The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-19 00:00:00

Death of M. Horace Vernet.

The sorrowful anticipations inspired during these
last two days by the news of the serious ill-health
of M. Horace Vernet, says Le Pays, have, alas !
been realized only too quickly.
We have the greatest possible regret in announc-
ing the death of this illustrious artist. At half-
past 9 o'clock yesterday morning he terminated his
long and bitter agony, in the palace of the Insti-
tute, where he occupied an apartment, situated in
the right wing. The original cause of the death of
M. Horace Vernet dates back now a considerable
time. As everyone knows the celebrated
painter had an especial love for horse
exercise. Eighteen years ago, while out riding
he had a fall from his horse in the Park of St.
Cloud, this fall breaking two of his ribs. Since
which accident three other casualties of a precisely
similar kind, have unhappily occurred to aggravate
the morbid effects of the first wound. The last of
these casualties took place about seven months ago,
at llyeres, on the beautiful property possessed there
by M. Horace Vernet. And from that moment
a tumour, which had already formed in the injured
side, presented characteristics that caused the
greatest solicitude to those in attendance upon
the patient, necessitating a number of serious
surgical operations one after another, ope-
rations which were performed at Verseilles
by Doctors Gosselin and Goddard. Those skilful
practitioners—who were succeeded afterwards at
Paris by MM. Malgaigne, Honolle, and Vaillant—
found it impossible eventually to ward off the
dreaded mortification that finally ensued ; the
fatal disease at length carrying off, as related, at
half-past nine o'clock yesterday morning, the
greatest of all the great painters of the military
glories of France.

THE STREET BuY is the natural enemy of adult
man, and it is to him a condition of existence
to defy the laws of society and elude the policeman. The
better to carry out the great purpose of his life, in choosing,
not merely his sports and pastimes, but even his industrial
occupations, he is always guided by the amount of annoy-
ance he will be enabled to inflict upon his senior fellow-
creatures. It is for this reason that we find him, even when
comparatively reclaimed, specially affecting such employ-
ments as furnish him with an opportunity for
giving loud and sudden knocks, utterinteb shrill
and startling cries, delivering irritating messages—
such vocations as those of the youth who brings
streets his ingenuity is chiefly
the newspaper, the printer's boy, the telegraph-office lad
In the
displayed in the way
he carries awkward articles entrusted to him, Everyone
with a knowledge of boy-nature knows that if you wish to
send, from one end of London to the other, anything in •
conveniently shaped and difficult to manage in a crowd—
say a small ladder, or a curtain-pole, or a letv yards of gas-
tubing, or a pair of gig-shafts—you can always get a Loy to
carry it for a trifling remuner lotion, if not f'r nothing. The
facilities which the task affords for exasperating mankind,
by poking it in the ribs and stomach, are to him more than
gold or silver. On these occasions, and indeed whatever may
be the nature and form of the but den, be it tray, basket, or
parcel, his philosophy has taught him that the maximum
of pain to the world and pleasure to himself may be secured
by cal rying his load on his head and resolutely keeping his
hands in his pockets. The advantages of this precaution
are t .votold. In the first place, the position of the article
is more favourable for the infliction of injury, and there is
more pleasing variety and chance about its evolutions than
when carried in the hand; and secondly, there is the pro-
spect that in some lucky collision it may fall on some-
body's toes, or at any rate receive some damage itself; fur
the destruction of property always has a soothing effect on
the street-boy's wiltd.—§aionlay Balm