The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-11 00:00:00

when we were first seen below the clouds we were
coming as from Hastings.
Had we mounted five miles high withant the pre•
cautionary dip we might, and probably would, have
found ourstAves over the middle of the Channel
without the power of re-ascending or keeping the
balloon from the water. In case this had happened
we had prepared ourselves with Stewart's life belts,
admitting of quick inflation and admirably adapted
for their purpose. Mr. Caswell, on learning the
place of descent, did not consider under the circum-
stances that it was prudent to re-ascend, and he
resolved to empty the balloon at Sevenoaks.
The results of this ascent aro remarkable. They
establish the prevalence of totally opposite currents
of air within two miles of the earth, as also tempe-
ratures of the air actually warmer than on the earth
at heights exceeding B,oooft, where usually the
temperature is from 30 deg. to 40 deg. lower than
on the earth, constituting the results of this ascent
as differing from all others, and as one by no means
unimportant in the series.
Lae exact place of descent was Wilderness-park,
on the property of Marquis Camden, who was pre-
sent, and to whom our best thanks are due for kind
assistance: The descent was so gentle that not an
instrument was injured.

JAMES GLAISIIER.

Blackheath, April 10.

Great Robbery of Gold Bars—£3ooo Reward

-_-~_.

On Saturday all the metropolitan bankers, bullion
dealers, and money changers, were served with a printed
notice by the City detective force, at the instance of the
Salvage Association, Lloyd's, offering £3,000 reward for
such information as may lead to the recovery of 63 bars
and 11 boxes of gold, valued at £so,o:fi, stolen from the
treasure in the sunken steamer Golden Gate, off Manza-
nillo, near San Francisco. The bills contain an accurate
description of the bars and boxes, with the mark and num-
ber of each bar, the name of the assayer, weight, and value.
Twenty-five were assayed by Messrs. Hewston and Co., 16
by Messrs. S. Molitor and Co., 8 by G. W. Bell, 5 by
Messrs. H. Harris and Co., and the remainder by Messrs.
B. C. Gevasey, Greenwood and Newbain, Rodens and
Ruhling. There is also one bag of foreign coin missing,
and several express parcels containing bullion. The Golden
Gate was an American steamer, and was wrecked in July,
1862, when a great loss of life took place. The total amount
of gold and specie on board was about £450,000, consigned
to several firms in New York, London, and Paris. and the
whole of it was insured. The underwriters, on hearing of
the wreck, dispatched a special agent to the scene of the
wreck to recover, if possible, the treasure. After conside-
rable exertions a large amount of the gold was discovered,
but owing to the dangerous character of the currents and
climate a great many lives were lost in the enterprise.
Several expeditions went to the wreck ; some failed, and
others were unsuccessful, and the gold in question was re-
covered by one party, who immediately decamped with the
valuable store. It is stated, however, that one of the gang
has been arrested. The gold when shipped on board the
Golden Gate was packed in boxes, and marked thus :—F.
A. S., No. 454; Lazard Freres, No. 217; B. D., No. 12;
H. L. and Co., Paris, No. 141; J. A., No. 28; B. and Co.,
Paris, No. 4; A. G., No. 1, It is believed that much of
the gold has already arrived in London, and that some con-
signments are expected,

Several Fires and Great Loss of Property,

On Saturday and yesterday several fires took place in
different parte, some being as far as six or seven miles from
the others.

One fire happened at 2 in the morning in the premises of
Mr G. H. Attwood, wholesale clothier, 27, Turnpike-road,
High-street, Stratford. The family and servants had re-
tired to rest, when a constabla noticed a flame in the front
shop, He alarmed the inmates and sent off for the
escape and fire engines, several of which quickly attended.
The flames, however, soon fired the whole of the building,
containing about a dozen rooms, and filled with a costly
stock in trade, and were attacking No. 28, belonging to
Mrs Wayland, a milliner, and No 20, belonging to M
H. L. Wayland (private), when plenty of the East London
Company's water having been procured the firemen went
resolutely to work, but the fire could not be extinguished
until the building and the two adjoining were seriously da-
maged by it, The loss will fall upon the Sun and Ulobe
Fire offices.

