The Sun.
London, England, 1856-05-09 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, 'FRIDAY EVENING, MAY 9, 1856,.

LONDON, FRIDAY, BIA.Y 9, 1856.

THE NEW LOAN OF FIVE
MILL lONS,

~s--

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has just
issued a notice for a New Loan. It is, however,
for a much smaller amount than had been antici-
pated. Five millions only are required, and that
sum is to be-rised in 3/. per Cent. Annuities, in
which term the biddings are to be made.

The following' are the conditions proposed :

"Downing-eree, Thursday Evening,
3la.y 8, 1856.

" Gentlemen,—l request that you will make it
known in the usual manner that her Majesty's
Government propose to contract on Monday, the
19th of May, 1856, for a.loan of 5.000,0001. ster-
ling, to 'he raised in Consolidated 31. p©r Cent.
Annuities.

"For every 1001. subscribed in money, the
contractors will receive 31. per Cent. Consolidated
Annuities. The biddiugs to be made in such

Annuities.

" The interest on the 3/. per Cent. Consoli-
dated Annuities will commence from the sth of

January, 1856.
"The days of payment, and the proportions of
the contributions to be paid, will be as follows :
"On Thursday, May 22, 1856,
,a deposit of

101. per cent.
"On Thursday, June 12, 1856, a payment
of 201. per cent.
" On Saturday, Juno 28, 1856, a payment of

201. per cent.
"Ou Thursday, July 24, 1856, a payment of

201. per cent.
"On Thursday, August 28, 1856, a payment
of 101. per eetit.
" On Thursday, September 18, 1856, a pay-
ment of 201. par cent.
"For each instalment after the deposit a
proportional amount of stock will be created for
the contributors. The stock for the deposit will
be created at the same time with that which will
be duo on the payment of the last instalment.
" No discount wi!l be allowed for prompt pay-
ment.

" Scrip receipts will be issued by the Bank in

the usual manner.
" The biddings to be made at the Treasury on
Monday morning, the 10th inst., at 10 o'clock.
The biddings to be for the entire sum.
" Lord Palmerston and I will be ready to re-
ceive, at a preliminary meeting at the Treasury,
at 1 o'clock on Tuesday next, the 13th instant,
any gentlemen who may be desirous of obtaining
further information on the subject.
" I am, Gentlemen,
" Your obedient servant,
" G. C. LEWIS.
44 The Governor and Deputy-Governor of tne
Bank of En gi and."

From this it will be seen that the instalments
are to be spread over a period
of
nearly four
months—viz., from the 22d. of May to the 18th
of September, while the interest commence,
from'. the sth of January This is equiva-
lent to a bonus of 11. 12& 6d. per cent., or divi-
dends, for an av,trage period. of six months and ahalf.:
There will be a preliminary meeting at the Trea-
sury on Tuesday next, at which any gentlemen
desirous of obtaining further information may at-
tend.

There can be but little doubt that the new
stock will be readily taken, especially as it is for
an amount so much less than had been antici-.
pated. We fear, however, that it augurs badly
in another rescect—that it proves that the
Chancellor of the r/ X 4 chequer does not con-
template affording any relief during the
present session to the over burdened tax-
payers- He has carefully avoided making
any provision for the debt to the Bank of Eng-
land—and setting that important item aside it
is manifest that 5,000,000/. will not be sufficient
to "wind up " the War, bring back our troops,
and provide for the supplementary expenses that
must be liberally disdiarged. It is impgasiple

that, Nder tlp circumstances, he can 1
ptpose New imposts,\but it is almost equally
certain that he will over but little relief
from the new burdens which he has created. The
Income Tax will still remain in all its oppressive
inequality, until April, 1858, at is. 4d. in the
pound, or nearly 7 per cent. on the earnings of
the industrious middle class. The increased Malt
Tax will still vex the " thirsty souls," while
the exorbitant Spirits Duties will stimulate
the demoralising trade in illicit alcohol.
Nor will any triumph be given to Teetotallers. To
them the duties on Tea, Coffee, and sugar, on
" the cup that cheers without inebriating," and
" the corn of the tropics," will prove that the
Financial Minister intends 01 to give in his
adhesion to the Maine liquor law.
Men of all parties will do well to consider the
subject before the financial statement -is brought
forward, so as to be prepared to hit " the right
nail on the head," at the only moment which,
according to red-tapists, will neither be too early
nor too late for moving amendments in the finan-
cial policy of Ministers. Mr. DISRAELI will have
opportunity of taking a glorious revenge. It was
on this budget—far better than any since sub-
mitted to the country—that the DERBY Adminis-
tration were expelled from office. He may now
produce " a Roland for an Oliver," that scattered
his forces, and sent his colleagues to enjoy the
sweets of private life, unalloyed by the cares and
vexations of official labour.

