The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-04 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOU-BELLS,

Was not peculiar to him ; it is more or less a
characteristic of the age. It savours the talk even of
the yotlng men and women of the present day; it is visible
in the ascetic spirit of pre-Raphaelite art; it permeates our
prose literature, and even makes itself felt in the utterances
of the newspaper press ; it rings with a sweet sad music in
the verse of Tennyson and of the Brownings. Oid social
forms and transmitted ideas have broken up before the ad-
vance of knowledge, and reconstruction has not in all
things kept pace with demolition. The times aro not only
" out of joint," but morbidly observant of the fact. This
may be only the sickening for a higher life ; but the effect
is sometimes that of a conscious death. Poverty, ignorance,
sin, and crime weigh on our minds and hearts more heavily
than they used to dc—not because they are greater in degree
than formerly, but because we are made more incessantly
aware of them by the restless activity of the press. We
burn with a rapid and eager flame as life burns in consump-
tion ; and a mournful sense of evanescence and incomplete-
ness—of change, and loss, and want, and unsatisfied aspira-
tion—lies for ever at the core of our perceptions of all things.
Thus it comes to pass that the leading authors of the day
are almost all shadowed with this brooding melancholy.
Dickens is perhaps the only conspicuous exception among
living men; in him, a hearty physical nature, and a spirit
of jovial enjoyment, have acted as antidotes to the sadder
tendencies of the age. Thackeray tasted to the full all that
is sorrowful in our limes, and gave it out again, like a
quintessence, in his books. Yet we must not confound
the gloom of the present generation with that of the one
preceding it—the sadness of Thackeray and the sadness of
Byron. The two are distinct species of the same genus.
The earlier form was saturnine, despairful, passionate, and
protesting—now angrily struggling with fate, now sar-
donically mocking it• The later development is resigned,
tranquil, half-amused in the midst of its teals, inclined to
make the best of things as far as it can, but thinking th
best, after all, a rather poor affair, He whom we
have lost so recently, and whom we yet mourn, will
live in the thoughts of our posterity chiefly as a
novelist ; yet he had great claims also as an essayist and a
critic. The qualities and habits of his mind directed him
more to the writers of the time of Anne and the early Georges
than to any others in onr mighty range of authorship ; and
he found in them the models of the purely literary part of
his writings. He seems to have been less attracted by the
lurid lights and shades, the gloom and glory, and withal the
somewhat extravagant end feverish painting, of the men con-
temporary with Shakespeare ; and to have turned with a
kindred spirit to the even grace, the polished irony. the
fine worldly sense, the burning sarcasm, and the consum-
mate execution of Addison, Steele, Swift, Pope, and Sterne.
In feeling, he was a product of thts age ; in style, he was a
product of that; and the union of the two, together with
his own piercing insight into the ways and thoughts of
men, made him a tally original genius. lie has left his
stamp upon the century. How far the impression will be
permanent, and how for his influence has been healthy,
this is not the time to estimate. At prssent, we stand by
his new-made grave, and can only mourn and praise.—
London Review.

ABERDEEN GRAMMAR SCHOOL AND LORD BYRON.
Among other traditions, one of the most fascinating
is that of Lord Byron's connection with the grammar school
at Aberdeen. When, in 1792, Byron's mother had sepa-
rated from her husband, the profligate Captain Byron, of
the Guards, she, being by birth a Miss Gordon of Gicht in
Aberdeenshire, had retired to Aberdeen with her little lame
London-born boy, then not quite five years old, and with
about £l3O a year saved from her fortune which her hus-
band had squandered. The little fellow, living with his
mother in the Breadgate, and cstching up the Aberdeen
dialect, which be never quite forgot, learnt his first lessons
from two or three private tutors in succession, the last of
whom he mentions as "a very serious, satutnine, but kind
young man, named Patterson," the son of his shoemaker,
but a good scholar. "With him," he says, "I began Latin
in Ruddiman'a Grammar, and continued till I went to the
Grammar School (Seotics4 Schule),' Aberdonies Squeen,
where I threaded all the classes to the fourth, when I was
recalled to England, where I had been hatched, by the de-
mise of my uncle." The fact thus lightly mentioned by
Byron was, as may be supposed, no small splendour in the
annals of Aberdeen. There were many alive in the town
who remembered the lame boy well, and some who had been
his schoolfellows. We u-ed to fancy the "faction" in
which he had oftenest 'sat; and there was no small search
for his name or initials, reported to be still visible, cut by
his own hand, on one of the " factions"—always, I believe,
without succes3. One school-legend about him greatly im-
pressed us. It was said that, on his coming to school the
first morning after his accession to the peerage was known,
and on the calling out of his name in the catalogue no longer
as " Georgi Gordon Byron," but as " Georgi, Baro de
Byron," ho did not reply with the usual and expected
" Adsum," but, feeling the gaze of all his schoolfellows,
burst intd tears and ran out. But there are half a hun-
dred Aberdeen myths about Byron, and this may be one of
them.—From Macmillan's Magazine far January.

