The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOTTR,NALS.

THE "SATURDAY REVIEW" ABOUT THE QUEEN.
—Rosenau is said to be a very pleasant place, and
the memories with which it is associated may well
possess a melancholy charm for the august person
who was recently an inhabitant of the castle. The
memorial ceremonies of Coburg are terminated, and
there is a general hope or wish that, having followed
on many similar celebrations, they may be the last
of their kind. Excess even in the feelings which
command the most universal sympathy provokes an
inevitable reaction, and the regret which is fitly sym-
bolised by an escutcheon or a tomb becomes dissi-
pated and vulgarised by laborious association with
a hundred monumental structures. In the consider-
able interval which has elapsed since the death of
the Prince Consort, almost every possible tribute
has been paid to virtues which were perhaps unsuffi-
ciently recognised in his lifetime. Poetry, and such
plastic art as faintly survives in England,have com-
memorated the dead, and striven to comfort the
survivor. The whole community was anxious to
make good any previous want of full appreciation,
and a warmer feeling prompted the expression of
public sorrow as an echo and a solace to profound
personal grief. There will be proportional disap-
pointment if the mourning of a nation proves to
have been misunderstood and wasted. There is
profound truth in the divine paradox that the dead
must bury their dead, for the living have ever duties
to discharge beyond the boundary of the graveyard.
Even when slaves and captives were sacrificed on
the funeral pile of a hero, his survivors and successors
inherited his task, instead of furnishing an ignoble
contrast to his career. Prince Albert's conscientious
devotion to business, combined with varied intellec-
tual activity, almost amounted to genius ; and if a
mind so manly and simple had yearned for posthu-
mous worship, he would assuredly not have selected
his votaries among contemplative anchorites. Nor
would it have been less repugnant to his tastes
that his political and social experiments should
become petrified, like fragmentary sectarian
dogmas, into authoritative and inimitable insti-
tutions. Sensible men wish neither themselves nor
their opinions to become idols, instead of acting as
living energies or germinating as pregnant sug-
gestions. Only pedantic and selfish testators attempt
to control future generations. There is sufficient
time for activity, whether judicious or mistaken,
during the daytime in which alone any man ought
to work. The English taste is not averse to the pre-
servation of organic forms after they have wholly
or partially lost their primitive vitality. Nor is it
merely with the superstitious instinct which induced
the Athenian Republic to elect every year a titular
king, that the titles and ostensible prerogatives of
mediaeval royalty have been sedulously respected
while the Constitution has passed through incessant
changes. Experience has shown that a ceremonial
primacy, restrained within certain invisible limits,
serves as• well for use as for decoration. While
imaginative loyalty attends on ancient descent and
on pre-eminent station, the divinity which hedges a
King is conveniently tempered by the undisputed
mortality of his Ministers. Although the mechani-
cal necessity for the original arches and buttresses
has been largely superseded by hidden cramps and
supplementary contrivances, it might be dangerous
to depart altogether from the old constitutional de-
sign. In popular estimation, as in conventional
language, the State is represented by the Crown,
and the Sovereign performs a simple duty in re-
nouncing the immunities of a private person.
Despotic rulers have often affected a plainness of
habits and manners which only served more for-
cibly to remind their subjects of their unquestioned
power ; but monarchs who reign instead of govern-
ing cannot afford to dipense with etiquette. If
form, as they pass into fictions, were absolutely
empty, it would perhaps be prudent to allow the
dead leaves to fall ; but it is difficult to ascer-
tain whether a latent capacity for usefulness still
remains in an ancient institution. The negative
advantages of English royalty may perhaps not
exhaust its valuable functions. • The Grand Elector,
whom Siciyes vainly attempted to reproduce in one
of his imaginary constitutions, affords exemption
from a Presidential canvass, as bishops supply a
happy alternative to General Assemblies. With a

• • ----
permanent King it is possible to endure a moveable
Cabinet, and consequently to vest the real direction
of affairs in a Parliamentary majority. Even when
party feeling runs high, the chief authority in the
State stands above the attacks of faction. An able
incumbent of the throne would probably convert
into an instrument of political influence theimpartial
position which is at the same time his duty and his
privilege. If the Prince Consort had lived to old
age, he would have survived all his teachers and
early advisers, and, with the aid of his characteristic
modesty and discretion, he might have exerted the
authority of a statesman who for 40 or 50 years had
never for a day been out of office. The Crown has
still, .in some cases, a power of personal selection
