The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-22 00:00:00

BY MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.

GRAVESEND, Monday Morning.
Arrived, May 21—Bertha, from Prederickshall ; Prince
Albert, from Dantzic; Elida, from Gothenburg ; Johns,
from Dunkirk ; Zenobia, from Holmstadt ; Julia and Her-
man—both from Dantsic.

Arrived, May 22.—Bertha, from Christiana.
DEAL, Monday Morning.
Passed.—M. A. Wilson, for Calcutta; Cornwallis, for
Adelaide—both from London.

THE GENUINE OLD ENGLISH COUNTRY SQUIRE,
meaning, of course, Mr. Henley, member for Ox-
fordshire. There is nobody in the House, says the Star,
talks the dialect he talks. It is the glorious vernacular of
the thoroughbred midland counties farmer, such as you
never hoar in London and never road in books. It would
delight the author of " The Mill on the Floss," the only
living novelist who knows how country people in the mid-
land counties really do think and talk, to listen to him.
The reporters don't give his speeches exactly as they are
delivered, and if they did they could not give his inimitable
farmer-like ways, his cool, quaint abruptness, or the honest
bluntness of his manner. Sometimes he is not altogether
grammatical, but his errors are country errors generally,
not the errors of the cabdriver or the omnibus conductor,
but those of St. Oggs. it is curious, you will say, that he
should be guilty of any at all. The right hon. gentleman
was educated at Oxford, and took his B.A. and M.A. in the
ordinary course. Oxford, however, is now along way behind
him, and since the days when he was at the University he
has returned, perhaps, to the language of his child-
hood and speaks as he was wont to do when a boy. What
a treat it is to hear such sentences as these, for example, in
such a place as the House of Commons :—" Old as lam
and half woor out, I would lay (too bad Mr. Henley, this)
upon my back and halloo Fudge !" Again says Mr. Hen-
ley :—" If a girl (notice how ho says girl—not gurl, as
even members of the House, I am sorry to say, will pro-
nounce it, but downright broad gairl) came into a parish to
which she did not belong and had an illegitimate child
because the kid was dropped in your parish you had to be
accountable for it." "Kid was dropped," indeed ! Mr.
Henley, Mr. Henley ! Fancy the right hon. gentleman
opposite the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who sits with
his eyes solemnly fixed on the ceiling, talking in such a
manner as this. There was one expression which Mr.
Henley used on Monday, which, alas, has not been re-
corded at all, and which would have been well worth a
verbatim report. It was something of this kind. The right
hon. gentleman had two sets of figures which nearly agreed.
"Now," says he, "there is not much difference between these
two, leastways if there is, you must have your hair cut to
find it out." Once more, and I have done with my quota-
tions frofe Mr. Henley. Ossington, I must premise, is a
village where the speaker has some property. It had been
treated rather tenderly in a report on the houses of the
agricultural poor—a report which Mr. Henley was criticis-
ing. Mr. Henley naturally wanted to know why such
tenderness in this particular case. "What is sauce for the
goose is sauce for the gander," he observed, turning to the
Speaker. Fancy that !—a comparison, however remote, of
the Speaker, with his tremendous wig, with his gown, with
all the divinity that cloth hedge him, to such a creature !
The Speaker—gracious heavens ! it takes one's breath away
—in the House of Commons, too, to be likened to a long-
necked domestic goose ! Is not Mr. Henley perfectly
unique ? Let it be added that, notwithstanding all this
rustic roughness, which makes the house laugh, Mr. Hen-
ley is listened to with respect. His common sense is great,
provided his prejudices don't intervene, as they did by the
byo pretty strongly this week; and when he talks upon
parochial law, highways, poor rates, or any other country
gentleman subject, he is always worth attention.
THE INVENTOR OF THE SEWING MACHINE.—The
history of the inventor of the sewing machine is a
most curious and interesting one. The name of this man
is Elias Howe. He was a mechanic of New York. Not
succeeding well with this effort of ingenuity in America,
he came to England, and sold his patent right in this coun-
try to Mr. Thomas, of Cheapside, for £250. Mr. Thomas,
some time later, paid £2,000 to a person who made some
improvement in the feeding apparatus. Howe was engaged
by Mr. Thomas at a salary of £3 a week to adapt the ma-
chine to the stay-making trade. About this time the in-
ventor had fallen into such extreme poverty that his family
were destitute of the necessaries of life ; but fortunately he
had not disposed of his patent rights in America ; to that
country he returned, and it is stated that the royalty which
he now reaps from home sale and for exportation amounts
to £50,000 a year.—Builder.

JEFFERSON DAVIS.—A good deal of excitement
was caused in the neighbourhood of the Liverpool docks
on Friday evening, in consequence of a rumour to the
effect that the celebrated blockade-runner Banshee,
which had just entered the river from Nassau, had no
less a personage on board than Mr. Jefferson Davis.
Crowds of people gathered towards the great landing stage,
where it was asserted the President of the Confederate
States would land. They were, however, doomed to dis-
appointment—Mr. Davis did not come in the Banshee. The
" sell" was well carried out, and there was no ill-humour
apparent among those who so eagerly took the bait.