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EXAMINER ,—We did sonic injustice to Colonel
Crawley when we characterised ate of unmatched
irrationality his argument that the guilt of klle un-
tried prisoner Lilley was to be assumed from tae
fact of the legality of his arrest. We had, indeed,
overlooked the reasoning of the President of the
Court upon the same point, and carrying the absur-
dity still farther. " We may assume," said he, " that
Sergeant Major Lilley was a culprit to the fullest
extent, in consequence of the stringent orders green
by superior authority for his close arrest." It is a
corollary, then, that the close arrest of an untried
man under the stringent orders of an officer in
superior authority is tantamount to a conviction of
his guilt to the fullest extent. What need, then, of
trial, unless:indeed it be to conform to the model of
justice established by the famous judge in the courts
below,Rhadamanthus, who heard what his prisoners
had to say in their defence after conviction and
punishment. If it is to be presumed that a man is
guilty because by high authority he has been
placed in close arrest, the fact must carry with it
such a load of prejudice as to make the forms of trial
a mere mockery. Ex parte the prisoner is con-
demned. To hear both sides is a rule of justice
ignored by the President of the Aldershot Court
Martial. The hearing of one side is, in his judg-
ment, enough to warrant an assumption of guilt.
The Colonel had made his charge to the Generals,
and the Generals, assuming it to be true, had di-
rected the close confinement of the accused, and from
that, says the President of a Court of Military Jus-
tice, it was to be assumed that the prisoner was " a
culprit to the fullest extent." Assumption of
guilt throughout, and nothing but assumption To
what purpose, then, do the Articles of War so
carefully provide trial for the accused within reason-
able time, if the orders of a general officer, in high
command can prejudge the whole case, causing guilt
to be assumed to the fullest extent alleged ? The
great Roman satirist asks, in the case of a man con-
demned under the worst tyranny—
. . Sed quo cecidit sub crimine ? Quisnam
Delator? Quibus indiciis? Ruo teste probatit ?
Nil horum. Verbosa et grandis epistola venit.
A Capreis: belie habet, nil plus interrigo.
In Lilley's case there was, indeed, the delator, but all
the rest was wanting—the proof, the witnesses; but
not wanting the letter from head-quarters, grandis
et verbosa, which settled the matter. The close arrest
was directed without any view to trial, and from
that close arrest it is asserted that guilt was to be
presumed to the fullest extent, no trial following to
enable the prisoner to prove his innocence if indeed it
could be possible to do so against the avowed preju-
dice arising from the mere fact of the orders for a
strict sequestration. A preliminary injustice may
thus be made the warrant for a final injustice.
There is no remedy. There is the treatment upon
which is based the assumption of guilt, and
there an end, no trial following, nor having
been contemplated by the superior authority,
whose avowed object was to prevent, not to deal
with offence. Sir Wm. Mansfield, indeed, had to
confess that there was not evidence to support the
charge of conspiracy, upon which, nevertheless, he
ordered the prisoners to be detained in custody, in
defiance of the Articles of War, which would have
given them the benefit either of trial or liberation.
But of what avail are articles of war if military
Dogberrys can be permitted to assume guilt from
the arrest which follows accusation, whether false
or true. And how monstrous is it to hear this pro-
pounded as doctrine by the President of a military
tribunal, and what a key it gives us to decisions
that have hitherto seemed unaccountable. The first
maxim of justice, the presumption of innocence, is
reversed if a rigorous confinement be directed by a
superior authority, and though in the very order,
the admission be made that there are not grounds
to support the charge! Lilley was a culprit to the
fullest extent, because confined by the direction of
the Commander-in-Chief, who found no evidence
against him to go to trial. We have to thank a cor-
respondent for re-citing the memorandum of the
Duke of Cambridge, of December, 1862. We
thought at the time that the force of the reprimand
cotivelikieot only to Colonel Crawley, but also to
the peealetaerals, was not sufficiently understood,
nor .thisapiatice inspiring it duly appreciated. And
we are aware than ever confirmed in that opinion.
There is tie acquittal in that judgment, and none of
its effect is cancelled by the court-martial, which
has sealed the condemnation of courts-martial as
now constituted and conducted. We may indeed
wish that the Duke of Cambridge had gone further
and brought to justice the injustice he censured,
but to the extent to which his Royal Highness
went nothing could be better, and never in fewer
words was so much merited censure conveyed.
