The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-02 00:00:00

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The world was going on in its usual c
got up and washed their faces ; clerks w'entato t
City ; omnibuses pursued their usual tradell'he sit
rose as though nothing was the matter ; the stars did
not even stop in their courses ; and the worthy
magistrate_took his accustomed seat on the Bench.
Still, to the unconscious and uncaring world a great
event had happened, impressive by its awful sim-
plicity. Earl Granville, K.G., Lord-President of the
Council, had made Miss Castalia Campbell, youngest
daughter of the late Mr. Campbell of Islay, his
second Countess Granville. What touching humi-
lity! what an impressive lesson on the littleness and
greatness of human events ! It is very true that
"in the eye of the Church" they were only com-
mon folks, just like John Smith and Sally Jones
who had bungled over the responses an hour before;
but, as the French Duke properly said that Al-
mighty
God would think twice before he damned a
man of quality and a peer of France, so Jenkins
delicatelykel
e) hints that the Church might very profit-
ably "-its eye" wide open when " the ceremony
now in progress"—delicious phrase, redolent with
all the choicest bouquet of Jenkinism—" was giving
to the ranks of the British peerage one of the fairest
additions it has long received." A slight scratch of
Priscian here, but the writer recovers himself with a
noble anti-climax. " And not the less was the
Countess Granville to be envied for drawing a bril-
liau c matrimonial prize." This last figure is not
very new, and, we must add, not very nice. To re-
present " Holy matrimony, that honourable estate
instituted of God in the time of man's innocency"
—Jenkins is so impressive about " the solemn
message," and still more solemn " benediction
of the Church," that he will be familiar with
the passage—as a lottery in which girls go in for
tickets, and where there area
most
tickets for
a single prize, and where the brilliant one is a
widower of fifty,
is not so polite either to the so-
lemnization of matrimony, or to the young ladies,
as we should have expected from so ardent a lover
of the Church and the sex as Jenkins. But, after
all, this is not the true and high significance of the \
great event of Tuesday last. The religiousness of
the ceremony which so deeply affected Jenkins,
" the light blue trimmings," and that judicious
ill
"just a sprinkling of orange-flower added to the
bonnet," and " the charming group" (ought it not
to-have been " bevy ?") of " bridesmaids in their
simple but elegant uniform Of white satin," are only
reminiscences—simple and elegant we admit, but
still only reminiscences—of Jenkins in the Post.
Now Jenkins is "on the Times," and in the
Times more serious considerations are in place.
There is the great political interest of Earl Gran-
ville's marriage. This takes the affair at once into
the category of " great public interest." " Lord
Granville has the good fortune to be not merely in
an official point of view, but one might almost say
by nature, the leader of that august assembly the
House of Lords No event happening in the
life of a man so distinguished can fail to be of in-
terest to the public, especially when it is taken into
account that this alliance affects the great family
of the Leveson-Gowers, who at this moment hold
in possession or in immediate prospect no less than
the eight peerages of Sutherland, Argyll, Leinster,
Westminster, Ellesmere, Granville, Cromartie, and
Blantyre"—not one of which eight coronets, by the
way, was represented on the occasion. To say that
this " event" " interests the public" is to say no-
thing. Here Jenkins fails; the sublimity of the
occasion crushes him. Interest the public ! why, what
affects the great family of the Leveson-Gowers and
their eight peerages must affect not only men, but
angels—not only the public, butthe solar system. The
" affiance" must be a matter of interest in Uranus,
if not a subject of congratulation and awful thanks-
giving in Sirius itself. That one of the greatest of
the greatest governing families of England—a Levo-
son-Gower himself—one whom " nature" designed
to be the leader of the House of Lords, born in the
pulpiest purple, and.with an hereditary right to be
Premier, contracts matrimony (and the Church's
solemn message tells us " the causes for which
matrimony was ordained"), and may become the
progenitor of future leaders of the House of Lords
by the ordinary and normal designation of nature
herself—this is an event so stupendous that we can
pardon Jenkins for breaking down at the very con-
templation of it. Forty centuries looked down on.
Napoleon at the Pyramids. Eight British peerages
and the whole power and pedigree of British W lug-
gism—in idea at least, if not in the body—clustered
round Archdeacon Sinclair and the altar on Tues-
day ; and, mystery of mysteries, though Jenkins
fained in spirit at the apocalyptic vision, he lived to
tell the wondrous tale.
