The Sun.
London, England, 1865-04-10 00:00:00

rHE 7-SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENiNG, APRIL 10, 18M,

t heir employ(Jrs as some men indulged in was " a
erious re ,flection upon the individual, and
tso to the order to which he belonged."
A very sensible speech was made by a " pud-
dler," in which they argued that they should
ado pt such rules, and fix matters upon so firm a
basi s that henceforth they need not fear a strike or
ale ck-out. He alluded to the happy settlement of
affs ,irs by the master-builders and joiners of Wol-
verhampton, and even went so far as to say that
suer' a result might follow upon the dispute in the
iron trade. If such should occur there will not be
so much cause to regret the disaster as some have
apprehended, and, indeed, the confusion that has
reoently occurred may be called non mal pour and
bie,ful, if a better understanding prevails, and if
from henceforth some decided plans are agreed upon.
The speaker desired that the rules should be such
as could be enforced in a court of justice, and not
depend upon the chance of which side was the
strongest. "Away with such a state of things for
the future henceforth ; the appeal should be to the
law and to the testimony." He proposed that the
ironworkers of Wolverhampton should not return
.to work until the masters understood what they
required, and they understood how the
masters intended to act, and moved that
" they should not return to work until their masters
had consented to a court of arbitration for the settle-
ment of all disputes in the future." This was
seconded, and the opinion concerning the proposal I,
was unanimous in its favour. A court of arbitra-
tion seemed to be an imperative necessity in the
minds of those assembled, and so far they are correct,
for such a course would finally dispose of many
vexed questions, and settle disputes in a summary
fashion, instead of the trades of the country being
successively paralyzed, and numerous bodies of ope-
ratives thrown out of employ for months together,
to the loss of all concerned, and the serious detri-
ment of trade. One of the men laid stress upon
the fact that they were now improved by education,
and able to speak to their masters themselves
instead of being afraid of the managers. It is to be
hoped that no undue prejudice upon the part of the
masters will prevent the resumption of work in wait-
ing for arbitration to be established. The sooner
some definite arrangement is made the better for the
interests of all concerned. Until in all parts such a
conclusion is arrived at, there can be little or no hope
but of the periodical occurrence of such misfortunes,
and it will be a great disgrace to all concerned if this
disastrous dispute is not made the opportunity for a
change, and if in future times it may not be consi-
derered as the epoch of a mutual understanding be-
tween the masters and men, based on fixed prin-
ciples, and founded on mutual understanding.

