The Sun.
London, England, 1865-02-21 00:00:00

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

(REUTER'S TELEGRAM.)

FRANCE,

PARIS, FEB. 21.

Imperial decrees have been issued to-day ap-
pointing the Commissioners for the Universal Ex-
hibition of 1867, and for the Universal Exhibition
of Fine Arts, which are to take place in Parissimul-
tan eously.
Among the persons appointed members of the
Commission are Earl Granville, Lord Cowley, and
Mr. Cobden.

BOURSE, Feb. 20.—The money market shows
but very little animation, and quotations remain
about the same. Threes, For the Account, are
now at 67f. 40c. Mobilier are not quoted. Rail-
way Shares are firm, with advanced quotations.
The market was heavy towards the close, with little
variation in prices. The following are the last
quotations : •

41- per Cents 96 50
Do. end month —
3 per Cents. 67 40
Do. end month 67 40
Credit Mobilier
Do. end month
Bank Shares 3525
Cr?.dit Foncier 1280
Roman —

Italian Loan 65 10
Do. end month 65 10
Ditto Threes —
New Mexican
Russian B9
Austrian
Spanish Threes 44
Home Debt
Deferred
RAILWAYS.

Cash. Acct.
Orleans
Northern lOl5 1016 25
Lyons and Mediterranean 948 75 950
Southern 5BO 578 75

Westerns3B 75
: 540
-

Eastern
Sardinian 306 50 m 305
Austrian
Lombard 547 50 548 75
North of Spain 337 50 ... 338 75
Saragossa 4Ol 25 ... 400
Ditto to Barcelona — 175

LITERATURE.

Mr. Charles Knight's Autobiography.

Passages of a Working Life during Ralf a Century.
By Charles Knight. Vol. 111., completing the
work. Bradbury and Evans.

It is with little less than a sense of personal gra-
tification that we would, here, tender to the author of

these delightful recollections our earnest congratula-
tions upon their completion. So perfectly unaffected
are they, that they constitute one among the very
pleasantest of autobiographies. From the beginning
to the end of them, the reader has no distasteful
remembrance, even for a moment, that the writer of
the book, the pages of which he is turning so glibly,
is in the very smallest partble of a degree egotistical.
Although, perforce, after the manner of all autobio-
graphers, Mr. Knight is writing, of course, about
himself, he gives us the impression, while he is doing
so, that he is all the while rather looking out of himself
at what is going on immediately around him, than
regarding any reflection of himself, as though it
were in a sort of a cheval-glass of self-contem-
plation ! He is thinking, apparently, all the while
less of Himself than of the last Half-century during
which he has been living, thinking, writing—in one
word, as he himself epitomises it upon his title-page,
Working. It is the record of a working-man in the
fullest meaning of the phrase that we are reading in
these reminiscences of Charles Knight, book-writer
and bookseller, author and publisher, editor and
compiler, historian, essayist, critic, commentator,
and here lastly autobiographer. Charles Knight has
been too busy a man to be egotistical. He has been
too much in earnest ever to have run the risk of
being a bore. He has too much to tell that is worth
the telling, to have the chance even, let alone the in-
clination, to run into the error of age, to wit, by be-
coming garrulous. In these three volumes he has
contrived to pack together his remembrance not
merely of the last half century, but a variety of
yet earlier reminiscences. He has for fifty
years worked so well, so wisely, saga-
ciously, steadfastly, persistently, unsatisfied by
success, undeterred by failure, that it is no exag-
geration whatever to say of him that so far as one
man could forward the interests of enlightenment
in his generation he has done so—self-made man
though he is ! It was one of the most famous
utterances that ever fell from the lips of Henry
Brougham, M.P. for the West Riding of York-
shire—the now historical dictum, " The School-
master is abroad !" And a very arch-type of the
Schoolmaster was Henry Brougham's friend
and fellow - labourer in the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge among the masses, Charles Knight, the
son of the Windsor Bookseller. William and
Robert Chambers at Edinburgh, Charles Knight at
London, have between them, during this last half-
century, done—pretty equally—yeoman's service in
the cause of National Education. While the Go-
vernment has been pottering and fumbling over the
problem, striving more or less earnestly at uncer-
tain intervals to hit upon its solution, these intellec-
tual labourers have been doing the good work
strenuously, persistently, indomitably themselves. It
that
w
is with Charles Knight's part in the good work,
howevetrh,ertehfoarte,wiet
is
haveof nitowalotnoe
doe exclusively.ou
And,would
here speak. Apart from everything he has
been enabled to accomplish in the way of
spreading abroad Useful Knowledge among the
naturally intelligent masses of the uneducated popu-
lation, as the officially appointed printer and pub-
lisher of the Society constituted l express y for
the purpose of furthering that Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge—apart from all that he
has done in his time in that capacity—as, let us
call him (and it is a title he might well be proud
of) the Right Hand Man of Lord Brougham—
what has not Charles Knight, during this half cen-
tury last past, accomplished, himself, individually ?
It is something, verily, for him to have achieved so
many eminent things that the multitude of Educated
Englishmen know him to have achieved ! Conspi-
cuous among these achievements of his, it will be suf-
ficient to mention among his titles to popular
consideration—That he has given to the world of
letters two noble Encyclopaedias—The Penny Ency-
clopedia ! and The National Encyclopxdia ! One
of the four divisions of the latter;.being the one only
really comprehensive Biographical Dictionary in the
English Language ! Added to this, he has won
honour to himself as one of the most sagacious
among the Shaksperian Commentators.. Besides
being incontestibly The Biographer of Shakspere.
As Editor of The Pictorial Edition of Shakspere, he
has built up one of the noblest among the few really
worthy monuments to the genius of that matchless
poet and incomparable dramatist. Beyond all
which, Charles Knight has secured for himself last-
ing recognition among the annalists of his native
land as essentially the National Historian, as the
author of The National History of England, the
history not of the Kings or of the dynasties, but
of the people themselves, of their succeed-
ing and multiplying generations. By issuing
during a series of years, week by week,
number after number, volume after volume, his
celebrated periodical of The Penny gagazine, he
may be fairly said to have individually inaugurated
the whole system of cheap serial publications. A
project yet further applied by him—in a more highly
elaborated, though, in
a pecuniary point of view, it
is to be regretted, in a far less successful way—in
a succession of cheap monthly volumes, known as
Knight's Shilling Library. g London"—" The
Land We Live In"—" Half-Hours with the Best
Authors"—these and a variety of other valuable serial
publications we are indebted to Charles Knight for,
beyond all the others that have been ennumerated.
To say nothing of his Almanack, and his Companion
to the Almanack—each of these last mentioned being
wonderful annual repertories of sound and
thoroughly reliable information. As an occa-
sional contributor himself to the popular
periodicals of the day—to such, for example,
as Charles Dickens's famous twopenny weekly
paper of " Household Words "—we are indebted
for a collection of essays as charming in their way as
Charles Knight's Once Upon a Time—a collection
that we put aside, for frequently " dipping into," in
the same corner of our bookshelves already sacred
to " Elia" and the " Spectator." And now, finally
—crowning his good labours as a man of letters,
who has cultivated literature, for the pure
love of it, during all this half century
last past—Charles Knight has but just now
given to us as a bonne bouche, this keen-witted
and thoroughly amiable record of his varied per-
sonal recollections. Only once during it all—(so

