The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-15 00:00:00

SUICIDE AT A RAILWAY STATION.

A gentleman named Edwards, residing at Clifton, while
waiting on the platform at the Dawlish Railway Station,
last evening, threw himself across the line as a train ap-
proached. The wheels of all the carriages passed over his
waist, cutting him almost in two. He was only 40 years
of age, and had been married only a few months. His
wife was on the platform and witnessed his death. De-
ceased had shown signs of derangement, and was accom-
panied by a man servant or keeper, who had only a
moment before left him.

SPIRIT OF THE PRESS-THIS MORNING.

CHARLES DICKENS IN THE ABBEY.

Charles Dickens (says the Telegraph) was yesterday

morning buried in Westmidster Abbey, in accordance
with the feeling that so great an Englishman could not be
spared from the company of worthies resting there ; but
the ceremony was performed at an early hour, after the
manner indfcated by his unassuming spirit, with
privacy and the utmost simplicity. The place where
he lies well becomes him ; Handel, Sheridan, and

the poet Gray, Cumberland, and Garrick, sleep near at
hand; Shakespeare's monument looks down upon the
spot; while the master of our present-day fiction rests
not far away from " Rare Ben Johnson." These be
" great company ;" and if any one regrets that the last
corner was added to the goodly fellowship of intellect
and art so quietly, it is, Heaven knows, a poor
and vain tribute, after all, to make a pageant out
of the heart's loss, and seek to express grief and
love by the sombre gewgaws of the undertaker's shop. We
have given Dickens a grave where the best and greatest
among our dead are laid, because the best and greatest do
generally receive such homage ; and it is, moreover, be-
coming and useful to have enriched the Santa Croce of
England with " all that can die " of a writer who, with so
much humour, so wide a knowledge of humanity, and so
sweet an eloquence, never penned an ignoble or impure
line. This was done no less for our sake than for his,
because, as he made his own greatness, so, being dead, he
could have taken care of it by his own tombstone; for—
we repeat it—the place where his body rested could want
no previons history and no associations; it must have
become, by reason of that single grave, such as Stratford-
upon-Avon is—a burial-place consecrated for ever, and to
all the world, by a single presence and a single inscrip-
tion. It is better, nevertheless, to have him resting
among his peers, the first and greatest children of Britain;
and better still to have laid him there in the simplicity
and modesty which he preferred and desired.
The Daily News says that Charles Dickens lies in West-
minster Abbey, along with the great chiefs and peers of
English literature. It is his proper place. His surviving
relatives have known how to reconcile reverential
regard to the simplicity and humility of mind
which expressed itsel in his funeral instructions,
with a recognition of the nation's title to pay
him the highest posthumous honour in its power.
He belonged to himself and to his family, but he
belonged also to the English people, of whose life in the
nineteenth century he was the truest of all interpreters.
It is creditable to the English people hard and
materialistic as they sometimes reproach themselves with
being, that their favourite should have been one whose
pages are not more remarkable for their unique genius
than for the humble and reverent faith, the cheerful
and genial hope, and the large and penetrating
charity which they overywhere display. An age
and a people which have reverenced and loved
Dickens have a right to respect themselves. But we will
not be betrayed into delivering, over his scarcely closed
grave, one of those funeral orations which he abhorred.
His true eulogy lies in the books which have delighted all
readers, and purified and softened the moral intellectual
atmosphere which we breathe every day. He is really
the author of far more than he wrote ; and his works at
once follow him, and remain behind him to continue their
beneficent influences. Yale, vale /
THE LORDS AND THE LAND BILL.

The Times observes that a debate which is to end in the
passing of a bill without a division is necessarily pursued
at a great disadvantage, and the Lords were certainly
not perfectly successful last night in overcoming this
initial difficulty. Lord Oranmore, dogged as he
may be in resolution, can scarcely persist in forcing
a division upon the Land Bill against the feeling of
the House and the counsel of the leaders of the
Oppdsition, and if he did prove himself sufficiently deter-
mined to divide, he would hardly find half a score to vote
with him. The opposition to the bill may, therefore, be
be treated as non-existent. The Duke of Richmond
avowed his intention of supporting the measure, and
though he found many hard things to say of it as un-
necessary, and even unjust in some of its main
provisions, the amendments of which he gave
notice were trifling in character and touched none of its
essential elements; and there can be no doubt that the
Duke accurately reflects the opinions of the great party
of the House of whom he is the leader. They with him
do not like the bill, and they do not scruple—so little is
their policy—to show their dislike of it while they are
ready to accept it. It would have been wiser to have
made a generous show of goodwill before swallowing the
unwelcome morsel. Lord Salisbury, who was the only
other speaker last night from the front Opposition bench,
did, indeed, praise the principles of the bill, and con-
fined himseif to a criticism of the details of the means
proposed to make them operative. With an opposition
in front of him which was no Opposition, it is
not surprising that Lord Granville should have
put off all show of fighting. The fact that
Lord Salisbvry confined his attack to the figures
of the scale, following, as it did, the Duke of Richmond's
practical acquiescence in the principle of the measure, is
sufficient to show that the bill will soon be added to the
Statute-book, with few alterations, and those of slight
moment, in its present provisions.