The hint that all is equally rotten East of Temple Bar is alarming, and revives certain qualms occasioned by the gigantic failures. Nor does rumor spare other lordly houses: many peers, it is said, are as insolvent as if they were the absentee city merchants living in Belgravia. What is the reason? Is it that the reverence for wealth obliges the nobles to compete with the merchants, even beyond their means, in order to keep up a proportionate show as the only support of " dignity?" Or is it that the class of gentry who obtain goods on false pretences now contains, besides the pretended noblemen, the bearers of real titles? The peers will do well to set their house in order, step only as a formal act, which he would soon bailiff, and its "rural felicity" ends in the squalidset right by re-settling the estates, we will gladly est of town miseries-a sale by auction. The concede to him the excuse of utter ignorance or Plantagenet is a pauper peer: the only estate that frenzied desperation. Let it be that he did not he can entail upon his descendants is the workknow what he was about. The world, however, house. will view the act as a whole. The world has a certain opinion of a son who ruins his father, and it will not have a more favorable opinion of the father who has ruined his son, or rather both his children. This is not the place to discuss the general question of entail, or to inquire whether public benefits may not spring from a private ruin. That may or may not be; but it is beyond our present thoughts. A particular act, the act of a public man, an hereditary ruler, and the conservator of a noble house, is what we are now called upon to review. The Duke of Buckingham has persuaded his son to sign away his birthright, and to divide it among creditors who had no sort of claim upon the son's reversion, whatever they might if they would not have it doomed. No national have upon the father's interest. There are doubt-institution can subsist on false pretences. The less circumstances in which it is reasonable that peers have seen the ground slide from under them the son should cut off an entail. In the present often enough. The dukes and counts of the dark case there was neither reason nor excuse. A ducal ages had personal functions, which their titles have house is overthrown to atone for one man's wilful survived for centuries. The Saxon earl was disfolly, and to give expensive tradesmen and extor- placed by the Norman baron, each in his time a tionate money-lenders better security than they reality whose power was felt; but the lords who contemplated when first they sold their goods and extorted a charter from John have lost their parlent their money. liamentary supremacy, and could not refuse a charter to the Lancashire weavers if the commons chose to vouchsafe it. The function remaining with the lords is to be wealthy, of unquestioned respectability, refined, decorous, and deliberative. A certain proportion of debauchees and knockerwrenchers might be conceded; an occasional felon or black leg could not be taken to derogate from the general character of the order; but once let bankruptcy eat into its substance-let the peers grow poor, so losing their university cultivation and their social independence-and the order is gone, after the mailed barons, the lumber troop, the French peerage, the fairies, and every other traditionary shadow. From the Spectator. THE SALE AT STOWE. THE sale at Stowe is too remarkable an incident not to have been improved in the lay homilies of journalism. The Times contrasted it with the time, not long distant, when the queen visited the ducal mansion, and when the satirist of the leading journal seemed to speak with as much familiarity of what went on behind the scenes, and with as much bitterness, as if he had been there among the guests. He is now most stern against that man of the highest rank and of a property not unequal to his rank," who " has flung all away by extravagance and folly, and reduced his honors to the tinsel of a pauper and the baubles of a fool." Whereat the Standard is aflame at this "Jew"like view. The moralizing Post opines that outrunning the constable is a foible not limited to the west-end; and, denying the imputed extravagance 66 as a personal matter, ascribes the disaster to "Peel's currency laws," which have reduced the prices of the land's produce and redoubled the burden on the landowner's property. Peel is to the Post what "the cat" is to the unlucky servant. Our contemporaries, however, do not deal with the cause to which the disaster is popularly assigned -an inordinate greed for land, inherited by the present duke from his father—a desire to grasp at every purchaseable acre, in order to acquire for the ducal demesnes a princely extent of territory. According to report, it is not through munificence, but through a species of covetous grasping, that the princely dignity of Stowe is handed over to the From the Economist. RUIN BY THE POSSESSION OF LAND. ONE of the