The Sun.
London, England, 1831-12-30 00:00:00

THE LETTERS OF THE GREAT.

Lord Nugent, in his " Memorials of John
Hampden, his Party, and his Times" (in an
exceedingly interesting, though not very Aristo-
cratic work, just published)) gives some curious
instances of the letters of great folks. He first
quotes one from the Duchess of Buckingham
to James 1., which, as his Lordship truly ob-
serves, shows on what strange domestic topics
the females of that Noble House, then so
favoured and so dishonoured, found entertain-
ment for the servile inquisitiveness of their
master's character. The letter was as follows

" MAY IT PLEASE YOUR MAJESTIE,—I have rcceved
the two boxes of dried plums and grays, and the box of
violatt cak and chickens, for which 1 most humblie thank
your Majestie.
" I hope my Lord Arran has tould your Majestic that I
did mean to wcne Mall very shortly. y I wood not by any
nielts_a done it till I had first made your Mojestie ac-
quaint—ed.-Milk it ; and by reason toy cuser. Brett's boy
has been ill of kit, makes me very desirous to
wene her ; * -k) Ido intend to make trial! this night
how shee will endure it. day, praying fur your Ma-
jesties health and long life, I humbly take my leave.
" Your Majesti3's most humbell servant,
" K. BUCKINGHAM."

Lord Nugent then gives another, from " Dal-
rymple's Collection of Letters," " if it be only
for the noble contrast of style and sentiment
whicil it displays in another person of the same
rank ; and as a sample of concise but pure and
touching eloquence." It is written by another
Catharine, the Duchess Dowager of Lennox,
widow of Esme, the third Duke, and, as Dal-
rymple terms her, " the mother of many heroes."
This is the letter :

44 MY SOVEREIGN LORD,—According to your Majesty's
gracious pleasure signified unto me, I have sent a young
man to attend to you, accompanied with a widow's prayers
and tears that he may wax old in your Majesty's se,vice,
and in his fidelity and affection may equal his ancestors
departed ; so shall he find grace and favour in the eyes
of my Lord the King, which will revive the dying hopes
and raise the dejected spirits of a comfortless mother.
" Your Majesty's most humble servant,
" KA. LENNOX."
[This " young man" was James Duke of
Richmond and Lennox.]

In the winter 1813-14, a fog set iti on Christ-
may-day, which lasted with little intermission till February.
THE GLOVE TRADE.--The glovers of this
city, in common with those in the business at Worcester,
Yeovil, and various other places, though able and desirous
to work, have the desponding prospect of shortly being
destitute of employment, and consequently reduced to po-
verty and want. It is not generally known that this
trade, which has hitherto been carried on to a very consi-
derable extent in this city, at Kingston, Leominster, Ll/4c.,
besides employing a large number of men ar.d their fami-
lies, has afforded a profitable occupation to the wives and
daughters of our peasantry in various parishes, some of
them at distances of seven, eight, and ten miles front tip--
manufactory ; and the extent of this employment may be
estimated, when we state that one manfacturer only in this
city has constantly, we believe, paid more than 561. weekly
to his work-people.— Worcester Paper.

tellect to acquire a knowledge of that art. Gru-
terus has preserved for our information the notes
of Tyro, the freed-man of Cicero. The Re-
public and the Government of cities also main-
tained at their expense these secretaries. It is
not necessary here to detail the history of the
notaries in Europe who succeeded the tahellions
of Rome. The intention is only to throw some
light o❑ the origin of short-hand-writing, and to
prove the great estimation in which the art was
held by ancient statesmen and orators.
Next to the art of printing, short-hand writing
claims the admiration of mankind ; it may be
called the triumph of human intellect. The
wisdom of the Senate, the principles of legisla-
tion, and the dicta of legal tribunals, are now
diffused over the British islands with the rapi-
dity of the eagle's wing. The learning, taste,
and reason of the most distinguished men, taken,
as it were, from the lips of the speakers, and
conveyed daily and hourly by the press of Great
Britain, must produce light and knowledge
among the people, which no other system of
education can impart. The advantages derived
from short-hand writing are not only great in a
public point of view, but privately the art is
useful. The student who attends lectures may
bring away the very words of the lecturer, and
impress upon the mind at leisure the correct ideas
of a speaker, in a way that can never lead to
error. The art, some years ago, was not applied
to any useful purpose in England. The debates
in the British Parliament were reported, but the
writers conveyed no valuable information to the
public. The speeches reported were too often
the mere composition of reporters, who wrote
from memory. We have now, so far as the limits
of newspapers will allow, the emphatic words of
the leaders in Parliament, upon all important
subjects. It is true inaccuracy will sometimes
occur, but every one who has attended the House
of Commons, and the other branch of the Le-

