The Sun.
London, England, 1870-10-07 00:00:00

THE LOSS OF THE CAPTAIN.

In the Court of Common Council yesterday, Mr.
Robinson moved that the sum of £250 be given in aid of
the widows and orphans of those lost in the Captain.
An amendment was proposed urging that the sum should
be limited to £lOO, but the original motion was carried.

THE GOVERNMENT AND THE CHAIRMAN-
SHIP OF THE METROPOLITAN BOARD

OF WORKS.

A statement of some importance was made on this sub-
ject at a Court of Common Council, held at the Guildhall
yesterday, under the presidency of the Lord Mayor.
Mr. William Lawley, chairman of the Local Govern-
ment and Taxation Committee, took occasion to refer to
the alleged interference of the Government in the matter
of the Chairmanship of the Metropolitan Board of Works.
He said he had seen reference made to a semi-private
correspondence that had taken place, and he
wished Mr. Lowman Taylor, one of their representa-
tives at the Board, to give them some enlighten-
ment as to the rumours that were in circulation, and to
state whether it was true that the Government had recom-
mended Mr. Ayrton as the chairman of the Metropolitan
Board. He hoped no such misfortune would befal the
ratepayers as that Mr. Ayrton should be placed at the
head of that Board.

Mr. Deputy Lowman Taylor, in reply, stated
that the late lamented chairman of the Board
died on the Bth of August. On the following day, a
letter was received from Mr. Liddell, the under secretary
of the Home Department, " suggesting for the considera-
tion of the Board that the appointment of a new chairman
should be made subject to any change affecting the
position of the future chairman which legislation on
the Local Government of the Metropolis might
render necessary.'! That was a very proper
communication, but two days afterwards a com-
munication was received from Mr. Rutzen, Mr.
Bruce's private secretary, which went a little further.
That letter was addressed Mr. Pollard, the clerk of the
board, and marked "private." It stated that legislation
on the government of the metropolis could not long be
postponed, and might involve the abolition of the office of
chairman of the board. Subsequently Mr. Rutzen ad-
dressed another private communication to Mr. Pollard,
in which a reference was made to Mr. Ayrton in
these words :—" Mr. Ayrton appears to be mentioned
as a candidate likely to be acceptable." That was all that
was said about Mr. Ayrton. It had been construed as a
suggestion that Mr. Ayrton was the right man for the
place, but all he (Mr. Taylor) could say was that Mr.
Ayrton was the man least likely to get it. Mr. Rutzen
had since withdrawn his letters, and he could not go
further into them, but he thought he- had sufficiently
answered the question.
The matter then dropped.

