The Sun.
London, England, 1863-06-19 00:00:00

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Their Royal Highnesses the Duchess of Cambridge
and Princess Mary honoured Viscount and Viscountess
Sydney by their company at dinner last evening, at their
residence in Cleveland-square, St. James's. There were
present to meet their Royal Highnesses, their Serene High..
nesses Prince and Princess Edward of Saxe-Weimar, the
Duke of Hamilton, the Duke of Newcastle, the Earl of
Sandwich, the Earl of Clanwilliam, the Earl Cowper, the
Earl of Brecknock, Lord and Lady Rokeby, Dowager Lady
Truro, Lady Florence Paget, and Dr, Quin.
Baron and Baroness Brunnow returned to town
yesterday from Dover, where they had received the Queen
of Prussia at the landing of her Majesty.

Tee Duke of Northumberland is recovering from
his recent attack of gout, His Grace was pronounced to be
much better yesterday.

The Duke of Newcastle returned to London yes-
terday from Oxford.

The Marquis and Marchioness of Bath received a
select circle at dinner on Wednesday, at their mansion on
Carlton House-terrace.

The Marchioness of Townshend's ball, which had
been fixed for Tuesday last, the 16th, and was unavoidably
postponed, will take place this evening, at 35, Belgrave-
square.

The Earl and Countess of Derby returned I o town
yesterday from visiting the Vice-Chancellor of the Univer-
sity of Oxford during the Commemoration.
The Earl and Countess of Camperdown had a
dinner party last evening at their residence in Hill-street.
The Countess of Antrim gave birth to a daughter
at Glenarm Castle, county Antrim, on the loth inst.
Viscount and Viscountess Holmesdale entertained
a select party at dinner last evening, at their residence in
Berkeley-square.

Sir Henry and Lady Fletcher have arrived at
Maurigy's Hotel from Bath.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer arrived in town
yesterday from Oxford.

ALMACK'S.—The first ball of the subscription
took place last night at Willis's Rooms, when about 300
persons were present, and participated in the delights of
the dance till an early hour this morning.

The Guards' Ball to the Prince and Princess

of Wales.

Some progress has now been made with the pre-
parations for the ball to be given by the officers of
the Guards in honour of the Prince and Princess of
Wa less, which, as our readers know, will take place
on the 26th inst., in that portion of the Exhibition
building formerly devoted to the display of the col-
lection of English pictures. The ball-room will be
the largest dancing room in England, and is the
only existing place in which so much space can be
obtained.

Messrs. Kelk and Lucas have undertaken to lay
down a new floor for dancing, which they promise
shell be well suited to the purpose in view, and
there is no doubt they will keep their word. The
decorations, which will be chiefly of a military cha-
racter, have been hitherto principally superintended
and directed by the committee of officers appointed
by the general body, and sufficient progress has
been made to show that if of a less elaborate charac-
ter than those by which the Guildhall was so won-
derfully transformed, the effect will be entirely
satisfactory. The spacious apartment will be illu-
minated by two rows of clusters of gas jets, of a
star-like shape, which will shed an ample flood of
light. At the end of the ball-room, which is 200
feet in length, with, a breadth of 50 feet, there will
be a spacious orchestra, for the use of the musi-
cians, who will be selected from the best men of the
string bands belonging to the three brigades of
Guards.

The supper-room will be also decorated in a very
handsome manner, and here there will be a large
collection of arms of all kinds, ancient and modern,
arranged in groups by experienced hands.
Invitations have been issued to a great number of
distinguished persons, and it is anticipated that the
number present will amount to between 1,400 and
1,500. The arrangements for the supper have been
confided to Messrs. Gunter, of Berkeley-square,
and the wines will be supplied by Messrs. Tod,
Heatly, and Co.

The entrance will be in the Cromwell-road.

CRYSTAL PALACE.—Madamo Lemmens Sher-
rington, Mdlle. Artot, and Madame Alboni, will sing at
the concert to-morrow (Saturday). M. J. Lotto, the
Polish violinist, who made his first appearbnce last Satur-
day, will also perform.

