The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-23 00:00:00

Fall of Five Railway Arches•

On Sunday night, about eight o'clock, during the time
the rain was falling in torrents and the wind was whistling
loudly, the inhabitants of Battersea and Wandsworth were
aroused from their usual state of quietude by hearing a
tremendous noise, similar to four or five separate severe
claps of thunder. For a few minutes speculation was of a
varied form—some imagined that a dreadful collision had
taken place upon the London, Chatham, and Dover Rail-
way, and many persons ran out of their houses to render
assistance to the supposed ill-fated passengers, when the
cause of the alarm was soon apparent. Near Battersea-
bridge, and close to the last-named line, the contractors
for the extension of the Brighton Railway have
been turning large brick arches, in order to form
the supports of the permanent way. Owing, however, to
the great quantity of rain that has fallen during the past
few days—more especially on Sunday—it is supposed that
the water had penetrated the concrete foundations before
the material had obtained that solidity necessary to keep
up the weight of the arches ; but one thing is quite certain,
that all of a sudden one arch came down with a loud and
rumbling noise, and fell almost as flat as a sheet of paper
upon the ground. In a minute or less afterwards, another
fell in the same way, and a third succeeded, and one on
either side followed in a similar way, making, in the whole,
five of the massive arches that have been razed to the
ground. Fortunately, it being Sunday, none of the mon
were at work, consequently no one was injured.
The other arches, from the examination made, appear
not to have suffered the least from the violence of the
heavy rains.

NEW ROYALTY THEATRE.—A new comic operetta,
entitled, "Felix ; or, The Festival of Roses," will be per-
formed this evening, for the first time. Felix, Mr. Eliot
Galer.
VICTOR HUGO (unquestionably one of the greatest
French writers of the age), is also, says a Paris
letter, one of the most successful in a pecuniary sense. He
received 400,000 f. (.£16,000) for "Les lliserables." He
has sold a pros. work, "Les Travailleurs de la Mer," to
Lacroix, of Brussels, for £6,000, and five volumes of
poems, "Les Chansons des Rues et des Bois," the
first of which is announced to appear next week, have
been disposed of to the same firm for £B,OOO. Accord-
ing to the Athenaeum, however, thus within five years
Victor Hugo has made £30,000 by his pen—a very hand-
some sum, but I must say I can hardly understand how
such heavy prices can possibly pay the publishers. The
Figaro, to which I am indebted fur these details, adds some
curious particulars about M. Hugo's mode of composition.
It seems that up to this time ho has never allowed a single
lino of his writing to go to the printer's. Ho has all his
" slips" copied out by his wife or daughter, and forms a
kind of autographic museum of the original MSS. of all
works. From that rule, however, he has departed, as re-
gards the new poems, which were jotted down chiefly in
pencil on an album ; the slips were tern out of the book
and taken directly to the printer's, at Brussels, whore they
are being set up under the author's own eye. It is a
curious fact that Victor Hugo should labour under the
delusion that he has mistaken his vocation, and that
as a painter he would have achieved greater fame.
The house of Lacroix and Co., of Brussels and Paris, has
purchased the right of publication for twelve years for the
sum of 40,000 f., or £1,600,