LORD ELCHO'S OPINION OF THE ARMY,
Lord Elcho has addressed to some of the papers
another letter respecting the organisation of the British
army, regarded in the light of the events now taking
place on the Continent. He alleges that our military
organisation is not such as to give us needful security
or to enable us to fill the part on the world's stage which
we profess to play. No one who takes up a newspaper
can fail to see that public opinion is now keenly alive to
our weakness and want of anything like real military
organisation, and that it is deeply impressed with the
necessity of some strong measures being taken to rescue
us from a position alike dangerous and discreditable.
But, on the other hand, this public appreciation of our
military deficiencies has given rise to a danger of our being
led by an exaggerated belief in these deficiencies, and by
a natural admiration of the successful organisation of the
German armies, to overlook what is good at
home, and hastily and needlessly to adopt what is less well
suited than our own military system, if rightly applied,
t' the position of our country and the circumstances
of its people. It cannot be possible, he thinks, for this
European crisis to pass over without a determined, sus-
tained, and successful endeavour on our part, once for all
satisfactorily to organise our war power. Yet he warns
the country against too much zeal. In these days of
organised Continental hosts, he says, without a resort to
conscription in some form or other, no efficient reliable
military organisation is possible, and the sooner Parlia-
ment and the constituencies accept this fact the better
it will be for the nation. The truth is, the ballot for
the militia is the key-stone of our military system.
It would• enable us to ensure its ranks being continuously
full, whether we fix the total of that force at 100,000,
200,000, or 300,000 men • it would facilitate the increase
at any time of the Armyi Militia, Reserve, by ensuring
under an circumstances a supply of men to take the place
of those who volunteered for it ; and it would further
ensure a supply of efficient military officers. Ballot for
the militia he maintains to be the panacea for all army
deficiencies, and he says :—" All things else 'are vain and
futile ; and, in attempting to obtain efficiency by such
measures as have recently been announced, the Secretary
of State is endeavouring to make bricks without straw;
for even if he were to succeed in inducing all the officers
of the force to comply with the conditions attached to the
additional ss. extra grant for qualified officers and non-
commissioned officers, there would still remain the question
of the men." In his argument the noble lord assumes that
volunteers would be exempted from the operation of
the ballot, and that uo substitutes would be allowed
To what extent the ballot should be applied would
simply be a matter for consideration. He believes that a
mild form of ballot would be sufficient for our purpose.
"If not," he adds, "it would be easy to give the screw
another turn ; but if what is suggested were found suf-
ficient, what a contrast would it present to the severity
of the Prussian system of universal service, or to that
of the French conscription !" Supposing the total strength
of the Militia to be fixed at 200,000 men, and that of
those 150,000 should be recruited, as at present, by volun-
tary enlistment, the remainder forming the Reserve and
being raised by ballot ; if only 10,000 men were thus
annually raised, we should at the end of five years—the
present period of a militiaman's service—have the reserve
of 50,000 men complete, and annually keep it up to that
strength. How lightly this would bear upon the people
may be reckoned from the fact that about 200,000 males
annually attain the age of twenty in Great Britain.

Professor Leoni Levi will next Monday commence
a course of eight lectures on subjects connected with the
war at King's College.

Mr. Robertson's new piece, "Birth," was per-
formed at Bristol, with Mr. Sothern as the chief character,
on Wednesday evening. The theatre was filled, and the
actors were called before the curtain at the close of each
scene. Nevertheless, the comedy is not considered by the
local press to be superior to most of Mr. Robertson's plays.
Mr. Sothern, as Jack Randall, in the new piece, imper-
sonates a young playwright, whose position enables him
to bring two hostile families—one aristocratic, the other
moneyed—together in happy marriages.

The Record states that at the monthly board of
the Society tor Promoting Christian Knowledge, the Rev.
J. C. Miller, P.D., in the chair, the sopiety voted £6,000
to the Church of England in Jamaica, which has been.
disestablished. A. grant of £l,OOO was placed at the dis-
posal of the standing committee for the remuneration of
writers who shall produce suitable anti-infidel literature.
The board agreed also to offer to the authorities of Keble
College, Oxford, handsomely-bound Bibles and Prayer=
books for the use of the undergraduate and other mem-
bers in the college chapel.
The visitors at the Workman's International Ex-
hibition in London are now much larger in number daily
than when it was first opened, the foreigners who are
everywhere to be seen in the metropolis since the opening
of the siege of Paris being the most conspicuous atten-
dants.. The executive committee have now made perfect
all their arrangements for the convenience of visitors,
such as issuing a revised catalogue, and having each
court in the building so distinctly placarded that no
difficulty is experienced in getting to any particular
object worthy of notice. Many distinguished personages
have already patronised the exhibition of our workmen's
industry.

METROPOLITAN G SSIP.-TA.

:SDAY.

