The Sun.
London, England, 1856-04-18 00:00:00

(From the Liverpool Albion.)
LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING.
If " April showers bring forth May flowers," as the
proverb has it, London should be a perfect parterre next
month ; the ghost of Hafiz find itself equally at home
in Islington es in Ispahan ; and the pert twitter of cock-
ney sparrows melt into the soft jug-jug of Lalla Rook-
hish nightingales. The much rain, however, • gives small
promise of any such paradisical products. Our domestic
philanthropy doesn't progress with foreign peace ; for,
as Zadkiel would say, " Taurus waxes restless under the
baleful gaze of the malefic Ursa Major," to whose evil
every other major is minor, save taking care of Major
Dowbizein, which is the maximum of all misfortune.
Brenoff,- or Orloff, or Kisliefl'e, or Meden, or whoever
bathe Muscovite plenipo coming Aver here, will find things
in as Tartaric a state of acidity as they were just before
the good Aberdeen found out that his imperial friend of
forty years was a gigantic Jack Sheppard. The precise
period when the by-no-means dOuble-sighted elderly
Highlander made that discovery, though now rather late
in the (lay to be inquired -into, happens to be one of
the chief gossip isms of the week,' lleoanse of Malmes-
bury's letter in the leading journal of yesterday, in re-
ference to the late Sir C. Hothem's neglected recom-
mendatien about mortar-beets, for whet the ex-
Foreign Secretary calls the then (1.853)" inevitable:War:"
The question-is; why dial netekberdeen know it to be in-
es itable ? What was, or is, the secret of his ignorance ?
for that there is a secret is held by many who are not ,
particularly enamoured of the pastime called a wild-
goose chase, or the eiploration of mares' nests. It was
stated at the time, in this column, very circumstantially,
and is now repeated by Malinesbury, that Hotham repo-:
dieted the Australian appointment, as being unfit for it,
end asked for a naval command, for which he was fit, and
for which the approach of war made him doubly anxious.
Rut it was not stated then, though it may be stated uow,
that he himself, jest before he left this country, told an
intimate friend there -would be no war, because he had
bAelviumaged hy..the First, Minister, that, ler certain rea-
sons, war was impossible. What were those reasons? That.
lathe point; but it is a point we may never get bee oud. It
is notorious -that Lord Raglan continued to be of the same
opinion, or rather conviction, up to the-very day the expe-
dition sailed from Varna; and that his authority was Aber.:
Teen. Bet who or what was Aberdeen's authority? That
he was juzgle l and deluded by other influences than his own •
monomaniacal devotion to peace is unquestionable ; and
hence the explanation of his refusal to make preparations
so essential in all others' eves. -Palmerston too, was hood- •
winked, or rather pretended to be so; and hence the other-
wise wholly unaccountable neglect of the militia, to which
the gentleman who spoke of "credulity anti connivance"
has frequently made allusion, with a significance showing
that there are other than Asian mysteries within his necro-
mantic cognieence. Sortie people have get hold of a tale,
and a not improbable one it perhaps is. and that wonderful;
Count Pahlen. whose apparition at Lord Granville's and
elsewhere so astonished our natives this time three years,'
was the secret agent of Nicholas for the purpose of confi-.
dentially communicating to his old crony, to whom he had'
years before imparted all about the sick man, that, what-
ever he might say or affect, he would do nothing. Relying;
on that, it is now assumed, that the Earl acted as he did,;
or rather didn't act at all till it was " too late" with- him, •
as it was with his other august friend, him of the Tuileries,.
whom tardiness converted from King of France into Mr.
William Smith, of 12righton, i thin eight-and-forty hours..
