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1886

public interest, was afforded in the erection
during the past year of a monument by
Maryland Confederates on Culp's Hill to
mark the furthest point gained by their line
of battle on July 3, 1863. The incident, trifling
perhaps in itself, has yet a wide meaning.
The field of Gettysburg had been occupied
previously wholly by the monuments of but
one of the parties to that conflict, but the admission
of a monument to the lost cause gave
it a national instead of a sectional character,
and pointed to a time when the victories and
defeats of the civil war will be considered
common property. Speculation in mineral
lands in parts of the South was wonderfully
profitable in 1886 to the individuals concerned,
and there has been a considerable development
of the iron industry in several places.
This development has been exaggerated
somewhat, perhaps, and has been artfully
turned into an argument for protection by
the high-tariff interest. As respects the vastly
larger agricultural interests of the South, the
past year, while a fairly good one, has not, it
is believed, been as prosperous as some
that have preceded it.

The condition of affairs in the old world
contrasts painfully with the actual condition
and prospects of the United States. While
there were no great wars in the other hemisphere
during 1886, the seed out of which
war on a tremendous scale will develop was
sown, it is believed, in that year. The enforced
abdication of Price Alexander of
Bulgaria reopened the Eastern question,
after the revolution in Eastern Roumelia,
with its sequels in the war between Servia
and Bulgaria and the threatened assault
by Greece upon Turkey, had apparently received
its quietus. Austria announced her
purpose to resist by force of arms, if necessary,
the occupation of Bulgaria by Russia,
and England and Italy followed the Austrian
declaration with declarations to the
same effect. War preparations since then
have proceeded with redoubled activity, and
the coming spring, it has been predicted,
will initiate a conflict the issue of which
will be the ruin of one or more of the great
powers and large changes in the map of the
old world. Germany wishes to add 41,000 to
her standing army in view of a prospective
struggle with France or Russia, or both.
France, despite frequent changes of ministries
and internal discord continues to enlarge
her military strength. England, besides her
unsettled questions abroad, has had to face
the Irish question, the stand in regard to it
taken by Mr. Gladstone having brought the
issue to a crisis. The prime minister's appeal
to the people of the United Kingdom for
leave to give Ireland a Parliament of her
own resulted in the return of a majority of
118 against his proposal, and the division of
the liberal party into two or more hostile
sections. Whether the fates are favorable
to a realization of Mr. Parnell's
hopes is a question upon which the
character of the combinations formed in Parliament
during the coming year will throw a
good deal of light. The annexation of Upper
Burmah was not completed without large
expenditure for the suppression of the bands
of rebels with which the country was infested.
Emin Bey, a governor of an equatorial
province appointed by Gen. Gordon, it
was not long since learned, still holds out
against the Mahdi's followers, and the sending
of an expedition for his rescue was an
interesting event of the closing year. Upon
the Red sea littoral the power of Osman
Digna, so long a menace to Egypt, collapsed
some months ago under the attacks of friendly
natives. West Africa experienced an irruption
of Arabs who undid much of Mr. Stanley's
work upon the Upper Congo. South
Africa enjoys unwonted quiet, and the discovery
of enormously productive gold mines
promises a rapid development of that quarter
of the world. But for the cloud of war that
overhangs Europe the outlook fer the old
world, as for the new, might be said to be
everywhere bright and promising.

The country is becoming rich in
schools and colleges. Public Opinion of
Washington figures out that the distinctively
scientific schools number ninety-
two; manual schools, 255; medical colleges,
145; institutions for the higher
education of women, 236; law schools,
fifty-seven. There are 370 universities
and colleges in the United States with
65,522 students in attendance.
_________________________________________

AN ENGLISH CRITIC ON HENRY JAMES.—The
love passages between a Southerner who had fought
under Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson and a Boston professional
female orator, who "speechified as a bird
sings," might have made an amusing magazine article.
Three volumes of them would cloy the appetite of a
Lydia Languish or the hungriest heliuo librorum in a
German University. No person endowed with the
smallest modicum of judgment can fail to acknowledge,
and within due limits to admire cordially, Mr. James's
talent. His power of analysis is very great; his anatomization
of motive is as skilful as it is wearisome; his
dissection of men and women is performed with an imposing
and impassive neatness. But where are his
sympathies? Has he any loves? or hatreds? or
passions? or prejudices? Why, when we have come to
the end of one of his stories, do we instinctively make for
our book shelves and fetch down a volume of Fielding or
Thackeray or Dickens, or even of Bulwer Lytton or
Harrison Ainsworth, if better is not to be had, with
which to savor our palate, for, as the Main of Uz says,
"Is there any taste in the white of an egg?"—[The
Saturday Review.

A pleasant Sociable was held at the
residence of Dr. Wm. E. Magruder,
near Olney, on Tuesday evening.

Francis Miller, Esq., will deliver a
lecture at the Sandy Spring Lyceum on
next Tuesday evening, 20th inst. Subject—The
Good Old Times.

Mr. Francis Snowden and Miss Fannie
Brooke Stabler, both of this county,
were married at Sandy Spring Meeting
House, by Friends ceremony, on the
18th inst.

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