The Sun.
London, England, 1869-06-25 00:00:00

Ti-TE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, JUNE 25, 169.

111E7 ROPOLITAN GOSSlP—'Thursday.

"Levelling up" is the word for to-day. Will it he the
thing for to-morrow ? I very much doubt it. The matter
stands thus. At the general election Mr. Gladstone pro-
mised that no portion of the Irish Church revenues should

be appropriated to the endowment of any other religious
body. At the same time it was stated by one or two

other Ministers that in all probability the glebes and par-

aonages would be handed over to the Church without charge.
Just before the session began, and when Cabinet Councils
were of almost daily occurrence, it was found that this could

notbe done consistently with the principle of thebill without
also giving glebes and parsonages to the Roman Catholic
priests, and the Presbyterian clergy. There was for a
few days something like a Cabinet crisis, one portion of
the Cabinet advocating giving to all, the other giving
to none. The latter section prevailed, and hence it

came about that one of the provisions of the bill
ordered that the glebes and parsonages should be sold, the

present occupants having the right of pie-en-Vim This
provision was felt, by many members on both sides of tl e

House of Commons to be harsh, and one Liberal member
besought the Government to give way on the point. Ent
Ministers, knowing that concession would involve

levelling up, refused ; so the hill passed in its present 61:nre.
Now it has entered the House of Lords the proposal has

been renewed, and is being strongly supported
by members of both i arties. The Marquis of
Salisbury and Lord Cairns have bad an interview,
and have come to an understanding as to the changes

they will propose, and which, I believe, involve this of
granting glebes and parsonages to the three religious
bodies. These amendments will probably he laid upon
the table to-night or to-morrow. Meanwhile, Lord Grey

has anticipated the Conservative party by moving the

omission of that portion of the preamble which prohibits
the application of the funds to ecclesiastical purposes.
But Lord Russell has far surpassed everybody else.

He has given notice of amendments (of which, strange
to say, neither the Times, the Star, the Standard,
nor the Herald has any notice) for appropriating

