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
under 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 metropolis
should be utilised as far as practicable, and in the mean-
time, until this can be accomplished, the committee have
deemed it expedient to approve the. bill, which they have
reported to the House, for preventing any obstruction to
the navigation of the river from the flow of sewage from
the metropolitan outfalls.

IN MEMORIAM: CHARLES DICKENS.
(From 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 loss which we have all of
us sustained by the removal from among us of so great and
so good a man. Shakaptre,--ficott, 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 1
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 which 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 small 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 a heart'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 him 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 Shakspere, 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
which a smaller man would have been called to account.
He knew theyigid 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 popularity 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 End
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 re warded by it I
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 ruins of
Dryburgh Abbey that he loved so well, Charles Dickens
might have rested in the pleasant county of Kent, where
his happiest days were passed, and through the green
lanes of which he was accustomed to wander. His re-
mains would have been sufficient to make a Westminster

Abbey for themselves, out of the humblest village church-
yard in which they might have been deposited. Never-
theless, the place that has received all of him that can
die will become a shrine for the visits of countless pil-
grims from all ends of the earth—sanctified to all who
honour great genius applied to the highest uses, and who
rank the poet, whether he writes in prose or in verse,
among the most Illustrious of public benefactors. In
conclusion, and while my heart is full, let me borrow the
words of Ben Johnson—applied to Shakspere :—" I
loved the man, and do honour to his memory, on this side
idolatry, as much as any. He was indeed, honest, and of
an open, free nature." C. M.
June 15, 1870.

The leaders of the Conservative party at Norwich
have met again, but it was announced that they had no
candidate to bring forward.

The Lynn Town Council has resolved to present an
address to Lord Derby on his approaching marriage ; also
to offer the stewardship of the borough to the noble lord.

. -
The death is announced of Major-General Sir
Archibald Bogle, formerly Civil Commissioner of the
Provinces of Tenasserim and Martaban. He was born
in 1805.

-- -
Prince de la Tour D'Auvergne, who has recovered
from his illness, definitely accepts the post of Ambassador
at Vienna ; he will not, however, go to occupy it for some
months.

Intelligence has just been received in London that
the body of Dr. Grant, late Roman Catholic Bishop of
Southwark, is on its way from Rome for interment in this
country.

During some recent excavations at Taillefer
(Namur), a perfectly-preserved foot of a fossil elephant
measuring twelve inches in breadth by eight in length was
discovered.

The conference of the Methodist New Connexion
has passed a resolution instructing the Stationing Com-
mittee to diminish the number of unmarried preachers'
appointments to the utmost practical extent.

It is stated that the Belfast Orangemen are making
great preparations for the approaching anniversaries.
Thirty thousand are expected to assemble at Lisburn.
The authorities will take every precaution to prevent a
breach of the peace.
The death of a centenarian is announced in the
person of Mrs. Elizabeth Coombe Leader. She was the
widow of the late Edward Leader Esq., of Abingdon, and
died at her residence, North Court, near Abingdon, on
Saturday last, in her 102nd year.
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
loses, or rather sinks, his former rank,

Themovement for appropriating to the education of girls
wasted or useless charitable endowments is making slow
progress. The committee are working just now in West-
minster, and it is hoped that before the London season is
over the Dean and Lady Augusta Stanley will take part
in a public meeting.
It is fully expected that Professor Jowett will succeed
Dr. Scott, who has just been appointed to the Deanery of
Rochester, as Master of Balliol. Dr, Scott's predecessor
also obtained a deanery, that of Wells, which Dr. John-
son still holds. Will Dr. Scott's successor be equally
fortunate?

Last year a good deal of curiosity was excited in London
society by the announcement that a grand ball was to be
given at Willis's Rooms by somebody whose very name
even was unknown. Of course no one would go under the
circumstances. The rooms were thronged to overflow-
ing. Some 800 guests were present, and the host
was not acquainted with a dozen of them. It was very
brilliant and very pleasant, and there was not the
smallest evidence of anything improper. The experi-
ment is to be repeated on the 20th, and is
likely to be just as successful as on the former
occasion. The giver of the entertainment comes from
the Eastern counties, and the story runs that, having
made the acquaintance of some charming young ladies
abroad, they induced him to give a ball. He allowed
them carte blanche, and so tickets were sent to friends
and friends' friends to the 12th remove. Another enter-
tainment of a more regular kind, the soirée of the Royal
Academy, takes place on the 29th.
The Great Western Railway Company have started
broughams and barouches, which they let out at 9d. the
mile, or 2s. 6d. the hour. They are most comfortable
carriages, and the extra sixpence an hour is a most mode-
rate charge for the advantage of driving in vehicles that
are neither tainted with pestilence nor swarming with
vermin.

The lamentably brilliant weather continues. This
morning the thermometer was 68 deg. at eight
o'clock. While our fellow-subjects at the An-
tipodes are being drowned with rain, we are
being scprched up to a degree- far more
serious than in 1868. The hot dry weather of that year
was two months later, and we had good crops both of hay
and corn. This year there is no prospect of either. It is
much to be regretted, in seasons like this, that the system
of sewage irrigation does not prevail more extensively.
Visiting Banbury a little while ago, I was
greatly struck by the appearance of the grass
on the town sewage farm. In the same field there
were two levels—one too high for the sewage, and that was
coarse and poor while the sewage-watered portion was
luxuriant. During the drought of 1868, the crops of rye
grass were sold at very high prices, realising nearly £3O
an acre. There is no doubt that the same system adopted
in other towns would secure our cattle against the dearth
from which they are now suffering, and which is com-
pelling farmers to part with their lean stock now,
to the great detriment of our purses six months hence.
M. Dore is painting a picture larger than any of his
previous works, and that is saying a good deal, for this
artist is an adept in covering the greatest amount of can-
vas in the shortest time. The subject of this

• SPY,/ WW •
work is ChristWWW
leaving the Praetorian
M. Dor4 is disappointed with London. He
came over here in order to make the drawings
for a book of which Mr. Blanchard Jerrold
is to do the letter press. But the artist can find
nothing picturesque in the province of houses. He should
go to Ratcliff Highway and Rotten Row, and he will find
plenty of materials, and of very different kinds.
Perhaps M. Dor4 would like London better if he
knew the Londoners' languae. But he is no linguist.
It is rumoured that Mr. John Forster, who wrote the
life of Walter Savage Landor, will be the biographer of
Dickens. Sir Henry Holland, the celebrated physician
who married the daughter of Sydney Smith, is writing
his own autobiography. He has visited all parts of the
world, and last year was in America. He is now nearly
eighty-two. There is no chance of Cobden's life
being written at present. His friends have
private reasons for withholding the biography
for the present. Lieutenant-Colonel Prince Edmond de
la Tour d'Auvergne has added another to the numerous
works on Waterloo. He attributes the defeat to Grouchy'a
inactivity, but thinks that a victory could not have saved
Napoleon from an overthrow, and did save the lives of 100,000
men, who would otherwise have perished in subsequent
battles. The title of Mr. Buchanan's new poem is " Ballads
of Life."
The New British Institution has just opened its first
summer exhibition with 140 works, chiefly by old masters.
Captain Ottley lends a, very large number of the works
exhibited, and some of them are exceedingly valuable.
The most remarkable is a work by Titian, which has been
perdu for many years. There is also a work by the rare
Spanish artist Morales.

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