The Sun.
London, England, 1870-05-16 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY, MAY 16, 1870.

TOWN TALK.
(From the Western Mail of Saturday.)
LONDON, Friday Evening.

The adaptability of the ballot to all sorts of political in-
stitutions is certainly, it must be allowed, something rc-
markable. Upon the other side of the Channel it is em-
ployed successively by a republic, and by a republic im-
perialised—by a despotism, and by a despotism liberalised.
Upon the other side of the ocean it is Unaproyed by a pure
democracy ; and upon the other side of the world, by the
electors in our own constitutional colonies. It was a
curious coincidence that the proposition to apply the
ballot to our own electoral system should at length have
been formally made by the Marquis of Hartington upon
the very morrow of the memorable day of the last French
plebiscite. Every one recognises, at any rate, in the
application of the " urn " and the billet to the gathering-
in of the suffrages of the adult male population of
France, the extraordinary tranquillity with which the
votes of 9,000,000 electors out of an aggregate
of 10,000,000 or , thereabouts, may, within a few
hours, be gathered together and placed upon record.
Whether the ballot, as applied to ourselves, will hence-
forth render bribery impossible, may yet remain matter
of doubt. But that it works smoothly and quietly as a
system is by this time placed altogether beyond dispute.
Among the most excitable and revolutionary people upon
the face of the earth, one has but just now witnessed an
alternative of the most momentous kind decided, " Yes "
or " No," with a placidity the most imperturbable. After-
wards, no doubt, when in reality the matter in dispute
was already decided, a barricade or so was hurriedly
thrown up by some of the more reckless desperadoes among•
the gamins de Paris ; but these frivolous and insensate de-
monstrations were simply the outcome of the wildest folly,
and were swept aside at a rush by a handful of Chasseurs,
answering with cries of " Vive Empereur " the interrupted
refrain of the choral chant of the " Marseillaise."

Who are the manufacturers of such wanton errors, I won-
der, as that one which announced at the beginning of this
week the occurrence of a frightful railway accident on the
continent, whereby several lives had been sacrificed, where,
in point of fact, no accident whatever had occurred.
During the last few days I have almost felt disposed to
imagine myself in autumn rather than in spring, living in
the extra-Parliamentary period rather than in the very
middle of the session. Why ? Because in the news-
papers I have read repeatedly of late some of those hor-
rible little incidents (purely mythical and apocryphal,
let me hope) that have, hitherto, been reserved for the
dead season of the year, when new sensation paragraphs
of any kind have, upon some plea or another, to be manu-
factured—now a " little Toddlekins" mutilated, in effect
gnawed to death, by a ferocious donkey ; now an infant
frightfully bitten by rats. Reading any detestable little
paragraphs like these, I always feel inclined to exclaim,
as Paul Dombey exclaimed to Mrs. Pipchin, " I don't
believe that story !"

Unmistakable evidence, apart from this, however, we
have abundantly around us just now—we Londoners—
that, instead of being "in the sere and yellow leaf,"
we are in the heyday of " the season"—a most precious
but most fugitive epoch, the actual commencement
of which dates from May-day. Already at one o'clock
p.m., and again at six o'clock p.m., the Row—Rotten-
row, the Lady's-mile—is a sight to see. Then, again,
Kensington-gardens, that loveliest of all the London
parks, is in a very glory of spring blossoms, not only on
the flower beds, but luxuriantly and resplendently over
the trees clustered about in all directions. Pink and
white May, one sees and smells, creaming into bloom over
the hawthorn. The laburnum trees are golden cascades.
The lilacs, with their heart-shaped leaves and their
plumes of delicate fragrance, set me thinking of the
American poet who has sung their beauty most effectively
—Walt Whitman, the half-tabooed, half-civilised.
Towering above them all—each tree amongst them a
cone of splendour—are the horse-chesnuts, with pyra-
midal blossoms either pinkish-white or rosy-red. I have
all a Cockney's belief that one nowhere can see such
spring effervescence of May, and laburnum, and lilac,
and horse-chesnut as in Regent's-park, or, better still, in
Kensington-gardens, unless, indeed, it be in that veritable
rus in urbe, that most charmingly be autiful of inland
watering-places, Cheltenham.
Hard by the Row and the gardens there are noticeable
just now very different splendours than those of the
flowering trees and shrubs of spring-time. There, near the
site of the first Crystal Palace, that of 1851, not of Syden-
ham, the golden glories of the Albert Memorial are, day
by day, become more visible as the scaffolding is being
cleared away, pole by pole, from the top downwards.
There, confronting it, on the other side of the high road
to Kensington, the Albert Hall is 'rising gradually to a
magnitude, though it cannot be said to a sublimity, equi-
valent to the ruin of the Flavian Amphitheatre.
In some of the shop-windows of London her Majesty's
lieges are just now being horrified by a very ghastly photo-
graph, displaying to view, in a hideous group, the obtrun-
cated heads of those horrible demi-semi-classical ruffians,
the Greek brigands or murderers. There they are, with
their noses half eaten away by decomposition, with their
eyeballs swollen, and two or three of them with a loathly
smirk upon their bruised and bloated lips. A more fright-
ful carte-de-visite of horrors I have not witnessed since I
saw at Brussels last winter a similar reflection from the
life, or rather I should say from the death, of the unfortu-
nate Kinck family, the victims, at Pantin, of the monster
Traupmann.

