The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-26 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

Remarkable Pamphlets,
A CHAPTER ON STREET NUISANCES, by Charles
Babbage, the eminent mathematician, has just now

been published, by Mr. Murray, in the form of a
pamphlet of twenty pages octavo. It is, in point of
fact, a chapter extracted, thus, for separate publica-

•
cation, from the forthcoming work of Mr, Babbage,
entitled " Passages in the Life of a Philoso-
pher," a work prominently among Mr. Mur-
ray's announcements. Nothing could be more
opportune than the issue of this particular chapter,
just at the moment when the street nuisances com-
plained of, arc at length being directly, and, let us
hope, vigorously dealt with by Mr. Bass's Bill, now
going through Parliament. fa no living man, per-
haps, can the gradual ripening of that bill into an
enactment be more intensely gratifying, we should
conjecture, than to the author of this eccentric
pamphlet—a pamphlet, the like of which
we don't remember ever to have encoun-
tered. Illustrious, years ego, by right of
his marvellous scientific contrivance, popularly
known as the Calculating Machine, Mr, Babbago
has for several years past been cruelly subjected to
a species of petty martyrdom, or rather, it should
be said, to a sort of ignoble tormenting, driving
.him at times (according to his own showing, here)
very nearly to the verge of distraction. For ten
years he has been thus tormented, we may say,
systematically. By whom ? By Italians, Germans,
and Indians, by English men and women and chili
dren! The instruments of torture employed by
these, he thus enumerates :
Organs, brass bands, fiddles, harps, harpsichords, hurdy-
gurdies, flageolets, drums, bagpipes, accordions, halfpenny
whistles, tom-toms, and trumpets. The human voice in
various forms-6houting out objects for sale, religious
canting, and psalm-singing.

Those who are mainly responsible for perpetuating
these street nuisances from yet.r to year, Mr. Bab.
bage also catalogues, in the manner hollowing :

ENCOURAGERS OF STREET Music.—Tavern-keepers,
public-houses, gin-shops, beer- shocs,coffee-shops, servants,
children, visitors from the country, and ladies of doubtful
virtue ; occasionally titled ladies, but these are almost in-
variably of recent elevatijn, and deficient in that taste
which their sex usually possess.

In trying to suppress the system of annoyance—a
system that has seriously militated against the
development of his own philosophic investigations,
Mr. Babbage appears to have been subjected to all
imaginable kinds of indignities, insults, and even
injuries, alike to his person and property. He has
had his windows smashed—he has been pelted with
stones—mobbed--placarded, one might even pro-
nounce it blackguarded—he has actually been
serenaded by a brass band for hours at a stretch,
when himself barely recovering from a most
painful surgical operation ! We will content our-
selves with making one extract alone from his
pamphlet in illustration of this disgraceful persecu-
tion, a persecution directed against ono of the most
eminent of living philosophers :
At an early period, when I was putting the law in force,
as far as I could, for the prever.tion of this destruction of
my time, I received constantly anonymous letters, advising,
and even threatening me with all sorts of evils, such as
destruction of my property, burning my house, injury to
myself. I was very often addressed in the streets with
similar threats. On one occasion, when I was returning
home from an affair with a mob whom the police had just
dispersed, I met, close to my own door, a man who, ad-
dressing me, said, " You deserve to have your house burnt,
and yourself in it, an I I will do it for you, you old villain,"
I asked him if he had any objection to give me his address.
Of ccurse he refaced. I then followed him at a short dis-
tance, looking out for a policeman, Whenever he saw one
at a distance he turned rapidly up the next street ; this
chase continued above half-an-hour; he was then joined
by a companion, an ill-looking fellow. They still continued
to turn off into another street whenever a constable became
visible in the distance. At last we saw a great crowd, into
which they both rushed, and further pursuit became im-
possib'e.
The whole record here given of the bodily and
mental suffering endured by reason of these
maddening strict musicians we would refer our
readers to—as to (such is human nature!)
a something frightfully entertaining. The whole
chapter, as penned by Mr. Charles Babbage, is, in
its strange way, a sort of literary companion
sketch to that pictorial record of similar inflictions
endured more than a hundred years ago, also in
the streets of London, according to Hogarth's
im
immortal picture of " The Enraged Musician."

