The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-14 00:00:00

'I Ii sus, LONDON, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14,

rUHEATRE ROYAL,'HAYMARtitt=Twonty-
second Night of a NEW FAIRY COMEDY.-111 IS
EVENING (Wednesday), to 't orriMence et} Seven, with the WOLF
AND THE LAMB. Messrs. • Chippendale, Rowe, W. Gordon,
Madame E. Pitzwilifaus •, after which, at a quarter to
Eight o'clock, a HaW Fairy Comedy, in Three Acts,
entitled TILE PALACE OF TRUTH. Characters by
311.. Buckstone, Messrs. Kendal, Everill, Clark, Rogers,
Braid, Mesdames Robertson, Chippendale, C. Ilill, Fanny
Wright, and Fanny Gwynne. After which UNCLE'S WILL—
Mr. Kendal and Miss Robertson. Concluding with BLUE
DEVILS. Box office open daily from 10 till 5.

DA ME TUS S AU D'S EXHIBITION,
1L i BAKER STREET.

On view Portrait Models of the Emperor Napoleon 111., the
Empress Eugenie, and Prince Imperial ; .King William of
Prussia, and Count von Bismarck. Admisbion, ls.; Children
under 10 years of age, Gd. Napoleon Rooms 6d. extra. Open
from 11 a.m. till 10 p.m.

BAZAAR IN AID OF THE REFUGEES
BENEVOLENT FUND.

PATRONWES
the Princess of Wales:
ILRIL the Princess Christian,
Comtesse cle Paris,'
11.R.H. Duchesse do Chartres.
HAUL Printesse Marguerite D'Oricans.
Mdme La Baronne de Beaulieu The Lady Herbert.
Duchess of BuccleUch. The Hon. Mrs. Pereira.
Marchioness of Lothian. The Hon. Mrs. Warren Vernon
Dow. Marchioness of Lothian. Mdme. Gueneau de Mussy.
The Countess Brownlow. Mrs. C. W. Price.
The Lady Anna Loftus. Mrs. J. Hungerford Pollen.
The Lady Georgiaria Fullerton. Mrs. Somerled Macdonald.
An EXHIBITION and SALE of WORKS OF ART
and Pansy and Useful Articles is now open, under the
above distinguished patronage, at the BAKER-STREET
BAZAAR. Contributions will be thankfully received
by the Committee, addressed to the Superintendent of
the "Refugees Fund Stall," at the Bazaar, Baker-street, W.
Articles manufactured or consigned by Refugees will be sold for
their individual account.

EGYPTIAN HALL, PICCADILLY.

Every day at 2,30 and S p.m.
POOLE and YOUNG, the Proprietors and Exhibitors of the
Overland Mail, by Telbin and Grieve, Albert Smith's Egyptian
Hall Panoramas, beg to announce a new sUbject—

THE PRESENT WAR
Between the French and Prussians,

-----
Each Picture on 500 square feet of- canvas, and painted by
England's greatest scenic artists.

THE NATIONAL M tISIC.
THE FINEST QUARTETTE IN EUROPE.
POOLE AND YOUNG,
THE EGYPTIAN HALL ONLY.
THE WAR.-POOLE AND YOUNG'S PANORAMA,

PARTRIDGE AND COOPER,
MANUFACTURING STATIONERS,
192, FLEET-STREET (CORNER OF CHANCERY-LANE), LONDON
fIIE PUBLIC, SUPPLIED AT WHOLESALE PRICES,'
AND
OARRIAGE PAID to the COUNTRY ON ORDERS OVER 20s
Fine Cream Laid Note a chea Per roam, s. d.
p paper... -.
Superfine Cream Laid Note; much approved
Superfine Thick Cream Laid Note ;especially recommended 5 6
Extra Superfine Double Thick ()ream Laid Note ... 7 0
Straw Paper, " Patent:" adapted for rapid writing 2 6
Large Commercial Note Papers 'a., 4s. La., and 6 0
Foolscap Papers, blue or cream.......... 105. 6d , Vs. 6d,., and 14 6
Outsides. Foolscap
Letter Paper for scribbling plain, 4a.; ruled ditto, 4 6
Tinted Lined Note five quires for Is. 6d., or 6 6
New Vellum Wove " Club House" N ote, five quires for 25. 6d.
Superfine Cream or Blue Eavelopes, %ts 6d, 5216 d, &Bs 6d ..
Largo Blue Wove Commercial Envelopes, 45 6(11 por 1 000
Cheap Buff Colour, for circulars, &0., its.
COLOUR STAM PING (Relief) reduced to Is. perlloo. Polished
steel dies sunk by the best artists in the trade at about half the
prices charged by the retail houses.
An ILLUSTI 4TED CATALOGUE, containing full descrip-
tion, with prices of Account Books, Copying Presses, Inkstands,
Stationery, Cabinets, Postage Scales, Despatch Boxes, Travelling
Writing Cases, Desks, poet free. Established 1841

