The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-18 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 18, 186'3,

tl t buthem those
from
dwehnoceeed
obtuseness
se o fallacyess or
rf
obstinacy
this t opinionnay
pr
prevent
a e
n
seeing clearly or being convinced against their will.
The character of the House of Lords was vindicated
in this address from any aspersions that may have
been cast upon it for inertness and inaptitude.
There was great truth in the remark, that "Many
a time and oft had the Peers of England prevented
the liberties of the people from being swallowed up
by the prerogatives of the Crown." From the barons
of Runnymede downwards there has been many a
warlike act and many a worthy deed that has lent
lustre to its annals, and illustrated graceZully the
motto, .Noblesse oblige. Mr. BAINES was very
happy in his efforts to exemplify the
particular character of our aristocracy as
contradistieguisbed to some others, In some coun-
tries there were ranks which were quite separated
from the rest of the community who could never
ascend to their elevation. In England all this was
very different, the sons of peers mingled with the
people and were their representatives, while many
Commoners were raised to the Peerage. A fitting
compliment may be paid to the " youngest member
of that assembly," Mr. MONCKTON MILNES. That
noble lord furnished a good instance of what Mr.
BAINES sought to convey, for he was essentially a
man of the people as it were, identifying himself
with institutions, and being connected with many
popular undertakings which perhaps tended more
to conduce to his reputation than his having a name
that was " inscribed upon bright pages in all litera-
ture, and honourably known in the House of Com-
mons." Without being of the highest order of those
who are admitted to " the first benches of the Upper
School," Lord HOUGHTON is a fair specimen of the
class who are constantly received into the high
places of the community, and these prove them-.
selves of signal service to the ranks they have left,
by inspiring fresh and new energy among those
they join. Thus the continual admixture
of classes that forms the best security and
affords the surest guarantee against the
overgrowth of prejudices and the danger of
corrupt innovations of power like those whose
enormity occasioned the great French Revo-
lution. After passing these eulogiums, Mr.
BAINES concluded by giving the upper branch
of the legislature a piece of good advice. He told
them not to impede the march of progress in the
Commons, and that as they cheerfully gave to them
their rights of many centuries, in their turn they
demanded their privilege of a fair representation,
It is to be hoped that this salutary warning will
not be disregarded when the time comes to test its
efficacy, and there seems some truth in the idea that
the extension of the franchise will not meet with
any very decided opposition in the Lords, for if the
subject be successful in its discussion in the Com-
mons the chief obstacle will be overcome, and in-
deed, judging from vast experience, it is most likely
that the most overwhelming obstacles will be en-
countered on Mr. BAINES'S side of the house,
whether it be in power or in the cold shade of
opposition. Lord HOUGHTON made some appro-
priate remarks on the occasion, and was very well
received. He observed that he would indeed regret
his change of position did he imagine he had entered
an assembly which precluded him from sympa-
thising with the popular cause. Lord HOUGHTON'S
gratulations as to the achievements of his party
were, however, more ingenious than founded on
fact, for it would be difficult to prove what the
chiefs of the Liberal ranks have done to create the
prosperity of the country. They have always been
active enough when their opponents were in power ;
but when they returned to office they emulated the
renown of those sovereigns of th 3 Merovingia
dynasty who have been immortalised in history as
Rois Faineants. This meeting appears to have been
remarkable for more energy than is usuahy appa-
rent in the meetings of the Liberal party. Doubt-
less, if Lord HOUGHTON and Mr. BAINES found
more kindred spirits and more congenial natures
among their friends, affairs would not be in the
tame, quiescent state which now distinguishes them,
and many a triumph that now graces their oppo-
nents might have been the pride and boast of their
ovrn party.

Bombardment and Capture of Osaca by the

Daimios.

We (illanchester Examiner) have been favoured
by a Stcckport gentleman, whose brother is at
Yokohama, with the following " Extra" of the
Japan Commercial News, containing intelligence
Which has not previously been published in this
country. The dispatch is headed—
" K inagawa, Oct. 10, 1863, 3 p.m.
" Authentic information has just been received of
the bombardment and capture of the Imperial city
of Osaca (and some say of Kioto also) by the
Daimios. The loss to the Tycoon's party is consi-
derable, including the two governors of the city
and several commanding officers.
"The Daimios are said to be advancing an army
of 50,000 men for the capture of Yokohama. It is
certain that they have expressed their intention,
or, as others say, sworn to do so ; and that an
attack on this place may be expected on the Bth of
the next month—whether Japanese or foreig❑ date
is meant we cannot tell.

