The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-10 00:00:00

OPENING OF THE PRUSSIAN DIET,

BERLIN, Nov. 9.
The Prussian Chambers were open to•dny by
the King in person. The speech from the throne
expressed his Majesty's earnest wish for a termina-
tion to the rise of differences between the Govern-
ment and Chamber. It announced a bill which
would regulate the rights of the Government in case
of the budget not being legally settled, and declared
that, without endangering the most important in-
terests, the King could only assent to such a budget
as should ensure the maintenance of the new orga-
nisation of the army.
The bill regulating the period of military service
had been modilled.

The revenue of 1862 had produced a surplus, as
would probably be the case with the revenue of
1863. The budgets for 1863 and 1864 should be
laid before the Chambers. The apparent Melt in
the latter would be removed by the ground and
buildings tax in 1865.

The balance-sheets for 1859, 1860, and 1861
would be submitted to the Chambers, as well as a
bill establishing the expenditure and receipts of
1862. Bills would also be brought forward for the
construction of new railways, with regard to the
legal position of associations, additional regulations
to the press laws of the Ist Jane last, and to a new
criminal code.

The Government was still endeavouring to secure
the continuation of the Zollverein, while maintain-
ing the commercial treaty with France, and in
especial to regulate its relations to Austria. Should
Federal execution in Holstein require the applica-
tion of extraordinary means from Prussia, estimates
would be laid before the Chamber.

The speech announced that the negotiations with
respect to the German reform question would be
submitted to the Diet, and concluded:—" We live
in an agitated time, perhaps stand upon the brink
of a more agitated future. I ask you therefore the
more urgently to bring about an understanding
upon the solution of home questions with earnest
will."

The late Speech of the Emperor of the
French,

The Vienna papers of the 6th inst. speak favour-
ably of the speech of the Emperor of the French.
The Botcshafter says :
The speech from the throne will always be regarded as
one of the most important documents of modern history.
. . . A manifesto of peace or war, according as Europe
will take it, it speaks out with an openness concerning the
state of the world whin entirely and completely corre-
sponds to the high position which the Emperor of France
claims for himself and for France—the position, namely,
in the centre of the European community.
In reference to the declaration that the moment
has come for reconstructing on new bases the edifice
destroyed piecemeal by revolutions, the Botsch,after
continn.es:—
Who will venture to deny that the edifice is in the
eiturttion described ? Who will venture to gainsay the as-
sertion that a reconstruction on new bases would be a bene-
frAction ? We acknowledge that it would be so, We grant
to Napoleon 111., for his frank speech, the same merit which
another Imperial Sovereign acquired by a similar explicit-
ness in regard to the unsatisfactory condition of the German
Confederation. If actual circumstances can no longer be
concealed, then it is right openly to speak of them as they
are. The two first princes of Europe resemble each other
in this noble candour. Could they understand each other,
and carry along with them the rest of Europe, then indeed
a new era would be founded. We cannot, however, shut
our eyes to the fact that such a new era of order and con-
tentment seems almost too beautiful to enable us entirely to
vanquish our sceptical Pessimism. How many high hopes
have already tumbled to the ground? On birth hopes, lofty
thoughts, and plans, noble minds find nourish m ent ; but it
is a very unsubstantial nourishment. Only a short time
back we cherished the hope that a great idea would carry
Germany along with it. It, did not do so. The petty fault-
findings of a petty world have robbed it of its feathers. A
great idea endeavours now to impose itself upon Europe ;
will it meet with a better fate ?
The Lloyd concludes a eulogistic article with the
following words :

Napoleon has thrown down the glove to many dynasties
and empires, and it almost seems as though an epigram of
Napoleon I. at St. Helena was about to be accomplished,
concerning the fate of Europe at tho end of 50 years from
that time, The crisis comes not unexpectedly. For more
than 10 years it has been indicated, daily indicated, by the
organs of public opinion, and those who will go down in it
have only themselves to blame for their downfall.
The Wanderer says, in relation to the reply of
&node to the French proposition :
Austria must ask herself the question, what she might
have to lose by such a Congress. To abide by her old aver-
sion to such assemblages would be to lay herself open to the
reproach of the speech which touches upon " the obstinacy
in maintaining a past which is rolling away." The Congress
may lead to the definitive recognition of a new order of
things in Italy by no means in harmony with the
views hitherto preponderating in our Foreign-office. But
Austria is no longer the champion of all Legitimacies who
have come to grief, she has only to look after her own inte-
rests, and protect what is hers. If war comes out of this
Congress, which in spite of the assurances of Napoleon re-
maias a possibility, Austria's situation can be no worse than
it would be if the war breaks out before the Congress. On
the other hand, a refusal on our part to assent to the idea of
the Emperor would be much more likely to expose us to the
peril of isolation, which has already once proved the path
to our undoing.
The Ost Deutsche Post says:—
It is at all events no declaration of war, but it is the
harbinger of great complications. For that, in the face of
such declarations as are here made, especially in relation to
the overthrow of the treaties of 1815, none of the three
above-named Powers (Russia, Prussia, and Austria) can
take part in the Congress, is clear. But England, also, is
above all the most deter.nined opponent of such a Congress.
Herein alone lies a sort of guarantee to conjure a European
coalition France can hardly feel herself powerful enough to
venture upon doing. The political parole for the winter
months is given; what will be the issne thereof, who can
foresee to-day ?

