The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-24 00:00:00

THE CITY REMEMBRANCER.

At length a day, the 14th January, at a meeting of the
Common Council to be specially convened, has been ap-
pointed to elect a Remembrancer for the corporation of
London, in the room of Mr. Tyrrell, who retired from the
office about six months ago, after a service of more than
half a century. By a recent resolution of the Court of
Common Council, the salary has been fixed at £1,500, with
an annual allowance besides of £4OO for office expenses.
The emoluments, which until now have been fluctuating,
amounted to about £2,000 a-year upon an average. There
are eight candidates in the field namely, Mr. James
Crosby, solicitor, admitted 1828; Mr. George C. Oke, as.,
sistant-clerk at the Mansion-house justice -room, and
author of several legal works of retaite; Mr. Samuel Spof-
forth, Parliamentary agent and solicitor, admitted 1850;
Mr. John R. L. Walmisley, Parliamentary agent and soli-
citor, admitted 1840; Mr. Henry T. Riley, MA., Cam-
bridge, barrister, called in 1847, and editor and translator of
Liber Albus; Mr. James Pearce Peachey, barrister, called
in 1851, and for three years lecturer on conveyancing to the
Law Society ; Mr. Woodthorpe Brandon, registrar of the
Lord Mayor's civil court; and Mr. If. E. Brown, Parlia-
mentary agent and solicitor, admitted in 1840. The long in -
terval which has elapsed since the vacancy arose, and dur-
ing which it was uncertain whether or not the office would
be amalgamated partly with that of the City Solicitor and
partly with that of the Town-clerk, has operated to prevent
some of the candidates presenting themselves until the
eleventh hour. Others, again, were unwilling to undertake
the labour of canvassing the Common Council, about 260
in number, so long as it remains a matter of doubt that
the Remembrancership would be maintained as a separate
department of the corporation, as it had been front the
reign of Queen Elizabeth. Some are understood to have
declined on principle to canvass at all, preferring to de-
pend on their good repute, even where the coveted prize
is equal in emolument to the office of an Under-Secretary
of State, but without its precarious tenure. This being so,
it is feared that some members of the Common Council
promised their votes when the field of choice was compare-
tiveiy limited, and that the wholesome rule of deter
digniori, which ought to be above all other considerations,
may not be allowed to prevail in the puLlic interest. It
would be difficult, perhaps, to understand how many arts
are practised on these occasions in the interest of particular
candidates for offices in the corporation, down to the em-
ployment at times of paid electioneering agents. It is not
uncommon for a man to lay himself out for a place of
emolument or honour before it is really vacant, and that
because its possessor happens to be moribund or advanced in
years. A rumcur was recently current in the city that an
inhabitant of a ward canvassed for the gown which
an alderman, who was ill, was supposed likely to give UP'
and that the moment the alderman heard of the proceeding
he declared his determination to retain his gown until thet
last. In the matter of the Remembrancership effertsqiuni
ae
as unconscionable are being made to carry the
particular way. It rests with the Common Council,election and
especially with the new body which has just been elected
to bailie such artifices, and see that, every one of the candi-
dates has a fair chance. The choice they made on a recent
election of a Commissioner of Police gave general
i satisfac-
tion. There is no reason why that of a
embrancer
tienshould not gain equal approbation, and that it will du, pro-
vided it proceeds ou public considerations alone.

JUDGE JEFFRIES,OF NOTORIOUS MEMORY (point-
ing with his cane to a man who was about to be tried),
said, " There is a great rogue at the end of my cane:, The
man to whom h© pointed, looking at hint :laid, '' At which
end, my lord F'
A CYNICAL PHILOSOPHER has remarked—" Ii

we all had windows to our breasts to-morrow, what a de.
mand there would be for blinds I"

The Court Journal. Established. 34 years.—See
the Court Journal of Saturday, which contains a vast
amount of exclusive news of public interest, and perfectly
original Courtly, Fashionable, Theatrical, Naval, Military,
and Spoi ting Intelligence, Club On flits, &c.; not to be
found in any daily or weekly paper.—Price sd. ; Stamped,
6d.—W. Thomas, 26, Brydges-street, Strand; sold by all
ReWB-ageLli6 ; and at the Railway Stations.

