The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-21 00:00:00

_.,----------------bpils,
time, and it was resolved that a great national not- .n $
morial, of a nature not known, should he determind
on, designed, executed, and subscribed for, all in 1, For some months past photographers have "__.„,f_, the
THE ALLEGED EARLY PHOTOGIt
period of three months, it was quite time for met state of excitement about the alleged discovery, s
oanio'orecl
who appreciated the importance of the object, or papers of the late Matthew Boulton, of a series
owl a'
e prOCe64
who did not mean joking, should take means to, prints supposed to have been produced by ss 0.. pictures
save themselves from the ridicule, as well as the in- now unknown, and about two early specitaent
Thy°. pro
dignation, which would be cast upon failure. The on silvered plates in a drawer in the library at bwiutb. the"
idea, too, of seeking a regular public subscription smith, of the Museum of Patents, who me tic soil
for a certain sum, with- any knowledge of the aecimens, related their history to the Photogrcr he coals
amount required, or explanation of the manner in ENovember last, and read documents
which it would be employed, was fatal to the end Pi hotogrePl;l'
in view, as far as present machinery id concerned. possession were produced by chemical or
tpe society 0
deed tended to prove the hypothesis that thwehi
There is no such generous public iu the world as agetcy at a date prior to 1791. A writer in laesAticturei,
that of these kingdoms, if it understands the re- iietsJournai, evidently acquainted with th
.° l',Bo-
- ; but there is no public less likel-•
y :o considers the evidence produced does notjustifY_trio79ll
part with its guineas for doubtful objects to be tion that the daguerreotype art was known at sau
cturee ia !II:
f attribullag
carried out by a quarrelsome committee. 1: the and he endeavours to point out the fallacy 0.
ico6enciee.
polite request for £30,000, carried at the last the production of the paper prints to hot il
graProdueed 110
meeting, be publicly put in force, we doubt whetter Mr. Smith states that the prints re P a
year
179 I
it will realise anything beyond what the personal method invented by Mr. F. Egington about th
vill° al),
influence of the committee—or rather the majority
of the committee who voted for it—can command. peered to have undertaken the production of o°Pi
tuateriels'
that he was taken by the hand by Mr, Bon
astrasssf
The general public will stand aloof until they know
what is to be done : and this, whatever it be, can- The copies were made in dead colours, and 111_,',0, ore
painting, on paper, copper, Canvas, and other.
~000 00'
not be determined upon and put into execution b
the 23d of April. As was suggested in the letter frequently finished as oil-paintings, or water-c to olollf:
y nem than one were employed. Thus producedoro;dror
published yesterday, some pleasant celebration ings, being passed into the hands of Mr. Bartia!witil tili!,`,
might be arranged for that day, leaving the perma- The sepia tone of some of the prints correspollue%roe deli,
Dent part of the memorial to be provided in due of the photographs new produced, while the :`__,9" tate!
course ; but the precipitation, if persisted in, will cacy of the surface from which the inapressie.
01001;
ruin all. Let us hope, then, that it will not be has led to a belief that such an effect could onlYbasi, of ttTlo
persisted in ; that the public will not be disgusted of chemical agents acted upon by light. The „oar ,„,
with the object itself by an appeal towards a mere
sham; and an appeal, moreover, which we are con- opinion is that the impressions were taken °llr, and
afw_,
surface of which had been specially prePare co bex.e,
vineed will not be adequately responded to. With the lapse of nearly a century the prepared surfer
.4407
respect to the numerous suggestions which have moved by friction, and the entire impression ob iatair:. of tl;r°
been made as to the form of the memorial and the image not having been absorbed into the subst
tinc; p p!t4
nature of the celebration, it must be confessed that paper, which is a hard and not a soft Prill sja cifat
those of the council—which have only entered into
the second question—are the least inviting. They That they were frequently finishes as paiatir`g otelPiy,
intelligble, and the prints themselvee uotegrqc)
are-1. Three medals for the three best poems on their mode of production. That they are not P 0 trili,.l
Shakspere. 2. A soirée in Westminster Hall, at the writer referred to believes, because the PaPer 01 otoe'l,
which books, prints, and other Shaksperian relics the impression is taken bears evidence of the use ,105
should be exhibited. 3. A morning concert of plate, a well-defined marginal line
Shaksperian music at Covent-Garden Theatre. 4. passage through the press. And with referel:oo 01)14
An evening performance at Drury-lane. No w, this method by which the minutely granulated Safe
engraver 0010
is surely a very sorry programme. The notion of
tained, he believes any skilful aquatint ',id%
the prize poem is most melancholy, as the probable the ground of 00
roduce a similar surface b la ing
result would be that out of a certain number—all
lPs sof a delicate soluytionyofof the One 81,04
bad—the three worst would be selected, and that if y me.an . any „iit to .