The Presse says :
The impression which this speech is calculated to make
in Europe is immense. We do not venture, on a first im-
pression, even to hint at the consequences of this important
event. It has, thanks to well •kept official confidences,
broken in upon Europe in a wholly unexpected manner,
and it is yet too early to perceive how far it will operate
healthily or fatally upon the shaken relations of the Powers.
Only one,point would we raise—an officious Viennese organ,
relying on most trustworthy Parisian communicatians, had
proclaimed that the declarations of the speech ou the Polish
question m °aid be drawn up in a kindly (wohlwollenden)
spirit towards Austria. Apart from the want of tact dis-
played in the choice of such an expression, we must confess,
now that the speech lies before us, that of a sentiment of
benevolence towards Austria we have been able to discover
nothing after the most rigid scrutiny thereof.

THE O'CONNELL STATUE COMMITTEE have held
a meeting, and, after considerable discussion, decided that
the memorial to the " Great Tribune" shall be erected in
Sackville-street, near Carlisle-bridge.
" SILKEN FETTERS " is " Une Chain() " turned
inside out and into English by Mr. Leicester Buckingham.
Charles Mathews will have a fine chance of displaying his
juvenile powers as the "young" composer, and Mrs. C.
Mathews has a very important role, which was played by
Mdlle. Victoria Geront in France.
MR. POOLE, R.A., and Mr. Topham, the water-
colour painter. are pursuing their studies in the South of
Italy. Mr. Calderon and Mr. Marks have left London for
the South of France.

THE CRYPT OF SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE, when
completed, will be one of the finest in Rome, or the world.
Egyptian alabaster, rosso and verde antico, lapis lazuli, and
the richest marbles and metals are employed in the com-
pletion.

SUICIDE.--00 Sunday afternoon the body of a
man unknown was found hanging in a wood belongiug to
the Archbishop of Canterbury at Boughton. It had ap-
parently been hanging about ten days or a fortnight.
CRYSTAL PALACE.—ONE SHILLING DAY, Mon-
day, Nov. 9.—Admissions on payment, 1,150; ditto by
season tickets, 882; total. visitors, 2,032.
THE COURT•MARTIAL ON COLONEL CRAWLEY.

_
--Although on Saturday it was arranged officially
that the court-martial on Colonel Crawley should com-
mence on Thursday next, doubts have since arisen whether
it will be possible for the tribunal to begin its sittings on
that day. The military authorities are quite ready, and
have been for some time anxious to proceed ; and Colonel
Crawley personally was understood to be an assenting party
to the arrangement. Yesterday morning, however, Col.
Crawley's legal advisers preferred a request that the court-
martial should be further postponed to the 17th inst., on
the ground that they had not yet succeeded in perfecting
the evidence for the defence. This application has been
referred by the Horse Guards to the Judge• Advocat-
e and await§ hie decision,

LITERATURE,

The Apostle of Temperance.

