The Sun.
London, England, 1854-01-23 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, JANUARY 23, 1854

Everything, it will now be clearly observed,
threatens the commencement of a general war,
and that almost immediately. The indications
of this come pouring in upon us simultaneously
from St. Petersburg and from Constantinople.
There cannot any longer be an instant's doubt
that the military preparations made by the CzAR
have throughout been conducted upon a scale
of unusual magnitude, and those preparations
are still continued without pause, while
orders have been recently despatched from the
Imperial Councils of the AUTOCRAT for the speedy
passage of the Danube by the army under Prince
GORTSCHA KOFF. Meanwhile the maritime exer-
tions of Russia have been, and are still, of an ex-
tent and continuousness quite extraordinary. Con-
siderable numbers of the Russian seamen have
been conveyed overland from the Baltic to the
Euxinc, and have thus swelled the resources
already collected together in Sebastopol. Under
these circumstances, are we still to hear of the
carrying out of those craven orders by the
combined fleets under Admirals Dtainss and
HAMELIN ? Are we still to hear of Russian ships
of war being politely saluted and nothing more by
their antagonists—of anything like a collision
being at all cost sedulously avoided—of our,

acting towards the Muscovites (if attacked by
them) simply on the defensive ? It is in-
credible. The whole country is unanimously
against any such policy on the part of the
Government. Very recently we pointed out the
decisive tone in which the Edinburgh has recently
spoken as to the absolute and imperative necessity
of a war vrith:Russia being carried out, if once ad-
ventured upon, by a concentration against the
enemy of all our energy, of all our daring, of all
our warlike resources, both military and maritime.
We may now refer no less pointedly to the precisely
similar ardour with which within the last few hours
the old Tory Quarterly has at length re-echoed the
sentiments of her old Whig contemporary. The
whole country, we repeat, is unanimous, all
parties are unanimous—Whigs, Tories, Radicals,
every one—upon this point, as opposed to the
hesitating and timorous policy hitherto persisted
in by the Coalition.