princely nobles of England is to be sold up like a bankrupt earthenware dealer. Stowe, adorned by the tasteful collections of different families for several generations, is to be despoiled. The world-renowned seat of Buckingham and Chandos is to part from its impoverished owners. It has been exhibited to the public to stimulate covetousness, and is now pulling to pieces and carrying away under the hammer of the auctioneer. What has made the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos a ruined and destitute man? He has been, we are assured, "neither a gambler, a drunkard, nor a profligate." "He has inherited debts," and the descendant of a queen, he has had royal vices. "To satisfy a feudal pride, and feed an inordinate ambition," says one of his advocates, "he extended a territory which had need of cur- he obtained that at 4 per cent., more likely he tailment." He and his father, the late duke, would have to pay 5, and latterly the Duke of were purchasers of land. The Lord Temple, Buckingham might pay 6; but making it 4, he who lives in Mr. Canning's satire from his love would have to pay for interest on the three of official stationery, became Marquis and after-fourths a greater sum than the annual rent. To wards Duke of Buckingham, was affected, like pay the remaining fourth, he has to raise 25,000/ many other noblemen, with a desire to increase on his personal security, or on the security of his possessions. The continual rise of rent for property already mortgaged; and as a collateral many years, and its rapid rise between 1800-security he has to insure his life. The value of 1815, begot a desire for the possession of land as his purchase will then stand thus:-He possesses a means of increasing income. Even when other an estate worth yearly 2,500l. times gave a check to the rise of rents the expectation of a future rise did not die out, and many noblemen and gentlemen continued to be great land buyers after its purchase as a speculation had ceased to be in the commercial sense advantageous. Their agents were always in the market ready to buy, and they bade high for every farm that was to be sold. It is within the recollection of most middle-aged men that the acquisition of land was quite a passion, and it was purchased by many noblemen and gentlemen, the late Duke of Buckingham amongst others, at prices far beyond its real value. They speculated on an improving rent, and very often met with only beggared tenants. ence. He has to pay for 75,0007. on mortgage, 3,000 Annual loss by the acquisition, 5,250 2,750 That is something like a representation, we believe, of the manner in which the acquisition of land-borrowing the money to pay for it-has involved this great ducal house in bankruptcy. The acquisitions were not limited to one purchase, nor were the mortgages and other incumbrances always paid except by additional loans. We are At all times there is a strong desire to get hold not acquainted with the family secrets, but it is of land. It carries dignity with the possession. probable that the present duke took with the purIt gives security, as well as much political influ- chases of his father all the incumbrances, and he When these circumstances were strength- seems to have added more of his own. His debts ened by the rapid increase in its value, pointing are said to be a million and a half sterling. It it out as a profitable investment for a gentleman, was stated, some years ago, that his life was inand promising him and his family increased opu-sured for as large a sum as the united life offices lence as well as increased dignity and political of England would guarantee. He may have had influence, the desire became a strong passion-a to pay, probably, something like 40,000l. per year habit even in many noblemen; and they became for premiums. He was never able to put aside buyers of land, regardless of all commercial considerations. The speculation would have been less disastrous had they always had cash to complete the purchase. But noblemen and gentlemen are more sure to desire land than have spare money lying at their banker's to pay for it. When a rival for political influence was in the field, or a mercantile man sought to intrude himself within the circle of ducal influence, he was to be defeated at all hazards, the land was purchased at any price, and without regard to the means of present payment. The money was borrowed to pay for it; and, though men may successfully trade on borrowed capital, to purchase land with borrowed money, is certain loss. If the profit to be made on capital employed in agriculture, determines, in the end, as is laid down by political economists, the profit of all other capital, the rent is always a surplus after that profit is paid, and may by no means be, in proportion to the sum given for land, equal to the average rate of profit. Owing to the passion for acquiring land, the dignity and security it gives, it yields a less per centage for money than most other modes of investment. Thus