If there is one paper more than another in England which encourages the very English taste for peeping behind the scenes, and private life of public men, that paper is the arid. In the number before as we find 'Jupiter Interviewed.' The first word refers to the Times, or rather to its chief director and proprietor Mr. Walter. Certainly, if all we have read about him lately in the World and Vanity Pair be true, he must be a very dull and pompous man.
Lately, it appears, he has been interviewed by an American reporter, to whom he was represented as the embodiment of all that was best, brightest, and most influential in English journalism. This rouses the wrath of Mr. Edmund Yates, and he makes a furious onslaught upon both Mr. Walter and his organ. The Times, he says, has now no opinions. Where it has not been organ of Mr. Walter's tergiversations, it has been the organ of his personal caprices, prejudices, and effeminate prepossessions. It has now no influence. "When it is understood that the utterer of those pompons, peevish platitudes, which the New York reporter the other day laid befure the American people, is the man who really rules the Times, it will be understood in America why that journal has ceased to exercise any other influence in the community than that which is legitimately wielded by a big advertising sheet. Its leading articles are, with rare exceptions, unread, because they are absolutely unreadable. People look at their first sentences to soe if they contain any Ministerial inspirations orhints, and then they look atthem nombre. Its Foreign Correspondence is voluminous.
But in each case it consists of two or three lines of information padded out by commentary which is at once vain, verbose, and vacuous.... In America, where people who buy a paper want news, the Times, conducted as it is at present, would be bankrupt in a few months."—Then we have a philosophical-fanciful article on waiters, who are called the only real 'Citizens of the World' who exist, The waiters of all the countries in Europe—the yarcon the Kelluer, the gar zone, ete.~—are all passed under review successively and in avery amusing style, In the gossip-column we notice that Mr. Irving has promised to deliver the opening lecture of the winter course in connection with the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution. The feller paragraph about the forthcoming re-edition of a famous or rather notorious book, will probably interest I notice, too, wd edition of the by Ste. gue containing an apawer raphe? wr wwuounced, with a ling his handy with such mess of dirt and dulness as this ao Romance of the Nineteenth Cenrury. a little unal in the backwoods of At ('of monosyllal chronicler of say), which enjoys immunity from the hunter 1 of certain unpleasant attributes bene his gifted es up the cul:
own defence, it ix quite anoth broken head is then is just and!
sert. It is dangerous work this Goldsmith tried it, we know, but ao also did Me. Swint of very successful, Mr. Mallock certainly possesses some of the pecn: rarities which mark, or used to mark, Me.
roe; but there are still more which, he possess. "The many fail, the one auc cods 5 all the reasons be has himself i iven ts to judge from, I do not sez and chanes of Mr. Mailock being the our.
Who Spectator notices an international conference of Free-thinkers, which has lately been held in London, It was attended by about y delegates from France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Great Britain, and America..... The importance of the meeting consists in this—that it records acertain change of attitude in the party of negative thought, Hitherto they have, for the most part, been accustomed to conform externally, being contented with the liberty of expressing their views in books; but they now seek to manifest.disbelief by out" ward symbols. Half the reports read mention movements, such as the abolition of baptism, the substitution of 'a philo-sophie ceremony' for the first communion, and the adoption of a secular ceremony at funerals, which are intended to signify total departure out of Christianity."—Well, but, there is nothing very new in all this, is there? The Positive Church has had a ritual for years. The Daily News mentions the formation of a Secret Society in Russia, which has for its object the suppression of the Nihilists. On this the Spectator remarks At ite head is a person of high rank, and it already numbers 900 members, commanding some £50,000, Meu formerly' high in the Secret Police have been affiliated, and their erations will extend to Geneva and London, first object of the " Holy Brotherhood" is to protect the Emperor, and punish those who threaten him; and three leading Nibilists, two of whom are named, are said to be wady marked down. It was, of course, from the first certain that the practice of as-ion would develop the vendetta, as it n all countries and all ages, Some Ireland, we shall ace an [tish jury slaughtered out by the relatives of the victiuns, for having deliberately refused Such an attemptes that of the Holy Brotherhood is og natural as the vengeance taken by an Arab tribe, which can got vedros; but i nevertheless igi is ud
braves for vengeance which the first successful crime on equal terme against foe armed just like themselves, If they kill anybody here, the Brotherhood will 10 hanged, if Russia'goos to war in cons Sir Edmund Hornby indites a letter to this journal on the subject of Extraordinary Tithes, in which the former Chief Judge of Shanghai takes up the cudgels for the clergy. "Iam no friend toa State Church and no champion of a State Clergy 5 but I do love justice," writes Sir Edmund, characteristically.—Poor Miss Braddon has hard measure dealt out to her, under the heading of '''he Mutilation of Litorature,' Her well-meant attempt to edit Scott for the million is denounced as preposterous~impertinent, if it were not grotesquely comic. We now turn to the Saturday, which be labours the unlucky authoress with perfect fury. This number is unusually readable. There is one tide upon a subject we have referred to already above, entitled Republican Baptisms.' It is one of the most interesting points in the history of Free-lit, says the writer, that freethinkers y always unhappy without some substitute for the forms and ceremonies which they pride themselves on hav jected.
Th Snummery' out the Christ door but, somehow or other, it comes again through the Secitlarist window. Readers of the late Mr. J. S. Mill (we quote now from our contemporary) have not forgotten his com anents—in which, for once ina way, ho showed that he had no small sense of humour, or might have had under other cireumstances—on the remarkable Comtian substitute for the sign of the cross. This consists in successively touching the organs, according to phrenolozy, of the more important passions and faculties of the mind
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.