The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-10 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 10, 1863,

dwelling. Over-crowding, close air, bad smells,
and dilapidated walls and roof, are of such constant
recurrence that they excite bat little comment.
The political wrongs of the masses find exponents
enough. Universal suffrage, uncontrolled voting,
and similar doctrines are never without their ad-
vocates ; "The rights of the people" is the continual
cry raised by demagogues and would-be reformers,
but the rights of the people to the unchecked use
of the common necessaries of life, their claim to a
clean, roomy, and habitable dwelling-place on the
land they cultivate—such pretensions are little
heeded. It is undoubtedly a difficult case, and one
that it is hard to mend without trenching on the
power of the landlord, and English reform and
charity too are justly very cautious about encroach-
ing on private right. One man has a right to let a
cottage or hovel, and another man has a right to
occupy it if he pays the tent, and the reformer is
not asked to interfere in the matter. Still, it is a
national disgrace to us that we should quietly sit
down helplessly in face of such a state of things as
is proved to be existing among us. Recent
discussions on the subject have called forth
a statement from Mr. SAMUEL CLARKE,
' who, having filled the office of sanitary inspector
during a period of fourteen years, has good right
to raise's voice on the matter. The extracts which
he gives from some of his own reports made in the
county of Norfolk during the last twelve months
are positively appalling; and these quotations are
not, he tells us, the worst cases, for those he has
purposely avoided, giving, consequently, an accu-
rate picture of the average condition of the dwell-
ings of our labouring poor. And from the extracts
given, dreadful as are their details, there seems no
reason to think them exceptional cases. The same
story ccmes over and over again—parents and
children of all ages crowded into one ill-ventilated
room, the walls leaking, open ditches near the
house, and a total absence of proper drainage.
In one case we find a man and his wife and
seven children, whose ages range from three years
to twenty, living in a small place "not large enough
to be called a room, being, in fact, the space
between the ceiling and the roof," The only air
and light that reach this place are admitted through
one square of glass eleven inches by nine. Another
dwelling is described as " a rickety tenement,"
whose walls are propped up and liable to fall at any
time; there are large apertures in the walls near
the bed, in which an old woman has lain since last
Christmas. It is "surrounded by filthy dykes, full
of stagnant drainage matter." Again, we find a
cottage whose floor is full of large holes, with pieces
of wood supporting the roof, and the drainage run-
ing into an open ditch; and another where a hole
is cut in the wall to give ventilation and stopped up
by bricks at night. In places such as this s)eep
eight, nine, or ten persons of all ages and both
sexes ; and yet such, we are told on unquestionable
authority, is the common state of the cottages of
our agricultural labourers, and has been for many
years past. Complaints of the heat, of the closeness,
of the bad smells, of the miserable over-crowding,
are met with from many of the inmates ; others
appear to have sunk into a state of hopelessness or
indifference on the matter. The over-crowding of
our largo cities and manufacturing to sins has often
been lamented over as an evil, in some degree in-
separable from the rapid increase of our population,
and the centralising tendency of trade and com-
merce. It has been a matter of rtjoicing to the
well-wishers of the poor that the increased facility
and diminished cost of the means of locomotion will
enable the labourer to live a little further from his
place of work, and will consequently give him a
little more choice in selecting his cottage or rooms.
But here, in the free open country where the air,
ti
of
wt
nh ey
br
eceozue lsd, have
ei t
t,
hi
es fis
pn
ae
er e t
ihs a no
pt
eh
ne ba
and
sdt
ho fe aol
tuhr
icnogmse,shuernesowuhgehrtettohtehpoosoerwerheolalsivsee in s decentare
esupd
p sewde dwell-
ings,
have had such easy access to their worldly supe-
riors, and to secure so much more of their interest
and attention,—the worst evils of a London alley,
or a Manchester and Liverpool byeway are things
unnoticed from their frequency. It is time that
this was looked to. It is time, if we call ourselves
a Christian nation, that we treat our fellow-men and
women as human beings, and give them an oppor-
tunity of living as becomes human beings. Excep-
tions are to be found, and Mr. CLARKE tells us that
ne ds non we
hn e
carer s
nv
de
‘thionu ghs mi
tenecessary toe hbleisgtho twe n
consideration to the proper and decent accommoda-
tion of the labourer es is shewn to the brute crea-
tion, whose services are also required in the culti-
vationstnnees o, soil."fwthheetberprompted ltis to bbeyh-poprneddetnheaet
orsu bene-
volence, volence, will no longer remain exceptional, or if so
we had better abandon our sermons and lectures,
underan existingdoura
attempts at
circumstances,
inaluesdt appearucation, to thewhich,
residents in these miserable hovels little better than
a satire and a mockery.

DIABLERIE OF THE FRENCH THEATRE.

