The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-17 00:00:00

IHE SUN, LON DON, SAiiiRDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1870.

demonstrated inimany a three-quarters' of nn hour
sermon—as the caustic caricaturist of " Vanity
Fair" daringly expresses it—his vivid realisation of
the comic aspect of redemption. Meanwhile, in the
absence of
,a serial story from Mr. SPUBGZON, there
has just come forth from the press a whimsical,
fantastical, lackadaisical. tale from the hand of that
exceedingly High Church Rev..lllr. LYN; whose
pleasure it is to call himself Father IGNATTIJC
" Brother PlaCidus " is the name of it.

—its purpose being to explain how- the hero -of
'the narrative came to be a Monk : just the object of
" Lothair " is to set forth the why and the where-

fore, as Punch's " Dyngwell " would have it, that
" theaioble Marquis " did not become a Monk, or, for
that matter, even a believer in Monks.. The, wild ex-
travagance of the notion that any good could possibly
be expected to come from a flippant literary jeu d'et-
Frit in which worldliness and Christianity are as in-

tirnately woven together as the contrasting warp and
woof in the fabrication of shot-silk, is among the
marvels of oddity peculiar to the present generation.
The notion, strange as it is, has influenced
the leader of Conservatism, and it has now
again influenced, in a feebler
_effort at the display of
vivacity, one of the shining wandering lights or will-
o'-the-wisps of modern Ritualism. Evidently there
are people who believe in these things, otherwise
they, would not come into existence,. and run
through countless editions, and get translated into
the majority of living languages. Thero are those,
clearly, still in the flesh who can take, au serieux, the
philosophico-psychologico-philologico-religious tran-
scendentalism, set forth in the elaborate Preface to
the newly-commenced reissue of the tales, novels,
andd, romances of the ex-Premier, the member for
Buckinghamshire. Christianity, one might think, re-
quires no seasoning in order to render it palatable
as the true manna from heaven by which the nobler
part of the human race is nourished. There are
those, however, whose tastes have become so vitiated
that to whet their jaded appetites they require, like

the old jaundiced Nabobs from Hindostan, to take
their bread of life, so to speak, spiced and peppered
and curried and devilled. Hence these demi-semi-

theological romances which are at once, as it seems
to us, an outrage on the sanctity of Religion and a
violation of all those elementary rules of art which
ought in some measure to be cared for, by the culti-
vators of literature.

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

of the population", would be a very difficult coiidi-
sion indeed to get over. The more the Luxem-
burgers contemplate the proposed transfer, the less
they seem to like it.

a ~:~'!,

means for obtaining knowledge of one's whereabouts
are by keeping land in sight, and by having good maps
and powerful opera glasses on board. 'The reaching
of any fixed territory in sailor fashion, M. de Fon-
vielle says, is out of the question. Nevertheless, he
would not object to a rudder being used in balloon
cars. He thinks, however, that -a propelling machine
might be arranged to work by hand, so that no rudder
should be required. This apparatus should be such that
it could he thrown overboard like ballast in case of
need. The famous Parisian writer concludes his last
article to Nature as follows :—" I 'am afraid to give
substantial explanations, which could hardly be
offered without giving a full knowledge of my in-
tended construction, which is not my purpose."