The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-23 00:00:00

To the Editor of the Sun,

SlR,—Your article of Thursday on the Customs Estab-
ishwents calls forth a few observations from me.
. .

The greatest portion of the revenue of the country is
collected by this department of the civil service. In that
collection a certain amount of responsib lity necessarily
rests with,and trustworthiness is requisite in, the employes.
For this they receive an average salary of £2OJ per annum
after 20 years service. Such being the case, I ask whether
an over eager parsimoniousness is not displayed by the au-
thorities most destructive to a true economy ? For a care-
less and slovenly I.erformance of duties is the probable
result of ill-paid services, and what can be more depressing,
or likely to produce indifference in The discharge of his
duties, than for any man to find that the remuneration he
receives is totally inadequate to his reasonable requi•ements
—and what can be more detrimental to the public service
than that a large number of those employed in it should be
continually struggling against pecuniary embarrassments,
commencing almost from the time they enter upon it.
In the beginning of April were published the Civil Ser-
vice Estimates, and never was a more striking anomaly
exhibited than met my eye in comparing the two offices of
the Inland Revenue and the Customs.
The revenue collected by the Customs for the year 1863
amounted to about 21 millions, and the expense of the
establishment to £771,000.
That collected by the Inland Revenue to about 18 millions,
and its attendant expenses amounted to £1,213,000.
This difference in the expense of the two establishments
ari,es from the superior scale of payment awarded to the
clerks in the Custom House ; and that such a difference
should exist in two departments, the duties in which are
precisely similar, and the examinations previous to appoint-
ment the same, is most incomprehensible.
The clerks in the Inland Revenue-office are not consi-
dered too highly paid, and it seems to me to be only just
that their brethren in the Custom-house should receive
similar remuneration for similar duties. At any rate, that
a notoriously hardworking and meritorious body of men
should receive such salaries as may enable them to main-
tain themselves and their families—a thing which their
petition to Parliament shows is beyond the power of the
greater portion of them.—l am, &e.,

London, May 21, IS6I.

SCRITTATOR.

The Late Fraud on the Banks.

The public will remember that in August last a
warrant was issued for the apprehension of a
Hungarian, named Sigismund Dietrichstein, upon a
charge of having by fraud and conspiracy obtained
the sum of £lO,OOO in Bank of England notes, with
which he absconded, and at the same time a large
reward was offered for his apprehension.
The warrant was obtained at the instance of Mr.
Muliens, the solicitor to the Bankers' Association;
on behalf of two of the City banks, from whom the
money had boen obtained, and the circumstances of
the case were somewhat peculiar. It appeared that
Dietrichstein had carried on business in Old Broad
street as a merchant, and was considered a person
of responsibility arsd credit, and he kept an
account with two bankers, one at the
West-end of the town and the other in the
City, and presented all the outward appearances
of wealth and respectability, There was no doubt,
however, from what subs, quently occurred, that
these appearances were entirely fallacious, and that
Dietrichstein, in conjunction with one or two others,
had concocted a deep-leil scheme of fraud, which
was carried out in a most ingenious manner. He
had been in the habit of speculating on the Stock
Elchange, and in the month of August It Pppeared
that he purchased for the account a large %;nantity
of foreign bonds. The account day was Satuide.;.,
and on that day he received the bonds, and gave
cheques upon his bankers for the amount. As these
cheques were crossed and Sunday intervened, two
days elapsed before the fraud could be discovered,
but it turned out that Dictrichstein had with-
drawn the whole of his money from the bankers
except a very small sum ; but when this fact was
discovered it was found that he and his wife and
child had left England. It should be stated that
the moment he obtained possession of the bonds he
placed them in the hands of two of the City bankers
as security for an advance of £lO,OOO, which amount
he received in Bank of England notes, and took
with him when he departed. Upon these facts be-
coming known an application was made to the Lord
Mayor upon the subject, but it seems that at first
there was come doubt as to the character of the
offence that had been committed, the circumstances of
li the alleged crime being somewhat novel; but in the
result a warrant was granted for the apprehension,
of Dietrichstein upon the charge of fraud and conspi-
racy. This warrant was placed in the hands of Moss,
one of the City detectives, fur execution, anti ht
started off, accompanied by Mr. Pollaky, in pursuit
of the fugitive. After a long chase the officer suc-
ceeded in arresting him at Pestb, in Hungary, and
in his possession there was found a considerable
portion of the money with which he had absconded,
and a good many of the notes also appeared to have
been changed by his wife. Dietrichstein was then
conveyed to Vienna, and an application was
made to the Austrian government for his ex-
tradition, but Cunt Rechberg, the Austrian
minister, refused to deliver him up on the
ground that he was not charged with felony,
which offence alone was the subject of the ex-
tradition treaty, but merely with fraud, and Mr.
Mullens, who had himself gone to Vienna for the
purpose of endeavoaring to procure the delivering
up of the prisoner, was obliged to return to Eng-
land, leaving him in the custody of the Austrian