A question was last night brought under the
consideration of both Houses of Parliament, on
which persons of all shades and varieties of poli-
tical opinion could cordially and unanimously
agree. Whatever differences might exist on other
points, there could be none as to the zeal and effi-
ciency displayed by the great body of those en-
gaged in the different branches of her MAJESTY'S
service. Whatever doubts might exist respecting
the skill or activity of the commanders, whether
by land or by water, there could be no difficulty
as to the unflinching valour and patient endurance
of the officers and men under their control and
direction. Whatever they had to do, they accom-
plished, so far as it was practicable. Mr. DISRAELI
truly remarked of the Army, that " there was
hardly any variety of warfare which had not been
proved during their course. There was the
pitched battle—the protracted siege—the heights
triumphantly gained—the heights defended with
success. Throughout these campaigns, so
numerous were the traits of individual heroism,
such were the wonderful effects produced by the
determination of the soldiers, that were we to
search the most glorious annals of past wars, we
should scarcely be able to find a match for the
ochievements of our contemporaries."

This beautiful and truthful tribute to the de-
voted gallantry of the men well merited the en-
thusiastic cheers which it elicited from all sides of
the House. Officers and men had faithfully
discharged the important duties confided to
their charge. Whether their efforts were
required at the moment of emergency,
when their brethren were falling thickly on
every side, and each man felt that his
own fate might be the same the next minute, or
whether they were suffering the most fearful
privations, their conduct was still exemplary.
They passed through every ordeal without stain or
impeachment, and by their achievements in the
field and in the trench, for dash or for patience,
probably a more formidable test, have never been
surpassed, if they have been equalled, by the
most distinguished of their predecessors.

The British soldier has been weighed in the
balance and not found wanting, and an unexcep-
tionable witness, one whose name has become a
household word in every English mouth, hap
added her indisputable testimony in their favour.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, the heroine par excellence
of the War, says :—" I have never been able to
join in the popular cry about the recklessness,
-ensuality, and helplessness of the soldier. I

should say (and, perhaps, few have seen more of
the manufacturing and agricultural classes of
England than I have before I came out here) that
I have never seen so teachable and helpful a class
as the army generally. Give them opportunity
promptly and securely to send money hone, and
they will use it. Give them schools and lectures,
and they will come to them. Give them books
and games of amusements, and they will leave ofl
drinking. Give them work, and they will do it.
Give them suffering, and they will bear it. I
would rather have to do with the army than with
any other class I have ever attempted to serve,
and when I compare them with . . . . I am
struck with the soldier's superiority as a moral,
and even an intellectual, being."
To add anything to this would be merely
" gilding reined gold," would weaken the case
we desire to support--would lesson the claims of
that noble army, whose " devoted gallantry in
the field—whose unflinching courage in the hour
of battle, and, above all, whose patient heroism in
the midst of disease and famine, and privations of
every description—keeping alive, under all diffi-
culties and discouragements, not only the strictest
discipline, but the most fearless valour and un-
hesitating devotion to duty—reflect more credit
on them than any army ever gained before."

Nor so far as the occasion allowed did our gal-
lant tars less distinguish themselves. They ex-
hibited, whenever an opportunity offered, the
highest qualities of British seamen. The Union
Jack, under their eharge, maintained its proud
pre-eminence, anti passed through the ordeal
untarnished by a single blemish.
The militia also well and truly performed their
duty: It was not merely that they supplied more
than 33,000 volunteers to the lino, and thus fed
its exhausted ranks, but wherever their services
were required there they were willing to go.
Not only were ten regiments employed on
foreign service, but thirty-seven more tendered
their aid, as they would have done in the Crimea
itself, if occasion required, and they were per-
mitted to have exhibited their zeal and gallantry
in the face of the enemy under arduous circum-
stances. If we have not alluded more particu-
larly to the Marines, the Naval Brigade, and
others engaged in the contest, it is not from want
of due appreciation. There cannot be a higher
tribute of praise than that they well and faith-
fully discharged their respective duties, and that
Will be accorded to each and all, not merely by
the votes
of both Homes of Parliament, but by
the cordial and
unanimous concurrence of the
entire People; by all, from the Peer to the Pea-
sant, kern the millionnaire to the humble opera-
tive who earns his daily bread by his daily
labour.

