The Sun.
London, England, 1863-03-16 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, IVIARCIT 16, 1863,

Importing Tea without colour on the leaf pre-
vents the Chinese passing off inferior leaves as in the usual
kinds. Horniman's Tea is uncoloured, therefore, always
good alike. Sold in packets by 2,280 agents.
" TAKE WHAT You LIKE;'—At Westminster
Police-eourt, this mot fling, a gentleman applied for
a summons against a cabman for excess of fare. The appli-
cant, it appeared, had a dispute about the cabby's fare, and
told him to " take what he pleaked"—holding in his hand
some silver money. The cabman took Gs., which the appli-
cant considered an excess, and therefore he wanted a sum-
mons, Mr. Ingram said, when a cabman was told to " take
what he liked," he might urge, in answer to the summons,
a mutual agreement. The complainant, taking that view
of the ease, did not persovet e in his application.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

PECTATOR.—The London Ili unneal ions were, on
the A .Olt, exceedingly rna!rnificeett—for London.
w ter short we fall of the true beery of Metal,
nation,-the impressive spectacle of the Quedrenf in I
Regent-street, with its sweeping curves of flame, I
brought out most clearly. We illuminate, as we do
almost all other things, on individualistic and com-
petitive printiples, instead of combining for unity
of design and contittlity of effect. One house writes
a sentiment in coloured lamps, another puts up a
gas star, a third a transpateucy of the Prince and
Princess, and all is spotty and irregular. A conti-
nuous stream of light, however thin, sweeping down
each face of the great thoroughfares, would have
threaded together all the single illuminations into
an effect of infinitely greater grandeur. The only
real failure, however, was the electric light, which
entirely disappointed the confiding hopes of its scien-
tific friends. People thronged to St. Paul's, at great
peril to their lives, to see a dome of fire, such as the
burning house in Paternoster-row lit up a year and
a half ago, and beheld what the class-books on optics
call an " oblique pencil of rays," and a very faint
one too, wandering in a desolate and dejected way
1 about the dome in the hope of effecting something.
A single beam of moonlight would have produced a
finer effect. St. Paul's cannot be lighted by a magic
lanthorn. The coloured Admiralty lamps round the
ball had the advantageof being seen from the howl-
ing wilderness of Smithfield—the nearest point
reached by many a cabful of patient explorers—and
certainly gave a striking impression of enormous
height, but also of great poverty of effect at that
height, looking something as a coloured glass-bead
necklace round a majestic beauty might seem to in-
fancy. The electric light on the National Gallery
did little better, except that which turned on the
top of the Nelson column, the whole height of which
remained:in darkness, it gave the effect of a sheeted
ghost in mid-air. Next to the Quadrant, St. James's-
street, Cheapshie, Fleet-street, Bond-street, and Pall-
mall were most brilliantly and continuously lighted
streets, the Strand, except near Temple-bar, being
rather a failure. An eccentric and ingenious mind
in the Haymarket produced dissolving views of the
various members of the Royal Family, which excited
great interest in the crowd, the Princess of Hesse
(whom they call the Princess Bessy) developing
out of the Princess of Prussia with a rapidity that
even Mr. Darwin's newest species never rivalled.
SATURDAY REVIEW.—The present Home Secre-
tary ie a typical specimen of the feeble race of
statesmen with which this conventional necessity
has often filled some of the most important offices.
At first sight, he has some qualities which would
seem to make him a useful member of a Government
that exists at the will of the House of Commons.
His gentle temper and extreme pliability secure
for him, among members of Parliament, that nega-
tive appreciation which is accorded to those who
do not disturb the.eveutenor of a lazy session by
importune activity. -Amen who, never is provoked
into rough word, who **et -says anything suffi-
ciently definite to be by phasibility indiscreet, and
who can always be squeezed by adequate pressure
into granting anything or withdrawing anything,
is sore of a certain amount of popularity. But it is
a SUCO SS of a very fidgile- and delusive' character.
No Ministry can exist long upon that neptive
popu'arity which is based upon its inaction, and
which is therefore largely compounded of contempt.
Virtuous and courteous debility is a quality of mind
useful enough in a stop-gap or a sinecurist ; but the
Ministry that treats the Home-office as a sinecure, to
be filled by the possessor of such qualifications,
dangerously trifles with its reputation. The Home
Secretary is the one official of the Government whose
personal ability presents itself in a palpable shape to
the experience of the people. If the Foreign- office
goes wrong, they are only wounded in their senti-
ments. If a Chancellor of the Exchequer blunders,
the chances are that he is simply blundering one class
in favour of another ; so that, if he makes enemies by
his mistakes, he is also making friends. But if a
hitch occurs in the mechanism by which the security
of life and property is assured, the evil results, or
at least the terrors of them, are felt by all classes
alike. If he so manages the police, or the punish-
ments of the law, that order is not preserved orcrime
increases, the indignation which men who are not
politicians feel is something very different from the
grumbles that are elicited by a rash finance or a
wrong-headed policy. The Home Secretary is
clothed with the elementary functions of Government
—the protection of life and goods from violence; and
if those functions are left unfulfilled, there is little
solace to be found in the exemplary discharge of all
the rest.
