The Sun.
London, England, 1870-04-02 00:00:00

PEACE PRESERVATION IRELAND BILL.

It was expecte I that the Royal Assent would be
given to bill to-day, and the Lord Chancellor
an I other officers were in attendance at the Eloise of
Lords, Lut 'bring!' some misunderstanding the
Oi:S2 of Commons d:d not assemble, and th-r,:f ore
oVillg could be done but an adjournment of their
lordships until Monday.

Her Majesty go to her marine reskience at
Isbone on the .13th inst.

A Cabinet, Council was held this afternoon at the
Official residence of the First Lord of the:Treasury, iu
Downing-street.

Lord Ailsa's RiUand of the Thi,tle will be given
tv Lord Minto.

The very extensive Distillery now being erected
at Belfast, with all recent improvements for the manufacture of
Irish whisky, by Messis. DUNVILLE Co., who have gained
a world-wide celebrity for their tine old Irish whisky, is to be
called "The Royal Irish istillery."

• lII.GII WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Morning. Evening
SATURDAY • ' 10 min past 3 25 min past 3
SUNDAY 40 min past 3 55 min past 3
Alosu.iv 10 min past 4 24 min past 4

TUESpAY

.40 min Past 4 50 min j ast 4

WEDI4ESDAY 8 min past 5 21 min past 5
THURSDAY 40 miu past 5 0 min past 6
FRIDAY., l5 min past 6 .40 min past 6

TO WN TALK.

(From the Western Mail of this Morning.)

LONDON, Friday Evening.

The acquittal of Prince Pierre Bonaparte, the
numbering of the Prime Minister and his colleagues
in the minority on a division list, the lapse of the
ninety-days-no-tidings of the unhappy City of Bos-
ton, are the incidents of the week. A telegram from
Paris, announcing on Tuesday morning in London
that the Emperor had signed a decree banishing his
cousin from France, turned out too good to be true.
The pawing out of the Court of Justice at Tours en-
tirely scot free (saving only the fine of 25,000 francs)
—the passing out of sight scot free thus of Prince
Pierre is certainly enough to infuriate and madden
beyond bounds the frantic band of Irreconcileables.
If the Prince should not be coolly " potted" one of
these fine days by one of the sharpshooters of Red
Republicanism, he will bear indeed a charmed life.
Add to the hatred Of political antagonism of the dead-
liest kind, the bad blood engendered by the evil genius
of the Vendetta among Cordcan foes, and then cal-
culate the chances Prince Pierre Bonaparte has, from
this time. forth, of dying peacefully in his bed, say
from the sheer effects of the decay of nature, years
hence, when he is a very old man ! His own manner
throughout the trial was anything but calculated to
smooth the path for himself in the future. His scorn
to a foe must have been something simply insuffer-
able. It had about it a good deal of that pitiless
cruelty expressed in every look, word, glance, and
gesture by the lap of Vandenhoff, who3e manner,
on quitting the stage once, at the close of that famous
scene in the fifth act of Othello, caused an unsophis-
ticated man I knew (who was then witnessing Van-
denhoff's impersonation for the first time) to spring
to his feet with an irrepressible cry of " Kill him !
kill him !"

There seems small hope, now, alas! for tidings of
the City of Boston, the prescribed limit having run
out after which the insurances are payable. The
memory of its last voyage threatens to take its place
in the melancholy record of the perils of the great
deep side by side with the loss of the President, and
with the disappearance of La Perouse, the great
French navigator.

Mr. Newdegate's successful motion on Tuesday
evening caused no little excitement in the House of
Commons itself and in its immediate precincts, the
lobbies and corridors. It was to many on the left
hand of Mr. Speaker a refreshing reminder that the
Government supporters are not to be winners in
perpetuity.

A very discreditable decision, as it certainly appears
to me, was arrived at the other day by the Reform
Club—one of the most distinguished journalists in
London having been black-balled (to the number of
no less than fifty black balls), simply because of his
being a distinguished journalist. Not a word is said
against him, there is not the hint of an imputation
all through his career—he is a man of conspicuous
capacity, a man of unsullied honour, a man of educa-
tion, and one eminently popular among those with
whom he associates—but—he is a journalist ! away
with him ! taboo him ! black-ball him ! let him be
ai.athema marauatha ! Many of those s'yly dropping
the black ball into the black ball into the balloting
box, would, five minutes or so afterwards if they
chanced to stumble across their friend in Pall Mall,
grasp him cordially with the very hand that had been
just before stabbing at him in the dark, and on the
sly ! It is the mere thought of the possibility of this
that attaches a taint of the disagreeable to these
social ballotings.