(From L' Union,)

Diablerie is the order of the day at the French
Theatres. At the Opera Comique they are playing
Les Amours du Diable, where, among other fine
things, the whole of the infernal regions dances in
fury around a poor diablesse who has allowed a
soul to escape that she had the charge of conducting
below. At the Theatre of the Porte St. Martin
Les Pilules du Diable, a fairy extravaganza, con-
tinually withdrawn, has also continually a diabolical
success. At the Gymnase they are performing Le
Demon du Jeu, an infernal drama, which has be-
come the rage, and chooses to be regarded as a
comedy. At the Ambigu they have the Sorciere,
a drama in which history takes all sorts of fantastic
galoPs mounted upon a broomstick ; and at the
Theatre de la Gbi 6, Peau d'Ane, a fairy tale, of
which a diabolical sorcery occupies the principal
part. At the Theatre of the Chatelet the Secret de
Miss Aurore terminates with apparitions and
phantoms; and at the Theatre Dtjazet, in the
Spectres de • Aurore, a sorceress, without any regard
to propriety, summons before the audience the dead,
and even the living. Let us add to this list the
pretty salon of M. Robin, where the phantoms
have commenced their diablerie, and where every
evening they draw together a multitude of mad
spectators, un monde jou !

CONTRADICTORY REPORTS.

THE STEAM RAMS AT BIRKENHEAD.

The mercantile organ, the Shipping Gazette, says:—
" We have reason to believe that the announcement which
appeared in a morning contemporary yesterday, to the
effect that the Government had directed the iron clad steam
rams now in course of construction at Liverpool to be
stopped, is premature, if not incorrect. We may add that,
on the attention of the Foreign-office being called to the
character and build of the -cossets in the early part of last
month, and before the memorial was presented to Earl Rus-
sell, the officers of the Crown at Liverpool made a survey
of the ships, and some correspondence passed between the
authorities and the builders. 'r ho result was forwarded to
the Foreign-cEce, end in the event of no new material fact
transpiring, we understand that no further action is likely
to be taken in the matter until the important points of law
raised by the ruling of the Lord Chief Baron in the case of
the Alexandra are settled by the full court next term, and
possibly not even then."

The peace-at-any-price organ, the AVar, says :—" We
are glad to be able to state, on undoubted authority, that
the Government have ordered the two steam rams which
have been the subject of so much controversy of late to be
detained,"

-- -
The death is announced of Baron d'Orgeval, for-
merly ellatuberlain to Charles X., and officer in the Gardes
du Corps.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

GREECE.
COPENHAGEN, SEPT. 9.
King George the First will return to-morrow.
He will proceed on the 11th to the Palace of Glucks-
burg in Schleswig to take leave of his Danish
Majesty, and will continue his journey on the
following day via Rumpenheim, Brussels, and
London.

THE POLISH INSURRECTION.

CRACOW, SEPT. 10.
An encounter resuaing in favour of the insur-
gents took place at Kokiciny, on the Warsaw and
Cracow line of Railway, on the 4th inst. Fifty
Russians fell.

Lelewel, after his victory on the 3J, pushed
forward in the direction of Tarobin.
BERLIN, SEPT. 10.
. -

A private letter, received here from Warsaw,
dated the 9th inst., states that on the following
day all communication with the city would bs cut
off, and the strictest state of siege established for
10 days.

ITALY.
TURIN, SEPT. 10.
The Stampa of to•day publishes a letter from
the Roman Penitentiary Court to the Italian
Bishops, demar.ding a formal recantation from the
priests who profess principles contrary to those
of the Roman Curia, under pain of heavy eccle-
siastical punishment.

SPAIN.

MADRID, SEPT. 10.

Senor Madoz and General Prim have declared
that the Progressist party is in favour of monar-
chical constitutional liberty, and that it will never
follow a policy of violence, but one of legal resist-
ance.

Another meeting of 50 members of the Demo-
cratic party has taken place at which the policy of
abstaining from voting was agreed to.

FRANCE.

PARIS, SErr. 10.

The Emperor has received a letter from the
Queen of Madagascar, notifying her accession to
the throne.

The Duc de Montebello, French Ambassador at
St. Petersburg, has received permission, at his own
request, to pass two months in France, where care
for the health of the Duchess requires his residence.
rho leave of absence of the duke will coincide with
the stay of the Emperor Alexander in the Crimea
and at Moscow.

Prince Metternich, the Austrian ambassador to
the Court of the Tuiler!es, is announced, we observe,
by Le Pays, to have just returned to Paris.
Bounsi, Sept. 8. The market has recovered a
little buoyancy, and a fair amount of business has
been done at an advance. Threes, for the Account,
are now firm at 691. 15c. Railway Share Market
---
firm, showing slight :
a-- improvement in some of the
lines. The market again retrograded towards the
close, and left off as follows :-
11 per Cents. 95 50 Italian L0an...... 73 90
Do. end month
Do. end month.... 73 90
3 per Cents
Do. end month 6B 80 Do. end month.... 74
Credit Mobilier 1185 Russian ........
Do. end month 1185 Austrian ........
Bank Shares
3385 Spanish Threes....
Credit k oncier 1395 Rome Debt ......