The parties chiefly affected by tho oversights
of Lord CLARENDON are already astir. Repudiated
Circassia and threatened Belgium have both
spoken. In the Belgian Chambers the excite-
=tent was very considerhble. In reply to questions,
the Foreign Minister stated ,that he had not yet
received official information of the language adopted
by the Plenipotentiaries at. Paris respecting the
Press of his country, but that "when that com-
munication did take place the answer would be
toady; and would be communicated to all Govern-

ments, firmly maintaining the rights of an inde-
pendent and constitutional country." He also
stated that no Power bad ever asked for any alte-
ration of the Belgian laws relating to the Press.
There was immense cheering and enthusiasm at
hearing these announcements. It is to be hoped
that the manifest unpopularity of Count WA-
LEWSKf S audacious language, and of the Pretocol
so unhappily signed by Lord CLARENDON, will
deter the Count and his Master from attempting
in France to make laws for Belgium.
It is impossible to repress astonishment at the
principal parties implicated. That Austria and
Prussia should be ready for any attack on real

liberty creates no surprise, but that Louis
NAPOLEON should imagine England would allow
her own greatest institution to be suppressed,
where it exists in any other country by external
coercion, is truly surprising. If the French think
a NAPOLEON on the Throne a consolation for a
gagged Press, let him remember that Belgium has
no such indemnification. A COBURG and a free
Press may be a fair compromise, but a COBURG
and a Press under the laws of France would be
unendurable. We must do LEOPOLD, however,
the justice of acknowledging that we do not
remember his evincing any personal hostility to
the freedom of the Press. Probably he lived long
enough in England to know that it is a
practical convenience under a constitutional
Government.. It is a ready means for any
Government to ascertain the popular tendencies,
and to adapt legislation to them before they be-
come unmanageable. But what shall we say of
an exiled Pole becoming the instrument of enslav-
ing a free country ? and what of our own Pleni-

potentiary, first asserting in his country's name
the impossibility of England's uniting in an at-
tempt to fetter the Press of another country, yet
signing Count WALEWSKI'S assertion that the
"Plenipotentiaries condemned loudly the ex-
cesses in which the Belgian newspapers indulge
with impunity, by recognising the necessity of reme-
dying the inconveniences which are so greatly
Abused in Belgium !" How c ,uld his Lordship

commit this country to Count WA LEWSKI'S sum-
mary after his own truly English remarks ? As-
suredly, many things were said and done of which
the Protocols tell us nothing. All England would
renounce the French alliance at once rather than
gee the Peace of Paris employed to put down the
freedom of the Press.

As we have already stated, we thick that some

solemn and official declaration should go forth
from this country to Belgium and Europe, that
England will tolerate no interference with the
Press of Belgium. Indeed Mr. GLADSTONE
;bowed at length on Thursday night that the
Attempt was wholly needless. No further check
but that of censorship can be introduced. Already
the law of Belgium requires the Government of
the country to prosecute, on behalf of any com-
plaining foreign potentate, while in this country,
if LOUIS NAPOLEON thinks himself aggrieved, he
himself must prosecute. The sore point probably
is, that the case there, as here, must go before a
jury ; and the Emperor of FRANCE remembers
how his uncle, in the case of PELTIER, gained
a verdict, but suffered infinitely more from the
speech of counsel than he could have done from
An obscure writer. Louts NAPOLEON does not
wish to become the theme of a Belgian blAc•