"The Tycoon's government proposes to erect at
once three forts or batteries at Yokohama, for the
protection of the settlement.

" Her Britannic Majesty's steamer Racehorse
leaves at 1 p.m. to-morrow for Nagasaki, and the
Algerine for Shanghae at the same time.'

FIRE AT WINDSOR CASTLE.—Yesterday morning
between 1 and 2 o'clock, policeman Money and Sil-
ver, who were on duty in Thames •street, observed extensive
flames of fire issuing from the Brunswick Tower and as-
cending high above the Castle. These men promptly gave
information to the police on duty at the Porter's Lodge of
the servant's entrance, also to the Hon. General Grey and
Capt. Ellis, the officer of the Castle guard. They imme-
diately turned out the soldiers, and ordered a party of theta
to proceed to the infantry barracks for the barrack engine
In the meantime, Mr. Walker, inspector of the Castle
police, caused the engine at the Castle to be brought to
the Terrace, and Inspector Eager had the Windsor
parish engine also quickly brought to the spot. Mr. Turn-
bull, the architect, Mr. Averlanti, the head cook, Mr.
Frankling, engineer, and Mr, Seabrook, storekeeper, with
others, ascended the top of the tower, and as there was an
excellent supply of water laid on in all parts of the Castle,
which is brought from the reservoir at Cranbourne, they
had extinguished the fire by the time the engines arrived.
It will be remembered that the Brunswick Tower, which
adjoins the Prince of Wales's Tower, was on fire some time
since. The day before some plumbers and glaziers had been
working on the roof of the Brunswick Tower, and intended
to remove the shavings and rubbish. After the Queen had
loft for Osborne they had piled it up against one of the chim-
neys, and it is conjectured that a spark from the chimney
must have fallen on the rubbish and caused it to ignite.
The damage is inconsiderable.

A TROLL OF THE JoKUL, (OR ICE MOUNTAIN)

Two men who were out mosslithering camped
one night on the fells ; one of them lay awake, and saw
the other rise in his sleep and stalk out of the tent. He
went so fast that the making man could not overtake him,
and he bent up towards the Jiikul. The pursuer stopped
at the foot of the Jaitul, tor on a peak of it sat a giant hag,
and now stretching her hands straight forwards, and now
drawing them back to her breast, she drew the sleeper into
her arms. The next year this man came down to some
moss-gatherers on the same spot; he was very moudy,
eo
that they hardly got a word from him ; they asked whom
he believed in, and he said, in God. The second year he
stood in awe of him—vet they asked whom he
came again—by this time he had grown so like a Troll
14t1:14aitevthedeyin, but ho gave them no answer. The third year
he came on" more
at;
las he was now a downright Troll, and
exceeding grim ; t Borne one dared to ask whom he
believed in, and he said, ,
rrunt I Trunt I and the Trolls
in the fell," and thereupon he disappeared. He was never
seen again; but they did not go to gather moss there for
many years after,

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

CALCUTTA, CHINA, AND AUSTRALIAN

MAILS,

SOUTHAMPTON, DEC. 17.

The Peninsular and Oriental Co.'s steamer Pera,
with the heavy portion of the above mails, has ar-
rived here, She brings 72 passengers and 1,532
packages of cargo, including raw silk value
£lOO,OOO sterling.

Off Malta she experienced a heavy gale with
tremendous rain, which detained her 25 hours; also
a strong north-easterly gale from Ushant up the

Channel.

On the 11th she spoke the British bark Selina.
The Ripon left Gibraltar for the East on the
10th inst.

GIBRALTAR, Nov. 13.—Exchange on London, 90
days, 501; Paris, 5.25 ;Marseilles, 5.27 to 5.28 ;
Madrid, 7 days, per cent. premium.

