The Sun.
London, England, 1869-02-19 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 19, 1869.

t raining-ships as the frigate Conway of the Mersey,
and the Worcester of the Thames, are, he thinks,
invaluable agents for the manning of the mercantile
marine. Mr. GREY, Secretary to the Marine Depart-
ment of the Board of Trade, speaks highly of these
ships, and says that they are settling the great ques-
tion of recruits for the merchant service. The Inde-
fatigable, of the Mersey, which educates and trains
for the sea the orphans of seamen and others, is fitted
to receive 300 boys, but, owing to the lack of funds,
has only about half that number. Surely this is a case
in which Government aid might wisely and economi-
cally be afforded ? To suffer so good and service-
able a work to languish for want of money is not
prudence, but short-sighted folly, and we hope that
the method of assistance which has been suggested—
a capitation grant—will be decided upon by the Go-
vernment.

THE first list of notices of motions issued from the
parliamentary printers, and containing nearly fifty
entries, is remarkable for the almost entire absence
of foreign topics. Seven years ago probably one-
half of the notices would have referred to the con-
cerns of other nations. Seven years ago Lord
PALMERSTON was Premier, and the most frequent
interpellators were men like Mr. KINGLIKE,
who hated NAPOLEON ; Sir GEORGE BOWYER,
who hated VICTOR EMMANUEL; Mr. GREGORY,
who hated the United States ; Mr. BAILLIE
COCHRANE, who hated Russia ; and Mr. ROE-
BUCK, who hated everybody and everything.
Lord PALMERSTON is dead, and with him has
departed that interest in foreign politics which that
most Conservative of Ministers fostered in order to
divert attention from domestic reforms. A new
epoch has begun ; a new regime is in force. The
working class has obtained the franchise, and the
working class cares very little about the affairs of
other persons, a good deal about its own.
VICTOR EMMANUEL may be the truest patriot
or the most treacherous conspirator that ever sat on
throne, but that is nothing to the new electors. They
are quite indifferent to the Eastern question, and
care absolutely nothing whether PRIM becomes Pre-
sident of the Spanish Republic or King of Spain.
On the other hand, they do care a good deal for
education, the pcor law, the ballot, the protection of
married women's property. So it comes to pass that
out of the whole list of notices only three refer ever
so remotely to foreign topics, and in two instances
we have a personal interest, since they involve the cost
of the Abyssinian expedition, and the relations
between the Indian and Affghan Governments.
The remaining subjects may be, divided into two
sections ; those which are more strictly political, and
which will give rise to party divisions ; and those
which are social, and have a good chance of being
decided upon their own merits. Holding, as we have
always done, that the former class has encroached too
much upon the latter, we rejoice to see that the list
of social questions is unusually large. Attention
is to be directed to the operation of the Poor-laws
in each of the three great divisions of the kingdom.
Mr. CORR:INCE will call attention to pauperism and
vagrancy in the United Kingdom, and to the general
principle upon which the Poor-laws are now adininis-
tared. Mr. CRAUFURD will move for a select com-
mittee to inquire into the operation of the Poor-
law in Scotland, and Mr. M'MAHON will ask if it is
intended to assimilate the Poor-law of Ireland to
that of England by enlarging the area of rating.
The whole question of local taxation will be raised by
several members. The Royal Speech has already
given promise of a Ministerial measure on the subject,
but several hon, members are anxious to have
the credit of raising the subject. Sir MASSEY
LOPES moves on Tuesday for the appointment of a
Royal Commission " to inquire into the present
amount, incidence, and effect of local taxation, with
a view to a more equitable readjustment of these
burdens." Sir GEORGE JENKINSON is content with
a tardier and less decisive step. On March 2 he
will " call the attention of the House to the subj ect
of local taxation, with a view to a remedy of the
injustice of the present system by legislation."
r.
Ministerial
introduce Ci LlNl
measure,
ai-lbn'
for
to wait for the promised
theil I()etns establishment ofask
c county
financial boards. The law of licensing is another
subject on which the minds of hon. members are
likely to be considerably exercised, as well they may
be. Mr. IBBETSON will ask the HOME SECRETARY