The Circassians, now it is too late, are also
moving. They probably hal till quite recently
no idea of what was going on at Paris. Seeing
the forts which alone prevented their intercourse
with the sea destroyed, they in their simplicity
thought the powers which had caused their de-
struction would take good care they should never
be re-established. They supposed their commerce
vith Turkey and with all Europe perfectly secure
for the future. Too late, however, they learned that
Rassia would probably be permitted to cut them
,ff as before from the sea which washes the feet
of their mountains, and by which alone they can
obtain not only such common articles of commerce
Ls they wish, but the supplies of warlike stores
which are their chief necessity for maintain-
ing their freedom. We read, therefore, without
urprise that their chiefs in hundreds flocked down
ro Anapa, on the news of Peace, drew up an ad-
tress to our QUEEN, asking the recognition of the
'ndependnace of their country, and sent a depu-
tation of twelve of their number with it to Con-
stantinople. We trust that something decisive
will be done. It seems clear that the Circassians
have never renounced their own independence,
squally clear that Turkey could never renounce it
for them—the SULTAN having no authority over
them but that of the religious chief of ISLAM.
Unless our Government can take some efficient
step at once, Russia with her wonted craft will
accomplish her ends, while we are merely venting
our indignation. Her troops are already moving
to the Caucasus, and her probable intention is to
overwhelm finally the free mountaineers, and to
compensate herself in Circassia for her losses else-
where. Was this result connived at by the Pleni-
potentiaries? Was it a part of the policy of not
humbling Russia ?

The War is over. The War that cost some
hundred and twenty millions of money ; and the
only good thing it has accomplished is the libera-
tion of FROST, JONES, and Co., and the revocation
of the sentence sf exile on SMITH O'BRIEN ! Is
this worthy of our character as an economical
people Is it in accordance with the principle
so triumphantly vindicated at the Naval Review,
when Members of Parliameat were victualled for
the day's holiday excursion at seven-and-sixpence
a head ? Were FROST, JONES, and Co. the only
real patriots after all ? And now that patriotism
can do the ruling caste no harm, is it thought
politic to show a due appreciation of the virtue of
patriotism in the liberation of their parsons
We are accustomed to speak of patriotism as a
priceless jewel. Could'nt we in this case have
had more of it for the money ? A hundred and
twenty millions ! Divide the sum by four, and
the reader will find that gives thirty millions
a-piece for FROST, JONES, and Cu. ! Never,
surely, hung orient pearl so costly on the neck of
beauty. Item—FaosT-1 Welch icicle-diamond
we should say-30,000,0001. Ratherstaggering to
light on this in the national accounts !
JONES 30,000,000/. ! Of the five million JONES'
in existence was not a jewel of equal value, a
jewel quite as spotless and quite as worthy of
admiration, to be had at a somewhat lower figure
—for a million say, or for a QUEEN'S shilling ?
Item—Smira O'BRIEN, an Emerald of the first
water, 30,000,0001. Surely a high figure for
a splinter of " the . gem of the say." In the
language of fast men—" Isn't this going it
rayther ?" Don't let us be misunderstood ; we
don't in the least complain of the revocation of
the sentence of exile on these men. Nothing of
the sort. They ought to have been pardoned
before. Their power for evil has long been gone,
and whatever they may have respectively deserved
it would have accorded better with the majesty
lof the country and its Sovereign to have set them
free, the Welsh rioters at least, years ago, and
&mu O'BRIEN the moment he stood out in such
holloAmble relief to his ungentlemanly associates
. in treason- and pialfairawat. What we complain

of is, that for so frightful an expenditure we
should only have so paltry a return 1
And yet we are going into the money market
to-day to beg or borrow five millions to keep ou r
credit afloat I—and that, too, with some two hun
dred gun-boats all ready for action, but of no
use 11010—

r the War is acltch'(l—
the Peace is b3tch'd !

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

While the German Jagers—the mercenary cut-
throats of Vaterland—are creating disturbances at
Plymouth, the authorities of the good city of
Exeter are intimating in a rather marked manner
their patriotic disgust at the Peace of Paris. As-
sembled in 4101110 U to decide as to what really
after all should or should not be done upon
the day ordered to be set aside for Rejoicings,
with squibs, crackers, pop-gun-shows, fireworks,
and all sorts of absurd illuminations and trans-
parencies, the Mayor and Corporation of the
city of Exeter resolved without one dissentient
upon letting the day pass without taking any
notice whatever of it ! For the ♦ery sufficient
reason that the Treaty recently signed contains
nothing at all in any way satisfactory to true
born and right-minded Englishmen. Bravo ! say
we to the Exeterites. May their bold and manly
decisions exact an honourable emulation elsewhere
in all parts of the United Kingdom.

LATEST NEWS.

PARIS, MAT 8.

The Moniteur announces that M. de Morn,
has been appointed Ambassador Extraordinary
to the Emperor of Russia.

General Ney left yesterday for St. Petersburg.

FRANCE.

PARIS, THURSDAY EVENING.
If the Empress's health, which is still delicate,
permit, the baptism of the imperial prince will
take place on the 14th June, the anniversary of
battle of Marengo and of Friedland.

