The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-02 00:00:00

FITE SU LONl,lo`,,i, FR I AY EV MONG, SEPTEMBER 2, 1864

LITERATURE.

Charles Dickens's New Serial Story.

Our Mutual Friend. By Charles Dickens. No. V,
Chapman and Hall.

With the fifth numbor of " Our Mutual Friend"
the first Book is completed. And—out of all
this same first book of Boz's last story—, commend
us to the two closing chapters of it ! Chap-
ter the sixteenth that is and chapter the seven-
teenth ! Commend us, especially and beyond
all, to the sixteenth ! The chapter introduc-
ing us to poor old (very old) Betty Higden—
to her great grandchild Johnny, the looked-for
Orphan, at length discovered, by Mrs Boffin, in the
flesh, and very chubbily in the flesh, too, as it hap•
pens! Nay, introducing us, besides these (this won-
derful chapter) to a delightful long boy, ycleped
Sloppy—and to two little children (two very little
children) called respectively Toddles and Poddles.
The scene, peopled by these very old and very young
creatures, is extremely humble, a mere cottage room
in a bye-lane down a back street in muddy Brent-
ford. Extremely humble, but extremely clean—

sweet and fresh as Mrs. Betty Higden's
house • room is, with a well - scrubbed brick
tbor, and with plenty of fresh linen, then
and there undergoing pressure in the scrooping
mangle worked by Sloppy. This latter individual
(already mentioned) Master or Mister Sloppy being
described as " one of those shambling male human
creatures borntobeindzsereetly candid in the revelation
of buttons—every button he had about him glaring at
the public to a quite preternatural extent." Other.

wise-defined —" Full• Private Number One is the

Awkward Squad of the rank and file of life, was
Sloppy, and yet had his glimmering notions of

standing true to the Colours." Although as yet
SloFpy has never once opened his big mouth—

- -
except, time and again, to roar with laughter and
for one brief while to howl sympathetially up

on Betty Higden's breaking down for a momGnt
and having a good cry—we are, nevertheless, fully
impressed with a conviction that Sloppy will turn
out to be not only "Full Private Number One,"
as aforesaid, but that he will stand forth
conspicuously, and hold his own thoroughly well,
among that strange and wondrous throng of origi-
.

nols—the Boz Characters. Then, again—Toddles
and Poddles ! Who but the creator of Paul Dom.
bey, and Little Nell, and Tiny Tim—who but the
delineator of David Copperfield in his childhood, of
Peepy playing, at wild beasts under the piano, and
of ever so many more little children, of all ages, from
Tilly Slowboy's charge (in arms) upwards—who,
in a word, but Charles Dickens, could ever have
dreamt of three such little creatures as Toddles and
Poddles, and Johnny ! When Dame Betty Higden,
the last-mentioned little creature's great-grand.
mother, gets him (Johnny) up into her lap,
while having a talk with that dear, kind,
good old soul, Mrs. Boffin, who has come
there to adopt the orpan—Betty, contenting
herself at first with kissing Johnny's fat, dimpled
hand by times, as she prattles on to her visitor—
when, we say, old Betty, at last, (Johnny
sitting there in her lap, "with his chin tucked
in and his lips pouting, concentrating his
blue eyes on the visitors, told shadowing them
from observation with a dimpled arm ")
when Old Betty comes to taking one of his fresh fat
hands in her withered right, and falls to gently
beating it on her withered left—Ah, well, a point
is then soon reached (as we read on) when
the great Master-Humorist of our age—of any age
for that matter—has full and absolute command (as
he has so often had before!) over our tears. " And
❑ow," says Mrs. Boffin—just before Old Betty
takes to gently beating one of Johnny's fresh fat
hands on her withered left,—" And now," says Mrs
Boffin, " concerning Johnny." " Yes, ma'am," says
Old Betty, beating on, " concerning Johnny."
" If you trust the dear child to me," said Mrs Boffin,
with a face inviting trust, "he shall have the best of homes,
the best of care, the best of education, the best of friends.
Please God, I will be a true good mother to him I"
"I am thankful to you, ma'am, and the dear child

would be thankful if he was old enough to understand"
—still beating the little hand upon her own, "I wouldn't
stand in the dear child's light, not if I had all my life be-
fore me, instead of a very little of it. But I hope you won't
take it ill that I cleave to the child closer than words can
&Gl(' AL/A A..., AA' •••• •A- • A. Cr loft rn, "

"Take it ill, my dear soul ? Is it likely ? And you so
tender of him as to bring him home here 1"
" I have seen" said Betty, still with that light
beat upon her hard rough hand "so many of
them on my lap. And they are all gone but
this one ! I am ashamed to seem so selfish, but I
don't really mean it, it'll be the making of his fortune,
and he'll be a gentleman when lam dead. I— I— don't
know what comes over me. I— try against it I Don't
notice me I" The light beat stopped, the resolute mouth
gave way, and the fine, strong old face broke up into weak-
ness and tears.