FRANCE.
PARIS, DEC. 18.
_ _

The bulletin of the Moniteur this morning,
speaking of the proclamation of the King of Den-
mark recalling soldiers on furlough, says :
" Private despatches, however, continue to affirm
that Denmark will not oppose in arms the Federal
troops undertaking the execution. She will only
continue to occupy the tete-de•pont of Rendsburg
and Frederickstadt, which are upon Holstein ter-
ritory,"

BOURSE, Dec. 17.—N0 improvement has taken
place in the tone of the market, which still remains
very heavy. In the little business done prices have
receded, Threes, for the Account, being now at 66f.
40c. Mobilier are also slightly lower. Railway
Market also dull. The market continued weak to
the close, and left off as follows :—.

41 per Cents. 94 30
Do. end month
3 per Cents
Do. end month 66 25
Credit Mobilier 1027 50
Do, end month 1027 50
Bank Shares 3360
Credit Foncier l2lO
Roman
RA ILI

(Italian L0an...... 71 50
Do. end month.... 71 45
New ditto ........
Do. end month....
Russian ........
Austrian ........ 82
Spanish Threes.... 52 5C',
Flame Debt ...... 51 50
'Deferred ........ 471

rAYB.
Cash. Account.
970 970
9G5 970

Orleans
Northern
New ditto
Lyons and Mediterranean 927 50 .. 928 75
New. ditto .. 880
Geneva 498 75
S Althorn 682 50 .. 682 50
Western
Eastern „ 475 .. 473 75
Sardinian 395 .. 392 50
Austrian ......
Lombard = 522 50 .. 521 25
North of Spain
Saragossa 615 617 50
Ditto to Barcelona 300 .. 302 50

LITERATURE,

Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's New Work.

Caxtoniana : A Series of Ebsays on Life, Litera-
ture, and Manners. By Sir E. Bulwer Lytton,
Bart., Author of "The Caxtons," &e. Two vols.

Blackwood and Sons.

