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P. J. TYNAN.

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party were regularly shadowed shadowed

by the police, who displayed somewhat of that sleuthhound instinct of which there is more in novels than in Scotland Yard-until, the moment having arrived, they were all arrested. Tynan was at Boulogne, his lieutenant was in Glasgow, other confederates were seized in Belgium and Holland. It is not yet known whether Tynan can be extradited. The Phoenix Park affair was a political crime, and political offenders cannot be extradited. Tynan's arrest and exposure have, however, done more to discredit and efface him than his conviction and imprisonment could accomplish. For he stands revealed to every one as a drunken blatherskite and blunderer, the last man in the world to direct a real dynamite campaign. The free run of the saloon which his renown as No. 1 secured him all these years has in the end been his undoing.

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he must have felt a pang as he thought of the bitter distress the Bull has brought to Lord Halifax, and all those deluded but excellent persons who walk in a vain show, and spend their lives trying to convince themselves and every one else that the Reformation in England was not intended to make a breach with Rome. The Pope, being an honest, brave man, who thoroughly understands his own position, has put his foot down upon all that nonsense with an absolutely inexorable decision. No one can read the Bull in which he traced with calm but inflexible logic the successive steps which severed the Anglican Church from the Roman communion without admira. tion. If the Church Association still exists, and is keenly alive to its own interests, it should reprint this Bull on Anglican Orders and circulate it broadcast in every parish where the clergyman manifests leanings towards Rome. It would, of course, be a very great thing and much to be desired, if Romans, Anglicans, and Greeks would agree to form one fold and reconstitute the unity of Christendom. But there is no sense in pretending that things are what they are not, and it is the first step towards a good understanding and a working arrangement, call it modus vivendi or what you please, that each communion knows exactly where it stands, and indulges in no hallucinations concerning its identity. with other communions. Lord Halifax's mission to the Vatican was merely the last step of a long series, all intended to demonstrate, at any rate, a beginning of this unity with the Roman Church. But the Pope, at least, is more loyal to the Reformation than many of those who are its professed children. He points out the changes that were made in the Prayer Book at the time of the Reformation, insists upon the significance of the alterations, and re-affirms, in the most uncompromising fashion, the judgment previously pronounced by the Vatican, that Anglican Orders are absolutely and utterly null and void. From the point of view of the Latin Church, the much boasted Holy Orders of the Anglican clergy are worth no more and no less than the "orders," whatever they may be, of any dissenting preacher in the land.

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but of yesterday, and yet already there are 270 Councils of Federation formed in various parts of the United Kingdom. The Secretary calculates that there are 8,000 of the Free Churches now federated together. This result is very satisfactory. The extreme dissidence of dissent and the reluctance of every Little Bethel to recognise its unity with the conventicle across the way belongs to a bygone age. Now, at least, Nonconformists are learning to find a bond of union in Nonconformity which is likely to bear good fruit. This winter special meetings are to be held throughout the length and breadth of the land. Missions, aiming at distinctly spiritual work, have been undertaken in many places, a Nonconformist catechism is being compiled, and in short the Nonconformists of this country are beginning to realise that they will be more successful if they act as a unit instead of squandering their strength by remaining as so many grains of sand.

. The Iron

Last month witnessed

Gates. the official ceremony which advertised to the world the successful completion of the great engineering undertaking which has freed the Danube from its iron gates. A canal, five miles long, has been blasted out of the rocky bed of the river, rendering it possible for steamers to pass up and down with safety, where formerly the passage could only be made with the utmost difficulty and danger. Six years' constant labour sufficed to rid the channel of obstructions which have been the dread of sailors for a thousand years. But the chief importance of the operation lies in the fact that it increases to Austria the importance of her great Danubian waterway, the mouths of which are the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. The significance of the event was emphasised by the reception accorded to the Emperor-King in Roumania, and by the not less notable omission to invite the Prince of Bulgaria to

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General Kitchener with his river steamers and 16,000 men of the Egyptian army struck his long expected blow at the Khalifa's force. The battle, if such it can be called, was fought on September 19th. The Dervishes held the west bank of the river, which they had lined with riflepits and protected by artillery. General Kitchener and his army were on the eastern bank out of range. The gunboats, advancing, were met with a storm of shot and shell. The latter, however, did not burst, being carefully served without fuses by the gunners, who were captives in chains compelled to work the guns by threats of instant death. The boats replied and retired, then advanced and retired again, watched mcanwhile with eager impatience by the army compulsorily inactive on the other bank. After a time a ford was discovered by which it was found possible to carry a battery of artillery to an island in midstream which commanded the Dervishes' postion. Its arrival decided the fight. After a few rounds the Dervishes, whose leader had been wounded, were in full flight, and the road to Dongola was clear. The gunboats went on at once, and were speedily followed by General Kitchener and his men, who are now in occupation of the fertile province, within three hundred miles of Khartoum. Their arrival was hailed with enthusiasm by the natives, who have been harried for years by the Khalifa, and General Kitchener felt so secure that he at once sent the South Staffordshire regiment back to Cairo. What he will do next he himself will decide, and the success he has already achieved will probably tempt him to feel southward to Khartoum.

