The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-14 00:00:00

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT.

The Rat. Master Longwhisker ; The Cat, Miss Mouser
The Deg, By Himself; The Cow, Madame Brindle; The
Priest (" All shaven and shorn"), Mr. Jollyman ; The
Cock (" That crowed in the Morn") Master Cocky-doodle-
doo.
Realisation of the famous Picture in the National Gal-
lery of Little Britain, taken (by permission) for Boys, from
a rare work in the collection of Master Smith, London.
FROGPOOL IN THE MARSHES (Twilight).

Song, " Will o' the Wisp." composed by J. H. Tully, Esq.
How the Squire goes Hunting and loses his way and his
temper, and what follows in consequence—Another curious
instance of Canine sagacity—Bull-frogs, Masters Hop,
Skip, Jump, Creak, &c.
SQUASH-HOLLOW SWAMP AND BED OF
BULRUSHES.

How the Squire comes to grief and afterwards to repent-
ance, and how Jack is recognised as the rightful heir—The
reward and harmonious movements of the Fairies on a
Grand Chromatic Scale towards
WILL 0' WISP'S HOME BENEATH THE
WATERFALL.
The Transformation.
Harlequins Messrs. CORMACK and ST. MAINE.
Columbines
Pantaloons Messrs. G. TANNER and MORLEY.
Clowns
Grotesque
1861-1862
SPRITES by the RIDOWAYS and SUWELL
FAMILY,
I.—EXTERIOR OF TWO SHOPS IN " UP-OR-
DOWN" STREET.
Messrs. lluline, St. Maine, Tanner, and Miss S. Gunniss,
Christmas Presents—every Man (and Boy) to his Post,
oven the Post-Man—Clown rides the high horse, which
proves his rock a-head—Two Young Men from the Country,
and Clown gets over them—a Sewing Machine (not a poor
Needlewornan)—a thorough Blow out—a Man in very re-
duced circumstance—Clown finds the Fruits of stealing
Apples in an elephantine way—a Band of Brothers—the
Police in Great and Small Force—Clown gets into a row
and blows up a policeman—the end of this scene is all
Bustle—N.B. Not Crinoline.
2.—THE GREAT SENSATION KITCHEN.
Messrs. Forrest, Cormack, Morley, and Miss Gunniss.
Harlequin seeks Protection, although a Free-trader—
The Cook's Guide—Clown tries to take the chair—the head
dish of the table—Harlequin goes through a Deal, and
Clown becomes a Board-er—Silence those dreadful Bells—
Clown and Pantaloon make an ap-Peal to the Audience on
the Merry Musical Bells—Pantaloon rather hard pressed—
arrival of a distinguished Foreigeer—Clown falls into his
own trap, and kills a Blue-bottle, which proves a bad
Buzz-tress for him—a Lecture on the Gorilla, by a ell-
known character—Clown meets with a few Friends (not
Quakers)—this Scene ends at the finish of it.
3,—THE INTERIOR OF A RAILWAY STATION.
Eight hours at the Set-side for 2s 6d—Duty off Paper—
"'l he Times" reduced and the Times on the rise—a book
that takes leafe of Clown—Harlequin gets his horse from a
Stall and sets up a trap. No Smoking a-Loud, only on
the Quiet—Clown makes a Tremendous Christmas Tree—
late arrivals—Messrs. Neverintimo, 'l'oolate, Dearme, and
Elessme—Clown burns his fingers (not the only person
that has done su)—Clown gives Good Bail and finds a Dale
of goods.

4.—The SEA-SIDE.
The Sands I The Sands ! I The Sands II I

Come unto these yelow sands.
A Sailor telling a Yarn and a boat Lying too—the Pier
Master's ap-Pierance—Clown makes a Man's hair turn
sandy and proves himself in the wrong box—by a slight
Miss-Take, which a certain Miss won't Take—Pantaloon
gets some shell-fish in a very Selfish manner—Clown asto-
nishes the Natives—Sailors that use their Cut-Lases but
don't Cut Lasses when they can join with them in a National Hornpipe—Clown gets a Sensation Leader—The
Great Donkey Stir St. Leger—Clown and Pantaloon's
Concert—fine ears for Music—they fish in troubled waters
—a Divided Interest—a sudden Squall (Children and all)
—The latest Novelty in Parrchutes.
Scene—A DISMAL SWAMP—After a steno a calm
appears, a HARLEQUIN'S HOME ON HIS THRONE
OF SPLENDOUR.
Doors open at half-past Six, to commence at Seven
o'clock. Tickets for Boxes, Pit, and Galleries, may be had at the Box Office before the opening.