The only notability of the Coalition who didn't fall into!
this trap, though lie tumbled into another of his own making;
much worse afterwards, was Lord John, who cried aloud for,
battle even when his chief murmured peace. Whether he;
knew then what he was crying aloud for is now questionable;
but what he may or may not cry for henceforth is a matter of
the smallest concern to any body. Last night seems really,
to have put an end to Finality. The headlong obtrusion and
Riecinirate withdrawal of his ill-omened, pragmatical, and.:
omni-obnoxious education crotchet, exhibit a self-stultifying;
abortiveness and decrepitude that seem to consummate the:
annihilation of all that was left of his reputation, not only as'
a statesman, but as a Parliamentary tactician. Amid the ill-
suppressed consternation and mortification of his friends, and;
the jubilant tittering of his enemies, the fallen- leader of,
Whigrery would insist on dividing upon a point, that served i
merely to exhibit his feebleness ; and came out of the lobi-y;
in a, minority of nearly one hundred. Palmers, on, who doesn't
believe in original sin, but yetdeerns some sort of instruction ne- 1
cessary to keep Eneli'hmen from being heathens, voted, with a I
sort of charitable condescension for his quondam superior, who
had for his fellow-teller— oh! tell it not in the Reform! -SirJohn
Pakineton. "To what base uses may we come at length,
Horatio !" Terrible and complete, indeed, is the retribution
Disraeli has extorted for the memorable malignity about " the
right hon. gentleman ransacking his Thucydides fair parallels,
and gloating in anticipation over the disasters of his country-
men"
a' Sebastopol. Surely Nemesis is a pure sephardim, of
true Caucasian breed, and is embodied in the person of the;
member for Bucks, who has now triumphed over three Prime
Ministers. and is evidently preparing for a victory over the
fourth ; for it is clear the t ttering Bottle Holder cannot hold •
the ring much longer. Equally clear is it that those judicious
gentlemen, the Peelites, are discerning that truth with their
usual penetrating prescience of what there is no longer any
doubt about: Hence the all-demure and decorous Gladstone
shrewishly snebbed both Russell and Palmerston last ight ; •
and, with his henchmen, Cardwell and Herbert, helped the
Knight of Netherby to elongate the tail of him whom they all
accused of having hunted their chief to dea9l. Still, the Pony
Peel should not be spoken of disparagingly just now, seeing
that he has lately said a smart thin-;, all his own, and not in
the least plagiarised from Sir Robert, who ind ed never did
say anything of the strt. What 1 it ? Why this :—A short
time ago the blunt and bluff Lord Hardwicke, whose portrait
w,u1.1 do for the sign of the Deptford Jolly Sailor, and who
often acts the part of that popular personage to the life, . oing
into the Carlton, spied the metaphysical Cumber for the. Uni-
versity poring over that lively matin print of his party, .
wherein it was diurnally demonstrated to a dozen readers, or
thereabouts, that Engle'. d was going headlong to perdition ,and,
positively for the last time of announcement, would be demo-
lished
some particular clay of some varticular month, unless
the right hon. gentleman and half-i-dozen others of his Wl-
mediate connexion contracted with Providence for the pre
vention of the catastrophe. The Earl, in half jest and whole I:
earnest having ejaculated a good deal of nautical lingo about
sailing under false colours, piratical craft, Flying Dutchmen, ;
and other marine gibberish, implying that W. E G.'s absence e
would be considerably more evelceme than his company in so
thoroughly Toryfied a latitude, wound uo by asking, point ;
blank, "Now, Gladdy. my boy, when do you mean to leave
off being rated in our books ?" The question, of course, ad-
mated of being divided into three heads, and each head an
swered under th ee different aspects. Ecery question put to
a Peelite does ; he wouldn't be a Pcelite if he didn't. How
ever, for a wonder, he disposed of it under one head, and at
once, saying, with the unel ieusness of a benevolent cobra :
" Lord Hardwicke, I shall take my name off the books of the
Carlton when my Lord Derby removes his from Brooks's "
ly
Tatthi
Ans d
iko
pon,
tat.,oialte bi
deei
sea-serpentria
ttareolltlyrhb.
etenol.
uegeotdit:tploooialno,gsstaushrtti,
doleey
weulpsuagii.thitee.
