The Sun.
London, England, 1870-03-26 00:00:00

A naturalised Englishman, well known for a good author of " The Bachelor of the Albany." Mr
navy years in the literary world of London, a Savage's new work, into which I am just inserting
Frenchman by birth and education, M. le Chevalier the paper-knife with an anticipative relish, is doubly
de Chatelain, a man of letters and a man of parts, entitled " The Woman of Business; or the Lady and
has recently been' giving at his house, Castelnau the Lawyers."
Lodge by name, out in the direction of Bayswater, On Tuesday the Lion of the Season sat for his por-
a very curious and attractive repetition of a very trait - meaning no other notability than Lycurgus,
interesting entertainment. It was nothing less than the Archbishop of Syra, Tenos, and Melos. The
an anticipative renewal in another form, or at any photographer was Mr. John Watkins, of Parliament-
rate, under another title, of a retrospective celebra- street, and the negatives, which were very numerous,
Con of an anniversary. Let me explain what must were many of them remarkably successful. As a
sound, when thus t xpressecl, exceedingly enigmatical. series they may be said to represent the Greek
Last year, on the 12th of March, the Chevalier de Archbishop, stage by stage, all through the elabo-
Chatelain celebrated, exactly a year too late, his rate process of robing and disrobing. Several of the
" silver wedding," by means of a fancy dress ball. costumes are certainly magnificent, one of them cora-
-1 his year, on the 15th of March, as nearly as possible prising, among the adornments, a gorgeously jewelled
23 years too soon, he celebrated, in the same way, mitre, or rather crown, and a white silk robe richly
his " golden wedding." As the Courier de l'Europe brocaded and lavishly seamed and interlaced all over
has publicly mentioned the latter entertain- with gold_ embroidery—like many of the oriental
ment, I need not scruple to do so myself after- vestments and diadems I myself saw on the Bth of
wards. Allured to Castelnau Lodge by an invita- December last in St. Peter's at Rome, as that won-
don, I was, unluckily, unable to attend by reason of derful procession of the CEcumenical Council, passed,
a pre-engagement; but, seeing through the eyes of within arm's reach of me, on the day of uaugura-
another, I may add that among the throng of literary tion. Archbishop Lycurgus has thus sat for his por-
and artistic notabilities disporting themselves there trait, as I understand, in order that he may present
under various disguises—as Buckingham, as Charles each copy, literally as a carte de visite, to the Queen,
IX., as Henri 111., as Marie Stuart, as Esmeralda, the Prince, and the Princesses, as well as to other
and so forth—R. IL Horne, of Orion and the anti- illustrious personages in return for their own photo-
podes, was discernible as a troubadour, and Edward graphs ;an incident curiously and rather whimsically
Corbould, the artist, in the magnificent panoply of illustrative of the march of civilisation.
' a knight in armour. Exceptional as a fancy dress
ball is now a days, the one thus given to his literary
and artistic friends by the Chevalier de Chatelain
" went off," as they say of a ball (as though it were
a bombshell), to very general admiration, being re-
garded by the guests of this—l hardly know whether
to say golden or silver—wedding couple as creditable
alike to their taste and to their hospitality.
A wonderful corn[ilation has just reached us in the
shape of a handsome volume, arrayed in golden brown
cloth and blue leather. It purports to be, and is, a
worthy companion to that microcosm of information,
now in :its thirteenth edition, " Haydn's Dictionary.
of Dates." " Haydn's Universal Index of Bio-
graphy," it is called, but Haydn's it is only as by a
sort of sobriquet; for Joseph Haydn, the antiquary
(compiler of the " Dictionary of Dates," in 1841),
died as this very book I am now referring to says at
p. 243, on the 17th of January, 1856. No; the
labour (and gigantic labour it must have been) by
which this superb epitome of the history of the globe
has been compiled, it should be said at once, is that
o' Capt. Bertrand Payne, the enterpr'sing publishers
(Moxon, Son, and Co.), and the indefatigable man
of letters. The ponderous tome extends to nearly
600 pai,es (586) of doubled-columned letterprev.
Arranged as it is, of course, dictionary fashion,
that is to say, alphabetically, the information it
contains is instantaneously accessible. As suffi-
ciently indicative of its completeness and of its
accuracy, it is only necessary to glance at the
solitary erratum, and at the trivial addenda.
If there is a fault of any kind in regard to its range,
it is that it is too comprehensive. Whales and min-
now, leviathans and tadpoles, are all swept together
in this all-embracing net. As a matter of course,
because a matter of sheer necessity, the particulars
given of each individual named in this stupendous
catalogue of notabilities are of the briefest and corn-
pactest character possible. But in a mere dictionary
that is all that can in reason ba looked for. To no
class of labourers in the field of literature do I feel
more gratefully beholden, as a rule, than to your con-
scientious dictionary-makers of any kind whatsoever.
It is the most toilsome office they have undertaken