ROYAL ENGLISH OPERA,
CO VENT GARDEN.
Under the management c+t Miss Louisa Fyne and Mr. W.
Harrison.
THIS EVENING, THE PURITAN 'S DAUGHTER. Miss
Louisa Pyne, Miss Susan Fyne; Mr. Santley, Mr. IL Corril,
r. Georp-f. Aor,, 'lr. Patey, Mr. A. St. Alhyn, Mr. T.
D;stin, 31r. Wallworth, Mr. Eugene Dussek, Mr. C. Lyall,
and Mr. W. Harrison.

Conductor, Mr. ALFRED MELLON.
After which will be produced (written expresAy by J. M.
Morton), a Grand Comic Christmas Pantomime, entitled
lIABLEQUIN GULLIVER ; or, A Trip to Brobdignae,, a
Peep at Lillipui, and a Fiyitu Visit to Laputa.
Gulliver, Mr. W. IL Payne Mrs. Guliiver, Mr. P. Payne.
Principal danseuse. Mdlle. Lamoureux. supported by the
Ladies of the Corps de Ballet. The Harlequin.tde sustained
by the em;ucnt Pantbmimists, Messrs. Al. L'avue, F. Payne.
L. Lauri, S. "Lauri, and ISM. Jenny Lauri.

Our contemporary the Morning Post, with whose
general views on the question we quiteagree, mistakes
the sense in which Mr. SEWARD'S dispatch to Mr.
ADAMS has been spoken of as a disavowal of the act
of Captain WILKES. It was obviously not a catego-
rical disavowal, probably no one thought of it as
such. It was. however, a disavowal of authorisa-
tion of the act by the Government, and the conten-
tion is that no honourable Government could for-
ward such information to another Government
without being understood to imply, that it would
not, and even ought not to have ordered the act.
With Yankee cunning, which is never ashamed of
the transparency of the cunning, direct disavowal
was carefully avoided, Mr. SEWARD said that he
attached no importance to the fact that WILKES
did not act under Government instructions, or more
exactly, that he would not say whether he did or
not, Bit if not, why mention it ? How could it
lessen " embarrassment" if Mr. SEWARD did not in-
tend to disconnect the Government and its servant.
If the Government accepted the act it had Captain
WILKEs on its arm, and would be as much em-
barrassed in squeezing through the narrow passage
left by precedents and authorities, as if it formally
ordered the act. For all legal purposes it was one
and the same thing for the Government to order the
act and to adopt it when done.
We will put a parallel commercial case. A re-
spectable firm finds that one of its travellers, in his
zeal to make profits for his masters, has over.
charged some regular customer, who he thinks for
some reason or other will let it pass, say £2O on
an order for goods. The firm becomes aware of it,
before it receives any complaint from the
customer ; it writes to the customer our
traveller charged you £2O too much on your last
order; but as it was not by our instruction, the
fact, though we do not indicate that it is of any
importance, will relieve the subject from embarrass-
ment, and we shall have, therefore, a friendly dis•
cussion on the subject. " Discussion !"—we imagine
the honest country customer would exclaim—" what,
admit that what you knew I should complain o.
was not done by your instructions, and yet not
order me to strike off the £2O. Gentlemen, I must
deal in future with some other wholesale house, on
whose integrity customers at a distance from the
great markets can rely ?" The honest tradesman
would repudiate the idea that what the wholesale
firm declared to be the sole act of its agent, was not
a virtual disavowal of the act ; at the same time he
would add —when he talks of discussing the subject
in a friendly temper, instead of making immediate
reparation, I understand him as wishing to profit
by his agent's over zeal if he can safely do so.
This i 3 to our mind precisely Mr. SEWARD'S
position. In fact, he does two thoroughly incon-
sistent things. With ineffable meanness he doss not
speak out on either; but he implies by talking
of not ordering the act that he disavows
it—while he implies, by talking of friendly con-
struction or consideration on our part, that he
adopts it ! He covets the profit of an act he dares
not say he ordered ! Circumstances have subse•
quently compelled Mr. SEWARD to a better course,
but, ea at preaeut advised, we must regard his
despatch of the 30th of November as the greatest
blot on his diplomacy. It is double tongued. " Out
of the same mouth cometh blessing and cursing"—
disavowal and avowal. With the Quaker-like apostle
WO may add, " My brethren, these things ought not
to be." We insist on the virtual disavewai, and
lifer that offer of reparation alone ought to follow.
If, on the other hand, we insisted on the virtual
avowal, then we should say that the virtual dish-
vowel is disgraceful.