From " Pelham" to " Caxtoniana" there has been
one tong soliloquy. It is clearly in the light of half-
regret, half-apology for early faults, that we are to
read the analysis given in this significant Preface
of the earliest of the Bulwer Lytton novels. We
have the frank avowal that it was written " at that
crisis of thought and feeling, common enough to the
boyhood and early youth of all men of genius, when
all the elements of thought are unsettled, when
crude impressions are hastily received as truths :
and in striving, first, to think for themselves, they
question all the oracles of human fate, and dange-
rously interpret the ambiguous answers accorded to
their own passionate inclinations." In the "Dis-
owned" we are next told to see " glimpses of a much
loftier tone of mind, of greater capabilities for
pathos, of grander ideals of human character, and
the nobles aims of human life." The mystery of
m
"Devereux" is derived, for variety, "not fro
the inferior sources of external incident, but the
complicated secrets of the human heart." IR the
character of Aubrey, " our reason is satisfied not so
much by the probability of the events as by the
consummate analysis of mind and motive by
which the events themselves grow naturally
and inevitably out of the idiosyncrasy of their
agents. Of " Paul Clifford" the design has never
been apprehended before. "In forma burlesque,
in essentials a tragedy," it is " a satire upon crime,"
a burlesque upon the false shows of civilised life,
" a genial appeal to the conscience of communities
to adjust our codes to the reform of criminals es
well as to their punishment.” Shallow critics have
been all along unaware of its ethical depth—
Our author must often have smiled, whether in scorn or
sadness, at the shallow criticisms which represented this
work, so full of a cordial philosophy, so marked by elevated
benevolence, and so rounded into the very moral which all
our statesmen have si.,ot3 laboured to shape into Acts of
Parliament, as a vicious representation of heroes and high-

waymen
Tor is " Eugene Aram" without those traits of
self-portraiture which bespeak the mind of the
novelist passing through a further phase of culture.
There is here the imaginary study of evil in its
effects upon a temperament like Clifford's in romance,
but with far higher gifts of mind—" the eff,ct of a
single crime upon a magnificent intellect." In
" Godolphin," on the contrary, we have the ideal
view of the same influence in a less tragical aspect.
" Ia one there is the picture of a life blasted, in the
other the picture of a life frittered away." In both
we see, as it were, the physician experimenting
upon moral poisons in their effects upon his ideal
self. Nor are we on any account to lose the
truthfulness and finish of the
" high-bred
cynicism of Saville, or the elegant effemi-
nacy into which the original genius of Godol-
phin himself subsides, as the indolence of
the epicurean gradually prevails over his finer
nature. In "Ernest Maltravers" we pass on to
" the type of the poetic intelligence, working out its
highest ultimate destinies through the scenes and
probation of actual life." In what passes between
Maltravers and Evelyn is represented " that epoch
in the poetic mind when, wearied with the actual
world, the poet yearns for return to his early dreams,
seeks to renew his own youth, and forgets that he
cannot regain their former freshness, nor link inex-
perienced hope with the memory of errors and the
fulness of sorrowful knowledge." It is in the re-
union with Alice—that is to say, " the restoration
of art to nature"—that " the ideal intelligence, long
at war with the practical world, is rebonciled to it.
" Zinoni"—the first inkling of a vein of thought in
Sir Edward's imagination which has since teemed
in the more astounding marvels of the " Strange
Story"—dawned upon the author's brain as the
"illustration of external life by symbolical phi-
losophy." Current rumour points to the no less
potent sympathy said even now to ezist between
the same imaginative genius and spirit manifesta-
tions of a more vulgar kind. Such magical bias,
however, is declared to be in its origin " no gloomy
criminal art, but a mastery over the lawful secrets
of nature, to be attained but by dauntless will, by
self-conquest, by the subordination of flesh to