AYB.
Cash. Account.
Orleans—
Northern
1000 .. 1002 50
New ditto

RAIL"

Lyons and Mediterranean 1045 .. 1040
GI enqva 497 50 .. 498 75
Southern 742 50 .. 740
..
Western
Eastern
. 427 50

Sardinian. ............. 430
Austrian .............. 425 .. 425
Lombard .............. 567 50 .. 570
North of Spain ........ 560 --562 50
Saragossa .............. 655 655
Ditto to Barcelona .... 362 50 ..

THE BOMBAY MAIL.

SOU 'HAMPTON, SEPT. 11.

The Peninsular and Oriental Company's steamer
Ellora, with the heavy portion of the above mail,
has arrived here. She bring 54 passengers, aLd
£770 in specie.
The Moors of the It'ff have attacked the Spanish
troops At the garrison of Melilla. The latter had
2 officers wounded, 3 soldiers killed and 42 Wounded,
The loss of the,Moors is stated to have been great.
They left 91 prisoners in the hands of Spaniards.
Exchange on London at Gibralter, 90 days, 493,
491.

MR, BOHN'S NEW VOLUMES.

I An Introduction to Astronomy: to which is added
An Astronomical Vocabulary. By Joan Russell
Hind, F.R.A.S. One col., pp. 216. Third Edition.
Henry G. Bohn.
Our Village. First and Second Series. By Mary
Russell Mitford. 2 vols. Henry G. Bohn.
Guided by the happiest tact in the selection of
copyrights, Mr. Bohn has, during the last sixteen
or eighteen years, been gradually accumulating
upon his own library bookshelves, and upon those
of his subscribers a really wonderful store of sound,
stirling, delightfully entertaining, and hardly less
delightfully instructive literature. He has been
enabled to do this, all the more effectually and effec-
tively, all the more rapidly and comprehensively
by issuing from the press, almost simultaneously,
not merely two or three, but as many as ten
or a dozen totally different collection of books,
or as he h9s entitled them, one and all (and with
good reason) LIBRARIES. In evidence, at once,
that we are not in any way exaggerating the
number of these distinct series we need only
here briefly enumerate the designation of each set of
these valuable works. The Standard Library,
the most varied amongst them all, is, as a matter
of course, far and away, amongst them all, the
most voluminous. Uniform with it, is The School
and College Series, hardly less varied, though,
as might at once be imagined, not nearly
so voluminous. The Illustrated Library, a little
more costly in price, comprises within it works no
less popular than " White's Selborne" and " Wal-
ton's Complete Angler," and with these othexs no
less comprehensive in their scope than "Lodge's
Portraits of Illustrious Personages." The Anti-
quarian Library comprises within it, again, such
other wise inaccessible authorities as Bede and Mallet,
as Mathew Paris and William of Malmesbury, as
Marco Polo and Giraldus Cambrensis. The His-
torical Library would be welcome to any book col-
lector of moderate means, if for nothing else, for its
comprising within it editions of the Diaries and
Correspondence of both Samuel Pepys and John
Evelyn. The like might be said for The Library
of French Memoirs, because of its supplying the
English reader, in full, with those both of the
famous Duke of Sully and of Phillip of Commines.
What need be said further in regard to the value
of The British Classics, when it has been remarked
that, among them, have here been brought together
the works of Edmund Burke, of Daniel Defoe, and
of Joseph Addison ? No less than seven volumes of
the collection being given up to a noble edition of
"Gibbon's Roman Empire," complete and una-
bridged, the original text of the " Decline and Fall"
being accompanied by a profusion of illustrative
notes and commentaries, by critics as various in their
acumen as Guizot, Wenck, Neander, and Niebuhr.
The Ecclesiastical Library, embracing within it
translations from the Greek of Eusebius and Phil:,
Ju' 93 LIS-- The Philologico-Philosophical Library,
containing, among other curious works, " Wright's
Provincial Dictionary" and " Wheeler's Analysis
of Thucydides"—The Extra Volumes, no mere
careless after-thoughts on the part of the publisher,
be it observed, but a series, on the contrary, num-
bering within it the writings of such giants of
literature as Rabelais, Cervantes, and Boccaccio—
The Shilling Library, about the best of all the
railway libraries issued from the press: these, with
The Classical Library and The Scientc Library,
carry the separate collections of works pub-
lished by Mr. Bohn to the full number
of THIRTEEN ! The Scientific Library and
The Classical Library, each of them, extending
already to very nearly 100 volumes ! The latter,
even now, is a perfect marvel of completeness, con-
sisting, as it does, of literal prose translations from
such Greek and Latin classics as Homer, Virgil,
Horace, Cicero, Herodotus, Livy, Plato, Aristotle,
YEsehylus, Thucydides, Sophocles, Terence, Sallust,
