The Sun.
London, England, 1855-08-24 00:00:00

I wish to put forward gloomy views on any and
I every occasion. Far from it. We never felt
more sanguine as to the complete triumph of our
arms than at this moment. We never were more
confiident that Russia would eventually, and per-
haps ere long, be thoroughly humbled, and be-
come suitors for peace on much more stringent
terms than those so arrogantly and contumaciously
rejected at Vienna. But even should it be so, our
Irejoicings at the happy terminatiou of the War
would not in any degree be. lessened because we
had made ample provision for its energetic con-
tinuance, and that the outlay which had in some
degree contributed to that felicitous result had
thereby been rendered unavailing. .

England is the land of testimonials. The
gratitude of individuals, in some degree, seeks to
compensate the benefactors, either of the com-
munity or of a district, for the apathy and in-
difference of the Government. The zealous and
enthusiastic pastor discovers that his labours have
been appreciated by the presentation of a bible, a
tea service, or possibly a purse of sovereigns.
The persons who take a leading part in promoting
any great object frequently receive a recognition
of their efforts from their collaborateurs, which are
alike honourable to those who give, and to those
who receive. We look on these tributes of affec-
tio , and grateful remembrance with peculiar
fa . ~,,, 'tether they be bestowed as a pecuniary
recomence to those who have expended time,
trouble, and money, for the public good, or are
applied to the creation or promotion of some
institution that may at the same time supply a
great public want, and commemorate the name
and services of the meritorious individual.

The latter is, of course, the form most bene-
ficial to the community, inasmuch as an object is
attained—which of itself should command the
sympathy and contributions of every person able
to spare his mite to the good purpose, while it
affcrds the deepest and purest gratification to the
party whose name is associated therewith.

I At present there is a project under considera-
tion which requires only to be named to command
the most enthusiastic support. Every one has
heard of Miss FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, of the
lady whose active benevolence and untiring and
judicious labours so greatly alleviated the suffer-
ings of our sick and wounded soldiers in the East.
Her name has become a " household word," as
the true heroine of the 19th century. It was
not merely that she, in the possession of youth,
beauty, wealth, position in society, all in fact that
could render life desirable, was willing to undergo
toils and privations from which those bound to
earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow
might well shrink—such instances of self-devo-
tion are happily not rare amongst the gentle sex,
of whom she is so fitting a representative—it
was not that she had the courage to inaugurate a
movementrequizing such untiring energy, or that
such miraculous success attended her self-imposed
labours, and that in a sphere from whence
many of her amiable sisters might well shrink
—all these are matters deserving of the highest
praise—but Miss NIGHTINGALE possesses still
higher claims to the national gratitude. She
appeared as a reformer, who not merely in-
dicated a mode of remedying a crying grievance,
an evil of immense magnitude, but stood boldly
forward to put her own precepts into practice,
and t 3 prove the efficiency of the remedy she had
devised. In vain did prudence counsel the seve-
rity of the ordeal she was about to encounter—in
vain was the annoyance which she might have to
undergo from the thoughtlessness or intentional
rudeness of uneducated soldiers hinted at—no
selfish care or personal consideration slackened her
noble zeal, or retarded for a moment her sacred
mission ; and it is only due to the gallant
sufferers to say that her confidence in their
honour and gratitude was completely justified.
No inconsiderate expression or action gave her
cause to regret that she had followed the dictates
of her benevolent heart, or endeavoured to
assuage the sufferings of her gallant countrymen.
Surely, then, if over a person could be regarded
as a national benefactor—if we still respect the
memory of HOWARD the philanthropist, who spent
his life in the improvement of prisons, we may
place Miss NIGHTINGALE in the foremost rank of
the friends of humanity of all ages, and should
strive to give expression to the admiration and
gratitude which must be entertained by every
true-hearted Englishman ! aye, and Englishwoman.
She is, indeed, eminently worthy of a testi-
monial ; and one has been suggested that would
be worthy of her. It is known that the long-
cherished " wish of her heart," has been to found
an hospital in London, and to work it on her own
system of unpaid nursing. It is a thought
worthy of the woman, and should it not be grati-
fied to its full extent? Whoisthere who could refuse
to aid and assist in such an undertaking, to bestow
from the superfluous means, with which he has
been endowed by Providence, some portion towards
the establishment of the "Nightingale Hospital !',
The project requires no advocacy—the mere
mention is sufficient to enlist every one in its
favour. We shall, by its means, get rid of the
SAIREY GAMPS and BETSY PRIGS, and replace
those disgraces to womanhood by ornaments to
the gentle sex. It is only necessary say that a sub-
scription list is about to be opened at Messrs.
COUTTS'S, to insure that those who have the ability
will also have the will to send in their contribu-
tions to the "Nightingale Hospital Fund," for
presentation to Miss NIGHTINGALE on her return
to England, so as to enhble her fully to carry out
her laudable project.

