The Sun.
London, England, 1870-11-22 00:00:00

MISS GARRETT, M.D., ON SCHOOL BOARDS.

Miss Garrett, who is a candidate for the represen-
tation of Marylebone on the London School Board,
at a meeting which gave her a very enthusiastic
reception, has expressed the view that the religious
difficulty will not be so great as was anticipated at
the earlier stages of the educational movement.

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HER MAJESTY.

BALMORAL, Nov. 19.

The Queen went out in tho morning, accompanied by
Princess Beatrice, and in the afternoon drove out, at-.
attended by the Duchess of Roxburgh°.
The Marchioness of Ely left the Castle.
The Rev. Dr. Taylor had the honour of dining with her
Majesty.

The Eight Hon. Hugh Childers, M.P., is expected
to leave his official residence at the Admiralty about the
middle of the week for Uantley Park, Yorkshire, after
which the right lion. gentleman goes to pay a visit to
Viscount and Viscountess Halifax at Hickleton Hall.

The schooner Sarah, of Montrose, got on the
Annat Sand Bank on Saturday evening. Fortunately her
crew were saved by the Mincing-lane lifeboat, which was
presented to the National L►stitution last year by the
merchants of Mincing-lane.

The Wardenship of St. Peter's College, Radley,
vacant by the resignation of the Rev. Dr. Wood, has been
conferred upon the Rev. Charles Martin, M,A., of New
College, Oxford, one of the Assistant Masters in Harrow
School.

---
The marriage of the lion. Isolda Vereker, eldest
daughter of Viscount Gort, with Lieutenant C. Crau-
furd, R.N., only child of Sir G. Crauturd, Bart., will take
place on the 22nd of this month, at Firle-place, Sussex,
the seat of the bride's maternal grandfather, Viscount
Gage.
Frederick Charles Plumtree, D.D., Master of
University College, Oxford, died on Monday morning
after a short illness. lle had held the office for thirty-
four years, having succeeded Dr. Rowney, the previous
master, in 1S 6. Dr. Phuntree was 7S years of age,
and was highly esteemed throughout the University.

LITERATURE.

SIR HENRY BULWER'S NEW WORK.

The Life of Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston.
By the Right Hon. Sir Henry layttCm Buiwer. Vols.

I. and 11. (Bentley.)
The expectations, long excited, in regard tp this bit,-
graphy have not been disappointed. The author of
" Historical Characters " has dealt not only worthily, but
wisely and discreetly, with the materials entrusted to bin'
by the relatives of Lord Palmerston. As Sir Henry
Bulwer apprizes his reader at the very outset, his original
intention was simply have sketched Lord Palmerston,
as he had already sketched George Canning, and William
Cobbett, and Maurice Talleyrand, in the luminous pages
of the popular work just mentioned—as yet his literary
masterpiece—" Historical Characters." That intention,
however, was naturally abandoned as inadequate, inune'
diately he began to realise upon a careful examination the
value of the voluminous private correspondence entrusted
to his keeping, to be dealt with or not according to the
dictates of his own judgment. Diaries and letters were at
his command in abundance. There was, besides, an auto-
biographic sketch in the handwriting of Lord Palmerston.
The materials were altogether ample and varied. The
biographer, bent upon using them to the best possible ad:
vantage, found his general design, in spite of 511
efforts at compression, expanding in its dimen-
sions, insomuch that the two considerable volumes
of the work hero published merely carry down
the record of Lord Palmerston's career to the completion
of his second term of office as Foreign Secretary. The
author endeavours, as much as possible, to let Lord
Palmerston be his own delineator. Indeed, the one ex-
ception we are constrained to take to the book as a whole
is this, that it gives us too little of Sir Henry Bulwer
himself. The observations of the biographer are purely
intercalary. The thread of the narrative penned hi
himself, we only catch sight of, so to speak, hero and
there at scattered intervals, in between the letters and the
fragments of diary and autobiography strung upon it, al/0
according to Sir Henry's genial view of them, possibly, 00
many pearls of price. The correspondence, no doubt, is
wonderfully interesting, and, for the most part, delightful
byreason of the vlrve, the " go," the elan, we had almost said
the chic of its exhilarating vivacity. Nevertheless, the
connecting or intermediate portions of the work—the
" Remarks " that are introduced every now and then by
Sir Henry Bulwer himself, we would, speaking for our-
selves, gladly have met with far more frequently. As it
is, the records of this eventful life are recounted for
the most part by the hero himself rather than by the
author or compiler of the biography. LordPahnerstodrela.tes
what happens, freshly, at the moment of its happening,
either with terse precision, through the medium of his
diaries, or in a more familiar and confidential manner,
through the medium of his unstudied correspondence..
The span of his life was, so to speak, a full-octave, ex-
ceeding, as it did, at the time of its close, ;the age of an
octogenarian. Born on the 20th of October, 1784, the
veteran statesman breathed his last on the 18th of Octo-
ber, 1865—dying while yet in possession of the Premier-
ship, his remains receiving at the hands of the nation
noble sepulture in Westminster Abbey. Succeeding his
father on the 17th of April, 1802, when still a stripling Of
18, he enjoyed his rank as an Irish Viscount, and held
possession of his large and increasing property in England
and Wales and Ireland for sixty-three years altogether.
During two years and a half (from April, 1807, to October,
1809,) ho was a Lord of the Admiralty. During a consecir
tive period of nearly twenty years altogether, he
held the important position of Secretary at War,
the first six of those years being the last six
of the epoch of the wars of the Great Napoleon. Thrice
he was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs—from the
22nd November, 1830 to the 15th November, 1834 ; from
the 18th April, 1835, to the 31st August, 1841 ; from the
3rd July, 1846, to the 22nd December, 1351—that is
during a period of fifteen years altogether. From the
28th December, 1852, to the 30th January, 1855, he was
Home Secretary. Twice he was Prime Minister—u Pen
the first occasion for exactly three years, namely, from
the 20th February, 1855, to the 20th February, 1858
upon the last occasion for upwards of six years, namely,
from the 30th June, 1859, to the 18th October, 1865, when
he expired from the simple decay of nature, whilst still St
the head of the Government. It is this busy life, of
which we have here a fitting record, under the hand of
one whose very first sentence runs thus :—" I have
undertaken to write the biography of a great statesman
under whom I long served, and for whom I had
a sincere and respectful affection." Than Lord
Palmerston no statesman ever more manifestly or more
deliberately bided his time. While yet in his premiere
jeunesse, while yet the curled darling of Almack's, ho ',vas
tempted again and again, but vainly always, by many
magnificent and dazzling offers of advancement. Twice,
while yet with the bloom of youth upon him, he had
placed at his command the Chancellorship of the Exche-
quer. He was offered an English peerage, with the Post-
master-GenerAlship. He was offered the SecretaryshiP
for Ireland. He was offered the Governorship of Jamaica.
He was twice offered the Governor-Generalship of India
by Mr. Canning, and previously by Lord Liverpool. Ifs
preferred retaining to the last his position in the House of
Commons, rising from the Admiralty to the War Office,
to the Foreign Office, to the Home Office, and at length
to the Premiership by acclamation. From 1807 to 1809,
as colleague of the Duke of Wellington, he sat as M.P.
for Newport, in the Isle of Wight, here spoken of mere
than once (asAp. 22) as Newtown. In 1811 he was first
returned as member for his own university, Cambridge,
for which he was re-elected four times (1812,18, '2O, '26),
closing his connection with that constituency only upon
the dissolution in 1831 of the last unreformed Parlia-
ment. Nothing could be more strikingly indicative of
the need there was for the reforming of the
then system of national representation than ono of the
earliest entries in the first volume of this life of Lord
Palmerston, a ;passage occurring at pp. 52 and 53, amid
taken from his journal for 1806, in which the method then
adopted by Ministers with regard to their borough seats
is not only explained as a thing quite natural in itself:
but is actually spoken of as " very politic and ingenious."
Lord Palmerston's account of it is simply this : _

