The Sun.
London, England, 1847-04-01 00:00:00

NAVAL INTELLIGENCE.

PORTSMOUTH, MARCH 31.—This morning at ten
o'clock, in the first train from London on the South-
Western Railway, a Board of Admiralty--comprising
the Earl of Auckland, First Lord; Rear-Admiral Dun-
das; Captain Lord John Ilay; the Hon. Mr. Cowper,
M.P.; Mr. Ward, First Secretary; accompanied by Col.
Irvine, Royal Engineers, Director of Engineering and
Architectural Works—arrived at this port on an official
visit.
Their Lordships were received on arriving in the Cla-
rence yard (where their flag was immediately hoists d)
by Admiral Sir Charles Ogle, Bart., the Commander-
.

in-Chief; Rear-Admiral Hide Parker, C. 8., Superin
teudent of the Dockyard; Captain Sir W. E. Parry, Su-
perintendent of the Clarence yard and the Royal Hospi-
tal at Hasler ; Mr. Davies, Master Attendant; Mr,
Grant, F.R.S., Storekeeper; Captain Milne, Flag Cap.
gain to Sir Charles Ogle; an Flag Lieutenants Cochran
and Spencer. They embarked in the Admiral's barge,
and were steered to the Sallyport stairs (under salutes
from the Victory, with yards manned, and the platform
battery), where they disembarked, and proceeded to the
George Hotel, High-street, to breakfast.
At half past eleven the Board left the George and re-
embarked at the Sallyport, and were steered to the
King's stairs, in the dockyard, where they landed at a
quarter to twelve, and were received by Captain Pasco,
of the Victory; Mr. Brown, master-attendant; Mr. Bel-
lamy, assistant-master attendant; Mr. Fincham, master
shipwright; Mr. Murray, chief engineer; Mr. Pennell,
storekeeper; Mr. Viuter' store receiver; Messrs. Watts
and Rice, assistants to the master shipwright; and Lieu-
tenant Hall, R.N., director of police. From the landing
place their Lordships were conducted to the Avenger
steam-frigate, alongside the jetty, on board which the
party went, and were received, with all the usual
honours, by Commander Potbury, her temporary com-
mander. Whilst on board the Avenger, Admiral Sir
Charles Ogle and Rear-Admiral Parker, with their
respective attendant officers, joined their Lordships; and
conducted them from the Avenger to the Kestrel
brigantine, in the basin (late the property of the Earl
of Yarborough), just commissioned; thence to the build-
ing slips, and went on board the Princess Royal, 90,
building after the lines of the Albion ; the master
shipwright explained to their Lordships the nature of
the intended improvements in that ship. Thence they
went under the stern of the Royal Frederick, 110, after-
wards the Queen, and on to the Arrogant, auxiliary
screw steam frigate, of 46 guns, built on the design of Mr.
Fincham and rearly ready for launching, and inspected
her, particularly the aperture for the screw, which is cut
on the plan of the patentee of the screw propeller, Mr.
Smith. After the Arrogant, their Lordships inspected
the new slips and dock building by Mr. Bramble, may( r
Of I),,rtsin.)llo), at the north curnt.r i;€ the ) urd ; attd
basin, building by I went from there to the new steam

Mr. Peter Rolt, where the clerk of those stupendous
works, Mr. 11. Woods, produced the plans, and explained
the nature of the undertaking and progress since the last
visit of their Lordships.
At the steam basin the board were joined by Rear-
Admiral Sir Charles Napier, K.C.8., and Captain Hen-
derson, C. 8., of the Sidon steam-frigate, whose arriral
and performances we notice lower down.
From the steam basin their Lordship? progress was
checked by rain and snow, which fell heavily for some
time. After the storm they got down as far as the dock
in which the Fairy was lying, and inspected her bottom ;
after this the party went to the Commander-in- Chiet's
to luncheon. At three o'clock their Lordship's resumed
their inspection of the dockyard, commencing with the
St. Vincent, 120, flag ship, in the basin, and witnessed
Lord Kielmansegg's new plan for setting up lower rig-
ging, to do away with the necessity of having dead eyes
and lanyards fur the same purpose. This mode is much
better adapted for shrouds near the ports, as it leaves
the port clear of everything for tiring. The plan
was fully explained to the Board by Captain Milne
and Mr. Biddlecombe, Master of the St. Vincent,
and was declared to answer perfectly. From the St.
Vincent the brigs in the adjacent dock, the Champion,
18, and Serpent, 16, the former to be sheathed with Mr.
Muntz's new patent metal, were inspected ; thence their
Lordships proceeded to view the Undine, in the basin,
which vessel is ordered to take them out to the Sidon, at
Spithead, in the morning ; thence round by the Leander,
50, building ; under the stern of the Royal Yacht, which
will be undocked to-morrow. They then viewed the
Ajax, steam guard-ship, in dock ; and thence, about
four o'clock, wo understood they would embark at the
King's-stairs and go on board the Excellent, to witness
gun drill, &c., and return to dine with Rear-Admiral
Superintendent Hyde Parker, sleeping at the George
Hotel. The Admiralty flag was hoisted at the dock-
yard•gate during the time their Lordships were making
their inspection.