A picturesque institution has, of late years, sprung into
existence in the metropolis, whereby what was formerly
an eyesore has been changed almost into an adornment. I
allude to the systematic application to advertising pur-
poses of the wooden enclosures surrounding any house or
houses in the great city, which may happen, at any mo-
ment, to be undergoing repairs of a lengthened character.
Formerly these " hoardings," as they are, for some occult
reason which Isannot conjecture, designated, were care-
fully emblazonediwith a warning against bill-stickers. Now
they are " farmed," as the phrase is, by advertising agents,
like Willing and Company, who go in for bill-posting in
all the colours of the rainbow, the chromatic effect being as
brilliant, often, as a peep down the tube of a kaleidoscope.
The notion, I believe, is one derived from our go-ahead
cousins across the herring-pond. About as 'cute an adver-
tisement as I have noted for this long while past is one
that appears on a fly-leaf of the second number of " Ed-
win Drood," in which a ladies' seminary at Rochester is
boldly identified (by the advertiser) with the Nun's House
School at Cloisterham.

Few can have failed to identify with living personages
several of the leading characters introduced into Mr.
Disraeli's brilliant romance of fashionable life nowadays.
His description of Cardinal Grandison is far more than a
mere silhouette ; it is a very cameo of Archbishop Man-
ning. Monsignore Capel was very well known to
be the prototype of that bland and persuasive Mon-
signore Catesby whose pseudonym has so suggestive
a remainder of the Gunpowder Plot. Mazzini, who
can fail to detect under the thin disguise of Mirandola ?
Wonderfully should I like to know who sat to the ex-
Premier for Father Coleman—who for Mr. Pinto—who for
the Duke of Brecon—but, best of all these really inimit-
able portraitures, who it was, especially, who was the
original of St. Aldegonde ? That last-mentioned character
is, to my.fancy, the most delightful, and, at the same time,
the most life-like limning in the whole of this singularly
brilliant book of " Lothair."

Is there anyone who does not feel grateful to the
honourable member who administered that smart rap over
the knuckles the other day to the habitually evasive and
officially nonchalant Mr. Ayrton ? Or who failed to en-
joy the " one two " between Mr. Fawcett's ill temper and
Mr. Gladstone's sarcasm ? As they number up, the highly-
coloured cartoons in Vanity Fair become more and, more
painfully accurate in their whimsicality. As for the new
illustrated paper, the Graphic, it has long ago distanced
the old Illustrated London News. Two detestable little
intruders among the so-called comic publications of London
(as a rule the dreariest periodicals out) have recently been
outraging the common sense of the street passengers, under
the titles of the Ferret and the Devil. They are about as
unwholesome as one or two of the more fantastic police
cases recently reported.

NATIVE CHRISTIANS IN FURTHER INDIA.—A per-
secution of native Christians is said to be going on in
Siam, where several persons have been put to death,
one being crucified.

PUBLIC WORKS IN INDIA.—The drainage scheme
of Calcutta has, it is said, collapsed, though for what
reason is not stated. A million sterling has already been
expended on the wark. Railways are extending, and the
survey for the Government State Railway between
Kundwah and Tudore, will commence directly after the
rainy season is over. A sanatorium for troops in the
Kulu Valley is also, it is said, in contemplation by the
Government.

[ADvEßTisEmENT.]—Holloway's Ointment and
Pills.—ln obedience to the universal custom, now happily
passed away, there existed for many years a great and
unfair prejudice against these remedies, though such has
been their success in expelling internal impurities, and
healing bodies scarred with sores, that their worst oppo-
nents have now become their warmest supporters. At
the
present day. n 9 difference of opinion exists with refer-
ence to the purifying and healing powers of .these world-
esteemed medicaments, which gradually cure diseases,
and remove disfigurements over which medical skill here-
tofore has exercised little control. Holloway's remedies
may be used by either sex with the comforting assurance
that harm cannot result from their employment by the
most delicate or feeble.

SPECI EDITION.

SUN OFFICE, 7 O'CLOCK.

IMPERIAL PARLIAREN F.

HOUSE OF COMMONS-THIS DAY.

The Speaker took the chair at five minutes before four
o'clock.

THIRD READINGS.

The following bills were read a third time and passed :
North British Railway (General Powers), North
British Railway (Tay Bridge), and St. Albans Gas.