It is generally supposed that there is a division of,
opinion in the Cabinet on the question of mediation, and
that the Prussian party being considerably the stronger,
has prevailed. Mr. Lowe and Mr. Bruce unquestionably
belong to that party, and it is to be presumed that Mr.
Gladstone and Lord Granville are on the same side. This
however, is by no means certain. Lord Granville used to
be thought decidedly Galilean. If it appears improbable
that an important point of foreign policy should
be decided contrary to the wish of the Foreign Secretary.
I can answer that such an event is not unprecedented.
In Mr. Dallas's recently-published letters there is one to
Mr. Marcy, in which the American Minister describes an
interview between Lord Palmerston and another diploma-
tist, in which the diplomatist expressed his surprise at
Lord Palmerston's remarks respecting the Danubian
Principalities, and said that they were quite opposed to
Lord Clarendon's ideas. Thereupon Lord Palmerston
replied, " Lord Clarendon has his notions ; but
we have ours." In this case Lord Cla-
rendon's did not prevail, though he was then
chief at the Foreign Office. At the same
time it is likely enough that Lord Granville's alleged
Gallicanism had no other foundation than his intimate
acquaintance with the French language and French litera-
ture. On the other hand it was he who was appointed
Foreign Secretary by Lord John Russell, in 1851,
when he turned Lord Palmerston out of office for prema-
ture recognition of the coup d'etat. As regards the pre-
sent Cabinet, it is thought that our Ministers wish to
favour the restoration of the Orleans dynasty, and that they
look forward to the bombardment of Paris and the conse-
quent downfall of the Republican Government as the
necessary, though principal preliminaries to the establish-
ment of a stable Government under one of the sons of
Louis Philippe.
What is to become of the fashions now that Paris is
shut up? Is Le Follet still published? If so, will the
proprietors of their charity have pity upon the Regent-
street and Bond-street milliners, and send them a copy ?
But it may be said, what need have we of Le .Follet ? Have
we not within a dozen miles of Regent-street the inspirer
of that famous magazine ; the arbitress of Fashion herself ?
Though the Empress Eugdnie has lost one throne,
She has not yet abdicated the other. So the milliners
aforesaid have only to take the train at Charing Cross and
make a pilgrimage to Chiselhurst, and they will learn all
that they want to know. It will be a strange pilgrimage,
for Chiselhurst is much frequented by Quakers who will
not be best pleased at this invasion, of their domain
by the ministresses of fashion and folly.
Chiselhurst is not,, however, wholly given up to broad-
brims and poke bonnets. There is a wealthy Roman
Catholic gentleman living there, and it is he who has
offered hospitality to the fugitive sovereign, and he who
has escorted her to mass on Sunday mornings. Camden-
place is a seat of historic interest. It was there that
Camden, the historian, the annalist of the Elizabethan
reign, died in 1623. A more charming place scarcely
exists, even in Kent, " the garden of England."
A good deal of correspondence has been published in
the newspapers respecting atrocities upon the French.
The charge originated with the correspondent of the
Pall Mall Gazette, who calls himself " Azamat Batuk."
Unhappily, it is confirmed in the Duily News of to-day.
If the accusation had rested entirely upon the first autho-
rity I should not have credited it. Up to September 12
" Azamat Batuk " had not crossed the Belgian frontier,
and I think it likely enough from what I have heard of
him that he has not crossed it since. A gentleman re-
cently returned from the seat of war, and who, having
donned the brassard, conveyed food and medical stores to
the wounded, first at Gravelotte and then at Sedan, tells
me that the conduct of the Prussians to the French
prisoners was splendid. Doubtless they were badly

I off for food immediately after Sedan; but
so was everybody else. For some hours there
was none to be got for love or money. So bad was
the French organization, that though a dinner of four
courses might be had for two francs at Bouillon, less than
a dozen miles off, the people at Sedan were almost starving.
And yet there were plenty of wealthy cloth manufac-
turers in the latter town who had only to give
their orders to the landowners in the Belgian
Ardennes and any number of cattle and sheep
would have been forthcoming. But there was no energy
among the French civilians, only plenty of selfishness.
At Saarbruck there arrived one night a number of French
prisoners. No provision had been made for them, for the
simple reason that the provision was eaten up. My friend,
for instance, had scoured the whole place in vain for eggs,
and had to be content with raw ham and black bread.
When the French arrived, and found no supper, they
were very indignant. Thereupon the Prussian officers
went through the town, and get together a kind a meal
which they gave their visitors, though it was then one
o'clock in the morning. I could tell you many other in-
stances of Prussian consideration and courtesy, which are
all the more striking because the officers have a bad habit
of treating their own men with great seeming harshness.
The smallest misunderstanding of an order will make a
Prussian officer shout and yell and shake his fist in the
unhappy private's face. My informant found a grand
gathering of newspaper correspondents at Luxemburg,
whence many of them wrote off their letters, from " the
seat of war." Luxemburg is intensely French, and the
people would gladly he united to France. They are
scarcely likely to get their wish.
The Daily News, which has far surpassed its contempo-
raries in the fullness and promptitude of its war news, has
attained this superiority by a very wise arrangement. It has
combined with one of the principal New York papers, and the
two journals having had a joint purse were able to expend
money which one journal alone would have found a heavy
tax. The most graphic account of the Battle of Grave-
lotte, one of the best pieces of writing which this war has
produced, was written by Mr. Moncure Conway, the well
known American writer, who has.for some years:been resid-
ing in London. He was compelled to return to England
after witnessing the great engagement, and on driving to the
Daily Hews office, so dirty and travel-worn that he was
hardly recognisable by his own family, he was shut up and
wrote off the account which everyone has since read with
admiring interest. In connection with journalism and
the war, I may mention that the writer of the letter in a
recent number of the Pall Mall Gazette, recommending the
establishment of a neutral State of Nice, Savoy, Lor-
raine, Alsace, and Luxemburg, was Mr. Sydney Dobell,
the poet. One other item of journalism I may mention
here. The writer of the letters in the Times, from Tien-

