The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-17 00:00:00

THAMES NAVIGATION.

The select committee of the House of Commons to
whom the Thames Navigation Bill was referred have
agreed to a special report, which says :—" It appears, on
the evidence of Sir John Thwaites, and otherwise,
that the Metropolitan Board have repeatedly had
tinder consideration the best means of utilising
the sewage of the metropolis, but that nothing
effectual has yet been done, and the sewage
still flows into the river Thames." The committee re-
commend that immediate 'attention should be given to
the subject, in order that the sewage of the- Inetropolif3
should be utilised as far as practicable, and in the mean-
time, until this can be accomplished, the committee halm
deemed it expedient to approve the bill, which they hay
reported to the House, for preventing any obstruction to
the navigation of the river from the flow of sewage from
the metropolitan outfalls.

PAWNBROKERS' SELECT COMMITTEE.

This committee sat again yesterday, Mr. Ayrton, M.P.,

presiding.
Mr. G. ATTENBOROUGH, pawnbroker of Old Kent-road,
and secretary or the Metropolitan Pawbrokers' Associa-
tion, gave evidence, and desired that in any Act to be
passed there should be freedom of contract and a
six months' forfeiture. It was impossible to get the
ts9.4t4,,agree to any terms of pawrtbrokialg;-batt-if,
they did, it would probably be without the law. As a
general rule, there was a loss on the sale of pledges. On
some few articles there might be a profit, but as a general
rule there was a loss. Witness described the process- of
dealing in the " leaving shops " or " dolly ishops," which
abounded, in London under various disguises, such as rag-
shops, chandlers' shops,- and old metal shops, and said this
evil might be destroyed to a great .extent by the principle
of freedom of contract. At these leaving shops the
charge was usually from 2d. to Bd. in the shil-
ling as consideration upon repurchase, and the
sale usually was made within a month. When
a loss was sustained on an article the pawnbroker
ought to have, the power of set-off upon other articles
which might be pledged by the same persons. With a
capital of -£4,000 in one business he could hardly net £2OO,
after taking 5 per cent. interest for his money. In London
there were 420 pawnbrokers, and a greater .pro-
portion of those died insolvent than in any
other kind of business in the metropolis. The insolvent's
business would usually be bought up by any pawnbroker,
and the pledger's rights were always reserved.
Mr. Nathan, of Limehouse, also gave evidence.
The other witnesses agreed generally with each other
as to the desirability of an alteration in the present law.
The committee then adjourned till Monday, the chair-
man remarking that it would be unnecessary to call any
more London witnesses.

IN MEMORIAM: CHARLES DICKENS.
(Front the Cosmopolitan.)

