The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-13 00:00:00

COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS.

The 'Economist observes that now, little as success in a
competitive examination may shew, it does shew, we
submit, more of probable efficiency for work than any
social influence exercised in a candidate's favour. This is
not saying much for it, but it is saying quite enough. If
you get a mode of selection which in the long run will
secure a greater number of good servants from whom to
choose than you would have got by leaving the nomina-
tions to the pressure of social influences, there is nothing
further to be urged for the nomination system. Moreover,
the new order in Council does not leave the matter wholly
even to this test. It imposes a six months' trial in the
duties of the office, after which the chief of the department
is to certify, if he can, the candidate's practical efficiency
before it confers the office at all. We trust this probation
will at least to some extent be real, and not too nominal.
The six months' probation is an exceedingly good qualifi-
cation of the purely intellectual test, and with it we need
not fear but that the new civil servants will soon become
a far more workmanlike set than we have ever yet had in
the same offices. It is not a small matter that the Govern-
ment have achieved in establishing the Civil Service on a
thoroughly popular basis, and yet on one which will
secure the members of it consideration at the hands of
the nation, respect from their own superiors, and a high
average of practical as well as intellectual ability.

The Bishop of Peterborough has been presented
with a pastoral staff by some of the laity of his diocese.
Mr. J. C. M. Bellew iq seriously unwell, and has
been compelled to suspend all his readings for the present.
Poor Charles Dickens's name was posted up at the
Union Club in the list of candidates to be balloted for on
the 22nd inst.
Mr. Tom Taylor is said to be engaged on a new
play for Mrs. Rousby, in which the actress is to perso-
nate Joan of Arc.
The report which has been circulated that the Earl
of Perth had abandoned all claim to the Perth estates is
without foundation.
A second munificent donation of £l,OOO has been
given byy the Ven. Archdeacon Sinclair to the building
fund of Kensington new parish church.
It is stated on the best possible authority that Mr.
Vernon Rigby has been engaged as principal tenor at
the forthcoming Hereford and Birmingham Musical
Festival.
There is a rumour that Thomas Carlyle is going to
America as soon as he has completed the revised edition of
his works upon which he has been engaged for the last
two years.
Fifty Christ's Hospital boys are taught practical
chemistry in the laboratory of St. Bartholomew's Hos-
pital. Periodical examinations are held, and indicate
satisfactory general progress, and, in a few boys, extraor-
dinary proficiency in the subject.
An ode for the installation of the Marquis of Salis-
bury as Chancellor of Oxford University, composed by the
Rev. Sir F. G. Ouseley, is to be performed in the Shel-
donian Theatre, on the 22d instant, the commemoration
day.
The Civil Service Gazette understands that Mr
Dilley, the author of "Illusions," the new comedy now
being played at the Charing-cross Theatre, and also the
joint author of one of the T. P. Cooke prize dramas, is a
member of her Majesty's Civil Service.
Nature regrets to learn that Baron Liebeg conti-
nues dangerously ill. He has recently submitted to two
operations for a very painful abscess in the shoulder, and
continues very weak, but perfectly clear and cheerful.
although believing that death is near.
MR. JOHN BRIGHT, M.P.—lt is said that a great
improvement is observed in Mr. Bright's appearance.
He receives few or no visitors at Llandudno, as he wishes
to avoid all exciting topics of conversation, and to enjoy
as much repose as possible.
THE INTERVIEW AT Exts.—lt will be long before
the elucidation of the Ems mystery takes place. A.
private despatch from Flensburg to a French paper de-
clares that the interview bore no relation to the affairs of
Gallicia, but that the two sovereigns would have been
more likely to discuss the question of North Schleswig.
On the other hand, it is affirmed that the Emperor and
King did not dwell on any particular subject, but merely
touched upon all matters of public importance in a general
style.