To dwell on revelations that Attach's disgrace-
ful stigma on our character as a, commercial na-
tion, exhibiting on the one hand alarge propor-
tion of our tradesmen and manufacturers as the
worst of swindlers, and the purchaiers of their
commodities as the most qrekioiisly - foolish of
dupes, is anything but a gratifying task. t Unfor-
tunately, however, it is an incumbent duty; and
while we would fain have held our peace with
regard to the adulteration of articles of daily
consumption, the frightful extent to which it has
been shown that system has reached, the neces-
sarily deadly nature and vast magnitude of its
results, 'the encouragement held out to honest
manufacturers and traders, and the certainty of
an effective blow being administered to it by con-
tinued exposure, are irresistible inducements to
call attention once more to the subject.
The reader doubtless entertains a high opinion,
as 'we do, of American smartness—or, to call a
spade a spade—rascality, and has, in all proba-
bility, felt his admiration of the free citizens of
the United States, with their industry, enterprise,
and various moral virtues sink now and then
towards zero when he has come across some spicy
Story of wooden nutmegs sold for the veritable
kernel from the spice islands—i—of ingenious and
productive swaps—of lumber " notions " cleverly
got rid of by ROSIN'S-like descriptions and a
raffle—of clocks, sold at cent. per cent. or more
profit, whose railieulous virtues before sale have
resolved themselves into the power, to go after—
of mermaids that were never drawn' by net or
caught bY-116-51' dra."6Elifizillions and hookiii; ilia

coin out of their pockets—of old women, guiltless
of half their years, serving to make the fortunes
of knaves warm by pretending to have nursed an
honest man—of woolly horses appropriately found
in the Rocky Mountains, and of Tom THUMBS im-
pudently foisted on the credulity of Courts, to
kiss the lips of our maidens, and, in effect, dive
with gusto into the pockets of their friends. If
so, the feeling did him credit in so far as his
censure was discriminate ; but when the next tale
of American smartness reaches him, let him re-
member what has been practised, and is still being
so, at home.

