The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-27 00:00:00

TN FUN, This Week, One Penny, Our Prize
Essays—Name of the Winner ; Sir Matthew& White
itidley, 31. P. ; The Frankfort Diet—all Smoke, &c., c.

OYAL PRINCESS'S THEATRE.
Lessee, Mr. George Vining
Under the Management of Mr. Walter Aiontgomery.
THIS EVENING, KING JOHN. King John, Mr. Walter
lon tgomery.
To be followed by A ROUGH DIAMOND.
Commence at 7.

NENV- THEATRE-ROYAL, ADELPHI,
-31:‘ Proprietor and Manager. M;.. B. WebstPr.
Tuts EVENING, at 7, a new comic drama, entitled THE
TIEN AND CH icK ENS ; or, A Sign of Affe ,tion. Messrs.
Killington, R. Phillips, Stephenson ; Mrs. Stirling and Miss
11 aimms.
Atter which, at a quarter-past 8, the new drama of THE
HALKSTED MAN; a,FI, T. E GIiOSI"S .•:Aiti;AlN, in
which will be exhibited Professor Pepper's adaptat!on of
the Great :-,pectrai Illusion. Messrs. J. L. Toole, R. Philips,
efton C. J. Smith; Mrs. Alfred Mellon and Miss H. Simms.
Followed by a new Burlesque, ent fled ILL-T RE AT ED
IL TRU v.A_TORE,. M€ ssrs. Toole, P. Bedford, R. Phillips,
.Ebrirne, C.. 1. Smith, Roraer ; the Sisters .Nelson, Carry and
Sari, and Miss K. Kelly.

ROYAL STRAND THEATRE,
Manager, 3/r. W. 11. Swanborough.

Tigns EVENING, HIS FIRST CHAMPAGNE. Mr.
Leigh Murray.
Followed by (34th time) THE MOTTO, "I'M ALL
THERE." Messrs. Honey, Turner, E. Danvers, Collier,
Clifton; Mesdames Ada Swanborough, F. Josephs, Maria
Simpson, Wallace, and Jenny White.
To conclude with TURN HIM OUT. Mr. Turner, Miss
Thorne.

Commence at 7.

111 FIE THIRD EDITION OF " THE SUN,"
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HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tins DAY.—Morning, 12h. 15m.—Afternoon, 12h. 45m.
To-moßßow.-Morning, lh. 12m.—Afternoon, lh. 40m.

The Weather--Sun Office, Aug. 27, 1863.
--
THEYLISOMETER.

This morning
This day at Two o'clock 72
Barometer-29.60.
Wind—S. ; moderate, and fine, with rain in the morn
jag and during the night.

44:
4405111.
O,ID nit
A

LONDON, THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 1863,

A quarter of a century having elapsed since the
British Association was last assembled at New-
castle-upon-Tyne—that one suggestive circumstance
alone furnished this year's President, Sir WILLIAM
ARMSTRONG, with a noble theme for the inaugural
address delivered by him last evening, a remark•
able harangue, which will be found fully reported
in another part of this day's impression of our
journal. Within these five-and-twenty years last
past, how much in truth has there not been accom-
plished. Science, to take simply one solitary illus-
tration of the marvels it has effected within that
interval—Science has, Pnosreßo-like, within this
narrow space of the world's history, summoned, in
Electricity, its ARIEL, virtually, to put a girdle
round:theEarth in forty seconds. Since 1838, when
the town of Newcastle was last selected as the
chosen rendezvous for the members of the
British Association, the whole wonderful systems
of railways and of steam navigation, have covered
th© solid earth with a magic network of iron, and
have enabled Man to traverse the ocean indepen •
dently of wind and tide. It is true that long before
1838 the marvellous contrivance of the steam engine
had already endowed modern civilisation with a
power, that might be regarded as not inaptly
symbolized by the Geni rising vapour-like from the
brazen casket dragged up from the deep in his net,
by the Arabian Fisherman. But it has been since
1838, it may here be confidently asserted, that the
chief application of that astonishing power, that the
principle evidence of its extraordinary capacity to
perform according to pleasure the labours of a Fairy
or of a Giant, has been manifested. Within this quar-
ter of a century, the round of which has but just been
completed, not only has the whole Railway System
grown up, and„parallel with it, the whole system of
the Electric Telegraph, but how many other won-
drous miracles of science have we not seen per-
formed with a nicety and a precision and a frequency
that have long since rendered them familiar even
to the uneducated multitude. If we have spoken,
as we have, of the invention of the steam-engine as
not inaptly symbolized by the Geni of the Brazen
Casket, dragged up in his net upon the
seashore, by the:Arabian Fisherman—and the
resemblance hinted at need hardly appear so extra-
vagant to the philcsophical dreamer, remembering,
for example, Sir ISAAC NEWTON'S humble reference
to himself, as one picking up shells and pebbles upon
the shore of the Great Ocean of Truth—we might
no less aptly recognise a symbolism of the magic
power of the Electric Telegraph in the obe-
dient Geni of the Ring of ALLADIN. The
rubbing of the ring in that wonderful old
eastern romance, being, almost one might
say, mysteriously typical of the completion of the
metallic round, or the electric circuit, by the opera-
tion of the galvanic battery—evoking nowadays
momentarily at every telegraph station, at the
behest of anyone, a Geni far more more marvellous
as a messenger, than that old Geni of the Ring in
the story of " Madill." Again, have we not pure
chaseable now, any day, at any railway station, for
a few coins, a little scrap of a card-board ticket,
that, for carrying us to and fro, whithersoever
.we wish, may vie with the few feet
',Mare of the Turkish Carpet, told of also
in the Arabian Night's Entertainments ? Another
°f the „
old poetic fabulists, it may be remembered,
amused his own fancy for the marvellous, and that
of his readers, by describing the little pool of water
upon the surface
ue of which the reflection of the
gazer's face' 8
gazer's fsz
ttufixed and preserved, and—with the
lanescape! Au shadow also of the surrounding
that of the
_ at exact and literal fore-shadowing
effected bym
the Photographer.
nowadays being perpetually
the liter years photographer. Several of
at this last quarter of a
century have elapsed since
WARNER died, almost
no poor Captain
buried away
in
some
ob:couteticed, and was quietly
visionary—the " long ran grave as a mere idle
projectiles,
about which he was wont in his t!
rethee
to talk amidst
almost universal ridicule, being the fa
then, of the jester and the caricaturist Write subject,
then, since the death of that poor, Yet--since
despised
WARNER, who only talked of those ''long Cap
eang „tain
,e
—have not the day-dreams of the •
ticable theorist, been, not only actu 'itpraeally
realised, but absolutely surpassed by the
astounding specimens of ordnance fabricated, among
others, by the icry man who was last evening, at
Newcastle, delivering the inaugural address for
V. 153 of the proceedings at thi3 annual meeting of
the members of the British Association. If only

for thus bringing vividly within the general survey
this last wonderful interval of five-and•twenty
years,since the Association was once before gathered

together down at Newcastle, we have reason to be

grateful to Sir WILLIAM ARMSTRONG for the en

thrilling interest, the instructive scope, and the

singular suggestiveness of his really masterly re••

tro3pect.

It is difficult for the denizens in the busy centres
of civilisation to realise the wild free life, the
reckless adventure of the new colony of the
Western Hemisphere. It is equally difficult for
the weary seeker for employment, heartsick with