Not so very long ego, we bad at length solved
for us, the pcviously (to all appearance) inscrutable
problem as io the Noll h West Passage. Sir ROBERT
ITC.LuttE demonstrated for once and for all the
existence of such a passage by sailing through it.
But, when the problem had been thus satistkotorily

Turning to any one of the more ancient maps or
charts of the earth as it was formerly known but
very partially—before the notion of a globe had
been dreamt of, and therefore by necessity before
any clue whatever had been offered towards the dis-
covery of another hemisphere—it is almost in-
variably observed that the old geographers
there indulged their fancies with fantastic
" pencillings by the way " of—" gorgons and
chimaeras dire." About the last of these blanks
still left upon Mercator has now to be threaded by
a thin line—a devious and tortuous line—running
to and fro, northwards, and then back againfsouth-
wards, across the centre of the world's largest island,
or, more strictly speaking, its fifth continent—Aus-
tralia. Yesterday we published in our columns
an account of the return to Melbourne, not (unhap-
pily) "safe and sound," but at any rate still living,
and, we will hope, long before this restored again
to health as well as to his friends—the sole survivor
of the adventurous party "voyageurs" who set
forth in the September of 1860 upon the famous
and now ever-memorable Australian Exploring
Expedition. JOHN KING, s hen the mail left, was
the hero of the Hour. And no wonder. A man
who had contrived by a display of pluck and en-
durance to accomplish at last, as JOHN KING has
done, what no man has ever been known to have ac-
complished before him, may well be entitled, after
all his hardships, to the hearty congratulations 01
his fellow-men. Those congratulations he seems
to have had from all sides—from his Excellency
the Governor and his Worship the Mayor down-
wards, It matters comparatively little under the
circumstances to begin with that the party o,
which KING was at length the sole survivor in.
eluded among its members none who could be
called in any way, strictly speaking, scientific or phi-
losophical observers. .irimporte. To begin with—
the thing has been done, the problem
has been solved, Australia has been
crossed and re-crossed. With that fact, for the
moment, we remain contented. The rest can follow.
The rest will come, by necessity, and come after-
wards, Later on we shall learn all about the fauna
and the flora of the interior of Australia. We
shall obtain information as to its mineral
wealth, and as to its geographical peculiarities
and characteristics. What we have longed
to know for so considerable a period, we
now do know for an absolute certainty. We
now know that Australia has been traversed
from shore to shore, and that the one bold, deter-
mined traveller who has lived to tell the tale is
JOHN KING. How the feat has bean accomplished
is a matter for after consideration. At this moment

we are satisfied, we repeat, with exulting over the
announcement that the thing has been done, and
that the heart of Australia is no longer a terra

incognita.