~„00
used in that process, the gradations from ."6 . ',lt 'e; 0
the result were otherwis® nobody would believe the wove °ll
being dependent upon the action of acid in obtolll ~
rust- The Shakspere relics available would be lost
the surface of the plate. That the effect was a°,,, g tb° 4,
in Westminster Hall, unless the honse at Stratford
regards as evident from the flatness of the est' iv gee
was brought bodily up to town in defiance of the .esperii of
v
tare which have been stopped out, and are ~00 o
.4
mayor and all the local enthusiasts. For the rest, impressed a_ 0 03,
eolur'l lIt'"
there would be nothing left to do but for the lions rent in the foliage. With regard to the ~4 ce
_,.1
to make occasional speeches, and for the smaller prints,. it was a common practice during the Zoe;
animals to walk about the he'll saying, like Lord ho w" OP
to print from mezzotiato, aquatint, and ca",,i orePc,
Frederick Verisopht, " What a clever man Sleek-detect titei
plates
.in several colours, and anyone w
io
seers was." The concert of Shaksperian music is a examine the Soho impressions may, he pays' .ti, so a
better idea, because more defined ; but we doubt evidence of a compound process of printinvirganocribelto
whether it would be sufficiently exciting for such a inks. The method of applying such inks _ a__1.,0,0 el
tine. As for the evening performance at Drury- Mr. Robert Laurie in 1776, in the second vu " .io
lane, we have most of us seen something like it Society of Arts Transactions.
before, and in honour of Shakspere one might as This process of compound printing .a still_cot a' op
well propose to take a walk down Fleet-street. The a modified form, small rubbers being at poriolp peD, v
best suggeetion we have heard is that of Mr. Tom the broader surfaces in place of the old L „ scoIISA,
Taylor—viz., for the endowment of a National For finishing as a water-colour drawing, e !"1.0 the
lea
Theatre, to be in London what the ThAetre Fran- necessary to use a hard paper, or to p Por foal
,e 0
gain is in Paris, and to have for its principal object face by coating it with gum, albutnen9 ...i. al lob
; SOIOTIeao 101
the representation of Shakspere, pure and undefiled, the well-known mediums. If as a water-cols_t:teC
des
by the best talent available. But for this or any or gelatine would probably be the material,tw_wwollid t',lo
other practical purpose the present committee must being used in printing from the plate ; the 0 °_,,ii 00,1 i
lose its present form, and give place to one of a combine, but the colour would not be ails fte;onla 71
really " National" character, in which every class PaPe"—if the coating of gelatine were thickf,_l_ ro clifrAjv
in the country shall be adequately represented. century be likely to perish, and there would PuTi for 'ele
POST.—The question that remains at issue be. in rubbing off the impression from the paper' ti;estl,°.rei
tween the Porte and the Moldo-Wallachian Prin- ing as an old picture, gelatine would not oeioyed to, of
cipality is one that can hardly be alio wed to fall two would not combine. If canvas were east the os7tivl
into the condition of a chronic grievance. The upon, no doubt oil-colours would be used.
ei'llrfaseft`oo
dignity of the Ottoman Government and the inte- water-colours it was necessary to harden llli iiy iissP
rests of the Eastern Church are equally at stake. paper, in order to prevent the colours aPPlie"
It becomes, therefore, of considerable importance to running or spreading.
point out the state of this question in the crisis
which has now arrived, as well as the actual bear-
ings of the dispute. Prince Couza, on his accession
to the united government of Moldo-Wallachia,
found the Greek monasteries of those provinces :n
possession of vast estates. These estates have
formed, for some centuries, the chief support of the
Christian Church both in Asia Minor and other
parts of the Turkish empire. All this property,
however, was seized and sequestrated by Prince
Couza, in defiance not only of traditionary right,
but of the express limitation of his own powers
over the united Principality. The Porte thereupon
protested against this act of wholesale spoliation, as
not less illegal than unjust. The Prince of Moldo-
Wallachia, however, set this protest at defiance.