On Tuesday afternoon I was fairly trapped. Where
do you think? Under the bed of the Thames, and yet
not in the Thames-tunnel. Before my letter to you
can appear in print, there will have been formally
opened to the public at large the very curious pipe run
under the be 1 of thi river, sixty feet below the
surf ice, between Tower-hill on the Middlesex side,
and Vine-street on the Surrey side. Invited to a
private view of the works on the day I have named,
I went, and saw, and was trapped I Arriving on
Tower-bill I there entered an insignificant little iron
box with a roof to it the open causeway. Inside this
iron box or hut is a lift with sofas where six can be
seated. In 25 seconds the lift is lowered to the level
of the causeway. There one finds a sort of tubular
waiting-room like the inside of a large stone omnibus.
At the further end of this is a doorway, through
which you look owl-like into the perspective tube or
pipe of the subway. In length the subway is a quarter
of a mile. In diameter it is some seven feet or rather
less. A carriage containing twelve persons, running
on a 2ft. 6in. gauge of rail,will be drawn, henceforth,
to and fro, from end to end of the tube, each pas-
sage through taking exactly a minute and a half, like
a subterranean pendulum. The fare will be, for first
. corners, 2d.; for last corners, Id. each journey. The
average time, from surface to surface, from Tower-
hill to Vine-street, or vice versa, will be four minutes,
descent, ascent, waiting, run, and altogether. Un-
luckily, when I got down to the subway level on
Tuesday, the steel chain drawing the carriage, very
soon after it started on its journey from Middle-
sex to Surrey, snapped ! An attendant, with the
preposterous name of Punch, who was
.only
capable of speaking in the hoarsest stage-
whisper by reason of a chronic cold that
seemed to speak eloquently for the unwhole-
some atmosphere he was doomed to breathe, en-
couraged us to remain, which we all did for a weary,
dreary interval, until, depressed by the failure, we
effected our escape.
The most startling morsel of literary news this
week is the announcement that on Monday, the
2d of May, the Messrs. Longman will publish a
new three-voluine novel, called "Lothair," from the
pen of Mr. Disraeli. Has any one, after being Prime
Minister, produced an imaginative work of thiS cha-
racter ? I doubt it. Few have done so before calling
a Government into existence ; but I doubt if any
one has, ere this, done so afterwards. Whatever the
theme of this new fiction by the ex-Premier, and now
leader of her Majesty's Opposition, the work is cer-
tain to attract universal attention. If, like the
majority of the fictions a'ready created by the right
hon. gentleman the member for Bucks, the work
should turn out to be a political novel, all the better !
That his hand is "in" as cleverly as ever in the
satirical delineation of character, Mr. Disraeli showed
resplendently only the other evening, when touching
off, to the very life, the portraiture of Mr. Horsman,
under the guise of a Superior Person. Twenty-
three years have elapsed since, in 1847, the pen of the
novelist was thrown aside by the author of " Tan-
cred ;" that work itself being left incomplete. During
those three-and-twenty years, the romancist has been
three times leader of the House of Commons, and
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and has at last risen to
the supreme political dignity of all, having for
eleven months held the reins of power as First Lord
of the Treasury. And now, after these three-and-
twenty years, which have been so fully occupied, the
ex-Premier resumes his pen as a novelist ! What-
ever may be the purport of his new production,
whether it be political or non-political, it is secure of
winning for itself a multitude of readers in all parts
of the United Kingdom, and among all classes of the
population.

Several tamouncanents of new works from well-
kn9wn writers are beginning to drop in now, very
acceptab'y. A fresh vo'atme, for example, one learns
with Lo lithe satisfaction, is a'mot ready to h rnd
from the sh:ewdeA critic of the day—Matthew Ar-
nold. A new nova i 3 all but ready by Moriimer
Collins. A new book of poetry—lei me hope just .a
trifle purer than the " hongs and ballads"—from that
unquestionable goat, Algernon Swiuburne. Though,
in remembrance of his later effusions, the forthcom
ing volume seems to me rather alarmingly entitled
"Songs before Sunrise." Then, again, there is the

announcement that Henry Vizetelly, formerly the
celebrant of the world-famous story of the " Diamond
Necklace," is just about to tell us all over again, but
with new lights upon it by Monsieur Marius Topin,
the equally world-famous story of " The Man in the
Iron Mask."

