Despite the rioting, the Government feels that it has at last got the best of the unruly members. From now on they can be fined and suspended and excluded from the Reichsrath until the sentence has expired.
It is to be hoped that the idiotic Dr. Wolff will be given a recess of several weeks. He seems to need rest from his Parliamentary duties.
The unruly party, which is opposed to the Government, is infuriated at the passing of the resolution.
They declare that it was a violation of their constitutional rights, and a meeting was held to decide what they should do about it. Nothing was, however, decided upon.
A terrible fire has occurred in London during the past week.
It is the worst fire that has visited the city since the Great Fire in 1666, when the whole heart of the city was burned.
This fire, though it consumed 13,000 houses and laid waste 400 streets, compelling 200,000 persons to camp out in the country, has always been regarded as one of the greatest blessings London ever knew.
London had been visited by a terrible plague, and the city was built with such cramped and narrow streets, the upper stories of the houses projecting and nearly touching one another, that the infection was borne from house to house, and it did not seem possible to stamp out the disease, because there was no means of properly airing and purifying the city.
The horrible disease would seem to have passed away, when suddenly there would be a fresh outbreak, carrying off hundreds of victims, and bringing terror into every heart again.
Then the great fire broke out. For four days it raged and consumed everything in its path, but at the same time it so thoroughly purified the city that the plague was stamped out for good and all.
The present fire occurred in the most crowded part of the city, in the heart of the business quarter.
London is not laid out like an American city, in blocks and squares, with broad straight avenues running for miles, crossed at regular intervals with wide and open streets.
It is, in the older part, a network of narrow roadways, with courts and alleys lying back of them. The streets turn and bend and twist and go in every direction, and leading out of them are other little winding streets. These side turnings are delightful for those who know London well, because you can turn down here and up there, and cut off corners this way and save miles that way, by threading through these strange byways that lead in and out of the highways.