THE LONDON RIFLE BRIGADE.—His Royal
Highness the Duke of Cambridge has intimated to the
commanding officer of the London Brigade that his other
engagements will prevent his carrying out the intention he
had originally 'entertained of inspecting the brigade in
Richmond Park on Saturday next. His Royal Highness,
however, will hold his inspection of the regiment in
Hyde-park on that day, at 5.30 p.m.
THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY now con-
tains 160 pictures, 47 of which, we learn from No.
L of the Fine Arts Quarterly, were presentations. Among
the latest additions may be noticed a very youthful Henry
picture of Charles the Second in a black wig and
armour, about the time of the Restoration—a younger por-
trait than usual of the Earl of Chesterfield—a likeness of
Sir Richard Steele, the Essayist—a sleek, self-complacent
semblance of Samuel Richardson the Novelist—a grim
effigy of Bishop Burnet the Historian—and a portrait of
Charles Churchill, the Poet and Satirist, after he had doffed
the clerical habit, the picture representing him in a coloured
coat and satin waistcoat, with an animated ruddy coun-
tenance.

Wincil IS THE GUILTY ONE ?—A thief in
l;sop's fable having stolen some property, hands it
to an associate, and when the owner taxes them with the
theft, the first swears that he has not got the article, and
the second that he did not take it. But there it is between
them. And so it was with poor Lilley's sufferings and
death. The blame of the protracted close confinement Sir
Wm. Mansfield throws on General Farrell. In contraven-
tion and defiance of the Articles of War, Sir William had
ordered the imprisonment to-he continued till the termina-
tion of the Court-Martial, hut as the Court was adjourned,
Sir Wm. Mansfield contends that General. Farrell should,
either in the exercise of his own discretion, have released
the sergeants, or have applied to him, Sir William, for
fresh instructions.

•
STEAM SHIPBUILDING ON THE CLYDE.--BUSiIIeSS
is well maintained in the Clyde shipbuilding yards.
Messrs. Henderson, Coulborn, and Co., of Renfew, have
launched a screw named the Alerta, intended for the
Spanish trade. She is about 850 tons burden, and is now
being fitted with diagonal engines of 150- horse power. 'I he
owners of the Montreal Ocean steamship line recently con-
tracted with Messrs Steele and Co., of Greenock, for two
large steamers of 2,500 tons burden. The cylinders of the
engines, which are to be of 400-horse-power, will be sup-
plied by Messrs. Macnab and Co., Shaw's Water Foundry,
and will be 6ft. 3in, in diameter. Messrs. Steele have on
hand a screw of 400 tons and several iron sailing vessels,

LITERATURE.

Montalembert's Life of Lacordaire.

lemozr of the Abbe Lacordaire. By the Count de
Montalembert, one of the Forty of the French

Academy. One vol., pp. 311. Richard Bentley.