The past week has contributed two illustrations
of Sir George Grey's characteristic deficiencies. The
procession was a disgraceful specimen of adminis-
trative incapacity that foreign critics will not soon
forget. If the Grand Duke Constantine could have
been near Temple-bar or at the Mansion House on
Saturday last, he would have recanted his too hasty
admiration of the English system of police. A pro-
cession, indeed, it ceased to be. It was resolved into
its component atoms. Nothing remained but a few
carriages floating about at rare intervals in a boiling
sea of mob. The Princess had a narrow escape of
being received into the embraces of the English
people with a literal energy upon which she did not
count. The reply on the part of the Home-office,
of course, will be, that all the disasters of the City
portion of the route were due to the break down of
that fragment of police which the vanity of the
Corporation has been allowed to keep asunder from
the general police organisation of the metropolis.
But there is no one who is so much to blame for the
existence of that anomaly as Sir George Grey. He
has had the reform of the City continually under his
hand for the last ten years. He has brought in some
half-dozen bills for its accomplishment, drawn from
the re port of Sir John Pat teson's commission. But
be has never even attempted to bring them
to au issue ; and after looking helplessty at the
difficulty for some six sessions, he has now aban-
doned it in despair. Nor will it avail him to
say that the difficulties of Saturday were unex-
pected, and that, had he foreseen them, he would
have put more pressure upon the laz' and selfish
Corporation. Unhappily, Saturday was but the
rehearsal of the real tragedy. Upon'Tuesday the
inefficiency of the police under Sir George Grey's
management bore fruit in all parts of London in the
actual slaughter of many innocent persons. The
uncoetrollalve throng of Saturday might have
warned him. But the certainty of impending dis-
aster tends rather to paralyse than to rouse men
who are naturally incapable of energy.
LONDON REVIEW.—No marriage can be regarded
as a commonplace event. Even when the sacred
rites unite the lowliest and the most obscure, it is
a crisis in the life and destiny of two human beings ;
the fertile source of happiness or sorrow not confined
to themselves; the sweet or bitter spring of unnum-
bered blessings or curses to those who wed and to
the society of which they form part. How august,
then, must be the bearing upon a nation's future of
such a marriage as we have just seen celebrated.
By it the Royal Family, beneath whose rule we so
love to live, renews itself under the happiest aus-
pices. We see in it a deliverance from all fear of a
break in the direct line of our native-born princes.
We trust that it will give us a young and buoyant
Court ; not, as in times we willingly forget, ranged
in opposition to the elder and graver one, but rein-
forcing its strength and increasing its influence by
the freshness of sympathy, the natural enthusiasm,
the openness to new thoughts and ideas, with which
it is the privilege of youth to aid and inspire the
calmer wisdom, the more cautious steps and the
more sluggish feelings of mature age. It is desirable
that the influence of the rising generation should
be felt near the throne as it is in every other part
of our political or social life. Never had prince or
princess a fairer opportunity of playing a great
part as faithful interpreters to the Sovereign of the
sentiments and ideas of their own contemporaries.
The nation confidently expects that they will not lose
sight of this duty ; that they will not, even in the pure
enjoyment of domestic happiness, forget the claims
of that public station to which they are born. At
the same time it is keenly alive to the fact, that
domestic purity and devotion are the indispensable
foundations of their usefulness. Of these, however,
we do not doubt. The Prince of Wales has had be-
fore him the best example in his mother and father.
Even before we saw her, report had invested the
Princess with every virtue that may adorn a crown,
or shed happiness upon a family circle. Since she
has shown herself in our streets, he would indeed be
a rash man who ventured to hint a doubt of this, in
any assembly 3f his countrymen and countrywo-
men. But had our hopes and expectations been
based merely upon these reasoning considerations,
our rejoicings would have wanted much much of
their warmth, and been characterised by much more
of aelf-restreint. The people were deeply affected
and thoroughly won by the romance of a love -match
in a rank where such things have been far from
common. This wets the touch of nature which broke
down all the barriers which rank and etiquette in-
terpose between soVereign and subjects. Those
who thought about the matter found here the best
pledge for the realisation of our fondest wishes. To
those who did not think, the same conviction was
suggested by the unerring instinct of our hearts.
Therefore was it both natural and well that we
should do as we have done. Our generous outhutst
of deep and genuine feeling will not fall fruitless to
to the ground. Nations, like individuals, gain im-
mensely by throwing off now and then the restraints
of conventional habit, and by giving vent to the
finer
emotions and exercise to the more unselfish
capabilities, which are apt to languish amidst the
) routine of daily life. Such demonstrations as those
, in which we have taken part sensibly raise the tone
of the public mind. They bring home to us how
much we all have in common ; they increase our