The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-31 00:00:00

I'HE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, JANUARY 31, 1865.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON:BRIDGE.

Tins DAT.—Morning, 4h. 50m.—Afternoon, sh. 12m:
To-Moßnow.-Morning, sh. 33m.—Afternoon, sh. 55m.

tivation in those, countries, but from the energy and
public spirit which the authorities have shown.
There is a mortifying contrast between the manner
in which the cultivation has been encouraged
in those half civilised regions and in our
Eastern dominions. It might have been supposed
that a rich and powerful country like England, so
deeply interested in the supply of cotton, and pos-
sessed of sufficient wealth, energy, and enterprise
to make any experiment of the kind not only pos-
sible but easy, would have been only too eager to
avail herself of the opportunity offered by the rich
and varied climates and soils of her Indian
territories. But whereas in Turkey and
Egypt every - effort was made, not only
to induce the people to enter into the cultiva-
tion, but to instruct them in the best means of
doing so, and the most profitable means of laying
out the money received for their cotton by the pur-
chase of the proper instruments for the improvement
of the soil and the dressing of the cotton, our
Indian authorities have acted with their usual
supineness and dislike to any striking progression.
The golden opportunity has been suffered in a great
measure to slip past, and when the fall of price,
consequent upon the cessation of the American war,
comes, the Indian cultivator will probably
be disgusted at the loss of his present high
profits, and will abandon the attempt. If
more active steps had been taken to en-
courage the cultivation during the years of the
distress, by the time peace was restored to the States
the first difficulties and preliminary expenses would
be over, the quality of the cotton improved, the frauds
of packing, &c., done away with, and the whole

trade set on a firm footing, *hen moderate profits
would be quite sufficient to repay . the ordinary
outlay of cultivation, and to give the ryot a suitable
reward for his labour. At the annual meeting of
the Manchester Chamber of. Commerce yesterday,
Mr. ASHWORTH, the President, made a very sensible
speech, commenting on the present aspects of
the cotton trade, and we are glad to see
that the views of most of the gentlemen who
addressed the meeting on the subject were enlarged
and enlightened. The change which has come over
the trade since 1860 is one of the most startling in
commercial history. Its vast extent and flourishing
prosperity prior to the transatlantic struggle, its
sudden collapse and subsequent gradual rise into a
state that gives hope of complete resusci-
tation even without the aid of its old
source of supply, form - a most remarkable
and interesting history. In 1860, observed Mr.
AsHwoßm, which was the year of our largest con-
sumption, we consumed an amount of cotton valued
at £34,000,000. Last year, for about half the
quantity, we paid £80,000,000. It is something,
however, to have even reached this level after
the almost absolute stagnation of the trade:
The fact of its growing indigenously in many dif-
ferent parts of the world proves what may be done
by intelligence and enterprise ; and w 5 hope our

commercial men will do all in their power to en

courage such enterprise, besides endeavouring, if
possible, to rouse an indifferent Government to
vigorous and consistent action.

The Roial Marriage Act.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUY.

Sin,—Some few weeks ago your paper contained some
remarks relative to the Royal Marriage Act, and you stated.
that it was an error to suppose that the members of the
Royal family are compelled to marry foreigners. The law
is as follows, "by Act 12th Geo. 111., c. 11, no descendant
of the body of King Georgo 11. (other than the isqie, of
Princesses married into foreign families), is cipable
yr
of contracting matrimony without the previous resent
of the King, signified and q't the great so.. , and
any marriage nontraitted willAw&t. such consent vow_
Provided that such of the said descendants as ti above

