The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-02 00:00:00

SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS-TO-DAY.

The Chemical Society—at 8 p.m., when Dr. Codling will
read a paper on "Platino-Ammonium Bases."
The Linnea,n Society—at 8 p.m., when Mr. R. M'Lachlan
will read a paper on "New Forms of Trichopterous
Insects."
The Society of Antiquaries—at 8.30 p.m.

FREE RUSSIA.

TO THE EDITOR OF " THE SUN."

May 31, 1870.

Sin,—Mr. Sutherland Edwards has at length been forced
to confess and explain his five " false citations" from Mr.
Dixon's book. The explanation is a real curiosity of lite-
rature ; for, in effect, it adds two more false citations to
the former five.

Mr. Edwards asserts, in regard to citations 1 and 2,
that Mr. Dixon does say (1.), that Solovedsk is'a Lavra ;
and (2), that there are four Lavras in Russia ; and then
goes on to add that if Mr. Dixon does not say so, the Ra-
dika of Archangel does.
Mr. Edwards repeats that false citations 3,4, and 5 are
in Mr. Dixon's book, and then he quotes these passages
which say the very reverse. The subject is serfage,
which Mr. Dixon shows to be a very different thing to
villeinage. " Serfage," he says, " was not villeinage
under another name," and he shows that villeinage died
out before serfage came into existence. Mr. Edwards
cites what Mr. Dixon says about villeinage as if he had
said it about serfage ! !

Can trifling and confusion get deeper in the mire ?

Detected and exposed in these false citations, Mr. Edwards
runs off in into vague and general charges, but it, would
seem from this passage of arms that he cannot risk a sen-
tence without making some mistake. Among the asser-
tions made by him in this correspondence, yon may find
the following ludicrous blunders.

He says there are only three Lavras in Russia, Mou-
ravieff mentions eight. He says there are only three Me-
tropolitan Sees in Russia. There are six, namely, Nov-
gorod, Kief, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Lithuania, and
Imeritia. He says there are only three ecclesiastics hold-
ing metropolitan rank. There are five, namely, Isidore,
Arseny, Innocent, Joseph, and the Metropolitan of
Imeritia. _ _ _

He says there is a Metropolitan See of St. Petersburg
and Novgorod. There is no such see.
He says there is no music in Russian churches.
He says singing is not music, and yet assumes to he a
musical critic.

He says the Russian Church allows divorce.
He says the Russian Church denies the existence of
purgatory.
He calls the New Jerusalem Church a Lavra.
He says the Monastery of St. Alexander Nevski "is
close to St. Petersburg."

~ .
He calls Prussia and Austria " the west of Europe."
- - -

--..... _
Here stops my pen out of breath with laughter. Poor
Mr. Edwards. LOOKER ON.

Mr. Disraeli was so far restored to health as to be
able to dine on Tuesday evening with the American
Minister.
An Oxford correspondent writes that the subject
for the Stanhope Historical Essay for 1871 is " Lafayette."
The Athenaeum Building Society, Birmingham,
has failed; liabilities, £B,OOO. It is expected that the
estate will realise 15s. in the pound.
IlDiritto announces that the Italian Government
has decided at once to bring in a bill for the construction
of the St. Gothard Railway.
It is stated that the Committee of the Keble
Memorial Fund have received from the Govern-
ment the promise of a Charter for incorporating Keble
College.

Queen Maria-Christina, of Spain, has just
arrived .at her villa of MOndesir, at Sainte-Adresse,
near Havre, where she intends to remain for some
time.

John Fowler, a farmer's son, and one of Lord
Delamere's tenants, has been fined £5 and costs for mali-
ciously killing a fox-hound belonging to the master of the
Cheshire Hunt.

It appears, from a parliamentary return issued yester-
day, that only three friendly societies in Scotland have as
yet complied with the statute, which directs the rules of
such associations to be deposited with the Registrar of
Friendly Societies.
DEAT II OF THE BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK.—A
telegram from Rome announces the death of the Right
Rev. Thomas Giant, the Catholic Bishop of Southwark.
Dr. Grant was apparently dying when he left England
towards the close of last year, to attend the (Ecumenical
Council. Ms surviving the journey, even, was a matter
of astonishment to those who knew his condition. Since
then h s health appears to have undergone several extra-
ordinary fluctuations. His decease has more than once
been announced, to be afterwards contradicted. The right
reverecd prelate has at last succumbed to the mortal disease
by which his Me has been so long rendered precarious. No
member of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in this
country was more popular than the late " Bishop of South-
wark," and none could be regretted more sincerely by others
even than his coreligionists.

DUNVILLE and Co., Belfast, are the largest holders
of whisky in the world. Their Old Irish Whisky is recommended
by the medical profession in preference to French brandy. Sup-
plied in casks and cases for home use or exportation. Quotations
on application to Messrs DUNVILLE tit co., Royal Irish Dis-
tilleries, Belfast ; or at their London Offices 4, Beaufort Buildings
Strand, W.Q

SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.

THE DERBY DAY.

