The Sun.
London, England, 1856-05-15 00:00:00

PREPARATION FOR THE'

Perhaps this latter fact is the most important
of all to bear in mind just now. Count ORLOFF
has been blandly promising anything and every-
thing. Just a little resistance to be sure, and
even that might have been easily overcome about
.Nicolaieff and the Circassian ports ; some resist-
Luce was requisite lest the " conciliation and
frankness" of Russia might have been too trans-
parently mere verbal and parchment conciliation ;
but in these Prussian Treaties, as in a hundred
others, we have the clear warning what
we are to expect. There probably never was a
nation, savage or civilised, so utterly destitute of
the sense of honour, so coldly unconcerned about
treaties or engagements as Russia. Her whole
history since she became a conquering—we cannot
iay a civilised, power—has been •f a piece in this
respect. Turks, Poles, Tartars, Persians—every
nation whom she has wronged, has shown some,
or even great regard to their word or bond.
Russia has shown none. We must conclude now,
is we did the whole War through, that a peace is
worthless which does not rest on the disabling of
Russia for further aggression. The power which
Jould unblushingly cancel four Commercial Treaties
even with Prussia, her accomplice in the Polish
robbery, and whose KING was the kinsman of her
CZAR—such a power will certainly throw the
Treaty of Paris in the fire as soon as it serves her
purpose.

But turning again to Prussia—is it to this
pitiable, helpless, nondescript power that we are
to be united by a royal marriage, and pay some
70,000/. a-year for the privilege ? A power which
France and Russia, whenever they like to unite,
can disintegrate by their opposite pressure in a
single year. A power botched together of frag-
ments with no cohesion but that of a common
censorship of the Press, a common surveillance,
and a common monarch with a standing army.
A. power which begs leave to be of every great
power around her. We detest the Royal Mar-
riage Act, and if the two young people really wish
to marry by all means let them ; but if our
Royal marriages are to be matters, as they are but
too likely to be, of political arrangement, there is
nothing to recommend Prussia. To a petty Ger-
man State it is, after all, no great degradation to
yield to conspicuously greater force, but for a
kingdom of the magnitude of Prussia to submit
to such treatment as we have described is a humi-
liation which places her in the lowest rank of
nations,

I A Bull led to the Sacrifice ! We all know per-
fectly well what that meant in the old classic days.
We know that it meant a grand, public, national,
politico-religious procession, with the victim con-
ducted in state to its doom by a chain of flowers,
fragrant and beautiful. Its hooves lacquered over
with gilding—its horns tipped with the same—
its head festooned with blossoms woven into gar-
' lands and coronals—its carcase "larded o'er with
sweet flowers"—its tail, for aught we know,
tailed off yet more lengthily at the tip of it, with
a trailing train of clustering honours like the
tail of the schoolboy's kite, knots of cowslips and
pansies, bunches of roses and buttercups, posies
of violets and lilies, with, may be, an appropriate
tAssle at the end of all, in the shape of a flower-
ing clump of rue. These odorous glories and
adornments closing, of course, with the inevitable
altar, the unavoidable knife, the pitiless high-
priest, the inexorable spectators, the blood and
the Munn of the crowning immolation.

Well—preciselyafter die old mythologic fashion
—another BULL, whose Christian name is JOUN,
may be announced as nowadays pretty much in
the same plight. A 13tia,r, formally led to the
sacrifice, under an aspect, however, a vast deal
more ridiculous. Thursday, the 29th instant, is
the day definitively fixed for the national festivi-
ties. Already, however, the sacrifice in the pre-
sent instance has been accomplished for the most
part beforehand. Already the " knife" has been
brandished to some effect in a two years' war to
it ! Already the blood has been spilt abun-
dantly, both actually and figuratively, with the
connivance on the one hand of the Secretary for
War, and on the other of the Chancellor of
the Exchequer. Thursday, the 29th, is simply
fixed as the day for a crowning spectacle of COMP.
ruemoration. JUAN BULL—as he has been so long
and so meekly—is then once more to be led forth
publicly by the nose "in the presence of Europe,"
as the tailors of Tooley-street might say, there to
be revealed to anybody's gaze who lists to look
upon a sight so verylamentable, under an aspect the
most supremely pitiable and ridiculous. Thinned
rather—poor fellow, after nourishing himself
for the last two or three years as he best could
upon food at war prices ! His purse lightened of
about 120,000,0001. over and above his ordina-
rily enormous expenditure ! His breeches pockets
for the time being fairly rifled, and afterwards
turned coolly inside out ! His coat of honest
broadcloth, showing its parti-coloured lining,
from having somehow or other been similarly
reversed ! His hat—fornvrly sleek as Friend
STURGE'S, and broad-brimmed as his namesake
BRIGHT'S-lamentably touzled in the late scuffle
yonder in the Crimea : in other words, what is
called—"shocking bad !" A melancholy spec-
tacle altogether—this modern version of "A BULL
led to the sacrifice !" Festooned, not as in the
Pagan times, however, with flowers and ever•

