The Sun.
London, England, 1830-07-22 00:00:00

aloof from his people; and the blandness and kindness of
his manners seem scarcely to have compensated, in the
opinions of those who approached him, for his morbid at-
tention to etiquette, and his too great disposition to con-
vert freedoms, or even blunders, into grounds of affiance.
Kings sometimes, like other men, become popular for small
merits, and unpopular for failings which are of no great
consequence to their people."
. _

• .
We question if our Evening Contemporary,.with
his philosophy, is much nearer the mark than those
on whom he comments. The truth .is, men do not
shed tears for Kings, except when they happen to
lose something by their death, or are delivering a
funeral sermon, or some similar composition,
written by themselves. This is in all cases a very
hard trial. Even Frederick of Prussia, though not
used to the melting mood, on reading to Voltaire a
funeral sermon he had composed on the death of his
reader, could not finish the first sentence without
shedding tears, though he would not, perhaps, have
given 100 dollars to Have his life. Our Contempo-
rary will find that the, affliction of subjects on the
death of Kings, though great in the mass, presses
very lightly on each individual. There is a sort of
conventional language, which it would be as inde-
corous not to observe on such occasions as it would
be to omit at the conclusion of a letter subscribing
your most obedient humble servant; and as the
matter is as well understood, as the denial by a ser-
vant when an inconvenient call is made, it would be
reckoned unpolite to question the sincerity of this
conventional language. The' mourning for a King,
never perhaps, since Kings existed, caused one sub-
ject to eat an ounce less at his dinner, if the cook
did his duty. We demur, therefore, to the test of
our Evening Contemporary.; George the Fourth
was as much regretted as any other Sovereign, ex-
cept Charles the First and Louis the Sixteenth by
their Nobles, and their sensibility was excited by
apprehensions for themselves. The attachment to
one a native country is an attachment to all that a
man loves. Attachment to a Constitution is an at-
tachment to that which gives that country its chief
value. Loyalty, when understood in the sense of at.
tachment to the institutions °fa country represented
by a head, is intelligible; attachment to an indivi-
dual merely as the head, is unintelligible on any
other than private and personal grounds...'--But the
Rev. Edward Irving, in his sermon pretteod at the
National Scotch Church, Regent-square, July 1.5,
100, called God to witness that the repfOienlations
of our Contemporaries, with respect to tre indif-
ference on account of the illness and detail of the
late King, are utterly unfounded. But let us hear
his account, as given in extracts in The
" Elul, surely, if ever a verdict of acquittal from every
hasty and inconsiderate charge was given to a Monarch by
a free people, it was given to him during those many
weeks of sickness by which he was confined. I hail the
opportunity of witnessing the conduct of many classes of
society, and of many families, and I can truly say, that
if it bad been the father of any of these families who bad
been so afflicted, there could not have been manifested
greater' concern for his affliction—there could not have
been more fervent prayers fur his recovery. And this
feeling was universal. The prayers of the people out-
stripped the tardy orders of the church, and found ex-
pression in their own plain and simple language. Ile was
not forgotten ! 0 no, he was not forgotten by his people !
If his reign had not been a blessing ; or if the transient
errors of his early life had not been forgotten ; or if his
people had merely borne with him in the hope of the fu-
ture, would not their wish of change have been expressed ?
Would not something like pleasure have been manifested
at the idea of his removal ? Would the whole nation
have clung thus around the throne of a King they dis-
liked? I confess that to me it seemed as if something
more than the death of a mere mortal man were resting on
that event. It seemed to many families as though their
head were about to be removed ; to the whole nation at
though their mediator, their puce-maker, were about to
be taken away. The lowest among us seems conscious of
some change ; we feel as if we were on the edge of some
crumbling precipice. Each One seems to feel the ground-
swell of a coining storm, and to wish that be who bad
weathered so many storms bud remained with us as our
pilot. But we must not speak thus : we must not despair.
We must still rally round the Throne, and do all we can
to resist the consequences of the coming storm. This dis-
course has not been written fur the purpose of eulogy, or
to answer any private end. It is to remind pm of the
importance of doing all you can as Christians, to break
the confederacy which is forming against the Lord and his
Anointed, and at the same time to remind you of what is
due to the memory of our departed Sovereign, whose re-
mains are this day to be consigned to the grave."
Who of all these writers is the correct expositor
of the state of public feelingj, on this recent event ?
How is history to distinguish between the true and
the false? We trill even give her the benefit of
Mr. Cobbett's contemporary labours. From the
following announcement in the Register of the 10th
of July, it would appear that we shall have a
History of the late King from his pen, even more
true than the History of the Protestant Reforma-
tion :---