FOHN GOSNELL and CO.'S CHERRY
e TOOTH PASTE is greatly superior to any tooth powder;
givos the teeth a pearl whiteness, protects the enamel from clocay,
and imparts a pleasant fragrance to the breath. Price it. dcl.
Red Bull Wharf, 93, Upper Thammastreot, London.

ANY GENTLEMAN requiring the comforts of
a HOME in a respectable and cheerful family, where there
are no other lodgers, to board or not with the family, as
required, may hear of the same by applying to A. L., Mr.
Hawkins, ,Post Office, Liverpool-road, Barnsbury, N.

LIFEBOAT' SERVICES.—During the Storms of
the past eleven months the National Lifeboat Institution
has contributed to the saving of 918 lives from various ship-
wrecks and 24 vessels from destruction. It has also expended
£23,287 in the same period on its Lifeboat Establishments, in
addition to granting £2,028 for rewards. -
The Institution has now 223 Lifeboat Stations under its
management.

Contributions are earnestly solicited, and will be thankfully
received by the London and Country bankers, and by the Secre-
tary, Richard Lewis, Esq., at the Institution, 14, John-street,
..kdelphi, London.

midable competitors, but lie distanced them all as a
romancist. He did so by his literary fecundity, by
the seemingly inexhaustible fertility and pro-
ductiveness of his imagination. During
his - time as an author, he is asserted
to have written upwards of one thousand two hun-
dred volumes. Ile is said to have called into exist-
ence eighty dramas and forty romances. Several of
his dramas have been trilogies of fifteen acts,
after the manner of the three parts of "Henry VI."
of SIIAKSPERE. Several of his romances have been
as voluminous as the stories of S s swim Bromism-
sox. Yet, as we have said, in spite of the portentous
length and elab /ration of th:se, there have crone
from the brain of Du-stAs as many as eighty dramatih
eflUsions, as many as testy romantic narratives. As
Charlatan as the man was in a very great measure
throughout the whole of his eccentric career, as a
man of letters there has hardly been ono of his books
that has not been in some respects above the
dead level of mediocrity. Several of them have been
superb in their radiant imaginativeness. One of
them is simply peerless as the romance of
romances. " Monte Christ() " is the Eclipse
of all imaginative literature. It has never
been equalled, and will never be • surpassed.
"Les Trois Mousquetaires" was one of the
most extraordinary of all his prose fictions. "Le
Tour de Neale" was one of the most. thrillingly en-
thralling of all his dramatic compositions. But to
this day his romance of the " Count de Monte
Christo" remains among all his prose fictions simply
unapproached and unapproachable. While his
weird and haunting melodrama of " The Corsican
Brothers" has never yet met with, and
is not likely to meet with in the
future, another capable of dragging it down
' from its position of pre-eminence. For all which,
DUMAS is at the best recognisable only as a magai.:
ficent charlatan. A charlatan, certainly, from first
to last, but almost always, as a rule, a charlatan who
was magnificent. In order to understand the daring
absurdities into which he, nevertheless, occasionally
blundered, it is only necessary to turn to one of his
dramas—a most preposterous play, entitled
" Kean," the hero of it being EDMUND KEAN, the
great tragedian. There, in that most ludicrous piece of
extravagance, " the force of folly could no further
go "—it is, one might almost declare, the very subli-
mation of nonsense ! Yet, utterly contemptible pro-
ductions like this play of " Kean " were put forth
as gravely and as sincerely lay their author as' the very
finest of his masterpieces. Personally also his life was
flawed with simply bewildering escapades—as when
he associated himself in an almost mountebank capa-
city with the entourage of the Nizzard Free Lance,
GARIBALDI—as when his reputation, such as it was,
was trailed in the gutter in the train of " the MEN-,
Kul," as thoughbe had been dragged at the tail of MA-
ZEPpA'S charger through the sawdust of an amphithe-
atre. ALExANDUE DUMAS father, who was one of the
second-rate notabilities of the French Revolution, is
reported to have been the illegitimate son, by a negress
of a 'wealthy planter of St. Domingo, by name,
the Marquise DE LA PAILLETERIE. It was imme-
diately on his father's death that ALEXANDRE LE
GRAND repaired for the first time to Paris, there to
seek, what he soon found, his fortunes. SliaKs-
PERE's "Hamlet," wonderful to relate, struck the
key note of the genius of the young adventurer.
`Witnessing a representation of the master drama of
the master dramatist, DUMAS declared to himself,
" And I too will be an author ! " Hence his eighty
plays, his forty fictions, his 1,2 00 volumes. Born in
the June of 1803, he has now died in the December
of 1870, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, at the
very moment when all the glories of his country
seem to be rolled in the dust at the feet of the
German invaders.