REVOLTING CRUELTY TO A CRILD.—At Wol-
verhampton, on Friday, a sweep, named John Smith, and
his wife were committed for trial, upon the coroner's
warrant, charged with the manslaughter of a child named
Sarah King, aged three years and nine months, the
daughter of the female prisoner. The evidence of the
neighbours proved that the prisoners had beaten and
starved the child, and one witness stated that when the
child was dying the female prisoner was seen " shaking
it to keep it alive." The body of the child was found to
be shockingly emaciated, weighing only I.Blbs. During
the inquest the people living near the prisoners became
greatly excited against them' and endeavoured to lynch
them. The windows of their house were all smashed, and
but for the arrival of the police, the building would have
been pulled down.

TO N 'A IS.
(From the Western Mail of Saturday.)
LONDON, Friday Evening.
A pair of white gloves wasnevcr-niore completely out of
fie reach of one of our Judges than it waS out of the reach
_ _ _

of Chief Jugtiee Bovill this session•at the .Criminal Court.

The catalogue of the accused ,Was sonve,tKug appalling.
The Recorder must haveshuddered on unfolding it—feel-
ing himself, as he did so, as though there had devolved
_ _

upon him the duties far rather of a recording demon than

of a recording angel. Instead of- white gloves for the
Judges, a larger nosegay than ever for the comforting of
the nostrils of each—a more plentiful supply of sweet
herbs to strew before the accused—as a preservative
against the gaol fever ! "There's rue for you," he might
have said to any of those arraigned at the bar, " and there's
some for me; you may wear your rue with a difference !"

Or—after he had gone through his abhorrent list, echoing
rather the words of Lear than of Ophelia—

. . . . there's hell, there's darkness,
There is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench,
Consumi don. Fie, fie, fie! Pah! pah!
Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary,
To sweeten my !ma 'nation.
It is the most appalling catalogue of crime that has ever,
perhaps, come together under consideration at the Old

Bailey—murder red-handed, murder most foul, base, and

unnatural, forgery, perjury, and abominations too
horrible and revolting in their character to particularize
anywhere, but in open court in the formal arraignment of
the accused. Wonderful to tell, however, the list was
within a hair's-breath, as one may say, of having added
to it another atrocity of portentous magnitude—meaning
_ _

the wholesale butchery of the poor, honest blacksmith's
family at Denham, near Uxbridge ; that ghastly massacre
having been perpetrated only just outside the limits that
would have brought it within the jurisdiction of the Central
Criminal Court of Middlesex. The Uxbridge tragedy, as
it is called, seems to me in its surroundings as though the
characters, and incidents, and localities, described •in
" Great Expectations " had somehow got horribly jumbled
up together—as though Magwitch and Orlick were one
and the same person, by whose homicidal hand Joe Gar-
gery had been. struck downat his forge, and, together with
Joe Gargery, a whole family of little ones like Pip, with
their aunt, the mother, and the grandmother. As it is,
the sessional labours just commencing at the Central

Criminal Court present to view a double murder, so ter-

rible of its kind as to resemble nothing less ghastly than
one of the most morbid imaginings of the diseased fancy
of Edgar Allan Poe, meaning the story, entitled, " Thou
art the man !" in which the lid of the box is burst open by
the doubled-up corpse of the victim, just as the lid of that
dreadful green box in the kitchen of poor old Mr. Heulin's
house was raised by the murdered remains of his unfortu-
nate housekeeper. Londoners, during this next week or
two, will have certainly the wherewithal now only to sup
on horrors, but to breakfast and dine upon them as well,
if they are so ghoul-minded in;the devouring of their news-
papers.

