The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-08 00:00:00

41E2 ROPOLITAN G OgslP—Thursday.

Mr. Gladstone has, on the whole, accom hed his fir( at
task of Bishop making very well. His appeintmentse'have
been commended by the Opposition no less than by the Minis-
terial journals. Of course they do not suit the extreme
men, whose praise is censure, and whose censure praise."
But moderate men of all schools will be well pleased. As
I stated last week, in contradiction to sundry rumours,
Bishop Wilberforce goes to Winchester, and, in all proba-
bility, Dr. Miller to Carlisle. During the present week it
has been announced that Lord Arthur Hervey will go to
Bath and Wells, Prebendary Mackarness to Oxford, and
Dr. Temple to Exeter. I cannot help thinking that in
selecting Mr. Mackarness for Oxford and Dr. Temple
for Exeter, there has been rather a placing of the
round man in the square hole, and the square man
in the round hole. Mr. Mackarness has passed most
of his post-academical life in the country, and has
been little connected with Oxford, nor while he was at the
University did be have a career much above the average.
Dr. Temple, on the other hand, has been a prominent man,
as a writer, as a preacher, as an educational reformer, and
above all as the head of a famous school. His proper place
would have been at Oxford, Prebendary Mackarness's at
Exeter, especially as in the latter diocese there is scarcely
any Broad Church element, and the few men of that school
are looked upon with great dislike by both the other
schools. Dr. Temple certainly has a difficult task before
him in healing the breach which now exists in the Western
diocese, and it will not be rendered easier by
the fact that he will have to work with men
of such narrow views, and violent enunciation of them as
Dean Boyd and Archdeacon Phillpotts. Nor will Dr.
Miller have a much easier task at Carlisle, where, though
he will find in Dean Close some points of agreement on
theological matters, he, an advanced Liberal, and a sup-
porter of disestablishment in Ireland, will have to work
with one who has declared disestablishment a crime and a
sin. On the other hand, Dean Liddell is not likely to
give Mr. Mackarness any trouble, for they both are
supporters of Mr. Gladstone. The Dean of Wells (Dr.
Johnson) is not likely to trouble anyone, for he is one of
those dignitaries who pursue the even tenor of their
way so quietly that outside the diocese it would be diffi-
cult to ascertain their names.
Dr. Temple, it will be remembered, two months ago re-
fused the deanery of Durham, on the ground that he had
a great work to accomplish at Rugby. Some persons
will say that he has been induced by the extra £2,000
a year to give up that work. Yet it may be
well imagined that he was influenced by much higher
considerations. A deanery is a somewhat otiose dignity,
and Dr. Temple may have felt that he was too young, and
had too much work in him, to subside into that. Educa-
tion has always been his strong point. He was for-
merly one of her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools. It was
he who, together with Mr. Acland, M.P., for North Devon,
the present Earl Fortescue, and Sir John Coleridge, the
father-in-law of the new Bishop of Oxford, did more than any
other person to originate the movement for improved
middle-class education which is now going on, and especially
the university local examinations. He was too one of the
Royal Commissioners who inquired into endowed schools,
and whose report of twenty volumes is the finest blue-
book ever published. Dr. Lake was another of the Com-
missioners, and he received the deanery which Dr. Temple
declined. Dr. Temple has accepted the bishopric prompted,
we may well believe, by the idea that in the House
Lords he will be able to give valuable assistance
to the Government when, next session, they bring in their