and, generally speaking, the most thankless. Cap-
tain Payne's book is a dictionary among dictionaries;
it is the epitome of all the histories, the cream of all
the literatures, the resumeof all the centuries. To know
it familiarly, one might say as Sir Richard Steele
said of the charming lady, is of itsaf a liberal
education.

Napoleonism or Bonapartism, as the linrerial
regime in Fiance is. called by the friends and enemies

of the Oa'lie Caesars, has, within these last few days,
hal two rather startling and certainly widely con-
trasting illustrations. While in the court of justice

at Tours, one of the princes of the reigning family
has been arraigned at the bar on a charge of homicide,
the reigning prince himself has been spontaneously
making another, the latest and certainly the most
signal concession he has yet vouchsafed to the now
dominant s 3 stem of Constitutionalism. The antidote
to the poison of Prince Pierre's escapade may be
found off-hand in the Emperor's letter to M. Emile
011ivier. The third Napoleon, by the way, has almost
been as great at letter writing in his time as Earl
Russell even—that complete letter writer among
English stat, smen. From 11;s memorable communi-
c ttion to " My dear Ney," when Colonel Ney was at
Rome, and when Colonel Ney's correspondent was
President, down to this recent epistle addressed by
his Majesty to that virtual Prime Minister of France,
the Minister of Justice, the Emperor has availed
himself of a good many startling opportunities for
going directly to the point in the form of a very
simple and almost familiar commuuic *tion. 1 han
at the present moment his Majesty has most
assuredly never, upon any occasion, written more
opportunely.
Besides Marianne Evans's 800 lines of poetry about
"The Legend of Infal" and the initial instalment of
Anthony Trollope's new serial story of " Sir Harry
Hotspur, of Humblethwaite," both of which are
promised as immediately forthcoming in Macmillan,
we have the prospect of several new attiactions in
others of the popular periodicals. Mrs. Adolphus
Trollope's clever but rather painful tale of " Vero-
nica," in All the Year Round, is upon the very
edge of its conclusion, and will be succeeded by
another of a very different character. In the
Court Circular, meaning not the state paragraphs,
so headed, but the newspaper so entitled, besides the
weekly gossipping of Edmund Yates, as a sort of
loafing " Asmodeus," E. L. Blanchard, the veteran
theatrical critic of the lelegraph and the Era, 15
enrolled among the hebdomadal contributor'esassup-
plying the readers of the fashionable j
Saturday mornings with a sketch of one
poorrueordtuheetrieouf
the favourite actors of the day. For the
of a sketch of this kind, no one is in any way more
d e
happily qualified. A pictorial
able promise is now in active workpreparation,ofve rthe con s
picturesr-
coming from the hand of Gustave Dore, the literary
portion from that of Blanchard Jerrold—the theme
being "London." It will be descriptive, I presume,
of the " London Life" of now a days—without Tom
and Jerry, Corinthian Tom and Jerry Juniper—
with perhaps a better than that slangiest among the
slangy pierce Egan, but can one say a better than
P
Eganikis great artist companion ? 0 rare
(gorge ! With really admirable pluck,
irce
Cru
Mr. !Alfred Austin, the sprightly, riant author of
"The Season," has, in a reprint of the anonymous
series of critical papers in Temple Bar, entitled
"Poetry of the Period," owned to its authorship.
lie, at any rate, is not one who :
Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike ;
To hint a fault and hesitate dislike !
lie hits the right nail exactly on the head, drives
it well home, and then comes from behind the screen,
at the back of which he has been thus vigorously
working, comes deliberately fran behind the screen
in sig'.t of us all, openly, and quite comfortably, for
the express purl ose of clinching
A remarkable volume has just come into my hand,
whose production I know Lo., fe.r it is published by
the Messrs. Chapman and Hall, al: onymously vs
" By an Englishman," giving a most animated sketch
of the men and events of the Anstro• Hungarian Em-
pire, and of the policy of Count Beu,t from 1866
to 1870. Also, I have from the same house, just to
hand, the " Last Novel" (I hope, in another sense, not
the last), of Marmion Savage, the witty and brilliant

'REPORTED ELOPEMENT OF A- DUKE'S
DAUGHTER.