hts
aitupegntoHhionyaefo
udtti:sinapeParliament.ui 3mer caught2a ihai.ons
himselfh
the coolness
sof s
eau
ir.oco-
o
e
of ?speeches Clontz, whoo- ins a a la lankrne witih:eyeaclmoloa
netted conspirators who should deny to the sovereign
the bill iiltl is rather odd certainly sbnuitallteisietnbtibte oif:dtuhceembielnl
t?
peopleel whereofnnc erso sr.
or
e
is co siderable. And what do you think it is ? Why, at
Brookes's he can see The Abion, and it is the only Liverpool
paper he can see there, blekogr,ttlhee:roonlley one admitted within
mostttlotaytoii.
individualex clusievoufn
iatlyl
as it must bse—haumiilitataitst
Dicky Sarnieal local amour propre a s an, inhabitant flatteringootifiyi:t hubere
Tyro of the North, CpacrrtthatbeaenofLottleonMer„dey.lSecon.l City of
thsreb,olgorveoaitiebry
your
Little Peddli
thatnot tahheeosteicorne.t
itof i
is hard
radii utio•esmayenwt
boaft theis
not, the fact is as aforesaid ; and it is .a
fact thatK bnoe:tr
ni
I'llotrit, whether it is or
tei nEy Empire,
s
fighting, as another game I,;rd of the s"Il? Ira"' sslecyockin.
never showed the white feather to po.Totieitp
.for ofinneKteiiwuesho,
would say.
mu chßtlii.tclewa 7sboßuutptehret
reported
-cecscsmofe
enmeshed
efisliilaclatii•nootpbeer.eopuonrted to bentmouoching the
g
More and more does the
ne
t edea plortfebses elstf of the
wiles of that weird head
that carried the brains of the father's cabinet, and morei and
more wrathful, in consequence, the sire, grows'
yl
literally
iryo process
overshadowso r other,tiilsatroisfi
abide that a scion of the house of Stanley Shoals
w can'tbe
do the threats of Tarnboff carry to the breast of
juvenilew avr ardb
ld in
,tien.aemve.r,
warp el by the I tritish head of lerael. Little terror, however,
eneg-erlyabyOlbiny;
presencene n
else in the hoes During no session of the last 10 1
has he
done so little, and yet during no three sessioes has he advanced
till
so much. You cannot tell why; nobodycen. He is, if po,si )le,
who,day, sg
more taciturn, more abstracted, more isolated, Clan ever. For-
merly he used to say nothing to anybody; now he looks at
nobody. Once upon a time. it vvas his custom of au zifter. loon to
fix his eyes intently on the tips of his boot toes, for three hours
at a stretch ; now he gazes point bla,k at vacancy ; and to
all appearance of that phantasmarorial visage of his, he has
no more concern with,. or consciousness of, what is goingon
around him in Westnenster than what is going on in Jerusa-
lem—probably a good deal less. How, when, where, or with
whom he contrives to arrange ihe order of business and the
mode of doing it, is as inscrutable to the general public, and,
apparently to every one of his party, as what lie intends to
do with " Tanered," whom he left in a state of chlorofermed
obfuscation at the end of the ninth volume of his Talmudical
reverie, nine st.ars ago. He seemingly takes no pains 'what-
ever to conceal his contempt for the noodles and bigots whom
he condescends to make use of ; and in the Abjuration Oath
debate, the otaer night, treated the Manners, Lennoxes,
Louvaines, and other young sprigs of the " old nobilitie"just
as the Duke used to dealwith the Londonderrys, Winchilseas
Rodeos, and tile rest, when they stood in his way—kick
them out of it. Moreover, ho does not speak often, and when
he does, he does not speak well, that is, well for him. •Yet, as
just said, he never stood so high in the house ; and be is
ad-
vancing at euch a rate, that it is almost questionable • if he
will vouchsafe to " go" when he shall be " sent for," unless
it be very speedily.
And if it really should come to that—if Coningsby should
pooh-pooh the Premiership, and leave poor Protestant ng-
laud without a Judaic director in the midst of its headless
benightedness, what a finale for the Sidonian biography !
