The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-22 00:00:00

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

LEEUTER'S TELEGRAM.]

THE SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN QUESTION.
HAMBURG, JAN. 22.

Several members of the Diets of Schleswig and
Holstein arrived last night in Altona, by railway.
They were received at the terminus with music and
great cheering. They reached Hamburg during
the night, accompanied by immense crowds of peo •
pie, and alighted at Zingg's Hotel, where they will
deliberate upon the course to be taken in the pre-
sent state of things.

STOCKHOLM, JAN. 21.

The threatened occupation of Schleswig has given
a great impulse to the movement in favour of Den-
mark throughout Sweden and Norway.
Addresses have been voted, committees are being
formed fur collecting subscriptions, volunteers are
enlisted,
and military armaments are continued with
increased activity in both countries.

KIEL, JAN. 21.

After the departure of the Saxon battalion the
fire brigade of the Turners occupied all the mili-
tary posts of this town. 4,000 Austrian troops are
expected here to-morrow or on the following day.
Colonel Wuplat has arrived in Kiel from Gotha.

SPAIN.

MADRID, JAN. 21.

The Minister of Finance will present to the
Cortes an exact statement of the receipts and
expenditure of the State in 1864.
F RAN CE.

BOURSE, Jas. 21.—The market continues dull, but
prices have not made any further retrograde move-
ment. Threes, for the Account, are unvaried at
66fr. 40c. Railway Shares firm, but with very few
transactions, The market closed as follows :

41 per Cents .. 95 10
Do. end month....
3 per Cents
Do. end month 66 40
Credit Mobilier 1016 25
Do. end month 1020
Bank Shares 3280
Credit Fonder 1230
Roman
RAIL'

Italian Loan 6B 30
Do. end month 6B 45
New ditto
Do. end month....
Russian
Austrian • 79 25
Spanish Threes 5l
Home Debt
Deferred
PAYS.
Cash. Account.
990 .. 990
942 50 .. 946 '25

Orleans .........
Northern
New ditto .......
Lyons and. Meditaranean 930 .. 933 75
New ditto . ..... : . 885 .. ..._ _
S iuthern ...... 647 50 .. 655
Western
Eastern
Sardinian . ....... 380 .. 380
Austrian
Lewbard ....... 515 .. 515
North of Spain • ....... 497 50 .. 497 50
Saragossa..
Ditto to Barcelona .... 282 50 ..

The National Shakspere Movements

LITERATURE.

The Grade Lesson Book. Sixth (and Last) Stan-
dard. By E. T. Stevens and Charles Hole. One
vol., pp. 220. Longman and Co.
Already we have had occasion repeatedly to com-
mend the really admirable plan upon which this
thoroughly readable series of Grade Books has been
constructed. Issued from the press, in half-a-dozen
volumes, each of them published quite independently
of its companions, but all of them together forming
a regular sequential and homogeneous whole, we
have bees enabled to examine the six books very
carefully, and with an unusual degree of minute-
ness. Our opinion, therefore, in regard to the
general excellence of the scheme upon which this
particular educational course has been framed, is in
no respect whatever formed either precipitately or
superficially. The plan, as a plan, has been scruti-
nised, as it were, under the microscope. We have
scanned it, and considered it again, and yet again
—now viewing it piecemeal, and now (particularly
at this moment) regarding it as a whole. And the
more completely the pla❑ of these Grade Books has
been brought under our examination the more
entirely satisfied have we become that it is
one essentially practical of its kind, one
steadily and entirely practicable. It is not simply
that the notion is theoretically good—it appears to
us to be one that any liberal-minded teacher could
and would, can and will carry out satisfactorily to
himself—actually work with pleasure to himself and
to his pupils. It is with the sixth and concluding
Standard that we have now to do—our estimate of
its predecessors we have already expressed. Turn-
ing, therefore, to the final volume of the half dozen
we find it to be—unmistakeably, as it ought to be
—the best, because of course the most advanced.
The contents of the little book for one thing are far
more varied, aro far more miscellaneous than those
of the five books or standards preceding it. They
breathe, these contents of vol., or standard,
vi., more directly of the age in which
we live. The authors quoted in the contents
are either very recently deceased or are actually
still living. Among the former, Samuel Rogers and
the Earl of Dundonald, Edgar Poe and Lord Ma-
caulay. Among the latter—that is, among our
living writers—Charles Dickens and Alfred Tenny-
son, Ruskin and Longfellow, Punch and the Tidies.
In this respect alone—namely, in the mere charac-
ter of the selections made—what an immense and
perfectly obvious improvement upon those twad-
dling, mawkish, " goody" kind of exemplars, clubbed
together is the old elementary school-books, from
the earliest spelling-books that held up to view in
such invidous contrast Tommy the Naughty Boy
and Johnny the Good Boy : our sympathies always
somehow going, by the rule of contraries, with the
former and against the latter—the former
being a study little Turk; the latter an un-
questionable little Ass. Instead of which literary
pabulum in the shape of a kind of intellectual pap
to the young mind, is furnished with wholesome
and relishing, and appetizing sentiment, such as
that to be found here in this sixth delightful little
volume at p. 34, in the heroic Lord Cochrane's re-
cord of his astounding capture of the "El Game"
frigate, p. 87, in the Poet-Laureate's exquisitely
dulcifluous lyric " The Brook," at page 93, in our
glorious Dickens's wonderful account of his visit to
the Chatham Dockyard, a piece of powerful writ-
ting only very recently published in All the
Year Bound, and to which we well remember our-
selves directing particular attention in these columns
immediately upon its first publication ! It was in
the August of 1863, and the paper from which the
extract is taken was from one of the very happiest
of the second series of the Uncommercial Traveller.
Recollecting what the requirements of the Revised
Code are precisely, we cannot but think that they
are fulfilled to a nicety by these six excellent Guide
Books, especially adapted by Messrs. Stevens and
Hole to meet these requirements.