the age of 25 may, after a twelvemonth's notice wiven to
the King's Privy Council, contract and solemnise in trridge
without the consent of the Crown ; unless both Hat ses of
Parliament shall, before the expiration of the sai year,
expressly declare their disapprobation of such intended
marriage ; and all persons solemnising, assisting, or being
present at any"such prohibited marriage, shall incur the
penalties of the statute of prmmunire." Now, as the com-
mon report is, whether true or false, that the Princess
Mary of Cambridge is desirous to marry Lord Hood, there
is one important clause in the said :Royal Marriage Act,
which belongs solely and exclusively to the House of
Cambridge, and which can only be known to membors of
the legal profession. It is as follows :—" The exception of
the issue of Princesses married into foreign families." Now
the word issue (unlike that of child or children, which is
wholly and exclusively confined to the first generation, and
can never take in grandchild or any more remote genera-
tion) means any descendant in law, and would apply as,
for instance, in the following case :—The present Queen"
is the issue of King James 1., albeit, she is his great, great,
great, great, great, great granddaughter. Now the Princess
Mary of Cambridge, and herbrother, the Duke of Cambridge,
as also their sister, the Duchess of Itecklenburgh-Strelitz,
formerly Princess Augusta of Cambridge, are, it is true,
descendants of the body of King George 11., but they arc
also the issue of a Princess married into a foreign family,
as the present Duchess of Cambridge was the granddaugh-
ter of the Landgravine of Hesse Cassel, and she was prior
to her marriage Princess Mary of England, ono of the
daughters of King George, and therefore the issue of a
Princess married into a foreign family.
Thinking this may not be much known at this dis-
tance of time, I have taken the liberty of troubling you
with this letter on the subject ; and although in all proba-
bilityyal Marriage Act would call
still it is a very nice point,
this a tmh
ee
rue pqhuoilbdbelres
eof f
thee
aßwo,
whether the House of Cambridge and all their descendants
are not free from the fetters of the aforesaid Royal Mar-
riage Act, and are able to contract matrimony without the
consent of her Majesty, her heirs and successors, signified
under the great seal. I don't here pretend to enter upon
any discussion of the merits or demerits of the Royal Mar-
riage Act, but merely and simply to state the law as, Sir,
your obedient servant, A. LAWYER.

THEATRE ROYAL ADELPHL

Miss Bateman as Julia in The Hunchback.