the surplus revenues of the Irish Church not only to the
building of parsonages, and the giving of thirty acres of
glebe to the clergy of the three chief Churches, but to
building Roman Catholic churches and Presbyterian
chapels. This is levelling up with a vengeance.
I find that I did the Bishop of Oxford an injustice in
suggesting that he arrived late in the House of Lords on
Friday night by, what schoolboys call, anaccident done on
purpose. The truth is, he did intend to speak that night.
Coming down from Mr. Motley's, he was greeted at the
House with the satirical announcement from the Bishop
of Gloucester, " Your colleague, Lord Westbury, is up."
Now, between the ex-Chancellor and Dr. Wilberforce
there have been sundry passages at arms in past times, and
the sentiment which the second entertains for the first is
the reverse of amicable. The Bishop's temper, not conciliated
by this sarcasm, was still further irritated when, on urging
the Duke of Argyll that he might be permitted to speak,
the Secretary for India assured him that it was impossible.
The Whips were determined to have a division that night.
Many peers who had been summoned from various parts •
of the earth, and who had not been in London for nearly
a dozen years, who vowed that they hated the place,
only wanted to get away as soon as possible, and
were insisting that they could not remain in
town over another Sunday. So it was neces-
sary that the debate should be closed that night.
The Bishop was told that if Lord Cairns rose after Lord
Hatherley, as it was expected that he would, it would be
impossible for anyone else but Lord Granville to speak;
if, however, another Opposition peer were heard before
Lord Cairns, the Bishop might have his twenty minutes,
which was all that he asked. As it turned out, Lord
Cairns did rise, and the Bishop who had done so much
for the Government was compelled to keep silence, even
from good words, which was pain and grief unto him.
However, he contrived to let off some of the fire that
burned within him a few hours later in a building on the
opposite side of the way. Preaching the sermon on Sunday
evening at the special service in Westminster Abbey, he
made for about a quarter of an hour the apology that he
would have made in the House of Lords, and proved his
devotion to the Crown by an almost extravagantly loyal
discourse. 'The sermon was, however, one of the most
eloquent that he has ever delivered. I doubt if this one
were made, like most of his, while be was shaving.
The Bishop of Gloucester is now the leader of the Con-
servative prelates. He is untiring in his opposition to the
bill; and means to obstruct it by resorting to every
possible device, supporting whatever amendments seem
most calculated to damage the measure, and without any
regard to their origin or primary purpose. The
Bishop of P.ipon is so disgusted with the result of the divi-
sion, that be has taken to himself wings like a dove and
fled to the Continent, thus following out Archdeacon
Denison's advice, not to go rear the committee. As to
the Arch deacon, he is as full of wrath as though he were
not St. George, but the dragon. The other day he was
talking to some Radicals, and he said that one of the first
results of the discstabliehment of the Irish Church would
be that Mid-Soinereet would return him as M.P., for; said
lie, the Irish clergy will then be able to sit in Parliament,
and if they do, you may be sure that the English clergy
will not remain excluded. "Now," he added, " would
you not much railer have a few quiet bishops in the
-Upper House, than n;c in the Lower ?" His Radical
audience certainly thought they would. It bad never
struck them in that light before. In all seriousness, this
point is one of great importance ; and it has perplexed
Mr. Gladstone not a little. If the Irish Church Bill
should have the result of permitting clerics to take up
politics as a profession, as is done in Norway, and that
result is by no means improbable, the clergy will cer-
tainly gain more influence than they will lose by disesta-
blishment.
The last night of the great debate taxed the London
papers to the uttermost. The T(.711-CB, Lich was the only
paper that aye Lord Granville's reply in full, and an
account of the division, had but fifteen minutes between
going to press and catching the first trains for the country.
In that fifteen minutes 15,00 copies were printed. The
funniest thing, however, was that the Will-o'-the-lVisr,
Mr. Hamilton Hume's comic paper, was so sure of a
Conservative triumph that it had prepared a very capital
cartoon of the Lords literally kicking the bill out of the
House. At the last moment a cartoon of a very different
kind had to be prepared. It is remarkable that your
contemporary should have made this mistake, as everyone
behind the scenes knew well that Lord Derby was riding
not to win, and as a matter of fact a large number of Con-
servative peers were instructed to leave the House before
the division took place.
While we in England are still discussing the Church, in
Ireland it is the land which is the great subject of con-
troversy and expectation. An Irish landowner (a Liberal,
by the- way) stated the other day that his agent had just
come back from a fair, and that there he found the
peasantry unanimous in believing that they would shortly
have the land entirely in their own possession. "Shure,"
said they, " has not the Pope got all the title deeds, and
is he not going to give them to the Cardinal and Mather
Bright?" The famous speechby the President of the Board of
Trade has produced a profound impression upon the Roman
Catholic peasantry. It is not surprising that they should
be dissatisfied. They see that in Protestant Ulster their
brethren enjoy fixity of tenure so long as the rent is paid,
and they ask why they also should not have it.
The treatment of the Pasha of Egypt has given rise to
some very severe criticisms. Yesterday's morning papers
gave a very different account of his Highness's reception
from the actual facts. To begin with, the Prince of \Vales
was not at the station when the Pasha arrived. The con-
sequence was that poor Lord Alfred Paget was in a state
bordering upon distraction. He rushed up and down in
a frantic manner, and when the military band had finished
the Egyptian Hymn, he shouted, "Go on ! go on !
Keep going !" At last the Prince arrived. But where
was the escort? No one knew. So Prince and Pasha
drove away, attended by a mounted policeman, and the
troops arrived at the station somewhere about the time
that royalty arrived at the Palace. Nor is this all.
Instead of the great gates of Buckingham Palace being
thrown open, the Pasha was taken in at the side door, the
servants' entrance, I presume. At Dover he was met by
a dirty fly and a pair of hearse horses. All this is making
people excessively angry. They see that their character
for hospitality is being completely ruined by the parsimony
or the negligence of the Court. It is not only that the
Sovereign herself keeps away from the capital, but she
does her utmost to keep away all other crowned heads.
Last night there was a state concert at Buckingham Palace,
and Titiens, Nilsson, Bettini, Santley, and Gardoni were
among the singers. But neither these nor the Pasha could
attract the Queen, though she was less than twenty miles

