The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-18 00:00:00

THERMOMETER.

This morning
This day at Two o'clock 66

Barometer-30.26.
Wind—Weet ; fine.

At
laj ris I gniT

LONDON, FRIDAY, SEPT. 18, 1863.

As last year is remembered as the Exhibition
Year, next year is likely enough to be borne in
recollection af►.erwards as the SIIAKSPEARE Year.

The arrangements now making betimes for the cele-
bration of the three hundredth anniversary of the

Great Poet's Birth, it is satisfactory already to
know, are all this while in about the very best
hanas to which they could well by possibility have
been entrusted. The most active and indefatigable

amongst the energetic promoters of the enter

prise, are precisely the very men best qualified

to hale undertaken the responsibility of its manage

ment. To recognise this upon the instant it is

only necessary to glance down the names of those
more particularly entrusted with these responsibili-
ties of management. Eventually, it is understood,

the presidency of the committee will be accepted by
his Royal Highness the Heir to the Throne of these
realms. Already as Vice-Presidents, there have
been collected together, as it were, in the choicest
cluster, the very pick among the representative
men of the age. There is an archbishop of the
English Church Establishment. There is one of
the noblest, as he is also one of the most learned and

accomplis'ned among our great patricians, his Grace
the Chwacellor of the University of Cambridge.

There is the one great living Poet. There is the
greatest of all our great English Humourists, hap-
pily also in the land of the living. A more judi

CIOUB selection could hardly have been made, more.

over, than has been made in the choice of those
empowered by the Committee to act as Secretaries
in the three departments into which the otherwise
bewilderingly complicated organisation has been
distributed. One among that cluster of sec-

retaries, the secretary, in fact, among the
secretaries, the principal originator and orga-
niser, we believe, of the whole scheme of this
noble and affecting demonstration, is suffi-
ciently well known to every educated person
in England as a man of letters of the very highest
attainments, to render his mere name a gua-
rantee that the project will be carried out
as it cught to be carried out 1. Will be
a demonstration worthy at once of the Great Poet

whose birth, three hundred years ago, it will com-
memorate, and of the Great Nation.by which his
name is borne in such loving remembrance. Now
that the COMMITTEE itself may be regarded as
tolerably corn plate, we publish, in another part of
our impressiQn of this morning, a full catalogue
of those n'jw numbered up (certainly it will be
allowed numbered to a goodly number indeed) as
comprising it. The representation in this com-
mittee ,of all the various classes, or sections, or
divisions of the educated community, has been espe-
cially aimed at, it will be observed, in the process

Of he • •
composition.
Aso period of very little more than seven months
n" intervenes between the present moment and
the tricentenary anniversary we are all looking
forw4ret to—namely, the 23d of April, 1864—
Rom® curiosity is beginning to be felt, and
even expresses,
as to what may be the ge-
neral nature' l'aPect, and consequences of its
celebration, And
as to all this, even now there are
glimmering intimations, here and there, of what
may reasonably be antieipated in respect to the
general character of thc,
demonstration. Through-
out not only all England,
or, We will say, the whole
of the United Kingdom, but far and wide in
every portion of the British
Empire, in all quar-
ters of the habitable globe, the
happy day is to be
borne in
especial remembrance and duly com-
s let us hope, that on the
memorated. In `
e
23d of April next, from every /---age steeple in
the land the bells may be ringing and the flags
fluttering. London, as the capital of the empire,
is to have its grand cotnmenaorative monument.
a reverent
Stratford-upon-Avon will be the scene of
and affectionate pilgrimage. The Crystal Palace at
Sydenham will be the metropolitan rendezvous for
the celebrants of the anniversary. Medals will
be struck as suitable memorials of the even!
Many if not all of the arts will vie in doing suit-
able honour to the occasion—sculpture, music, ora-
tory, at least, will do so. And the extent of the
advance of England's intelligence as an educated
community during these last three hundred years
will be signally indicated by the national character
imparted to this unexampled commemoration of a
Poet's birthday.

It has before now been remarked with some show
of truth that the laws of England have been framed
SO as rather to frustrate the ends of justice than to
many instances the adage
forward them ; and in
proves correct which says that the_law je,a spider's
fl
web, through which large flies break, while little
ones are caught and hopelessly entangled. Eng-
land, from her high position and from the promi-