The Sun.
London, England, 1864-10-31 00:00:00

The Tunnel through the Alps,

Before the tunnel of Mont Cenis was undertaken, the
most daring engineers did not venture on the construction
of a tunnel one-fifth of its let:gth ; and they wore espe-
cially careful, by vertical shafts, to provide for venti-
lation, It was considered that, without such a precaution,
even the tunnels then executed would be, at least, highly
injurious to human life. Yet not only will the Alpine
tunnel to of very great length, but ventila-
tion by vertical shafts is out of the question, on
account of the enormous height of the mountains
above. Ordinary tunnels are excavated simultaneously
in various parts. Such a mode of proceeding was
impossible in this case, and for the same reason that
ventilation cannot be obtained by means of vertical
shafts—the altitude of the mass above. Hence if the
boring were effected in the usual way, the work would
be exceedingly tedious; it could not bo completed in less
than 36 years, on account of the imperfect ventilation, and
the limited number of men that could be employed upon it.
These difficulties have been overcome. Air, Compressed by
water power, obtained at each extremity, is driven through
tubes to the farthest portions of the excavations; and
thus, not only is pure air supplied in abundance, but
motive power is conveyed to the very place where the
drills are at work. At the northern side there are
twelve of these drills, mounted in a strong moveable
frame; at the southern, somewhat fewer. Each of
them revolves as it strikes the rock, the effect being
produced both by tapping and boring. Each system of
drills can be applied to the face of the rock at any
desired place. They form an opening ten feet wide
and ten feet deep; this is enlarged to the proper size
by the workmen, after which the walls and vault are
constructed. The work proceeds at about a yard
a day at each end—that is about twice as fast
as if carried on by manual labour alone. At this rate,
twelve years will be required for its completion; but
it is expected so to accelerate it, after a while, that it
will be finished in seven. About 1,700 yards are already
executed on the French side, about 1,250 on the Italian.

It may well be supposed that to ad vane° with such accu-
racy, that the two portions of the tunnel may at last exactly
nyet, is a matter requiring. great carp and ingenuity. In-
stances have occurred, with comparatively short tunnels,
in which the excavators have passed each other by. This
would be a very serious thing in the present case, but it is
rendered impossible by extremely sample means. A. lamp
is placed in the centre of the rock at the inner extremity of
the excavation, and signal posts in the proper direction on
the mountain above. Tho tunnel is known to run in ex tctly
the required direction when the lamp and the posts are
shown by a theodolite to be in the same vertical plane;
that is, when the signal posts are seen if the instrument is
raised, and the lamp if it is depressed—the motion being,
so to speak, in a truly perpendicular direction. When the
work is completed the Alps will be passed in half an hour.
Cassell s illuaraW Paper,

Suddenly there is a great blank among us, and
the shadow of a great darkness, One of our dearest
and most delightful companions, one whom not only
we, but also all whose eyes will rest upon these
columns, must think of as in some sort a cherished
companion, is taken from us, John Leech, known
to the public as one of the most kindly and the
moat graceful humonrists that ever lived, known to
his friends for a peculiar gentleness and refinement
of character that at &et sight seemed as it were in
opposition to the robustness of his judgment, and
therefore took many people by surprise, died on
Saturday-evening at 7 otelock. The death of G midi
was said to have eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and
the death of Mr Leech will touch many more hearts
both of this and other ,nations, than Garrick ever
reached. Although he looked strong, he had been
long a suffererer, and complained of sleeplessness;
his incessant brainwork induced a peculiar irrita•
bility with which most persons have a terdency to
jest rather than to sympthise. He was much
affected by noise, and or* literally driven from his
house in Brunswick-E —by 'street futile. He
hoped to get peace at ngtoo, especially as he'
abut them out kly__t he. 'ea ed-doublo windows;
but ho had no peace, and in addition to the torment
of the organs he came to be efflicted at early dawn
by the hammer of some small mechanic. His friends
made light of it, and tried to jest with him. " You
may laugh," he would say, "but I assure you it
will kill me." He was so unwell that during this
last summer he was obliged to go abroad, and he
was forbidden to indulge in his favourite exer-
cise of riding on horseback. He came back
better in the autumn, but still he was strangely
susceptible to noise, and only than a fortnight ago
he spoke with more than his usual earnestness,
with something even of passionate entreaty
in his tones about the suffering which
the street organs gave him, and about the
smallness of the sympathy which he received from
people who have to work their brains in a mere
routine. At last his sufferings have come to an end,
and if any of his friends were inclined to treat them
as imaginary they will now be convinced. It is
not a year since he stood in tears by the grave of
his schoolfellow, Thackeray, and now his friends
will follow him, too, to his long home. They were
schoolfellows together, they
were fellow-workers
together in Punch; both had something even of
womanly gentleness intermingled with the strength
of their characters; and both were in their styles
of working classical.
Although Mr Leech lived to be 47 years of age,
the record of his life is short and simple. He was
born in London in 1817, and was educated at the
Charterhouse. He left school to study medicine,
and had made considerable progress in that direc-

