The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-04 00:00:00

THE 'SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVE NI NO, OCTOBER 4, :,!.1862.

months ago Mr. SPURGEON took this very subject
up, it may be remembered, in a much more suitable
spirit—in an entertaining lecture upon the Gorilla,
delivered to an immense audience in his Metropoli-
tan Tabernacle. Humourist ae he is essentially in
temperament, Mr. SPURGEON could not find
it in his heart to treat the preposterous
question that had then very recently been
raised in consequence of the publication of
M. Du CHAILLU'S African Adventures, quite
seriously—as these learned professors nevertheless
did yesterday down at Cambridge in Section D.
Mr. SPURGEON found it absolutely impossible not
to recognise upon the instant the intensely
ludicrous aspect of a query that might really with.
out exaggeration be expressed in the form of an
inquiry addressed to the Human Biped by the
Gorilla, somewhat tothe effect of the old familiar
remonstrance of the negro, "Am I not a Man
[at any rate the Gorilla's advocates would delicately
insinuate—Senzething very like a Man—something
all but Human] and a Brother ?" Elevated upon
his raised platform, for it is less of a pulpit than a
platform in his vast Metropolitan Tabernacle—
having there beside him upon that platform a
gigantic stuffed specimen of the Gorilla species, Mr.
SPURGEON from his own intense and hearty sense
of the whimsical, could not, we repeat, but recog-
nise above all things in regard to the inquiry
selected by him for discussion upon that occasion
its flagrant ridiculousness. Apostrophising the
stuffed body of the Gorilla beside him during the
course of this popular lecture of his, Mr. SPURGEON
spoke quite conclusively, we cannot but think,
upon the matter then seriously in debate among
some people—As tOthere being any similarity,
resemblance, or analogy between the Human
Family and the race of the Gorillas! He
spoke thus conclusively because his words, oddly
addressed to the inanimate form of the Gorilla
beside him, were, in the midst of their very
oddity, the thoughtful utterances of the Satirist—
of the Humouriet —of the MAN ! Bearing in
mind, indeed—what we here scarcely dare oven
to hint at with a veiled and reverend sense of awe
as connected with a notion so wild. in its utter ex-
travagance—bearing in mind how in the History of
Mankind the Human Form has been sanctified with
a sanctity beyond all articulate expression—it does
absolutely appear to us hardly less than a profanation
to take an outrageous phantasy of this kind into so-
lemn and deliberate discussion. If it is to be discussed
at all—let it be discussed in the reasonable, because
the only appropriate spirit in which Mr. SPURGEON
discussed it ! Bringing the ridiculous notion, at
once, down from the cloud-land of the scientific
dreamer—down, down, irresistibly, to the very
dust ! Effectually setting aside the nonsensical
theory broached by some among these dreamers, by
the very simple and suitable logical device wisely
hit upon by Mr. SPURGEON, as alone applicable to
the subject. the logical device, namely, of the
reductzo ad absurdum. Better this, surely, than
all the learned prattle of yesterday—indulged in so
very gravely in Section D, down at Cambridge, by
Professor OWEN—about posterior lobes of the cere-
brum overlapping, about lateral ventricles, about
the hippocampus minor, about what Professor
OWEN, for:want of a better phrase, calls archen-
cephala, and so forth. As well might we chatter
with Miss WILHELMINA AMELIA SKEGGS, in
the " Vicar of WAKEFIELD," about SHAKSPEARE
and the musical glasses and what not—as hope to
raise into dignity a theme so ludicrous and even
despicable by means, of no matter how unmeasured
a quantity of this kind of learned, or (we shrink
not from presuming to designate it, though Pro-
fessor OWEN himself is the Philosopher who conde-
scended to employ it yesterday) this kind of psvedo-
learned small talk ! No—laughter-moving though
the remark may have appeared to be in the
estimation of some who listened to it yesterday,
when very simply and earnestly expressed by
the Rev. W. N. MOLESWORTH, there is a moral
and psychi2al gulf between Man and the higher
order of Apes—a gulf that is in itself altogether
impassable. We would go beyond this even, and
say—that merely to suggest the crossing of which
(in the remembrance of the awful considerations we
have already alluded to) does appear to us, we re-
peat hardly less than a deliberate profanation ! The
humane sentiment expressed in immortal words by
TERENCE—

" Homo sum el nemo alienum mihi puto I"

is strictly in its significance the sentiment of a
phil• anthropist ! Not all the babbling of the deli-
berate maintainers of the Darwinian Theory of
Development, and of their predecessors the sup-
porters of the much older Lamarckian Theory, can
surely induce any one out of St. Luke's seriously to
believe in his heart that the Gorilla is to be in-
cluded—and with the Gorilla of course the chim-
panzee, and the long-armed ape, and the little
marmoset, and the huge baboon, and the ourang
outang, and every fantastic member of the race of
the Monkey—under the all-comprehensive nemo in
the beautiful and eminently Christian ejaculation of
the pagan TERENCE.

Lancashire is not only, it appears, threatened
with a cotton famine, but with a coal glut. With
the impoverishment caused by the lack of the raw
material of cotton among the manufacturing opera-

tives of the County Palatine, we are all long since
familiar. The impossibility of obtaining our usual
supplies; or, indeed, for some time past, any sup-
plies at all of that raw material from the Southern
or cotton-growing States of North America, has
been throughout this year of grace a matter of pain-
ful notoriety. The stoppage of the customary im-
portation of the raw material has necessitated, of
course, the stoppage also, later on, of the customary
exportations of the manufactured articles. Im-
plying between whiles, quite obviously, the inter-
ruption of the labours of manufacture. Mills thrown
out of work by scores upon scores—operatives
thrown out of employment by thousands upon
thousands: such have been the inevitable conse-
quences intermediately of this dwindled importation
and exportation.

And now, added to all this but too well-known
source of grief and anxiety as the winter closes in
upon us—comes the melancholy recognition of yet
another evil of a kindred character, and in some
measure, also, of a kindred origin—the dreadful
prospect of what we have designated a coal glut.
As illustrative of what we mean by this phrase of
a coal glut, it will be sufficient to allude to one
indisputable fact, just now brought to light, in re-
gard to the actual state of things down at Wigan,
in Lancashire. There, at Wigan, at once a great
cotton town and coal depot—there is one colliery
proprietor alone, for example, who has not less
than 70,00 tons of coal banked, that he knows not
what to do with,from the closing of certain consider-
able markets for it ! Divers other colliery proprietors,
having thousands upon thousands of tons of coals
"banked" in like manner (uselessly left, as the
phrase is, upon their hands) in similar propor-
tions. So direfully are the evils of the
American war spreading wider and wider, ring
within ring, from the first dropping of that strong
fact into the deep waters of ova. commerce, of our
trade and manufactures. These tidings from the
coal districts, as well as from the cotton districts
in the North, threaten for us but a sombre and
alarming winter, Thought must be taken now be-