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE DEFENCE OF PARIS,

It is said that when Count Moltke sent the • news
.of the recapture of Orleans into. Paris a council of
Ministers was immediately held. M. Ernest Picard
was disposed to• discuss an honourable peace, but
General Trochu, in an impassioned speech, urged the
continuance of the war. He said these overtures
proved that Prussia was conscious her_position might
~be painfully compromised in the enemy's country
during the winter. The continuance of the war was
unanimously resolved upDn. This is not the first time
that General Trochu is supposed tc have prevailed
over his wavering colleagues in favour of further
resistance. Considering that he is the least demo-
cratic member of the. whole Government, scarcely
a Republican at all in fact, it is hardly fair to say;
as some English journalists do, that the Republicans
alone desire wary whilst the moderate men of all
grades wish for peace.
THE GERMAN EMPIRE,
The treaties incorporating the:Southern States in
the reconstructed German Empire were passed by an
overwhelming majority. Even against the Bavarian
convention, which was most stoutly opposed, only
thirty nays were recorded out of 225 votes. But a
good many members absented themselves rather
than vote for a treaty which they thought granted
one state indulgence at the expense of the rest.
However, the over-mastering desire • of unity over-
came all lesser scruples. It is believed likewise that
the special privileges of Bavaria will melt away in
time, and that they are merely harmless concessions
to her pride. Lastly, Count Bismarck threatened
to resign if the treaties were not adopted, and this-
menace proved quite sufficient, as it has often done
before.

upon the subject, has written a letter de-
scribing the working of the system under which
unattached or non-collegiate students are now ad-
mitted to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
Mr. Roundell considers that if the lads of the nor-
thern counties were more acquainted with the
facilities open for their instruction at the chief
colleges they would avail themselves of them to a
great extent, and therefore .he addresses-, his
letter to the Lancashire and Yorkshire iietrs-
paper's. Tile distinctive feature of the .“ un-;
attache 1" scheme is the ability of the student
to be in lodgings of his own choosing,
at the university, and thus avoid the expense,
of college life: The opening of the universities to
poor young theft is, to quote Mr. RoUndell,
" the crowning of the educational edifice of
which the primary school and the grammar
school are the main supports. The work of
the Legislature will be completed if in the coming
session the privileges,' honours, and emoluthents of.
the universities rind their colleges are in their fulness
thrown open to merit, without regard to member-
ship of a particular Church." Though the system of
allowing unattached scholars to pass examinations at
Oxford hasbeen ;noperationonly two years, there are
ninety-Six students of this class there at the present.
time, and the number is steadily increasing.