The Sun.
London, England, 1855-11-17 00:00:00

THE EXHIBITION OF PHOTOGRAPHS.

TAKEN IN THE CRIMEA BY ROGER FENTON.
The most attractive exhibition in London is still
open to public view at 5, Pall-mall-east, the Gal-
lery of the Old. Water Colour Society—the extraor-
dinary exhibition of some three hundred PHOTO-
GRAPHIC PICTURES taken in the Crimea during the
spring and summer of the present year, by Roger
Fenton, Esq., a gentleman who has earned for
himself this time forth the reputation of being
one of the most eminent of living photographers.
We have no record in past days of anything at all
comparable to this really astonishing exhibition.
It is beyond all manner of question the result of
an enter prise obviously and entirely unparalleled.
For this enterprise we are indebted in the first in-
stance to the firm of the Messrs. Thomas Agnew
and Sons, the distinguished publishers and print-
sellers of Manchester. Satisfied that the under-
taking, however startling from its novelty, was after
all capable of being accomplished by a judicious
combination of skill and munificence, the Messrs.
Agnew determined about a year ago to give to the
world a series of actual sun-pictures of the great
warlike events transpiring in the Crimea. Ex-
pressing it otherwise, we might say quite as
accurately, that they resolved to hold, every now
and then; " a mirror up to Nature," a mirror upon
whose surface there should be indelibly fixed, in a
succession of magic instants, whatever might hap-
pen at the time to be reflected in it. Already they
have so far accomplished their strange and daring
enterprise that upwards of 300 of these exquisitely-
preserved reflections of the scenes and heroes of
the war are at this present moment ranged along
the walls of the Old Water Colour Gallery, No. 5,
Pall-mall-east, to bo seen for the fee of one shilling,
and examined leisurely with the illustrative aid of
a little sixpenny catalogue. Imagine our fore-
fathers during the early part of the last century
having been in any way so privileged. Fancy Sir
Dick Steeleand the Right Hon. Joe Addison loung-
ing arm in arm some fine morning into one of the
popular show-places hard by the Haymarket, bent
upon wiling away an hour or two together over
authentic reflections caught in some strange
magical manner through the wizard glass of some
wonderful necromantic kind of apparatus, and
imprinted in a twinkling upon some incom-
prehensible sort of miraculously sensitive paper--
here a veritable life-portrait of Marlborough, there
an actual glimpse of the " foughten field ' of Mal-
plaquet ! Fancy even as recently as the days of
the last great war—the last war of the giants—
fancy our excellent friends Corinthian Tom, and
Jerry Hawthorne, and ridiculous Bob Logic, doing
(just once in a way) anything as " slow" as saun-
tering down some St. James's picture gallery intent
upon examining for themselves the shadows, the lite-
ral shadows—painted, engraved, and printed in a
single moment of time by the weird pencil of the
sunbeam—of the smoking battle-fields of Assaye
and Vi ttoria, or again of the living and breathing
forms of a Picton or a Wellesley ! Fancy this, and,
while you do so, you are no doubt conjuring up a
conjuncture of circumstances which were altogether
preposterous and absolutely impossible when the
eighteenth, or oven this present nineteenth, cen-
tury, was in its teens, but which is never-
theless not merely possible nowadays, but
actually, and effectually, and brilliantly ac-
complished. Ecce signa—these photographic pic-
tures to the number of three hundred and odd
taken in the Crimea during the recent spring and
summer, during the memorable interval, in fact,
which elapsed between the heroic defence of the
Inkerman Passes by the English, and the equally
heroic capture of the Malakhoff Tower by the
French, a memorable epoch, an epoch memorable
by many a chivalrous passage of arms in the
trenches, midway between that glorious sth of
November, and that no less glorious Bth of Sep-
tember. Later on the remarkable photographic
pictures now in Pall-mall are to be placed more
directly within reach of the general public
through the medium of a splendid serial publica-
tion. Meanwhile, the original suu-pictures them-
selves—not mere copies of them—are being at this
very time exhibited, as we have said, collectively.

THE LATE TRAGHDY AT BRIGHTON.

(From the Lancet.)