Well, who knows ? His history hitherto has been as much of
a psychological romance as his own " Coutarini Fleming ;"
and why not so to the close ? Besides, see the turn things
are taking. Notwithstanding the abjuration debate afore-
said, here's no less it person than that prince of practical
philosophers, shrewd, hard-headed, mathematical-minded old
(for Colonel he will
Col. Thompson be called, though they
should make him Generalissimo), out in print to-day with
proofs that there are lawful heirs to the legitimate right-divine
kings of this country ; at least that there are people who be-
lieve in such heirs ; and he pertinently asks those who laugh
at the notion of a British Pretender to remember how they
laughed also at Boulogne, and all the rest of it; and how
they think of Cayenne, as they ruminate on Ham, or a
" Strasburg" pate, of a morning now. Supposing that the
notion of another dynasty should get abroad, and that our
candid friend, Austria, should cultivate it with her Concordat
machinery, Russia having, as is well known, a poisoned pole-
mical chalice ready to present to us and France, iu reference
to a Greek Church " cross" with Rome (whereof more here-
after); supposing this to take p'ace, as some of it will, let
us remember that there is a privy councillor, who is a citizen
of the world, as little troubled with scruples as was his poli-
tical idol, Bolingbroke, uneer simi'ar circumstances; and,
like him, infinitely the ablest man in the State, with ten times
his-opportunities. Captivating contemplation for maiden an-
nuitants thinking of their dividends iu 1860, But, ?nem—what

a capital hint for the Liverpool Financial Reformers. Let
Mr. Robertson Gladstone, instead of appealing to Prince Al-
bert and his wife to provide for their daughter, Miss Victoria
Adelaide Maria Louisa Guelph, as any other Mr. end Mrs
Brown, Jones, or Robinson would do, just hint at the idea of
there being a Master Charles Stuart, or a-Miss Mary Ditto,
in the wind. Why, that same 70,000/ a-year for the Prince
of Prussia, which has so disgusted your worthy presidential
financier, will be changed in a twinkling into shillings,• and
thence into farthings, and after that into nothing at all, which
it is to be hoped will satisfy your local analytical arithme-
ticians, if any can, though it is tolerably clear that nothing
will ; and, indeed, if it did there would Ate no-use in them.
Thompson tells us that there is something like a conspiracy to
suppress the evidence of the existence of this pretender, or
phantom of one ; and he points to the fact .that whereas an
article appeared in the Quarterly some years ago, explaining
all about it, there is no reference in the indint since published
to that explanation—a clear proof to the Colonel that the
chee to Croker's bugaboo has been burked by the publisher.
Croker, by the way, may, perhaps, clotted( old accounts on
that as well as other scores next week, in forthcoming Quar-
terly, wherein he is to scarify the satirist of Disraeliand him-
self [think of a "slashing article" by Rigby ag bast thelibeller
of his own lampooner !] Mr. Humdrum Hayward, who has
been making sucha noise in the papers oflate). abdut Monta- •
lembert atld the futttre 6f England.
