The Sun.
London, England, 1862-03-21 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIO Y EVENING, MARGIT 21, 1862.

marine cable required to traverse the bed of the.
Atlantic ocean from Valentia to Newfoundland has
already only required a submersion just three
hundred fathoms lower still—the profoundest part
of the course already marked out between Ireland
and Newfoundland indicating an extreme submer-
gence of the plummet at 2,100 fathoms. And in
writing thus upon this one important particular,
we
n writinge
simplyuo upon what has actually
beenwhat has merely been pro-
jected as possible, but upon what has literally
been already accomplished. The submarine
telegraph from Toulon to Algeria, connecting thus,
at a distance of 600 miles and at a depth of 1,800
fathoms, the opposite shores of the Mediterranean,
is, in point of fact, the last achievement of this
kind, brought to a happy issue by the united skill
and enterprise of Messrs. GLASS and Co. What we
know for an absolate fact certainly to have been
done there, we may reasonably count upon being
as readily and as securely accomplished elsewhere.
The calculations, in a revised form, have, in
point of fact, been made afresh under the super-
vision of the Company—a Company, it should be re-
membered at this moment, wholly free from any
liabilities. They are the rational estimates, there-
fore, of a perfectly solvent association. And they
bring to us results all the more reliable from their
being the result of knowledge purchased through
the anguish of a bitter and costly experience. The
Atlantic Company, wiser by its experience, is still
sanguine of effecting its design in good substantial
earnest—heartened to this conviction, of course,
upon the twofold and very reasonable proviso that
it should be aided in carrying out its enterprize by
the hearty co-operation of the public and of the
Government.

The short, pithy speech of Lord OVERSTONE
last night, in the fresh debate raised by the un-
ceasing Bishop of OXFORD on the New Code,
just said in the House of Lords what every prac-
tical Englishman is saying in his counting house
or his parlour. Examination, though not gene-
ral examination, is everything. The noble lord
had had personal experience on the subject, and
from that, as well as from the nature of the case,
he expressed his " fervent hope" that the people
of England would understand the value of exa-
mination as the test of a school efficiency,
"In the public school which he had attended
an imperfect system of examination prevailed ; but
he passed thence under the hands of the late Bishop
of LONDON, to whom he owed a deep debt of grati-
tude for having first taught him the full value of
examinations, and the necessity of continuing them
in every form as the only means of rendering a
man's reading really efficient." What the Bishop
of LONDON had impressed on the mind of his lord-
ship, through the personal benefit he derived from it,
is, in fact, but what we are doing in other depart-
ments of life daily. If we have a house to build we
expect the builder to be subject to the examina-
tion of our architect at any time whatever. If we
contract for the performance of any work, we
require that the results shall accord with the
specifications we have furnished. And in such
work as school instruction, especially when the
great majority of the parents have no means of
testing the teachers work, competent examination
is the only means of ascertaining whether the
nation, which pays, has had money's worth for its
money.

His lordship's language was not too strong in
telling the lords spiritual, that when it was de-
clared that a large percentage of children on leav
ing school at present could not read, or write, or
go through the ordinary process of ciphering, it was
not to be supposed that these children were ever
capable of becoming useful or moral citizens ? "It
was a farce to continue the present vast expendi-
ture, and to keep up the present complicated ma-
chinery, if a mass of the children sent from schools
supported by the State were so imperfectly taught.
The State had a right to require that these schools
should undergo the ordeal of examination, and
should show in this way that they were worthy of
support." The present system is, in regard to both
the larger half of the schools in the country,
" a farce," for the larger half, which most
needs help, obtains none. It is a farce
also, in regard to the larger half of the children
whose attendances are so liberally paid for out of
the national taxes, for it is proved that they do not
learn those elements of knowledge which would
qualify them to be competent letter carriers, or col-
lectors, or the higher class of goods porters, or to
perform any of that large part of commercial work
for which we want servants who can " read, write
and count."