Although far from being Sir Edward Lytton's
greatest work, Caxtoniana is certainly, in many
respects, among all his numerous and various writ-
ings, to our thinking, one of the most remarkable.
In some respects, even, we would go so far as to say,
it is, among them all, in our own estimation, almost
the most remarkable. During the lengthened in-
terval within which these seven-and-twenty Essays
upon Life, Literature, and Manners, were being pub
lisped by instalments in the pages of Blackwood,
the author's design appeared to us, we will confess
it, rather vague and. straggling—a wondrous, if not
a mighty, maze, and altogether without a plan.
Now, however, that the whole series has, imme-
diately rpon its completion, been collected together,
being, here, laid before us in its entirety in the
shape of these two singularly handsome volumes,
we will acknowledge ourselves to have been, in this,
in a very great measure mistaken. What, even then,
to our precipitate judgment, when Caxtoniana first
came to be regarded only piecemeal, bit by bit, bore
an aspect; almost we might say, of incoherence,
now that we have been enabled to regard it as a com-
prehensive whole, not only at once assumes to itself
a readily appreciable coherence, but wins anew our
admiration by reason of the harmony of its propore
tiuns and the symmetry of its general arrangement.
Descanting in the first instance—(with the subtlest
sympathy for the thought he thus undertakes to
articulate in the inaugural essay of the seven-and-
twenty)—upon a certain marvellous evidence of in-
creased attention to Outward Nature he has ob
served among thoughtful men towards the Decline
of Life, Sir Bulwer Lytton here takes from what
thus seems to him, as he charmingly expresses it,
distinctly indicative, that " life in age rounds its
completing circle towards the point at which it
touches the circle of life in childhood," our Author
takes that one mystic point in the rounding orbit
of human existence, as his own starting-point in
these his deeply thought-out meditations upon Life.
For Essays, they are, it should be particularly borne
in mind while reading them, it should certainly
be borne in mind by us while commenting upon
them thus analytically, Essays they are peculiarly
and essentially and above all—upon Life. The
other two themes mentioned upon the title-page of
Caxtoniana, are altogether subordinated to that far
grander theme of Haman Life, to which those added
minor themes of Literature and Manners are, as it
were, but accessories and adornments, are here, in
a certain sense, so to speak, but supplemental, and
subsidiary. Upon Manners and upon Literature,
the philosophic mind of Pisistratus enlarges, no
doubt, repeatedly, in Caxtoniana, with a charming
discursiveness. Instance, his ninth essay " On Style
and Diction," his eleventh, " On the Moral Effect of
Writers," his fifth, in which he delineates so delight-
fully the salient attributes of that social paragon the
" Superior man," and his eighth, " On Rhythm in
Prose as conducive to Precision and Clearness." But,
if we might so express it without any appearance of
affectation, the thread of the whole discourse—the
thread upon which are hers strung together in such
curious contrast, and in such affluent abundance,
thoughts as varied both in outward appearance and
in intrinsic value as a chequered succession of pearls,
and berries, and pebbles, and precious stones—the
one unbroken, elastic, devious thread of the dis-
course upon which these thoughts are all strung to-
gether in Caxtoniana, is that marvellous, mysteri-
ous gossamer thread of Life, manipulated by the
weird sisters of the old mythology, the fated
thread touched successively by the distaff, the
wheel, and, at the last, by " the abhorred shears."
A noble topic of discourse, in truth—and
one which, with manifestly the profoundest sense
of its awful import, the reverent genius of
Bulwer, here, in some of the finest pages he has ever
written, most nobly discourses. Not merely has it
appeared to us, as already intimated, that, with a
tender significance, the mystic meeting-point in
the rounding circle of human life, above indicated,
has been selected by the author as his own starting-
point in these meditations of his upon Life (and in a
lesser sense also upon Literature and Manners)—but
it seems to us that we have, at the very close of
that first essay " On the Increased Attention
to Outward Nature in the Decline cf Life"—a key to
the innermost meaning, purport, tendency of these
same earnest, more than heart-born, soul-born
meditations. A key, it is, to their innermost mean-
ing : and, beyond that, otherwise to express it, the
keynote, likewise, to the dominant harmony run-
ning through these, ever most musical, often most
melancholy, musings upon Life, these seven-and-
twenty Essays of Caxtoniana. Allusion being
here made to what appears to us the subtle
significance of that double echo at the close of the
first of these thoughtful Essays—that concordant
echo of words human and divine—lovely words
from an old poet, sacred words from the New
Testament—here Sir John Davies instilling into
our heart's core the benignant truth, "Death is
nought but the Soul's Birth"—here Holy Lips
breathing into our very soul, "Make yourselves as
little children, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
Having said thus much upon the general design
of Caxtoniana, upon the pure tone and elevated
character of the work as a philosophic and artistic
whole, we have already, we conoeive,justified to the
full whatever we have before remarked in com-
mendation of it, as a worthy expression of the
matured genius of the Author. How far it really
does afford evidence of his genius in its maturity
might, perhaps, be rendered the most readily ap-
preciable upon a comparison of Caxtoniana with
a former collection of Essays penned by the same
hand. Whereas in the two volumes of " The Stu-
dent" written by our author, now a good many years
ago, when he was, for a very brief but a very bril-
liant interval, Editor of the New Monthly, in
which magazine those earlier essays appeared, from
month to month, as the Editor's own contributions
to his periodical—whereas in those two volumes of
" The Student" the reader could wander, as he
listed, so to express it, through an orchard in the
spring time, in its first tender verdure and abound-
ing efflorescence—here in these two volumes of
" Caxtoniana," Bulwer's reader has hardly so much
wilful inclination to wander fitfully as he lists—
the orchard is no longer of the spring time, it is in
the full wealth of an abundant autumn, the richest
colouring on the leaves, the ruddiest fruit clustered
thickly in the boughs—the ripest of it all drop-
ping about us as we pass onwards. Or, to adopt yet
another simile, one of Pisistratus Caxton's own,
that wonderful simile of the River which he has
recently worked up into so exquisite an allegory in
Us Schiller-like poemuf " The Boatman" in the last
number of Blackwood—whereas in " The Student,"
the current of thought, along the margin of which we
loitered years ago with such unaffectedly pleasur-
able emitions, was so near the fountain head of the
stream as to be, here and there, shallow perhaps, but
wondrously crystalline in the sunlight, sparkling
among the reeds, dimpled by the pebbles in its bed,
of
ruffled but by the breeze or by the passing wing
the midge and the dragon fly —that same curbrernotao__
thought now rolls by tis, here in Caxtoniana,
the
d
the
ened, deepened, impetuously, no longer
midst
enst
of the
pastoral landscapes, but through thei
g irt almost say,
roaring oity,with at intervals,
"e
ranee of the ocean
a briny sense, as by a tidal inthr . '_ommon
with
awaiting it, and towards which it, in u