greens—appropriate though the latter would
have been beyond all question-but hung about,
poor knave, with brown paper squibs and crackers
plump with explosive bowels of gunpowder ! A
sight for the Gods—Yes, for the threepenny Gods
of the Wictoria Gallery ! For no more reputable
spectators surely—unless, inde9d, with the bold-
est satiric effrontery, Her MAJESTY'S Minis-
ters point the moral of the War, and adorn
the tale of the Peace, by a grand tableau repre-
sentation (as we have here described it) of "A
Bull Led to the Sacrifice," in Green Park, in
Hyde Park, in Dublin, in Edinburgh, in each case
in the shape of a big Vauxhall transparency.
Then, but not otherwise, there may be some grain
of sense in these preposterous fireworks, with their

accompanying charivari of flags, guns, bell-ring.
ings, and illuminations.

The Chancellor of the ExchequAr and Lady Theresa
Lewis entertained, at dinner, at their residence, Kent
House, Knightsbridge, last evening, the Duke and
Duchess of Argyll, the Countess Dowager of Morley,
Viscount and Viscountess Goderich, Viscount Valletort,
Lady' Harry Vane, Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons,
the Right. Hon. Robert Vernon Smith, M.P. and Mrs.
Smith, Mr. Panizzi, and the Right lion. T. B. Macaulay.
Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent visited the
Duchess of Gloucester, yesterday, at Gloucester House.
The Marquis of Dalhousie arrived at Claridge's Hotel,
yesterday afternoon, from Portsmouth, where his lord-
ship had landed on the previous day. The noble mar-
quis was accompanied by his daughter the Lady Susan
Ramsay.
The Marquis and Marchioness of Townshend enter,
taiued the Earl and C iunte-ss Spencer, and a select circle,
at dinner, at their mansion, in Grosvenor-squaro.
Mrs. Manners Sutton's ball is fixed for Monday,
June 2.

Mr. and MCP. S. M. Doulderson have left Edwards'
Hotel, for Lrichtf...z. Nthora h 33 also left for the
iaxo _

ENTOMBMENT.