is [there] represented in immovable, feature-
less, unemotional type." That in approach-
ing this wonderful man, that in commun-
ing with him through his works, he had
done so "in silence and in solitude, face to face,
alone with him alone"—that " he had read and
studied and meditated upon him in early youth with-
out gloss or commentary, preface or glossary !" To
employ the Cardinal's own beautiful illustration of
the limpid purity of the source from which he had
thus drunk in these draughts of Shaksperian lore—it
might be said that instead of caring to quaff it from
a richly jewelled and delicately chased cup—he had
chosen the most transparent crystal vessel, how-
ever homely—filling it at the very cleft of the rock
from which it bubbles fresh and bright, and thus
drinking it while yet sparkling, while yet " beading
with its own air-pearls the walls of the goblet !" Cast-
ing one comprehensive glance back over all the
world's literature—modern, mediaeval, or in the
days of antiquity—the Cardinal recognises Three
P oets, out of the whole human race, each of whom in
his way may be considered supreme, matchless, un-
rivalled. The Dii Majores of Literature ! SHAKS-
PERE—and prior to Shakspere, DANTE—and, prior
to Dante, HOMER. Each of those three pre-
eminently established in fame—none of them ever
to be dethroned. As to the indestructability of
Shakspere's supremacy—its indestructability saving
only with the destruction of Letters themselves
—the Cardinal declares emphatically, that " To
imagine Shakspere, even in intention, removed from
his sovereignty, would be a treachery parallel only
to that of Lear dethroned by his own daughters."
Meaning by this, that all future literatures or de-
velopments of our own literature—consummated as
the latter had been by Shakspere himself into "the
powerful idiom which so splendidly combines the
Saxon and Norman elements" (p. 23)—must, hence-
forth, evermore, own allegiance and filial affection
to Shakspere as their arch-progenitor. The Secret, or
nucleus, or essence of Shakspere's Genius, we find his
eminence here sagaciously tracing up to that match-
less, protean, marvellous Sympathy of his—as the
Cardinal puts it, " the most perfect of sympathies."
A sympathy pronounced to be " the very soul
of the dramatic idea"—meaning thereby the power
(so essential to the Dramatic Poet) to throw him-
self into the situation, the circumstances, the nature,
the acquired habits, the feelings—true or fictitious
—of every character he introduces." That Genius,
that Gift, that Power, that " Soul of the Dramatic
Idea," Shakspere possessed as no man ever had
before or ever has since possessed it—possessing it, so
far as mortal man could, in truth, in its supreme per-
fection. Here, indeed, is the heart of the whole
marvel ! Here, in truth, is the key to the whole mys-
tery—here is the solution of the otherwise inextri-
cable problem! And the beauty, and the majesty, and
the sublimity, and the completeness of Shakspere's
gift, in this way, is such that it can be said of him,
as it is here said of him by Cardinal Wiseman
(p. 37) that he, " Shakspere, has sympathy as com-
plete for Shylook or lago as he has for Arthur or
King Lear." Otherwise, to put it, in regard to this
Poet of Poets, " For a time he lives in the astute
villain as in the innocent child." Astonishingly
varied as his characters are, moreover, they never
for an instant lose their identity. As it is here
exquisitely expressed, " From the beginning to the
end, each one is the same, yet reflecting in himself the
lights and shadows which flit around him." One while,
indeed, the Cardinal goes so far as to speak of this
gift or power of Shakspere's, as the " übiquity of his
sympathies." Commenting later on upon the Poet's
astoundingly vivid delineation of insanity in Ham-
let (supposing, that is, that Hamlet, after all, really is
insane) Cardinal Wiseman hesitates not to say, with
all the power of language, " While this character was
before him, he (Shakspere) changed himself into a
maniac 1 He felt intuitively what would be his own
thoughts, what his feelings, were he in that situation.
He played with himself the part of the madman, with his
own grand mind as the basis of its action." Con-
tinuing the same thought in other words, words still
more felicitously expressive of it—daring though the
thought is in itself—the Cardinal says of Shakspere,
in reference to his delineation of this character of the
Madman, " He needed not to look for a model out
of himself, for it cost him no effort to change the angle
of his mirror and sketch his own countenance awry !
It was but little for him to pluck away the crown
from reason and contemplate it dethroned." In say-
ing this (so very admirably !) his Eminence is
avowedly denying the validity of the argument put
forth by Dr. Conolly to the effect that Shakspere's
delineation must necessarily have been the result of
external observation. The Cardinal's view of it—
a far more reasonable view to our mind—being, that
" the powers by which the genius of Shakspere
reached this painful, yet strange accuracy, was
rather that of introversion than of exter-
nal observation." Summing up in one
luminous sentence all the marvels of that
consummate sympathy of Shakspere, the
Cardinal says, moreover, in so many words—" We
may compare the mind of Shakspere to a diamond,
pellucid, bright, and untinted, cut into countless
polished facets, which, in constant movement, at
every smallest change of direction or of angle, caught
a new reflection, so that not one of its brilliant
mirrors could be for a moment idle, but by a power
beyond its control was ever busy with the reflection
of innumerable images, either distinct or running
into one another, or repeated each so clearly as to
allow him, when he chose, to fix it in his memory."
Surely a marvellously felicitous illustration ! It
seems to realise to us, upon the instant, by one
exquisitely happy figure of speech, the otherwise
inexplicable aptitude or apprehension of that most
profound, comprehensive, subtle, all-sympathising
Genius of Shakspere—a Genius, in its own match-
less way, just simply supreme, complete, inimitable,
incomparable ! Epitomising, in an earlier portion
of this most eloquent Lecture or Treatise upon
the Genius of Shakspere, the world-wonders
accomplished by Shakspere's Genius, Cardinal
Wiseman has spoken of the Immortal Bard—as
" the great master of our language," as " al-
most its regenerator," as " quite its refiner."
As " the author whose use of a word stamps
it with the mark of purest English coinage."
As one " whose employment of a phrase makes it
household and proverbial." As one " whose sen-
tentious sayings, flowing without effort from his
mind, seem almost sacred, and are quoted as axioms
or maxims indisputable." As " the orator whose
speeches—not only apt but natural to the
lips from which they issue—are more eloquent
than the discourses of senators or finished
public speakers. As " the writer who has
run through the most varied ways and to the
greatest extent through every department of litera-
ture and learning, through the history of many
nations, their domestic manners, their characteristics,
and even their personal distinctives, and who seems
to have visited every part of nature, to have in-
tuitively studied the heavens and the earth." 'We
would add that while the lecture before us opens
with one of its most eloquent passages, the one
referring to Raphael, and Mozart, and Michel-
angelo—it closes with another passage, in its
eloquence not unworthy of being placed beside it in
direct companionship. It is a peroration quite worthy,
in fact, of completing what the exordium had so
very gracefully and impressively commenced. The
passage of the Lecture here referred to epitomises, by
a series of " incongruous combinations," the all but
bewildering maze of imaginings conjured up by
the genius of Shakspere. A single one of these
same " incongruous combinations" will suffice
to illustrate the character of them all, as where
the Cardinal says—" here the golden orb dropped
from the hand of a captive King rolls on the
ground side by side with a Jester's mouldy
skull—both emblems of a common fate in human
things !" As an Appendix to the work we have
" A Proposal for a Tercentenary Memorial of
Shakspere"--a proposal that even yet, we would
hope, admits of being adopted by the nation
and fully realized. Cardinal Wiseman sug-
gesting in this Proposal of his a Memorial akin to
that glorified by the familiar words of Horace, the—
Monumentum
Quod non imber edax, non aquilo impotens
Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis
Annorum series, et fuga temporum.
In other words—such an edition of the complete
works of 'William Shakspere as, in its text, in its
typography, and in its illustrations, should be abso-