Another fire occurred on the premises occupied by Alt.
J. Shean, a marine store dealer, 51, Great Alie-street, Good-
man's-fields. The alarm having been given by the police,
Conductor Wood attended with the Whitechapel Royal
Society's fire escape, and found an aged female, of 78 years,
on the landing, whom he succeeded in bringing down in
safety. The steamers by Shand and Mason attended, and
a bountiful supply of the East London Company's water
procured, but in spite of which a building of two floors,
used as stores, at the rear of the dwelling, was burnt out
and the roof destroyed.
A fire, which at one time threatened vary disastrous re-
sults, broke out from some unknown cause in the premises
belonging to Mr. J. Hatton, a cornchandler and seedsman,
situate at 26, Little Portland-street. The flames when first
discovered were raging in the provender lofts over the
stabling, Brigade and other engines attended, and the fire-
men., aided by 60 hired auxiliaries, managed to get the mas-
tery over the fire, but not until several loads of hay and
straw were destroyed, and the building seriously burned.

A SHIP ON FIRE AT BLACKWALL.—About a
quarter before one o'clock a.m. on Saturday, a
telegraphic message was received at the chief station in
Watling. street, tat a ship was burning in Messrs. Wig-
ram's Yard, at Blackwall. Capt. Shaw gave orders for the
engines to be despatched from sundry stations, and also
started himself, as did the Duke of Sutherland, Lord
Richard Grosvenor, M.P., the Hon. Stuart Wortley, Hon.
Captain Howard, and a powerful body of firemen, as well as
the land steamers by Shand, Mason, and Co. Upon reaching
Blackwall, Capt. Shaw found that the outbreak had com-
menced in the large ship under repair named the Princess
of Wales, Capt. Head, of the Hudson's Bay Company, of
590 tons register, which was burning furiously between the
nfidships, This large vessel was lying in Messrs. Wigram's
dry dock, and a fire raging amongst such valuable property
and in such a confined place caused great excitement to
prevail, and the floating engines of the East and West
India Dock Companies were brought alongside the ship, as
well as one of the private engines belonging to the
firm. These ware followed by numerous other engines.
The whole of this force was called into operation, and
floods of water discharge] upon the flames, but being con-
fined below the hatchways it was a work of no little diffi-
culty for tue firemen to reach the seat of the conflagration,
and it was found absolutely necessary to scuttle the ship
Large portions of the ship are destroyed, and she is officially
reported as being severely damaged by fire and the attempt
at scuttling. The origin of the misfortune could not be

learned. -
STEAMSHIP COLLISION AND LOSS OF LIFE.—On
Siturday the particulars were received of a collision
which took place in the East Swin between the Florence
Nightingale and the Admiral, iron screw steamers, resulting
in the immediate foundering of the former and loss of two
of her crew. The Admiral was on her way to Newcastle,
from London, with passengers ; and the Florence Nightim.
gale, a new and powerful steam collier, was on her way
from Sunderland to the Thames, freighted with 600 tons
of coals. Between twelve and one o'clock in the morning
of the 7th, weather fine, the vessels were proceeding in
opposite directions through the East Swin, between the
Gunfleet and Sunk Sand light ship, when the Admiral
struck the Florence Nightingale just abaft the main rigging
on the port side, with such force as to cut her down to the
cabin-house on deck. The ship immediately began to sink,
and in less than six minutes went down in deep water.
Most of the hands succeeded in getting on board the Ad-
miral. The screams of those on board could be heard as
the vessel went down. The Admiral's boat picked up one
poor fellow, but two others Perished. The Admiral sus-

borrowers of
owfhsoewhainvge
3bireaecnniinnetshwe weekly as i
ihlladboitwoefilpatyoianpgply at once
tained serious damage.
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they will not only save the
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einn-
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-