tion before he discovered what was to be his true
path in life. His first sketch in Punch, entitled
"Foreign.Affsirs," appeared in the first week of
August, 1841, and thenceforward the history of his
lite is to be seen week by week in the pages of that
popular periodical. Nu doubt, he was otherwise
engaged also. lie illustrated almanacs and novels,
books of travel and poems. A Christmas time with-
out two dczen sketches by Leech, full of the most
graceful and delicate humour, would be a strange
Christmas indeed, a Christmas which might as well
he without holly and mistletoe, dancing and good
cheer. He always took great pains as Christmas
drew nigh, and year by year seemed to surpass
himself in delicacies of touch, and in the charm of
his humour. But it was through the weekly pages
of Punch, far more than through the yearly almanac,
that Mr Leech was Vest lanse#4. to the
_public; end
his life is there rifleaft. He goes to France and
drawsa French scene, to Scotland anddraws a Scotch
one. Then his experiences of our social life—his
pictures of balls, dinner parties, mess-rooms, bache-
lors' chambers, Rotten-row, gardens, parks, streets,
watering places, shooting parties, hunting fields,
boating, fishing, and we know net what else,
make up such a history of his time as to the future
historian will be invaluable. The fashion of the
day, the psesion of the hour is reflected on his page
as in a photograph. And while we have thus in his
sketches a curiously complete history of certain
phases of this Vi6torian era, we have also in them a
picture and a chronicle of the artist's own life,
Anyone, without knowing Mr Leech personally,
can detect in these sketches the work of a keen-
sighted, hearty sort of man, healthy and broad in
his sympathies, full of fun, but still more charmed
with grace, and sensitive to beauty, fond of chil-
dren, fond of dwelling on all youthful beauty, fond
of beautiful dogs and horses, bat above all things
of truth and nature.

We have said that he was classical in his style of
working. One cannot well speak of the ridiculous
in itself as classical ; and much of Mr Leech's work
concerned the ridiculous. Bat in him the sense of
the grotesque and the love of satire was never
allowed to interfere with, much less to over-ride, his
attraction to whatever was beautiful and true. There
never was a caricaturist who was so little of a ca.
ricaturist ; who would giro the truth of nature on
so many different sides, and seemed at the same
time to have so quick an eye for whatever is lovely
in nature. He drew with equal ease a fine lady and
a erossing-sweeper—and on the same page he would
bewitch the reader of Punch with the lovelieet of
little maidens, and provoke him with the vulgarest
of upstarts. And ha was always seeing and drawing
something new. Suddenly we should be astonished
with some sea-piece in which the billows were ren-
dered with wonderful skill. Or we had some moun-
tain scenery, or a glade in a wood, or ploughed
fields, or standing corn. He never stood still.
When we wondered what should come next, we
had some rare sky, some curious effect of light. And
all this display of scenery was the mere background
to views in which men, and women, and children
were the chief objects of interest. All seemed to
flow from his pencil so easily that people scarcely
enough understood how hard he worked. • He
must have worked very hard to produce so
much variety in constant succession week
after week for more than 20 years. He died,
too, in harness, working to the last, and
working, indeed, beyond his strength. With cha-
racteristic generosity he made unusual exertions in
aid of his relatives, and his labours were latterly
more severe than they need have been if he had had
only to think of himself and his household. These
anxieties and exertions have at length struck him
down—and who is there to fill his place ? A good,
great man, of fine and rare genius, has gone from
among us,and we shall not know how much he was to
us until we discover by his loss that nature does not
often produce such artists as John Leech. One of
our greatest artists, Sir Edwin Landseer, has said
that there is scarcely a sketch of Mr. Leech's which
is not worthy to be framed by itself and hung on
our walls. Other artists are equally strong in his
praise. No mar envied him. The public at large
think more of the human interest that belongs to
his drawings and the amusement which may be de-
rived from them. But, over and above all this, they
have qualities which, notwithstanding the lowli-
ness of the material employed, will hereafter confer
on Mr. Leech's sketches a very high renown as
works of art.

To these few observations wo append the follow-
ing letter, which will have a sad interest at the
present moment. When Mr. Bass proposed to bring
a bill into Parliament relating to street music he
received a number of letters from various persons
who wished him success. He published these
letters, and among them we find the following. We
will only add that, though Mr. Leech suffered
much, his life was not supposed to be in immediate
danger. He went out to consult Dr. Quain on
Friday, and there was a child's party in hie home
at the time of his death :
" Punch Office, M, Fleeb-street, 231 May, 1861.
" Sir,--I venture upon what might possibly be consi-
dered an impertinence, were not the subject of my note of
public interest.
am so greatly interested in the success of your mea-