lutely unrivalled. The proposition, such as it is,
admits, we do sincerely believe, and we shall yet
earnestly hope, of being carried out to its actual
fulfilment. Rapidly though this posthumous work
of Cardinal Wiseman's has been issued from the
press by his Eminence's executors, it has manifestly
been carried through the press by them with
exquisite care for the accuracy of its publication.
Only on a single page have we noticed anything
like an oversight, and there, indeed, on the parti-
cular page we are now referring to (p. 31), there
are in point of fact two errors of the press—one
of them purely a typographical error, where, in the
tenth line, we read " particuler"—the very next
sentence running thus—" We do not mean by the
use of the word genius, that the soldier
knew anything of poetry, or the printer
[it should obviously, from the mere context, have
been the painter] of mechanism." Such as the book
is, however, altogether, in itself—it is worthy (brief
and nominally incomplete though it may be) of
being regarded as the writer's last intellectual offer-
ing to England, a lecture in honour of England's
greatest son, in honour of that William Shakspere
to whom has been accorded (p. 53) absolute and
undisputed sovereignty over the literature of the
civilised world.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

PALM SUNDAY AT ROME.

ROME APRIL 9.

To-day being Palm Sunday, the Pope blessed the
palms, and distributed them among the members of
the Diplomatic body.
A large crowd of foreigners lined the route of
the procession from the Basilica to the Vatican.

M. de Persigny disembarked at Civita Vecchia,
and arrived at Rome at 11 o'clock this morning,
alighting at the French Embassy.

PLYMOUTH, APRIL 10.

The Great Victoria, from Melbourne, January 17,
passed up the Channel yesterday, with 14,446
ounces of gold. She landed eight passengers last
night at Dartmouth by a pilot boat.

FRANCE.
PARIS, APRIL 10.

The journal l' Union de l' Ouest has been suspended
for two months for publishing false news, with the
object of misleading public opinion and exciting
hatred against the Government.
MARSEILLES, APRIL 10.
The Ceylon reached Marseilles at 6 a.m. to-day.
The mails leave for London at 11.30 a.m:
MALTA, APRIL 9.

The Nyanza, with the heavy portion of the above
mails, left here at 10 a.m. to-day. She may be ex-
pected at Southampton about the 18th inst.

The Ellora, from Marseilles on the sth inst.,
reached Malta on the Bth at 2 a.m., and left at 9
a.m. for Alexandria.