PaCe Irus, Tibullus, Suetonius, Apuleius,Xenophon,
Hesiod, Catullus, Nepos, Caesar, Juvenal, Plautus,
Euripides, Pinder, Lucretius, Aristophanes, Mar-
tial, and Demosthenes. Talk of-CRIM like that to
a Schoolboy—it were (for him)-like killing off-hand
the grim old Dragons of Difficulty now watching
over the wickets of the golden orchard, and, after
that, turning him loose and unnoticed into the
Garden of the Hesperides! Whatever extent
of toil Mr. Bohn may have lavished, whatever
amount of money he may have squandered (and
he has manifestly been stinting of neither) in the
publication, simultaneously or alternately, steadily
and progressively, of these Thirteen remarkable
collections from the literatures of all nations and
in all languages, that enterprising publisher must
surely have had, must surely be now having his,
reward—for ho has certainly earned it, he is
still persistently earning it. Here, in the two
charming works, whose titles are prefixed to
this notice, are his two latest additions to two
among his Thirteen Libraries—Miss Russell
Mitford's Village to his Standard Library, and Mr.
Russell Hind's Introduction to Astronomy to his
Scientific Library—the two works, or three volumes,
issued from the press by Me. Bohn simultaneously
with-the magazines for this present month of Sep-
tember. As to " Our Village," it has during the
last two generations enjoyed the reputation belong.
ing of right to a beloved and favourite English
classic—a book familiar to every patriotic man of
letters who can appreciate a humour as sweet and
innocent in its flavour, a style as pure and spon-
taneous in its grace, as those of either 'Washington
Irving or of Oliver Goldsmith. What the Rev.
Gilbert White did so wondrously by the natural his-
tory, or more especially by the birds and insects of
Selborne, that Miss Mitford has done by the social
life of the Village, of which she herself was, in every
sense of the word, so happily an inhabitant; happily
that is for herself while an inhabitant and for our
national literature for ever afterwards. Gaffer and
gammer,lads and lassies,old crones and apple-cheeked
children, tinkers and taiiors, as the nursery district
has it, soldiers and sailors, butchers and bakers and
(supposing there could have been such in Our Village)
candlestick makers—all were as one to Mies Mit-
ford ; she had an eye fir the oddities and the virtues,
alike, of each of the motley race around her—each
was caught and embalmed and eternized in the
amber of her beautiful narrative. And here in
what is nothing less than a really lovely edition,
Mr. Bohn presents the whole of this charming Eng-
lish classic (the two series of the work complete),
in companion volumes to his subscribers. As to the
new volume of The Scientific Library (is not this,
by the way, the sixty-second P), while it is
notified upon its titlepage as the Third Edition
of the work contained in it, we may here add
yet more, in reference to the interest attach
ing
to it, as a whole, that the book con-
sists of two distinct publications originally issued
from the press separately, and now brought toge-
ther—henceforth, we will hope, to be incorporated
permanently with each other. It is but right that
they should be so, for they certainly harmonise
very admirably. Both works, in this third
edition, moreover, are very considerably en-
larged, while the contents of each have been
subjected to a most careful revision. As an
Introduction to Astronomy we believe the book
to be unrivalled. As an Astronomical Vocabulary
we believe it to be at once the completest and the
most accurate ever yet published, certainly within so
brief a compass and at so small a price. As might
have been expected from so eminent an astronomer as
Mr. Hind—himself the discoverer of no leis than ten
out of the astounding number of seventy-eight
asteriods, yet brought to light, between the Ist of
January, 1801, and the 15th of last March, 1863
Mr. Hind's asteroids being Iris, Flora, Victoria,
Irene, Melpomene, Fortuna, Calliope, Thalia,
Euterpe, and Urania—the very latest information
in regard to the growth of this celestial science, a
seie,ace ever-expanding, ever-advancing, is embodied
with scrupulous care in this very lucid and masterly
Introduction to Astronomy.

SCANDAL ABOUT QUEEN ELIZABETII! Mr.
Froude has been busy about the Simaneas MSS.,
and intends, it is said, making liberal reference to scandals
about Queen Elizabeth in his first and second volumes of
the history of the reign of that Queen, forming the seventh
and eighth volumes of his " History of England from the
Fall of Woisey to the Death of Elizabeth." Hitherto the
extracts given from these Simancas documents seem en.
titled to no more credit than is usually accorded to the
scandals promulgated by Nicholas Saunders and Girolatne
Pollini towards the close of the 16th century,