The Sun.
London, England, 1847-09-17 00:00:00

Ifll

%OND:)N, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1847.

The little tenement at Stratford-upon-Avon, which
until very recently has been occupied by a butcher,
and which tradition declares to have been the birth-
place of WILLIAM SIULSPERE, is no longer to re-
main the prize of a mere hucksterer of curiosities.
Thanks to the enthusiasm and activity of the com-
mittees of London and Stratford-upon-Avon, it was
purchased yesterday at the Auction Mart of Mr.
ROBINS, for the sum of three thousand pounds : it is
now the property of the nation ! Those who recog-
nise in this only a momentary extravagance, arising
out of a romantic reverence for the fame of a dra-
matist, are incapable of appreciating what is holiest
and noblest in the nature of our common huma-
nity, and are incompetent to discern even a
single ray of a glory that pervades and jillumines
the whole globe. Is there wanting a testimony
that this mark of homage—a mark of homag€
more splendid than was ever before paid to the
memory of mortal—was by no means premature, by
no means conventional, by no means the effusion of a
merely casual or intermittent excitement ? The fact
is attested by a thousand circumstances—by the con-
course of a vast multitude of pilgrims to the place of
his nativity—by that supreme and affecting admira-
tion which has conducted the illustrious of distant
lands to the cottage and the shrine—by the autographs
of the immortal and obscure, the kings, the princes,
the nobles, the historians, the artists, the poets, the
warriors, the citizens, the brave and the beautiful, the
student and the worldling, the merchant and
the philosopher, written when they went to un-
cover the head and bow down the spirit in the
humble room where his eyes first opened to a
world destined to resound for evermore with his
fame, and to be dazzled by his surpassing genius.
Could the souls of the great departed re-
visit the scenes of their bodily existence, then must
SUAKSPERE have exulted in the knowledge of how '
he had gone forth with ignominy from his native
village, and how he had lived to raise that village to
a dignity beyond that of the most gigantic marts of
commerce—a celebrity that should survive while the
ruins of Persepolis decayed beneath the touch of
Time, and the walls of Carthage crumbled in the
dust of Africa. Could the eternal spirits of the dead
obtain a consciousness of the estimation of posterity,
then must SHAKSPERE have rejoiced at the millions who
have, year after year, month after month, day after day,
pressed onwards in their pilgrimage to the spot in
which he was born and died, to gaze upon the dila-
pidated house which had been his cradle, and
look with awe upon the epitaph which
protected his bones with a blessing and a
malediction. And how immeasurably would such
a sense of exultation be enhanced now that a whole
nation has pronounced its reverence for his memory
g w
by claiming for itself the dwelling which is said to
have sheltered his infancy, and
preserving from dese-
cration or destruction the earth which had been hal-
lo,ved by his footprints.

We cannot persuade ourselves that even the most
ignorant economists can regard these three thousand
pounds of the national
.moneys as frivolously ex-
pended. We cannot think that there is a man in
existence so blind to the influences of genius as not
to recognise the moral advantages resulting
from such an employment of the public
contributions. The most unimaginative must behold in
this proceeding a brilliant token of the advancement
of civilization in these realms, and a lesson calculated
to inspire the uneducated mechanic with aspirations
beyond those which have, in bygone centuries, been
prevalent throughout the humbler classes of society.
Every one whose heart thrills at the name of SHAY-
sPERB---and there are, and have been, and will be
millions be grateful to those individuals who
courted for themselves the responsibility of securing
to the nation the lowly tenement associated, by such
reverent traditions, with his earthly career, in the little
street called Henley-street, in the little village called
Ztratford-upon-Avon. They have conferred upon the
empire a boon which has been preserved by three
thousand pounds, but which could not be created'

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by the riches of the earth, or even, to
quote the— magnificent expletive of OTHELLO,
"by the sea's wealth !" While the arrangements
were making, preliminary to the anticipated auction
of yesterday, it will be remembered that Lord
MoapEru, as Chief Commissioner of the Woods and
Forests, promised to meet the munificence of the
people in a suitable manner—he engaged that, pro-
viding the Shakspere property at Stratford were
purchased by public subscriptions, the Government
would for ever afterwards ensure its preservation.
Now that the property hes been purchased by public
subscriptions, the Government will have to fulfil the
engagement spontaneously made through the de-
claration of the Noble Viscount. The tene-
ment and the adjoining buildings henceforth
belong to the nation—the protection and guardian-
ship of these relics of the Glorious Dead devolve
upon the Government. Remembering that such is
the mutual understanding between the State and the
community, it is at once obvious that there
cannot be an immediate Conservation without an
immedia to Conservator. The bare fact that Go-
vernment has guaranteed the security of the
property will not, as if by magic, prevent
accident, or raise a barrier against the grati-
fication of individual cupidity. The incendiary is
not to be quelled by a promise ; the pillaging tourist
is not to be affrighted by a stipulation. There must
necessarily be some agent of the Legislature resident
upon the spot to carry its intentions into effect, to
watch over the condition of the dwelling-house and
keep in awe the pilfering predilections of such as
may resort to the locality. It is equally manifest,
moreover, that whoever may be employed in
this honourable manner by the Government,
whoever may be elevated to the dignity
of being nominated the Guardian of the Home of
SHAKSPERE—that individual must be a man of such
reputation as to justify the Administration in con-
fiding to his care the national treasure. Of all classes
in the community, which is there more suitable:to
furnish a man capable of filling this office than the
literary ? Of all orders of literature, which more
appropriate than the dramatic ? Of all dramatists,
who more worthy than SHERIDAN KNOWLES ?
We do earnestly put it to Lord MORPETTI, and
through the medium of that Noble Lord, to
the Government generally, that by conferring this
appointment, with a suitable income, upon SHERIDAN
KNOWLES—the most distinguished dramatist of a
day when we can boast a TALFOURD and a BULWER-
LYTTON—they will be confiding the birthplace of
SHARSPERE to the fittest man in her MAJESTY'S do-
minions, and will be compensating a very brilliant
and poetic genius for many years of unmerited neg-
lect. With SHAKSPERE'S Home the property of
the nation, and SHERIDAN KNOWLES the first guardian
of that Home appointed by the Government, we may
then assuredly exult in the knowledge that the dead
and living adornments of Literature are widely ap-
preciated and suitably cherished. Then may the
pilgrim of future ages, as he traverses the
antique street of Stratford, or pauses in the
churchyard by the banks of the beautiful Avon,
remember that this generation prized the lives as well
as the relics of our national bards, then may he, with
a profounder feeling of homage for the great man
who has shed a lustre on the name of England, stand
on the threshold, by the tomb, and in the meadow,
where, in the exquisite and loving language of JOHN
MILTON—

