The Sun.
London, England, 1853-01-24 00:00:00

(From the Weekly News and Chronicle.)

The news of all news is the marriage of the Em-
peror of the French with a Spanish countess ; the
civil ceremony having been secured without delay,
the religious one to follow in due time—a consum-
mation of both to be devoutly wished, or the con-
trary, as the French people may be disposed to
feel in the affair. The prestige of France is power
—power with its right hand clenched very near
your face ; and the impersonation of this power can
do as he chooses, and " who shall say him nay ?"
Whilst ominous whisperings, loud enough to be
understood or suspected, were passing between
royal houses, repudiative of upstart pretensions to
the hands of their daughters, lo ! their royal con-
ventionalities are broken through—their traditions
on the tenderest point are set at defiance ! The
Marquis of Oaklands marries the pride of the vil-
lage, or Stiggins, the stockbroker, the flower of
service-maids, and the ladies of their respective
circles stand by their orders with a vengeance,
talking of the mes-alliance most deplorably, whilst
the men shrug their shoulders, not knowing for
the mijillait'what to make of it ; but the Marquis
and his party are in power, Stiggin's purse is
plethoric, and before many months are over super-
ciliousness gives way to obsequiousness • there are
receptions in Mayfair and Belgravia, hanquets in
Tyburnia, and blow-outs beyond description in
Baker-street. Louis Napoleon's wife, whoso she
' may be, a dame de la _Halle, a child of? the people,
a hidalga of the sangre azul, lineally descended
from Pelayo or the Cid, a daughter of the nobility
in the -golden book of a thousand years, or the
pinchbeck roll of yesterday, is an empress, a real
live empress—and, if all go well with her husband
and herself for twelve months longer, if he do not
turn out a black-leg or a Bluebeard, she will be an
empress with all the honours the world over, even
in the pettiest royal precincts where
_inward pride
is in an inverse ratio with outward consideration.
Then will the heart of humanity be consoled, and
the pride of philosophy be gratified, at the blind-
folded boy Cupid jumping through the most dust-
honoured prescriptions, and kicking the most
august prejudices of ages about like bladders on the
most elevated platform of life, as harlequin tumbles
through the paper windows and flourishes his meta-
morphosing wand in the pantomime of our mimic
stage :

" Hymen, 0 Hymens !"
The quondam British Consul, at Malaga, "an
alien in blood and language," as Lord Lyndhurst
described the Irish' in respect to the less westerly
subjects of our Crown, but not " alien in religion"
to the Spanish dwellers by the Mediterranean in
36 deg. 45 min. north latitUde, and 4 deg. 30 min.
west longitude, managed, two generations ago, to
win and wed a native lady of noble rank, of the
first degree, and become naturalised to the country
and its institutions. The fruit of all this good
fortune was a beautiful daughter, who, in her turn,
became the mother of the loveliest maiden that
ever walked an alemeda, with mantilla put on as
no other daughter of beauty can wear it, casting
her death-looks from all sides of her magic fan.
Our beautiful Iberian Celt went recently with all
the world to Paris, to see the new order of things
and the man of the epoch. She saw him ;he saw
her ; they saw each other. At the Opera, at
Court, in the royal—now the imperial—gardens,
the deadliest eye from the North to the South Pole
met the lightning flashes of the pride of Grenada,
and was awakened from its visio& of reel-hairecl,
Princesses, and paler dames bt,the north. At ochn-
peigiVoo, they met, amongst the beautiful forest
scener , mingled in the exciting pleasures of the
chase,, there the great hunter of the stag himself
enveloped in the toils'ottlfelittle ilunter of hearts,
thought, with his favourite English poet, of another
Spanish maid—for he reads Byron for his Napo-
leonic sympathies.
"Her glance how wildly beautiful ! how much
Hath Phcebus woo'd in vain to spoil her cheek,
Which glows yet smoother from his amorous clutch !"
And there Love accomplished his coup d' eta t
which raises Eugenie Fitzpatrick, Countess of
Teba, to the imperial throne of France, and
mingles the proud blood of Ossory with the new
line of the Cmsars.