Father Mathew: a Biography. By John Francis
Maguire, M.P. One Vol., pp. 557. Longman
and Company.
Seven years ago, good, noble-hearted Father
Mathew breathed his last—the close of his career
occurring in the year 1856, on the Bth of December.
The history of this simple.minded Irish Priest is
familiar to the great mass of both the educated and
uneducated population of the three kingdoms. His
memory is still treasured up in the hearts of all
those—it matters nothing of what sect, or class, or
country—who can appreciate the loveliness of true
and practical benevolence. It is no exaggeration to
say of Theobald Mathew, that, as ho was the most
active and energetic, his fair fame is still cherished
in the tender recollections of the grateful millions
of this vast empire, as the most revered and the
most beloved of modern Philanthropists. His pane-
gyric has been pronounced by illustrious men of
all ranks, and classes, and conditions of modern
society—alike by the Asiatic and the European—.
equally in the Old World and the New. His
career in Ireland was contemporaneous with that
of the Liberator Daniel O'Connell. And it appeared
then, in the life time of the two men, as it appears
even now in the retrospect, in no degree dwarfed by
the comparison. Theobald Mathew, by the sheer
force of his Goodness anti Benevolence, secured the
love and homage of the whole Celtic race as com-
pletely as Daniel O'Connell did by his Genius and
his Patriotism. The current of their respective
courses ran, in that sense at least, parallel to each
other, were equally wide, profound, and irresistible.
The one vindicated the religious freedom and inde-
pendence of his fellow-countrymen by the power
of his magnificent oratory. The other swept out of
viaw and all but exterminated, :he long-prevailing
vice of drunkenness—not only amongst his fellow-
countrymen, but equally on both sides of the
British Channel—nay, more than that, equally, it
may even be said, upon both sides of the broad
Atlantic. What the " unadorned eloquence" of
Richard Cobden did in the furtherance of Free Trade
principles—the equally inartificial, the less coolly
logical, the more tenderly impassioned eloquence
of Theobald Mathew accomplished in securing the
triumph of the principles ot Temperance. Insomuch,
that white by an emphatic phrase, long familiar to
us, Mr. Cobden has been frequently spoken of as
the Apostle of Free Trade—a strangely material, for
inasmuch as it is a strictly mercantile Apostleship!—
Father Mathew has had consecrated to himself,
by the spontaneous canonisation of his benign and
beautiful popularity, the sacred title of " The
Apostle of Temperance." The recognition of the
radiant virtues of this illustrious man, was complete
and universal during his own lifetima. It was
simply impossible, indeed, that it could be other-
wise. Never had any benefactor of the human
race more distinctly his mission, than this humble
priest, the mere announcement of whose coming
awoke as profound an enthusiasm, here, in this Pro-
testant England, as ever it did in Ireland among
the devoted adherents of the Papacy. Wherever
Father Mathew went, during the working portion
of his career as a promoter of temperance, as the
arch-promoter of temperance, his welcome was an
ovation. On his arrival at Washington he was
invited to attend in the house of the American Le
gislature : and, as the Commons of England had
done in the instance of Warren Hastings, the Con-
gress of the United States rose to receive Theobald
Mathew immediately he made his appearance
amongst them. In the fashionable and intellectual
society of London, he was welcomed with an un-
affected reverence and admiration. Earl Russell,
then Lord John Russell, pronounced his eulogium
in almost we might say unmeasured terms of
homage—the eulogium of this Catholic Priest from
Ireland—from (of all places in the wide world for
the encomium of a Catholic Priest, and that Priest
an Irishman I) the platform of Exeter Hall One
of the most beautiful tributes ever offered to the
name and fame of Father Mathew, moreover, was
pronounced, in 1840, by the lips of the manly, gentle,
noble-minded Bishop of Norwich. The grim
Iron Duke bent for once in suavest courtesy in
his bearing towards the Irish Priest, when they
met in the London drawing-rooms. The ex-Chan-
cellor, Lord Brougham, enjoyed there, also,a playful
parley of badinage with the Apostle of Temperance.
D warkanauth Tagore, the great oriental merchant,
was among the most amiable and reverent of the
good Father's motley crowd of correspondents.
Born at Thomastown, in the county of Tipperary,
Ireland, in 1790, one of the sons of a tolerably pros-
perous farmer Theobald Mathew won his renown
among the world's benefactors, under the blessing of
God, by the simple but irresistible agency of his pure
life, his heart-born eloquence as a preacher, and
hie profound and earnest philanthropy. Educated
first of all, at a school in Kilkenny, afterwards at
the College of Maynooth, and eventually by a pri-
vate tutor in Dublin, he had become, in 1814, a
priest and a Capuchin Friar. Forty-two years he
laboured—bow zealously the world knows—at his
vocation. What the core and heart of that voce

don was, is indicated by the title awarded to him
by common consent, the title prefixed to these re-
marks of ours, a title that has in a measure, eclipsed
or superseded his patronymic. Already several
little memoirs have, at intervals, appeared recounting
very briefly and fragmentarily, and, therefore, it
need hardly be said, very unsatisfactorily, the life
and labours of the Apostle of Temperance. It has
remained, however, until this time, for the
author of the remarkable work—" Rome : its
Rulers, and its Institutions "—it has re-
mained for the gifted member for Dungarvan,
for John Francis Maguire, to become, as he has
now happily become, the Biographer of Father
Mathew. With some few judicious illisions and
abbreviations, with a moderate revision of the work
in its next edition—the book here submitted to
our consideration will take its place perma-
nently among those biographies in which the
annals of our National Worthies are ranged in a
select row upon our bookshelves. Foremost among
them the masterpiece of all biographies, Boswell's
Life of Dr. Johnson ; but, ranged there in the same
cluster, works as various as Dr. Southey's Life of
1, I

