The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-12 00:00:00

FRANCE•

1 The bulletin of the Paris Observatory gives the
following as the atmospheric state of Europe yes
terday :—" A very heavy
equall coming from the
North of Europe has rapidly invaded the centre of
the Continent, extending from the NE, of Francc
to the greater part of Russia. There is reason to
tear that it will continue to fall as far as the
Nlvditerranean. The barometer has rapidly risen
on the western coasts of Europe, and the mistral is
blowing on
that of provence. This squall, which
probably is not isolated, and the state of the winds
and barometrical pressures on the coasts of the
Atlantic, make us
presume that another is following
closely."
The Moriifetir de la _Rate states that by a recent
decree the salaries of the naval chaplains are fixed
as follows t—Chaplain.in-Chief of the fleet from
B,ooofr. to 10,000 fr. a.year ; superior chaplains,
5,000 fr.
; chaplains of the fleet and of the ports,
Ist clae
0, 2,5C0fr.; 2d class, 2,000 fr. They have
aiso an indemnity for lodging and furniture, and
an allowance for the wine and waz lights used at
the altar,

BOURSE, Ong. 11.—The arrival of Eoglish Con-
sols with rise of j has failed to produce any up-
ward movement in this rairket, which still continues
in the same inanimate state. Threes, for the Ac-
count, are onvaried at 66f. 45c, Mobilier have been
done at 1,005 E, and are now at I,olof. Railway
Shares show but slight variation, with little doing.
The market closed as follows :

4t per Cents .. 95
Do. owl
per Cents
Do. end month 66 40
Credit Mobilier..., 1007 50
Do, end menth 1007 50
sank Shares 3390
Credit Fancier 1215
Roman

' Italian Loan 68
Do. end mouth 68 35
Ditto Threes,
Now Mexican 66 25
Russian — --•
Austrian
Spanieh Threos 19 50
iiolllo Debt
Deferrel

LI

A National Benefactor's Autobiography.

Passages of a Working Life during Half.a Century.
By Charles Knight. Vols. I. and 11. Bradbury
and Evans.