It appears that the matter has since been brought
to a conclusion by the whole of the money that was
obtained by Dietrichstein having been repaid. As
above stated, a considerable sum was in his posses
sion when he was apprehended, and the whole of
the remainder has since been given up. The bonds
that were obtained will consequently be restored,
and no further proceedings will be taken with re-
ference to the charge.

Great Conflagration at Victoria Docks.

Yesterday (Sunday) morning, at a few minutes
before one o'clock, an electric telegraph message was
received at the carious stetions of the Fire Brigade
that a serious conflagration was raging on the
Hudson-wharf, Victoria Ducks. This property, US
is well known, occupied a large superfices, whereon
were erected sundry factories belonging to Messrs
Odam and Co., the representatives of the Patent
Blood Manure Company.
The first discovery of the fire was made by a
police constable of the K division, who in passing
along bis beat perceived smoke in groat volumes
issuing from the factory nearest the eastern end.
Thts part of the factory was 200 feet long and 116
broad. It was termed the vitriol department, and
contained no less, it is stated by the manager, than
3,000 tuns of oil of vitriol. The engines quickly
arrived, but in spite of every exertion the flames
were not qacnched until the lapse of nearly nine
hours. The. damage is very extensive. The boots
and uniforms of the firemen and the hose of the
engines sufLred some injury from the vitriol that ran
out of the building.
As soon as the lire was got under a searching in-
quiry was made by the brigade authorities to ascer-
tain the cause of the disaster, the result of which
clearly showed that the over heat of an iron flue
i
had occasioned the mischief. Captain Shavv, n his
official report to the insurance eimpanies forming
the London Brigade, describes the damage uone as
follows :—" The vitrio: department of two floors
high, 200 feet long, and 116 feet broad, belonging
to Messrs, Odatn and Co., the representatives of
the
Patent Blood Manure Company at Viconia Docks,
burnt out, and roof off; building! and contents cora-

kf I egrun.Ltneive.n an ko ft Ira ti rtA watihr.)

THE ROYAL LYCEUM THEATRE,

Mr, Fechter as Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,
The long expected and eagerly looked for revival
of Mr. Fechter's Hamlet " came off" at last, like
one of the Great Events of the Season as it is, on
Saturday evening. In many respects this, the
indisputable masterpiece of Shakspere's all•iecotn-
parable genius, has never been more magnificently
put upon the stage than it has now at last been put
upon the stage of the Lyceum Theatre under Mr.
Fechter's management. A.n immense and brilliant
audience crowded stalls, pit, boxes, and gallery, from
the floor of the house to within an inch or two
of the ceiling, on Saturday, in visible evidence
of the curiosity awakened in regard to this grand
revival. One or two of the scenic effects—it should
be observed at once—scenic cacts from which so
much had bzen anticipated—fully realised our
expectations. In one of them, the extraordinary
character of which had been whispered about
beforehand (evidently erroneously), we were
doomed, it is true, to be disappointed. The rumour
is regard to this purely supposititicui stage Effect,
having been, that upon the castle platform where
Hamlet is seen following in the path taken by the
Ghost, the latter would have passed over the snowy
battlements without leaving any trace whatever of
its footprints, the footprints of the Prince in pursuit
of the ghastly apparition being at the same time
clearly discernible. Nothing of this, however, was
witnessed, of course, on Saturday, any more than
the once-talked-of application of the famousDircks-
and-Pepper optical contrivance, with a view to the
more vivid realisation of the spectral illusion in the
ghost-scenes of the great Tragedy. Applications
of eccentric contrivances of this exceptional and