Nelson, as Sir James Mackintosh's Life of Sir
Thomas More, as Mr. Lockhart's Life of Sir
Walter Scott, as Charles PhiHipps' Life
of Curran. As the biography of a man so
Good that, without a particle of what is called
genius, he attained the height of the truest Great-
ness, Mr. Maguire's biography of Father Mathew
is not unworthy, even before revision and abbrevia-

tion, of taking its place among that selected and
treasured cluster of biographies. It realises to us
the man, the priest, the orator, the philanthropist,
the maral hero, the worker of all but social
miracles. It familiarises us with everything
appertaining to him. His little serving man John,
that crabbed old retainer who seems to combine
somewhat of the characteristics of Charles Layer's
" Cross Cornoy," and of Walter Scott's" Caleb Bal-
derstone"—we know now, as well as we know Dr.
Johnson's black servant, Mr. Barber. Thanks
to Mr. Maguire, don't we also know Father
Mathew's cat Madame Pinky, as intimately as we
!
have long known., thanks to Mr. Boswell, Dr.
Johnson's
P cherished good father's pet
dog Soberson'sand
cat
isrnaned little Lesbian
hie
dearlyh
favourite,
Ho
the sparrow, Peter, are not they
also introduced through these delightful pages not
so much to our acquaintance as to our intimacy ?
Seldom if ever have we read any book written from
first to last in a more genial tone, and therefore it
hardly needed that we should say, in a more win-
ning manner Throughout, the writer is unfiag-
ingly " in the vein." The kindly influence of the
mere thought of Father Mathew has evidently had
something to do with this, no doubt of it. Bat apart
from his theme, Mr. Maguire has manifestly had
no stint of appropriate qualifications for his task
--a task that has manifestly been for him, through-
out, a labour of love. It is time, however, that we

fhould let our author speak for himself by a few
illustrative quotations. Does any one marvel as to
what may have been, in truth, the predominant cha-
racteristic of Father Mathew's nature, and even,
be it said, of his oratorical powers as well ? Let
the following extract satisfy them, for once and
for all, as to—
THE MAGIC OE FATHER MATHEW'S ELOQUENCE.
Those who for the most part thronged to hear him, and
crowded his little church with that object, were not either
inclined to be critical, or very capable of criticism. They
came, in an humble spirit, to hear the Gospel expounded
to be told ofthe mercy and goodness of God—of the beauty
and holiness of charity—by one whose life was the living
example of the precepts he taught. What was it to them,
if a simile was false, or a metaphor out of place, or an image
occasionally tawdry, or a sentence wanting in polish, or a
chain of reasoning loose and inconclusive ?—they crushed
into that little temple to listen to the word of God preached
by a man of God ; and in that expectation they were never
disappointed. Once within that church, they yielded them-
selves, implicitly and unhesitatingly, to his spiritual and
moral guidance, and they went with him whither he led
them. Ay, and even those few who ordinarily could sit
coldly in judgment upon the excellencies or the defects, the
style or manner of a preacher, and who, perhaps, came
just to see something of the young priest of whom the
"common people" and the "old women" talked so much—
even they, cool critics and lofty judges, as they held them-
selves to be, found themselves suddenly surprised by a
strange dimness of vision and a choking sensation in
the throat, at the unpretending pathos of the
preacher. What was the charm that held spell-bound the
close-packed hundreds beneath the pulpit, that riveted the
attention of the crowded galleries, and moved the inmost
hearts even of those who had come to criticise ? The
earnestness of the preacher. Not the earnestness of the
actor, who simulates, with cunning declamation and by
impassioned gesture, the ardour of nature. No; it was
the earnestness of truth, of sincerity, of belief. Father
Mathew practised what he preached, and believed what he
so persuasively and urgently enforced. Then, the emotion,
which his voice made manifest to the ear, and which his
agitated features made visible to the eye, was real, genuine,
springing from the heart, thrilling his nerves, warming
his blood, quickening his pulse—felt in every fibre of his
frame. There was established between the preacher and
the audi.ence the most complete and perfect identity of feel-
ing, the result of the sympathy which they mutually felt.
As a most amusing specimen of Mr. Maguire's
genuinely Irish sense of the humorous, take his
account of the following grotesque incident in re-
gard to—