away.
Carlton-house-terrace has been the trysting place of all
the gossips and the cynics in London this week. They
.have been spectators of the disetablishment and disendow-
mcnt of a duke, and all the papers have been delivering
homilies thereon. I%lehnwhile, neither gossips, cynics, nor
papers appear to have heard that another peer, who has
held very high office and quitted it under circumstances
not altogether conducive to his fame, has made acquaint-
ance with the Philistines, which is Hebrew for the sheriff's

officers.
Mr. Lowder is now, I believe, the only London clergy.
man who still burns altar lights. Mr. Rodwell continued
to burn them until he was threatened with proceedings.
He then took counsel's opinion, and Dr. Deane was so
strongly against him that be thought it better to conform
to the Cairns judgment. Mr. Le Geyt, of St. Alatthias'g,
Stoke Newington, has likewise conformed. As for Mr.
Lowder, he is a man of such extreme self-denial and
devotedness, has done such an enorraeus amount of good
in one of the Very worst districts of London, that, unwise

though he is in defying the law, he gets a good deal
of sympathy from men of a very different school from
his own. Should a defence fund be opened in his behalf,
you may look for the name of one of the best-known
Broad Church clergymen in London.
You will remember the vehement opposition which the
London gas companies offered a little while ago to the
bill brought in for reforming them. In spite of that oppo-
tion the bill was passed, and the result has been most
satisfactory. Three of the companies were com-
pelled to amalgamate. They have begun to
erect large works at Barking, and will, when these are
completed, abandon their present works, which are so
grievous a nuisance to Londoners. By this removal they
will enable the Thames Embankment to be continued, and
so one improvement leads to another. They will have to
lay down eleven miles of two-feet main, and will keep
it always at work by having several receivers in
various parts of London. These will be free trom all the
annoyances that arise from the present manufacture in
the midst of a dense population. In spite of all
these expenses, it is found that the company will, through
the reduction of expenditure resulting from amalgamation,
get a higher profit from the Act of Parliament charge of
3s. Od. than they now get from that of 4s. 6d. This
happy resultof combination augurs well for the economical
working of the telegraphs when they are under
Government control. This is likely to take place very
shortly, as the bill empowering Government to raise the
necessary money for the purchase has been prepared, and
will very shortly be introduced by Mr. Lowe.
Longfellow is still in Italy, and when he wrote last to
his London friends, dated from Como. He was to have been
in England before this, but has probably been kept away
by the thought of a banquet to which he had been invited
by the Goldsmiths' Company. The author of " Hiawatha,"
different from most of his fellow countrymen, has a great
dislike of publicity. Tennyson, as I mentioned in a former
letter, is in Switzerland. The subject of his new poem
is the Quest of the Holy Grail.

The example of Lord Lyttelton is about to be followed
by his third daughter. She is to be married to Mr.
Edward Stuart Talbot. Young Lord Newport is to be
married to Lady Ida Lumley, daughter of the Earl of
Scarborough, and Mr. Brand's daughter to Mr. Henry
Campion.

MISCELLANEOUS NETVS.

.
spiritual manifestations in which he mu taken part,
specially mentioning a spirit -hand which had written
the autograph of Napoleon I. in the presence of the
French Emperor and Empress. . Being ques-
tioned as to the state of departed human beings,
Mr. Home said that spirits retained their personal
identity. Ile had seen spirit buds and flowers. Had
seen a bottle disappear. Dr. Edmunds asked if it
was a brandy bottle, a question which greatly incensed
Mr. Home, who objected to being made ridiculous in
the newspapers. A Mr. Glover having declared his
belief that the manifestations were made by the
devil, Mr. Home interposed, declaring his conviction
that the manifestations of this medium came from
his own mind !

A NEW MUSEUM.

An addition is to be made to the public buildings
of London. The Duke of Argyll has resolved to
appropriate the ground between the India Office and
Oharlcs-street to the building of a new museum,
library, and chart &Tice under one roof, from plans
by Mr. Digby Wyatt. At present our Indian literary
treasures, in which we arc richer than any other
country in the world, not excepting Russia even, aro
helped away like so much lumber, and are wholly
inaccessiblA to the student.