From the Cape Times.]

the unshaken confidence with which Mr Rhodes has succeeded in inspiring the Rhodesians. It is told in the school-books as a proof of the indomitable faith of the Romans in the ultimate triumph of the Republic that the ground on which Hannibal's army was encamped found a ready purchaser in Rome in the darkest hours of the Republic's misfortunes. The same faith abounds in Rhodesia. There also

[Feptember 23, 1893. 66 PEACE HATH HER VICTORIES NO LESS RENOWNED THAN WAR."

It would seem probable that we shall be Mr. Rhodes. at Khartoum before Mr. Rhodes gets through to Uganda. The Matabele are, however, surrendering, and Rhodesia will before long be as tranquil as Natal. Marvellous indeed has been

they never despaired of the Republic. The price of real estate in the regions overrun by rebels has not fallen. Values, indeed, have gone up during the war. Speculators in "Stands" in Bulawayo have sold for thousands what last year they bought for hundreds. Neither rinderpest nor rebellion has shaken the faith of these pioneers in the value of the land which Mr. Rhodes saved for the

Empire. But the Rhodesians, black and white alike, know no other king but Rhodes. His prestige seems to shine all the brighter in Bulawayo because of the clouds which overhang it elsewhere.

The

President Kruger is

Grand Turk as little amenable as of Abdul Hamid to the Pretoria.

representations of the friends of freedom. He keeps his two captives under lock and key, he has spent nearly a million sterling over arms and munitions of war, and he is securing laws from the Rand which will enable him to gag the press, to banish every Englishman whom he distrusts, and to confiscate to an indefinite extent the property of the goldminers of the Rand. For the present we must just grin and bear it. We have made suffi cient mistakes to deter us from action. It is now the turn of the Boer to make the inevitable blunders which will enable us to recover lost ground. The more he oppresses the Uitlander, the more chance there is of that interesting settler asserting his rights with resolution, and, if need be, by revolution. But, for the present, we must play a waiting game. Colonel Rhodes and the officers convicted of aiding and abetting the insurrection have been permitted to

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The Weather.

After a summer of extraordinary sunshine and brightness, last month was extremely wet. A long-continued downpour of rain has ruined the harvest in many districts, and I regret to hear very bad news from Ireland as to the result of this inclement weather. The rain and the wind came together with almost unprecedented violence, and it was felt all the more, coming, as it did after a summer of almost unprecedented brilliance. We escaped the tornados. which rent Paris and Savannah, but we had all the wind and rain we could do with, and a little

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The Customs Union.

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A WALL STREET VIEW OF THE AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES.

The Associated Chambers of Commerce, at their meeting last month, poured cold water upon Mr. Chamberlain's scheme. On the other hand, it has met with sympathetic support from Mr. Laurier, the new Premier of Canada, who, however, gives a prior place in his programme to a reciprocity treaty with the United States.

The Meeting of the British Association The at Liverpool last month passed without Association, notable or sensational incident.

British

Sir

Joseph Lister, the president, devoted his address, as was right and natural, to a sketch of the progress made in medicine and surgery by the discovery of antiseptics-a discovery with which his own name is honourably associated. Mr. Flinders Petrie read a paradoxical paper maintaining that reading and writing, instead of being the great instruments of culture, were responsible for the crippling of the mind. The scientific picnic of the year has seldom yielded less amusement for the general public, and one feels more and more the lack of a lucid intelligible survey of the progress of scientific discovery in all fields. Science is so specialised and scientists tend to become such Brahmins that the ignorance of the average man

[August 19, 1896.

seems likely to become denser the more minutely the field of knowledge is surveyed.

Lord Aberdeen and Sir C. Tupper.

It is satisfactory to see that Lord Aberdeen has had the courage to brave the wrath of Sir Charles Tupper and the retiring Ministers rather than consent to the scandalous and colossal conglomerate of indefensible jobs with which they proposed to leave office. A reasonable amount of patronage and promotion within the limits of the law and tradition is allowed to outgoing Cabinets, but Sir Charles Tupper's proposals passed all bounds, and Lord Aberdeen vindicated his office by refusing to assent to them. The Governor-General no doubt tends to approximate to the position of an English monarch, but at present he is still invested with the functions of an umpire in a cricket match. He is bound to see fair play between parties, and Lord Aberdeen's action, although it provoked an outcry from the defeated jobbers, will be approved by the sober second thought of the English-speaking race.

The contest for the American Presidency continues with unabated vigour, but as I quote at considerable length my American colleague's account of the situation it is unnecessary to enter upon that field here.

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