The Sun.
London, England, 1862-06-18 00:00:00

111 E SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, JUNE 18, 1862,

tertainment. In this way yearly one sees an-
nounced by advertisement dinners (each duly pro-
vided with chairman, sometimes also with vice-chair-
men, always with a procession of stewards, having
one and all of them a mystical rod of office, and
invariably led off at all the toasts by a loud-lunged
fugleman in the shape of a practised toastmaster)
—certain among these dinners, by the way, being
of the most unappetising name, style, and title
imaginable. The Orthopedic hobbles in one while—
the Cancer Hospital has its festival at another—and
so on through " all the ills that flesh is heir to"—
benevolent people readily finding some distressful
plea for having a feast for the purpose of swelling
the funds of some favourite hobby or another among
our practical philanthropists. It was only the other
day, in illustration of this popular rage for dinners
in England, that some of the more enthusiastic pro-
moters of the Main Drainage movement took it
into their heads to glorify the progress already
made, and still rapidly making, in that great subter-
ranean improvement of the capital, by actually
partaking of a magnificent dinner down in one of
the largest of the Sewers! A locality of rather
revolting associations, one cannot but feel, such as
any one might have imagined would have scared
away the revellers invited to the demonstra-
tion, instead of attracting them to it. Yet no—
the whole scheme was so perfectly en regle here in
England that the dinner in the Sewer was a decided
success, and was very numerously attended. The
rage for banquets at the end of a session is aptly
enough illustrated in the political world, year after
year, immediately prior to the prorogation of Parlia-
ment, when, by an invariable custom, her Majesty's
Ministers, in agreeable conclave assembled, go down
the river to consume the immemorial whitebait
with lemon juice squeezed over it, and the particu-
larly thin slices of the inevitable brown bread and
butter. It is one of the oddest customs surely in
the wide world for any circle of " Potent, grave,"
and if not "reverent," at any rate right honourable
" Seigniors" to adhere to. And yet, odd
though it be, oddest of the odd though
it be, it is decidedly Rot one of those " more
honoured in the breach than the observance." And
so Ministers, as a matter of pleasant necessity, as
one of the most agreeable among their bounden
duties, consume their White Bait Dinners imme-
diately before the commencement of the Grouse
Shooting. So, likewise, among the general com-
munity : whatever we may be about—getting up a
public company—adding a new wing to an asylum
—welcoming some distinguished servant of the
Crown—bidding goodepeed to another—always,
invariably, unavoidably, comes the celebration of
the event liy a banquet, with the inevitable et
ceteras of speeches alternately of a complimentary
character, and by way of acknowledgment.
It is hardly a circumstance to be surprised at,
therefore, that the principal participators in the
promotion of the interests of the Social Science
Congress should bring their labours to a close in the
way already mentioned, viz., by a dinner in the
Crystal Palace at Sydenham. If by nothing else
this dinner was elevated above the level of ordinary
festivities of this description, not so much, we will
say, by the character of the association of whose
labours, this year, it was the amiable termination as
by the casual utterance of an anecdote in one of the
after-dinner speeches delivered towards the end of
the proceedings. The speaker being the Right
Hon. J. W. NAPIER, the Irish ex-Lord Chancellor.
The subject at once of the speech and of the anec-
dote being tjie President of the Social Science Asso-
ciation. Anything relating to the personal history
of a great man like Lord BROUGHAM, is at all times
welcome to the nation proud alike of his genius
and of his career. At this advanced period in his
career, while his rare and comprehensive genius is
still at its brightest, the interest that cannot fail to
be awakened in the minds of all by particulars such
as those which have just been formally brought to
light by the recollections of the Right Hon. J. W.
NAPIER,-it would be difficult to exaggerate. Lord
BROUGHAM is now in the eighty-fourth year of his
age, with his encycloprediac intellect unclouded,
and with his every energy still so well strung and
so full of healthful vigour, that the youngest man
who might in any way have been reasonably
selected to preside over the recent sessional labours
of the Social Science Association (even if he could
at the same time have been :endowed with Lord
BROUGHAM'S mental capacities and his peculiar
aptitude for the office) could not have acquitted
himself better of the responsibilities devolving upon
him in his post as President. But adverting to the
anecdote, we would here recall to public recollec-
tion, the anecdote mentioned the other day quite
incidentally by the ex-Chancellor for Ireland—Mr.
NAPIER, in reference to the extraordinary length of
time, duritg which Lord BROUGHAM'S life had
been devoted to the interests of the whole human
race, observed, that "He (Mr. NAPIER)
remembered some years ago meeting an old and re..
spected lady in the north of England, who knew
Lord BROUGHAM very many years ago. She hap-
pened to be the only lady present at a party when
all the original founders of the Edinburgh Review,
including his lordship, dined together after the
second number of that publication appeared. It
had been arranged that none-should know who were
the authors of the different articles in the Review
except the editor, and, of course, the writers of those
articles. On that occasion, which I believe was in
1 1802, the lady's husband remarked that the writer
of a certain article he had read was fit to be
anything. Mr. BROUGHAM observed, " What ! do
you think he is fit to be Lord Chancellor ?" The
reply was, " Yes, and I tell you more, he will be
Lord Chancellor." Probably his lordship still re-
membered old Mrs. FLETCHER. [Lord BROUGHAM
—Perfectly.] She had the happiness to live years
afterwards, and to see her friend Lord Chancellor of
England. Not, by any means, alone as Lord
High Chancellor of England, however, will the
name of HENRY Lord BROUGHAM, be hold by
his fellow crountrymen, in future times, in
grateful remembrance. Personally, of course,
the date of his taking his place on the woolsack marks
the culmination of what, in Napoleonic, and cer-
tainly, also, in pegan, phraseology, may be called
the Star of his destiny. But since the brief but
brilliant period of his career as Chancellor came
to its close, Lord BROUGHAM has advanced instead
of retrograding or even of remaining stationary.
As the Irish ex-Chancellor NAPIER well remarked
the other evening, when Lord BROUGHAM quitted
the woolsack "he did not descend to an inferior
position." Still he hold his own as the " Hero of
Humanity."

' The POPE is in a passion—but then it is excusable,
for we ought-in. fairncss to view it as the temporal
Passion of the temporal POPE—the temporalities
being beyond all doubt the real cause of it. To e) be
sure, it is hardly in keeping that he should• hurl
such ecclesiastical and religious denunciations
against these political offenders ; but then again we
should remember that we all naturally fight with
the weapon we are used to. The cause of the wrath
is secular, the attacks are secular too, but these
or
the POPE thinks should
be, the
good things are,
a spiritual prince ; and so
they of
they become religious matters.

But Protestants who arc so scandalized at seeing