much of delicate reticence is there in the work !)
—does he permit us for a moment to have a glimpse
into his own home. And this only at the very
close of this the third and last of these volumes of
his self-revelation, of his genial remembrances.
Itlis then only (as he himself remarks apologetically,
while he is vouchsafing us this fleeting glimpse into
his own home) from the mouth speaking, out of the
fullness of the heart—namely, where immediately
prior to the "Finis" Charles Knight inscribes to his
Wife, "to her who has been the best friend, the
sympathiser, the consoler," during Half a Century
of his Working Life, this honest record of the work
done by him in that same half century. It is, in
every sense, a worthy tribute—and one upon the
worth of which we may fairly and most earnestly
felicitate alike the manly donor and the gentle re-
cipient.

DR. WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY. Part 11. (Bell and
Daldy.)—Another of the monthly half-crown instal-
ments of this popular edition of a noble Dictionary has
but just now appeared, under date this present month
of February. It brings the work down to " Court,"
thereby affording another illustration—a rather
vivid one, by the way, seeing that there are, in
the present periodical issue of the work, to be no
more than twelve of these instalments altogether—
another and a very striking illustration of the fact
that the earlier words in a dictionary monopolise
a very disproportionate space as compared with
that required by the later words. Ex. gr. here is
one-sixth of the serial gone already, and the third
letter of the alphabet not yet completed ! The
little woodcut illustrations sprinkled through the
work are explanatory for the most part either of
natural history or of mechanics. And—apart from
their usefulness, in the way of explaining yetfurther
an explanation beyond what letter-press could ac-
complish—these minute embellishments of the edi-
tion serve to enliven it, while they in some sense
also serve to beautify it. In its comprehensiveness,
the Dictionary of Dr. Webster, as yet further revised
and improved by Dr. Noah Porter and by Dr.
Chauncey. Goodrich, bears, so far, a resemblance to
the most modern edition of a Dictionary in the
German Language, that—like a famous Dictionary
it makes mention of and explains almost every
admissable compound-word in free and easy use as
part and parcel of what may be called our idiomatic
vernacular.

THE AUTOGRAPHIC MIRROR. Nos. XXV. and
XXVI. still sustains the reputation of a very
curious serial publication, a serial the interest
of which appears to be really inexhaustible.
Sir Edward Parry, the Arctic navigator ; Isambard
Brunel, the great inventive engineer ; Miss Glynn,
the actress; Madame Catalani, the singer ; Edmund
Burke, the orator ; Walter Scott, the novelist ;
Descartes, the philosopher ; Cellini, the artificer ;
Swift, the satirist ; Michael Angelo, the artist ;
among other famous people—contribute their quota,
here, to the interest of this double number of the
Autographic Mirror, otherwise L' Autographe Cos-
mopolite, the interest of which same double number
is still further enhanced at the close of it by fac-
similes of three comic illustrations from the hand of
the late W. M. Thackeray.

