The Sun.
London, England, 1848-11-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
TIMES.—Yesterday was the great metropolitan fes-
tivity. ' The Chief Magistrate of the ancient city of
London entered his year of office with the same antique
pageant, grave ceremonial, and magnificent hospitality
that our fathers saw before us, ere the age of revolutions
had begun. Representing all the municipal corporations
of the country, he presented himself, with all his civic
court, at her Majesty's Palace of Westminster to be
sworn to his arduous duties; and after the " double
triumph" by land and tide, which still excites the smile
it did a century ago, he received the chief notabilities of
The empire at that same Guildhall which Plantagenets
and Tudors have visited on similar occasions. Among
the few relics of old London, happily there survives one
centre of civic associations. It is true, that instead of the
lurid torch, the blazing hearth, or the forest of wax candles,
the walls are resplendent with gas, and ten thousand myste-
rious tongues of flame shed aseconddaylight on the festive
array. It is true that the chiefs exalted to the dais are
no longer men of fierce countenance, more used to blows
than to words. Lower dowa, faces full of comfort and
wealth contrast oddly enough with the barbaric effigies
that still adorn the hall. Yet as a whole there is not to
be found, probably in all Europe, a more perfect and na-
tural mediaeval idea than the Lord Mayor's banquet and
show. The scene which historic novelists have attempted
to describe with so much tedious detail is here recog-
nized at a glance. It is no affectation, no revival, no
v Lin attempt to ingraft old upon new—it is old Loudon
where it was, and, in many honourable respects, very
much what it was. Go where you l you will nowhere
see so goodly a muster of old English will
industry, honesty,
and skill. Of the many hundred men who yesterday
crowded the hall and its adjoining apartment, nearly all
had risen to a position of competence, respec-
tability, eminence, dignity, or power, by habits
of independent feeling and exertion. The vast
variety assembled illustrates the uniformity. of
character pervading all the orders of British society.
There were the constitutional advisers of the Crown,
men of no mean reputation or ill-tried honour; there
were distinguished naval and military commanders, the
law officers of the Crown, judges, dignitaries of the
Church, noted merchants and tradesmen, men who had
made their own fortunes, and won their own fame. The
Lord Mayor sat on the seat whereon have sat before
many a man who once was houseless, and who after-
wards attained still higher distinction. Many of our
nobility, if they wish to go back so far, will find the
cunabula of their race in the gaudy honours elf the
homely old city. The tone of such a company is that
of industry and honour. Here are no murmurings
against fate, no accusations of the elements or the stars,
no jealousy of Governments, no schemes of revolution
or greediness of plunder; for the simple reason that our
good citizens have proved and ascertained by expe-
rience that a man may generally rise if he chooses,
and that if he does sink lower, or grovel in
his native squalor, it is generally his own fault.
In such a place, if anywhere, may be permitted
those modest congratulations which will sponta-
neously rise to the lips and struggle for utterance, at the'
comparison of this metropolis with its continental sisters.
Prudish moralists have forbade us this innocent joy.
We were lately told by a man who has not taken his own
elevation with the most exemplary meekness that it is
self. righteeus to recognise the remarkable immunity we
hitherto enjoy from the scourge of epidemic insurrection.
The parallel, indeed, is striking enough. Our Hotel de
Ville is occupied by harmless citizens, instead of a revo-
lutionary junta, or a democratic clique. Instead of whole
battalions a few unarmed policemen protect it from in-
vasion. Our metropolis has not seen its streets con-
tested inch by inch by furious factions. It has net
become familiar with volleys of musketry and the
thunder of cannon. It has not been besieged by
provinces, blockaded by famine, bombarded, and
taken by assault. It has not been mined from
below, and burnt with rockets from above. It
has not been entered by victorious strangers. It is not
a prey to anarchy. It is not " govet ned" by an imbe-
cile, or, what worse, by a man too crazy to reign, and
too sane to depose. Its citizens are not armed. Its
youths do not dream of conquests, at least on European
soil. Its credit, shaken by commercial mischief at
home, has revived even under the alarms of spreading
revolution ; its industry is not abated, and the fountain
of wealth is not dried up. It is scarcely human not to
think of these things and be thankful for them. Such
congratulations need not be alloyed by vanity or ill-
will. We can receive with equal pleasure Lord Lans-
downe's well-deserved compliments to the loyalty of the
late Lord Mayor and his fellow-citizens when threatened
with revolution, and M. de Beaumont's excellent obser-
vatiou, that the common prosperity is furthered by in-
ternational peace, and impaired by war ; and that it is
rather our object to raise our neighbours than to ruin
them.
CHRONICLE.—We may fairly and properly address
to our countrymen the words addressed by Burke to the
House of Lords, towards the conclusion of his famous
speech against Warren Hastings—" Your justice stands
pre-eminent in the world; but it stands amidst a vast
la( ap of ruins, which surroun 1 it in every corner of
Europe." It is this last circumstance which gives a
more than common significance in the case of His
Royal Highness the Prince Consort v. Strange (reported
in our paper of the 7th); for although the superficial
observer may regard it as a mere matter of course, that
the highest personages in the realm should appear before
Vice-Chancellor Knight Bruce to ehforce a claim, and be
recelve3 on a perfect footing of equality with the lowest,
it it not the less true that there is not another country in
the world, aristocratic or dcm ,critie, monarchical or re-
pubiean, where the Sovereign or the First Magistrate,
or any one identified in inti..r.st with the Sovereign or
First Magistrate, would app ear in a court of justice
without fear and trembling, or (worse still) without
en undue, yet well-ground •d, eereidence in the result
The first remarkable c ec:soe on which the stern,
uncompromising character ' shins t law became fami-
liarly known throughout Earn: e, was in Queen Anne's
time, when an Ambassador from Peter the Great was
arrested in the streets of London for a debt of flits'
pouiels. Peter was furious, and insisted that the S:leriti
of Middlesex, and all others concerned in the affair.