People's Edition of the Poets.

No. I. Cowper.

W. Tveedie.

Penny wisdom is not always found foolishness.
In signal proof of which we need only turn to the
initial number of this new penny weekly venture
of Mr. Tweedie. From his prospectus we take the
following Qv tract :

"On the muster-roll of British Poets is inscribed a long
list of immortal names, whose lustre will remain unim-
paired by comparison with the poets of any country in any
age. From Chaucer down to Byron, that heir of doubt and
passion, who alternately oppresses us with gloom and
hurries us along to the lightest and most sparkling of mea-
sures—and Shelley, who, in exquisite verse, depicted his
own wondrous dreams of the future—there is one grand
array of poetic names—
That on the steady breeze of honour sail
In long succession, calm and beautiful.
WO have the fancy and invention of Spenser—the beauty,
pathos, and awful sublimity of Milton—the wit of Butler—
the archness and piquancy of Prior—the strength, ele-
gance, and ease of Pope and Dryden—the descriptive
power, and inbense love of nature of Thomson and Bloom-
field—the rough satire of Churchill—the manly sense, the
patriotic and religious zeal of Cowper—the unstudied grace
and harmony of Goldsmith—the good nature of Gay—the
humour and feeling of Burns. A host of minor bards, too,
might be mentioned, whose contributions to our poetic
wealth are gems, though not so massive, yet rare and
priceless."

And it is this treasury of literature that the enter-
prising publisher is now bringing out in this per-
fectly new form to scatter thus broadcast among the
population.

THE SPECIAL GRIEVANCE FELT AT THE PRE-
SENT TIME.--A dozen years ago, a projector of
lively imagination, when he took up a map to scratch a new
line across it, almost invariably avoided houses—especially
valuable houses—as if they had the plague. No curves and
gradients were thought too severe if they enabled a com-
pany to escape the necessity of paying for such costly land
as that which was covered by buildings. Now all this is
changed. The open country has been scored all over with
iron roads until there is not room left for a paying line ;
and the great mania of the moment is to cut through dis-
tricts where land and houses are of fabulous value, trusting
to the surveyor-machinery to keep the compensation some-
what within bounds. Who can so much as guess at the
enormous value of the property comprised within a circle of
a quarter of a mile round the Mansion House? And yet
on this sacred spot the map of London is so marked by the
projected lines of new companies that it seems almost to
be obliteratedby them. Practically, the Lands Clauses Act
has hitherto been tested.for the most -part by its operation
upon ordinary farming land, thongh it has long been known
that it presses most severely upon the occupiers of
of house property which a railway company think fit to ap-
propriate. A mere tenant from year to year may practically
have the assurance of continuing his business as long as he
pleases on the accustomed spot, because he knows it will
sumer his purpose to pay a higher rent than any
stranger would give; but if he is dispossessed by a com-
pany, his whole trade may be ruined without the chance of
any compensation at all proportioned to the magnitude of
the injury. A thriving shopkeeper is driven to make a
connection in a new locality, and has perhaps £3O or 140
allowed him as compensation for the compulsory removal,
on the plea that his landlord might, if he pleased, have die,.
possessed him on a six months' notice. It has become the
too, for the companies to exert their pottier to the
Utmost, and, as a matter of course, to elpel their victims on
a hotted of a few days or weeks. To take a different class
cf eases, Where a company requires to demolish a residence,
the compensation generally obtained by the occupant is
ludicrously disproportioned to the expense and annoyance
occasioned by a forced removal from a house on which the
savings of years may have been judiciously or injudiciously
lavished. At a time when the blood of projectors are con-
templating a raid upon house-property on a scale quite un-
exampled, it would well become Parliament to inquire how
the existing provisions for compensation work in this class
of cases, and, if they are found deficient, to introduce into
future bills a new set of clauses for the protection of the
unhappy owners of property which railway companies may
think fit to covet. —London Review.
_ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY.—We are in-
formed that, having in view the encouragement of
the study of scientific botany amongst all classes, the Royal
Horticultural Society offer the following prizes :-1. One
silver, and two bronze medals for the three best collections
of wild plants of each separate county of the United King •
dom, dried, mounted on paper, folio dewy size, classified
according to the natural system, and labelled with the name
of locality where found, and the date when found. Intend-
ing competitors may obtain the forms of labels on sending
12 postage stamps to the Secretary of the Royal Horticul-
tural Society, South Kensington. 2. Three gold medals
will be given for the three best of all the collections out of
all the several county collections. Not more than one' of
the medals can be awarded in one county. The collections
must be delivered on or before the 31st December, 1864, to
the Secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society, South
Kensington, carriage free, marked with a number or cypher,
and accompanied with a sealed letter containing the collec-
tot's name, the address, and the price at which the collec-
tion can be sold or another made. A aJciety's gold medal
will also be awarded to every exhibitor of a new species of
plant found growing in the United Kingdom.