Future of England, quotha ! Past of. England; -of Eng-
land passe, as the antidiluvian ex-Secietaty 'of th'e Admi-
ralty would say if he heard from the lipthof the irst Lord,
to-night, the 're,nendous tidings tha. the Dreadnought is to
be done away with. What the Dreadnought moored of
Greenwich, that delightfully dilapidated old three-decker,
the pride and glory of ,Blackwall whitebait eaters, -the only
floating thing the Thames has in the shape ,ef maritime
retPectability, or that give us inland cockneys a sniff otthe
saltwater to look at—this to be done awaymrltla 1; Impossible I
Fact, nevertheless ; for though aVona, isn't much of -a con-
juror, it is presumed he knows what he Walking about when
he says that ; and that's what he has said to-night acne
London Tavern. But don't be. alarmed. "Dreadnought"
is the word still. Although she is to disapPesr, she is-to be
replaced by the Camperdown, of 600 tons treater burden ;
so tie shall have a line-of-battle ship half at*•-again to look
'at, and theittarbeliityportionattrus*filifeblntife'aitpdAttrao
we are now in our acquaintance with such leviathans to ye deni-
:zens of the merely mercantile Mersey, saying nothing of our
possession of that unique monster of the deep, Scott Russel''s
stupendous stupidity. Such it is, though nobody here has
openly ventured to say so, but plenty will say it now that it
has been said in Liverpool. There's failure on the face of it,
monetary and mariee failure of every sort ; but the great
failure of all is the failure in having foreseen that it must be
a failure. Much of the capital sunk in her construction' will
be clogged with 30 per cent interest before she can be floated,
if floated she ever be. • When floated she can never be
docked, never be cleaned, in any part of the world except
the Isle of Dogs, London ; but to the dogs of a far dieant
part of the world she must go if anything happen her machi-
nery, as it tu cy readily be understood when it is known hat
the 30-ton block of metal forming the centre of her shaft has
taken perpetual relays of men sis menthe to hammer away
at, night and, day, with the forge nearly at white heat all the
while—a nice look-out in the case of a fracture or a flaw off
Borneo, or some equally convenient corner of the globe.
The whole thing has long hem the laughing-stock of many
judges, and the crying stock of more, not since the builder's
blow up, but for several months pia v'ously, ever since the
design of the thing really became tangible ; and the uniform
remarks of those who knew any hing of the behind-scene'
business was, " What could.you expect from Brunel but a
bore ?"--a pleasantry that invariably gives the hipps to
Hawes, and other fortunate proprietors of that lively pro-
perty, the Thames Tunnel, which will probably be in a condi-
tion to make the tollman a Christmas-110x of ninepenee half-
penny on the 26th of December. A D. 1999.
What has all this to do with Wood ? Why, not much to be
sure, only, as he himself would say, it came in quite promis-
cuous, and it wouldn't do to eschew it, though seemingly
cutting him. Sir Charles is as: all times the most grotesque-
looking personage in her Majesty's service, or her Majesty's
Opposition, as the case may be ; and that is not saying a
little, considering the collecti at of inlescriba de two-legged
-euriosities who face each other across the pair of Parliamen-
tary t tbles in the two houses. Of much the same attenuated,
wiry, dislocated anatomy ; as restless in his attitudes ; as
spasmodic, electric, galvanic, and voltaic in his gestures as
Brougham himself, his visage is equally mobile as that of old
Harry ; but, unlike thebusy B.'s, it has .ins, and only one ex-
pression, namely; overpowo' ing aston,shmeut that he, Wood,
should be Secret.,iy of the Treasury, Chancellor of
the Exchequer, President of the India Boa,d, First Lord
of the Admiralty, or what not, as the case may be.
Now certainly, under the circumstances, that is a most
natural expression ; and it doss great credit to Sir Charles'
accurate appreciation of him-elf and the times he lives in.
It is a sentiment which the public fully reciprocate, only
they .can't bo always indulging in and dwelling upon it, as
he, moth to the repute o his modes'y and industry, seems to
be everlastingly doing. Well, if that be the expre-sion of
Wood's face at ord!nary times, what must it be, what must it
not be, on such au extraordiaary occasion as to-night ? Let
any man w, o has ever seen Wood making a speech in his
ordinary attire, frisking and skippin • about, bending forward
within half a let of his feet, one moment, and throwing his
head beck within half a yard of his heels, the next!—now
haw-hawin; like a to-key-cock, and then neighing like a filly
at his own jolies, only a filly doesn't joke, though what else
should make a h• roe laugh it is hard to say :—let any one who
only knows Wo d in this his usual aspect fancy the effect of
a white cravat, of cast iron stiffness, and a corresponding
shirt-toll it rght up to the sirs ; and then making, not one,
but 16 speeches at the head of a public dinner table. Ah,
that was a spectacle to be forgotten only with life by the
lucky beholrlei. To-day, at the Sibthorp sale, a bea itiful
woman sold 'or 161. Don't be shocked—to was only-a painted
female, and not at all a Jezebel. though your respect for the
tasty rhetoric of Canon M'Neile will put that modest
metaphor in your head, as a matter of course. The painting
was by HogArth ; but if, instead of a beautiful woman, it had
been Wood, in the figure he cut to-night, such a production
by such an artist would have brought 1,0001., and been cheap
at the money. However, as some learned author has some-
where profoundly rem.irkel, appearances are often deceitful ;
and, as another equally erudite philosopher has also sagaciously
observed, we slyshield not a! waysjudge by appearances. Despite
his funere ilitY, or eomica, funereality, if tliere be such
a phrase, Sir Charles really made a very good sort of chair-
mta He gallopped through the toasts as he used to do
through the es' irnates in his higgh dy-pipledy budgets, and
before you w -11 knew what it was he was going to propose,
'he was c dling upon you to ,Irink it with three the rs, and
was hip-hip-hurrahing himself at such a rate that nearly took
the breath out of Toastmaster Higgs with amazement.