even extraordinary -character might, however,
not unjustly have been reprobated by the truer
Shaksperian students as partaking overmuch of a
tendency to mere clap-trap, It is probably judi-
cious, therefore, that nothing of the kind was even
attempted. In the more legitimate care for the miss-
en-scene, however, at the Lyceum, everything that
could reasonably be desired has been cared for with
a hand lavish sometimes to an excess of absolute
munificence. The scenery by Te!bin, always
Effective, was in several instances almost magically
illusive. The platform scenes in the first act, and
the graveyard scene in the last were worthy of
the admiration with which they were welcomed.
But the grandest display of all was in the heart of
the tragedy, in the third act, that is, where the play
within the play is performed in the grand Hall of
the Palace before the majesty of Denmark. It was
altogether a sumptuous revelation of barbaric pomp,
and would have tended even of itself to have ren-
dered remarkable to an extraordinary degree
this revival of " Hamlet," at the Lyceum under
Mr. Fechter's management. Here, however, it
should be remarked at once that the new pictorial
decorations, the scenery, the picturesque and
often gorgeous costumes, the splendid up-
holstery work, and all the rest of it—were
wholly and absolutely subordinated to the care
evidently devoted throughout to the acting by Mr.
Fechter and his company. The impersonations,
apart from the gifted actor-manager, himself, were
many of them, in a high degree worthy of admira-
tion. Miss Kate Terry's Ophelia was an exquisitely
pathetic and tender realisation of that lovely
imagining of Shakspere's. Miss Elswortby's Queen
Gertrude, again, was, all through the play signally
meritorious. The Polonius of Mr. Brougham
Lacked that unctuous senility which was noticeable
of late years in Mr. Meadows—and which in the his-
tory of the modern stage is understood to have
had its most felicitous pourtrayal years ago by that
true Shaksperian actor the late Mr. Blanchard. The
King Claudius of Mr. Emery was one of the most
successful delineations of a stage monarch that we
have for a long while witnessed. As a piece of
serious acting it was as excellent in its way as poor
Bland's Burlesque Sovereigns used to be as speci-
mens of grotesque impersonation. Mr. Shore looked
lior-etio, and that was all : while the Ghost of
Hamlet's father, as represented by Mr. .Tordan, had
by too robustuous a voice for a mere unsub
stantial api:arition. As to the part, the part of parts
in the whole Treg7dY' the Tragic hero among all
Tragic heroes, Hamlet :.he Dane, as impersonated
by Mr. Fechter—what pi, -goer in London
does not already know if, and know it
Hamlet
.
perfectly P Hamlet the blonde-
gotoetd.
in funereal black, but without a touch of the
tering bugles on his picturesque attire. Pechter,.
Hamlet it, a word ! That strange, new, thoroughly
unconventional Hamlet that startled the world
of London playgoers either into admiration or into
indignation, accordingly as the beholders happened
to be infatuated or not in regard to the old tradi-
tional version of the Danish Prince—in his personal
attributes, in his very dress, in his various readings,
in effect, in the whole spirit and in the whole sub
stance of that great tragic character. At the period
of Mr. Fechter's original appearance as Hamlet at
the Princess's, we carefully analyzed the intellec-
tual peculiarities more especially noticeable in so
many of his astounding innovations. Upon the whole
our estimate then of what appeared to be its eminent
charms, even among them its pre-eminent beauties,
has now been confirmed upon the revival of the
great tragedy at the Lyceum on Saturday last, under
the distinguished Actor's own management.
Whether or not it can be traceable to the hiatus
that has occurred in the representation of Hams
let by Mr. Fechter—by reason of the popularity
last season of "The Duke's Motto" and this
season, until now, of the kindred melodrama of
" Bel Demonio''—certain it is that, some among the
most exquisite of the new points in Mr. Fechter's
reading of Hamlet were, according to our notion,
either forgotten or strangely slurred over on Satur-
day. Where Polonius, for example, asks him, in
the first act, whether he will not come in out of the
air—his sudden exclamation, with an indescribable
pathos in the very tone of his voice, "Into my
grave ?—passed on Saturday almost unnoticed,
almost unthought or. His innovative readings,
again, still strangely jar at times upon cur long
accustomed sense of the meaning of the words of
Shakspere. As, for examp!e, where the Ghost is re-
lating to him his being barbarously murdered in
the orchard,when Hamlet, listening,laorror stricken,
to the narrative, and suddenly recognizing the
identity of the assassin through the Ghost's
generalised description of him, Mr. Fechter sighs
forth, as in an agonised sigh " 0 my prophetic
soul !" and then, interrogatively asks suddenly of
the Ghost, with a stress upon the pronoun—"My
Uncle ?" It is in the love scenes with Ophelia, how-
ever, that Mr. Fechter, to our thinking, altogether
defies competition. The exquisitely pathetic ten•
derness of his acting, of his inimitable bye-play, of
the wonderful fluctuation of contending emotions
over his eminently expressive, and also eminently
handsome, face, the tearful music of his
intonations throughout those charming love
scenes with Ophelia—but especially towards
the close of that one in which he bids her again
and yet again, in an incoherent phrcuzy of con-
tending passions (some assumed, some real)
" Got thee to a Nunnery !"--roused the Lyceum
audience on Saturday, as the audiences at the
Princess's used to be aroused, we need not say for
how many hundred nights, to a pitch of enthusiasm
as loud and prolonged in it:3 expression, es it was in
itself absolutely unaffected. The popular trage-
dian, it ehould be said, immediately on his first
appearance, was welcomed with a long-continued,
and again and yet again reiterated thunder of ap-
plause, and afterwards during the evening, was
summoned before the audience anew at the end of
every act (save one), to receive a repetition of the
same cordial acclamations. The single exception
referred to above in parenthesis being attributable
solely to the admiration which had been immediately
before then excited among the audience by the last
scene of Ophelie., in that stranga eventful tragedy,
where she comes on (lend into madness by her
grids, warbling snatches of song, and distributing
{Levers among the royal bystanders—a scene in
which Mies K ite Terry made a gee eine hit, win-
zaftig on her exit a stormy oatbu'st of plaudits.
if all the other acts, Mr. FE char had