SEVERAL RECENT PAMPHLETS—upon very miscel-
laneous subjectsseems to demand from us, here
and there, some passing word of comment.

A Letter addressed by Permission to Lord Stanley,
M.P., by Indopolite, (Davy and Sons), puts as
clearly as could well be put within the compass of
no more than 111 pages octavo (Appendix and all)
the pros and cons in regard to the claims of his
Highness Azeem Jah to the title and dignity of
Nawaub of the Carnatic.

The Exorbitant Rate of Discount. By an Ex. M.P.
(Robert Hardwicke)—undertakes in a letter ad-
dressed to the working classes (pp. 22, 8vo.), to
demonstrate how the Malt Tax might be repeated
without creating a deficiency in the revenue.
The British Captives in Abyssinia, by Charles
Beke, Ph.D. (Longman and Co.), puts very power-
fully (in 61 pages octavo) the almost incredible in-
cident of the two English missionaries, and of
Captain Cameron, her Majesty's Consul at Masso-
wah, being subjected to captivity by the arbitrary
decree of Theodore, the Emperor of Abyssinia. The
eloquence of the argument being yet further enforced
by the reader's remembrance that the argument
throughout is one sustained by a critic and a philo-
logist as gifted and profound as the learned author
of " Origines
The Revenue Survey, by a Lawyer—coming to us
all the way from the Union Press at Bombay, is
so far of importance, inasmuch as it comprises
within it (pp. 104, 8vo) the memorials against the
Revenue Survey and Settlement Bill lately passed
by the Legislative Council of his Excellency the
Governor of Bombay, together with the remarks of
the Press thereon, the whole preceded by the com-
piler's very lucid, and therefore most acceptable in-
troductory observations.
Interpretation and its Application to Ecclesiastical
Documents, by Howard Warburton Elphinstone
(Ridgway) discusses briefly in 26 pages octavo the
general theory of the interpretation of formal docu-
ments, and the precautions to be taken in applying
it to certain classes of ecclesiastical documents.

An Answer to Mr. Dalton's Pamphlet on the Irish
Question, by Andrew Carden (Hodges, Smith, and
Co.), inforces, in a few pertinent pages (22 8vo),
the writer's earnest antagonism to the granting
of leases to small farmers, explaining his reasons for
thinking that there is no real damage of any exces-
sive emigration, and baseing the whole argument of
the question at issue upon the contrast of the merits
and demerits of good and bad farmering.
The Agricultural Value of the Sewage of London
(Stanford) is a pamphlet extending to no more than
78 octavo pages altogether, and yet it is for all that
a pamphlet of more value and importance to the
agriculturists of the United Kingdom than many a
burly tome issued from the press for their instruc-
tion. Comprised within seven very readable chap-
ters and a couple of appendices, we have here com-
piled for us a comprehensive digest of the principal
schemes submitted to the Metropolitan Board of
Works, together with copieus extracts selected from
the evidence of various authoritative chemists, engi-
neers, and agriculturists.

INDIA: CHINA, AND AUSTRALIA.

SOUTHAMPTON, Feb. 21.

The Peninsular and Oriental Company's steam-
ship Ellora, Capt. Brooks, with the heavy portion
of the Calcutta, China, and Australian mails has
arrived. She brings 60 passengers, seven packages
of specie, valued at £2,451, also 470 packages gene-
ral cargo, and 1,010 bales raw silk, valued at
£90,000 sterling. _

On the 9th inst., the Ellora exchanged colours
with the steamer Delta, 200 miles east of Malta ;
10th, with the steamer Palestine, 100 miles east of
Malta ; 12th, exchanged night signals with the
steamer Pera, with the outward mails of the 4th,
240 miles west of Malta ; 16th, signalled the
steamer Massilia, between Gibraltar and Cape St.
Vincent, with the outward mails of the 12th ; and
on the 18th, off Vigo, spoke the ship Britannia and
Utopia.

GIBRALTAR, Feb. 16.
The last advices from Tangier state that great
apprehensions are felt of a failure of the crops in the
neighbourhood of Tangier, and as far down the
coast as Rabat the prevalence of wet weather has
hitherto rendered it impossible to get the seed into
the ground, and the season is now so far advanced,
that it is feared the time for sowing will have
passed before the earth is in a fit state to receive
the seed.

The Sultan, it was reported at Tangier, has suc-
ceeded in bringing to obedience, without firing a
shot, the tribes which were in insurrection in the
vicinity of Mequinez.
The weather all over the Mediterranean has been
universally severe.
Mail communication from Spain has been sus-
pended the past few days, in consequence of the
heavy rains. All communication between St.
Roque and the interior is cut off, and all the rivers
and streams in the neighbourhood are impassable.
The Infante Don Enrique, who was banished to
the Canary Islands, a few months ago, has returned
to the Spanish capital.
Exchanges are quoted—London, 90 days' date,
491 ; Paris, sf. 14c. to 15c. ; Marseilles, sf. 15c. to
16c. ; Madrid, eight days' sight, 1} dis. ; Cadiz, 3i
; Seville, k din. ; and Malaga, to I din.