Here it is that Sloppy, as already related, lifts up
his voice and bellows, terrifying Toddles and
Poddles into a roar by so doing, and causing Johnny
by sheer sympathy to become a prey to despair!
" The absurdity of the situation' at this climax of
it, at once, effectually, as our author remarks,
" put its pathos to the rout," Toddles' and Poddles'
buccanneering expeditions, hand-in-hand across the
floor, across country, one might almost say, in an
attempt to bear Johnny, " crowing, into capti-
vity and slavery "—the fluctuations of this game
—every casual touch (each given with such a tender
hand!) in the desaription —all is, just simply in one
word, charming. Another of those delicate limnings
of childhood and little children—that we read—

through a loving mist of tears (half of fun half of
tenderness)—in the works of our Great Novelist—
descriptions that, once read, we ever after-
wards bear among our most cherished recollections.
Incidents of various kinds!, some of them of con-
siderable importance in the development of the plot
of " Our Mutual Friend," are here related. Inci-
dents, for example, of such importance as the dis-
covery that it is Gaffer Hexam's dead body
that hangs drowned at the end of his own tow-
line—as the appointment of John Arrowsmith
as Mr Boffin's secretary—as the removal of
the Boffins into their grand fashionable resin
deuce at the West-end, with all its consequences,
in the shape of a dismal swamp of begging.letter
correspondence ! But, tempting though the last-
mentioned theme especially is to delete upon, we
can give not a thought at this moment to anything
but the little children.

THE DUKE OF HAMILTON.—" The Title of Duke
de Chatellerault," Bays the Gazette de France,

"which has just been confirmed to the Duke of Hamilton,
is one of the small number of those which the
French kings had created in favour of some noble
foreign families, in order to perpetuate the remem-
brance of great services, or tha participation
in some famous event. James Hamilton, Earl of
Arran, son of a Scottish peer, and of the eldest daughter of
James 11. of Scotland, was by his mother presumptive heir
of Queen Mary Stuart. The Parliament had already de-
clared him governor and protector of the young Queen,
second person in the kingdom.' It is in that double title
the Earl of Arran negotiated and concluded the marriage
of Mary Stuart and the Dauphin of France, afterwards
Francis 11. King Henry 11. gave' him as a recom-
pense for that happy intervention the dukedom of Chatelle-
rault, to enjoy it, he and his posterity, male and female,
The younger branch of the House of Hamilton came down
in direct line to the present day, and is still represented in
Scotland by the Marquis of Abercorn. The elder branch
became extinct about the end of the seventeenth century in
the House of Douglas, a branch of which was substituted
fc., the Dukes of Hamilton and de Chatellerault. The
traoirnission of the title of Duke de Chatellerault in France
had b recognised in the House of Douglas by Charles X.
iu 18-%G; in spite of the reclamations of the Marquis of
Abercorn. The young Duke of Hamilton was born in
1845."

Four. :11E1Y BURIED ALlVE.—Yesterday aftet.
noon, shortly before 4 o'clock, a sad accident, which
has terminated fataliy to two men and serious injury to two
others, occurred on the new line of railway now in course
of construction by he South-Esetern Railway Company
between Deptford ant Lewisham. It appears that at the
time stated a party of excavators were at work cutting
away a portion of the chalk embankment, and had just
completed their work when„ without any warning, a mass
weighing nearly 100 tons suddenly tell, burying four of the
unfortunate fellows, and othe.'s narrowly escaping a similar
fate. Such was the weight of t`he falling earth that a truck
standing on a side lice of rail was completely smashed,
The men immediately set to work to rescue their com-
panions, and messengers went despatched for medical as-
sistance. After a short time tsvo of the unfortunate men
were reached, still alive, and having been attended to by
two medical gentlemen resident in the neighbourhood, they
were conveyed to Guy's Hospital. The other two men,
named Thos. Willbourne and Samuel Brown, both of whom
were married, on being got out were pronounced dead, and
their bodies were removed to the pariat dead-house to await
the corner's inquiry,