The Princess Royal, 90, is to be altered; but her de-
signer, Sir W. Symonds, Surveyor of the Navy, is to
have the direction of her alterations himself.

The Fairy was undocked this afternoon ; and this
evening the Undine was taken out of the basin, in order
to be got ready for their Lordships' reception tomorrow
morning.

The "Sidon steam-frigate, Captain Henderson, C. 8.,
returned from her Channel cruise this morning. She is
officially reported to have answered remarkably well.
She went as far as Falmouth, and, under sails, with top-
sails, topgallant-sails, foresail, and fore and aft sails,
made 10i knots per hour, the inclination not exceeding
five degrees, and under steam 11k knots; she was very
stiff and perfectly dry. She made 17 evolutions under
the latter speed, which was the maximum attained, and
drew alt 17 feet 2 inches; forward 16 feet 10 inches ;
had 630 tons of coals on board, and all her shells,
powder, and such like stores, and water and pro-
visions for three months, stowed away, for the full com-
plement intended for her, viz., 320, officers and men.
She put in for a short time to Plymouth Sound yester-
day, and Admiral Sir John West, K.C.8., Commander-
in-Chief at that port, and afterwards Rear-Admiral Sir
John Louis, Bart., Superintendent of the Dockyard,
went on board and inspected every part of her, with
which, both internally and externally, those gallant and
experienced officers expressed themselves highly grati-
fied. To-morrow morning the Lords of the Admiralty,
augmented by Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Adam, K.C.8.,
who joins his colleagues this evening, will go on board
the Sidon, to insrect and judge for themselves.
The Cygnet brigantine, Commander Montr‘sor, is
now (halt-past five P.m.) working up to Spithead from
the coast of Africa station.

The Edinburgh, 56, block-ship, was taken out of the
basin to-day, and the Retribution steam-frigate, and the
Undine dispatch-vessel, were taken in.
The Echo steam-tug has gone round to Woolwich, to
repair numerous defects.
Major-General Lord Frederick Fitzclarence, the
newly-appointed Lieutenant •Governor and Commander-
in-chief of the south-west district, accompanied by Lady
Augusta and daughter, will arrive here to-morrow about
three o'clock, and sojourn at the George Hotel until the
Government house is re-embellished and ready for his
Lordship's reception. His Aide-do-Camp, Brevet Major
Harvey, arrived to-day, to make the necessary prepara-
tions for his Lordship's reception.
Woo'mien, MARCH 31.—The following information
will be useful to persons desirous of entering her
Majesty's naval service :
•• The examination of naval cadets, master attendants,
and other candidates for entry into her Majesty's ser-
vice, will in future take place ou Mondays and Fridays,
and all candidates for such examination, to well as
those who may wish to be examined as to their qualifi-
cations for higher rank in the service, are to present
themselves for that purpose on board tho William and
Mary yacht, at Woolwich Dockyard, on the days above-
mentioned, between the hours of ten and twelve o'clock
in the forenoon, when the necessary orders for their
examination will be issued on the receipt of the usual
applications from the several candidates.
" By command.of the Commodore."
The Salamander steam-sloop, from South America,
and last from Portsmouth, arrived at Woolwich to-day,
and will be paid off here.

The Terrible steam-frigate, under the command of
Captain hall, is under orders to leave Woolwich for
Portsmouth and Ireland with provisions.