gislature, must know that errors are occasioned
by the want of proper facilities to report. The
distance at which strangers or writers are placed
from the speakers in the House of Lords and
House of Commons is too great. It is impos-
sible to hear persons who speak in a low tone of
voice, and it ii almost unnecessary to observe
that a reporter cannot report accurately that
which he does not distinctly hear, and clearly
understand. We are enabled to make what
may be considered a .bold assertion, but it is
nevertheless true, namely, that a short-hand
writer, placed in a situation where he can hear,
may commit to paper, if necessary, every word
uttered by a speaker. The skill evinced daily
in the art of reporting must be considered one
of the great foundations of public liberty, and
every friend to the British Constitution should
stand forward the advocate of reporters, who
have done much within the last twenty years to
promote the liberty of the subject, the blessings
of the British Constitution, and the morals of
the people.
It would not be difficult to prove that the
present system of reporting is advantageous to
domestic peace, and the stability of Government.
The people of England are the best subjects in
the world, provided they find in their rulers due
regard for the principles of that Constitution
which their best blood has been so often nobly
shed to defend. Expose fairly the sentiments
of the representatives in Parliament, who dis-
cuss the measures of Government, and there
will be no disposition to form plans of conspiracy
treason, and disaffection, which have generally
been the result of false or mistaken views of the
measures of Governments. The public Press
is now a stream of light and information, flow-
ing through the United Kingdom, and should
any Government be weak enough to arrest its
progress, the obstruction must produce con-
sequences fatal indeed to public peace and tran-
quillity. Let the Press be unshackled, and its
licentiousness, which seems to be an in-
separable vice, stands restrained by wise
legislative enactments. Experience has proved
that no Government can expect to prosper
without a free Press. The great Republic of
Venice, established upon a system of secrecy,
fell a victim to that very principle. The mea-
sures of its Council, though intended to promote
the public interest, were dark and mysterious.
The people kept in ignorance, and naturally sus-
picious of all rulers, engaged in plots against the
State, and at last the army itself, on which the
Senate most relied for protection, became the de•
stroyers of the Republic. Had Venice, in the ple,
nitude of her greatness, possessed a free Press, and
not the false policy of concealment, the Govern-
ment of that once powerful commercial State might
have existed to this day. Events of more recent
data have proved that an attempt to keep down
the spirit of the age by restraints upon the Press
must excite universal disgust, and kindle the
flame of revolution ; that flame which drove
Charles the Tenth from the throne of the Bour-
bons. Happily there is no apprehension that
the liberty of the Pi csc can be suppressed in this
country, whilst short-hand writing gives to the
reporter the invaluable power of spreading truth
and information over the land, the people may
boast of advantages unknown to surrounding
nations.—Morning ihivertiser.

The Westminster Review hints that the
" Tour of a German Prince," attributed to Prince PUCK -
LER MusKAw, is the production of 4 young Irishman of
good family, in foreign service, during his two years' fur-
lough, done into choice German by the very able chaplain
of his regiment.

On Monday M. Majendie attended at the Aca-
demy of Sciences, in Paris, and delivered a verbal
report of his visit to Sunderland. In addition to the
circumstances stated in his letter from that place, he
said that the most striking phenomenon of the
cholera is the almost total stoppage of the circula-
tion of the blood, the action of the heart being re-
duced to not more than ten or twelve pulsations in
a minute. To this he attributed the black or blue
appearance of the extremities, and the imminent dan-
ger of piscing the patient in an upright position,
which not unfrequently produced instant death, as
thereby the passage of the blood to the head is ren-
dered extremely difficult. This effect is the same in
both sexes and at every age. The principal cause
of the extensive ravages of the disease he supposed
to be the horrible state of poverty of the lower or-
ders. " There are," he said, " three parishes in
Sunderland, two being situated on the heights, and
the third in a damp position on the borders of a
river. The two former contain upwards of 800 spa-
cious houses, in which all the comfort that civiliza-
tion can suggest, or affluence procure, is to be found,
and con'equently scarcely a single case has occurred
in them ; but in the lower town, occupied by 17,000
inhabitants, of whom 14,000 are in a state of pau-
perism, arid the objects of parochial relief, the ravages
have been carried to the extentrecorded in the public
prints." This part of Sunderland he described as
consisting of nothing but an assemblage of alle)s
scarcely four feet wide, each room in which rarely
exceeds ten feet square, containing a whole family
huddled together day and night, and the walls of
which are rendered black by the smoke of the coal
fires with which they there cook their scanty meals,
the whole forming a picture of wretchedness,
filth, and poverty, which, accustomed as he has
been from his professional duties to visit the
abodes of human misery, he could not have be-
lieved to exist in the present age in any part of
civilized Europe. The evil, he stated, was increased
by the atrocious practice of farming out the poor,
though, indeed, the poor-house was even worse
than these private dwellings, hundreds of paupers
of both sexes being crowded within it, arid annually
subject to the attacks of typhus and scarlet fevers,
and the measles. M. Majendie lamented that the
popular prejudice against dissection was so great
that the faculty had not been able to obtain permis-
sion to open the body of a single person who had
died of cholera. He expressed great satisfaction at
the liberal assistance he had received from his profes-
sional brethren both in London and Sunderland.
He also approved of the judicious conduct of the
British Government in refraining from all rigorous
measures for preventing communication by laud;
and as to the quarantine adopted for the vessels, it
was, he said, merely nominal, as the ships were
stationed at not more than twenty or thirty feet
from the land, and the crews had every facility of
going on shore at night. Slight, however, as the
restraint is, it has caused such stagnation of business
in the port of Sunderland, that hundreds have been
thrown out of employ; and new causes of poverty
having resulted, the number of cases of cholera has
been augmented. M. Majendie considers that tie
fatal elect of this disease has been considerably aug-
mented by the precautions taken on the continent
to prevent its progress. M. Moreau Joanne' made
some observations on what M. Majendie had said,
and attempted to show the advantages resulting
from police restrictions and interference. These
were most completely overthrown by M. Majendie
in a manner so much to the satisfaction of the
academy, that on M. Moreau Joannes rising to reply,
the academy unanimously passed to the order a
the day.