among rival 'leaders of the dominant party ; and, in
the few public questions which are supposed to in-
terest the Court, the eager conformity of Ministers
and candidates for office has long served the House
of Commons as a standing joke. A mere favourite
would be intolerable toParliament, but a statesman
inspires additional confidence when he is known to

command Royal support. South Kensingtonitself
is principally obnoxious because it is not adminis-
tered by recognised servants of the Crown. If Lord
Palmerston had been in earnest, he might perhaps
almost have carried his proposal for stuccing half a
mile of brick wall in honour of an august
memory. The country has never haggled
about the large debt of gratitude which it
has incurred during the present reign. The Court
has been a model of dignity, of prudence and
of all domestic virtues ; and in the performance of
political duties, whether serious or ceremonial, the
Queen Las been conscientiously indefatigable. Al-
though uo previous quarter of a century has, on the
whole, been so tranquil and prosperous, there have
been times when discontent would readily have
fastened on any act of royal misconduct. Since
1837 there have been several changes of ministry,
and it was impossible that all statesmen should be
equally acceptable at Court ; but neither the Queen
nor the Prince in his lifetime was ever accused of
withholding the proper support from the Cabinet of
the day. The educated classes can, perhaps, hardly
judge how far the general loyalty is still ideal and
personal. In remote districts, the simple constitu-
tion of the Old Testament still satisfies the popular
mind ; and some years ago, old women in the East-
ern Counties, hearing that vaccination was made
compulsory, told one another, with regret rather
than with surprise or disapproval, that the Queen,
in imitation of Herod, had commanded, in virtue of
a recognised prerogative, a general murder of the
innocents. Republican artisans in Northern towns
have sufficient objects for jealousy in master manu-
facturers, and in the less known monopolists of
land, who are supposed to constitute a corrupt aris-
tocracy. The Crown is known to have allied itself
in other countries with the democracy, and one
elevated landmark in a fen rather illustrates than
disturbs the prevalent equality of level. As mis-
conceptions of the true character of English royalty
diminish in proportion to the advance of
.knowledge,
the beneficent operation of the ancient form is more
thoroughly appreciated. Foreigners have often re-
marked with surprise that the wealthiest and
proudest peers considered themselves honoured by
employment in the service of the Court. To the
country at large the display of royal splendour, as
long as undue extravagance is avoided, has always
been agreeable. Among
many proofs of the pro-
found respect which is felt for the reigning
Sovereign may be counted extreme unwilling-
ness to offer censure, criticism, or advice.
Those who are most fully convinced of theinexpe-
diency of a partial abdication are nevertheless re-
luctant to tender any suggestion which might seem
unpalatable or intrusive. To a great extent it is
true that by common estimation, as by legal rule,
the Queen can do no wrong. The credit which has
been earned has not yet been exhausted by long
retirement from public life. Excess of fidelity and
earnest feeling would readily be excused if it were
checked at last ; but the nation may in time become
tired of monotonous grief, and tombs enough have
been built. A King or a Queen is only life tenant
a
of an estate, with moral right in the reversioner
to impeachment of waste. If the dues are allowed
to fall into desuetude, they may not hereafter be
easily resumed. It is true that levees and drawing-
rooms are not institutions of the highest importance,
and that they are probably more tedious to the
principal performer than to the crowded guests ;
but a general who despises salutes, or a bishop who
loses temper at the sight of a white neckcloth, is
no tmore anomalous in his tastes than a king who
dislikes the obeisances of his subjects. For several
years various members of the Royal family have
been employed to receive the homage which belongs
exclusively to the person of the Queen. It is im-
possible to deny that a Peeress, a Lady Mayoress,
or a wax doll might discharge the material duty
of standing in the corner of a room while gentle-
men or ladies defile past in unwonted splendour
of attire ; but the essence of the transaction is the

acknowledgment that the Queen is the head of
society, owing reciprocal duties to those who come
to offer their respectful salutations. Except under
the pressure of heavy affliction, the Queen has set
an admirable example to privileged idlers who
attempt to cheat the community of a trivial consi-
deration for their abundant wages. Young officers
who shirk parades, and young peers who shirk
select committees, ought not to be able to allege, in
procedent or excuse, the eccentricities of a nobler
character in a more dignified station. It is the duty
of a Queen to go to a drawing-room, as it is the duty
of a curate to go to church. The losses which sadden
life scarcely justify the disuse of pleasure, and they
can never excuse the abandonment of official func-
tions.