At the close o.

to appear anew before the footlights (and no won
der!) to receive from his audience renewed expreg-
sion of their admiration. It was a greeting justly
due te him on Saturday last at once as an acter and
s a manager, as a manager of extraosdinary enter.
prise, and as an actor of very rare gifts and cf
unquestionable genius.

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HER MAJESTY,

BALMOEAL, May 19.

The Queen walked in the grounds in the morn-
ing, and went out in the afternoon, accompanied by
their Royal Highnesses the Princess Louise and
Princess Beatrice, and attended by Lady Citturchiil.
Her Royal Highness the Princess Helez, a, with
the Prince and Princess Leiningen, drove to the
Linn of Dm.

His Royal Highness Prince Alfred was present
at the marriage of his cousin Princess Clot) Ide of
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha with the Archduke Jcseph,
which was solemnised at Coburg on the 12th inst.
His royal highness proceeded from thence on a visit
to his sister, the Princess Alice (Princess Louis of
Hesse Darmstadt), and goes by Carlsruhe and
Geneva to Marseilles, where he will join the Racoon
on the 22d inst.

MAY 20.

The Queen went out in the grounds in the morn-
ing, and drove in the afternoon with her P.2yal
Highness the Princess Leiningrn.

The Prince and Princess of Wales.

The Prince and Princess ct Wales, attended by
the Countess of Morton and Mijor Teesdale, drove
to Hampton Court cn Saturday.
The Prince ern- Princess, attended by the Countess
of Morton and Major Teesdale, went to the Italian
Opera, Covent-garden, in the evening.
The Rev. Professor Gibson had the honour of
explaining to his Royal Highness the Prince of
Wales the details of the illuminated address pre-
sented to their royal highnesses, on their marriage,
by the Presbyterians of Ireland.
The Prince and Princess of Wales., with the
Countess of Morton and Major Teesdale in waiting,
attended Divine service at the Chapel Royal, St.
James's, yesterday morning.
The communion service was read by the Rev. the
Subdean, the Rev. J. V. Povah, and the Rev. Thos.
Ileiruore. The Rev. the Subdean preached the
sermon from Psalm ix., v. 10.

Anthem, " i was in the spirit," Blow; sung by
Messrs. R. Barnby, Benson, Bradbury, and WnitL.

house.

Mr. Cooper presided at the organ.
The following were present during the service :
His Royal Highness the Dike of Cambridge, the
Archbishop of York, the Archbishop of Armagh,
the Bishop of St. D Avid's, the Duke of St. Albans,
Earl St. Germans, Marquis of Bath, Viscount Syd-
ney, Lord Vivian, Lord Hardinge, and Lieutenant-
Colonel the Hon. Sir Charles Phipps.