spirit"
If his successive creations, from " Pelham'.
downwards, may thus be viewed as so many reflec-

tions of the author's self, as in a room with many
mirrors, the same law of impersonation holds even
more strictly true as a key to his latest publication.
Passing by the practical lessons of the " Csxtons "
and "My Novel," as the expression of his sager
manhood, we have in " Caxtoniana" the didactic
statement of ideas which he has at other times
habituated himself to clothe with the personality of
fiction. By far the larger part of these two volumes
may be read as simple soliloquies or confessions.
Never, perhaps, since Rousseau, has a philosopher
or moralist thrown so much of himself into his re-
flections, even when giving them their most abstract
or general form, and using least commonly the first
person singular. To any keen interpreter of casual
hints and intimations, nothing more is wanting for
a complete mental image of the writer or the man.
Years which have added the last perfection to that
polished style—chastening its early exuberance, and
sobering the youthful tendency to inflation and.bom-
bast—have but matured the habit of studying the
world by the inner light of his own consciousness. It

is in the microcosm of his own sentiments and
yearnings that the very universe seems alone
capable of being read and understood. What-
ever changes may go on without are as no-
thing to the importance of the alternations and
vicissitudes which mark the development within.
Tne laws of mind and morals are to be studied, not
in reality, but in type, and that type not far to
seek. Into whatever fountain Narcissus turns to
gaze, there is, changed as it may be by time, the same
individual image still.. As Sir Edward himself says
of Montaigne, " it is his own human heart, as be
has tested it though his own human life, that be
first analyses, and then syntheses. And out of that
analysis and that synthesis he dissects into separat,e,
members, and then puts together again, the world."
Of what avail to him are the multitude of tr?kF,
save as they "serve only to enforce his own opinions
and illustrate his own experience of life

POACHING AFFRAY NEAR MACCLESFIELD.—At
about 1 o'clock on Monday morning a desperate encounter I
14 gamekeepers and nearly
Atwice
Macclesfield, between 12 or
took place on the Siddington estatntoe,atifhlo,euhreasovtraintfiegvoer
efinc:illiresed fromi.
their number of poachers. On the previous night the keepers
of Mr. J. B. Glegpgo,acWhiinthginggantogn
adjoiningwith the
formation of a body of poachers having been seen in the
neighbourhood, mustered in force and started off in pursuit.e
They traced the
Davenport, Capestborne Hall, where they fell in H.
wTohfeorkthidable gangs
y armed,
keepers on that estate, together
sut suitably
those of the
and tthheeir
landowner,•lllr. J. Dixon, Astle Hall.
their strength, and being keepers united
r. JabesWright,
continued their
search.' About 4 o'clock they came upon t
of the strength of their opponents,
setting nets in a field in the occupation of M
keepers, unaware
two gangs closed and compelled
Siddington. It was pitch dark,
Pounced upon them, but
thewatchers to stand
aloof. The latter summoned their antagonists to surrender, a
but the poachers replied with
regular tools then ensued. volley of large stones. A
and the confusion the keepers In the darkness of the night
fear of hitting the fellow-watchers;
were chary in striking through
-watchers; but the poachers w,re
less cautious, end set
hard blows before di upon each other, exchanging many
perior in number and wen
their mistake. Though su-
leaving four of their number wounded on the ground:
keepers took into custody. A hare, a rabbit, and
a quantity of netti •ng and sticks were found upon them.
The keepers
escaped marvellously, many of the blows in-
tended f•or them fallino• on the 'beads of the unlucky
poachers. The four capturedp men, Joseph Wilson, Joseph
Cl ['Ann, Thomas Fitton, and Robert Moss, were brought
up at Macclesfield on Tuesday. They made no defence,
but Moss and Wilson complained of the brutal ill-usage
they received at the hands of the keepers, 18 or 19 of whom
(they averred), armed with spears several feet long, and
double-barrelled guns, cut and slashed right and left.
Wilson showed some ugly wounds on his head and face, and
Moss had the back of his hand severely cut, ho said, with a
spear. The justices sentenced the prisoners to three months'
hard labour each, and expressed an opinion that if the
borough police officers did their duty under the powers
which the recent poaching Act gave them, the game
e lest;
infected pre-
servesin the neighbourhood of Macclesfield would b
s
infected with midnight marauders.
The steam despatch boat E3laireur has just
ceived orders to take part in the works for laying do n irbc-
newt submarine telegraph line between Carlin,. w - --e
Oran. The operations will commence on th,, arrivali'ella and
at the
former place of the Dix Decemb re, which has gone to Eng-
land to bring over the cable,