THE " EXAMINER" ON PRUSSIA AND AUSTRIA.—
Prussia, after all, it appears, is not to have the
guard and garrison of Kiel town, which, as part of
Holstein, falls to Austria. This is remarkable, as it
completely eliminates the Prussians from the more
southern Duchy. When one enters from the Bal-
tic the waters which form the harbour of Kiel, those
waters are•found to divide into two basins. One of
them, the northern, runs up to the canal by which
there is communication with Rendsburg ; the other
runs four or five miles up the estuary till it reaches
Kiel. The outer harbour, adjoining the canal, is all
that is required for a naval station. The harbour
that runs up to Kiel is purely commercial. The
giving up this latter to Prussia would have been in-
dicative of giving up Holstein. But this the ar-
rangement of Gastein seems carefully to have
avoided. Still the whole arrangement is most dis-
gusting to the Duchies. Their first wish was to
preserve Kiel as their administrative capital, to as-
semble the States there, the University, the Go-
vernment offices, the Courts of Appeal. For this
they cared more than for any political considera-
tion. It was one of their few old griefs that the
Danes would not allow Kiel to be the centre of any-
thing. The Austrians and Prussians are, however,
doing precisely that which rendered Denmark
odious to the Holsteiner and South Slesviger ; and
the result of the joint policy of Bismark and Mens-
dorf is to create a foyer, as the French say, of future
insurrection. in fact, they are doing at Kiel what
Bismark has been doing at Cologne, augmenting the
unpopularity of the Prussian Government to a de-
gree that really weakens it. As long as there is
peace, indeed, the Liberals will not rise. But let
there be war or turmoil, or an uncertain future, and
the many springs of disorder and anarchy, which
are only stopped for the moment, will burst forth
and inundate the land. Whilst Prussia is thus sow-
ing trouble and hostility in the north-west of Ger-
many, Austria is not pacifying Hungary. It ap-
pears from the official circular that the aim of the
new Government of Vienna is to fully satisfy the
Magyars, but in so doing to dissatisfy the other
races. Thus the quasi dependence of Transylvania
is to be sacrificed to Pesth, and of course it is in-
tended to treat Croats and Slavons in the same
way. This will not pacify Hungary. It may re-
store Pesth to a kind of loyalty, as long as the
Vienna Government remains true to its principle,
but it will create amongst the Turk Slavons of the
Empire a great deal of dangerous effervescence.
These will not obey the Magyars, and they will
even find another Jellachich to lead them in resist-
ance. The organisation or reorganisation of the
Austrian Empire is thus a task most difficult of ac-
complishment. To satisfy one class of malcontents
is almost certain to raise up and provoke another ;
and as long as these feuds and disorders remain
flagrant in the population, it will be impossible for
the Government to turn its attention to the great
questions of finance and trade, through which it
might hope to find relief from its pecuniary embar-
rassment. People exclaim against the overgrown
army of Austria, but how without it keep its scat-
tered and discontented provinces together. The
Emperor and the army form its only links, and
the attempt to supersede them by a Reichsrath
or Central Assembly has by no means hitherto
succeeded.

TIIE "LONDON REVIEW" ON THE LATEST ELOPE-
MENT.—The propensity which some people have to
make bad worse is so curiously illustrated by a
police case which was reported in Thursday's papers,
that we may narrate the story to our readers, as a
warning to " parents and guardians." It will point
its own moral ; and, as it savours strongly of the
romance of real life, we will plunge in nzedias res
without further preface. The Rev. Robert Crosse
is rector of Ockham, Surrey. Amongst his other
comforts he possessed a groom and a daughter ; the
groom, George Smith, a boyish-looking lad, about
eighteen years of age ; and the daughter, Alice
Caroline Crosse, according to the police reporter,
" a slight lady-like young woman," aged twenty.
Miss Cross had tolerable expectancies in. the way of
money ; and, as grooms are not usually indifferent
to such considerations, it may be that " George,"
when he found that he had obtained that warm
place in his young mistress's heart which grooms in
general can only hope to find in the female occu-
pants of their masters' kitchens, considered that
fortune bad dealt very generously by him, and that
it was worth an effort on his part to raise himself
from the position of the rector's stable-boy to that
of his reverence's son-in-law. But, as far as the
story of his wooing has yet been told, it does not
appear that he exercised upon Miss Crosse any of
those subtle blandishments which grooms of more
advanced years and more mature perception of their
opportunities have occasionally employed with suc-
cess. It is open to grave doubt whether he ran away
with Miss Alice, or whether Miss Alice ran away
with him. It is clear, however, that on the
morning of the 26th ult. they left Ockham
together, and after a moonlight walk of five
and a half miles to Weybridge Station, took
the mail train to London. Mr. Crosse pursued
them, and after several days' search discovered them
at No. 1, St. Ann's-place, Wandsworth, and gave
George into custody on the charges of abduction
and robbery. The charge of robbery is based on
the allegation that Miss Crosse, in leaving her
father's house, took away with her some things
which belonged to her mother, under George's per-
suasion. Whether it can be maintained will of
course turn on the question—did George abduct
Miss Alice, or did Miss Alice abduct herself ? She
is in her 21st year—she was 20 in June last—and if
we may believe her account of the elopement, both
charges must fall to the ground. Her story is
this :—George had been nearly two years in her
father's service, and .the intimacy between them
commenced about Christmas last, " a little before,
perhaps." It began in this way I went out
riding with him, and he accompanied me as groom."