Portraits of the Late W, M. Thackeray,

(From the Times.)

There are three draughtsmen whose portraits in I
chalk take rank apart, by virtue of their peculiarly
intellectual and refined quality, no less than their
perfection of drawing. These are Mr. G. H. Watts,
Mr. George Richmond, and Mr. Samuel Lawrence.
That of these three artists Mr. Richmond alone
should have obtained the honours of the Academy
is one of many indications how little the distribution
of those honours is guided by the true distinction of
the artist, as estimated by the finest tastes.
Each of these draughtsmen has his distinctive
merits. Mr. Richmond stands pre-eminent for the
delicacy, amenity, and refinement of his work. But
in aiming at these qualities he often misses the
strength of strongly-marked heads, and generally
satisfies U 3 least in the portraits of men whose lead-
ing character is power.
Mr. Watts gives evidence of a rarer imaginative
quality, While working under the influence of the
most refined sensibility to beauty, he is as much at
home in expressing power, whether of imagination
(as in his head of Tennyson), of scientific insight (as
in his portrait of Herschel), of practical vigour
and adventurous energy (as in his likenesses of
Rawlinson and Layard), of command (as in his
Sir John Lawrence), or statesmanship (as in
his Gladstone and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe).
If Richmond is the man to draw our foremost
lawyers, divines, politicians, or social celebrities,
we should go to Watts for the greater lights of our
system—our poets, our statesmen, as distinguished
from our politicians—in a word, for the worthies
whose words and works will stamp ane mould their
time for posterity.
Samuel Lawrence is less known to the public than
either of the contemporaries with whom we are now
classing him. Even their fame is esoteric, rather
than exoteric; the property of certain sets and
circles rather than of the public. That of Richmond
is wider than that of Watts, but that of Lawrence
is more limited still. This is due partly to his re-
cent absence of some years in the United States,
partly to his voluntary seclusion in the study of the
methods of the old masters, particularly the
Venetians. But real lovers of art are aware of
powers in this painter, however unshowy and little
calculated to win popularity, which fully justify us
in assigning him a place by the side of men like
Watts and Richmond. In colour he has not yet
quite succeeded in what he aims at ; but as a
draughtsman, and working in black and white, he is
one of the largest and most dignified, as well as most
vigorous and truthful portrait designers that this
country has ever had. All good judges who know
his life-size chalk portraits will, we are satisfied,

indorse his opinion.
Mr. Lawrence drew the last portrait for which
Thackeray sat to a painter. It has been photo-
graphed by Mr. Ayling (493, New Oxford-street),
and the photograph is now before us. It requires
no small merit in a drawing, or photograph from
one, to hold its own against the direct work of the
sun, Whatever may be the demerits of Phcebus
Apollo as a painter, he has qualities which make
him a tremendously formidable rival to the limner,
who has to trust the unaided powers of pencil or
port-crayon. But it only needs a comparison of
Mr. Lawrence's photographed drawing with any of
the heads photographed from Thackeray himself,