Americans are for ever protesting that English-
men cannot understand them or their institutions;
of that we are not so sure; we fancy, as impartial
bystanders, we often understand them better than
they do themselves. But, on the other hand, Mr.
GLADSTONE thinks that, at the present time, Ame-
ricans do not understand us. " I heartily wish,"
he says, "it were in our power to exhibit to the
community of the United States the precise and
exact state of feeling that has subsisted in this
country ever since the beginning of that tremen-
dous convulsion which now agitates that continent,
and threatens its peace and prosperity."
He truthfully describes the general feeling of Eng-
land at the commencement of the struggle to have
been that the prosperity of America was intimately
connected with our own commercial prosperity, and
that we had, in truth, a selfish interest in the web
fare of the country. When the struggle began,
however, and its proportions became apparent, Mr.
GLADSTONE says, " There is no doubt I think of the
fact that the thinking men of this country did come
to the conclusion that in that war which had com-
menced the party which was apparently the stronger
had committed itself to an enterprise which would
probably prove to be entirely beyond their powers.
We saw there a military undertaking of tremendous
difficulties, and a military undertaking which, if it
could be successful, would only be the preface and
the introduction to political difficulties far greater
even than the military difficulties of the war itself."
In that opinion we should have shared from the
beginning had we supposed the Northern people
could have pertinaciously forced upon their Govern-
ment the non-emancipation policy. As it became
apparent that the clearest military and political ne-
cessity could not overcome the northern aversion
to the innocent negro, we began to share with
most others the views indicated by Mr. GLADSTONE.
It is these opinions of Englishmen which Mr.
GLADSTONE thinks Americans cannot comprehend,
and the results could not be better be deselibed
than they are by our eloquent finance Minister,
through a happy though very obvious illustration.
" There is no doubt we know," he observes,
" that in private life the same thing constantly
happens. It constantly happens that when a man
is engaged; with his whole heart and soul upon some
enterprise that he thinks vital to his well-being,
and when some other person is known to have said
that he thinks that enterprise had much better not
be undertaken, great offence, great irritability great
susceptibility is the result, and a state of things
arises, in spite of the inclinations of men themselves,
in which there is a predisposition to quarrel and to
contention. I believe that it is a true and fair de-
scription, on the whole, of the state of things be-
tween England and America at the time when that
which is now so well known asthe case of the Trent
occurred and produced so profound a sensation in
this country."
Mr. GLADSTONE cannot help adverting to what
every one who has only glanced at the American
correspondence, is compelled to ask—Why, if the
law of the case be as Mr. SEWARD states it, did he
not give up the prisoner at once. Most good
humouredly our Chancellor of the Exchequer gets
over the universal question--"I," says he, am the
man, who, if any, ought to complain—lt is I who
must have my budget spoiled by Mr. SEWARD'S
inconsistency, but I hope the'question will not be
put--I mean in Parliamentary phrase the previous
question. Let us think of their reception of the
Prince of WALES—When men by the thousand, by
the ten thousand, by the hundred thousand trooped
together from all parts to give him a welcome as
enthusiastic—as obviously proceeding from the 1
depth the heart—as if those vast countries had still
been portions of the dominions of our Queen. Nor
was the past to be remembered only; we must regard
their position and conduct as a whole—
" Let us look," he said, " to the fact that they are of
necessity a people subject to the quick and vehement action
of opinion, liable to great public excitement, intensely eager
upon the subject of the war in which they are engaged,
naturally raised to a high pitch of exultation by hear-
ing that one of their vessels of war had laid hold upon
the Commissioners of the Southern States, whom they re-
garded simply as rebels—let us look to the fact that in
the midst of that exultation, and in a country where
the principles of popular government and of democracy
are carried to extremes—that even there, in this state of
struggle for life and for death as they think it to be—
that even there, while ebullitions were taking place
all over the country of joy and exultation at this capture—
that even there, this popular and this democratic Govern-
ment has, under the demand of a foreign Power, written
these words—for they are the closing words in the despatch
of Mr. SEWARD —" the four commissioners will be cheer-
fully liberated," Let us take those words, I say, without
minute criticism upon anything that may have passed at
former times, and may have been open to a difference of
view. Let us accept them with thankfulness to the
ALMIGHTY for having removed an apparent cause of deadly
collision, in which the hearts of the people of this country
were united as the heart of man to defend, in all circum-

stances and to all extremities, the honour of the British
flag, and to discharge the duty of protection to those who

had placed themselves under its shelter,"

These aro at least generous sentiments, and if
they be but reciprocated, as they should be, from

the other side, may soon bring about a considerable
change of feeling here. We can well afford to

forget and forgive many things, but we aro en-

titled to ask that they be not repeated. Forgive-
ness is useless when it is certain that the offences

will be renewed. We can most hearti!y shake
hands with Mr. SEWARD over his cheErful sur-

render of the prisoners. We can even excuse his
verbose despatch written for America, not for
England, and necessary probably there; but, he
must permit us with perfect good nature, to justify
ourselves and to repudiate his legal reasonings, and
his worse °biter dicta, and not suppose that we are
desirous of prolonging a mere wa r of words. For
nothing have we less inclination.

SEPTENNIAL A VERAGES.-TITHE
COMMUTATION.

TO THE EDITOR OP• TILE SUN.
STR,—As nmny of your readers may feel anxious to know
the result of the corn averages for the seven years to Christ-
mas, 1861, published by authority in the Londun Gazette
of Friday evening, v z.,—

Wheat _ 7s. 01d. per imperial bushel
Barley 45. 7id. ditto
Oats 3s. Id. ditto
I beg to state for their information, that each £lOO of tithe
rent-charge will, for the year 1862, amount to LlO9 13s 63,
or very nearly 21 per cent. less than last year's value. The
value for the year 18:55 was only £B9 153 8:3,,d, or nearly 20
per cent. below the amount of the present year.
The following statement from my " Annual Tithe Com-
mutation Tables" will show the worth of £lOO of tithe rent-
charge for each year since the pissing of the Tithe Com-
mutation Act, viz.,—

1837
1833
1839
1840
1811
1812
1843
1841
1845
1816
1817
184-8
1849

1850
1851
1P59
1185553
8,1 3 6
93
11156 181! 8
1854
1856
1837
1858
1859
1860
1861
1802

26)2619 16 ii

General average for 26 years £loo 15 3
I am, sir, your most obedient servant,
CHARLES M. "Wuzicii,
Actuary University Life Assurnce Society.
5, Suffolk-streeet, Pall INInllEaF,t, S.W.,
11th January, 1862.