The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-13 00:00:00

whispering tones of the well-bred company are a
check on their uproarious outbreaks ; the frigid
manners of the strongly disciplined waiters dis-
courage their jocular sallies. All is dull, quiet,
formal, dismal, for them ; they seldom venture into
these precincts ; more rarely abide in them ; hardly
ever quit them without a loud declaration of their
firm purpose never to revisit them.

It is not possible to imagine anything more de-
cent, orderly, and respectable than the grand saloon
at the Schweizerhof. It is a splendid apartment on
gigantic proportions, built in the most correct and
elegant style. It is a kind of Knrsaal or Conver-
sation-Haus, only without the roulette and trente-et-
quarante tables, and without that company from
Athens and Boheme which enlivens the reunions of
Homburg and Baden. It was Sunday yesterday ;
few of the English were out for excursions ; many
had congregated at Lucerne, for the convenience of
the fine new church they have erected in the centre
of what may be called the English town. It was

pleasant to see them, the girls sailing in in all their

tidy decent muslin, coming down and sitting in family
groups at the various tables to breakfast ; pleasanter
still to see them walking in a well-suiteddemurepro-
cession to their places at the long tables for their 5
o'clock dinner—their own late dinner ; no connexion
with the Continental feed at 1 o'clock in the hottest
hours of the day. Charming it was between meals,
or between the church services, to see the same
groups at the literary end of the saloon—for the
enormous hall, divided into two compartments by a
double row of stately pillars, answers both purposes
at its two opposite extremities—to see the same
groups, I said, pore on the Saturday morning papers
from home, look over albums and caricatures, engage
in desultory talk ; all their proverbial insular re-
straint put aside, the ice of their national reserve
broken, and forming altogether, if not quite a
family, at least quite a friendly circle, with less stiff-
ness and ceremony than one would observe in many
a London drawing-room. A few well-broken Yan-
kees claimed right of cousinship with the statelier
Briton, and their somewhat pushing familiarity and
active inquisitiveness contributed, perhaps, not a
little to the expansion of souls and liveliness of talk.
Fewer still were the Germans, and other Conti-
nentals, but they were evidently of that class who do
not object to a house full of English, a class who
rather hover about the English, try to understand
them, and like them in proportion. Presently, as the
shades of evening fell, the groups, one after another,
adjourned to the terrace outside, under the horse-
chestnut trees, on the lake. There was the lake to be
wooed and worshipped, the darkening hills, the long
smooth ridge of the Righi, the high, rugged crest of
Pilatus. There were plans for the morning move ;
parties made up ; a bantering with the guides ; a
bargaining for horses or carriages ; then a yawn

here and there ; a complaint of weariness ; a fore-
thought of early rising on the morrow. Group after
group vanished. By 9 all was quiet without and
within the hotel.

_
From Newhaven to Dieppe.

On Saturday last a steamship race of great inte-
threat in the present state of naval architecture took
place on the passage across the Channel between
Newhaven and Dieppe, under circumstances very
similar to those described in The Sun a year ago,
in the case of a steaming contest between the Mar-
' seilles and the Alexandria. The new vessel, named
the'Bordeaux, tried for the first time on Saturday,
belongs, 'as in the former case, jointly to the London
and Brighton Company and to the French company
whose lines run from Dieppe to Paris in connection
with the English company, and has beeilbuilt and
engined by Mr. C. Lungley, at Deptford-green,
whose method of constructing fast steamers was so
signally successful in the case of the Marseilles. The
great interest of the trial lies mainly in the fact that
the, new sectional form of bow, which has been in-

troduced in her Majesty's paddle despatch steamer
Helicon with marked advantage, and likewise in the
armour-clad frigates Bellerophon, Pallas, Lord
Clyde, &c., has been adopted independently and
simultaneously by Mr. Lungley with remarkably
good results. The Bordeaux has been built not for
gpeed or even for passenger traffic exclusively, but
to combine with these a great cargo-carrying power,
which i 6 becoming continually more and more ne-
cessary on theNewhaven and D ieppe line of steamers,
owing to the great development of trade between

England and France that has marked the progress
of the last two or three years. She is 210 ft. long, of
23ift. beam, lift. in depth, tonnage 576 (builder's
measurement), and fitted with engines of 180-horse
power (nominal), on the oscillating principle, with
brass tubular boilers and patent feathering floats,
the engines as well as the ship having been constructed
at Mr. Lungley's establishment. The vessel selected
to compete with the Bordeaux was the Lyons, a
very fast steamer, built, with almost exclusive re-
gard to speed, by the late firm of Messrs. Scott Rus-
sell and Co., and now furnished with new and power-'
ful boilers to prepare her for this trial. The two
vessels left Newhaven about 11 a.m., the Lyons hav-
ing the advantage by about two minutes, and when
the more burdensome and commodious Bordeaux fol-
lowed it involved a reversal of all old-established ideas
of shipbuilding to suppose that she could ever over-
take, even with so slight a difference at starting, the
sharper and fleeter-looking vessel. A very shorttime,
however, sufficed to enable the Bordeaux to over-
haul the Lyons ; but she had scarcely done so before
some cause for a temporary stoppage of the former
ship arose, and she was soon left far behind. This
incident, however, only showed the new vessel to
greater advantage, for after again starting on her
stern chase she gradually drew up to her competitor,
passed her, and entered Dieppe harbour at least 17
minutes in advance of her, and a crowd of specta-
tors who cheered her arrival, which was succeeded
by an international dinner and display of fireworks.

RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE.

SOUTH-EASTERN.

The report of Mr. Ashcroft, the engineer, stated
with respect to the construction of this company's
Lewisham and Tonbridge line that the first section
of it, from the Greenwich junction to Chiselhurst,
was passed by the Government Inspector on the Ist
of June last, and was now being daily worked for
passenger traffic. The earthworks onwards between
Chiselhurst and Orpington were progressing in a
satisfactory manner. Out of 780,000 cubic yards
of earthwork 350,000 had been tipped into the Or-
pington great embankment, leaving 430,000 yet to
remove to complete that work. The cutting between
Orpington and Chelsfield was completed, except
about 6,000 cubic yards at the south end of the
tunnel. The length of the Chelsfield tunnel would
be 594 yards, of which 429 were completed. The
brickwork was being proceeded with at the rate of
15 yards per week. In the cutting between Chels-
field and Polhill tunnels about 50,000 cubic yardsof
excavation had been carried to spoil, and there yet
remained to be removed 450,000 cubic yards. This
cutting formed the key to the finishing and opening
of the line to Sevenoaks. The Polhill tunnelwould
be 2,530 yards in length, of which 1,146 yards were
finished and bricked in, and the rest was advancing
at the rate of 30 yards per week. The works be-
tween Polhill and Sevenoaks tunnel were in a for-
ward state. The stone cutting at the north end of
Sevenoaks tunnel contained 355,000 cubic yards,
of which about 140,000 cubic yards remained to
be removed. The Sevenoaks tunnel, when com-
pleted, would be :451 yards in length, of whichwork on the line, an.dshewak.s,
which rate of prog,ress
1,362 yards were
being this
pwuassh etdh the heaviest
at tll e rate of 30 yards per Nvede
(
would shortly be increased. The works from Seven-
oaks to Tonbridge were proceeding in a satisfactory
manner, and would be finished quite as early as the
more northern portions of the line. The earth-
works on the Dartford branch were completed, with
the exception of small portions at Penhill and Cray_
ford, which latter had been left in for ballast, and
the brickwork was nearly finished.