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

THE ARMY AND NAVY.

The Broad Arrow says : His Excellency the Right
Hon. Lord Napier of Magdala, G.C.8., Commander-in.
Chief in India, has been suffering at Peshawur from a
slight attack of fever, which has detained his lordship on
the frontier longer than was intended.—The Military
Secretary will not hold a levee at the Horse Guards on
Tuesday, the 14th inst.—The United Service Gazette
says :—The First Lord of the Admiralty returned to
Whitehall on Thursday. Mr. Baxter. M.P., the Finan-
cial Secretary to the Admiralty, is still absent from his
official duties, and the date of his return is uncertain.—
The Army and Navy Gazette says :—The post of a Naval
Aide-de-Camp to the Queen has been placed at the dis-
posal of Mr. Childers by Captain Richards' advancement
to flag rank.—Captain Sir F. Leopold M'Clintock is now
the senior officer for promotion to the Active List of
Rear-Admirals.—Prince Arthur may be expected to arrive
home from Canada with the Ist battalion Rifle Brigade in
H.M.S. Crocodile about the second week in July.—
Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Symonds, K.C.8., will, it is
reported, resign the command of the Channel Squadron
in about a fortnight. The name of his successor is
not positively known, but that of Vice-Admiral
E. G. Fanshawe has again been freely mentioned.—
Orders have been issued for the withdrawal of all the
officers and subordinates of the army departments from
Australasia. One officer will be left temporarily in each
colony—viz., Victoria, Western Australia, New South
Wales, and New Zealand, to settle all claims against the
Government, and to make arrangements for the future
payment of pensioners.—By the death of Major-General
C. E. Wilkinson, Royal Engineers, Colonel G. Wynne
becomes a major-general ; Lieutenant-Colonel and
Brevet-Colonel A. H. Freeling a colonel; and
Captain and Brevet-Major E. M. Grain a lieu-
tenant-colonel in the corps of Royal Engineers.—
Major-General W. Munro, C. 8., who has been selected to
succeed in the command of the troops in the West Indies,
will leave England in the course of a few days for Jamaica
to assume his command. There is every probability that
Sir Hope Grant will be appointed to the command
of the Aldershot Division on the retirement of Sir James
Scarlett. Colonel W. A. Middleton, C. 8., Assistant
Adjutant-General, will succeed Major-General Gloucester
Gambier, C.B-, as Deputy AdjutanttiGeneral of Royal
Artillery at the Horse Guards. Viscount Templetown,
G.C.8., will succeed Sir G. Buller, G.C.8., as Lieu-
tenant-Governor of Portsmouth and General Command-
ing-in-Chief of the Southern District.

THE OXFORD PROFESSOR'S "STINGLESS

INSULTS.'?

Mr, Alfred B. Beaven sends the following letter to the
editor of the Times:—

Sir,—Allow me to call attention to the following pas-
sages, taken from a letter which was addressed to the
Manchester Examiner in the month of March, 1868, and
which bears the signature " Goldwin Smith."
" 1. His triumph is a triumph over public morality,
and over the self-respect of the nation."
"2. He attained his present position by an in-
trigue, dexterous, if merely falsehood can merit the name
of dexterity,' but as vile as any that sullies the annals of
political faction."
"3. Disraeli has risen by personal invective, by con-
spiracy, by using the arsenic which kills noble repu-
tations."
" 4. He has made his way by serving the prejudices of
aristocracy, and not only its prejudices, but its lowest
passions in a way in which the very menials who stood at
its portals would bate scorned to do."
" Neither his own principles nor the sight of a suffering
and starving people could deter him from accepting the
wages of political assassination."
With the evidence of his own Billingsgate pen before
him, I am astonished that even this foul-mouthed libeller
can have the audacity to complain of the manner in which
his least odious characteristics have been sketched in the
brilliant pages of " Lothair."

; VIE WEEKLY PRESS.
MR. GOLDWIN SMITH AND MR. DISRAELI

Hoity-toity ! What a row ! exclaims the Saturday
Review. Mr. Disraeli has, so Mr. Goldwin Smith says,
called Mr. Goldwin Smith " a social parasite," and gin
Goldwin Smith by way of retort, calls Mr. Disraeli "a
stingless coward." And we are informed that on some
previous occasion Mr. Goldwin Smith saluted Mr. Dis-
raeli as " a statesman of easy virtue," whereupon Mr.
Disraeli retorted by characterising his opponent as " that
wild man." All this is very amusing—for people will be
amused by gross personalities—to the world of bystanders,
but by no means so amusing to the friends of these masters
in polite literature, and in the art of unpolite vitupera-
tion. The friends both of Mr. Smith and Mr. Disraeli
will mutter the old line—
" Who would not weep if Atticus were he ?"
There is not much to be sure of Atticus in either the ex-
Cabinet Minister or in the ex-Oxford Professor, but there
is much for those who value the reputation of public men
to be ashamed of. Passing by their previous encounters—
in which, as it seems, Mr. Goldwin Smith began the bad
habit of calling names—there is
.this to be said of the
past, that both the Premier and the Professor put their
names to their strong talk. On _the present occasion
the Right Honourable novelist fired the first
shot, by stigmatising his old foe under the
thin transparent veil of a scarcely disguised fiction.
Up to last Tuesday everybody felt that Mr. Goldwin
Smith had been treated in a very .unbecoming way, but
they knew also that it was not for Mr. G. Smith to vindi-
cate himself. Let others do it, as others had indeed done
it amft Mr. G. Smith ought by this time to know
that there is nothing so ridiculous as to fit on a
fool's cap which a spiteful foe presents to
you. Mr. Goldwin Smith made exactly that
false move which Mr. Disraeli wanted him to make.
Mr. Disraeli was in the wrong—Mr. Goldwin Smith
would not leave him there, and has put himself in a worse
wrong. He says that Mr. Disraeli's affront is "sting-
less," and then he shews that he has been stung to the
quick, and comes before the world with his face swollen,
and evidently in great pain and agony. And worse, and
more melancholy than all, he talks about " a coward,"
and about Mr. Disraeli " answering for his words." Mr.
Goldwin Smith has not, we are sure, acclimatised himself
to revolvers and the bowie-knife, and therefore we had
rather think that he is talking nonsense than threatening
pistols. Meanwhile, when in a very poor business like
this one party forgets what is due to good taste and
the other what is due to good sense, the cynical world is
apt to laugh with the one and at the other. In this case
we may regret, but cannot wonder, which way the laugh
goes.