MAGAZINE DAY.
BLACKWOOD.
Our venerable Eusebius opens with a caustic
though unusually dispassionate criticism upon Mr.
Carlyle's " Cromwell. The reviewer acknowledges
to a certain admiration for the genius of this bold and
eloquent writer. He remembers him of the thrilling
majesty of the " Sartor Resartus," and of the
graphic and passionate " History of the. French Re-
volution," and almost relents from the expression of
the indignation excited in his bosom by this mar-
vellous work upon the man Oliver. lie expresses his
indignation nevertheless, and very bluntly too. First
of all he revolts from the religious laudation which
Mr. Carlyle has lavished upon the sectarianism of the
Lord Protector. He impeaches Mr. Carlyle as a
rank Roundhead, and accuses him of out-puritaning
the Puritans. Upon the whole, Blackwood is here
not very much at fault; for ethical madmen are
scarcely the right sort of people to bold up to
popular reverence—they are scarcely the class
which it is judicious to eulogize when their
extravagances are among the most worthless
lumber in the repositoryof dead fanaticism—they are
not exactly the body of whom we should speak as of
" the last glimpse of the Godhead, vanishing from
this England." Yet —with submission to our ear-
nest, anti-Puritan Ebony—we would observe, that
some such panegyrics as those contained in Mr. Car-
lyle's work upon the religionists of the Cromwellian
age, were requisite to enforce upon the minds of the
supercilious and contemning many a wholesome
repect for the spiritual ardour which kindled the
hearts of Cromwell and his brethren of the conven-
ticle. Granted that that spiritual ardour vented
itself in their case in a most fantastic and exaggerated
form granted that their God-worship almost
amounted to buffoonery—still there was a sincerity
at bottom which commands our reverence, and ren-
ders ridicule indecent, and vituperation base. Even
the reviewer in Blackwood confesses that there was
this sincerity ; he says, and says truly, that the
" Machiavellian explanation" or hypothesis of Oliver's
character " is henceforth entirely dismissed." " If,"
says he, " there is any one who still believes that
Cromwell was a thorough hypocrite, that his religion
was a systematic feint to cover his ambitious designs,
the perusal of these volumes"—(meaning Carlyle's)
—" will entirely undeceive him." Cromwell, then,
the foremost man among the Puritans—the very type
and essence of Puritanism in his proper person—is
avowed to have been sincere and truthful in his creed
at bottom. Therefore, as respect for the sincere
belief of another (however odd and eccentric may be
the manifestations of that belief) is the core and spirit
of Religious Toleration, it is certain that respect for
the sincerity of the belief of the Puritans is essential
before we can form any just estimate of their charac-
ter, and especially of the character of their chieftain.
plow Cromwell was not one ,jot more contemned than
'Puritanism was ridiculed. It was the bounden duty,
then, of Mr. Carlyle in reclaiming Cromwell from
abhorrence to reclaim Puritanism from ridicule ;
it was a part of his work as a biographer;
unless he had effected the latter, he could
not by possibility have effectually accomplished
the former. lie became consequently the ex-
culpator, not the apologist, of Puritanism ; and
to obtain his end in the readiest manner that could
well be contrived, to startle the million from scorn to
respect, he became at once the panegyrist of Puri-
tanism. That is the plea upon which we hold Mr.
Carlyle as excused in his otherwise incomprehensible
and inexcusable eulogiums upon the Roundheads.
But it is the style of Thomas Carlyle in his interpo-
lated commentaries that principally excites the wrath
of Blackwood. The introduction especially is de-
scribed as containing " such an amount of extrava-
gant assertion, uttered in such fantastic jargon as can
nowhere be paralleled." Now be it observed, that a
very few sentences before this botched and blundering
condemnation, this same Blackwood speaks of this
same work as frequently containing specimens
of Mr. Carlyle's happier manner, " where concen-
tration of style, a spirit of humour and re-
flection, and a power of vivid portraiture have
not degenerated into mere quaintness, into a species
of slang, into Carlylisms, into vague generalities
about infinitudes and eternities." It is because Mr.
Carlyle has a genius that spurns all the lacing and
boddice-work of a prim grammatical construction, it
is because he clothes his thoughts in a robust and
masculine diction, and has no affection for pottering
incessantly among the quincunxes of syntax, or for
thumbing a schoolboy's dilectus, that he is now-a-
days jeered as a sort of monstrosity in the world of
letters. Upon the same system of prudery Martin
has been derided as a violator of all the rules of Art.
But what abysses of the sublime have not the pencil
and the imagination of Martin opened to us ; and what
worlds and universes of thought have not the pen and
the genius of Carlyle revealed The most exquisite
torso is still nothing more than a decapitated trunk, leg-
less and armless—but, viewed rightly, it conveys to the
mind a vivid conception of the beautiful. The
Thef•eus of the Elgin collection in the Britils„hi 111u-
scum, ;lsti-
scum, is, to the best of our recollection, ise
and yet, looked at clearly and justly, and not through
the smoked spectacles of hypercriticism, it impresses