The inauguration of Sir EDWARD BurwEn
LYTTON, as Honorary President of the Associated
Societies of the University of Edinburgh, on
Wednesday evening, afforded him another oppor-
tunity of delivering one of those masterly ora-
tions by which he has already, at intervals,
evidenced the scope of his genius through utter-
ances attesting at 'once his capacity as a profound
thinker, and his eloquence as a skilled and accom-
plished rhetorician. Everything combined to
invest the occasion of this remarkable Address
with an interest peculiarly calculated to captivate
the popular imagination. It was the welcome by
Scotland of one of the most illustrious of living
Englishmen. It was the organisation upon a new
basis of those learned societies—including the
Dialectic, Diagnostic, Scots-law, and Hunterian
Medical—which were instituted many years back for
the cultivation of oratory, science, and literature.
It was an occasion, moreover, upon which were
assembled together, in honour of the first-elected
President of the Association, many among the
most distinguished representatives of the intel-
lectual power of the age, of its comprehensive
erudition, and of its ripened scholarship. Sir
EDWARD evinced, from the first word to the last,
his appreciation of the importance attached to the
incident of his inauguration. He revealed a per-
fect sense, on his own part, of the value of that
incident as another bond of sympathy, drawing
yet more closely together the fellowship of enthu-
siasm between educated Scotchmen and educated
Englishmen. He betrayed this salutary con-
sciousness, we repeat, throughout the whole of
his harangue, rendering it especially conspicuous
in the exordium and the peroration. In the ex-
ordium by those genial and unstinted panegyrics
on the mental glories of the land in whose capital
he was speaking, as well as by the fervent and
graceful tributes of admiration offered by him to
the more notable among his Scotch contemporaries.
In the peroration by that adroit reference to
the nationality of his hearers, in which he
blended by a master-touch the severity of re-
proof with the suavity of compliment.
It could not but be interesting to those who
listened to BULWER LYTTON on Wednesday—
children for the most part of that " land of brown
heath"—to hear from his lips the avowal : " The
first poets who charmed me from play in the half-
holidays of school were CAMPBELL and SCOTT—
the first historians who clothed, for me, with life,
the shadows of the past, were ROBERTSON and
Hum E—the first philosopher, who, by the grace of
his attractive style, lured me on to the analysis of
the human mind, was DITGALD STEWART—and
the first novel that I bought with my own money
and hid under my pillow, was the `Roderick
Random' of SMOLLETT." Neither could they have
hearkened without some emotion to that catalogue
of their living celebrities, in the enumeration of
which Sir EDWARD directed marked attention to
the " vigorous and rushing verse" of AYTOUN, to
the "wide repute" of PILLANs, to the "comprehen-
sive science" of HAMILTON, to the union of " all
that is tender and graceful with all that
is hardy and masculine" in the exquisite intellect
of I'VmsoN, and, " last but not least," to the
integrity and independence of MACAULAY, to his
luminous genius and his scholastic attainments.
Referring to the close not less earnestly than to
the opening of the Address, we would especially
revert to the consummate skill with which Sir E.
B. LYTTON reminded his auditors as the sons of
Scotland that, while demanding with their ac-
customed energy whatever they might consider
to be equal rights, they would be untrue
to their own glory as a nation, if they
did not feel instinctively that the veritable
majesty of Scotland needs neither the pomp
of courts nor the blazoning of heraldry. "What
though Hulyrood be desolate," he exclaimed,
" what though no king holds revel in its halls ?
—the empire of Scotland has but extended its
range : and, blended with England, under the
daughter of your ancient kings, peoples the Aus-
tralian wilds that lay beyond the chart of COLUM-
BUS, and rules over the Indian realms that eluded
the grasp of ALEXANDER." Adding, while at the
close of his remark he pointed to a banner sus-
pended opposite--" That Empire does not suffice
for you : it may decay, it may perish. More
grand is the domain you have won over human
thought, and identified with the eternal progress
of intellect and freedom. From the charter of
that domain no ceremonial can displace the im-
pression of your seal—in the van of that progress no
blazon can flaunt before that old lion of Scotland."
It is not, however, by these graceful and eloquent
allusions to all that is noblest, and truest, and
loveliest in the devotion of every enlightened Scot
to the soil and the history of his fatherland, that
the speech delivered by Sir BULWER LYTTON on
Wednesday last, in the Queen-street Hall, at
Edinburgh, is alone, or even, by any means, the
most remarkable. It is rather by those interme-
diate portions of it, lying between its opening and
its conclusion—the pith and substance of the ora-
tion—in which the orator took so ample and gor-
geous a survey of the prominent glories of ancien tli-
terature. Itwas in that comprehensive glance down
the long perspective of the classic past—from which
the speaker drew forth that masterly resume of the
literary achievements of antiquity. Before enter-
ing upon the consideration of this ample theme,
bewildering, indeed, from its amplitude, Sir E. B.
LYTTON endeavoured to impress upon the youth
of Scotland the imperative necessity of com-
bining the twin duties of observation and
inquiry—bearing in mind that " the instincts
of the infant are the primary duties of the
student" remembering that " a man will
always be eminent according to the vigilance
with which he observes and the acuteness with
which he inquires." Reminding them of that de-
claration of Dr. ARNOLD, that " the difference be-
tween one boy and another was not so much in
talent as in energy," and declaring for his own
part, " I am no believer in genius without labour,
but I do believe that labour, judiciously and con-
tinuously applied, becomes genius in itself "—Sir
EDWARD urgently impressed upon the young
student, whether of science or of literature, the
absolute need of perseverance. And " perse-
verance," said he with an admirable felicity of
expression, "is energy made habitual." Not less
exquisitely epigrammatic, by the way, were those
sentences in which, a little later on, he spoke of
Moral Philosophy as the hand-maid of Divinity,
and as the sister of Jurisprudence. Subsequently
came that magnificent survey of classical litera-
ture, of which we have already spoken in terms
of deserved and unaffected admiration. A sur-
vey, in which, " looking down the abyss of ages,"
the Pcet recognised by an intuitive subtlety of
perception that the apparent repose of classic art
was none other than a mere effect of distance.
[After the lapse of two thousand years, he argued,
"if we do not see all the play of the waves it is
because we do not stand on the beach."] A sur-
vey in which the Philosopher beheld along the
marge of Paganism the dim adumbration of
the approaching Christianity. [" When we
look from ARISTOTLE to his great master
PLATO," said BULWER LYTTON, "it is as if
we looked from Nature up to Nature's Gon."]
A survey in which the Orator di asbrurncde-s
ing materials for the display of all the resources