Among the few real men in this age of medio-
crities, after times will without any doubt whatever
rank the Great Orator who is the subject of this
beautiful and touching Biography. Frenchman
though he' was to his heart's care in the ardour of
his patriotism—Priest, Monk though he was—his
name and fame are familiar, are admired and hon-
oured here in this Protestant England, And this
for the very reason that what Henri Lacordaire was
in name he was in reality, he was with the
whole intensity of his ardent nature, he was
with all the might of his pure and noble soul.
Into his character as Orator, as Priest, as
Monk, he cast the whole fire of his genius. Ills
motto—it it was any man's of his time—was that of
our own Clarendon : Thorough ! Beginning life as
a law student, called eventually to the Bar of
France, practising first of all as an Advocate, Lacor-
daire—suddenly—from a free thinker, from,. if not
an infidel, certainly a Deist, a Voltairian, at any
rate, an Unbeliever in everything but Morality—
became, body and spirit, heart and soul, a Christian.
Never doing anything throughout his life by halves,
he determined to become, from that ever-memor-
aba3 moment (for him and for so many of his fellow-
creatures) from that moment of his conversion, not
only a Christian, but an ecclesiastic. He resolved
not merely to enter the Church, but to enter it lite-
rally—to advance from the Porch at once and to pass
within the Sanctuary. He quitted his profession as
a Barrister. He eagerly entered himself once more
as a scholar at a seminary—this time, however, it
was at an ecclesiastical seminary. Taking holy
orders, within a year or two after his entrance, he
had advanced to the priesthood—retaining still, as
he retained to the last moment, through the
whole course of his virtuous at d labo-
rious life, that same fervent and passionate love
for political freedom which he had cherished from
the dawn of his reason, and which was already the
one consolation of his soul before the birth in his
soul of his burning love for Christ. Before one
other syllable is here uttered, or, rather, written,
about the Pere Lacordaire, or about the biography
of him, penned by .the most intimate and the most
beloved of all his friends, the Count de Montalem-
bert—we would here comment upon the fact
of that burning love for the Redeemer, that
from the hour of his awakening to the
sight of Belief from the blindness of Infidelity, be-
came the paramount, and dominant, and all-
absorbing joy of the life of Lacordaire. " When
all the events of this generous life shall be known,"
says his biographer, "the orator will disappear
before the monk, and the prestige of that eloquence
which has moved, enlightened, and converted so
many souls, will seem a less marvel than the
formidable austerity of his life, the severity with
which he chastised his flesh, and his passionate lore
for Jesus Christ." Lacordaire has repeatedly evi-
denced the intensity of this love of his fcr the Divine
Founder of Christianity, by passages of the rarest
eloquence : among the noblest attestations that ever
emanated from his lips, at once of his power as an
Orator and of his devotion as a Christian. " Lord
Jesus," he cried from the pulpit of Notre Dame in
1846, in the course of his First Conference, "during
the ten years that I have been preaching to this
audience, Thou wert ever at the bottom of my dis-
courses ; but to-day at last I come more directly to
Thyself ; to that divine face which is daily the ob-
ject of my contemplation ; to those sacred feet
which I have so often kissed ; to those loving hands
which have so often blessed me; to that life whose
fragrance I have inhaled from my cradle, which my
boyhood denied, which my youth again learned to
love, and which my manhood adores and preaches to
every creature. 0 Father ! 0 Master! 0 Lover ! 0
Jesus ! help me more than ever, since being nearer
to Thee, my audience must feel it, and I must
draw from my heart accents indicative of Thy ad-
mirable proximity." Again as the very crown-
ing and concluding words of those first wonderful
Conferences : " Ah !" he exclaims "I have already
often named Him ! It is He who is here before you.
It is He whose name, sooner or later, will cause every
knee to bend in Heaven, on earth, and in hell. I
pronounce, once more in concluding, that name
which of all names is the most dear to me. I name
with faith, hope, love, adoration, the Lord Jesus
Christ." ghat was the secret of the fervour, of the
purity, of the consistency for which this noble life
was throughout so remarkable. In itself, in its in-
cidents, in its general character it was a very
simple life indeed. After the one grand turning
point already, here, more than once alluded to, after
the courts of law had been forsaken for the haunts
of religion, the events of his life may be easily
enough summed up in a very few sentences. The
editing for three months of a Paris newspaper,
L'Avenir, conjointly with the Abbe de Lamennais
and the Count de Montalembert. A journey to
Rome at the close of those three months—made
almost as a pilgrimage by the then editor of
L'Avenir. A separation, first of one of the younger
of the three, and then of the other, from the elder
of both of them, the gifted but arrogant-minded
de Lamennais. Sermons in abundance. The
writing of one or two books, among them the
"Life of St. Dominic," the founder of the Order
whose ranks the young priest had entered—return-
ing to France, returning to Paris, returning to the
pulpit of Notre Dame, his head shaven, himself
arrayed in the white robe of the Dominican. His elec-
tion in 1848 as representative of the People, and his
entering the republican assembly, as such, in his garb
as a monk. His election a dozen years afterwards
as one of the Forty of the French Academy, and
his appearance there also in the white robe of the
Dominican Monk, to receive that singular homage
at once to his genius and to his character. Re-
viewing the general aspect of this notable and noble
career, the Count de Montalembert himself ob-