the Duke of Buckingham would not get a higher rate of interest on 100,0007. he invested in land, than 2 per cent.; but, to acquire possession of the coveted place, he would borrow, or leave three fourths of the price on mortgage, and he would be lucky if his dignity, to cease his hospitality, to shut up his many princely mansions, to part with any portion of his estates, for that would have been to change his nature, to alter his being, and lower the dignity he made immense sacrifices to keep up. So he was dragged by his dignity to ruin. To have sold some of his land, the purchase and possession of which was his bane, might have preserved his house from its ultimate shame. His safety was to be found in denuding himself of his broad acres. But a latent hope seems to have inflated the ducal breast that corn laws would keep up prices, that rents would again rise to the war level, and the family be restored to ease and grandeur by the value of the land being doubled. Inexorable fate, and Sir Robert Peel have put an end to this hope both in the duke and his creditors, and the abolition of the corn laws has undoubtedly hastened the catastrophe which the house of Buckingham has to deplore. How much of the whole misfortune may be traced to those laws, would be an inquiry more interesting, we are afraid, than profitable in its results. We should never get to any satisfactory solution. To not far-seeing men, nor men very deeply reflecting, the possession of a power to make laws to secure the price of corn seems a security against the fall of rent, if it do not offer a means of guaranteeing a rise. It would add to the motives of a weak man, greedy | times comparatively modern the clerical body had for influence greater than his talents could com- engrossed an increasing and undue share in the mand, and for wealth that he had no industry to management of academical tuition.—Mr. E. Bunacquire, to become a great landowner. Writers bury, after adverting to the existence at Cambridge of the protectionist and medieval school exclaim Oxford, pointed to the great disproportion between of the same evils as those indicated by Mr. Lyell at bitterly against the sordid avarice of traders; but the funds of the University and those of the colleges speculation is their legitimate business, and, not as one of the principal causes of the undue preponwithstanding the failures of individuals, benefits the derance of the latter-and drew attention to the public. In what way speculation in land, to gain constitution of the academic body itself as opposing increasing rent and political power, can benefit great obstacles to the introduction of necessary rethe public, those writers fail to show; and while forms, especially on account of the absolute veto they bear hardly on the mercantile speculators, want of all power of discussion or amendment of possessed by every member of the Caput, and the they require the public to speak only with com- graces in the senate. He stated at the same time passion and honor of the failure of the sordid land that the immediate object of the memorialists was speculators. A merchant could operate with safe- not to urge specific measures of reform, but to obty if he could by law fix the price of commodities, tain a preliminary inquiry by means of a royal comas many of the land speculators believed they serious consideration; and adverting to the variety mission.-Lord J. Russell promised the matter his could fix the elements of rent. But they have of opinions entertained as to the best modes of rebeen deceived, none more so than the Bucking- form, admitted the necessity of the reform itself.— hams; and we feel no compassion for a family of Athenæum. which it has long been suspected and asserted that its personal embarrassments, arising from speculating in land, have been the main cause of its persevering exertions to preserve the restrictions on the supply of food. THE printed books and the almost invaluable collection of Irish MSS. at Stowe, will be sold, not by Messrs. Christie & Manson, but by Messrs. Sotheby & Wilkinson. A portion of the MSS. at Stowe was examined by Lord Nugent when compiling his Memorials of Hampden and his Times, -but his lordship, it is understood, made only a cursory examination. Many of the real treasures have only recently been discovered. A careful catalogue by competent persons would materially assist in realizing those high prices which the duke's creditors are anxious to obtain.