BY LEONARDO DA VINCI•

A remarkable picture is now "on view " at
No. 31, Regent-street, Waterloo-place, a picture
publicly exhibited in London twenty years ago as
a " Descent from the Cross, or Preparation for the
Entombment, painted by Leonardo da Vinci,"
and then as now, in 1835 as in 1856, very gene-
rally admitted by most of the competent judges of
art in our metropolis to be a veritable master-
piece from the hand of the great Florentine. It
was accepted, moreover, as a genuine Leonardo a
score of years ago solely upon the strength of
its artistic merits. Excellences of so very re-
markable a character, in truth, that those con-
noisseurs who were most familiar with the style
of the earliest of the greet masters among the
Italian painters (the leader of the Dii Majores o
the Atelier in the Roman Peninsula) at once
pronounced it to be an emanation from the
genius of Leonardo, and an emanation from the
genius of no other than, Leonardo. The
reasons for this very prevalent and very
positive opinion in 1835, remaining of course
twenty-one years afterwards, in this year of grace
1856, precisely the same, may be at once very
readily explained. To afford which explanation
the most effectually and perspicuously, it is re-
quisite merely to enumerate a few among the chief
peculiarities of this extraordinary composition.
Wherefore let it be promised at once that the
painting appears to have been produced originally
upon the oak pannelling of a building—probably
as an altar-piece—the picture having been after-
wards cut out of the wall and framed as an ordi-
nary easle-picture. Restricted, doubtless, in his
design by the narrow dimensions of the original
pannelling, the artist nevertheless contrived to
obviate the diffiqulties inseparable from that very
restriction in regard to space, by grouping the six
figures introduced into his composition with a
consummate ability, of itself sufficiently indicative
of the master-hand ! Six figures they are, as we
have said, in number—six figures, about half the
size of life, the Pieta, or dead Christ, being, as a
matter •f course, the central form about which are
clustered the Blessed Virgin, the Beloved Disciple,
Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea, and the ir-
resolute but ardent Nicodemus. Clustered, these
five attendant figures are, too, so reverently, so
sorrowfully, so characteristically about the inani-
mate shape of the Redeemer ! Joseph of Arima-
thea gazing upon the dead body of his crucified
Lord with a look of awe, visible in every line of
that noble and benevolent countenance, which
even through the look of awe seems to be smiling
with a serene trust and implicit confidence in the
glorious triumph of the inevitable Resurrection !
The Blessed Virgin with her holy visage sod-
dened as it were with a grief, supreme, unutter-
able, and inconsolable. The beloved St. John
leaning his head towards her's in tenderest sym-
pathy, mingling together the tears of those who
were thenceforth to be, relatively each to each,
as mother and as son, according to the Saviour's
lovely and dying admonition. The Magdalene
weeping with the others, bat weeping with them,
it almost seems, partly in bitterest woe, and
partly in agonised indignation. And Nicode-
mus kneeling in sorrow and humility among
his companions upon Golgotha, bearing up
the feet of the Redeemer reverently in
his arms, while the Sacred Head is supported in
those of Joseph of Arimathea. By a wonderful
stroke of the artist's sense of the sanctity of the
corpse of the Incarnate God, not one of the hands
of the attendant mourners and worshippers, not
even those of the two who are actually sustaining,
in their embrace the lifeless body of Jesus, touch-
ing it ! The sanctified cerements, the " linen
cloths" mentioned in holy writ, interposing ex-
quisitely between the body of the Lord and the
hands of such faithful Disciples as Joseph and
Nicodemus ! Besides these tokens of the genius
of Leonardo—there were others, recognised easily
enough in 1835—tokens visible now in 1856, at
31, Regent-street, where the painting is again
happily "on view"--tokens unmistakeably those
of a great master, and to such as are the best ac•
quainted with his distinguishing characteristics
those of no other great master than the immortal
Florentine. The pathos in the face of the Virgin
Mother, the passion in that of Mary Magdalene,
the amenity in that of Joseph of Arimathea, the
grief in that of St. John, the fervour in that of
Nicodemus, are all surpassed, we might almost say
immeasurably, by the awful and divine majesty
expressed in the Pieta, shadowing forth so terribly
and wondrously the vastness of the ineffable sacri-
fice. From the lance wound in the side scarcely
more than a drop or two of blood and lymph have
oozed—the ichor of the expiring Divinity ! From
the nail-holes in the sacred hands of the Redeemer,
the blood almost seems unaccountably to have
trickled up to the elbow—but you remember on
the instant that those sacred hands have been
raised during the crucifixion, and that the blood
has there coagulated. In the form of the " Man
of Sorrows"—what expressive attenuation ! In the
face—what infinite and Divine resignation! Leo-
nardo, and no other than Leonardo, at so early a
date as 1506, could by possibility, we fee], have
produced a picture such as this of the " Prepara-
tion for the Entombment." Although two cen-
turies had then passed away since the date when
Giovanni Cimabue had revived the art of paint-
ing ; although Cimabue had been succeeded
by a pupil no less gifted than Giotto ;
although the career of Masaccio had been
completed a hundred years after that
of Giotto had reached the period of its consum-
mation ; although Domenico Ghillandaio and
Andrea Verocchio, Filippo Lippi and Pietro
Peruginn, Francesco Francia, and Luca Signe-
relli had then followed each other in rather more
rapid succession—the art of painting had not in
1506 so far developed under the hands of its
votaries, as to enable any other than Leonardo
da Vinci to produce a work combining within
itself so many rare excellences, excellences of
perspective, grouping, design, anatomy, colour,
expression, pathos, grace, drawing, drapery, &c.,
discernible in this very remarkable picture of the
" Preparation for the Entombment." And this
date-1506—brings us at once to the new, and,
as it appears to us, conclusive testimony that the
painting is from the hand of Leonardo da Vinci,
with which, twenty-one years after its exhibition
in London in 1835, the picture is again submit.
ted to the examination of the lovers of art in our
metropolis. Since the occasion when it was
formerly "on view," it has (very recently) been
discovered, curious to relate, that the picture
bears upon itself the date (" 1506") of
its production, and the initials (" L.D.V.")
of the master hand that produced it—the master
hand of Leonardo da Vinci. Initials and date
have both been detected, minutely but distinctly
defined, upon the sword-nut of Joseph of Arima-
thea—while the artist's well-known monogram is
discernible upon a precious stone set in the sword-
hilt. Probably the cause why these signs manual
have not been discovered earlier is the circum-
stance that the lines of the initials of the date
and of the monogram, constitute actually some of
the high lights both in the sword-nut and in the
precious• stone, a circumstance accounting readily
enough for their having been hitherto overlooked.
It is especially observable, moreover, that in each
of these newly-discovered evidences the initials,
the date, the monogram, are written inversely
from right to left, according to the invariable wont
of Leonardo, who never wrote otherwise than
after the fashion of the Persian caligraphers.
Besides all which—as a sort of crowning or sup-
plementary testimony illustrative of one portion of
the foregoing, explanatory, that is to say, of the
date " 1506"—it has also recently been disco-
vered (strange to tell) that the Portrait of the
Artist himself, Leonardo, is discoverable in Nico-
demus, that that of King Louis XII. of France
is traceable in Joseph of Arimathea, and
that of his Queen, Anne of Brittany, in Mary
Magdalene ! Illustrative facts perfectly re-
conoileable with the date and with =item-

porary incidents in his career recorded by
the biographers of Leonardo. In 1506 the great
Florentine was in the fiftY4ourth year of his age,
in the karma of hie /012- OW is the ripmes6 of