Immediately before the re-assembling of the two Houses
at the close of the Whitsuntide holidays, attention is dis-
tracted from the onslaught made by Blackwood on the
ex-Premier, through that cut-and-thrust critique upon
" Lothair "—which is attributed by some to Mr. Paget,
and by others to Colonel Hamley—by the deliciously
ridiculous, and yet outrageously insolent, missive
addressed to the member for Bucks by Mr. Smith, of
England and America—Mr. Goldwin Smith, that is to
say, formerly of Oxford, and now of Ithaca, in the United
States. The laugh against him all through town now is,
that he has himself fitted the cap on his own head, or,
rather, it should be said at once and henceforth, the cap
and bells. Never, it may be safely averred, has a clever
man (in his way) made a more ludicrous, or, at the same'
time, a more brutal blunder. The " wild man "of Mr.
Disraeli certainly makes a charming pendant to the " noble
savage "of Mr. Osborne. Under the companion pictures,
the trite Horatian motto, Par nobile fratrum, might for
once be inscribed appropriately.
The crowning sorrow of all has befallen the afflicted
house of Newcastle. The Duke and one of his brothers,
it both bankrupt, Lord Arthur Clinton is now "wa "in
one or two directions, under a warrant from Bow- t, can
..,
the charge of bilking a cabman of twenty shillings, lam-
a warrant from the Central Criminal Court for certain (to
speak of them in the mildest possible terms) disreputable
associations.

Men of letters and politicians are alike eagerly on the
watch just at this later turning-point in the parliamentary
session for the publication at last of their long-promised
biography of Lord Palmerston, by his friend and colleague
in the subtle art (or science, shall I call it ?) of diplomacy,
Sir Henry Bulwer. If the work should not be issued from
the press until after the double close of the session and of
the season, it will, most assuredly, be a matter of very
general regret and disappointment. As a reminder that
the period of the year when London will be flitting hither
and thither on the holiday excursions of those who have
either summer or autumnal leisure, a luxury hardly known
to the unhappy journalist, there come into my hands two
very different, but two very charming works ; one a thin
octavo, by Edward Spender, the other a couple of portly
volumes, by Walter Thernbury ; the former entitled
" Fjord, Isle and Tor," being descriptive of the Land's
End, the Channel Islands, and Norway; the latter, that is
Walter Thornbury's book, re-christened now " A Journey
Round England," being, in point of fact, the long since
tolerably well-known "As the Crow Flies " series of
papers appearing from week to week in the double-
columned pages of All the Year Round. Why the title
should ever have been altered I cannot conjecture.
There are two illustrated publications, strictly new and
intensely true, upon the very verge of their appearance—
" London," pencilled by Gustave Dore, and penned by
Blanchard Jerrold—England in the Nineteenth Century,
edited, conducted, or however else you may please to term
it, by G. A. S.— light and daylight, otherwise by George
Augustus Sala. Do any of your readers down at Cardiff
and its surroundings, who happened some twenty years
ago—namely, in the month of May, 1851—to be in Lon-
don, with all the rest of the world from the ends of the
earth, to witness the then novel wonders of the first great
International Exhibition, Prince Albert's, Sir Joseph
Paxton's, England's, Europe's, the two hemispheres'—do
any of you readers, I wonder, chance to bear in their
recollection, as vividly as I do myself, a certain wonderful,
whimsical, fantastic, multitudinous caricature, or rather
wandering wilderness of caricatures, pencilled with a most
facile hand on the walls bordering the grand staircase,
winding its way up the centre of the late Countess of
Blessington's some time residence of Gore House at Ken-
sington, then, in 1851, a sort of mammoth restaurant, the
chef of which was the sublime Alexis Soyer ? If they do
recall to mind that-drawing in bizarre outlines of all the
celebrities or notorieties of the day and of the night, they
will bear in their recollection the first displayof that since pro-
lific genius for droll conceits, George Augustus Sala, artist,
man of letters, contributor to the periodicals, newspaper
correspondent, polyglot-sensational-last-leader- writer in the
Daily Telegraph, who is now going to tell the later half of
the nineteenth century all about itself, in so far as relates
to this our England. A goodly staff is understood to
have already gathered about Mr. Sala, who himself has
shown that he can wield the pen of a ready writer allur-
ingly enough ever since he opened upon the world through
his very first article in Household Words—opened upon it
how, or with what ? With " The Key of the Street,"—
the capital title of that brilliant first article of Sala's,
which may be turned to by those who list, and which is
worth turning to, I promise you, in No. 76, at p. 565 of
the third volume of our dear lamented Charles Dickens's
Household Words. " The Key of the Street," in point of
fact, is in some sort the seed-germ of Sala's larger, but
kindred, work, called " Twice Round the Clock." It
showed, at any rate, by going once round the clock
through the darker hours, if not what was the time of day,
at any rate what was the 4ime of night among the sleep-
ing, boosing, thieving, rgeling, roystering, miserable,
watched or watching worlil of Londoners. Sala's obser-
vant glance now will turn from London to England from
the twelve or the twenty-fourl:l9urs to the century.
Have you realised the result(of the decision arrived at
the other day by the Queen in Council at Balmoral ?
According to the significance of the announcement of it,
as since then officially published in the Gazette, there is an
end thenceforth for ever to what has been known, and
sought, and bestowed hitherto under the name, style, and
title of ministerial patronage. Everything,—lthat is all the
good things—big and little, in the civil service (barring
the judgeships) can be obtained by the mob of aspirant,
only and solely through the ordeal of open competitions
Snug berths, cushions plumped out with bank notes.
small allotments on Tom Tiddler's ground, sacred to that
pleasant pastime described by Mr. Alfred Mantalini as
picking up the demnition gold and silver"—all these
luscious tidbits, the ortolans of official life—the truffles of
political existence, are, by this one sweep of the pen, by
one sign manual of the sovereign, dissipated into thin air,
and are henceforth as the mere golden day-dreams of the
place-hunter's excited and ecstatic imagination.