tsin, is Mr. Gundry, formerly of Corsham, Wilts.
I mentioned in a former letter the dangerous illness of
Lady Herbert, of Lea. She was suffering from a severe
attack of rheumatic fever, but she is now better, and has
been made acquainted with her sad bereavement —the
death of her son in the " Captain."—Mrs. Burgoyne has
been almost stupefied by the loss of her husband,

the gallant commander of that ship.— Archdeacon
Denison who seemed at death's door three months ago,
has sufficiently recovered to don his armour again, an d
has already struck a blow at Dean Stanley with reference
to what is called the Westminster Abbey scandal.
Science has sustained no slight loss by the death of Dr.
Miller, Professor of Chemistry, at King's College.
The Birmingham Education League mean to hold their
first annual meeting at Birmingham in about a fortnight.
The members of it are not in a particularly happy frame
of mind. At a meeting of the London branch held last
night it was admitted that they had met with little sup-
port in the metropolis, and, of course, the result of their
campaign in Parliament was not such as they had wished
or expected. Far more important than any controversy
between the League and the Union is the impending
election of the Education Boards. This takes place next
month in London, and several good men have been men-
tioned as candidates. Unfortunately a good many of them
have refused to serve on account of pressure of engage-
ments. A very fair excuse in the case of members of
Parliament like Sir Charles Dilke, though not so, perhaps,
in other cases. Still more unfortunately there is a prospect
that the boards will become centres of party politics. The
Reform League—Mr. Odger, Mr. Cremer, Mr. Lucraft,
and the rest of the Adelphians—are putting themselves for-
ward prominently as candidates on the ground that this is
a working man's question, and that those who claim to be
par excellence representatives of the working men ought
to have a prominent place in the management of this
matter. Undoubtedly they are right to a certain extent ;
it is a working-class question, but it is one thing to feel a
complaint, another thing to cure it. There are plenty of
patients in the world, but it does not follow that they are
the best doctors. It is to be hoped that Mr. Forster's
great measure will be saved from the degradation of class
or party politics. There is no time to be lost if that fate
is to be averted.

Literary news is beginning to revive. Archbishop Man-
ning is publishing a pastoral to his clergy respecting the
Vatican Council, which, it is to be hoped, for Mr. Mas-