"They purchased seats from their friends at a 101,
price, making up the deficiency, probably by appointments
and promotions. These seats they afterwards sold out at
the average market price to men who promised them Bog
port, and with the difference they carried on their
contested elections. The sum raised in this manner wad
stated by a person who was in the secret to be incor
ceivably great, and accounts for an assertion afterwards
made by Lord Granville in the Lords, that not one guinea
of the public money had been spent in elections.' It m3Y,
be imagined that if seats were bought for two thousand
five hundred, or even two thousand pounds, and sold again
for five thousand pounds, a comparatively small number
of such transactions would furnish a considerable fund;
and Government had so many seats passing through its
hands that at last, in one or two instances, it sold them to
people who only professed themselves, in general well air
posed towards them, without exacting a pledge of uncoil"
ditional support."
Verily "politic mid ingenious " with a vengeance I Those
times were, however, altogether different from our ovii•
Not only the political habits of the age, but the manners
and customs of the hour Were altogether different. ft is
refreshing to read' all about them here in these cow
temporary records, under the hand of Lord Palmerston,
as he describes the incidents and the men around WI
with uncompromising distinctness. Speaking of the
contest for the representation for Westminster, he says, for
example, " without putting too fine a point upon it," that
"Paull being the greatest blackguard of the two, quite
supplanted Sheridan in the opinion of the Covent Garde')
electors :" and a page or two later on he refers to a lq*.
Thistlethwaite as "a very stupid and respectable yowl
man, possessing considerable property near Portsmouth.
It was on the 3rd of February, 1808, that Lord Palmer'
ston delivered his maiden speech in the course of the de'
bate provoked by the expedition to Copenhagen. At
that time, as Sir Henry Bulwer expresses it,
" Any great affair was debated in a great manner 14
leading men." Commonplace talking was not then tole'
rated. A first speech under such circumstances was a
formidable undertaking. Lord Palmerston, then hilt
newly entered upon the Parliamentary arena, achieved a
success sufficiently pronounced to win for him several en"
couraging congratulations. Whatever Sir Henry Bulwer
may say as to the excellencies of Lord Palmerston as a
Parliamentary speaker, the latter never evidenced tile
possession of the gift of oratory, never indicated his title
even to the lesser dignity of a skilled and accomplished
rhetorician. In the whole of his long career he de'
livered but ono speech of any real importance—that, hoe'
ever, being in truth a great speech, meaning the ono 0
which lie vindicated the whole of his policy as Foreigh
Secretary, enchaining the attention of the House for lioars
together, carrying his audienca with him as one man, ex-
torting from Sir Robert Peel the exclamation, " We are
all proud of him ! " and eliciting the approval of both
sides and of all parties by acclamation. As a rule, hoe
ever, he was confused and hesitating in his delivery
Often as we have listened to him while addressing the
House of Commons, we have never heard him roe
in his manner above the dead level of mediocritY•
The humming-and-hawings were as distressing as they wer°
monotonous—his hands nervously waving back, now th°
one, now the other, as if to eke out by gesticulation the
seeming insufficiency or unreadiness or his vocabrdorP,
I biographer has, evidently en.),,gii, a c„,,,eioas„ess et
all that we are now referring to, where (i. 'O3) he allude 6

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3ed them 014'
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i around him
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videnced the
ated his title
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