Vulgar, impudent, and audacious as such frauds
are they only go to pick pockets, lower morals,
and perpetuate knaves and fools. They don't sap
the citadel of men's lives—they don't lay the seeds
of incurable disease—they don't weigh down the
blossom of childhood to the grave—they don't
sallow the manly cheek and bring the crimson
dawn of death to tincture the cheek of beauty—
they don't call for incessant drastication or per"-
petual drenching. A man may outlive a thousand
cheatings; he can only be once killed with poison.
A wooden nutmeg may try a lady's temper, but
grated wood in her possets is not so bad as alum,
copperas, pearlash, and ammonia in her bread.
A clock at double price, and with no qualities out
of a hundred vaunted of it but one—that of telling
the time in its own way—may be worthy of an
unsaintly ejaculation, and provocative of no
prayers but prayers for patience ; but jars of
pickles verdant with verdigris, a cruet-stand a
very laboratory of poisons and nastiness, such as
horse-juice and tannin, red lead and vitriol, ar-
menian bole, ochre, and copper, are enough to
make the stoutest start. The mermaid was
an impudent draught on American credulity, but
not quite so bad as that which offers
you as a wholesome beverage an infusion of malt
strengthened with sugar, bittered with quassia
instead of hops, and doctored with grains of para-
dise, sulphate of iron, cocculus indicus, lime, &c.
The woolly horse was an audacious myth, but
those who believed it ha not to swallow chicory,
and chicory adulterated with articles the bare
mention of which is enough to make you sick ;
nor had they, as its victims, to drink tea prepared
from Bohea, a fifth time infused, redried, and
curled together, or otherwise mixed with wil-
low, sloe, and other leaves, coloured and polished
with black lead, Prussian blue, and chromate of
lead ; nor were they called on to mince at cakes
made of potato flour instead of arrow root, and
sweetened with coppery preserves ; nor at jellies
guiltless of isinglass, and trembling on feet of
gelatine. The old nurse of WASHINGTON was
a Methuselative imposture, but the decrepit old
dame didn't ask you to swallow along with her
port and sherry, hot with spirit and cayenne,
and bodied with catechu, kino, and logwood, nor
spirit cetherealised with nitric acid, and made
ardent as the peppers of the Tropics. Nor were
you required to take her with a pinch of ochre,
glass, sand, saltpetre, ammonia, and fermented
and dried tobacco refuse sold under the misnomer
of snuff; nor, if disposed to smoke her, to do so
with earth, sugar, oil, sand, treacle, ochre, salt-
petre, and hemp-dust. Tom THUMB was a
mighty humbug, though but an impudent little
dog in other respects ; but his osculations, how-
ever much they might disgust tho fastidious of the
other sex, were not so bad as the poisoned kisses
sold at every confectioner's shop. Whatever they
were they brought to no fair lips, young or old, the
verdigris, the Prussian blue, the lead, the arsenic,
the mercury (vermillion), the smalts, the chrome
yellow, the warehouse scrapings that daily
find their way to them in the shape of
sweetmeats through the ignorant kindness of
parents and relations, nor, we must add,
hard as all these things were to swallow,
were they so bad as to have palmed on you
damaged or poisoned drugs for genuine, to rely
on opium, aloes, rhubarb, and scammony in your
hour of need, and discover by the effects or no
effects, that " they are all something else." In
conclusion, while pointing out the turpitude of
these adulterations, and administering a correc-
tive to national vanity, we are far from express-
ing an opinion that American morality is superior
to our own. What we have aimed at has been
to indicate that a system deserving the most in-
tense moral reprobation is in vogue among the
tradesmen in this country, that (until the
Lancet pointed it out) the eyes of the public have
been blind to the evil, though they could see a
vicious system across the Atlantic, and that its
destruction is imperatively called for by every
consideration of morality and expediency.

We would call particular attention to the Report
we have received of the proceedings of the Con-
ference, held at Southampton, of delegates and
members of Mechanics' and Literary Institutions
of the Hants and Wilts Educational Society in
union with the Society of Arts in London. We
there see the chief local leader of the Anti-Corn-
Law League, together with one of the most influ-
ential members of the Tory party at Southampton,
—Mr. STEBEING —the Archdeacon WIGRAM, and
the Hon. Mr. BEST—in unanimous response and
agreement in opinion as to the necessity of the
abolition of local political patronage, and the con-
version of party appointments into prize scholar-
ships, to be given upon competitive examinations
to the most meritorious candidates, for the en-
couragement of the local and general edncational
institutions for the lower as well as the middle
classes of the community. A leading inhabitant
promises, on behalf of Southampton, that it shall
be got to set an example to other boroughs of a
self-denying ordinance, and the renunciation of
political patronage, in favour of impartial and
competent awards for merit. This movement
will, of course, be slighted and treated as Utopian
by those who are unaware of the feelings created
by recent events in the minds of all classes. The
example of the competition for the Indian writer-
ships has made an immediate and profound im-
pression on all persons connected with the educa-
tional institutions. They have.been brought, by
other evidence, to see the practicability of the
extension of the same principle to appointments
for merit available as prize scholarships for scholars
of the middle classes, and even for merit amongst
the children of artisans. Every zealous schoolmaster
will soon perceive that every appointment as a
piece of party or borough patronage, or political
jobbing by. the Borough Member, is a prize scholar-
ship stolen from one of his best scholars, and an
act of injustice to his own labours. Every middle
class kind of a family will be brought to see that
every such outrage is in derogation of the securi-
ties for the education of his children. The appeal
of the Rev. Mr. BOOT; the Chairman of the
Council of the Society of Arts, for exertions to
secure the stimulus of examinations and prize
scholarships in behalf of the middle classes,
must meet with a deep if not loud re-
sponse. The interests of the educational
associations in Hants and Wilts are essentially the
same as those of the other affiliated institutions
throughout the country. Now, those institutions
at present number 400, and comprehend upwards
of /'O,OOO of the best-instructed and most intelli-
agtetentitiatlejicotedimui.orijttylimi
faT6ht:y3:-n hwarionhowneitthhe_eire.