THE IRISH BRIGADE.
(From the Weekly Dispatch.)
"In Servia," observes Lamartine, " the priest-
hood have no influence over the people, except in
the concerns of religion." We believe it will be
found that a very exact measure of the amount of
liberty enjoyed in any country may be meted by
the degree of social power commanded by the
clergy. Wherever sacerdotal ascendancy pene-
trates into the politics of society, there we may be
certain there is neither freedom of opinion and
action, nor anything like common sense or intelli-
gence in the management of state affairs. The
rule of cardinals was the curse of France, and is
the nightmare of Italy. In Spain, Portugal,
Naples, the Brazils, Mexico, Peru, the church sits
like an incubus upon the chest of mankind, weighs
down its inspirations, and crushes the free play of
its breathings. There is a snivelling slavishness
about our own Methodists which smacks of the
Conference, and always renders them so equivocal
at elections, that it is the habit of both parties to
enter them in the " doubtfuls" of their canvas-
sing books. Your very high Churchmen are inva-
riably the enemies of enfranchisement, and the ad-
vocates of despotism. Even the Congregationalists
and Baptists are only really independents and libe-
rals in spirit, when they keep their pulpiteers to
their proper place, and ignore all their pretensions
preferred from any other position than the reading
desk—recognising their authority even there only
so far as it approves itself to their understanding
The fact is, that, in the great affairs of secular life,
parsons of all denominations, are, as a general rule,
consummate fools, or obfuscated blockheads. They
are as destitute of business views as women--as
jealous, vain, and irascible as scolds. Sagacious
politicians dread the encumbrance of their help al-
most as much as they fear the momentum of their
opposition. At the period of the Anti-Slavery
movement, their " public appearances" were very
alarming to the wise friends of emancipation.
Their platform apparitions during the Anti-Corn-
law League movement, were often such as to
keep the clear-headed lay members nervous
and quaking during the whole currency of
their respective effusions ; and with good reason,
because it was generally out of clerical violence and
execrable bad taste that the Post, _Herald, and
Standard culled their choicest texts for frighteni2g
the old women of Belgravia at the revolutionary
tendencies of the free trade movement. To go no
further back than the events of the present week,
look at the contest for the University of Oxford.
Who but a wasp's nest of shovel-hats would ever
have encountered the scrutiny of public opinion
with an exhibition so deplorable of pointless imbe-
cility and impotent and wanton waywardness, as
that which has equally made the " judicious grieve"
and " the unskilful laugh," over the bigotry of
Bennett, and the capricious folly of Denison.
These churchmen manage their business like no-
body else. They cannot be made to believe that
there is " reason in the roasting of eggs." They
cast down their idol, Mr. Gladstone, without any
defined excuse—scarcely with the motive even
which induced the celebrated objection to the great
unknown " Dr. Fell"—because those who vote
against the new Chancellor o 2 the Exchequer are
still profuse in their professions of personal attach-
ment to him. They are rash enough and blind
enough to attempt the degradation of the chief of
the few men who have either the ability or the in-
clination to maintain anything like a reasonable
defence of the Church ; and that, too, on the ground
of his acting under the only Minister who endea-
vours to reconcile the progress of society and en-
larged views of legislation and government, with a
steady and consistent advocacy of the claims o? the
established ecclesiastical institutions. The poll is
wantonly kept open for weeks too, solely appa-
rently to show the impotence of the opposition
who demand it, and the paltry ill-humour of the
faction who perpetuate this stupid etourderie. Lay-
men cannot understand this envious, spiteful, piti-
ful spirit. Men who would so disturb a borough
or a county—forcing expense without any end but
annoyance, would be sent to Coventry by all par-
ties. The Church seems quite unconscious o: the
danger of her position. She provokes continual critic-
ism. Like the Israelites at the siege of Jerusalem,
her faptions wrangle when the enemy of both isstorm
ing their very gates ; and when she reaches that fall
to which she is hastening headlong, the inquest