Mr. Ingham, the magistrate, asked, " Who made
the first advance ?" " I don't exactly know,"
said Miss] Alice ;. but when his worship pressed
her for an answer, she said, " I think
we were about equal." In an infatuation of this
kind, when the first step has been taken, the other
steps follow rapidly. " Did you ever go into the
stable ?" asked the astute magistrate, " Oh, yes,"
said ingenuous Miss Alice, " I have often gone into
the stable to see the horses cleaned." The ways of
love are mysterious, and defy reduction to any fixed
laws. One woman loves a man because he is mild
and sentimental, another because he is rough and
outspoken. Beauty allies herself with ugliness, and
the success with the fair sex of men who are plain,
broken-nosed, pitted with smallpox, low-born, or
otherwise apparently unpromising, is well known.
It may be that even in the unsentimental art of
cleaning horses there may be a grace and mastery
which will touch some sympathetic chord in the
breast of a refined woman that neither the influence
of kindred or station, nor the fear of the world's
scorn will be strong enough to resist. Not to dwell
on so profound a subject, we may take itfor granted
that by some fascinating influence or other George
became that one male mortal with whom alone Miss
Alice thought she could unite her fate for better or
worse ; and, unless she has fibbed monstrously in
order to shield him, it was she who first proposed
that, on the 26th ult., they should take the wings of
the morning and flee away together from Ockham.
" I think I proposed that," she says. "There had
been a great row ; and I was unhappy, and I wished
to leave. Then there was a great row when it was
found out"—her going into the stable to see the
horses cleaned—" about a week before I went
away." Mr. Crosse says that he discharged the
prisoner because it had been reported to him
that she had been in the stable with him.
That was on the 24th—on the 26th they decamped.
" I arranged it," says Miss Alice. " He was sent
away at a moment's notice. I saw him in the pas-
sage when he was leaving, and I merely told him to
come the night after to my bedroom window. I
used to light paper in the window." The poet says
that " Love will find out the way," and accordingly
on the night of the 25th or the morning of the 26th,
after papa had gone to bed, which he did at mid-
night, Miss Alice folded a piece of paper with her
dainty fingers, and, like another Hero,gave her lover
the signal. Luckily, or unluckily, her Leander had
no Hellespont to cross. " I think he was in the
lane," she says. At all events, he " came up out-
side," and then "I told him I should go away; I
put my things out of the window, and then I got
out myself. I scrambled out somehow, as I had no
assistance,"—the window was 14 feet from the
ground. "I think he helped me a little when I got
nearly down. I think I was slipping down,
and he held me. Nothing further took place,
you know, except that we walked together to the
station. I did not know where I was going, but
I thought I was going to London. I proposed
walking to Weybrilge Station. It is a distance of
about five miles and a half along the road. We
walked there together. We took a mail train to
London, and I paid the fare." We need not folloy7
the fugitives further in their career. Their story is
a mixture of romance, bad taste, and, we regret to

say, of grossness on the lady's part, which over-
shadows its romantic phase, and forces us to regard
Miss Alice as a heroine who has not thrown herself
away, even ttpoft a groom, When she found that a
license could not be obtained at Doctors' Commons
without her father's consent, she went straight to
Wandsworth, and took the lodgings in which she
lived as his wife with " George" till the latter was
taken into custody on Tuesday, upon the charges
We have mentioned. But now turning from her
and her ill-selected mate, what possible good could
the rector of Ockham propose to himself by a pro-
ceeding which exposes to the world this lamentable
story. A little reflection might have convinced
him that it would be better to make the best of a
bad business, rather than to make bad worse. How
long Miss Alice will continue under the fascination
of George Smith it is impossible to say ; but that
she is not only a perfectly self-possessed young
woman, but is determined to go through with this
unfortunate love affair, is clear from her bearing
and evidence in the Wandsworth police-court. As
a question of morality, there can be no doubt that
the right course for Mr. Crosse to have adopted
was to give the sanction of marriage to an intimacy
which, for the present at least, seems certain to
continue, with or without it. And, though we
should be loth to urge in favour of this course au
argument which might seem to challenge his own
prudence in the government of his family, we can-
not but think that it was a blunder on his part to
allow his daughter to ride out as he did, if she has
spoken the truth, with his groom for her only com-
panion. It seems strange, also, that she could have
been in the habit of going into the stable alone, as she
says she did " often," if there had been that strict
watchfulness which the most indulgent and confident
of parents should never omit. It is not a thing
heard of now for the first time that young ladies
will fall in love with music-masters, riding-masters,
dancing-masters, or even grooms, when the oppor-
tunity for such ill suited attachments has been given
by parents exemplary in every other respect except
in that caution which bars every approach to danger
even where it seems most improbable.

