The Sun.
London, England, 1852-09-20 00:00:00

THE SUN,

indeed, that there is not left amongst them any more
vitality of hatred than can be found in the roe of a
ehotten herring. The recons'ruction of the glass
edifice at Sydenbam is, therefore, being eff-cted with-
out the revival of any of those sinister hints or sneers
of depreciation to which the public, two or three
seasons back, were so accustomed. There is, probably,
not to be found in the three kingdoms an individual
bold enough to jeer at the schemes of the Crystal
Palace Company as impracticable or extravagant—
al ways excepting, of course, our dear friend Colonel
SIBTHORP. Yet those schemes are of a magnitude
and of an apparent complication so remarkable that,
four or five and twenty months ago, they might have
been reasonably viewed by the generality as more
suitable for the dreams of a visionary than for the
prospectus of a commercial association. The truth is
that, in 1851, so many seeming miracles were ac-
complished by the ingenuity of Sir JOSEPH PArron,
by the industry of Sir CHARLES Fox, and by the
zeal of Sir RICHARD MAYNE, that people have
almost abandoned the old-fashioned custom
of betraying, or, indeed, of possessing, emotions of
astonishment. If matters go on in this way much
longer the organof " wonder" may be quietly sponged
uut of the chart of Phrenology. It is the fashion, by
,he way, of the new generation to be prepared against
any surprise whatever. Insomuch that the petit
maitre of our day—ennuyee, blasé, "used up," or
what you will"—like pleasant Sir CHARLES COLD.
.TREAM, or rather that is to say, in other words, like
our delightful CHARLES MATHEWS, the incomparable
namesake and impersonator of that character—can
pry even into the flaming abyss of Vesuvius, and find
nothing in it." Neither can this self-possession be
altogether incomprehensible in an age when marvels
lre rendered mere matters of everyday occurrence to
~ur children. There was a drama produced on the
stage of Covent-garden some time back, which had
.Lhe good fortune to be twice played by her MA-
JESTY'S servants in the presence of her MAJESTY. It
was from the band of the veteran LEIGH HUNT, and
was called " A Legend of Florence." In this drama
we remember one Fran) Di. RIVA is made to speak
as follows—his remarks being uttered in the age of
LEO X., and in one of the streets of old Florence :
" The wild man's dream,
Or what he might have dreamt, when at his wildest,
Is, to the civilized man, his common place :
And what should time so reverence in ourselves,
As, in his due good course, not still to alter."
" Till chariots run some twenty miles an hour ?"
suggest, his companion, derisively. " Ay," says DA
RIVA, " thirty or forty."

- " Oh! oh! Without horses?
Say, without horses."

" Well, to oblige you,—yea"
" And sailing boats without a sail! Ah! ha!
Well, glory be to poetry and to poets!
Their cookery is no miocing! Ah! he! ha!
They certainly, while they're about it, do
Cut and carve world's out with their golden swords
To which poor Alexander's was a pumpkin."
Not merely, however, have the dreams thus humour-
ously imagined been long since realized by the fiery
dragon of the steam-engine, carrying us upon the
seas without a sail, and upon land thirty or
forty miles an hour without horses—but in a
thousand other particulars the phantasies
of the day-dreamers of old have become,
indeed, our daily commonplace. When our
portraits are taken by the sunbeam, when we can

talk a thousand miles apart with flashes of lightning,
when we can grow coffee from a transparent solution,
and read with our elbows by clairvoyance, and dis-
cover planets not with the accidental sweep of a teles-
ope, but with the precision of an algebraic calcula-

tion,—it is scarcely possible that there should be much
room left for the simple emotions of surprise or
amazement. The wonderful achievements of 1851
seem to have set the finishing seal to this self-collected
complacency. By the beginning of that memorable
year we had seen a palace sprout from the greensward
of Hyde-park as magically as the famous structure
ouilt in a single night by the genie of the ring for
Prince ALADDIN ; and a palace that contained more
gorgeous curiosities than were ever conjectured to be
possible by the imaginative young lady who told the Sul-
tan Caliph the stories of the Arabian Nights' Entertain-
ments. The rapidity with which the Crystal Palace
,f the Exhibition was constructed, under the auspices
of Fox and PAXTON, was such, in truth, that the
public are now prepared for "anything" in re-
ference to the labour of its reconstruction
amongst the rural scenery of Sydenh,:tn. When
we hear, therefore, that the foundations are al-
ready hastening towards their completion, the in-
elligence comes to us 53 a mere matter of course.