Beginning life as a publisher and bookseller, the
writer of this manly and charming autobiography
has long since assumed to himself a yet more re-
cognisable position, and in his instance it is one
of very considerable eminence, as a man of letters.
Charles Knight we know now-a-days far more as
a man of letters than as a publisher and bookseller.
Regarded in the latter capacity he is to be 87.;03,
only, as it were, in perspective. It seems tows a long,
while now since he kept a printing establishment
at 'Windsor and a bookshop in ":„.ali man. we have
to look beck beyond a coa
Atderable interval even to
recognise him as he yr, as when he had his name issued
from the press, ',zeroes his own counter in Ludgate-
hill, at the bottom far more frequently than at about
the chs::idle of many a popular and widely circulating
plsioication. Yet further back, he has here intro-
duced himself to us at the very commencement of
these ingenuous memorials of his Life—a life, let us
say at once, as honourable from first to last as it
nits been laborious throughout—beyond the open-
ing of this present century, we there behold him
as he appears to himself in his own retrospec-
tive glance as among the earliest of his
personal recollections we there behold him
yonder dwindled down, as it were, by a mere
effort of distance into the appearance of a little
child in a white frock and a black sash I A halls
orphaned child, then but very recently bereft of his
young mother, and as, by a natural consequence of
that event, fairly idolised by the poor sorrow-
stricken widower his father—a Windsor trai.eaman,
more noticeable as a book worm than aPa bookseller.
Between that far-off period anfl. the present hour
stretch back the years deac:ioed in this truthful and
graceful auteibiogra;4. The interval—as will be
found, indeed,.uhave been pretty clearly intimated
here nl3°':, our author's title-page—the goodly in-
terv:si extending between the Now and 'Then being
made up of fully Haif-a-Ceutury of a genuine
Working Life—led off, that half century of a Work-
ing Life, by a " Prelude of Early Recollections." The
result of it all being—what is here most interestingly
related by Mr Knight himself, but what we as among
those numerous and grateful admirers of his,whom he
has for years been helping so largely to benefit by his
labours—knew to a great extent before any of these
memorials appeared, knew, that is to say, from the
niece facts and fruits of those very labours them-
selves. For, applying here that happy phrase of
'Wordsworth's about the child being father of the
man, may we riot put it thus—that the little child
in the white frock and she black sash has developed
into a man sufficiently noteworthy to be entitled,
as we have here eagerly and gladly entitled him at
the commencement of these remarks, namely, as "'A
National Benefactor ?" Is he not so ? Answer this
—any number that may 'anywhere be found of
really intelligent and educated Englishmen! For,
in point of tact, in simplest truth, what are among
the many conspicuous titles to oar gratitude, towards
Charles Knight as a Popular Benefactor P He
hes done more practical good sere ice than
any other English Worker that could be
named in furthering the great cause of
Popular Education. He has done single-handed
among Englishmen in this cause, in the interests
of this cause, in its general and comprehensive deve-
lopment, what William and Robert Chambers have
done together among Set:lima:len. And—without
acing in any way invidious wnile saying so—we
would here add that ()aeries Knight has, in simple
[natter of fast, done yet more than those two emi-
nent popular publishers of Edinburgh. The com-
parison between the two houses, between that of
the Englishman and that of the Scotchmen, has
been originated, not by ourselves, but by one of
our contemporaries. Therefore it is that,
without any imputation of appearing invidious
while doing so, we may here strenuously protest,
as we feel constrained in fact to do, out of a mere
sense of justice, we may here strenuously protest
against any pre-eminence being accorded to
Robert Chambers over Cnarles Knight. They
are worthy rivals, they are worthy contemporaries ;
but, if their names must be brought thus into di-
rect comparison, pre-eminence ought rather, to our
mind, to be accorded, not as one of our contem-
poraries has accorded it, to the reputed author
of the ''Vestiges of Creation," but, on the contrary,
to Charles Knight, to that " good grey head," to
that honest right hand from which have emanated
other nobler works, either wholly original or
thoroughly and laboriously edited, works far and'
away beyond any deistical geological speculation
upon cosmogony that ever was written For, has
not Charles Knight taken his plane recog•
nisably—among the Historians of England ?
—among the Commentators on Shakspere ?
among the most luminous of our National
Eacycloare lists P—among the moat skilled Topo-
graphers of London ?—besides squandering broad-
cast over the land during fully one quarter of a
century all those seeds of truth, scientific, artistic,
and literary—seeds of truth sown by him as the
Publisher, as the Editor, as the Worker, in behalf
and by the authority of the Society for the Diffusion
of Useful Knowledge ? To him we are indebted for
that famous Penny Magazine that was the pioneer
and forerunner of all our cheap and wholesome, of
all our instructive and entertaining periodical
publioations. Upwards of thirty years ago the
" Penny Magazine," under the direction of Charles
Knight, enjoyed (in 1832) an average circulation of
200,0001 Yet, as Mr. Knight has himself been
enabled to say now of that famous periodical,- " in
it there has never been a single sentence that could
lug -ime a vicious appetite, and not a paragraph that
could minister to prejudices and superstitions, which
a few years since were common ; there have been no
excitements for the lovers of the marvellous, no tattle
or abuse for the gratification of a diseased taste for
personality, and above all, no party politics." No
wonder that in the following year the marveiloue
success sehieved by the Penny Magazine induced
a man of Mr. Knight's enterprise to embark
upon even so gigantic an undertaking as the
publication (begun in 1.833) of the Penny
Cyclopaia. Upon the labours of Charles Knight
nowever, as Publisher, as Editor, as Author, iZ
were superfluous here to expatiate. They are known
intimately and they are honoured accordingly. His
"Pictorial Shakspere" is among the very noblest
editions of the greatest of our national poets, the
greatest of all poets. His " London" is the most
comprehensive work upon the metropolis of Engs
land, of the British Empire, of the World. His
" Shilling Library" will always " hold its own
among cheap and popular repertories of
that character. His "History of England"
—utterly mistaken though we ourselves deem so
very many among its views to be—is more intensely
national, is more thoroughly popular, is more com•
pletely a History of England, of the English People,
and not merely of the English Sovereigns, than any
other work upon the same subject that could be
very readily mentioned, His Once upon a Time
again turning here for a moment to his less
ambitious and Wore miscellaneous productions—
surely those who have read it, as we have done, with
so thoroughly enjoyable a satisfaction, will speak of
it only as a sort of model work of its class, being, as
full as an egg is of meat, crammed from cover to
cover with instructive entertainment. And Charles
Knight's Autobiographic " Passages of a Working
Life Daring Halt a Century"—a work two.thirds of
which are happily completed, lying here before ns
in effect, as they do, in these two goodly volumes
out just now submitted to our consideration—is a
literary production that in the pervading style and
manner of it, is very much of a-piece with the
charmingly discursive pages last mentioned. Only
here, in this later work, there is of course the
added interest of a consecutive narrative, perfected,
so speak, by that nameless charm which is in-
separable from all autobiographic confidences. As
affording a taste of the-quiet humour flavouring the
artative of theSe'menririals liereis Mr. Knight's
comical illustrative mention of the manner in which
justice was administered some half a century ago by
,ne of the then magistracy :
Under the guidance of the town clerk, corporate magis-
trates generally got through their business decently. Some-
times they made little slips. Late in the swain an offender