-Athenæum. THE "UNITY OF RACE" MOVEMENT. To MR. PUNCH: Sir, I wish you would do something to put a stop to that ridiculous movement towards " Unity of Race," wherein half the people of Europe are going to loggerheads. In Schleswig-Holstein there are the Scandinavian and Teutonic elements of the population, as they are called, quarrelling and cutting each other's throats. In another direction, the Sclavonic breed is longing to be at the Teutons. The Austrian and Italian folks are at variance, and even the Neapolitans must needs fall out with the Sicilians. It is unnecessary to mention the wrongheaded Celts in Ireland, burning with envy, and hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness towards the Saxons. By and by, I suppose the fingers of Highland and Lowland Scotch will itch for internecine war. Why can't they fuse? Why can't they mingle? Why can't they put their horses together? I declare, Mr. Punch, that this mania for asserting unity of race puts me in bodily fear. When I examine the composition of my own anatomy, what do I find? Why, that I am partly andeal of the Saxon, a spice of the Dane, a bit of the cient Briton, with a cross of the Roman, a gocd Norman, and a touch of the Lombard and the Fleming into the bargain. OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE.-The memorial for which we have prepared our readers, praying for a royal commission of inquiry into the best methods of securing the improvement of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which had been signed by nearly three hundred graduates and former members of those universities, as well as by some of the Fellows of the Royal Society, was, we learn, presented to Lord John Russell some weeks ago, by If this madness should prove contagious, who Mr. Lyell, accompanied by a deputation. Mr. knows but that a squabble will arise between my Lyell, a contemporary reports, observed that the constituent atoms; the Belgian, Lombard, and Danstudy of many important branches of knowledge, other; my Saxon muscles will detach themselves ish particles of my blood will separate from each both moral and physical, especially the more pro- from my Norman bones; and there will be a breach gressive ones, now nominally taught at Oxford, had of late been virtually abandoned; chiefly because, between my ancient British forehead and my Roman according to the present system of examinations, no The consequence will be, that I shall go to proficiency in those sciences could lead to distinc- pieces, or fall a victim to spontaneous combustion. tion in that University. The classes of experi- Pray arrest this nonsensical unity of race movemental philosophy, comparative anatomy, chemistry, ment if you can. If you cannot, at least endeavor geology, botany, modern history, political economy, to give it a right direction. Just remind the conand many others, were nearly or wholly deserted. tending nations of the fact that they are all deThe colleges, by dividing the students into many scended from Adam; and persuade them to amaldistinct sections, were unable to furnish and sup-gamate in one common stock on the strength of it. port an adequate staff of able and permanent teachers, each devoted to one department; and lastly, in nose. Your constant reader, From the Economist. SMALL POX IN SHEEP. once in a flock it is contagious, but not so among cattle. During this disease, good hay, and drinks of a decoction of barley, are good, to which a little common salt may be added. At the commencement of the disease the nose and mouth must be kept clean with vinegar and water; the eyelids are to be often washed with warm milk, and an electuary of three parts flower of brimstone, and one But I am decidedly of opinion that inoculation of part common salt and honey, is a useful remedy. the whole flock the moment the disease shows itself, even in one in the neighborhood, is the only preservative. Mr. G. Warnecke, a veterinary surgeon of great And the following account of the disease by membered by farmers and all other persons who experience in Hamburg, should be read and rehave to do with stock : The first symptoms are, that the animal becomes lame or stiff in the hind legs, is uneasy, will not feed, &c. and trembling, with increased heat of the body, but After this the fever commences with shivering the ears and tail particularly become very red, the nostrils and gums dry and hot; the animal stands with drooping head, and the feet are close together under the belly; it is lame, or halts, particularly with the hind legs; the ears hang, the eye is blood-shot; the fever increases, as also the difficulty of breathing; the animal feeds and ruminates little, or not at all; its dry dung passes in very small hard balls. WITH respect to the sheep small pox, Mr. J. B. Simonds, of the Royal Veterinary College, in a communication to the Board of Trade, says, "I fear it (the disease) may be said to be naturalized in this kingdom. I would recommend that means are taken to obtain correct information, through the magistracy, of the present extent of the malady, as I have reason to believe that great mischief has resulted from the commingling of flocks, the farmer suppressing the true cause of death among his sheep, and not hesitating to send animals for sale which had been exposed to the contagion. The infected sheep should be confined to the separate farms, and none should be allowed to enter a fair or market, if coming from places where the disease prevails; for the malady may have been received, and be