THE REPORTED INSURRECTIONARy
MANIFESTO IN .HUNGARY.

MILAN, Dec. 24.

The Allianza publishes a st atetuent that an in..
surrectionAry manifesto has been affixed in the
principal towns of Hungary.
The manifesto announces the establishment of a
General Committee to obtain the independence of
Hungary, and assume the direction of the affairs
of the country under the orders of Kossuth.

The Austrian Government is taking great pre-
cautions, but agitation is general throughout Hati.
gary.

GRESHAM LIFE ASSURANCE SOCIETY.

The annual general meeting of the share and policy
holders in this society was held yesterday at the offices,
37, Old Jewry, Cheapside.
the
bheoaerhd of dviair Narsecots.
e:rup ie 1 by W. Tabor, Esq., chairman of
the

The advertisement calling the meeting having been read,
The following report was then submitted to the

meeting :

" The directors have to state as their report for the
financial year ending July 31st, 1863, that as many as
4,228 proposals have been made to the office for assu-
rances. amounting to £1,732,235.
" That of such proposals 3,50 S have been accepted and
completed, yielding £37,347 133. Bd., as new premiums fur
the year, exclusive of annuities. _

"The general income for the year has been £162,537
.2s. 2d., of which £12,147 6s. sd. is from interest of in-

vestments.

" The amount paid during the year for deaths, including
bonuses, has been £55,533 13s. 6d.
"The current tunds remaining accumulated and invested,
after payment of the charges of the year, and exclusive of
share capital and deposits, amounted to £374,671 13a. sd.
" The accounts have been examined monthly by the
assigned auditors, Messrs. G. 11, Ladbury, W. W. Venn,
and William Whitelock, and have been found and certi-
fied to be correct. These gentlemen again beg to offer
themselves for election.

" The directors retiring, but again offering
themselves for election, are, Edward Solly,
William
Henry Thornthwaite and William Tabor, Esqs., and are
the
eopmamst year,
by the board as the list for election.
" The above report comprises all the essential results of
and presents to those who are acquainted with
assurance business, such evidence of the activity and pros-
peruoni t
oyf pt rhood
suocoeide t
yb,y a tshoea enxntoetnfsate
to a nbdesuccessfulg ohri gyasnai
tsi as
factory?,

The CHAiltxtAN- said it now became his duty to move
that the report be received and adopted. He did not know
there was anything that called for remark, but he could
not resume his seat without congratulating the meeting
upon the success of their operations during the past year,
which he thought were unparalleled in the annals of life
assurance. Their premiums kept on increasing, and they
had completed fresh proposals yielding £37,347 13s. Sd.
(Hear, hear.) Such an amount of new business had, he
thought, never been exceeded by any other office, and the
fact showed that the foundation of the establishtalent was
sound and reliable. (Hear, hear.) Their accumulated fund
had also shared in the general increase, and it now
amounted to nearly £lOO,OOO. (Hear, hear.) Their largs
increase of business had been most legitimately obtained.
There had been no amalgamations, no purchases, but all
had been done in the most regular manner. During
the last week he had examined their securities for money
advanced, and he had also been to the Bank of England,
and seen that the amount standing in their name was cor-
rect. (Hear, hear.) With these few observations, he
would conclude by formally moving that the report sub.
witted to the meeting be received and adopted.