GIBRALTAR, APRIL 9.
The Delta left here for Southampton on the 6th
inst. at 5 a.m.

The Delhi, from Southampton on the 4th inst.,
reached Gibraltar at midnight yesterday, and left
at 7 a.m. to-day for Alexandria—all well.
BOURSE, April B.—The market is somewhat heavy,
and prices have slightly declined. Threes, for the
Account, have been done at 67f. 77c. Italian Loan
is unchanged at 65f. 95c. A somewhat notable re-
duction has taken place in the shares of the Credit
Mobilier, the quotation at this hour being 818 f. 75c.,
showing a difference of 12f. 25c. on the closing price
of yesterday. Railway Shares are inactive, and
quotations remain about the same. The market
improved a little towards the close, but still showed
signs of weakness in several departments. The fol-
lowing are the last quotations :

41 per Cents 95 Italian Loan 66
Do. end month Do. end month 66 25
3 per Cents.
Do. end month 67 80 New Mexican

Credit Mobilier ... 822 50 Russian
Do. end month ... 820 Austrian -
Bank Shares 3550 Spanish Threes 461
Credit Foncier 1292 50 Home Debt
Roman
RAILWAYS.
Cash. Acct.
Orleans
Northern lO6O 1065
Lyons and Mediterranean 982 50 ... 985
Southern 6lO 612 50
Western 532 50
Eastern
Sardinian 306 25 306 25
Austrian

Lombard 553 75 ... 553 75
North of Spain 307 50 ... 302 50
Saragossa 390 ... 385
Ditto to Barcelona 167 50 ...

THE EPIDEMIC IN RUSSIA.
ST. PETERSBURG-, APRIL 6.

The Poste du Nord contains the following note :
" Different foreign journals publish reports which
are quite fallacious, alleging that the plague of
Siberia had recently declared itself among the in-
habitants of the province of Novgorod and also at
St. Petersburgh, depopulating, in a very brief
period, a whole district (the district of Chanew ?),
carrying off the physicians who had been despatched
there, and spreading terror through the whole popu-
lation of our capital. It is further stated, that this
disease, to which, to calm the public agitation, we
had given the name of typhoid affection, had
destroyed in a few days not only almost all the
patients in the hospital of Oboukhow, but that
the whole staff of this establishment, both medical
and administrative had fallen victims to it ; and that
in consequence of these facts our Government had
sent for the most celebrated physicians of France,
Germany, and England, in order in have the bene-
fit of their counsels in such a terrible moment of
public calamity.

" In a German journal The Wanderer, of the 28th
March, we read intelligence of a still more absurd
character falsely purporting to have been received
from St. Petersburg, according to which a number
of the inhabitants terrified by the reports relating
to the apparition of the Siberian Plague, had set
fire to the Convent of the Nuns of the Elevation of
the Cross, and that this institution, together with
the Municipal Free Hospital, had fallen a prey to
to the flames.

" The improbability, not to say complete absurdity,
of all the above reports, and others of a like nature,
bruited abroad probably by some of our kind friends,
do not really merit any serious consideration. We
can only say further, that the Siberian plague com-
mits no kind of devastation—that, God be praised,
the typhus and typhoid, as well as the relapsing
fever (febris recurrens) have somewhat decreased
during the last few days, and that, in consequence
of the thoroughly active measures adopted by the
administration of the hospitals, it will, in all pro-
bability be no longer necessary to provide extra
temporary accommodation for the sick."

THE ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS,
TURIN, APRIL 6.

" Vesuvius

The Aurenire, of the 2d inst., says :
is emitting strong columns of flame with greater
fierceness than was observed in the first ebullition.
The subterranean rumbling sound is also louder
than before, and everything combines to induce the
belief that an eruption of more or less vioience is
immiment. However, from conjecture to certainty
there is a wide gulf, and so we must hope that this
prophecy will have no further fulfilment than that
made a month since."

MISS BATEMAN having, on Saturday evening,
completed her engagement at the Adelphi, after
playing Julia in "The Hunchback" eighteen nights
with brilliant success—withdraws into the country
to recruit her health prior to her re-appearance on
the boards of the Adelphi on Monday, the Bth of
May.