incubated in the system, without any evidence of this being shown by the animals." In a subsequent letter, Mr. Simonds says that vaccination cannot be depended on as a preventive of the small pox of sheep; but that it is a wellestablished fact that inoculation gives security against second attacks, and greatly diminishes the severity of the disease. He recommends that lambs should always be inoculated, keeping them separate from the sheep during the progress of the inoculated disease; and he says, also, that, even after small pox has shown itself in the flock, it is of great value, and " may be said to be our chief means of controlling the virulence of the affection." Col. Hodges, the British consul at Hamburg, says that, in Mecklenburg Schwerin, a law exists, which directs all owners of flocks not only to acquaint their neighbors when the disease appears among their sheep, but also obliges them to circulate information of its breaking out in the country newspapers.' Baron Biel, of Zieron, in Mecklenburg, says, "It is considered to be an epidemic, which, when once it appears, is contagious in the highest degree. Inoculation, however, prevents the danger almost entirely; and where prop-close together, of a red, violet, blue, blackish, or erly attended to, reduces loss amongst flocks to about two per cent." A German correspondent of Col. Hodges thus describes the disease and its treatment : 66 Soon after the first attack of fever, there appear on all the bare parts of the body, particularly about the mouth, eyes, and on the inner surface of the leg and belly, and the under part of the tail, numerous small spots like flea bites, which in eight or nine days come more out in small pimples, and in forms like the heads of small pox. become more numerous, the swelling of the head As the spots increases, so much so that the animal can but with difficulty open its mouth and eyes the lumps that have formed fill, in three or four days later, with a pale, clear, white matter. The pustules now formed are of a good sort, and differ in size up to that of a pea. They are found mostly on the parts of the under the wool. The malignant pustules are found body with no wool on, but they may even be found brown red color, with a blue margin; they are broad, flat, and sunk in, and emit an offensive smell. culty, snorts with open mouth, gnashes its teeth, and its evacuations emnit a very offensive odor: in this latter state a cure is not possible. On the first attack of the common "variola," the animal must be well taken care of, and must not be exposed to cold or wet, and drinks must be administered to it of salts, bitters and spices. The animal stands unsteady, with drooping and swollen head, and closed eye; the nostrils are stopped up with a tough viscous matter, smelling In this disease the sheep suffer previously inter-like carrion; it breathes very short, and with diffinally, with loss of appetite, heaviness and indisposition to move, difficulty of breathing, swelling of and discharge from the eyes, and of a viscous matter from the nose in from three to five days spots appear on the bare parts of the legs and body, which become large, and form blisters, in the centre of the red circumference of which yellow spots come, and at last fill with yellow matter. If these spots become blue or blackish, they unite, and a thin stinking matter issues from them, which is the height of the disease; but death ensues if the pustules should not come properly out, or should strike in again. The last stage of the disease, when it terminates favorably, is marked by the drying away of the sore, on which a black scurf forms and falls off. The animal has the disease, as with man, only As a preventive, inoculation with healthy matter, if obtainable, is the best, as thereby the inoculated animal throws out only a few of the pustules, the sickness from which it can easily get over, and it is then completely protected from the attacks of the disease. Let every one watch for the first sign of the disease in his flock, and then have immediate re course to inoculation, taking great care to keep the migratory insects, analagous to those known as animals during its progress in some place he can blights. But this theory has found no favor with afterwards effectually purify. But no man should the medical men of Europe; who, however, we think of putting newly-bought sheep with the rest rejoice to say, have at length decided, by an overof his flock until he has kept them by themselves whelming weight of experience and authority, that for several weeks. With anything like general the disease is not contagious. Science has its care, and honesty amongst farmers, the plague heroes as well as war, and its martyrs as well as may soon be effectually stayed. As to the means religion. More than one French physician placed of purification for trucks, carriages, hurdles, pens, himself in direct contact with a patient in the and so forth, Mr. Simonds says: "Such carriages worst stage, in order