THE "COURT CIRCULAR" ON OUR LATE NAVAL
VISITORS.--Portsmouth, though rather hard put to
it, on the whole performed its duty well, as regards
our gallant naval visitors. For once at least, a
corporate body, in the provinces, was content to
merge its municipal dignity in the greatness of the
occasion, and play a subordinate, though by no
means insignificant part in the festivities and re-
joicings to which they themselves largely contri-
buted. The Mayor and his colleagues, to their
honour be it recorded, magnanimously resisted all
temptation to get up deputations and addresses, and
wisely expended all their energies in a grand ban-
quet and ball, which, as the fitting reward of muni-
cipal virtue, proved a great success, and delighted
everybody. In the merely ornamental part of their
hospitality the authorities were more fortunate than
was anticipated, and, even compared with the lumi-
nous splendours and artistic demonstrations at
Cherbourg and Brest, we have, at least, the satis-
faction of escaping national discredit. In the matter
of oratory we fear there is not so much reason for
congratulation. At the dinner given by the Admi-
ralty to the French officers the speech of the Duke
of Somerset was by no means up to the mark, being
far too stiff and official for an interchange of na-
tional friendship. It was terribly commonplace as
an expression of good feeling, and strange to say,
as emanating from so able a man, destitute of a
leading idea beyond a general declaration of wel-
come and kindness. Far better and more dignified
in tone was the speech of the French Minister of
Marine, commencing with the words, " Happy days
are these, in which the officers of the navies of
Great Britain and France have it in their power to
become acquainted with and to appreciate each
other." The enviable gift of giving a graceful
colouring to a complimentary dinner toast, by
associating it with lofty thoughts and suggestive
allusions, was clearly on the side of the French
Minister; and in the brief speeches which accom-
panied the toasts in honour of the navies of
France and England, the merits of terseness and
point, to our thinking, were on the side of our
Gallic visitors. Nothing, however, could exceed
the cordiality exhibited on both sides ; and
that, after all, was the main point in such a demon-
stration as that which took place at Portsmouth.
We have already awarded praise to the Mayor and
his colleagues in the corporation for their modesty
and reticence, and as regards the municipal banquet,
in which the chief magistrate was all in his glory,
we are bound to say that his speech was a clever
oratorical effort, all things considered. In spirit it
was altogether unexceptionable, and that being the
case, we may well excuse the swelling epithets with
which it abounded. The Mayor, on behalf of the
town, laboured hard to do justice to his distinguished
guests on so great au occasion, and if his command
of language sometimes failed him—if he had occa-
sionally to substitute big words for large ideas—the
fault was pardonable enough. The French officers
who shared the hospitality of the Corporation and
the Admiralty, have, we are assured, carried away
with theta many happy recollections of the kindness
they have experienced ; and without placing any
undue reliance on evanescent feelings arising from
the temporary excitement incidental to a lavish
display of hospitality, we cannot but believe that
such a demonstration must be productive of good,
as affording an additional assurance, and being, so
to speak, an open proclamation of the excellent
understanding which prevails between the govern-
ments and people of the two countries. As a fitting
termination of the recent festivities, it is deserving
of mention that the inhabitants are so well pleased
with their Mayor and the graceful and efficient
manner in which he represented and carried out their
hospitable wishes in reference to their late visitors,
that they have decided on presenting him with a
testimonial in recognition thereof. This is right and
proper enough, if only as a stimulus and incitement
to future mayors to do likewise when the occasion
demands. A committee has been formed, and a
public meeting is to be called, to sanction and ratify
this grateful resolve, which at least shows that
Portsmouth, in its own opinion, has proved itself
equal to the occasion—a very fair subject for con-
gratulation, when we bear in mind that failure would
have entailed national as well as local discredit.