kell's sake, will be somewhat more explicit than his

• Grace's secretary's letter to that gentleman. 'Mr. Charles
Eastlake, whose book on furniture was very well received,
has written a history of the Gothic revival, in which he
attempts to show how far the taste for Medieval Archi-
tecture was retained in England during the past two
centuries and has been revived in the present. Mrs.
Cotton has written the life of her husband, the late
Bishop of Calcutta, which ought to be an interesting
biography; and Mr. Brunel has written the life of his
father, the engineer of the Albert Bridge. Professor Max
Muller is coming out with a third volume of his " Chips
from a German Workshop." Mr. E. A. Free-
man, the historian of the Norman Conquest,
and the very severe critic (in the Saturday
Review) of Mr. Froude's history, has in the
press the " Historical Geography of Europe." Mr. Brod-
ribb, whose interesting article on Pliny in a recent num-
ber of the Fortnightly Review, will be remembered, is,
together with Mr. A. Church, bringing out a selection of
Pliny's letters, the Latin text, with English notes.—Mrs.
Oliphant's "Life of St. Francis of Assisi " will be the
next volume of Macmillan's Sunday Library. Dean
Goulburn is publishing some of his Cathedral
sermons, arid Canon Liddon those which he delivered at
St. James's, in Piccadilly, last Lent,and which, though an
hour and a half long, were listened to by enormous con-
gregations. Professor Jowett's Plato, in four volumes, is
to be out before Christmas. Mr. Ellis, who has become
what Moxon used to be, the poets' publisher, will soon
publish the fourth and concluding part of Mr. Morris's
"Earthly Paradise," which must then surely rank as
the longest poem in ' the world. Mr. Mac-
millan is publishing " The Service of the Poor,"
a volume about Deaconesses, Sisterhoods, Nurses, and
kindred topics written by Caroline Emilia Stephen, a
near relative, I believe, of the late Sir James Stephen.
Coming to the magazines, I may mention that the
author of the able and interesting article in the new
number of the British Quarterly on " Education in
America " is Mr. Joseph Payne, an occasional contributor
to the Pall Mall Gazette, and who has obtained much
valuable information direct from the United States.
Mr. James Hannay is, I believe, the author
of the article in the Cornhill on the " Western Pyrenees."
The Rev. R. F. Young, of Swindon, is about
to publish at the beginning of the new year a new
spiritualist periodical, which will attempt to shew that
Spiritualism is entirely reconcileable with Christianity. The
magazine will be a monthly, price two-pence, and every
communication will bear the name of its writer,
so that every facility may be • offered for
testing the truth of the statements published.
A gentleman, named John Hampden, also of Swindon.
has published a magazine, whrise object, as he avows, is
" to gain unpopularity by speaking the truth." . It is
called the " Armourer," and its purpose seems to be to prove
that Newton's theoryof around revolving globe is the greatest
fraud and delusion that ever disgraced and bewildered an
intelligent people, and has done more to promote infi-
delity and scepticism than all the writings of Vcltaire
and Tom Paine." That Mr. " John Hampden" has the
courage of his opinions may be gathered from the fact that
he will pay £5O and the necessary expenses of any two
engineers or surveyors who will show by actual
measurement that the world revolves. It may
be urged that this is a very safe bet, inasmuch as no two
engineers would be able to measure the world, and £5O
would hardly be a sufficient fee to tempt them even if
they could. A very amusing comic album of the war,
consisting of a republication of German lithographs is reis-
sued with English text, by Mr. Falkner, of Manchester,
Mr. Max Cullenan, the author of a paper on Trinity
College, Dublin, in the Fortnightly Review for October,
is a well-known classical scholar of the Irish University,
who, before he finished his college course at Dublin,
transferred his talents to Cambridge, and there obtained
a Fellowship. He is a young man and has already edited
several high class works, chiefly of Latin and Greek verse.
Mr. Cullinan's younger brother, also a classical scholar, is
now passing through Trinity College, Dublin. In con-
junction with Mr. Brady (scholar) T.C.D., this gentleman
is editor of the Dublin University classical serial Kottabos.
Speaking of this magazine, I may, perhaps, add, that its
title serves to exemplify the peculiar channels from which
the names of periodicals may sometime be fetched.
Kottabos was originally a Sicilian game much in vogue at
the drinking parties of young men at Athens. It was
played in all manner of ways, but the simplest
and most usual custom was for each member of the
company to throw the wine left in his cup so as to strike
against a bright metal basin. If all the dregs fell in the
basin, and the sound was clear, the sign was looked upon
as favourable, and the successful actor was commended.
From these facts it may be seen that cynics, if they
are inclined, can deduce questionable opinions of the
alumini of Trinity College, Dublin, from the title of their
serial.