We quite agree with his lordship that " The
people of this country might rest assured that
where a school submitted willingly to the test of
examination the system of instruction followed
there was a sound one ; and that, on the other hand,
they might with certainty come to an opposite con-
clusion wherever they found an unwillingness or
an inability to undergo such a test." The country,
if it reflects at all, cannot doubt why the whole
army of teachers, of school societies,and managers lay,
clerical, and episcopal,have all united to raise such
an outcry against payment after verification of the
items of their work. The cause can be neither more nor
less than that the work will not bear it. The quaking
seems to be as great as when an inspector of
weights and measures unexpectedly pays a visit,
and demands to subject not only the troy weights,
but the weights for the many also to his test.
It is acknowledged that in very many schools the 1
first-class scholars are all right enough. The
troy weights will do. It is the avoirdupois
weights which turn out to be more than half of
them light. The less valuable intellectual ma-
terial of the school is made to bring in
as much capitation grant as the better,
by, in fact " stamping it." We commend
to the clamorous teachers, and to the public
too, some of Lord OVERSTONE'S closing re-
marks :—" He confessed," he said, " that he should
have been much better pleased if, instead of all the
protests and ingenious arguments by which the
new Code was opposed, the school managers had
said, ' You have made mistakes in your new sys-
tem ; you will find them out as you proceed ; but we
believe that the children in our schools are effi-
ciently taught, and we shall not, therefore, object to
their examination.' This would have been far more
satisfactory, and would have inspired him with far
greater confidence in a system which was maintained 1
at such great expense to the public than the course
which had been taken by the school managers and
their advocates." We are certainly pleased to find
that the longer the subject is discussed, the more
tl3s china of the Government to pay the nation's
money for educational " value received" is appre-
ciated and commended. i

A remarkable pamphlet has recently been pub-
lished by Mr. FREEMAN—entitled " Astrology
in a Nutshell." It is penned, as the title page
informs us, by Mr. CHRISTOPHER COOKE, the
Solicitor to the Astro-Meteorological Society.
The argument, sustained with great logical
acumen throughout this really curious brochure,
is addressed by its author to Mr. ALDERMAN
lituataßEY, apropos to certain remarks uttered

by the worthy alderman two or three months
since in respect to a startling prophecy of the
lamented Prince Consort's death, contained in
Zadkiel's Altnanack. Alderman HUMPHREY, we
doubt not, will have been himself considerably
surprised to find himself selected by the Solicitor
to the Astro-Mcteorological Society as the me-
dium through which the Champions of the science,
or, us it has long been disdainfully termed, the
pseudo-science of Astrology, may appeal to the
public at large for a calm and dispassionate re-
consideration of their ease. Tho event may pos-
sibly prove—and of this possibility the pamphlet
just penned by Mr. CoOKE, the Solicitor, and
published by Mr. FREEMAN, the Bookseller,
may ho in effect the direct and immediate
precursor, almost we had said the visible and
palpable cause—the event, we say, may possibly
yet prove that the law as it now stands in regard
to the treatment of the cultivators of this once
alluring and recondite study may be at least parti-
ally modified in some respects by the interposition
of the Legislature. It is all but impracticable, we
should suppose, for even the most cynical amongst
us not to regard with a sort of left-handed or mor-
ganatic gratitude the labours (however mistaken)
of many illustrious philosophers, ancient and mo-
dern, from the days of ARISTOTLE down to those
of our own glorious FRANCIS BACON, Lord
VERULAM ; the labours leading them gradually, as
believers, here in Astrology, there in Alchemy, to
the development and perfection, so far as they have
yet admitted of being perfected, of the two great
sciences of Chemistry and Astronomy. Laugh
to scorn though our age may and yet will persist-
ently, the prosecution, or affected prosecution, even
nowadays, of Astrology at least, if not of Alchemy,
the Historians of all the Sciences, the Analysts of
all the Ologies have long allowed and proclaimed by
universal consent that out of this derided study of
Alchemy grew Chemistry, that out of this reviled
science (still so called) of Astrology grew Astro-
nomy. In each instance it was literally like the
burying of a seemingly valueless little seed-germ
destined to rot into the ground under the very pro
cess of its long and sedulous cultivation—but a
seed-germ in each instance out of the very decom-
position, as one may say, of which sprang forth,
and burgeoned and blossomed the two great sciences
already specified, the science here of Chemistry,
there of Astronomy. It is in remembrance of these
singular and abundant fragments of historic facts—
facts during many ages, and by many illustrious
men—

"Beloved as Fable, and believed as Truth"—

that we are yet fain to hope that the time will at
length come, and that, moreover, before much longer,
when painful incidents like that associated a few
years back with the fantastic name of COPESTICK,
will not admit of very easy repetition. Let knaves
and swindlers have their due by all means, and
suffer the penalty of their own ill-doings.
Let the law deal as rigorously or as vigorously
as it pleases with all demoralising charlatans,
with all cajolling mountebanks, and with syste-
matic, and, as one may term them accurately (for
there are such people), professional vagabonds of
every description. But with such as may come
simply within the category—(even to the view of
this particularly hard-headed generation in which
we live—yet a generation too, it must be admitted
with a qualm of wonder, rife with spirit-rappers,
and table-turners, and crystal-seers, and so forth)—
with such as may come simply within the cate-
gory of credulous dabblers, some of them as-
suming seriously to be believing proficients in
obsolete fields of knowledge, certainly these incon-
trovertible records of the past, might in some sense
be taken into account by way of mitigation. Laugh
Astrology to scorn, by all means, if you will,
as an absurd hallucination, and laugh at it
thus down to the very end of the chapter,
but don't map out the domains of science or of
pseudo science—rendering this legal and that penal
—by Act of Parliament ! As a calm and candid
inquiry directed to the elucidation of this hitherto
ill-considered theme of investigation, Mr. CHRIS-
TOPHER COOKE'S very plain-spoken pamphlet, en-
titled "Astrology in a Nutshell," comes out most
opportunely, and, without the smallest atom of
circumlocution, goes at once directly to the point.