The motion having been seconded,
Mr. W. SMEE said he could nut allow that opportunity to
Fess without expressing the pleasure he felt at the success
that had attended their operations during the past year.
During that time they had no less than 4,223 new propo•
eats, and the uninitiated could form no idea of the immense
labour such a circumstance would create, as every proposal,
representing as it did the head of a family, had to be dealt
with singly and separately. It was most satisfactory to
know that their increased business had not been produced by
amalgamation, and that each new assurer had attended
personally at one or other of their offices, and had undergone
an examination by the medical gentleman appointed for the
particular district. The utmost care was taken in the selec-
tion of lives, and to :that fact much of their prosperity
was to be attributed. Such had been the success of their
operations that, in some towns, they had secured every life .
fit for insurance, and this in a field, in many instances,
which others had failed to cultivate. The Gresham
was really and truly an European office; be would
not say they had not a governor or a consul insured in.
their office, but they had been insured previous to their
appointment—(hear)—in fact, the whole of those assurers
had been obtained without in one instance going to the
colonies for them. (Hear, hear.) It was the happiness of
the board to have the advice of a gentleman of great breadth
of mind, and he might truly say that it was owing to the
untiring energy of his friend Mr. Farren—(hear, hear)—
that the Gresham had been brought to its present pitch of
prosperity. He ventured to predict that the office would
still grow, still extend itself, and large as
it at present was
it was destined yet to become larger for the future, (Hear.)
The CITAIRMAN put the question for the adoption of the
report to the meeting, when it was enthusiastically

carried.
Mr. WILLIAMS moved the re-election of the
retiring
directors, viz., Edwat d Son Henry Thorn-
y, Esq., William He
thwaito, Esq., and William Tabor,
Efici,
He said they
Would be im-
arer or abler servants.
were all gentlemen of tried ability,par
(Hear, hear.)
The motion having been seconded
talifdhii:
possible to obtain be
brother directors,
was put to the meet-
ing and carried unanimously.
their greatest pride to
Mr. THOWITIIWAITE, on the
oialyanicmoantdeittion and
hem,to fresh
their
fresk
returned thanks. He swaidouiildt w
business
( lear, hear.)
see the office in its present flourishing as
past successful labours
exTerhtiisoncosn forcl utdheed f
tuLt ue r e .
of the meeting.
A POLICYHOLDER said before the proceedings terminated
would
worthy and esteemed award a vote of thanks to their
eem
-ed chairman. (Hear, hear.) He had
invariahly discharged his duties in the most courteous and
affable manner.
and he had great pleasure in moving that
the best thanks of the meeting be presented to him.

The motion having been carried,
The CHAIRMAN returned thanks for the compliment,
but at the same time he must say that much of their suc-
ce.a was attributable to their admirable and able actuary and
secretary, Mr. Farren. (Rear, bear.) They had had the
haprinees of knowing that gentleman for many years, and
the more they knew of him the better they liked him.
This being the case, he bad great pleasure in moving a
cordial vote of thanks to Mr. Farren. (Hear, hear.)
Mr. BEADNALL said it would afford him great pleasure in
seconding the
motion.
The CILAIRMAN having put the motion, and declared it

carried,
Mr. FAAREN said he had to thank the meeting for
himself and also for his staff, because the latter
rendered him the most essential service. He
need hardly tell them that the
mainust l yssup-
ports
fthe
paid
aided its society,
d-i
ports that he depended upon e for success we his
'
own staff and the gentlemen who acted as agents.
Those gentleman felt a settled confidence in the soundness
unhesitatinglyandtbeytwmeryostbodywas
t ' wellwo and
advocated
justly
services rendered, and this, coupled with the energy and
ffi
perseverance of every one engaged in the o ,
° extension.
Les, was one of
the secrets of their success. He could only thank the meet-
ing for the compliment they had awarded him, but at the
same time he could assure all present that his constant en-
deavour would be to enlarge the operations of the Gresham.
Tho proceedings then t " emulated.