The Sun.
London, England, 1862-09-20 00:00:00

prejudices, and tyrannies form a thick vault around
it, and so much darkness is above it. Alas ! since
man's birth the whole of history has been subterra•
nean. We see nowhere the divine ray ; but in the
nineteenth century, after the French revolution,
there is hope, there is certainty. Yonder, far in a
distance, a luminous point appears. It increases ;
it increases every moment; it is the future; it is
realisation ; it is the end of woe, the dawn of joy ;
it is Canaan, the future land where we shall only
have around us brethren and above us Heaven.
Strength to the sacred locomotive ! Courage to
thought ; courage to science; courage to philosophy.
Courage to the press ! courage to all of you writers !
The hour is drawing nigh when men, delivered at
last from this dismal tunnel of 6,000 years, will
suddenly burst forth in all its dazzling bright-
ness !" There !—are not our words justified ?
Is not that for the Press something very like
indeed to an Apotheosis? It is intensely
French. The French Revolution is everything.
The epoch of the Redemption is, theref3re, we may
presume nothing by comparison. Nay, are the
words not positive upon this point. " Alas !" he
cries out, "since man's birth the whole of history
is subterranean." Adding, " We' see nowhere the
Divine ray." Nor is this enough: he continues—
"But—in the nineteenth century—after the French
Devolution, there is hope, there is certainty." And
at the last, "The hour is drawing nigh when men,
delivered at last from this dismal tunnel of six
thousand years, will suddenly burst forth in all its
brightness." Are we not right in calling all this
intensely French ? M. VICTOR Hugo, carried
away by the impetus of his audacious genius, is
too fond repeatedly of approaching rashly to
the very verge of the profane. With our full
and absolute appreciation of the immense im-
portance of the Press as an institution, and of the
French Revolution (the French Revolution) as an
epoch in the history of humanity, the Ray
Divine came not, surely, in the age of ROBES-
PIERRE and his compatriots, but Eighteen
Centuries previously ! And as to the simile
of the Tunnel through which the steam engine
of the Press, according to M. VICTOR HUGO,
is bearing onward the train of Civilisation to the
point at which it is to emerge into the outer day—
it is one that has an uncomfortable reminder
to us of that last wild phantasy of JOHN
MARTIN, the Great Poet-Painter, that won-
drous representation of the Dies Irce, in which
a railway train, engine, tender, and all, are
being spilt into an abyss that has abruptly opened
before them while in full career. It is to be regretted
that these and other, the like, only too charac-
teristic extravagances, have in any way served to
mar the touching and impressive address recently
delivered at Brussels to his admirers by VICTOR
HuGo, the Great Poet, the Great Dramatist, the
Great Novelist! One whose genius having, some few
years back, soared heavenwards with the tapering
pinnacles of Notre Dame de Paris, has now dif-
fused itself abroad far and wide amongst his fel-
low mortals, the lowliest and the most degraded
even amongst them, felons and strumpets, all the
scum and offal of the human family peopling,
together with the noble, and the beautiful, and the
good, the wonderful pages of Les Miserables.

Can this be true about KOSSUTH, the Great
Patriot-Statesman of the Hungarians ? The tidings
now coming to us about him form, in truth, a very
melancholy companion-picture to that only too well
known as representing the actual position just now
of the fortunes of GARIBALDI. It is asserted, ap-
parently upon too good authority, that Kos-
SUTEE is at the present time living (only just
barely thing) at Turin—in very reduced cir-
cumstances. His two sons are certainly under-
stood to have obtained some employment in a
public office in that capital—but the pay received
by them in return seems to be the merest pittance.
'Worse, far worse, however, than the pecuniary
straits to which the family is just now subjected,
is the serious nature of the illness afflicting the be-
loved central form in that home group of the wife of
the Great Man—the mother of his two sons. It will
be remembered that but a brief while since the
family of KOSSUTH suffered a very poignant grief
in the premature death of his only daughter ! The
mother of that fair young girl, now in her early
grave, appears to have been stricken down now in
her turn by mortal illness. Well do we remem-
ber the arrival of this interesting family, thirteen
years ago, in this metropolis ; when in Mr. MAS-
SINGBIRD'S house, near Eaton-square, we were in-
troduced to KOSSUTH by that common friend of all
advocates of Liberalism, the late Lord DUDLEY
COUTTS STUART. The two sons, now toiling over
their office work at Turin,and with them then the fair
young daughter (now passed away from this world),
were graceful little children. KOSSUTH then him-
self, it is true, with his noble heart oppressed with
grief by the recent dashing down into the dust of
his Golden Hopes—but with his darling home-
affections uncrushed ! Cannot something be done
for this true Patriot? Cannot England accord to him
and his some practical assurance of her sympathy ?