The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-13 00:00:00

of spotless virtue. It certainly is to be regretted
that in a country of superior general morality like
England the first thing that strikes a foreign eye
should be the display of flaunting, unblushing vice.
The price to be paid for the suppression of that
evil may be too high. Perhaps we shall find out some
of these days whether they do really " knanagri these
things better on the continent."

The Shakspere Commemoration,
As ITSELF SARCASTICALLY COMMEMORATED SY

A SATURDAY REVIEWER.

Surely we have seen the last of it, exclaims our
sardonic contemporary, who adds—To talk Shake
spere on a Shakspere subject--
• • the times have b-en

That when the brains were out the man would die,
Azd ther3 rn end; but now they rise ag,•in
With twenty mortal murders on their crow,,s.
Twenty ! twice twenty times was the Sbakspere
Tercentenary celebration done to death. Every art
and device of mortal man combined to produce the
terrible and ignominouFfiasco of this unlucky scheme.
The two committees which quarrelled about the
honour of inventing what was destined from the
first to fail ; the secretaries who quarrelled with the
committee, and the committee which disavowed the
secretaries, and then disavowed and dissolved itself ;
the somebody who affronted the late Mr. Thackeray,
and the somebody who effronted Mr. Phelps, and
the somebody who affronted Mr. Fechtcr, and the
somebody who affronted Mr. Bellew, and Mr. Bel•
kw who affronted everbody : the Memorial Com-
mittee which passed a solemn vote, "Agreed unani-
mously that we receive £30,000, to be furnished
by public subscription ;" and the public who never
would subscribe, thirty thousand shillings—the
whole thing runs into a parody. This is the statue
that the committee did not set up ; this is the actor
that worried the committee; this is the parson that
riled the actor that worried the committee, &c. &o.
ad infinitum—and infinite series of blunders, break-
downs, quarrels, vanities, absurdities,extravagances.
We thought that we had done with it. But it
reappears. Even the dinner at Stratford, at which
Lord Carlisle presided, was not the last of it—the
dinner which was so bad that the excellent Viceroy
has never recovered from it. Nor was the Prim-
rose-hill oak-planting the last of it, at which the
Sbakspere worshippers and the Garibaldi worship-
pers, after the fashion of rival religionists, got to
loggerheads. Ecce iterunz Mr Hepworth Dixon,
who promised that the minutes of the Shakspere
Memorial Committee should be deposited in the
British Museum, but who will now be called upon,
we fear, to deposit them in Basinghall-rtreet. At
any rate, the Stratford Shakspearian Tercentenary
Commemoration Committee is in a hopeless state of
insolvency. Whether the two Committees—the
London Committee and the Stratford Committee—
ever coalesced, we are not quite sure. Nor are we
cortain whether any Rump of the London Memo-
rial Committee survives to be roasted yet once more.
We remember only that secession after secession,
took place. We have an indistinct recollection that
the Monumental Committee fell to pieces after a
literary gentleman, without consulting the whole
body, drew up the famous programme of a " monu-
ment embracing a statue" in " the style of the
poet's period." Nor can we call to mind that the
Memorial Committee, if it still exists, has ever pre
sented a report, or told us how much of the £30,000
which it passed a resolution to receive has been re
ceived. Indeed, as we are not aware whether the
London Committee is alive or dead, hybernatmg or
wstivating, releep or awake or on a journey, we
desire to say nothing about it. It is only to be
hoped that, when its day of account comes, the
London Committee may present a better balance-
sheet than its Stratford brethren.