to feel that good work of the human brain and hand
—even when it is but the transcript of a living
physiognomy—has in it something which cannot
be got out of the soulless operations of chemicals
and camera. No one who knew and loved Thackeray
could hesitate a moment between the facsimile of
Lawrence's drawing and the finest photograph
ever taken from the noble head of the living
Thackeray. Mr. Lawrence made two portraits of
Thackeray. The first, taken many years ago, for
Lady Ashburton, has been engraved, and may now
be seen in many of the printsellers' windows. It
represents his haughtier or more defiant expression,
with the head held high, as Thackeray's head was
wont to be held when he denounced meanness, fired
up at wrong, or warmed into praise of goodness or
greatness.
The second portrait is the one just photographed,
and is the property of Chief Baron Pollock.
Thackeray knew and appreciated the painter. His
way of giving him the commission for this portrait
was very characteristic of the man. Meeting Mr.
Lawrence at an evening party towards the end of
the summer of 1862, Thackeray said to him, " The
Chief Baron was dining with me the other day, and
we laid our heads together to make a little plan for a
painter-friend of ours to take each of our heads off;
so. Mr. Painter, execute thine office on that dear old
Chief Baron whenever thou canst catch him; on me
at thy leisure." Thackeray's portrait was drawn at
his new house in Kensington Palace-gardens. The

painter made two drawings of the Chief Baron.
Thackeray, when called on to choose between them,
complained, "You make me feel like the ass be-
tween the bundles of hay, but take this one"—
a sideface, which hung in his dining-room at Ken-
sington to the time of his death.
In this portrait of 1862 Thackeray is represented
in an attitude which all who knew him will recog-
nise as characteristic and familiar,—reading, with
the page held almost perpendicular, and near the
face. There is the power of the nobly-arched brow,
the softness,yet keenness, of the candid eyes, and the
sensibility and sweetness of the delicately-curved
and finely-cut mouth, which in its face so perfectly
redeemed the effect of the nose, early flattened by
the fist of a schoolfellow at the Charterhouse. It

....... ____ __
is such a likeness of Thackeray as his friends will
like to have, and would wish strangers to identify
him with. It presents him in the serenity and sweet-
ness of his happier moments, and it is as he looked
in such moments that those who most lament his
premature death must of tenest call him up to re-
membrance.

For such a likeness we have every reason to be
grateful to Mr. Lawrence, and to the photographer's
art, which multiplies copies of such a drawing
cheaply.

Mr. G. A. Sala on the Death of Thackeray,

Mr. Sala, on the arrival of the melancholy news
in America, writes :—" Suddenly I was drawn on
one side, and told that the news by the Africa—
which, late in the afternoon, had not arrived at
Halifax—had just been telegraphed, and that Mr.
Thackeray was dead. The papers of to-day confirm
this shocking intelligence. The correspondent of a
newspaper is nobody. He has no recogniseci exist-
ence, no individuality, no feelings, and no heart.
He is only so much talking type transplanted, to be
set up in another country. Thus I am aware that
it would not be pertinent to my charge even to hint
at what I felt on hearing that he was dead whose
hand I had hoped to touch when I came back from
this place, from this country where his name
was held in honour, and his person in affec-
tion—he whose cheery voice I hoped to hear
asking me, What I thought about the Yankees.'
It is 'Within my attributes, however, to testify to
the deep and genuine sorrow with which the news
of this appallingly sudden event has been received
here. It will be the same at Boston, the same at
Philadelphia, the sa.:ne in every city in the States
he visited. Mr. Thackeray left thousands of
friends in this land, and not one enemy ; and the
loss whicb his family, it'ls friends, and his country
have sustained is shared by all that is worthy of
preservation in American Soeiety. At least twenty
times to-day I have been asked " Will WilluNn
Makepeace Thackeray be buried in Westminster
Abbey ?" and I have been afraid and ashamed to
answer as I thought.

ARCH2EOLOGY IN FRANCE.—Tha Moniteur des
Arts states that there were discovered a few days since on
the banks of the Rhone, near Lyons, 45 Gallo-Roman
tombs, the skeletons in which wore complete, the face
turned towards the cast, and the head suppertcd by a small
earthen urn. One of the tombs only is formed of Roman
tiles of a very large size. No inscriptions, arms, or coins
of any kind have been found in any of the tombs.
WASHINGTON IRVING'S COPYRIGIITS.---In the
Uuited States ho realised more than £12,000 by the sale of
his books ; from English publishers he receivee £12,217 103
for copyright ; the largest payments being
£3,150 for the
" Life of Columbus," £2lOO for the " conquest of Gra-
nada," £1,575 for the " Tales of a Traveller,"s
a d
n £I,A l-
050
apiece for "Bracebridge Hall" and " Tale of the
i hambra."