Yesterday the first sailing-match for the season name
off under the patronage of the Royal Thames Yacht
Club. The morning opened with cloud and mist and
gave promise of anything but an agreeable day. This,
no doubt, operated as a check upon the less seasoned
admirers of this truly national sport, and was the cause
why the present race was not so numerously attended
as on former occasions. The Prince of Wales, steam-
boat, belonging to the General Navigation Company,
which had been provided for the stewards, the mem-
bers of the club, and visitors, was, however, as full
as it could conveniently hold, and the river boat
Greed bad also its ample complement of amateurs. When
the steam-boats had reached Erith, which was the
starting point, the weather cleared, and as propitious
a yachting day as could swell be wished for en-
abled the visitors to enjoy all the excitement of the
" run." The club offered two prizes on the present occa-
sion, °le of 100 sovs, for yachts exceeding 35 tons, and
one of 70 sous. far yachts exceeding 20 tons and not ex-
ceeding 35. Of the first class were to have run the
Tons. Port. Owner's Name.
Cyclone ......... 13...8ri5t01...W. J. Patterson, jun., Esq.
Amazon ....... ..46...L0nd0n A. J. Young, Esq.
Extravaganza...4B...Poole ...Sir Percy F. Shelley, Bart.
Of tee second class, the
Thought ......... 28...L0nd0n George Coope, Esq.
Secret ............ 30...Plymouthflenry J. Waring, Esq.
Phantom... ..... 28...L0nd0n Samuel Lane, Esq.
with the usual half-minute time per ton for difference of
tonnage.
The Cyclone and the Phantom, however, were not
placed, both yachts having unfortunately sustained da-
mage coming up the river. The other four boats started
from Erith about 21 minutes to 12 o'clock in the follow-
ing order :—Secret, Extravaganzas, Amazon, and Thought.
The Amazon, however, soon took the lead, and rounded
the Nore light-ship at 2 minutes past 2, followed by
the Extravangza, at 7 minutes past 2 ; the Secret at 71
minutes past 2 ; and the Thought at 7i minutes past 2.
It was apparent by this time that the Amazon would
be facile prineeps, ao _that the real excitement centred
in the contest between the two boats of the. second class
—the Secret and Thought. The former steadily held
her own till the boats reached the Lower Rope
point, when the tacking manceuvres commenced, and
it seemed that with every tack the Thought gained
a little on her adversary. At all events she
emerged into the Reach below Gravesend, not only
ahead of the Secret, but also of the Extravaganza.
The vessels turned the winning point in the following
order :—Amazon, 18 minutes to 6 ; Thought, ]2 minutes
to 6 ; Extravaganza, 7 minutes to 6 ; and the Secret 5
minutes to 6. The distance run was between 60 and
70 miles, and was performed in nearly six hours by
the Amazon. The weather was extremely favourable,
there being a smart breeze all the day, S.W. by W.
The two successful yachts.came alongside the Prince of
Wales, amidst the cheers of those on board, to receive
the prizes, which consisted of two handsomely designed
silver pieces from the atelier of Messrs. Garrard and
Co., Haymarket. The extravaganza is a new boat, and
a good deal of speculative interest attached to her sail
ing powers.

In the absence of the commodore of the club, Mr.
Greene performed the agreeable ceremony of distribut•
ing the prizes, accompanied with the usual libation of
champagne and complimentary approval of the exertions
of the crews. The visitors raached L .ndon-bridge at
eight o'clock; extremely well pleased with their excur-
sion. The band of the Royal Horse Guards Blue were
on hoard, and contributed very much to the enjoyment
of the day.

THE ALLEGED POISONING AT Asurorr —The adjourned
inquest on Emma Scott, of Ashton, supposed to have
been poisoned by a neighbour named Jane Newton
(in custody on suspicion), was held on Tuesday after-
noon. Mr. Stone, analytical chemist at Manchester,
said that he had examined the intestines of deceased,
and discovered the presence of arsenic in various por-
tions of tkem. The daughter of deceased showed that
her mother was in company with the prisoner on the
Saturday night before her death, and came home very
sick, saying, "Oh, dear me, Jane Newton has given
me a (savoury) duck and_ a muffin, and they have made
me so sick." She continued sick until the Monday fol-
lowing, when she died, -This was the effect of all the
evidence, no poison hating been traced to the prisoner,
for motive for the rourderhavig bocce shown, and tho
Cali, was Author adinnat*