Omni; be punished with instant ;death; but the Queen
replied, that " she could inflict no punishment unles
warranted by the law of the land; and, therefore, we;
persereled that he would not insist upon impossibilities."
Napoleon, as arbitrary as Peter in his way, accepted
with extreme reluctance the small reparation offered him
in the prosecution of Peltier; and could never be made
to understand that the Government might not have
gagged Sir James Mackintosh had they thought fit.
The legal victory gained by Horne Tooke 'e father, a
pultsrer, over the Heir Apparent of the British
'chrome, might have taught him better; or he might
have been consoled on hearint that one of the
severest mortifications ever inflicted on a member of
our Royal Family, was the beinc, defeated in the attempt
to stop a path across Richmond-park by a shoemaker.
It is remarkable that Napoleon did once suspend a pro-
jected improvement in Paris rather than eject a shoe-
maker who refused to resign his tenement; but the Em-
peror was so little in the habit of respecting rights of
any kind that we suspect this solitary instance to have
been a coup-de-theatre at the best. When Louis
Philippe laid claim to the right of engraving from the
n-w pictures in the Versailles Gallery, and the claim
was contested by the painters, he forthwith proceeded to
use the whole influence of his Government to get a legis-
lative declaration of his alleged rights, and failed. It
will he admitted on all hands that our Sovereign and her
Royal Consort have come with infinitely more grace be-
fore tho public, in their capacity of patrons of art, and
assertors of their rights as amateur artists. As to these
rights, there was not the shadow of a doubt from the
beeineing. The only difficulty was to discover
the proper parties to be proceeded against. " The in-
formation stated that her Majesty the Queen, and her
Consort, his Royal Highness the Prince Albert, re-
spectively, had occasionally, for their amusement, made
drawings and etchings, principally on subjects of private
and domestic interest to themselves, of which etchings
they had made impressions for their own use, and not
for publication; that, for the greater privacy, such im-
pres,ions had been for the most part made by means of
a private press kept for that purpose, and the plates
themselves had been ordinarily kept by her Majesty
under lock ; that the impressions had been placed in
some of the private apartments of her Majesty at Wind-
sor, and in such private apartments only." These had
boon abstracted, and a gallery formed fthem, which
advertised, had been duly 9
as well as a work entitled
" A. Descriptive Catalog
Alfieri Gallery of Etchings:' The
the Royal Victoria and
The collection (according
Vl') the report) " containedgs." portraits of the favourite
dogs of the Queen and the P inc?, etchings from old
and rare engravings in the possession of her Majesty ;
several from the original designs of the Queen and his
Royal Highness, representing warrior
animals and birds, and historical and domesticht? heads
subjects,
and of
and a variety of interesting works, some from sorlgiaa
drawings by Landseer and other esteemed artists. The
information alleged that the impressions of the etchings
were intended to be for the private use of her Majesty
.and bis Royal Highness Prince Albert, and that' al-
though copies of some of them have been occasionally
and rarely given to some of their private friends (one to
one friend and one to another), no such collection as
that so advertised for exhibition as aforesaid was ever
given away by them or either of them, or by their or
either of their permission ; and no such col-
lection could hare been formed, except of im-
pressions surreptitiously and improperly obtained.' "
After the requisite technicalities were complied
with, the desired " injunction" was decreed.
The impression left by the perusal of "Lord
Hervey's Memoirs" is certainly not favourable to
royalty. It is not simply the irregularities in
which one of the royal pair, so graphically delineated by
Sporus, indulged with the express sanction, and even
connivance, of the other, but the total absence of refine-
ment or cultivation in their pursuits, which strongly
offends modern notions. But any rash conclusion to
which a reader of delicate perceptions and high moral
tone may have been hurried regarding the effects of
high station, will be at once corrected and repelled by
the charming picture of domestic life in a palace, inci-
dentally suggested by the grave legal documents in this
case. Monarchy is safe in the affections, as well as in
the principles, of the people, so long as the curtain,
however rudely and suddenly drawn, is sure to disclose
nothing but harmony, purity, intellectual habits, good
feeling, and good taste ; and Justice receives the high-
est of earthly homages when Princes and Rulers seek, of
their own accord, her judgment-seat.

CHOLERA ON BOARD HER MAJESTY'S STEAMER
SEAFLOWER, AT JERSEY. The Admiralty were in-
formed yesterday of cholera having broken out on
board tile above vessel, stationed for the protection of
the British fisheries at Jersey; and more medical re-
sources {fah the ship afforded being required to meet
the exigencies of the case, their Lordships have ordered
medicalofficers to be dispatched from Portsmouth to
her relief. The steamer Myrtle took out the required
medical aid yesterday tern