Great Britain, Austria, and other Powers then
united with the Porte in demanding a restitution of
the monastic property. But the only result of this
combined representation appears to have resulted in
a legislative enactment which was designed to con-
firm the spoliation. Prince Couza submitted the
question of the secularisation of the monasteries to
Moldo-Wallachian Legislative Chambers. This
Chamber passed a bill of secularisation by the great
majority of eighty to only seven votes. The aliena-
tion of the monastic property now accordingly is
pretended to rest on what is falsely called a Par-
liamentary sanction, though the question, all the
while, does not lie within the competence of the
Executive or Chamber of Moldo-Wallachia. It
is with this defiance that Prince Couza has had
the audacity to meet the formal demand of Turkey
and her allies for the restitution of the property of
the mcnasterics. At this point the question now
rests. It has been the custom, in some quarters,
to argue the matter thus at issue between Turkey
and the united Principality as though it were
analogous to precedents of monastic spoliation in
the west of Europe. It is said that less than
thirty years ago the English people were advocates
of the suppression of the Spanish monasteries, much
as three centuries ago they suppressed the same
establishments in their own country. To this we
can but reply that we are surprised that arguments
so futile and inapposite should be used. To begin
with, the one case was that of a suppression of
monastic establishments; the present ease is that
merely of the sequestration and secularisation of
their property. If a case were made out against
the Moldo-Wallachiau monasteries themselves, we
should be unwilling to defend their continued pre-
servation ; and if the establishments themselves are
to be suppressed, their revenues are diverted, as a
matter of course, into some other channel. Bet
Prince Couza has simply secularised and alienated
the property of the monasteries, while he has left the
monasteries themselves as so many monuments of
poverty and indigence. Moreover, the property of
the Moldo-Wallachian monasteries have been de-
monstrably applied to the most beneficial uses. We
have already said that they have long served to
support the Christian Church in very many of the
regions in which it has flourished amid the Maho-
'listen institutions of the Turkish empire ; and
these monasteries thus exert a strong and indisput-
able claim on the general support of Christendom.
The dissolution of the Spanish monasteries, and the
alienation of their property, were in themselves
harsh measures ; but those institutions could put
forward no such plea of public utility for their sup-
port. It is in a spirit of equal liberality and justice
that the Ottoman Porte has opposed this shame-
less spoliation by Prince Couza. In the phases,
however, into which the question of the Moldo-
Wallachian monasteries has now entered, the
question of the Ottoman ascendancy on the
Danube has become directly involved. The Porte
has been set at open defiance by Prince Couza and
his subservient Chamber. The constitutional re-
lations between Moldo-Wallachia and the Govern-
ment of the Sultan, as defined both by the treaty
of 1856 and by antecedent capitulations, have been
not less clearly broken. One difficulty is that an
indignity and a gross insubordination once borne
with and left unredressed, other acts of the same
kind will inevitably follow; and it is easier for the
Sovereign Power to exact reparation on the occur-
rence of the first grievous outrage than when it has
submitted to other such defiances of its authority.
Indeed, there are already sufficient evidences amen.:
other Christian nationalities of the Porte of a dis-
position to challenge its supremacy on the first
te Turkish
of
practicable occasion. It is now announced that the
Herzegovinians have passed a resolution declaring
tthreaatsutrhyey;
whilew iwill
ptahyetli no s umr re er lee t intoaxaere to h
y preparations
the Prince of Servia appear to be increasing. It
becomes, therefore, at once the duty and the interest
of the Porte to sustain its prestige, and not to allow
itself to be driven to the wall by such an intrigue!.
as Prince Couza. It is well known that this
monastic
question has been got up for the most part in a spirit
of hostility to the Porte, and with the
its legitimate supremacy at defiance. viewor can it
of settingNT
doubted that Prince Couza, in pursuing this be
unfor-
tunate and can on ill-judged course, which only bring
upon him defeat and humiliation of one kind or
another, is secretly backed
by powerful supporters.
But we suspect that these supporters will be found
to avail him little in the hour of trial ; and we be-
lieve that it will not be found consistent with the
temper of the present Sultan to Couza
treat Prince
with any deterence fur the extent or success of his
foreign in • trigues. In a word, the ascendancy of the
Porte is now openly assailed in more than one
quarter; and the preparations for the formation of
a military camp at Sehumla will convince Prince
Couza that (re s rebellious vassal is not likely to be
treated by the Porte with much greater •ti
cone' era-
tion than another.

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