The following is from the London correspondent or a
Bristol paper :—" An elopement in high life is reported.
The daughter of a duke, who is connected by marriage,
with one of the members of Mr. Gladstone's Administra-
tion, and who has herself been married for eleven yeare..
has eloped with an officer in the Guards."

ENGLISH PEDESTRIANS RN AUSTRALIA.
When the question of an Eleven of English cricketers
paying another visit to the Antipodes was started last
autumn, it was at the same time proposed that some of our
professional runners should also undertake the voyage with
a view to testing the powers of the Australian champions.
The first arrangement, fell through, but the pedestrians
nothing daunted, set sail for the colonies, and
the latest files of Australian papers give us some
brief tidings of their doings. England was represented
by Topley, the champian walker ; Hewitt, the champion
sprint runner; and. Bird, who has proved himself
very formidable over long distances. The trio competed for
the first time on the Melbourne Cricket Ground early in
January, when a series of handicaps came off in the'pre-
sence of some five thousand spectators. Unfortunately,
they were not by any means in good condition, and the
long starts which they were called upon to concede to the
best men Australia could produce, caused their defeat in
every event. Feeling, however, that they were not com-
peting fairly on their merits, they decided on a second
trial after five weeks' training, and we shall doubtless hear
of a great improvement ih their performances. Hewitt
has matched himself with Harris, the champion of Aus-
tralia, for five sprint races, varying between a hundred
yards and a quarter of a mile, and these events are looked
forward to with much interest. To form any comparison
between the pedestrians of the two countries, the various
champions should undoubtedly meet on level terms ; for,
with the climate and ground strange to them, our repre-
sentatives are already heavily handicapped.

THE DECLINE OF AMERICAN COMMMERCV.
President Grant has sent a special message to Congress
on the decline of the United States' merchant navy. -11-
summary of this important document is given in a special
telegram from the Timer's Philadelphia correspondent.
The President commences by referring to a report of the
committee of the House on the subject, saying!'"
"It points out grave wrongs, proving the decline
of commerce. It is a national humiliation that we
are now compelled to pay 20 to 30 million doll
annually, exclusive of the passage money, which
we should share with vessels of other nations, to
foreigners for doing work which should be done by
American owned and American manned vessels. This 15
a drain upon the revenues of the country equal to casting
money into the sea, so far as America is concerned.
nation of the United States' great resources must one day
possess a full share of the ocean commerce, no matter
what its cost. Delay will only increase the cost and
enhance the difficulty of attaining the result.
I therefore make an earnest plea for early
action in a way to secure increased American com-
merce. The advanced period of the year and the fact
that no contract for shipbuilding will be entered into
until Congres3 arts, and the further fact that if Congress
delays all large vessels contracted for this year will fail of
completion before winter, being therefore carried over for
another year, induces me to request an early consideration
of the subject. I regard it as of such grave importance,
affecting every. interest of the country so much, that any
method gaining the object will secure rich na-
tional blessing. The building of ships and navigating
them utilizes a vast capital at home, employs thousands
of people, creates a home market for the productions in
the farm and the shop, and diminishes the balance of
trade against us precisely by the amount of freight and
passage-money paid to American vessels. It gives us
supremacy on the seas of inestimable value in the
case of foreign war. At the beginning of the
late War the American navy was less than to
vessels of 150,000 tons,
ro, with 8,000 men. We drew
from the merchant marine, which cost the Government
,;„
nothing, but had been a great source of wealth,
vessels, exceeding 1,000,000 tons, and 70,000 men to aid in
suppressing the rebellion. This demonstrates the vialte
of the merchant marine as a means of national defence in
time of war." The President recommends the adoption
of a general method proposed by the Committee of the
House for regaining this lost commerce. He says he
believes a direct money subsidy is less liable to abuse
than an indirect one, given to the same enterprise. be
thinks in this case, however, subsidies, while they may
given to specified lines of steamers or other vessels, shoul
not be exclusively adopted. In addition to subsiclizill
aGsirable lines of ocean traffic, general assistance shoula
be given in an effective way. He concludes by commen,a:
ing to favourable consideration the Bills wapesed t'-`"
House Committee.