THE PROSPECTS OF GOOD ARCHITECTURE IN
LONDON, having been lectured upon by His Emi-
nence Cardinal Wiseman only a few weeks since,
namely, on the 12th of last month, in the Theatre
of the South Kensington Museum—that distin-
guished dignitary's Discourse has since been pub-
lished verbatim in a goodly pamphlet of forty-one
pages octavo, and so published, like Mr. Babbage's
pamphlet (just now mentioned), by Mr. Murray,
of Albemarle-street. At the time when his Emi-
nence delivered this very charming and luminous
dissertation upon the probable prospects of good
architecture in our metropolis we gave an unavoid-
ably abbreviated report of it in the columns of Vie
Sun—unavoidably, that is, bearing in mind the fact
of the lecture being delivered during the sittings of
Parliament. Here, however, are the Cardinal's
ipsissima verha as nearly as possible as they fell
from his lips. And they are peculiarly worthy of
having been thus preserved for us by the aid of the
stenographer. For, while they are profoundly
interesting and valuable, when regarded arch w ()-
logically in regard to the past, they possess
for English people, for Londoners especially,
a very peculiar interest and value, indeed,
because of their opening up to view the
probabilities, and still more the possibilities of
London architecture in regard to the future. From
the stand point of the Present, the Cardinal first
looks back, in this lecture of his, for instruction,
for example, for hints, for suggestions to be drawn
from antiquity, especially from classical antiquity.
Having collected together much of which—
namely of instruction, of example, of hints,
of suggestions calculated to be especially valuable
to everyone in any the smallest degree interested
in or connected with the prospects of London archi-
tecture, his Eminence applies these hints, and sug.
gestions, adapts those examples and instructions,
derived from the past, to the present and future
condition of our own metropolis, considered archi-
tecturally. It is very strikingly remarked by him at
the outset that almost everything that is
known of the architecture of past ages, peoples,
countries—is known exclusively from the " public"
edifices in the various capitals. The one only ex-
ception (proving the rule) being referred to by his
Eminence in the sentence here immediately fol.

lowing :
" Submerged in a deluge of bland, insinuating ashes,
which penetrated into the most remote corners and crevices
of every building—, mbalmed, instead of being petrified like
its twin city Herculaneum, Pompeii has given us the only
practical and sensible illustrations of what writers had let
us know about their domestic arrangements."
Here, again, as in the instance of that pamphlet of
Mr. Babbage'e but just now noticed, the publica-
tion of the Cardinal's Lecture in a separate form is
wonderfully opportune. In proof of which, hear
what he has to say about the threatened interference
of Railway Schemes with the actual condition of
London and Westminster
- •

'‘ You will all have heard of the extent, reported by the
City engineer, to which new railway schemes carry their
competing designs, in that venerable portion of our metro-
polis. it may be summed up in one sentence. The require
about 160 acres only, which is about one fourth of the
entire city;' the total length of railways proposed is about
20 miles; and 'the various public ways of all descriptions
which are interfered with are about 300.' The requirement
of one-fourth of the area of a city for the conveyance of the
inhabitants of the remaining three-fourths, does indeed seem
disproportoned. But lam not disposed nor entitled to dis-
cuss this great statistical point. The question is, could not
the ravages which necessity imposes be repaired, and more
deference be paid to that natural piety, under which the
ancients classed reverence for religion and respect for the
departed ?"
Yet, while he puts the query thus—he has already
had occasion to remark with terrible significance—
" There is a natural reverence for whatever is monu-
mental or historical, and this feeling grows and ripens to
religious reverence. Neither of these feelings seems to be
much cultivated amongst us. Take the following evidence
from the ' City Engineer's Report on Public Companies
applying for Bills in the present Session of Parliament.'—
The monument at Fish-street Hifi, and Temple-b^.r,
Draper's-gardens, Finsbury-Circus, Apothecaries' Halt,
and portions of the Times office are scheduled, as are vari-
ous of the City halls and the Admiralty at Whitehall,'