" Our sweetest Shakspere, Fancy's child,
Warbled his native wood-notes wild."

The fearful mortality that has taken place on
board many of the emigrant vessels—amongst the
unfortunate passengers—who, flying from the desti-
tution and misery that was so frightfully prevalent
in their unhappy country during the latter end of
the last and the beginning of the present year, en-
countered dangers more fatal, and horrors more
awful than those from which they fondly hoped they
had escaped—has attracted the public attention, and
awakened the liveliest sympathies for the ill-fated
sufferers, and the most earnest determination to
prevent the recurrence of such heartrending events,
by every means practicable. It is the especial
duty of the nation to see that efficient mea-
sures should be adopted for the preservation
of the health and lives of those who have
sought new homes in another hemisphere, during
the perilous voyages they may be compelled to un-
dergo in the first instance, and subsequently to their
arrival, until they shall be placed in positions to earn
their own livelihood by the exercise of their honest
industry. It is due to those who are departing, and
it is due to the inhabitants of the lands in which they
are about to take up their future abode, that the new
colonists should be landed in health and strength, and
that disease and pestilence should no longer be wafted
to their shores from the parent state. We say the
parent state, because it is amongst the vessels that
have sailed to our own colonies that the mischief has
attained the most fearful height—the stringent regu-
lations and the heavy penalties introduced in the seve-
ral ports of the United States having effectually pre-
vented the negligence and carelessness on the part of
the shipowners that has led to such lamentable
results. This duty is rendered more_ imperative be-
cause a certain degree of encouragement has been
afforded to that emigration, a clause having been in-
serted in the recent Irish Poor-law Act, by which
the several unions are allowed, on certain condition s
to make rates for that purpose without limitation of
amount. The Legislature, which thus sanctioned
the sending abroad of so many British subjects
for; the pecuniary benefit of a class, are bound
to make provision for the manner in which that ob-
ject shall be carried into execution, and to take care
that thousands of human victims shall not be sacri-
ficed in order that some trifling expense may be
avoided. When we find, in some instances, that of
those who have left their native land full of hope and
confidence, considerably more than one-fourth had
died on the passage, and a still larger number had
been stricken with the disease by which their
brethren had perished, and were scarcely enabled on
their arrival to drag their enfeebled frames to the
hospitals and lazarettos provided for their recep-
tion, it becomes unnecessary to urge at any length,
the propriety of the most searching inquiry into the
causes of this horrible fatality, and the adoption of
every possible precaution for the future.
It i 3 svol known what fearful mortality was occa-
sioned in former days by the ravagli of what was
termed the gaol fever. The unfortunate prisoners,
debtors as well as criminals, were swept away by
hundreds —a sentence of confinement for any
lengthened period was almost tantamount to a sen-
tence of death.

" Lasciate ogni speranza voi the intrate"

might, indeed, have been inscribed Over..the prison
gates. Remedies were, however, provided through
the philanthropical labours of a liowaa
A better and more wholesome diet Zs.
afforded to the captives, a proper ventilation was in-
troduced, the filth and dirt that had previously beef,
suffered to accumulate was got rid of, and cleanliness
rigidly enforced, and what has been the result? The
disease is no longer to be discovered. It has been
completely extirpated from the localities in which it
formerly ran riot, and our gaols are now as free from
disease and sickness as any other parts of the
kingdom ; indeed, we believe that, notwithstanding
the confinement and the moral depression that must
necessarily exist, the average mortality is less amongst
the inmates of the prisons than amongst an equal
number of persons at liberty. If such humane atten-
tion has justly and properly been bestowed on
the condition of those who have violated the
law, and committed offences of every degree of
who magnitude, why should it be withheld from others,
are free from crime, whose only rep roach is their
poverty ?
Similar exertionsland similar precautions
twhiell
emigranthaN•
eequ
falleyvebrewneilfilcibaefoundeffects.l to
l\b'e n
e bfeltiehe vesathmaet
class, and occasioned by the like causes, as the gaol
hoper i
fever, and we may reasonably
Ministry
have be completely overcome. Tfe
ple in
have shown the most praiseworthyse present
determinationn thatt
m
to improve the sanitary condition of the pee
every part of the country. They have appointedto a
number of competent and talented gentlemen
in-
quire and report upon the special measures that may
be necessary fur the,, metropolis. We trust that
Commissioners may also be directed to investigate
the nature and causes of the ship fever, and
the means by which it 'may be prevented.
The Government may not be enabled to ob-