If he didn't get on in this fashion he would never have got
throegh to-night's business At all ; for, with the exception of
'that antique bla ter arid Sal tmaa line devourer of combustibles
Admiral Bowles, all the duty • fsPouting devolved upon him,
there being no great guns present to go off, as there had been
'a late Cabinet meeting in the afternoon ; and, besides, Satur-
day is always a bad night, those in town contrive to get out
of it, or at least to keep out of the Corn hill end of it. Like
a genuine Whi; as he is, brother-in-law of two Greys, uncle
of three Russells, and cousin to nineteen Elliots, lie took the
highly constitutional and very Hampden-in-the-field-aucl-
Sydney-on-the-scaffold privilege of doctoring the toast list,
that is, strik•ng out certain toasts. Among them was, " The
Foreign Sovereigns Contrib'ttiug to this Charity." Now, to
have given this, would have necessitated a flourish in praise
of him whom Sir Charles. at Halifax, with more truth than
courtesy, had coiled Caligula, or some complimentary c assic
something or other of the kind, at the time when, as Victor
Hugo says, as he alone can say—" Sehinderaunes became
Cesar :" the thrice-sworn defender of the Republic, filched
the purple, with felon hand, incarnadined in the blood of
Murdered citizens. Still, although his Imperial Majesty sent
Pof., Si'. el contrived to have a sly hit or two at hint, de-
claring with highly ita'icised emphasis that we could carry on
the war for ever, with annually increasing eclat ; that our fleet
is, beyond all comparison, the greatest the world ever saw, as
the world might soon see by going, to Spithead one of these
fine days ; that our army are wallowing in luxuries, equally
full of food and fight, knowing no fear but the fear that they
should have no op ortunity of threshing somebody or other,
and not very particular who it might be ; and that if it
weren't for consideration -towards others—(hem !)—we should
have gone ou till we had grilled the last tallow-candle eater,
or frog•cater either, for the matter of -that, on the North
Pole or equinoctial line, we shouldn't much mind which ;
both, if our friendly enemy, or inimical friend, preferred it,
herefore, shouted Wood, (and no non-sequitur was it either,)
I give you " The woolen walls of Old England !" Rule
Britannia, of course, was bellowed by the band, (Coldstreams
—magnificent,) all the company joining chorus, Sir Charles
pitching the key—very strong—and a -timulating rattle of
subscriptions, to the tune of nearly 900/., rolling rejoicingly
in, including ten guineas from M'Gregor Laid, the only do
nation with a Liverpool name to the tail of it. There is only
room to note one professional feature of the entertainment,
namely, the number of sentimental ditties,all briny of course,
warbled through the night ; " Lovely Nan," " Peg of Wap-
ping," "My Kate and bark," and a multitude of marine.
melodies, too tedious to mention, your Correspondent leaving
Mr. George—a gentleman with a sort of alto bassoon voice—
shrieking " Sally in our alley" like a delirious mermaid with
the tooth-aeo
P.S. Now that you have read all this circumstantial de-
scription of the affair, perhaps it is as well to tell you the name
of it, namely—the Seaman's Hospital Anniversary.