Education Bill.
While Mr. Gladstone has got through his episcopal
appointments, he has still to fill up a large number of
ecclesiastical vacancies caused by those appointments. The
rectory of Honiton, worth £BOO a year, with a Prebendal
stall at Exeter, fell vacant by the elevation of Mr. Mackarness,
and although the first is usually in the gift of the Earl of
Devon, it falls to the Crown on this occasion in consequence of
the vacancy occurring through a Crown appointment.
Lord Arthur Hervey's promotion renders vacant the
living of Ickworth, worth £BlO a year. The appointment
to the Archdeaconry of Sudbury will, however, remain
with the Bishop of Norwich. Should Canon Miller go to
Carlisle there will be the living of Greenwich,worth £l,OlB
to give away. The Canonry of Worcester is only an honorary
one, and will, I believe, revert to the Cathedral chapter.
The Headmastership of Rugby, which will be vacant by
Dr. Temple's election to the episcopate, will be conferred
by the Trustees of the School. It is early yet to say who
will be chosen • but if Mr. Farrar, the second master at
Harrow, should come forward there could hardly be a
better man for the post. The universities have fared
very unequally in the present distribution of good
things. Mr. Kingsley, who succeeded to Dr. Moberly's
canonry at Chester, is a Cambridge man, and of course his
successor in the Regius Professorship of History at Cam-
bridge, Mr. Seeley, of " Ecce Homo fame, belongs to the
same university. So, too, does the new Bishop of Bath
and Wells. But Dean Lake, Dr. Temple, Prebendary
Mackarness, Dr. Miller, and, of course, the Bishop of
Oxford are all Oxonians. The ages of the new prelates are
as follows :—Dr. Moberly, 66 Bishop Wilberforce, 63 ; Mr.
Mackarness, about 48 ; Dr.'Temple, 48; Dr. Miller, 55 ;
Lord Arthur Hervey, 61; giving an average of 57, which is
five years too high.
As there is no present prospect of an underground com-
munication between England and France, a proposal has
been made by Messrs. Waring Brothers, contractors,
who, it is understood, are supported by some influential
firms, to construct a port of refuge near Cape Grisnez,
which is about ten miles north of Boulogne. The French
Government has been asked for a concession, and the pro-
jectors offer to find the whole of the money which may be
required. At the particular spot there are twenty-six
feet of water in all states of the tide, so that
large vessels would be able to enter at any
time. The distance from Dover is twenty-two miles,and, ,
as steamers of the class that run between Holyhead and
Kingston would be employed, the passage could be made in
little more than an hour. Passengers would, therefore,
have the advantage of the shortest journey by the fastest
and most comfortable boats, with a certainty of being able
to enter the port when they reached it. To a seasick
person nothing is more trying than to find, after crossing
the Channel, that the steamer has to remain
outside the harbour for an hour or two until
the tide serves. A convention a-,,pointed by the
French Government will meet at Arras on the 14th
inst. to consider the phn. A very strong opposition is
threatened by the inhabitants of Boulogne and Calais, who
foresee that such a scheme, if carried out, would
completely divert the traffic from those places.
They represent that it is possible so to improve
the two harbours as to give sufficient depth of
water at any time. It remains to be seen whether the
Government will be tempted by the offer to improve the
communication, with the additional advantage of a new port
of refuge, at no cost to themselves, or whther the rival
interest of Calais and Boulogne will prevail. At all events
it is to be hoped that some means will speedily be found
for rendering the passage from shore to shore less unpleasant
than it is now.
Mr. Rassam, of Abyssinian fame, is returning to Aden,
i
where he hold a post in the
tone As
before he
undertook to liberate the captves. He leaves England,
greatly complaining of Lord Napier. He declares his lord-
ship did not treat Theodore fairly. When the cows were
accepted, Theodore thought that all was right, and that
there was nothing more to do than to make terms, having
been assured to that effect by Lieutenant Prideaux. It
appears that Lieutenant Prideaux did not dare tell Theo-
dore that the English general demanded the surrender of
Magdala, for he feared that the angry tyrant would be enraged
and put his informant to death. Hence Theodore did not
know Napier's terms, and Napier supposed that they had been
rejected. Indirectly, therefore, as well as directly, Theo-
dore was his own executioner. But for his atrocious tem-
per, ho might have been informed of the British con-
ditions, might have accepted them, and might be living
now.
The literary world is beginning to revive, and publishers
are now venturing to issue books which they have been
holding back for months in the hope of better times. It
is hardly, however, owing to this cause that the delay has
taken place in the publication of Mr. Tennyson's new
poem, whose subject—The Quest of the Holy Graal—was
first announced in this correspondence. Whatever
the "Poet Laureate writes is sure to sell, no matter
how dull the times. Delay in his case always
results not from the unwillingness of publishers
but from the fastidiousness of the author. Except Balzac,
there scarcely ever was a man who touched and retouched
so much as he does, as the printers know to their cost.
,There is scarcely one of his poems as now published which
has not been altered since its first appearance. Fortunate
are those which have been only altered. More than two
dozen of the " Poems, chiefly Lyrical," published in 1830,
and just a dozen of the poems published in 1833, have been
altogether suppressed. The new poem, lam glad to say,
is in type, and there is good reason to hope for its
appearance on this side of Christmas. It is not often that
poets so fastidious are so successful. For ten whole
years Tennyson published nothing. During that time he
was perfecting what will probably remain his greatest
work, the "In Memoriam." Even now his works bear but
a small proportion as to number compared with
those of Wordsworth. And yet while Wordsworth
was a comparatively poor man, Tennyson is guaranteed
£4,000 a year by Messrs. Strahan. Another point
of interest is the fondness which the Laureate has shewn
tbroughout his whole career for the Arturian legends. So
long back as 1832 he published the " Lady of Shalott." In
1842 there were fragmentary poems borrowed from the
same source, namely,the "Morte d'Arthur," "Sir Galahad,"
and " Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere." Then
came, in 1859, the " Idylls of the King," and now at the
ripe age of 60 he is about to give us a poem
founded on another of the same legends. It is worth
mentioning that Tennyson is indebted forhis poem " Enid "
to Lady Charlotte Guest's " Mabinogion," whose narrative
he has followed even in minute details. Finally, on this
subject, what has become of the promised collection of
Tennyson's songs, set to music, which was announced some
time ago ?
A few days ago the Times contained a long review of Mr.
Gilbert's new novel, " Sir Thomas Branston." The reviewer
spoke highly of the artistic skill of the book, but
protested against the main fact, declaring that it was im-
possible for a well-principled young woman to be so utterly,
changed by typhus fever and the administration of alco-
holic stimulants during the fever as to become the demo-
niac which the novelist depicts. lam authorised by Mr.
Gilbert to state that this change is not only not impossible,
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interest
those who are reading it to know that there are in
archives of Ferrara a number of "the good Duchess's"
letters which have never seen the light, and which have
become accessible only since the Austrians were driven out
of Italy. Mr. Gilbert is now just setting out for the open-
ing of the Suez Canal.
I have already referred to the book about London which
will shortly be published, written by 19Innchard Jerrold
and illustrated by Gustave Dore. I have now to announce
a book about Paris written by Mr. Bertrand Payne (Moxon
and Co.), and illustrated by Mr. Moyr Smith, these two
gentlemen having visited Paris together for that purpose.
But that which is likely to prove one of the most remark-
able illustrated books which have appeared for a long
g
time is Hood's poem of Miss Kilmansegg, illustrate
by Mr. Seccombe. FOf this artist, as yet unknown
to fame, and who is, I believe, an Artillery officer, his
friends speak in the most rapturous terms. They say that
he combines the genius of Tenniel, Doyle, Cruikahank,