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC jOITRNALS,

THE SATURDAY REVIEW ON THE SHAKSFERE
TERCENTENARY DEMONSTRATION.—Tee late of the
Shakspere Memorial is the lest and drollest effort
of the spirits of malicious fun. Why should this
whole affair have corn?, in every particular, chap-
ter and veree, to such condign and total grief?
There is nothing at all absurd in the notion of get-
ting up a National Shakspere Monument. On the
contrary, it is a thing to be done. Even a Shakspere
Festival has its precedent—a sufficiently absurd
one, it is true—in Garrick's Stratford Jubilee. A
Tercentenary glorification has been tried so often
that we almost condone its absurdity from the fact
that it is only a stupid plagiarism. In itself, even
the formation of the London Shakspere Committee
was not absolutely ridiculous. Mr. Dixon has won
a name in literature. Mr. Halliwell, the co-secretary,
though not without his fopperies, is a man of great,
if queer, reading. In the antecedents of even the
London Committee there was nothing on which to
anticipate its ridiculous break-down. We are not
going to repeat its history. It has disappeared,
vanished, exhaled. Like Aubrey's ghost, " being
interrogated, it made no answer," but, un-
like brey's ghost, it has left neither " a
curious perfume, nor a melodious twang."
The London Committee collapsed in a
wrangle, a fiasco, a break-down, so thorough, so in-
geniously comical, so total, and so absurd, that we
can only account for its ignominious death on the
same theory under which we subscribe to the Stock-
well mystery. Tho Devil, or at least an imp,
was in it. A superhuman, or infrahuman, agency
is necessary to account for a catastrophe so mis-
chievously nonsensical and ridiculous. The London
Shakspere Memorial, however, did not stand done.
There was a Stratford Memorial Committee, and
something at least of the public confidence which
was alienated by the sayings and doings of Messrs.
Dixon and Halliwell gravitated to Stratford. At
Stratford there has always been a semi-religious
fanaticism about Shakspere, and nobody very seri-
ously objected to an extravagant outbreak of it.
Besides, there was every reason to believe that the
malignant influence at work had been exercised by
the completeness of the London failure. No Puck
could be frolicsome or tricksy enough to lead his
victims, if he could find them, a second witches'
dance through bog and briar. Besides, the respec-
tables and the dignified mustered in strength and
dulness round the Stratford Committee. However,
it very soon became at least a suspicion that " the
strange doings" were about to be repeated. It was
like the old ghost story which relates how a family
fled from a haunted house, and how, half way to
the new residence, a gibing voice, in mocking tones
from the midst of a feather-bed, shrieked out,
" Ha' you're flitting are you; I'm flitting too."
Puck has certainly gone down to Stratford. He
will not leave the Shakepere Memorial while there
is breath in it. What but the old inspirer of Messrs.
Dixon and Halliwell could have dictated the Strat-
ford programme ? What mundane wit could have
suggested a Banquet and Handel's " Messiah," a
Miscellaneous Concert and " Twelfth Night,"
" Hamlet" and a Fancy Dress Ball, together with
such a gallimaufry as Shakspearian Readings (of
course by Mr. Bellew), excursions, and exhibitions
of actors' portraits, and could call all this a Na-
tional Shakspere Festival? The witch cauldron in
"Macbeth" and its weird cooks must have been at
work at this strange bill of fare. " Twelfth Night"
and the " Messiah"—that is, " Comfort ye my
people," and Sir Toby Belch—bat the absurdity so
closely trenches on the profane that we decline to
pursue the nauseous parallel. This only we must,
in the interest of decency, observe, that if the
" Hallelujah Chorus" can by any stretch of imagi-
nation be deemed suitable to a bhakspere Festival,
then a fancy dress bell, with its Debardeurs and
Pierrots, is very much oat of artistic and dramatic
keeping. But this is not all. The same ludicrous
fatality attends everything connected with this
outbreak of the Lues Shaksperiana. It infects all
who are connected with it. There is an Executive
Committee to whom the monument is entrusted. Of
the monument we have always had but one opinion.
It is a very proper thing ; and the choice of
the memorial was entrusted to men in whom, or
in many of whom, artists might place great
confidence. We can say nothing as to the
knowledge of art possessed by the Duke
of Manchester, but Mr. W. Cowper's official
position justified his place on the Committee. Sir
eeeeph Pexton once stumbled into a single great
success jn design. Mr. Tite and Mr. Donaldson, as
Presidents of the Institution of British Architects,
justify the choice made of teem, Mr. Beresford
Hope and Mr. elaclise represent very creditably
art in its amateur and in its practical form. Yet
what but the envious instigation of the ancient and
unappeaseable spirit of mischief could have induced
these gentlemen to clog their proposal for the
monument with the outrageously absurd provision,
to use their own wonderful language, that " the