If an expedition to Epsom, says the Times, is accom-
panied by much mortification to Londoners, who are, so to
speak, but a stone's throw from the spot-- and these
mortifications, be it remembered, happen almost
invariably to all of us, except, indeed, the loss
of our watches, which most of us are too wise to
take with us—how we ask, can it answer for our
provincials to come so far merely to undergo
the same disappointments ? There is no accounting, of
course, for tastes. Some people like long voyages in
yachts ;at least, they profess to like them. Some people
like mountain-climbing, camping out in tents, stand-
ing up •to the waist for hours in water, and,
after all, not killing a salmon. Some lie for hours
crawling and creeping on mossy hill-sides, seek-
ing to compass the death of a stag, which, after
all is not kind enough to come within easy shot. All
these amiable enthusiasts say they like it, and no doubt
they have their reward in the feeling of life and vigour in
the dancing waves, the balmy air, • the chance of a
long struggle with a clean-run fish, or the " thud "of the
bullet as it brings down a noble stag. But what on earth can
be the pleasure of decent people—and many of these
sightseers are decent and respectable—in leaving
their homes and families and rushing up to London and to
Epsom to see little or nothing of the very race which they
came to see, to lose their money on animals which they
eannot even approach, and of whose very colour they are
prgfoundly ignorant, and then to return to town drenched
to the skin or with their throats full of dust (as it may
please the weather), the laughing-stock of all the little boys
in the metropolis ! Verily, if there be such a thing as
temporary insanity, this is part of it. What can be more
frantic than to pursue something of which the only
pleasure is in the prospect, of which the fruition is dis-
appointment, and of which in countless cases the retro-
spect is regret ?
The Post says that the " glorious " uncertainty of the
Derby was never more fully proved than it was yester-
day. The favourite for whom the prophets, almost to
a man, had plumped, whose pretensions had para-
lysed speculation, whose success was taken by the world
at large as inevitable, and whom accident alone could,
it was said, deprive of the great racing prize of the year,
this favourite of favourites has sustained an ignominious
defeat, having finished behind an animal not even men-
tioned in the betting. The result is certainly curious. It
shows what a perilous business is that of the backer
of racehorses; and, conversely, it throws a light
on the reasons why it is that the bookmakers of the
Turf are enabled to realise fortunes by their calling
The public will always back favourites, but the
favourites are as often beaten as not. One thing is cer-
tain—the success of no owner could be more gratifying
to the public than that of Lord Falmouth. Racing, purely
for racing sake, he is one of the few men on the turf who
can claim to follow the pursuit as a sport and pastime. We
want more of such men on the turf. When the winning
of money becomes the first object of the owners
of horses it is impossible but that scandals, heartburnings,
and dissensions must arise, to the disgust of all true
lovers of racing, and to the lowering of the status of the
old national sport. Lord Falmouth sets an excellent
example. His horses are felt to run on their true merits.
Hence his success will be an unquestionable gratification
to the public.

The Daily News says that the prophets were unani
mous, but wrong. The winning horse may metaphori-
cally be said to have had his foot upon his native heath ;
but his name was not Macgregor. The favourite was
was fourth, instead of first. We leave it to expects
to explain, if it needs explanation, how it was
the expected did not come to pass. The theory
of the moment seems to be that, in transferring
Macgregor from Daley's jockeyship to Fordham's, Mr.
Merry loaded him with the proverbial ill-luck of the latter
rider. But this theory will not perhaps stand the philo-
sophical scrutiny of an enlightened age. It is impossible to
advance be-c and the profound generalisation that
nothing is certaiJ but the unlikely. The peculiar
form, equine or human, which the improbable assumed
yesterday, was that of the horse Kingcraft and the jockey
French. We congratulate Lord Falmouth, and condole
with Mr. Merry and the many to whom Lord Falmouth's
colours and Mr. Merry's were the symbols of joy and woe.
But the Derby is a thing of yesterday. To-morrow the
Oaks. From sport to sport they hurry us.

The Telegraph reminds us that when, in 1809, Sydney
Smith, in the pulpit at Malton, took up his parable
against horse-racing, and loudly proclaimed, within bow-
shot of the then most fashionable training-ground in
Yorkshire, that his hearers were wasting time upon that
which satisfieth not, he came home to his wife conscious
of failure, and said, " So fight I, as one that beateth the
air." Great though the fire and force of his pulpit
oratory were, Sydney Smith could make no impression
upon his horse-loving audiences. But the Derby of 1870
is a far more powerful preacher than any living or dead
monitor. It tells us that horses cannot be trusted.
It proclaims that nothing on earth is certain
except the unforeseen. It will be welcome to all true
lovers of the sport, inasmuch as Kingcraft belongs to one
of the most conscientious sportsmen, and is trained
by one of the most honourable trainers that
Newmarket Heath ever saw. And yet the Derby of
1870, like every other great race in the present year, is
indicative of decay in our great national sport. A worse
horse than Muster probably never got a place in Epsom's
great contest ; and so small a field has only once before
started within the last twenty-five years. But, in addi-
tion the numbers assembled at Epsom exhibited a marked
decline, and the result of the race is calculated to put
reasonable men out of conceit with turf " certainties."
We are not Quixotic enough to think that it will cure
gamblers of their infatuation. Riddlesworth, upon whom
6 to 4 was betted in 1831—and which was defeated by
Spaniel, though he had hardly a supporter at 50 to I—ran
a good second. Let us hope that the unplaced Macgregor,
against whom on Wednesday bookmakers at last refused
to back the field at any odds, will cause some few who are
not inextricably entangled to pause and ask themselves
whether the pursuit of horse-racing, though it may rea-
sonably be upheld as a diversion, is worthy to be made the
business of a life.