Queen Isabella has addressed a letter to the Noll
Father on the occasion of the Prince of Asturias's journeY
to Rome.
Hail and snow showers (says the Meteorological
Report) are reported from some stations,
and lightning in
London.
The Memorial Diplomatiquc is auised to en
dy,
in the most formal manner, the report that the Marquis
de Banneville will not return to his post-
court a sergeant of polieffectce
the
JUVENILE ACTORS.
watch ellar i astltret
communicateduthaMpt7
that, having received nume'
the magistrates to thesPtctriect):
roux complaints, he pr°e He obtained
where he found a boy
a °discovered about thin children
irty
tance, however,
" been erected
Inside
A stage had
—At th
a number of boys were performing. He found that the chil-
dren obtained the money for admission, which was a peog
each, in some baeseZhbo3sre-dofhlest`3", the pieces perforraie.
gearingaP " and dresses the Jack Sheppard" stiod
The , scenery were brought into court; a 1
included the royal arms of England ! There was a's°, i •
bat, which, though not of the best material, was ' ? '
gently made with the view of giving . 9,,...
a romantic apP.,
tthe ,
ante o
which are given in low-class periodicals of highwaymen' A
NEW WAY OF MAKING LOVE.—Mdlle. Mahe
Roze, who is at present 'whoaell
MM. de Saint-Georges studying a part in L'Ontbre,
and Flatow are about to bring
at the Lyrique, Paris, was remarked of late to be nervoilS
and preoccupied, and on being questioned by her frieila4
declared tis
that she had received a number of anon7l°°„.,
letters from an unknown admirer, the missives being
1.-;
markable alike- for their ardour and their bad spelling'
the last one had directed her to be on a certain evenir
at half-past five, alone, in front of the Church of bt'
Trinity, as, if not, she might reckon on having her fal
sprinkled over with sulphuric acid. Her friends insi..ste:,
on her lodging a complaint at the prefecture of Poilcat
On the day appointed the young actress WAS _..a
the place of rendezvous, and a young workman, in a blow
and cloth cap. came up and addressed her : "Ah ! you hsZa
come! Are you alone? " " Yes." " Well, it is not I 17'..r.
wrote, but my brother. He is there in that hack
coach." At that moment several police-agents sedzed,_,
the man, and proceeding to the carriage found it eraPVe.
Of course he was detained in custody to answer the age {loci 4
It appears that this is not his first attempt, .as be ~,
offering his heart to Mdlle. Roze, he had laid it—ill Ph;f
cisely the same manner—at the feet of Mdlle. Massiei ~
the Gymnase. He must at all events be allow og
_a
have good taste in thus selecting two of the vrottg"
actresses in Paris. aSt
ItEDUCTION OF ARDIAMENTS.—For some time p-t,I
there has been a movement in Germany in favour of !:tt,,
reduction of armaments. A sense of the beg
burden which is entailed on the population by the syesifb,
of armed peace which is maintained has penetrated to ',if,
Assembly of the Northern Confederation. The 851.'"
opinion is shared by the States of Southern Geri
where they rely on the autonomist reaction to coup
the the Prussian influence.. In the Vienna Reichsrath a 13;
position of this character has been rejected by a ma)
of
of only eleven. The opinion of Europe has pronounce o f
itself in this matter as in the question of the atolition__
capital punishment, and sooner or later its ideas will 0/
carried out.
froA. LONG VOYAGE.—A. large vessel called
Nora Creina, 1,000 tons burthen, Captain Taylor, _
Bombay, with a general cargo, put into Queenstolviii,3
day or two ago, short of provisions. The ship was 1.._ a
days out, and during the last fifty days the crew suffered
fearful hardships. Linseed cake constituted their 1 °_(3
for the principal part of that time. They received soya
relief from a passing ship, but this did not last for
~Y 0
time, and the linseed cake was again resorted to as I".A
only resource to save the crew from actual starvation: 01
short distance off the harbour some provisions were pi To,
on board by
a pilot schooner and with this meagre suPPi',
the unfortunate men who were unable to work the s_iiora r
IN
from hunger and exhaustion, were regaled before the
_.
Creina arrived in Queenstown. This remarkably Pry
,110_
1 tracted voyage, extending over a period of SiS =Cll.' '
was. Attributable to eolvtroo winds. , ,