of an important question, as sacred as it is practical
and useful—popular education, with its contingent
questions of professional teaching and freedom of
teaching. Oa these points we may easily agree
with the adversaries of the Church. There are
two secondary points of the education question,
which are its gratuitous and obligatory cha.
rectors, which we have to contest. The
Church claims specially the right of found-
ing schools, and that in virtue of the commission
she received from her Divine founder. "Go and
teach," he said to her, and she has ever since gone
on, never stopping as long as schools had to be
founded. The first Councils ordered priests to be
schoolmasters, There still exists a pastoral of
Theodule, Bishop of Orleans in the ninth century,
in which he bids his priests to attend personally to
the schooling of children. What, then, can be
the worth of the pretensions of the Liberdtres—
not liberals, I say, for, like Felix do Merode,
I cannot call our adversaries liberal: any more
than a muratre (stepmother) can be called
a mother. The name of liberals in such
a case is not French. Fenelon and Bossuet are my
true liberals. France and Belgium are united in
language, as they are sisters in Christ. I wish that,
being what yon are, our souls remain ever united
in devotion to Christ and His Vicar, the Holy
Father. But now let us trace up the career of the
Church in her efforts in behalf of popular education.
We can go back to the documents of every century
—say the Bth, 7th, or 6th even. In 589 the Coun•
cils of Narbonne, and later, those of Lateran, order
that priests should go and instruct the children in
their districts, and that not only in the villages
(per vicos), but even in the hamlets or detached
farms (per villas). At the very time when Voltaire
speke of certain classes as ignorant blackguards
(grueux ignorants), who were not to be taught
(qu'on n'enseigne pas), a priest of the diocese
of Rheims, the Venerable De la Salle, was founding
a religious order.of schoolmasters in France, and
the Pope of that time, the great Benedict XIV.,
blessed and confirmed this order, and wrote—
"Ignorance is the origin of all evil, especially among
the industrious classes." In this nineteenth century
two brothers of the name of Lamenais made them-
selves celebrated. The one, on whose unhappy end
I will not dwell, made a great noise but left no
disciple ; the other established schools in Senegal,
in the isle of Bourbon, in the West Indies, for the
education of the children of the Negro slaves. And
now the zeal of our missionaries leads them every-

where to establish at the-same time churches and
schoola. The letters of Saint Francis Xavier testify
to this constant pursuit of founding both churches
and schools lat the same time. And the
society which now has enlisted in its ranks,
the children of Belgium, as well as those of Franco
and other Catholic countries, is that of the holy
childhood, which keeps up schools for Chinese
foundlings. And, then, we are told that there is a
prejudice among religious men against popular in-
struction. We deem some certainly dangerous; but,
then, only when it is given by bad teachers, cud I
repeat, with the eloquent orator yeti heard last year,
M. Cochin, " the worst teacher of all is ignorance."
I bless the progress of inventions, and especially
that which allows me to come and see you here, and
to return to Orleans, without loss of time and datri•
ment to my charge, but I feel that the more these
material inventions are developed and multiplied
the more need there is of a moral restriction.

The march of competition gives us better workmen,
better cultivators, and improves their material con•
dition. Let it march and march onwards, but let
it march in the light of the Gospel. Otherwise all
instructed workmen sill be discontented, and all
ignorant workmen will become paupers. Let not
those who pretend to instruct the people take them

from the guidance of God, and represent Him as a
mere sentiment, something useful, perhaps, but not
necessary, Not necessary ! Why our God made
heaven and earth. It is our God who now multi.
pie at this very moment teaching orders in France,
till I can reckon more than 40 containing 150,000
members. And yet they are not sufficient. And
yet we tiro told that religious teaching is not
wanted. To those who tell us so, we may ask,
where were your schools in France when we
founded ours ? Have you any in Thibet ? we

have ! And then we are taunted with opposing
cdu.“(Lvi, vf ft: alaica. ZUsGrue

them, we do. Instruct them you, also, as much as
you like. But, do not make mothers who cannot
take care of their children. Napoleon I. said to
the mistress of his schoole, " Give me mothers
who can bring np their children I" De Maistre said
that Christian mothers alone could teach their
children to fear God, and not to fear death. In
Belgium you have an admirable law on primary
schools, which is due to M. Dechamps' ministry
in 1862. In France we have been struggling for
something like it for the last twenty.five years. I
struggle myself for it as much as I can. I try not to
insult any adversary, and to be always in the right,
but I must say 1 enjoy particularly, leaving nothing
to say to my opponents. Not long since an im-
portant personage insisted upon it to me that we did
nothing for girls' schools. I had no answer ready
for him at the time; but I made inquiries, and
found that out of the 21,000 girls' schools existing
in France, 14,000 have been founded, and are di•
reeled by the Catholic clergy. On the other hand,
it cannot be denied that the men in power are very
busy in that respect, and are applying the public
money in founding normal schools, &c. The Gene-
ral Council of a department in France has ever
proposed a premium for the schoolmasters who
should marry schcolmistresses ! I do not know,
however, whether they always recollect that
women have to be brought up from the
interior life of a family; that their chief
characteristics should always be self.devotion and
modesty. Women of talent are all very well ; but
among the popular classes only ask their husbands
what they think of them, As for me, I reverence
good schoolmistresses, but my ideal of a girls' school
is that in which the image of the blessed Virgin is
set before the eyes of the pupils, whose school.
mistress goes to communion."