t, Peel says, ' we are too near to the blessings enjoyed
under his Majeity'a mild and beneficent away to enable us
duly to estimate them.' What, too near? Why, then, e
man can judge beet of a bottle of wine, I suppose, a year
or two after he has drunk it. Poor Ogden, for instance,
was, while hi the dungeon in Horsemonger-lane, too near
to Sitimouth's blessings to be able duly to (*haute them.
Tie starving Melt are too near to the blessings of bent&
cent away ; anti the poor Queen was a greet deal too near
to the mild and beneficent treatment which she received, to
be able duly to estimate it. She should have lived thirty
or forty years longer, and then she would have beets better
able to judge of the real character of the proceedings
against her. A trial of any sort in a Court of Law must
be much more likely to end in justice when the transac-
tions to which it relates have all taken place many years
before. In short, this is the old cant of the rascally
rabble of mercenary writers, who are hired to keep silence
while tha facts are froth in the minds of the people.
Tao near,' indeed! IloW can the narrator of transac-
tions and the describer of character be too near to the
transactions and the actors ? This is monsoonal When
a witness sweats in reference to a written memorandum,
he ought to be told that, to make it good for anything,
it must have been written long and long after the occur-
rences took place. 'l'oo near, indeed, to write a falae
history, and :mike it pass for truth ; but not too near to
write a true history. There is something so monstrous in
the idea that those of one generation are to write the
history of those of another generation, I will dissipate
all this cant—if it please God to give me life end health,
I will drive this Cant out of use---this lying, cheating, this
base cant; I will let the nation ace that we are not a bit
too near• to the blessings conferred by this King, to be
to estimate them. We shall have lies enough about him
plenty of histories in praise of him ; but from me, his
memory will get that which will stick to it."

We rannOt quit this subject without noticing the
good eonee diwplayed by Mr. Irving in his ullusion to
the ecendahnni (Ammeter of the Court

" If from there tokens of his piety towards Clod, I
come to speak of his behaviour to his fellow men, I may
well ask, where shall we find such a model of courteous.
um 1 He exhibited the most perfect grace of Milkers :
in him it was not a mere form, but the certain mark of a
genuine loving-kindness to all lie people. Hence beloved
to witness the joy of his subjects, and patiently bore with
their rude applause. Not that he eagerly sought such ap-
probation, or that he was ever forgetful of the respect
which was due from all to his exalted station ; for while
he manifested such amiable condescension, he could, in a
moment, rouse all his Royal feelings, and rebuke and
chasten those who presumed to trifle with his dignity.—
He was 'well worthy to be the King of a free people ; be
was brought up among tie, and could bear with those
boisterous ebullitions of feeling which we so frequently
indulge in, either from want of the respect due to Ma-
i .
Aesty, or from the momentary and mistaken want of
loyalty. He was frequently assailed by the shafts of ca.
loamy ; and ;lit few have been aide to shake them off with
more perfect good nAture. often have I pitied from my
' very heart the situation of a King who could not enjoy
1 the friendly society of females without exposing himself to
the most shameful slanders. lie nobly asserted and pro-
' tech:it the boners of a free press, at the same time that
he had so much to bear from its aspersions."
This is speaking like a gentleman. We have
always thought it one of the worst traits in our its-
tiolllll character, that guilt should always be pre,
sinned when even age bus destroyed the fuel of the
plosions, and that to the other evils to which age is
subject, it should be attempted to deny to it the
4olitee of the kindness which is alone to be found in
female friendship. Mr. Irving takes a more liberal
view of thc matter. May he, when his athletic
furtin,rio longer recommends him to female attention,
1.,/(1 as hie reward, the friendly female society