Political arrests have lately taken place in the
department of the Loire. Arms and revolutionary
papers have been seized. The enemies of the exist-
ing Government are again active.
The following telegraphic despatches have been
received to-day :--

"TURIN, May 7, Evening. —The disoussion on the in-
terpellations to the Government has been continued to-
day. M. Mamiani delivered a brilliant speech in fa-
♦our of the Government. Count de Cavour read the
note which had been delivered to the allied Powers
on the affairs of Italy, and added that the Cabinet of
Turin persisted in its policy towards the Court of Rome.
The deputies of the Right and Left offered their support
to the Government, it circumstances should require it.
The Chamber adopted an order of the day approving of
the conduct of Count de Cavour."

" MADRID, May 7.—The Gazette publishes the statutes
of the Spanish Bank. The capital is to be 120,000,000
of rr.alci. with liberty to increase it to 200,000,000.
T. greatest tranquillity prevails throughout the
kingdurn:

BOURSE, May B.—The following were the last
quotations :

Cash. fr. a. End of Month.
4i per Cents 93 75 —f. —e.
3 per Cents 74 90 75 40
New Loan 75
Bank Shares 3,950 Roman
Credit Mobilier 1,815 Austrian
Belgian Fives ...... .. 97 Spanish Threes...— —
Pied.montese (5) 93 Some Debt 4l

THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

(SECOND NOTICE.)

Everything considered, we do most dispassion-
ately believe the most remarkable picture in this
year's Exhibition of the Paintings of the Royal
Academy to be, curiously enough, No. 413—a
blank in the Catalogue ! It is the production, we
understand, of a young artist named Burton.
Evidently a man of genius—a poet in his way,
already a perfect master of colour, a►nd a most
keen observer of Nature. The incident por-
trayed by the artist in this very notable maiden-
picture is but dimly indicated by the title gene-
rally reputed in the gallery to belong to it,
namely, that simply of " The Wounded Cavalier."
How powerfully the tragic interest of the scene is
revealed at one glance to the spectator's imagina-
tion ! flow wonderfully the whole story is told
by the painting itself without any need whatever
of extraneous aid in the way of its elucidation
The sylvan seclusion of the spot which has become
the arena of so many wild and contending pas-
sions—how admirably that is intimated by every
(even the minutest) accessory ! The furious
Past and the sorrowful Future—how clearly,
how distinctly, how marvellously, those
are laid bare to any one's apprehension
by that one agonising glimpse of the Present,
which, by a masterly sense on the part of the
painter at once of the pathetic and of the com-
plete, has been selected by him as the moment of
representation ! Everything is, upon the instant,
comprehensible through that single glance among
the green leaves into the woodland. The be-
holder understands it all, in a manner, instinc-
tively. Understands, from the playing cards lit-
tered among the underwood, how the knightly
gamblers have rushed forth desperately and sud-
denly into the adjoining coppice to fight out their
wine-heated quarrel at once and to the Death.
Understands from the tumbled-down stones of
the boundary-wall how the victor has fled from
the duel-ground, leaving his antagonist bleeding
and groaning upon the green sward. Understands
from the broken blade of the wounded man's
sword sticking in the bark of the tree in the fore-
ground—the trunk of which tree, by the way,
separates the picture (though not, as might be
reasonably conjectured, inartistically) into two
nearly equal divisions—understands, we say,
from this broken sword• blade sticking in the bark
of the gnarled tree in the foreground how the
wounded cavalier had aimed a. last desperate blow
at his opponent, and how with the hilt still
clutched in his grasp of anguish, giddy with loss
of blood, sick with pain, and dizzy with passion,
he had staggered round to the other side of
the fatal tree and had there fallen for
dead among the trampled fern and brushwood.
The observer understands all this, the picture
tells it to him plainly : it tells him more—it tells
him how the wounded cavalier must have lain
some time bleeding upon the ground —j udging
from the cobweb spun by the spider from the
sword's point to the tree's trunk, and afterwards
powdered with the liquid diamonds of the dew

glittering all along the mazes of its fairy cordage !
More, even, than all this the piloting reveals to
the gaze of the spectator. It tells him how the
LAdye-love of the Gallant, wandering with her
puritan Tutor through adjacent copse and meadow,
had abruptly come, quite accidentally, upon the
pale and bloodstained form of her betrothed. It
shows us the beautiful maiden looking with an-
guish upon the face of her beloved, as she sup-
ports his head upon her arm so tenderly. It
half discloses to us at the back of the splin-
tered tree, already mentioned as occupying