We had intended, agreeably to an intimation made in
our last number, to have entered at some length into a
consideration of the many deeply interesting medico-
legal points connected with the mysterious deaths of Dr.
Franck and his son, at the Albion Hotel, Brighton.
The case is exciting the deepest interest throughout the
country, and forms the subject of conversation amongst
all classes of society. The awful character of the tragedy,
the mystery in which it appears to be enveloped, the
unaccountable omissions of the coroner in not directing
post mortem examinations of the bodies, are all topics
entitled to grave, serious, and patient investigation. Did
Dr. Franck, sane or insane, kill his son, and then de-
stroy himself ? Was the case one of voluntary strangu-
lation, the suicide of the father following rapidly upon
the heels of the discovery of the son's self-destruction ?
Did the son die a natural and sudden death from disease
of the heart or brain—as suggested by Dr. Winslow,
in his letter to the Times on Tuesday, the 13th in-
stant—and the father, in a paroxysm of temporary
delirium or insanity, caused by the discovery of the
son's sudden death, throw himself from the window I
Was chloroform given to produce insensibility and
death, or was some potent poison, like hydrocyanic
acid, introduced into the stomach, thus extinguish.
ing life ? How can these deeply important ques-
tions be satisfactorily solved unless both bodies
be exhumed, and subjected to thoroughly searching
examinations ? In the head of the father there might be
found a suffieient extent of cerebral or meningeal disease
to account for insane acts, and to relieve him in
great measure, if not entirely, from moral responsibility,
even if it should be ascertained that he was the cause of
the death of his son. Ail the vital organs of the body
of the son should be subjected to a most scrutinising
investigation ; and should the cause of death be undis-
coverable in them, the stomach and intestines and their
contents, and also as much of the blood a's can be col-
lected, should be submitted to a patient and competent
chemical analysis. Of course the examination of the
body would extend to a careful inquiry, in the case of
the father, to the extent and bearings of the goitre on the
large blood vessels in its locality; and, in the case of the
son, to the condition of the parts underneath where the
silk scarf was found on the neck, and the state of the
air-tube in that situation. The skin of the neck in the
son, and also the hands of both bodies, should be exa-
mined minutely, with a view to the discovery of the marks
of finger-nails. The contents of the phial found in the
room should also be exposed to a thorough analytical
inquiry, and all these investigations should now be made
as publicly as possible.
Connected with the whole case scarcely anything ap.
pears to us to be more extraordinary than the breathless
haste with which the inquest was held after the deaths
took place, only 7 hours having elapsed between the oc-
currence of the catastrophe and the assembling of the jury.
Without doubt the proprietor of the hotel was desirous that
the bodies should be removed from his premises as
quickly as possible. That might have been done by an
order from the coroner, and they might have been re-
moved to the dead-house connected with the parochial
church, or even to the premises of the undertaker em-
ployed on the occasion—a practice which is often pur-
sued with much convenience in the metropolis. The
jury might have viewed the bodies at the place where
the deaths happened, and might have inspected the room
where the deceased bad slept, and the window from
which the father fell—and,then thebodies might have been
conveyed elsewhere, and the inquest adjourned for a
week or a fortnight, thus giving time for all those in-
quiries to be made which the peculiar circumstances of
the case appeared so emphatically to demand. Even now
it is anxiously to be hoped that the coroner will exercise
his authority to cause the bodies to be at once exhumed
and submitted to the anatomical and chemical examina-
tions we have suggested, and in this expectation we for
the present refrain from noticing further the circum-
stances connected with this deplorable catastrophe.
We hope that the medical faculty at Brighton will not
remain passive in this matter, but, exercising a proper
and legitimate professional spirit, insist upon the insti-
tution of a full inquiry into these mysterious and melan-
choly deaths. The scalpel, laboratory, and microscope
may solve the mystery, and at once satisfy the craving
appetite for exact scientific information. We conse-
quently defer any further remarks o* the case, while so
much is left to mere conjecture, and when a correct
course of proceeding may lead to a discovery of facts
which may tend to a removal of all doubt and uncer-
tainty on the subject.

The remains of the late Lord Truro are to be interred
this day (Saturday) at Ramsgate.
JULLIEN'S CONCERTS.—Another of those characteristic
inventions, in the manufacture of which M. Jullien is so
experienced a master, was produced last night, entitled
" The Fall of Sebastopol." It was not to be expected
that the fall of the enemy's stronghold could pass by
without the special illustration of the great musical pic-
ture painter. As in the case of the "British Army
Quadrille," the hero of these martial adventures pub-
lishes a vivid programme of the incidents which the
music is alleged to portray, and the poetical frenzy of
t(t):inted. To de-
any " special
cwolri ircehs
pcoonudl de
ndt nwo
tdhi s
wc rhe
od
mi t twoetabree paeenq
scribe the effect of the music which deals so potently with
this tale of pluck and blood would be impossible ; but if
it is not said that M. Jullien has outdone himself in
realising the busy combinations described in the text we
shall indeed be surprised. The " March of the Allied
Armies towards Sebastopol," which opens the work,
contains some excellent military passages, in which the
motion of the different bodies of soldiers are suggested
with great variety and picturesqueness. M. Jullien
has resorted to all his most vigorous and pungent arts
of instrumentation in clothing the two great national
airs with adequate importance • and with the assistance
of three military bands, in addition to the vast phalanx
of instrumentalists already in commission, we may be
sure the result is no whisper. It will not be doubted
that the spectators were delighted with this imposing
celebration of the great victory. M. Jullien was re-
called at the close of the " quadrille " with immense en.
thusiasm ; and at once complied with the request to add
"Rule Britannia " to what had gone before.

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