board the Margate boat, eating a coarse dinner out of a cotton handkerchief, and quite ready to "spell for" a glass of wine of any fellow-passenger. The back-grounds of his life are not agreeable to contemplate. It is bewildering to think of the painter of those rainbow dreams of pictures engaged in coarse, and worse than coarse, orgies at Wapping. Turner's coffin lies in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, close to that of Sir Joshua Reynolds. What Mr. Ruskin did and has done for his fame is well known, and also Turner's gruff astonishment at "the young man's" discoveries of his meanings. He was sordidly careful of money, but that he was capable of kind and even generous actions is certain. In this first year of the French empire, too, died Count d'Orsay, who was something of an artist, and held some sort of office under the prince-president, Louis Napoleon, in that capacity. He was the Count Mirabel of Disraeli's love-story of Henrietta Temple; not a coxcomb in the vulgar sense, but an artistically finished man of the world, elegantly epicurean, very clever, and somewhat fascinating. His relations with the Countess of Blessington started from a very high-flavoured piece of "scandal" which was never forgotten. At Gore House, where they presided over the hospitalities together, no lady who was in society was ever seen then, but there were plenty of brilliant men, including Disraeli (as has been mentioned), and some who were only notorious, including Louis Napoleon, then an exile. D'Orsay spent his last years in erecting, on a green eminence in the village of Chambourey beyond St. Germain-en-Laye, where the rustic churchyard joins the estate of the Grammont family, a marble pyramid. In the sepulchral chamber there is a stone sarcophagus on either side, each surmounted by a white marble tablet; that to the left incloses the remains of Lady Blessington, that to the right contains the coffin of d'Orsay himself. It was known that Count d'Orsay was bitterly disgusted with the state of French politics after the coup d'état of December, 1851, and disappointed with his old friend's treatment of him. It was said in addition that he died (aged about 53) of chagrin, while the Countess of Blessington broke her heart over Louis Napoleon's ingratitude. d'Orsay had been a lieutenant in the French army, and notwithstanding the great flaw in his life, had, like the countess, fine qualities. He is very amusingly sketched in Lord Byron's diary at Genoa. "Milord Blessington (Mountjoy) and épouse, travelling with a very handsome companion in the shape of a French count, who has all the air of a Cupidon déchainé, and one of the few ideal specimens I have seen of a Frenchman before the revolution. Mountjoy (for the Gardiners are the lineal race of the famous Irish viceroy of that ilk) seems very good-natured, but is much tamed since I recollect him in all the glory of gems, and snuff-boxes, and uniforms, and theatricals, sitting to Strolling, the painter, to be depicted as one of the heroes of Agincourt.” It was arranged that d'Orsay was to be a fixture in the Mountjoy family by becoming the husband of the honourable Harriet Gardiner, his lordship's daughter by his first wife. This young person was summoned accordingly from school and married at her father's bidding to the Cupidon déchainé. The great scandal ensued. Lord Blessington died at Paris in 1827, and the title became extinct. His countess became a fashionable star in the literary firmament of England, and Count d'Orsay resumed in London the career of sportsman, exquisite, artist, and general arbiter elegantiarum. Lady Blessington's literary success was nothing more than succès de salon. The disappearance of these two figures may be said to mark the close of the whole business of literary dandyism. While various small pageantries were going on in Paris by way of preparing for the actual assumption of the purple by Louis Napoleon, a ludicrous performance in the empire way was taking place in Hayti, a place which is memorable in connection with Toussaint L'Ouverture even if Wordsworth had not commemorated him in one of his greatest sonnets. Soulouque was to be crowned emperor. For months, troops, such as they were, had been pouring into "the capital" from every quarter of the country. In they came, helter-skelter, some with sticks, guns, a great number of the latter without locks; some HAYTI-SOULOUQUE AS "FAUSTIN I.” with coats only, many without either coats or breeches. The soldiers that had been lucky enough to procure shoes were more fortunate than their officers. There was a large tent erected on the "Champ de Mars" capable of containing from ten thousand to twelve thousand people. At a distance of four hundred yards there was another, erected immediately behind the government palace, which served as a robing-chamber for the imperial family. On the east-end stood a platform on which there was a Catholic altar; the rest of the tent was partitioned off for the deputies, nobles, ladies of honour (black), consuls, and foreign merchants; the troops assembled and formed into a square, and a double line was stationed along the route leading to the palace, in order to protect their majesties from violence. Then came the senators and deputies, dukes, earls, and ladies of honour, who were led to the place assigned to them by the master of the ceremonies. Their majesties were to make their appearance at six o'clock a.m., but with true negro punctuality they did not arrive till nine. They were announced by the discharge of artillery, music, and loud and long vivas from the spectators, and none shouted more lustily than the foreign merchants, while at the same time they inwardly cursed Soulouque and his government for ruining the commerce of the