LONDON REVIEW.—The Schleswig-Holstein ques-
tion becomes daily more threatening to the peace of
Europe. Led on by the minor princes, the German
people have cast off all the restraints of prudence,
and all regard for the probable consequences of the
war towards which they are recklessly hurrying.
Meetings of delegates from the various representa-
tive assemblies clamour for the immediate separa-
ration of the duchies from Denmark. Prince Fre-
derick of Augustenburg is openly raising an
army for the invasion of tee provinces which he
claims. And as the forces charged with the levy
of Federal execution in Holstein take possession
of town after town, his Grand-ducal Highness
is proclaimed eovereign of the country. It is
true, the Federal Cemmissioners formally dis-
avow complicity with acts that are utterly
inconsistent with their own proceedings which im-
pliedly recognise Christian IX. as Duxe of Holstein.
But they take no steps whatever to arrest the revo-
lutionary movement ; and their feeble protests only
serve to show how powerless are the Governments
most interested in preserving peace, to control or
even to check the mania which has seized upon the
Teutonic race. Indeed there is too much reason to
fear that Austria and Prussia have given up the at-
tempt, are on the eve of throwing off the obligations
imposed upon them by the Treaty of London, and
are preparing to cast themselves headlong into the
popular tide. Their proposition to the Diet to occupy
Schleswig as a means of compelling Denmark to
revoke the November Constitution is little, if at all,
short of a declaration of war. If it be adopted—and
there is no reason to hope that it will be rejected—
the Danes have but one course open to them. They can-
not submit to such dictation on a point on which the
Diet have no jurisdiction without virtually placing
themselves at the feet of a conqueror. If the
Federal execution had been conducted with a decent
regard for the rights of Christian IX. as Duke of
Holstein, and if no threats of occupying Schleswig
had been held out, it might have been expedient to
withdraw the Constitution in order to give time
and opportunity for negotiations. It is, doubtful,
however, whether the high spirit of the Danes
would even then have tolerated this measure, al-
though it is understood to have been urged by Eng-
land, Russia, and Sweden. It is impossible to advise
a concession which is evidently meant as the first
step towards that dismemberment of Denmark which
is the avowed object of the German people. Nothing
appears left to the Danes but to make the best re-
sistance in their power. We cannot believe that
they will be left without allies. The other Scandi-
navian nations must see that the cause of Denmark
is their own ; nor can England, France, or Russia,
without violating their plighted faith, permit the se-
paration of Schleswig. We tear there is but little
hopof averting war now that statesmen have resigned
the reins to agitators. And if war once breaks out who
will venture to speculate on its extent or duration ?
Austria, at any rate, should feel some alarm at the
prospect before her. For the Italians are already
preparing to welcome the long desired opportanity
of liberating Venetia, and Kossuth is once more ad-
dressing the Hungarians. Louis Napoleon makes no
sign, but the most demented German professor can
scarcely fancy that his apathy indicates indifference.
The new year does indeed open stormily. To all
appearance Europe is on the brink of a general
war, arising out of a dispute of the paltriest charac-
ter, and brought on by the maddest folly which ever
took possession of a nation. It would be ludicrous,
if the possible consequences were not so terrible, to
see men who are themselves tyrannised over by a
host of petty despots embarking on a crusade for
the liberation of those who are already in the en-
joyment of freedom : to see a country which has long
bewailed its internal dissensions recklessly exposing
itself to the threatened attacks of two powerful
neighbours for the sake of filchinga petty province,
and to see in the van of this war of nationality
Powers which, like Austria and Prussia, hold in
subjection Poles, Italians, and Hungarians.
SPECTATOR.—At the late Buckinghamshire elec-
tion the hero of the nomination day was, to our
mind, the Liberal candidate, Dr. Lee, of Hartwell
Park. He is described as a mild and gentlemanly
looking country squire, of very venerable mien,
and his antagonist, Mr. Harvey, courteously ad-
mitted him to be " of acknowledged ability, of wide
astronomical and meteorological celebrity, of broad
acres, and of good county family." If to this we
add that from his courtesy and benevolence he is
equally beloved by his friends and tenantry, it
would seem that the Liberals were provided with a
model candidate, and so indeed they were, for a
Caristmas election. When the venerable old man,
with his
.gray hairs, and voice " feeble, but dis-
tinct," came to the front of the hustings, it
seemed as if we had got back to an older election
in Worcestershire, which is as real to this genera-
tion as if it had actually happened. For of the can-
didate for Buckingha ashire we may truly say that
" all who know that shire are very well acquainted
with his parts and merits. He is a gentleman that
is very singular in his behaviour, but his singularh
ties proceed from his good sense, and are contradic
tions to the manners of the world, only as he thinks
i iii '"zld 'mug. ilowev;:r, this humour