'During the last seven days, in every part of the world
where men speak English,- and to which the electric cur-
rent conveys the news of our time, thousands of pens have
been busy in extolling the genius and lamenting the early
death of Charles Dickens ; and as many printers' presses
have been employed in disseminating to the ends of the
earth the tidings of the irreparable losswhichwe have all of
us sustained by the removal from among us of so great and
so good a man. Shakspere, Scott, and Dickens have each
shed imperishable glory upon English literature—have
each been benefactors of their country and of the world—
and have each devoted their talents to the harmless mirth
of the nations, to the inculcation of virtue, to the elevation
of the human character—and to the proof that divinity
doth not alone hedge the forehead of the king, but encir-
cles the brow of the humbleSt human being that labours
upon the sod—did society and law but know how to elicit
the divine spark, and how to employ it.
When Shakspere died his contemporaries knew not the
greatness whioh had departed. When Scott died, stricken
down by over-work, and by over-anxiety to pay the debts
for which he had become liable, the mighty heart of Great
Britain throbbed with no sthall and no transient sorrow.
But forty years ago the reading world was not so large
and sympathetic a world as it is now, and the grief of the
public, great as it was, fell short of that universality of
lamentation which has attended upon the death of Dickens.
Great Britain, America, India, Australia, and wherever our
noble tongue is understood, have all felt that aheirt's com-
panion, a dear friend, a noble and a familiar teacher has been
taken away untimely ; and that from the rich, copious,
and apparently inexhaustible fountains of his wit and
pathos, there will flow no more refreshing streams to
gladden the dusty path of our every-day life, and cheer
the hearts of tie people.
I, who write these lines (I wish to drop the professional
" we " and to speak for myself on an occasion so personal),
had the advantage of the acquaintance and friendship of
the great writer. The acquaintance began three-and-
thirty years ago, and the friendship almost at the same
time. I knew trim intimately, and worked with him when
we were both young and unknown to fame. I knew him
as intimately when his fame began to eclipse that of all
his contemporaries. I knew him intimately to the last ;
and always found him to be the same genial, earnest,
open-hearted, large-brained, conscientious, modest, just,
good man, that he scarcely knew himself to be, but that
all who came into intimate relations with him discovered
him to be, before they had been many hours in his com-
pany. Of his genius I do not care to speak, for space
would not allow me to express a tithe of the admiration I
feel for it, and of the reverence far greater than the admi-
ration, which I entertain for the noble uses to which he
devoted it.
Like all the greatest authors who have ever lived—
like Shakepere, Milton, Scott, Goethe—he possessed a
singularly clear and lucid as well as comprehensive
intellect. The strong, sturdy, hearty, serviceable common
sense, which enables a man to see through moral as
well as through logical and physical muddinesses
and entanglements at a glance, to, seize the needle
of fact out of the bottle of hay, with a per-
ception like that of Ithuriel ; to crack the nut of
sophistry and error, and extract the kernel of truth,
while commoner minds would be debating whether the nut
could be cracked or was worth cracking ;—all these things
were as easy to Charles Dickens as the act of respiration.
And to my mind it was his great merit that he was truly
and purely a literary man—a literary man of the very
highest class—both morally and intellectually. Courted
by the great and the titled, he never courted them, but
held up his honest head— the peer of the proudest. On
the other hand there was not a shred or shadow of
Bohemianism about him. He never imagined that his
marvellous genius could palliate or atone for an error for
whioh a smaller man would have been called to account.
He knew the,rigid mathematics of things, and felt, through
all his life, that his genius was a trust committed to him
by God for the benefit of his kind. He acted honestly up
to his convictions. He was not a man of ".isms," or a
professional philanthropist, but one who could no more
help being philanthropical, without preaching philan-
thropy, than the sun can help shining. And the sun of
intellect that was in that capacious brain, like the sun in
the firmament, shone upon the just and the unjust, and
irradiated with the same beneficent radiance the lowest as
well as the highest places of our daily lives. It brought
verdure and bloom into the flower-pot at the poor man's
windows with the same benign influence that it shed upon
the trees in the rich man's, park and avenues. No writer
of any time ever exercised such direct and all but personal
influence upon men's homes and daily thoughts, or used
that influence so universally on the side of right and
justice. He wrote much ; but not too much. Indeed, in
the suddenness of their bereavement, the public of two
hemispheres may well be justified inthinking he wrote too
little. There is no fear that his fame will be evanescent.
It is only the writers who pander to the prejudices and the
vices of the day, for the sake of popularity, who live their
little day and are forgotten to-morrow. The truly great
writer never courts popularity, but populaiity comes to
him unsought ; sometimes while he lives, as in the case of
Scott and Dickens—sometimes long after death, as in the
case of Shakspere and Milton. Popularity of this kind
is, as was said of Shakspere—" Not of a day or an age,
but for all time." And such will be the popularity of
Dickens. Happy he to have enjoyed, and to have been
encouraged and rewarded by it !
Some fond and fretful regrets have been expressed that
the State bestowed no title or honorary distinction upon
the great writer. I doubt whether it was good for Walter
Scott to have consented to be made a baronet. Lord
Shakspere or. Lord Milton would certainly sound less
nobly and less pleasantly in my ears than the ennobled
names by which the world knows them. And to be
" Charles Dickens," and nothing greater and nothing
less, was surely a nobler distinction than to have been a
duke or a marquis. Neither did I sympathise with those
who claimed that his honoured dust- should repose in
Westminster Abbey. I would have preferred that the
great tree should have lain where it fell. As Shakspere
sleeps in his native Stratford, and Scott amid the ruina
Dryburgh Abbey that he loved so well, Charles Dickens!,
might have rested in the pleasant count of Kent, where
his happiest days were passed, and though the green
lanes of which he was • accustomed to *hinder. His re-
mains would have been sufficient to make T Westminster
Abbey for themselves, out.of the humblest village church-
yard in which they mightjave been deposited. Never-
theless, the place that has received all
.of him that can
die will become' a shrines for 'the visits of countless pil-
grims from all, ends of the earth—sanctified to aIP Who
honour great genius applied to the highest uses, and Nkho_
rank the poet, whether he writes in prole or in verses
among the most Illustrious of public benefaors. In
conclusion, and while My'heart is full, let me borrow the
words of Ben Johnson—applied to Shakspererfq", I
loved the man, and do honour to his memory, on this side
z idolatry, as much as any. He was indeed, honest, snd of
- an open, free nature." C. M.
t June 15, 1870.

- The Guardian has ascertained, on what it considers
the best authority, the rightful rank of the Bishop of
Bath and Wells, who is the younger son of a marquess,
and who, as such, would naturally, and did till lately,
rank after all viscounts, but above the rest of the bishops.
It is beyond dispute (our contemporary says) that becom•
ing, in virtue of his consecration, a spiritual peer, he
MSC% or rather sinks, hid :former rank. • •' ' •