THE " QUEEN" ON DECOROUS BATHING.—The
indignation of a weekly contemporary has been
latterly deeply moved with regard to the bathing
practices upon our coasts, and our facetious friend
Punch has, within the last week or so, made the
manner in which " the snobs behave," and " how
they are treated by the sea-side," the subject of two
very admirable sketches. Letters, moreover, from
private correspondents abound, in the columns of
local and metropolitan papers, complaining of cer-
tain infractions of the laws of good manners in
connection with salt-water bathing. At Margate,
Ramsgate, Dover, Deal, Hastings, Brighton, the
scandal seems equally prevalent, and equally objec-
tionable. The worst of the matter appears, how-
ever, to be that, whilst every one is ready with an
objection or complaint, no one is prepared to sug-
gest a remedy. It must be admitted, it is true,
that the objections are very various. In the ma-
jority of cases it is costume or no costume that forms
the substance of the complaint. In other cases
we hear that " young ladies," armed with opera-
glasses, frequent convenient spots upon the shore,
whence they can view the " gentlemen," as they
disport themselves in the waves. At Brighton, the
great objections to sea bathing are sewage and
shingle ; in Morecombe Bay, the practice is to be
avoided on account of quicksands ; and on the
Cornish coast it is dangerous by reason of the
strength and swiftness of the tides. Now, if ever
there were a season in which sea-bathing would be
likely to gratify and to benefit those who habitually
visit the sea-side, it is the present one—when the
ardours of a more than usuallyhot solstice are assail-
ing us, and we are doing all we can to keep our-
selves cool. Among people who can afford the
expense, and who are not abroad, there are few
who are not now listening to " the deep-resounding
sea," and who do not every morning enjoy their
cool plunge into the salt water. Why should there
be any objection to this ? The exercise is not a
cleansing one ; but there can be no possible reason
why it should become a disgusting one. It is a mis-
take to suppose that you are any cleaner for
plunging into the sea. The result of a sea-side
bath is to cause the incrustation of salt (or, as the
chemists would term it, muriate of soda), with all _
manner of those other muriates and phosphates
which float around the shore of an inhabited place,
to settle upon the skin. All this has to be removed
by means of a subsequent bath of cold fresh water,
To a healthy person, however, the nervous shock
of the cold plunge and the iodine in the sea are
both restorative and invigorating, and there can be
oiftatnhtoofse
little or no doubList
otahnmadtoonnthegre,tteohrme
epmvteoanstiton to take a dip
treteinntab
winhle'
hthderabwrintyh'e'
the inland, to the sea-side. There is no need, how-
ever, that this healthy and invigorating exercise
should be made a scandal to anybody of decent mind.
As for the " ladies" who take opera-glasses to look at
the " gentlemen," and the " gentlemen" who (vide
Punch) row boats among the ladies' bathing ma-
chines, we have nothing to say, except that it would
be impossible, without the aid of the police, under
any circumstances, or with any regulations, to curb
their misconduct. As regards the rest of the sea-
side visitors, we must declare that, in our opinimh
the blame is to be principally imputed to the muni-
cipal authorities of our seaside towns. These worthies
—usually the most respectable, or rather the noisest
hear that the
haberdashers, grocers, and attorneys of the place-
-4; parade are letting
are well content to see visitors come every season by
flocks, to increase the reputation of the place and
but it never occurs
their own custom. They are glad to
to supply
drawing-room floors on the,,r Promenade"
for seven guineas, and that there are not enough of
and that one of these duties
of the
tohpeennceaeessrriaitgieses
eufpotnhethilitors ;
to them that prosperity brings with it its duties as
If the municipal authorities of the
people who bring the
P •
is to ast seei its
to alshvneaelN iv
tie fgeatersts ,
in
itself,
an act of com-
mercialin the arrangement of fitting bathing-.
our coast 'would consent to spend a
gauit
apterodpebryldaiswrenfceesesftamrome
vidwhieleh-
litownste muopf:::
,ellnyy .
had a due regard to decency, the attractions of their
tpliphl bathing-
places,
:eel
hsis 1
0,
improvement,
scroooeunvsls:dtmar
buneecnast:o:
deaf as rainmeerreeasspedect aattitohne,y
awovulerdy finc
re-
munerative one. If they desire a model toimitate, we
will point out that of the little island of Guernsey.,
That island is a granite rock, and has no shores
but the shingly beaches of its bays ; yet it possesses
the best bathing-place in salt water that we ever
saw. When the harbour-works were being con-
structed, a kind of nook or ingle was set apart
among the rocks for a bathing-place for the male
sex. Here, screened from observation, a plunge
may be enjoyed into some five or six fathoms of
water, so clear that the long leaves of the bright,
lush alga;may be seen waving about and inviting
the bather, as it were, into their cool retreats. Let
the authorities of our sea-side resorts take example
by this, by providing bathing-places where the re..
creation may be indulged in without infringem.fenft
of the laws of decency, and by insisting u'- on. it
that the laws of good manners and decoruta be ob-
served, and we promise them that they will find
themselves all the better off for it in the matters of
tau* mow, and cad their rates and taxes.

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