We are not at all astonished at the catalogue of
ne tnaterials employed—the hundreds of braciogc,
:ne thousands of girders, the millions of railing], the
:wiles of gutters, the acres of glass, and the moun-
rAins of sashbars. We feel no amazement at the news
-hat the garden] are already being marked out for
inure cultivation. It sounds to us simple enough to
le told that OWEN JONES and DIGBT WYATT are tra-
velling here and there into the remotest corners of the
European Continent, to collect ideas of novel decora-

'ton and embellishment. Dr. LATHAM has of course
undertaken the management of the ethnological de-
partment. Professor ANSTED has of course accepted
the office of arranging the geological illustrations.
We shall only be surprised it FARADAY does not bot-
tle up some of the electric belt of Saturn in a Leyden
Jar for the shelves of the Crystal Palace Laboratory,
and if OWEN does not add to the zoological treasures
of the establishment an infant Mastodon or a sucking
Pleisiosaurus.

Some of the guessers at intelligence announced a
week or ten days ago, that Mr. DISRAELI had pre-
pared his Budget, submitted it to his colleagues, re-
ceived their unanimous consent to all its propositions,
and was quite ready to make his financial statement
as early in November as was practicable, consistent
with the swearing in of the new Parliament, the pass-
ing of the Standing Orders (which, by the way,
ought to be carefully revised, inasmuch as they often
override Statutes of the Realm), and the disposal of
the routine business following the election of Speaker,
the delivery of the tell-nothing document called "The
Speech from the Throne," and the mock discussions
on the Address ~ which, as usual, is merely an echo
of the Royal s Speech." Now, we very much doubt
the truth of
probable this circumstantial assertion. It is ex-
tremelyy
difficulties
e that Mr. DISRAELI, AS Chan-
cellor of the i
is '
Exenequer has applied himself, with
h wonted industry and ability, to master
the man
of National Finance ;
for the Right Honourable Gentleman is deter-
mined, we Presume, I. ..
0 earn his salary, and to
fi
aexpectationsalso,
that
he
of his friends and followers. It
i has sketched the rough plan of
a budget which will endeavour to be at once popular
and productive. It is not unlikely
ts probable,lfil the
that he may even
consult some of his colleagues, severally, upon the
leading points which have occurred to him as practi-
cal and rengible ; but that he has completed his
got it in his pocket,
budget, and has
with the Cabinet "approved" endorsed upon it, ap-
pearsthat Colonel SIBTRORP
as unlikely as should
become Chairman of the Crystal Palace Company ; or
that GEORGE FREDERICK YOUNG should speak com-
mon sense ; or that Major BERESFORD should walk,
down " the shady side of Pall , -man ' arm-in-arm
hrewsbury
with his correspondent, FRAIL, the S
bar-
ber; or that JOHN O'CONNELL should come over
f'or the express purpose of " dying on the floor
of the House;" or that Vice-Chancellor STUART
should support " Chancery Reform ," or that Row-
LAND HILL should propose a return to dear postage ;
or that Brother JONATHAN should cease to grasp and
brag; or that Punch should ridicule Whig absurdi-
ties; or that Joster BRIGHT should suddenly become
the Parliamentary mirror of politeness and gentle
courtesy; or that, in short, any other very unlikely
and unexpected event should suddenly occur

" To overcome us, like a summer cloud,"
On the contrary, we think that Mr. DISRAELI hag
yet some weeks of hard labour to undergo, before he
can have his budget into anything at all approaching
what tailors call "ship-shape." The laws of taxa-
tion, now existing, are altogether wrong in principle,
and they cannot be maintained much longer in their
present shape. Thero is the Income and Property-
tax, to commence with, which every one (except
Government officials, who dislike the an ticipated trouble.
of a change in the system,) admits to be unjust,
oppressive, and unequal. This we have shown so
often (and we venture to say) so forcibly, that we
need not waste words upon the subject here. All
admit that this impost cannot remain as it is. If a
man have 5001. a year, derived from professional