to bring the contagion quesshould be first thoroughly cleansed with soap and tion to the proof. water, and then well washed with either Sir William Burnett's disinfectant solution, or a solution of the chloride of lime, as either of these agents will prevent any injurious results following the use of the trucks, &c., for other sheep." From the London Morning Chronicle. The first known case in Great Britain broke out in Sunderland, in October, 1831. The disease was not formally announced in London till February, 1832. The greatest number of deaths was in the densely populated quarters near the river; but the average mortality of the metropolis was not much increased, and the bills of mortality lead to the conclusion that the influenza is as destructive in this country as the cholera. The scene of the most fearful ravages of cholera was France, or rather Paris, which it reached on March the 2d, 1832; passing over the intervening localities, and springing from the English to the French capital at a bound. 66 THE unknown must be blended with the terrible to produce the sublimity of fear; traditionary impressions of bygone horrors grow weak and faint as contemporary witnesses die away; and an entire nation cannot be thrown into a phrenzied state of alarm in 1848, by precisely the same causes, and in precisely the same man- Both Italian and English literature have drawn ner, as in 1832. The threatened approach of the freely on the plague. Boccaccio and Manzoni, Asiatic cholera is contemplated with the most Defoe, with his graphic details, and Eothen," perfect calmness, almost amounting to indifference, with his mocking pathos, have flung an appalling at this time; and we are far from wishing to dis- charm over it. But it remained for a French turb an equanimity, which may do something to poet, Barthelemy, to personify and poetize the avert, and a great deal to mitigate the evil. But, cholera; and for a French historian, M. Louis at the same time, it is best to familiarize ourselves Blanc, to commemorate its exploits in the loftiest with its features, however loathsome, and be pre- style of history. The chapter devoted to this pared to recognize and grapple with it from the subject in "The History of the Ten Years," is first hour it manifests itself. The East Indies are one of the most eloquent in a work abounding in its birth and resting place. It broke out in the eloquence. "Terror at first did not seem to keep Delta of the Ganges in 1817, and arrived in England pace with the danger. The plague had surprised in 1831, occupying sixteen years on the journey. the Parisians in the midst of the festivities of Just sixteen years have elapsed since it dis- mid-Lent; and the intrepid gayety of the French appeared from England, and started fresh from character seemed at first to brave the destructive the Bengalese. Its comet-like course, therefore, malady. The streets and boulevards were thronged would seem to be subjected to rules, although with masks as usual; the promenaders mustered these have hitherto baffled science. Nothing can in great numbers. People amused themselves be more irregular than its course. It jumps over with looking at caricatures in the shop-windows, enormous spaces, and then retraces its steps, as the subject of which was the cholera morbus. if to repair the omission. It runs down one bank The theatres were filled in the evening. There of a river for several hundred miles, and never were young men who, in the extravagance of their touches the other bank. It has dealt the same fool-hardiness, plunged into unusual excesses. with streets. Since we are to die to-morrow, they said, let us exhaust all the joys of life to-day. Most of these rash youth passed from the masked ball to the Hotel Dieu, and died before sunset next day." The higher classes were not spared in Paris; and as many of them as could find conveyances took flight. But the royal family set a noble example by remaining; and the heir-apparent, the lamented Duke of Orleans, made a personal tour of inspection through the hospitals. Casimir Perier (the President of the Council) accompanied him, and "this was an incontestible proof of courage on the part of a man who had long carried the seeds of death within him, whose nerves were irritable to excess, and who shuddered at the mere idea of a In Paris, it has happened that all the inmates in the upper and lower stories of a house lay dying, whilst not a single persons in the middle stories fell ill. "We have on record (says Colonel Rowles, as quoted in Mr. Challice's pamphlet) an instance of one side of a ship, in the Madras roads, being struck by cholera, while the other side was untouched; nor did the men on the side not attacked by it afterwards suffer, although they attended upon their afflicted companions, and buried them, that is, threw them into the sea, as they successively died." This gentleman adds that the cholera is considered by the native Indian doctors to arise from animal miasma, consisting of |