The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-08 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
LONDON, TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1862.

The Thames Embankment Bill could not well
have passed more quietly than it did last evening
through committee. The Chief Commissioner
occasionally evidenced, it is true, by the momentary
petulance which gleamed every now and then at
momentary intervals through his ordinarily subdued
and always eminently gentlemanly air of non
chalance, the extent to which his feeling had been
wounded during the previous discussions. Other-
wise than in some such casual way the stream of
small talk about this clause and that, flowed on in
the most equable manner imaginable. Mr. MAs-
SET'S voice was continually calling out the number
of clause after clause that met with no opposition
whatever—passing each in turn sub Baena° and
within a beat or two of the House clock's
pendulum.
As the rare exception indeed a clause was here
and there, according to announcementc,loapupseose3, ford4bya
more or less serious amendment.
example, Lord Jomi. MANNERS suggested in the
course of a very courteous but caustic speech, should
be omitted altogether. The noble lord asked the
Committee coolly to allow it to fall through: being
supported in this suggestion by Lord FERMOY.
It will be observed that the clause in
question is simply one designed to secure if pos-
sible to the general effect of the buildings des-
tined to skirt the borders of the Thames Embank-
ment, something having the semblance of " uni-
formity of design and consistency of purpose."
Lord JOHN MANNERS, regarding the whole project
with a somewhat jealous eye, deems that clause
34 will only bestow upon the Chief Commissioner
the power of exercising a most vexatious inter,
ferenee. He warned the committee from allowing
another £12,000 or £13,000 to be drained use-
lessly from the public purse for the luxury of all
the wrangling, controversy, and litigation likely
to result from the vague efforts that may yet
be made to harmonise the popular ideas, or
the Minister's notions of what really is or
is not " architectural ornamentation. " Mr.
KER SEYMER had something to say upon this
matter in_defenee of the Chief Commissioner; Sir
J. SHELLEY, going something quite upon the oppo-
site tack. Lord H. CECIL, as somehow appeared
to become him, delivered a slashing speech, that,
although it was in a great measure dead against Mr.
KER SEYMER, appeared to amuse no one more
thoroughly than the hon. gentleman the member for
Dorsetshire. According to Lord ROBERT, the pro-
posal contained in the obnoxious clause (34)
amounted to this—that the citizens of London
should pay the money (through the coal dues or
the wine dues, or what not, it mattered
little which, but, at any rate, that they would pay
the money out of one pocket or the other) and that
meanwhile the Chief Commissioner should spend
it! To the which proposition, as a matter of
course, the noble lord the member for Stamford
had the strongest possible objection. In responding
good-humouredly to the hot remarks relating to
himself as Chief Commissioner, Mr. COWPER—as a
happy contrast enough in its way to what he sarcas-
tically called the noble lord's eloquent appeal on
behalf of economy—gave a brief but vivid and pic-
turesque description of the nature and the probable
aspect of this grand projected scheme of the Thamea
Embankment. This embankment, said the Minis-
ter, would be a hundred feet wide. It would be
one of the grandest and most majestic features of
our metropolis. On one side of it, he observed, with
a boastful manner that would have been in the
highest degree entertaining to an Americ©n fresh
from the banks of the mighty Mississippi—on one
side of it there would be the river which was the
pride of England. Even some of the more "tra-
velled" members of the Committee could not resist
a momentary laugh at this—whereat Mr. COWPER
(interrupting himself to glance across at the
laughers) interjected, in a serio-comic tone of ex-
postulation, " At any rate, we all know it, and are
proud of it as Father Thames !" Well—boastfully
viewed or not—there, on one side of the 100 feet
wide embankment, will flow the waters, no longer
the foul and pestilential, but the purified and pellucid
waters of the Thames. On the other there will
be ornamental grounds—such as, let us say, the
garden at the back of Montagu House, and all the
rest of those pleasant lounging places, the grass
plots and shrubberies partitioned off at Whitehall-
gardens, the verdant and flowery haunts of his
Grace the Duke of RUCCLEUCH and of such
immediate neighbours of the Duke as the
right honourable gentlemen the member for
Stroud! Together with these pleasure grounds

there will be other portions of the route along

which will be raised rows and terraces of houses—

that Mr. COWPER argues (and with reason) it will

surely be most desirable to have in some degree

at least harmonised with one another so as

to produce a general effect instead of being aban-

doned carelessly to the caprices of the taste (often
times eccentric) of separate individuals. "Any-
one," Mr. Cownit observed last night, and with
k literal truth in bis words that defy contradiction,
It Anyone
who compared London with more splen-
did continental capitals would see that one of its
great
defects Was that most of the streets, and espe-
cially all the eiae
systematic phm, 1314
r ones, were not built upon any
evneraNvefre left to the individual
caprices osfawthea
very
house
houses. They
tail perhaps
two very small ones, a stucco -a- standing between
brick ones, and other irregularities
house between two
which destroyed
the architectural effect of the
whole thorough-
fare." The sketch here given of the
aspect of our street architecture ie so_ general
".' what exa
gcrated, no doubt. The view taken is net , g-
means
any
means binocular. It is the one-sided view ..
, ...s We
may say, of a one -syed observer. But it is faithfully
drawn from the reality. Mr. COWPER might have
added to his exceedingly accurate bird's-eye view
of the metropolis, that this very jumble and hatch
J

potch of style and more frequently of no style
leads occasionally to a result in itself eminently

picturesque. It is a lottery, however, at the best,
and a lottery too that we should be sorry indeed
to see applied in any way to the proposed scheme at

he risk of marring the Whole effect of the Thames

Embankment. In support of his right hon. ccl
league, the Prime Minister argued forcibly in favour

of the retention of the clause—which, although
energetically opposed by Mr. CRAW FORD, Mr.
LEWIS, and Sir WILLIAM JOLLIFFE, and although
(more formidable still to its success !) preposter-