I have given you thus far the very words of the
illustrious orator as far as I could note them. I
feel it impossible to abridge the rest of his dis-
course. It seems to me a profanity to attempt
it. I find that I am reaching tha limits
of my present communication, and prefer to
end here the specimen I can give you of the
matchless and, above all, intrinsic eloquence which
riveted us for two hours and a half to the lips of
the Right Rev. Academician. An involuntary re-
mark was in everyone's mouth who had attended at
the previous meeting, and it was for the highest
praise that could be bestowed—" Montalembert
himself has been distanced." None will acknow-
ledge it so readily as that truly Christian great
man, and there seems no invidiousness whatever in
the comparison.

On leaving the hall I was quite astonished
to find among the crowd an American gentleman,
from California, and his wife, who had both
come up that very day from Antwerp to hear
Mgr. Dupanloup, paying the ticket for the whole
of the Congress meetings, to hear that one great
speech ; and who, although they had but animper-
fect knowledge of French, were overjoyed at having
been present at such an event. In the evening we
had, at half-past seven, a most in terestinglecture on
" Spiritism, Table-turning, and other Spirit Mani-
festations of the Present Time," by the Chevalier
Deglageux Dasmou9seaux.

DEATH OF SIR JOHN RATCLIFF.—BIRMINGHAM,
Thursday Evening.—Sir John Rateliff died at his resi-
dence, Wyddrington, al, noon to-day, after a few weeks'
illness, the immediate cause of death having been diabetes.
The deceased was Mayor of this town three times consecu-
tively, and on the occasion of the Queen's visit to open
Aston Park ho received the honour of knighthood. lie
was for many years engaged in trade in the town, and had
realised a large fortune.
BRANDING IN THE ARMY.—We understand, says
the Medical Times and Gazette, upon good authority, that
his Royal Highness the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-
Chief has seen fit to issue a circular from the Horse Guards,
by which the present very objectionable plan of branding
soldiers is removed. When the necessity for marking a
soldier occurs, the operation is to be performed by the
drum or trumpet-major at the orderly room, in the presence
of the adjutant, and under the immediate supervision of a
regimental or staff medical officer. This is as it should be,
and we congratulate the profession that a medical officer
no longer occupies a derogatory and false position, and the
Duke of Cambridge that be has had the good sense to con-
cede an alteration which was very urgently required,

Disturbances in Syria.

(REIJTER'S EXPRESS.)

CONSTANTINOPLE, AUGUST 21

Disturbances have again broken out in the dis•
trict of Payaz, in Syria. Dede Bey, son of the
caimacam of the district, Mustik Pasha, who was
recently arrested by order of the Government, has
declared himself in armed revolt. His followers
consist of some two thousand mountaineers, well
armed and mounted. Their refuge is in au almost
inaccessible spot in a gulf on the sea, at about four
hours' distance from the commercial port of Alex-
andretta, and has been rendered notorious as the
scene of the assassination of Mr. Coffin, the American
missionary. This rebellious lair commands the roads
from Marasch to Alexandretta (Scandaroon), and
from Adana to Aleppo. These routes are now quite
unsafe, and the commerce from the interior, which
comes down to the sea at Alexandretta, the port of
Aleppo is vexatiously impeded. Mr. Skene, the
British Consul- General at Aleppo, travelling
the c other day from Aleppo to Alexandretta,
to embark there on his leave of absence had two
valuable horses stolen from his escort, although
protected by a strong force. These brigands are
not wanting in boldness. Even the town of Alex-
andretta itself, where there is probably never less
than 4,000 bales of merchandise waiting for ship.
ment or conveyance into the interior, is not free
from their marauding incursions, A band of thirty
horsemen appeared in the town last week and
attacked the premises of M. Derivaux, the local
agent of the Russian Steam Navigation Company,
but as M. Derivaux rapidly collected his people, and
the other European residents hurried to the rescue,
the assailing party Were driven off. Since then
Sureya Pasha, the governor of Aleppo, has, so to
speak, garrisoned the town with fifty soldiers.