the mind with peculiar ideas of the grand and the
majestic. Give us the comprehensive judgment that
can recognise the intrinsic greatness of an object, with-
out carping at the minor details ! After inveighing.
against Carlylisms and Anti-Dryasdustisms, "Ebony'
pursues " The Lays and Legends of the Thames, '
with some humour, and very considerable sprinklings
of slang. " Vampyrium "is the subject next exa-
mined among the various truths contained in Popular
Superstitions; it is a decided improvement upon the
preceding article about the "Divining Rod.' The
" New Sentimental Journey " promises to .be as
diversified, if not as touching in its sentimen-
tality, as the famous one of Laurence Sterne.
The contribution immediately afterwards is a
sketch of the renowned regiment, " The Fighting
Eighty-eighth." It is the best article in the
whole number, written with delightful esprit, and
recalling to the memory many of the most interesting
passages in those Peninsular campaigns whose records
have been fo well penned by the historian Napier. In
a review of the Hon. George fellow's " Life of Lord
Sidmouth," a brilliant outline is given of the career
and times of that nobleman, from the period of his
disrelish for politics, when William Pitt rallied his
depreciation of his powers for statesmanship by re-
peating the lines of Wailer:—
"The lark that shuns on lofty boughs to build
Der humble nest, lies silent in the field;
But should the promise of a brighter day,
Aurora smiling, bid her rise and play;
Quickly she'll show 'twas not for want of voice,
Or power to climb, she made so low a choice:
Singing she mounts, her airy notes are stretch'd
Towards heaven, as if from heaven alone her notes
she fetch'd."
The progress of Henry Addington up to his elevation
to the peerage is detailed with some impartiality., In
the course of the paper we are glad to observe the
following vindication of, perhaps, the grandest phi-
lippic ever uttered by man—Sheridan s speech on
Warren Hastings and the B€gum Question :
" It has been the habit of late critics to decry the
merits of ,this famous oration, and even to charge it
with being frivolous, outrageous, and bombastic, an im-
mense accumulation of calumny and clap-trap, which the
craft of Sheridan would not submit to the public ordeal,
and which ho has therefore left to its chance of a fan-
tastic and visionary fame. But this we find it impossible
to believe. That in a speech of five hours and a half,
there may have been—nay, there must have been,
passages of extravagance, and even errors of taste, is
perfectly probable ; but they must have been overcome
by countless passages of lustre and beauty,—by power-
ful conceptions and brilliant examples of language ; at
once resistless and refine:l,—by living descriptions, and
thoughts of daring and dazzling energy, sufficient to
have made it ono of the most memorable triumphs of
senatorial eloquence in the world. How, on any other
supposition, is it possible to account for the effects which
we know it to have produced ? •
" Addington's letter, alluding to this subject, says,
• The papers will convey but a faint idea of a speech,
which I heard Fox declare to bo the most wonderful
effort of the human mind that perhaps had ever been
made. Mr. Pitt, and indeed tho whole House, spoke of
it in terms of admira'ion and astonishment, scarcely in-
ferior to those of Mr. Fox.'
" The papers, indeed, convey a worse than inadequate
idea of this wonderful oration, for they give merely a
few fragments, in which they have contrived either to
select their examples with the most curious infelicity, or
to blunder them into bombast. But nothing can be more
childish than to suppose, that Pitt would have given his
praise to tawdry metaphor, that Burke would have done
honour to feeble truisms, that Fox should have been un-
able to distinguish between logic and looseness of reason-
ing, or that the whole assembly, who had been in the
habit of hearing those pro-eminent orators, should have
been tricked by theatric dexterity or charlatan rhetoric
into homage. The oration must have been a most mag-
nificent performance, and we have only to deplore the
loss of a great work of genius."

Upon American oratory, and American orators (a
fitting bathos by the way, from the sublime of Sheri-
dan), there is some capital sarcasm in a paper en-
titled " how they Manage Matters in the Model
Republic." " Horne Catullianse," and a delightfully
absurd cockcrow upon the presumed downfal of the
Pree-trade principle, terminate the number for All.
Fool's Day very appropriately.