The Sun.
London, England, 1870-09-19 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1870.

Curious to note, amid the clang of arms both
within and around the great and beautiful capital of
France, the gathering yesterday of a quiet throng
around a grave in the very middle of London, in
Bunhill Fields burial-ground, a grave that for nearly
one hundred and fifty years had remained altogether
neglectedu Widely different though the spectacles
thus contrasting with each other, here and yondert
there is a significance at the heart of each
in very many ways, it may be said,
intensely congenial and sympathetic. Underlying
each, there is a patriotic ardour the glowing warmth
of which it would be impossible to exaggerate. Ani-
mating both demonstrations, there is a passionate
love of democratic independence at once of thought,
and speech, and writing, and printing, for- the ade-
quate indication of which no words. that could
be employed would be deemed by anyone
extravagant. Of the truth of all this in re-
gard to Paris, every incident in the unfolding of the
grand and awful tragedy whioh is there being
enacted is, from day to day, almost from hour to hour,
absolutely demonstrative. For our present purpose
it will be sufficient, however, if attention is now ex-
clusively directed for a moment to the widely con-
trasting and yet essentially kindred spectacle wit-
nessed yesterday in London, in one of our old
intramural graveyards.
A century and a half has nearly passed by since there
was deposited in that grave the body of the man
over whose last resting place a beautiful and
substantial memorial was yesterday inangu-

rated. He rose from the ranks of the people.
He lived a struggling life. He died poor. Ho was

more than once bankrupt. Like Cardinal WOLSEY,
like MARK AKENSIDE, like KIRKE WHITE, accord-
ing to some like SHAKSPERE, he was the son of a
butcher. He himself kept a hosier's shop in Corn-
hill. He was arraigned at the bar of justice as a
criminal. He was tried, condemned, and
sentenced. He was mulcted heavily in
fines, was incarcerated as a prisoner in
Newgate, was pilloried here and there all about
London. And yet this man's crime all the while
was simply that he was, heart and soul, a champion
of freedom of speech, of writing, of printing, and of
publishing. He was one of the first and foremost of

English journalists—the greatest of all political pam-
phleteerst—the most illustrious and world-famous
of all the story tellers who have delighted childhood.
DANIEL DE FOE—that was the man's name.
Originally his name was FOE—this true Friend of
us all—this Friend of our children and our children's
children, on through a perspective of gene-
rations. His glory as a man of letters

is that he was the author of " Robin-
son Crusoe," the most wonderfully realistic
tale that was ever penned by writer of imagination.
His triumph of romance, however, in another sense,
was his "History of the Great Plague of London,"
reading like truth, and yet written, every word of
it entirely out of his imagination. As it social
reformer, one of his n014.195t achievementb was his
routing out and utterly extirpating the infamous den
of Whitefriars.

Reading to-day, on the very morrow of the in-
auguration of the memorial tomb of this wise, good,
bold man, a memorial touchingly raised to the
memory of the author of "Robinson Crusoe "—by
whom!' by the Boys and Girls of England 1 reading,
as we do, now upon the very morrow of that
incident the record of a horrible inquiry
that was being carried on simultaneously not
hundred miles from Bunhill Fields burial ground,
namely, at the Middlesex Sessions before Mr. Ser-
jeant Cox—an inquiry into a certain frightful traffic
in immorality going on here in the very midst of us
—the instinctive cry of one's heart is, 0 for one

hourof DANIEL DE FOE ! 0 for the wieldingonce more
of that scathing pen that frightened all the obscene
creatures away from their loathsome haunts down
in Whitefriars I For eleven years it would seem
that there has been flourishing in the metropolis of
England a system of immorality the mere mention-
ing of which seems little less than an outrage
and a profanation. Not a stew, not a brothel, not a
bagnio--a housa kept, first of all, by a Madame
D'ALMA, and, subsequently, by one °LARISSA
DORVAL, and another, ATHALIE. VEVEY—a hand-
some, commodious residence, the admission fee
to which was a guinea, the attraction
to which Was a room full of prostittftes
undraped in any way whatever. Wontler-
ful to tell, the wretched women keeping this abomi-
nable establishment, on being indicted, by the
Society for the Suppression of Vice, for that
surely heinous offence, are in the simplest,
way in the world " got off" in a manner
by the learned counsel defenaing them,
Mr. Serjeant BA L LANTINE. llis argument was that
the prisoners themselves believed that they were en-
gaged in a perfectly legal transaction as in most or

le Continental cities, such houses were licensed by
Le constituted authorities., There was this to be said,

added the learned Serjeant, that no women were
seen entering the house with men, but they lived
in the house ; and he might contend that they
lived in the house as lOdgere. The house having,
been given up, he should advise the prisoners to with-
draw their plea of not guilty, and leave the matter
in the hands of the Court. No sooner said than
done. The prisoners pleaded guilty. The Judge
who was trying them, Mr. Serjeant Cox, having
consulted with one or two justices on the Bench,
said he considered that, as the house had been
given up and the furniture sold, he should
only fine the defendants. The sentence, therefore,
was that each of them p(ty a fine of £5O, and be im
prisoned until such fine was paid. Whereupon the
prisoners left the court otherwise unpunished, and
evidently delighted at their escaping so easily.
Reading this terrible narrative, again we say 0, for one
hour of DANIEL DE FoE, the author of " Robinson
Crusoe," the historian of the Plague, the destroyer of
Whitefriars.

FEW wars have been so entirely devoid of any
religious incentive or object as the war now waging.
Yet it is probable that it will have more effect upon
the religious condition of Europe than any great
conflict since the Thirty Years' War. The long
struggle between GUSTAVUS and TILLEY led to the
establishment of the Protestant religion throughout
Northern Germany. It was a war prompted by re-
ligion, and having for its end a great religious
settlement. Yet this present war, into which
religious considerations have never entered, is likely
to effect one of the greatest religious revolutions that
the world has ever seen. It is strange that this
should be so. The proximate cause of this war was
as untheological as could well be. Catholic Spain
wanted a Sovereign, and chose one who was, it is
true, a Prussian Prince, but was nevertheless a
Catholic. When hostilities commenced the two
chief foes were undoubtedly of different Creeds, but
while Franca was Catholic and Prussia Lutheran,
Prussia was joined by Catholic Germany,
by Liberal-Catholic Bavaria, by partly Evangelical
partly Ultramontane Wurtemburg. Nay, in the
German host have been found not these only, but
Calvinists and Jews, and (we may well believe it,
seeing how large a proportion of the army
came from Berlin) unbelievers also. These
antagonists fought without thinking of their
respective churches. Protestant Prussia was in no de-
gree the more oppressive because her enemy acknow-
ledged the Pope. Catholic Bavaria and Wurtemburg
were not one jot the less vehement because their
foes were co-religionists. A Scotch divine has seen
in the overthrow at Sedan the fulfilment of his
favourite prophetic theories; and au English Profes-
sor has mourned that this same overthrow has
resulted in disaster to the people with whose faith
he sympathises. But Dr. CUMMING has long ago
exhausted the patience of his hearers by seeing in
every skirmish the day of doom ; and Professor
13sEsix is the only enthusiast who perceives in the
Franco-German war a conflict between antiquated
Protestant superstition and new and enlightened
Positivism. No one who has not been given over to
the tyranny of preconceived ideas would interpret
the great events now unfolding, as they have been
interpreted by the minister of Crow,. Court Chapel
and the London Univerdty Professor.

TOPICS OF THE DAY.