country. Their majesties were preceded by the vicar-general. Her majesty first made her appearance, attended by her ladies of honour, under a canopy like that which is seen at Roman Catholic ceremonies on the occasion of the procession of the holy sacrament. She wore on her head a tiara, and was robed in the most costly apparel. Before her husband was elected president she had been a vender of fish. Soulouque himself then followed, accompanied by all the distinguished nobility, under a similar canopy, wearing a crown that, it is said, cost thirty dollars, and having in his hand two sceptres. Their majesties were led to the prie-dieu, where they first said their prayers, and they were then conducted to the throne. The ceremonies then commenced by the vicar pronouncing a solemn benediction on the crown, sword, sword of justice, sceptre, cloak, ring, 5 collar, and imperial cloak of the emperor, after At the time of which we are now speaking there was considerable excitement in relation to Arctic enterprise, more particularly as to the fate of Sir John Franklin and the crews of the Erebus and Terror, which had sailed in search of the north-west passage in 1845 and had not since been heard of. From 1847 onwards, expeditions, both by land and sea, had been despatched in search of the missing ships, at a cost of about a million sterling to the country. In the spring of 1852 the brig Renovation, of North Shields, came home with a report that the captain and men had seen two ships embedded in ice somewhere off | betting and "betting-offices." It was not yet Newfoundland. This brig was herself in the hour for the legislature to interfere with danger at the moment, and the captain so ill these precious institutions, and it is not yet a that he could hardly do more than "groan;" | settled thing in all minds that it had any busibut the tidings naturally caused much discus- ness to interfere, or that it has done any good sion in England. The general conclusion, by meddling. But there never was any doubt after this discussion and comparing of notes, that the results of the "betting-office" system was that the whole story was the result of an were shocking. The thing began, probably, illusion not unfrequently occurring to nautical in a cigar-shop, with some such words in the observers of distant icebergs or masses of ice. window as "The Races! A List Kept Here." A high authority expressed this opinion:-"I But after a time these places of resort were think," he wrote, "they were 'country ships,' openly styled betting-offices, and a horrible as we whalers call them-formations upon an "roaring trade" was done. Servant-girls, iceberg which deceive even practised eyes. shop-boys, clerks, all and sundry, went and To place ships in such a position by the pro- betted, large numbers of the wretched advencess of freezing into an iceberg would require turers stealing the money of their employers thirty to forty years, and floe ice would have in order to "speculate." Courts of justice all been broken up with the western ocean swell over the country had a dreary tale to tell. In before it had even reached Cape Farewell. one town in the north of England as much as Not a piece of sufficient size would be found £50,000 was lost on one horse; and it was to contain even one ship, much less two. No found that very poor people had pawned iceberg of one-fourth of a mile would reach blankets and children's clothing to procure such a position; it must have been two pieces money for this kind of gambling! Meanof icebergs, and the vessel being five miles while the honest friends of the "turf," as it distant could not observe the water over the is called, were concerned in helping to expose detached ice. We have the experience of the this nuisance, for jockeys and stable-boys eleven whalers wintered on the ice; they all were frequently bribed by the proprietors of broke from their icebergs long before they these dreadful dens, to betray the secrets of reached Cape Farewell." their masters with regard to particular horses. The cry, once taken up, did not cease for long until something was done. Sir Edward Belcher expressed his belief that two ships had been seen, not on, but beyond the iceberg, and that they were not the Erebus and Terror. No reliance, he said, could be placed on the position or correctness of the objects seen over a field of ice. He instanced a case which occurred to Captain Sir Edward Parry, who, with a shooting party in the Arctic regions, saw what every one of the party would have taken his oath was a herd of moose deer, until they came up to them, after nearly a whole day's exertion, and found they were a flock of ptarmigan. All this, however, while it added to what some people might call "the poetry of the case," kept the subject alive in the mind of friends at home, and it never died out till the expedition in the Fox under Captain M'Clintock. One of the "social" topics which in 1852 began to attract serious attention was that of It has already been hinted that the accession of the Tory party to power was followed by one or two signs of a return to what were regarded as repressive measures by the Radical side. There has always been a tendency among high-and-dry politicians of the church-and-king school to limit that right of public meeting and discussion which is so dear to Englishmen. Now Mr. Home-Secretary Walpole was one of the best men that ever lived, and a sound constitutional lawyer, a Christian gentleman who would not for his life do a thing that he believed to be unjust. But he was not a man of robust feeling and intelligence, and had somewhat feminine views on points of order. Unfortunately he had excuse, or what looked like excuse, for interfering with certain meetings in the open air at the East-End of |