so conspicuous a place in the composition,
the gaunt figure of the round-head-school-

man with his red-edged parchment-covered quarto
under his arm, with no hair at all to speak of,
with a broad-brimmed, sugar-loafed hat, and lan-
tern jaws, and the sourest and grimliestexpres-

sion imaginable, and a skinny hand nervously
clutched behind his back in the intensity of his
suppressed emotions—!ooking on from the back-
ground. The loveliest little gorgeous dragon.-
butterfly—(exquisite type of the " soul," just
trembling upon tho lips of the expiring, ca.valier)
—lit the while upon tho fatal sword•blade,
snapped from the haft by the tree, and spun upon
with its delicate meshes by the spider ! Alto-
gether it is a wonderful picture---a work of art,
so true to nature, so replete with tragic interest,
so abounding with manly pathos, rather than with
sentimental affectation, so complete in itself
as a story, so various in its contrasting

characteristics of quaintness, and beauty, and
passion, and repose, that we do not
hesitate to speak of it as, everything
considered, about the most remarkable picture in
this year's Collection. It stands forth—even by
the side of paintings from the easels of Hunt and
Millais—as incontestibly one of the most note-
worthy pleas yet put forward of late years, in
deprecation of the wrath of those authoritative
judges of art who are most inimical to the old-
new school of the modern-ancients called, for
want of a better title, the Pre-Raphaelites.
Henceforth we shall look for great things from
Mr. Burton. The public, or we are much mis-
taken, will do no less, when they have rendered
themselves familiar with the merits of this very
curious production, No. 413—" The Wounded
Cavalier." Let the young artist, guided by the
instincts of his own genius, so develope that ge-
nius wisely, and direct it sagaciously, as not to
end simply where he has begun, and so to dis-
appoint the popular expectations.
Another very notable production in the school of

the pre-Raphaelites for the present season is, of
course, No. 398, " The Scapegoat," by W. H.
Hunt—an extraordinary picture, suggested by the
sixteenth chapter of Leviticus. A painting con-
veying to the mind an astonishing sense of deso-
lation. Par away, illuminated by the gorgeous:,
sunset dyes of Palestine, are the mountain
peaks of Edon]. The immediate scene itself
represents in the foreground (as the catalogue
tells us) the margin of the salt-encrusted shal-
lows of the Dead Sea, at Oosdoom. The
solitary figure in this region of solitude, of awful
and utter solitude, is, as the title of the piece in
dicates, " The Scapegoat"—otherwise the Em-
missary goat, what the Hebrews called Azazei,
and the Greeks arorottratog, and the Latins Gaper
Emissarius. The Goat laden with the sins of the
people, and sent forth by the high-priest to be
devoured by wild beasts in the wilderness. In other
words, the type of the Redeemer ! Mr. Hunt has
comprehended with a poet's comprehension the pa-
thos of this strange spectacle of solemn and dread-
ful abandonment. The vastness and barrenness of
the surrounding waste, and the wild and troubled
expression shining out of the eyes of the Scapegoat,
an expression half-supplicative, half-despairing
are " points " in this singular painting which are
rendered with surprising vividness. Yet the ge-
neral effect of the painting is so strangely gro-
tesque that many of those who involuntary
pause before it, arrested by its secret power
and startled by its chromatic splendour, smile
upon this undoubted ebullition of genius almost
—he it plainly said at once—with the smile of
derision.

The recognised Chief among our youthful and
gifted band of Pre-Raphaelites, facile princeps
by reason not only of a daring priority in
point of time, but by right also of un-
questioned pre-eminence, both in regard to
innate abilities and in referen-,e to their mi.,
nute, and exquisite, and laborious cultivation
_John Everett Millais—appears during the
past twelve months to have been more than ordi-
narily industrious, and in oue or two instances
more than usually successful. What cannot fail
to loud a peculiar charm to his five remarkable
contributions to this year's Exhibition, is the cir-
cumstance that in each of those five paintings the
young artist has depicted with a most loving and
appreciative pencil the multiform and manifold
graces of little children. No. 293, " Portrait "of
a Gentleman," is capital—just the very urchin
who would look up with a face full of latent fun
hidden by a. varnish of sudden gravity—a boy-
sage caught feasting bis sense of the ridiculous
over a scrap-book of cariea'Aires ! No. 586, "The
Blind Girl"—a limning painfully true to reality
—is a portraiture which at once assunies to itself
among the work Stored up is our gaZeriefi of art