was brought before ono of our mayors, having been
detected in stealing a smock-frock from a pawnbroker's
door. "Look in 'Burns's Justice,'" said his worship to
his son; "look in the index for smock-frook." "Can't
find it, father. Not there." " What! no law against
stealing smock-frocks ? El-- my heart, young fellow,
but you've lad a lucky efrcape."
Hardly so decorous appears to have been the system
in vogue, about the same time, among those who had
the management (even in a royal chapel) of the re-
ligious ceremonies of the Church as by LaVf gsta•
blished : ex. gr,—

I have see-
stalk (- Says Mr. Knight, a stranger civilian
,with his spurs on) into the choir of St. George's
tihapel. The spur was instantly detected ; and
when the bewildered man was surrounded by a bevy of
white surplices as he loitered in the nave, there was no help
for him but to pay the spur-money.
Such inter, uptions to the beauty and solemnity of the
service were not sufficient to prevent their abiding impres-
sions ; and thus the salt of devotion was nut wholly waistied
out of me. I was, however, well nigh rushing into the
desert, in going through the ceremony which was to keep 1110
in the fold. I nad diligently prepared myself for confirmation.
Dr Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury, was to perform the rite.
There was an absence of all solemnity, and even of decency,
upon which I look back with disgust. I still sea the bishop's
officers driving the young people to the altar-rails as it they
were sheep gaing to the lair ; the monotonous formality at
the imposition k,f hands upon the huddled batches who
knelt a few minutes, and then were chased back to their seats
by the impatient ministers of the solemnity. Its failure
altogether to satisfy my excited feelings compelled me into
a passion of tears, and I went home sus told my father that
I would be a Quaker or Unitarian. I think that confirma-
tion confirmed whatever was sceptical in my composition;
and I had to escape into the region of natural piety, and long
dwell there, oefore I could become reconciled to the estab-
lishment which could endure such profanations.
As affording a very striking contrast between
what is and what hits been, the following account
by Charles Knight of the duties devolving half
a century back upon one of the then Volunteers
will be read with the liveliest interest, we doubt
not, by our Victorian Riflemen.
The Cambridge organisation was complete. At Windsor,
the chief business of life appeared to be volunteer drills
and reviews. My father was a lieutenant in our local
corps, and I was ever at his side in those midsummer
marchings and counter-marchings. This volunteering, was
not altogether playing at soldiers. Our volunteer had some
work to perform wholly unknown to the volunteer of Queen
Victoria. He had to pipe-clay his white breeches and
gaiters. He had to polish the bright barrel of his musket
till he could see his face in .it. "Brown Bess" was a
later invention. He had to grease and flour his hair like
a modern tootmau ; and then to wash the grease and flour
out, till he was fit to stand at the counter and sit at the
deak; like an honest tradesman. He had no railway to
carry him to a review ; but marched through the night to
Bulinarsh Heath, near Reading, to take his place amongst
the other bold warriors of Berkshire. The discipline was
not very exact. I have laughed, although I was scanda-
lised, to see an impudent corporal play tricks with his
lieutenant's queue. Rods were sometimes left in the bar-
rel when a volley was fired, to the no small danger of the
colonel in front. We had a yeomanry corps, composed of
the choicest spirits of our town. It was commanded by
a pursy wine-merchant, who was not so well -mounted
as his men. On more than one occasion, when he headed
a charge, they would open right and left, and leave him
behind, when he roared, " Unparalleled in the annals of
war, gentlemen." Full of fun as they were, our volanteers
would have fought to death if the necessity had come. The
volunteer of my boyhood was not altogether unprepared for
war; for there was a ball practice at a target fixed in a
chalk-pit. But, as far as I recollect, the hits were as few
as the ordinary calculation as to the musket-firing in a
field of battle—that not one shot in a hundred tell But
what of that ? There was the same emulation as I have
la juiced to look upon in the noble rivalry of the Wimbledon
meeting of 1563. Though sixty years have made all the
difference between the musket and the rifle, and more
difference in the skill of th 3 volunteer the emulation both
of one period and the other is derived from our ancestry.
From first to last, we have never found the interest
of this work flag in the perusal of it. It is precisely
the very kind of autobiography we should have
expected from the hand of Charles Knight—un-
affected, manly, vivacious, entirely devoid of self -
glorification, andisflgured by evidences of designed
reticence or intentional concealment, and this for
the simple reason enough that a manly, truthful,
honest, open nature like that of Charles Knight had
noshing whatever to conceal. Enough however,
if we close these remarks of oars with two very
brief but sufficiently significant observations—each
of them distinctive of the man—each of them a very
noble panygeric. Firstly, that it will be remem-
bered of Charles Knight that be was the friend and
fellow labourer of Brougham. Secondly, and finally,
that it was more than a mere radiant witticism 01
Douglas Jerrold's when—on being asked one night
by our author, on their way home together, if be
(Jerrold) ',could suggest a fitting epitaph for his
companion's tombstone—Jerrold answered at the
streetcorner, with a hearty grasp of the hand at
parting—" Good Knight !"