Our liveliest hopes in regard to Miss Bateman's
success in her new impersonation have been far, far
exceeded. Triumph could not have been more com-
plete or more legitimate than the really bril-
liant triumph won by her last evening, as Julia, in
" The Hunchback." She looked—to begin with—
charmingly. She dressed the part with exquisite
taste—her costumes being as various as they were
picturesque and some of them magnificent. But
it was, of course, the emotional genius apparent in
her acting of the character throughout, that
achieved for her that complete and absolute com-
mand over her audience which may, now, at length,
in our delightful remembrance of last evening, be
said to have securely established her reputation as
an actress of the highest powers. Her most enthu-
siastic admirers need no longer fear to be met
with the taunt that Miss Bateman is eminent only
in one character—that she has gained her extra-
ordinary popularity, here, by one solitary representa-
tion. To our own individual thinking, her Julia far
surpasses her Leah. Yet, while saying this, let us
acknowledge, at once, quite frankly, that, according
to our view of it as a dramatic production, the play
of " Leah " is just simply detestable. The charac-
ter of Leah, even, in our eyes, although played by
Miss Bateman, and played, too, by her, as all the
London world of playgoers knows by this time, with
such impassioned intensity—the character of Leah,
we say, is, in our eyes, very nearly as odious as the
play itself. Only at the close of it—in our
own estimation, at least--was the drama of
" Leah "in any way really acceptable. Other-
wise, throughout the first four acts, we should
have been disposed to pronounce it, in the words of
Dogberry, " very tolerable and not to be endured."
The fifth act alone was (according to our judgment),
and this thanks,solely to the genius of Miss Bateman,
the reclamation of both the drama and the character.
We forgot, then, the malignant spite of the mendi-
cant Jewess, in the earlier scenes, in the pathetic
tenderness of her dying prostration. With her
Julia, however, it is altogether different.
There, at least, we have nothing to for-
get or to forgive in that alternately charm-
ing, tender, radiant, agonised impersonation.
Besides—the character itself is one so inexpressibly,
more agreeable to contemplate. It is no longer a
wandering mendicant, the creature of an alien race,
whose fortunes we are called upon--to follow
sympathetically—for the most part vainly, in our
own instance, again let us acknowledge it !
Julia, on the contrary, that spoilt child of fortune,
is from first to last what Leah never, even for one
single instant, affects to be—a lady ! And a
perfect lady, Miss Bateman is, as Julia, throughout.
But then, not only the two characters, but the two
dramas are so widely contrasted! Listening to the
words of " The Hunchback" we are listening to a
dramatic production which is, in its way, part and
parcel of our national Literature not to the
tawdry rubbish of an evanescent melodrama, one
that partakes not in the least of the cha-
racter, one: that participates, not in the
smallest degree, in the dignity, of any lite-
rature under the sun. Occasionally, even, we
need not hesitate to assert, that tile text of " The
Hunchback," as indeed, not unfreguntly happens in
others of the dramas of SheridancKno,4es, rises to the
elevation of true poetry. As a, revival of one of our
legitimate modern dramas, Ihis reprosentation of
Sheridan Knowles's truly admirable, drama of " The
Hunchback,"—particularly as it is now put
upon the stage of the Adelphi, ficatrt —is
an incident to be hailed, as we for one do certainly hail
it, with the very liveliest satisfaction. ' ' was
a matter of regret to u., last evening ithat ater-
prising manager was not himself pc3sent—hy the
accidental circumstance, as we learlt, of his having
been snowed up somewhere in Wad s--that he him-
self was not there prk• out in the use, go that he
might with his owr eyes have wit n =d the brilliant
success achieved by this revival of "The I unchback"
tender his manage dent. See y, dresses, appoint-
ments—an were - and of such unmis-
takeable excelle audience could
see at a gla)..( 0. for neinselves, at every
-curni---th,,t7 1:.;,1 for dic.: -leas in-emu's-1y
been announced by ,td citisement, no ex-
pense had really been spared under Mr.
Webster's ni tltagement , with a view to
render this reproduction of ' The Hunchback "
worthy of it as a dramatic masterpiece. But what
is far more worthy of note, the parts in this new
cast of " The Hunchback " proved to have
been admirably distributed. There was not
a single character in the piece that was not
thoroughly well represented. Mr. Swinbourne's
Master Walter —from whose dorsal defor-
mity the play takes its title, a character
assumed, it may be remembered, by the dramatist
himself upon the occasion of the play's first repre-
sentation in 1832 upon the boards 'of Covent Gar-
den—was not simply carefully studied and eminently
judicious throughout, but was here and there dis-
tingUished by singular animation, and once or twice
even by a pathetic tenderness that fairly carried
his audience with him. Mr. Jordan we do not re-
member to have ever seen to so much advantage as
in Sir Thomas Clifford. He not only looked the
character (veryhandsomely!) but played it with real
ability throughout. Mr. Toole's Fathom, quite as
a matter of course (small though the part is in
itself) was another of that inimitable low comedian's
triumphs of comic impersonation. The scene be-
tween Fathom and Thomas, the London footman
(grotesquely portrayed, this latter, by Mr. Romer)
was one series of explosions of laughter from be-
ginning to end. Apart, however, from the great
scenes of the play—meaning those in which Julia,
Master Walter, and Sir Thomas Clifford, are the
chief interlocutors—the most brilliant triumph
of the night (apart, remember ! from those great
scenes) was that riant, sparkling, thoroughly ex-
hilarating scene—scene the first in the fourth act,—in
which Helen schools Master Modus in " The Art of
Love," not according • to Ovid ! Mr. Billing-
ton (always a favourite with the Adelphi audience)
was the ultra-modest lackadaisycal Master
Modus—Miss Henrietta Simms being the charming,
delightful Helen of the occasion ! Miss Simms's
performance of Helen last evening, but more par-
ticularly in that scene, as also in the sequel to it,
viz., the first scene in the fifth act, may be set down
at once, as, beyond all question, the greatest hit
that pretty young actress has yet achieved since
the occasion of her first stepping before the London
footlights. We not only congratulate her very cor-
dially upon this, but we feel that we ought, in simple
justice to her to mention the fact that she was, during
the evening, twice recalled ty acclamation—hand in
hand, of course, with her companion, Master Modus.
Even an insignificant character like that of Lord
Tinsel was, in the cast of last night, so very happily
touched off—with an air of such deliciously absurd
nonchalance—by Mr. Ashley, that it seems here
to claim, at least, one word of honourable
mention. The heroine of the night and of the play,
the observed of all observers, the one bright particular
star of the occasion—among all that moving group
of Her Majesty's Servants, as they were wont to be
called in the old-fashioned language of the playbill—
was, naturally and inevitably, by right of her genius,
by right of her many rare qualifieations as an
actress, not excepting even from among these her
classic profile and her chiselled features—Miss Bate-
man, as the • Julia in this really admirable cast of
"The Hunchback." Her triumph, in the represen-
' tation of that character, in all its grace and
tenderness, in all its espie'glerie in the garden
scene when she is toying with the feather,
in all its pathetic anguish in the draw-
ing-room scene, now alone, now with Mas-
ter Walter, now with Sir Thomas Clifford,
was—we would here emphatically repeat what we
have already said—a triumph complete and legiti-
mate. It was a triumph so unmistakeable of its
kind from first to last, that it at once securely
consolidates her reputation. At the fall of the
curtain she was recalled again and again—re-
ce.iving a thunder of applause from all
parts of the house, as well as a plentiful shower
of bouquets from the stage boxes on either
hand. The theatre itself was filled from floor to
ceiling, and the audience never flagged in the evi-
dence of its appreciation of a performance that
(speaking for ourselves) was thoroughly enjoyable
from the rise to the fall of the curtain—not a single
momentary hitch of any kind marring the effect of
the first night of this revival of " The Hunch-
back." It was an evening that was really a treat
to old b10,9‘ playgoers.