monument should embrace a bronze statue, placed
under a decorative canopy, in the style of the poet's
period ?" What on earth do they mean by a moon.
ment embracing a bronze statue ? and what is the
style of the poet's period ? If they or their trea-
cherous prompter mean architectural art as prat:-
tissd in Shakepere's lifetime, do they mean the de-
caying Gothic of Elizabeth's time ? or the halting
Tudor ? or the brainless Jacobean ? DJ they not
know—if they do not, let them go to Queen Eliza-
beth's monument in Westminster Abbey, and they
may perhaps learn—that of all caricatures and de-
basements of art, of all senseless and barbarous mix-
tures, " the style of the poet's period" is the
very ugliest and most abomilable ? But so it is.
There is a fatality about the whole thing. The
Shakspere blight infects all that it touches. Nine
pod tetigit, he, the malign spirit, makes a mess of.
There only remained the theatrical portion of
the celebration. It seemed impossible to spoil
this part of the Festival. To be sure, the plays
offered at Stratford were like the sermons appraised
by Cowper's tithepayers—plaguy dear. To ask the
most devout of Shakspere'a worshippers to pay els.
in a Stratford barn for what they could get for 53.
in a London theatre, was a bold attack on the faith
and fervour of the holy pilgrims. Bu it passed.
And even the unlucky Phelps affair was beginning
to be forgotten, though it showed that spiritual
wickedness was at work in Warwickshire as well
as in London. It argued something at least unhu-
man to set Mr. Bellew and Mr. Phelps by the ears ;
and Puck must have laughed in his sleeve, if he has
any, when " the foremost man in his profession
claimed the right to play Hamlet on this occasion,"
and indignantly exclaimed " that he had been in-
' stilted by the Stratford Committee asking Mr.
Fechter to play Hamlet." But even this was got
over somehow or other, and everybody thought we
had come to the last disaster. For the London
Committee to have stumbled over the Thacke-
ray difficelty, and for the Stratford Com-
mittee to have floundered into the Phelps
trouble, ought to have satisfied the most spiteful or
evil influences, and hope began to whisper that all
was at last smooth, at least in the Stratford Green
Room. The 'limes has for a whole mouth adver-
tised, "Tuesday evening, Twelfth Night ;' Wed-
nesday evening, Hamlet; Thursday evening, As
Yon Kike It;'—reserved seats, 21. e." We :lid not
like it at all. but we euhmitted ; when 10, at the
eleventh hour—nay at a quarter to twelve—on April
4 (the Festival being to come off on the 231), the
crowning trouble is announced. Mr. Feel:ter follows
Mr. Phelps's example, and retires in grievous dud-
geon. There is to be no''. Hamlet" after all. So that
at last Mr. Phelps's divine wrath is appeased, and
on the foremost man in his profession will not be in-
flicted the indignity of seeing, or hearing of, " Ham-
let" presented at the great " Stratford-on-Avon
Tercentenary Festival" by a Mossoo. More-
over, by a just Nemesis, the indignity which was
offered to Mr. Phelps has been repaid twofold
o Mr ' Fechter ; at least so be tells us, for there
are accusations end reerimi eations on both sides.
" Dr. Flower, M.D., Hon. Sec," announces that
" Mr„ Fechter has broken faith with the Commit-
tee." Mr. Fechter, through his friend" H. Barnett,
Esq."—for, as Warren kept a poet, so actors nowa-
days keep a Secretary—on the other hand complains
that the Stratford Committee has forced him to the
painful necessity of abandoning " Hamlet" by pass-
ing a resolution (which was a sensible one enough,
and only desired Mr. Fechter's guide, philosopher,
and friend, Mr. Bellew, to mind his own business)
" giving the force of truth to the false and unge-
nerous statement spread about by one of your mem-
bers, and published by unfriendly papers, namely,
that Mr. Fechter by under-current and trickery
ways' forced oa the choice of his Hamlet." To all
which Dr. Flower rejoins be:professing his " entire
ignorance of any resolution—in fact, we are
quite ee e loss to know to what resolu •
Lion you refer.; or who are the members
of the Committee to whom you refer." We
think that we can clear up the mystery. The
" spirits" have been at it again. The imps of dark-
flees, who have all along had a spite against the
Shakspere Festival, have crowned their malignity.
They passed the mysterious resolution ; the Eng-
lish of the alleged "under-current and trickery
ways" is thoroughly elfish and diabolic. They have
slily punched Mr. Phelps into heroics, and secretly
pinched Mr. Fechter into aulks. It's all their doing.
Nothing elres.can account for it. 4 series of etch
blunders, a succession of such misfortunes, a con-
sistent course of such mal-adroitness in London
and Stratford, theatre u„,t ?_.
mittee and out of Commiti monument, in com-
ee, in promise and, as it
now seems, in performance, could only la_eye, been
originated by Satanic malevolence and Satanic
skill. No mortal proflciancy in blundering could
have achieved this sublime and superb triumph of
failure. The whole history of the Shakapere Ter-
centenary Festival combines,ln the true Shaltspe-