The Sun.
London, England, 1856-04-23 00:00:00

ROYAL THEATRE ADELPHI.
Proprietor and Maoager, Mr. B. Webster.
Directress, Madame Celeste.
THIS EVENING,
TEE GREEN BUSHES.
To conclude with
URGENT PRIVATE AFFAIRS.

ASTLEY'S ROYAL AMPHITHEATRE.
Lessee and Manager, Mr. Win. Cooke.
THIS EVENING,
Lord Byron's MAZEPFA and the WILD HORSE.
♦fter which, the skilful and varied SCENES in the CIRCLE, witl
Other Entertainments.
To conclude with ENGL iND'S HARVEST HOME and GRAND
NATIONAL STEEPLECHASE.
Box-office open from Eleven till Four. Stage Manager, Mr. W.
West. Equestrian Director, Mr. W. Cooke, Jan.

EMMA STANLEY'S "SEVEN AGES OF WOMAN."
Evening performances as asual, on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays
and Flidays, at 8 o'clock.
Admission—Back Seats, Is. ; Centre Seats, 25.; Stalls, 3s.
SAINT MARTIN'S HALL, Long-acre.

HIGH. WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
T JIB DAY—Morn. 32 min. aft. 3—Evening 48 min. aft.
T 1-YoßP.ow—Morn. 3 min. aft. 4—Evening 20 min. aft. 4

THE WEATHER—SUN OFFICE, APRIL 23.
THERMOMETER, IN THR SHADE.
56 -highest since noon yesterday.
41 -lowest this morning and during the night.
57 -this day at noon.

BA.RO METER, 29'97.
WIND, E. to S.E.—Light, with rather dull weather.

:11,4 MI
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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23, 1856.

OUR GLORY AND OUR SHAME ! ! !

A Charivari of a wholly unexampled character
has this day been given at Spithead to the Britisl
Sovereign. The most magnificent fleet that eve,
floated on salt-water—having in these few hour
been ostentatiously passed in review by Queer.
VioTonte—ha3 welcomed her MAJESTY with ac
clamations. Under let us ask this just it
a whisper—under what circumstances ? At th
close of a two years' war from which this un
paralleled Navy has emerged without the ere&
of one solitary achierement commensurate it
any way either with the vastness of its resources.
or with the splendour of its historic reputa-
tion ! Hard truths, no doubt—but truths which
we conceive should be kept at this moment in
very particular remembrance.
The American oyster, which was so large that
it took seven men to swallow it whole—was ab-
solutely nothing to the Russian sea fortification
as treated during the reccut contest by the Roya
Navy of England. Why, these maritime defence-
of the Muscovite empire hive proved so formi
dable that it has actually taken we don't at thi-
instant recollect exactly how many screw steam
men-of-war (aided at the eleventh hour and
three-quarters by a shoal of gun-buts and mor-
tar-vessels) NOT to take them !
The exceedingly memorable King of FRANCE
who with forty thousand men marched up
the hill and then , marched down again
—was literally as nothing to these great, big,
burly, blustering war-ships of Britannia ! Going
swaggering about the Baltic and about the Euxine,
doing nothing, and then coming home again to'
kick up a shine at the Nab, as if (according to
Yankee phraseology) they had been- actually
whopping all creation.
We call this, with reason, a Charivari—this
boisterous reception of her MAJESTY oft Spit-
head, upon the forenoon of this 231 of April
—[it ought by rights to have been the ist].----by
the roaring sea-lions of Great Britain. A Charivari,
and nothing better than a Charivari, we take this
noisy demonstration to be—following up as it does
with such wholly disproportionate enthusiasm the
miserable " do-nothing" tactics of the successors
of NELSON, HOWE, JERVIS, EVAIOUTII, DIISCAN,
and COLLINGWOOD. What ! all this grand to-do,
a'l this enormous parade, all this gigantic display,
all this stupendous demonstration—yards man-
ned, banners streaming, royal salutes fired, and
thousands of gallant jack-tars rasping their throats
hoarse with shouts to make the welkin echo—all
this, forsooth, as a sequel to two of the most
vapid maritime campaigns upon record ? Never
was there such an egregious non sequitur! Why,
the very grandeur of the naval display witnessed
upon this most memorable occasion near Ports-
month, has served-to demonstrate. only the more
glaringly the positively -ludicrous disproportion
of our means for gaining victories, and of
our nullity as recent winners of any great
maritime achievements. The reflection is rather
painful, we cannot but think, which has been
forced upon us by this unequalled naval demon-
stration. What—and with these weapons at our
direction ; with these ships of war, the like of
which were never dreamt of in the days of Trafal-
gar or Camperdown, nay even, for that matter, in
the more recent times of Algiers and Navarino ;
with these matchless screw steamers, independent
of wind and tide, and carrying each seventy,
eighty, ninety, a hundred, a hundred and thirty
guns (as the case might bs) of enormous calibre,
with these wonderful fleets, with these miraculous
armaments—England has all this while done
actually NOTHINIS I With Russia alone, single- I
banded, opposed to her ! With France
by sea and by land abetting her, and abetting her
be it said, with all the ardour, inseparable from
the mere novelty, of their intimate and chivalric •
alliance ! Nothing, positively, actually, abso-
lutely nothing done with all those mammoth ships-•
of-war in the way of any one distinct triumph
over the foe—and then by way of appropriately
celebrating the fact of this same disgraoeful..
" nothing," for us to have all this hubbub of re-
joicingfor Nothing, about Nothing, in commemo-
ration of Nothing—.a gala occasion which we
have been compelled (for want of an apt English
phrase for it) to designate as nothing more nor
less than a Charivari to the British Sovereign !
Bomarsund, in the Baltic, and diertch, in
the Euzine—lo ! and behold the two pop-gun