ROYAL OLYMPIC THEATRE,
Wych-street, Strand

Sole Lessee and Manager, Mr W. H. LISTom.

Miss BATEMAN as MARY IfAtINER every Evening during
the week, assisted by Messrs. G. Belmore, W. H. Vernon, Blake-
ley, Elliott, David Fisher ; Mrs. Poynter and Mrs. W. H. List 02.
In reply to numerous applications at the Box Office, and to
prevent disappointment to parties desirous of securing seats
several weeks in advance, Mr. W. H. LISToN feels compelled to
announce with regret that, in consequence of previous arrancre-
ments. the briliant engagement o; thIS distinguished Artiste
tnuat POSITIVELY TERMINATE on SATURDAY, JUNE 25.
Commencing with MUSIC HATH CHARMS. Concluding
with VIE 'VARSITY BOAT RACE. Box Office open from 10
till 5.

LYCEUM THEATRE (under the management
of Messrs Mansell).
THIS EVEN ING, at 7.30, HIS OWN RIVAL Mr. P.
Charles and Miss L. Morgan.
At 8, BREAKING THE SPELL.
After which, at 8.30, LITTLE FAUST: Mr. T. Maclagan, M.
Marius, Mr. Aynsley Cook, Mr. Odell, and Mr. Wilmot; Mdlle.
Debreux, Mesdames Lennox G ey, Lawson, Lee, and Emily
Soldene.

ROYAL STRAND THEATRE.
Sole Lessee and Il!ansgeress, Mrs. Swanborough.
THIS ENENING, at 7 o'clock, LOVING BEARTS. Messrs
Edward Tory and Turner; Mesdames Bufton al d Santley.
Followed by KENILWORTH. Messrs David James. Terry,
Turner, and Fenton; Mesdames Sant ey, A nstiss, Goodall. Met-
calfe, and Moore.

VAUDEVILLE THEATRE', STRAND.-
Lessees—Messrs H. J. Montague. D. James, and T.
Thorne.—THIS EVENING, at 7 30 CUPBOARD LOVE' by F
Hay. After which, at 8, a new and original Comedy, in 'three
Acts, ent;tled TWO 110 ES. To conclude with the new and
successful Lurlesque. DON CARL' 'S; or,-The Infante in Aims
Supported by Messrs. H. J. Montague, II Irving, G. Honey, W.
H. Stephens, and T. Thorne; Mesdames Nelly Power, Amy Faw-
sitt, T. Levis, and A. Newton.
Doors °pelt at Seven. Commence at 7.30

THE LATE EDITION of 46 THE SUN" at
Mr. BEAVMPNT'S, " The Wellington," Wellington-street,

strand.

EVENING EDITION.