The Sun.
London, England, 1865-06-23 00:00:00

NEW MEMI)ER,

Mr. BRASSEY took the oaths and his seat for Devon-
port in the room of Sir A. Buller, resigned. He was
introduced by Mr. Jackson and Col. White.
POOR-LAW BOARD CONTINUANCE, &c. BILL.
On the order for the committal of this re-committed bill,
Lord FERMOY denounced it as a sham, and moved as
an amendment that the bill should simply limit the con-
tinuance of the powers of the Poor-law 'bard for one
year. _ .

Mr. H. LEWIS seconded the amendment.
The SPEAKER reminded the ,noble lord that if he car-
ried the amendment it would negative the motion, that be
should leave the chair, and the house would not be able to
go into committee even for the purpose of continuance.
Sir B. BRIDGES, Sir J. SHELLY, Sir M. W. RIDLEY and
other members earnestly pressed upon the Government
that the bill should be simply a continuance bill.
Mr. VILLIERS defended the bill, which, he said, was
exactly what it professed to be.
A long discussion followed, which resulted in the amend-
ment being withdrawn, the President of the Poor Law
Board, however, agreeing that the bill should be made a
continuance' bill simply for a year, and the whole of the
other claims were, therefore, negatived.
The sitting was suspended at half-past three.
At six o'clock the house resumed, and was
LEFT SITTING.]

FOURTH Efl ITION

SUN OFFICE, HALF-PAST 7 O'CLOCK.

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE—This Day.

NEWTON RACES—Tms DAY.

SELLING HANDICAP.

Qui va la
Lady Sefton
SCURRY HANDICAP

•
Edinburgh
Jewel
Nell Digby
LATEST BETTING.
NORTHUMBERLAND PLAPE.
100 to 30 agst Caller On (taken)
Bto 1 agst La Toucques (taken)
10 to 1 agst Le Marechal (taken)
100 to 8 agst Brindisi (taken)
- 100 to 6 agst Brandy Wine (taken)

THE HA.NDEL FESTIVAL,

The Grand Full Rehearsal.—(This Day ,
This afternoon's superb performance in the
Crystal Palace at Sydenham might be described
(and in no way extravagantly) as a magnificent
flourish of trumpets, announcing the approach of
the Three Grand Days set apart next week for the
Handel Festival. Everything connected with the
celebration to-day of the advent of this Triennial
homage paid to the incomparable genius of Handel
was again, as usual, carried out upon a scale of
most appropriate, or, it may be said, of simply pro-
portionate grandeur and magnificence. The wea-
ther itself could hardly by any possibility have been
more propitious. Our English midsummer in all
its glory rendered the Crystal Palace itself radiant
with sunshine, while filling the green branches
of the " leafy month of June" more pro-
fusely than ever with the gorgeous colouring
of the rainbow in all the abounding blossoms-
of those flowering trees and shrubs and efflorescent
plants, that are of themselves so complete an adorn-
ment, so matchless an attraction among the count-
less other attractions and adornments lavished by
Nature and by Art, by the gift of God and the
ingenuity of Man upon the glorious Palace of the
People down at Sydenham. The attendance, again,
has this day of itself been a sight worth seeing.
So vast a multitude, even with the vivid remem-
brance before us of past occasions of the like kind,
was such as could scarcely in reason have been
anticipated. Gigantic as the attendance has been
before now upon the three preceding celebrations
of this Triennial Handel Festival, it has to-day been
altogether surpassed. Much of this astonishing
increase in the number of the visitors is attributed,
of course, to the greater facilities of rapid commu-
nication by railway with all parts of the United
Kingdom. But, coupled with that fact, there
is another that appears to us to be equally
obvious and equally noticeable namely, the
fact of the extraordinary fame of these un-
rivalled, nay absolutely unprecedented perform-
ances—awaking an eager curiosityamong thousands
who must have merely heard of them or read about
them, until now, when, the opportunity again re-
curring, the desire at last to participate in the en-
joyment themselves, because (with these additional
thousands) just simply irresistible. Triennial fes-
tival after triennial festival, it has been thus in re-
gard to the appreciable increase in the multitude of
visitors swarming up to London from all quarters
of the United Kingdom. Occurring, moreever, as
these wonderful performances do, triennially, and
not annually (their annual repetition, if only
by reason of their magnitude and com-
plexity, would, in fact, be an achievement
incapable of realisation, if attempted),
they possess always the charm of Novelty—the
charms of a Freshness, that is that never palls by
too frequent repetition. Every successive occasion,
besides this, gives evidence, on the part of the great
bulk of the performers, that their hands and voices
get more " in" to the adequate production of the
colossal work before them ! Practice, here as else-
where, tends, more and more, towards the all-
desirable goal of Perfection. Turning, however, to
the great preliminary performance which has to-
day signalized the inauguration of the Fourth of
these Triennial Festivals, this henceforth especially
memorable Festival of 1865, we would here remark,
to begin with, that the wondrous Orchestra never
looked more magnificently ! Yonder, in the central
position of all, confronting that marvellous gathering
together of Four Thousand Singers and Instrumen-
talists, was the Prince of Conductors—Mr. Costa.
Seated far above him before the triple keyboard of
the stupendous organ, himself amere dot amongst the
multitude was the organist of the day—doubly typi-
cal, one is tempted to say, through the simple oddity
of his name, of the intensely English character of the
performance throughout—Mr. Brownsmith ! Ex-
tending to the right hand and to the left in the
noble sweep of the concave semicircle of the orches-
tra—a structure so gigantic that it is actually in its
dimensions twice the diameter of the dome of St.
Paul's Cathedral—extending to the right hand and
to the left, we say, from those two important, con-
spicuous, and central figures (above, the Organist !
below, the Conductor !), like the wings of a very
army of performers, were ranged the 500 instru-
mentalists, as many as 400 of them artists armed
merely with stringed instruments, aided by another
hundred weilding the varied sounds that flow from
auxiliary instruments of metal, wood, leather, and
parchment—drum, and cymbal, and trumpet, and
ophicleide,,and serpent, flute and bassoon, clarionet
and trombone, hautboy and triangle, horn, and
harp, and flageolet—backed, surrounded, encom-
passed by the serried ranks of the huge chorus, or
rather choruses—singers numbering the occupants of
thatlovely and symmetrical orchestra, up to the grand
total. already mentioned, that wondrous total never
approached by any other choir upon record, the
almost inconceivable total of Four Thousand Per-
formers ! Eleven years have sufficed to lead to this
marvellous combination. Sixteen hundred of the Four
Thousand, it should be remembered, too, are fur-
nished by the Metropolitan Division alone of the Han-
del Festival Choir, that important division, that most
important of all division's, having been drilled with
so much regularity, from time to time, in the area
of Exeter Hall, under the master-baton of Mr Costa!
Co-operating with these sixteen hundred amateur
members of London, there are here, besides, chora-
lists gathered together from all the principal cities
of England, Ireland, and Scotland—from Binning-