Toddles's Highland Tour. With 21 illustrations.
Pp. 150. Rantledge and Co.
Under this ridiculous title—as, " The Strange
Adventures of Richard Toddles and Tom Stepwell
during their Journey in Scotland"—the reader is
here presented with a really useful as well is
entertaining guide book, showing him the way
to a very cheap and, at the same time, a very
delightful excursion. Daring the Nine Days
occupied by Toddles and Stepwell in traversing the
route marked out for themselves north of the
Tweed—these two excursionists certainly contrive
to make a Nine Day's Wonder of it, by seeing so
much and paying so little. For, which in effect
among the sights that ought to be seen upon
a Scottish tour do these knapsacked lowlanders not
see yonder in the land of cakes ? Loch Lomond,
Glencoe, Fort William, Ben Nevis, Killiecrankie,
the Trosachs, Holyrood, Melrose, Abbotsford,
Drybuqh—with a multitude of other famous
localities, hill and dale, river and lake,
inhabited building and deserted ruin—Toddles
and Stepwell visit together. And yet—at the
end of all their pleasant sightseeing and gad-
ding about, hither and thither, they have spent
absolutely not a ten-pound note a-piece! The
sum total of their expenditure from the hun'
of their starting upon their holiday expedition
to that of their return homewards, being jotted
down, item by item, during the course of their nar-
rative—the sum total being given upon the last
page as, to a nicety, just exactly 1:18 16s. 2cl. It
we are not very much mistaken, Mr M'Connell'e
pencil has contributed to this pleasant little gossip-
ping guNe book through Scotland two or three at
least out of the twenty-one illustrations scattered
through it.

IN TERZSTING DISCOVERY OF ROMAN REMAINS.
—Ths excavations in hot Bata-street for the new
wing of the Bath "United Hospital, tl.'e foundations of a
large Roman building have been recently discovery 1.
These foundations are exceedingly stY•ong, and indicate
that the building to which they belonged must have been
one of some importance. The base of pillar, turned upside
down, and built into the foundation, was likewise found,
and appears to have formed part of even an older structure.
This week a further interesting discovery has been made, in
the course of excavating the site of the house lately in the
occupation of Mr William Foote, Lower Borough-walls.
This discovery consists of a large portion of a beautiful tasse-
lated pavement. The pavement seems to have formed the
flooring of a room about 12 feet sVare, and rests upon pil-
lars and hollow tiles—the tiles having be.en used fur heating
purposes. The design of the pavementis differe2 t to any found
mounded
in Bath before : in the censre is a rose, which is se:
by several borders of geometrical pattern. Enough of the
pavement remains to enable an accurate sketch of its entLre
design to be taken, The foundation of the dwelling just re-
moved was built upon this hollow Roman floor, and the pave
meat is in consequence much crushed and thrown out of its
level. A second pavement, composed of larger tesserce, ad-
joins this first one, and appears to have been the floor of a
passage or vestibule leading to the apartment. Tracings et
the designs are being taken, and the interesting remains will
be preserved with jealous core. Some fragments of Roman
pottery have also been turned up in the course of the exca-
vations. The discovery has come just in time for the meet-
ing of the British Association, and is to be regarded as a
valuable addition to the relics connected with the Roman
occupation of the oily of King Bladud.—Bath Chronicle.
A call of £5 per share has been .made by the
Continental Bank Corporation, to be paid on or
before the 10th proximo. •
Daring the last few days there leas been very
little animation in the Foreign and Colonial Pro-
duce Markets, Sugar• have barely sustained former
prices, while coffee has also been rather cheaper.
['ea has been in moderate request at steady rates;
while in rice, fruit, spices, and tal!ow there hay.
)ten no dealings of importance. P.Y.C. on the
spot is quoted 41s 9d, and list three mouths deli-
very 439 9d per cwt.