a place kindred to that occupied by the
pathetic shade of Nydia in the records of
imaginative literature. No. 553, " L'Enfant du
Regiment," we have already spoken of, as a very
exquisiteproduction—exquisite beyond all man
ner of doubt, whether viewed in reference to the
subject itself, or in regard to the method of its
treatment. As to the subject—that is told in
two minutes. It simply consists of a chi d lying
(anyhow) sound asleep upon an old knightly
monument, carved in stone, with the re-
cumbent figure of the mailed dead—may be the
effigy of some grand old B tyard among the
Crusaders—the slumbering figure of the child
half covered by a regimental coat of blue and
scarlet, the colours of which oontrast exquisitely
with the stony hue of the crumbling old ceno-
taph. No. 448, " Autumn Leaves"—perhaps
one of the finest pictures of its kind yet exhibited
by Millais—represents a group of children and
maidens busy piling up and burning in the waste
corner of some weedy, flowery, fruitful " plea-
sa un ea," towards the close o f the yellow leaf-dropping
month of September—a gorgeous heap of fallen
foliage, ruddy, green, brown, golden, purple, ver-
million ! Lookiug, at the picture, you can almost
hear the rustle of the moving footsteps, you can
almost smell the fragrance of the scented smoke
—you can hardly fancy it is, after all, merely so
much paint and canvass, it looks so wondrously like
a cluster of living girls and a pile of dying leaves :
not the image of the two, but the very
girls and leaves themselves. No. 200, " Peace
Concluded, 1856"—the largest and the most ela-
borate of all these five pictures—is (we can have
little doubt of that) in some respects the most
clever of the five, and yet altogether beyond all
question decidedly the most unsatisfactory. The
pane arrangement of the picture is—upon the
very face :of it—preposterous. Papa, with
a very coarse sandy moustache, and ha-
bited in a dressing gown the texture of
which resembles sacking, sprawls at full
length upon a particularly narrow sofa—at the
extremest edge of which, Mamma is somehow (in
a very Acrobatty or W. H. Paycey manner) sit-
ting. upon ,nothing at all—for we can't for an
instant suppose she is sitting upon Papa's unseen
waistcoat, like the comeliest Daymare in a browu
velvet boddice and skirt ! Trotty and Toddles,
children both wonderfully child-like in
look and gesture stand by : one of
them having ingeniously hauled out of the Noah's
ark in the' corner such effigies of a Lion and a
sear as would have puzzled M. Buffon very much
indeed could he have seen them. The lid of the
said Noah's ark we take, by the way, to be one of
the most glaring among Mr. Millais' affectations
—you can all but smell that dealy painty smell
familiar to those who know what it is to handle
the toys of children. The grease in Papa's hair,
again, is another of these affectations—it ought
to have been brushed into it with the best un-
bleached ' bristles purchasable at Truefits or
Gilling water's—not left to cake there en masse
under the pressure of Papa's recently doffed
silk ventilator, or possibly that of his lately
unbuckled helmet. For we are left to
conjecture, somehow, that this same youthful,
sandy, pomaturned, sprawling paterfamilias has
just come hack from the wars to repose at home
—a circumstance which can alone account for his
shaking Mamma's hand with one of his, and with
the other holding at arm's length a damp copy of
the Times newspaper.

Another of these pre-Raphaelites, R. Hannah,
to wit, reveals to us in No. 230, " Master Isaac
Newton, in the autumn of 1665, sitting in his
garden at Woolsthorpe." The greenest of apples
(how it ever came to drop off the bough no one
can possibly imagine) lying upon the most me-
tallic coloured of greenswards—and the cosiest,
ripest, mellowest of fruits sticking up aloft on one
of the branches, as though it never intended
to fall even through all the snows, and
frosts, and rain, and wind, and hail of the most
pitiless of on-coming Winters.
So much, this year, for the more conspicuous
among the pre-Raphaelites--a school steadily
rising in note and influence even in spite of Mr.
Ruskin's exaggerated adulation now of Mr. Hol-
man Hunt, and now of Mr. Everett Millais—dhe
Prophet and the High-Priesr, of this old-new
Religion of the Painter's Art.

MARKET NEWS.—(This Day.)