COURT CIRCULAR,

WINDSOR CASTLE, MARCU 20.

Her Majesty, accompanied by her Royal Highness the
Princess Alice, drove out yesterday afternoon. Colonel the
Hon. A. Hardinge attended on horseback.
The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone arrived at the Castle
yesterday, and had an audience of her Majesty.
The Right Rev. Wm. Thomson, D.D., had an audience
of the Queen and did homage on being appointed Bishop
of Gloucester and Bristol. The Right Hon. Sir Geo. Grey,
G.C.8., her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home De-
partment, assisted at the ceremony.
The Hon. Lucy Kerr and the Hon. Victoria Stuart
Wortley have succeeded the Hon. Beatrice Byng and the
Hon. Emily Cathcart as Maids of Honour in Waiting.
Tuesday last was the birthday of her Royal Highness
Princess Louisa.

Her Majesty the Queen will hold a Privy Council this
day (Friday) at Windsor Castle.
A Deputation from the Dublin Ballast Board had an in-
terview with the President of the Board of Trade yester-
day.

Despatches were received yesterday, at the Colonial-
office, from the Governors of Ceylon, Hongkong, the Aus-
tralian colonies, Malta, and Gibraltar. Despatches were
sent to the Governor of Canada.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer returned to London
yesterday from Windsor Castle.

The Marchioness of Downshire gave her second
dancing party last evening, at her residence in Be!grave-
square.

The Earl of Hardwicke will leave town to.
morrow for Plymouth.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer returned to
London from Windsor Castle.

Mr. Adeane, M.P., and Lady Elizabeth Adeane
will leave town early next week on a visit to the Countess
of Hardwicke, at Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire.
The Rev. Mr. Lascelles and Mrs. Lascelles have
arrived at the Queen's Hotel, Upper Norwood.

On Tuesday next, at the New Vestry Hall, in
the King's-road, Chelsea, the grand oratorio of " Judas"
will be performed by the Sacred Harmonic Society of that
district. Conspicuous among the vocalists upon the occa-
sion we observe the name of the popular songstress Madame
Elwood Andrea.

According to a communication from the Secretary
of the Mercantile Law Amendment Society there is reason
to apprehend that the registration of trust deeds in bank-
ruptcy, under the act of last sossion, has thus far teen con-
ducted in a manner that will render such registration of no
effect.

THE REINFORCEMENTS FOR CANADA. When
the troops constituting the reinforcements for Canada were
sent out last December the condition in which they were
despatched was the theme of universal praise, and the
authorities were deservedly congratulated upon an example
of efficient administration, contrasting happily with some
of the shortcomings of former days. We are glad to say
that on the other side of the Atlantic the arrangements to
meet the difficulties opposed to the transport of troops
through New Brunswick at a severe season of the year have
been conducted with the most creditable success. A de-
spatch, dated March 6, has been received at the War-office
from the General commanding at Halifax, stating that the
whole of the reinforcements for Canada, consisting of up-
wards of 6,500 men, had passed safely into that province.
with the exception of one detachment, which was delayed
within a day's march of Riviere du Loup by a alight stop-
page on the railway. It is satisfactory to learn that this
has been effected with very few casualties among the troops.
Three men died on she line of march, two from pneumonia
and ene from the effects of cold and intemperance ; one man
of desertions was nine. The General bears testimony to
hjured by frost bites, while the total number
th.aesasdenve;alble conduct of the men throughout, not a single
complaint against any of them having reached him during
their transit, and he considers it chiefly owing to their own
cheerful deportment and the untiring exertions of the de-
partments—naval, military, and transport--employed, that
this movement has been so successfully accomplished.

LATEST NEWS.

ILLNESS OF THE POPE.
ROME, MARCEL 18 (via MARSEILLES).
The Pope has been ill for the last week, and is
confined to his bed the greater part of the day.
The strength of his Holiness is much prostrated,
and the soreness of his legs causes him great irri-

tation.
His Holiness hss suspended his audiences.

JAPAN.
SUEZ, MARCH 20.

The extraordinary Ambassadors from Japan on
a visit to various countries in Europe have arrived
hero.

THE BRAZILS.

BORDEAUX, MARCH 20.
The French steamer Beam, from the Brazils,
arrived here this morning.