Talking of mysteries, I may tell you at once what
you may not yet have had the opportunity of learn-
ing, that " The Mystery of Edwin Drool" is no
mystery at . all to the readers of the story, is not
intended to Le a matter of any bewilderment to
them. The reader's interest in regard to it will be,
throughout--watching how the mystery (kno in to.
him) is eventually brought to light.
A wonderful and beautiful adaptation of photo-
graphy to the art of wood-engraving has recently
been perfected, and is certainly entitled here to par-
eular mention. Its advantage is peculiarly noticeable
in the instance of any illustrated work of a very
large circulation, such as oue of Mr. Dickens's serial
stories, the average monthly issue of which has run up
from 30,000 to 40,000. The artist's original drawing,
even after a demand like that has been met, remains
now to the very last untouched, unblurred, un-
smuehed in the least particular. Photographs, in point
of fact, are taken from the original drawing —photo-
graphic facsimiles are taken on the sensitized super-
ficies (carefully prepared, of course, to that end before
hand) of the very box-wood block that is going to be
engraved. Any number of the prepared boxwood-
blocks may be photographed thus with facsimiles
of the original drawing, and engraved afterwards ;
and, by this means, any demand—eVen the demand
of Charles Dickens's readers—may be readily met.
Not, as of old, by worn-out impressions, but by im-
pressions as clear and crisp in every outline as -the
proof first printed.

T. W. Robertson's accepted play at the Prince of
Wales's " M.P." reminds one of Charles Lamb's
abortive farce of " Mr. H.," and of that deliciously
ridiculous story that is told of Charles Lamb about
it—namely, that he went on the first night to witness
its exp:cted triumph, bat that, as the farce proceeded,
it proved to be so unmistakeably and execrably bad
that Charles Lamb himself was at last one of the very
loudest in hissing, until it was finally damned.
A treat of an exceptional kind may be looked for-
ward to to-morrow week at the PI incess's Theatre,
where, on his passage from the Prince of Wales's to
the Vaudeville, Mr. H. J. Montague will take his
benefit, enacting himself not only Captain Dudley
Smooth, but (for the first time) Romeo.
Two admirably selected subjects wi.l be found at
this next Academy Exhibition to have engaged the
attention of those well-matched artists, Mrs. E. M.
Ward and Mr. E. M. Ward, the Royal Academician.
The former has chosen a theme that might for once
attach a pathetic significance to the cry of Vice La
Bagatelle ; the incident pourtrayed being an inter-
view, at La Bagatelle, between the ex-Empress
Josephine and the little King of Rome ; in the
presence of the great Napoleon. Mr. E. M. Ward's
chief-d'ceuvre
.this year (for he will have three contri-
butions to the gallery, among which we may, there-
fore, make this distinction) will be a picture of the
infamous Judge Jeffries browbeating Baxter, of the
" Saint's Rest," during his trial in Westminster-hall,
through the open window of which (a picture within
a picture) Titus Oates is seen standing in the pillory
in Palace-yard.

Three private views are before me for to-morrow,
to wit, the sixth exhibition of water-colour drawings,
at Mr. Arthur Tcoth's gallery in the Haymarket, the
seventeenth annual exhibition of the French and
Flemish schools, at 120, Pall-mall, and the new
spring exhibition of the society of British aitit,ts,
in Suffolk-street, the late president of which,
Mr. Hurlstone, expired since the gallery was
opened to public view last season. A mcre
fitting successor could not possibly be found for the
post of president than the vice-president of the society
for some years past, meaning. Mr. J. J. Hil►, the
painter of " Rus:ic Beauties," and similar 1 ictui es of
English rural life.
In a private gallery in Nev Bond-street there is at
present on view, for a thief inter►al, the now his-
torical portrait of her Majesty the Queen, painted for
Mr. Peabody, and presented to him by the Soya-
re: (ru.