if he means to bring in a bill for amending the
present law, and will, no doubt, get the usual answer
that while the Government attach great impor-
tance to the subject, they greatly fear that
the pressure of public business will not
with so important
pa\Nerl:m:FiatittitDertLheAdinv,t,isroinNt
daring
i leea
signalise
pres
e nhti s rseetsusironn.to tShi er
House by reintroducing the Permissive Bill next
Monday. Mr. DALRYMPLE
, file newly-elected
member for Bath, will, in the event of Sir WILFRID
obtaining leave, move that the bill be referred to a
select committee—we presume with the view of
shelving it. Mr. HUGHES is going to
reintroduce
his Sunday Trading Bill. Mr. THOMAS CHAMBERS
will once more take up the subject with which
his name is identified—marriage with a deceased
wife's sister—in the hope that the Reformed
Parliament will give him greater support
than its predecessor gave. Mr. GURNEY, who,
though a strong Conservative, is one of the most
radical of politicians so far as women's rights are
concerned, will introduce a bill to amend the law
with respect to the property of married women,
which will no doubt be based upon the report of Mr.
SHAW LEFEVRE'S select committee. To these matters,
introduced by private members, we must add Mr.
FORSTER'S " Bill to amend the Law relating to En-
dowed Schools and other Educational Endowments,
and otherwise to provide for the Advancement of
Education in England and Wales," which measure
will be introduced this evening.
The political questions already started are
numerous. First in importance, though not in date,
is Mr. GLADSTONE'S measure for dealing with the
Irish Church. The notice is as follows :—" That the
Acts relating to the Established Church, Ireland,
the Acts relating to Maynooth, and the first resolu-
tion of the House of Commons in the session of
1808 relating to the Established Church, Ireland,
be read : that this House will immediately resolve
itself into a committee to consider the said Acts
and resolution." In connection with Irish questions
it may be added that Mr. MAGUIRE has given notice
of a resolution for the appointment of a Royal Com-
mission to inquire into the management of the
Irish estates of certain London companies, with the
view of considering the advisability of annulling
their charters and selling their estates, with the right
of pre-emption to the occupying tenants.. This will
scarcely please the Ulster Orangemen. On the other
hand, Sir THOMAS BATESON'S notice for repealing
the Party Processions Act will not please the Ulster
Romanists. The Reform Bill and cognate
topics give rise to a variety of notices. Mr.
H. SHERIDAN, a private member, will ask to
introduce a " Bill to amend the Representation of
the People Act, 1808," which would seem to be
taking out of the hands of the Government its reso-
lution for getting rid of the rating franchise. Mr.
LEATHAM is to be entrusted with the duty of intro-
ducing the Ballot, and he will, no doubt, do the work
much better than Mr. HENRY BERKELEY would
have done it. Mr. FAWCETT will endeavour to re-
affirm the clause, so unfairly got rid of in the last
House of Commons, for throwing the expenses
of elections upon the ratepayers. Mr. PETER
TAYLOR will go still farther, and ask that
members shall be paid, thinking, perhaps, that if the
Conservatives have already granted one point of the
charter—the abolition of the property qualification—
and are not indisposed to grant a second—vote by ballot
—they will grant a third also. The SOLICITOR-
GENERAL will renew his attempt to get rid of
religious tests at the universities, and this time will
have the official support of the Government. Mr.
LOCKE KING is once more going to—not " abolish

primogeniture," but alter the law of primogeniture ;
so that, in the event of intestacy, real property shall
be divided among all the children, as personal
property is, a measure that is nearly certain to pass
the Commons and to be rejected in the Lords. Mr.
FAWCETT is desirous to carry the competitive prin-
ciple still further, and apply it to all branches of the
civil and diplomatic service. Lastly, Mr. GLADSTONE
has given notice of a motion for next Monday, which
sounds very formidable, though we candidly confess
we do not know what it means, " That the House
do resolve itself into a committee of the whole
House, to consider the Acts enabling her Majesty to
recompense the services of persons holding, or who
have held, certain high civil offices.' Is the present
Government going to abolish pensioas, or to sacrifice
the salaries of its own members upon the altar of

economy ?

LITERATURE•

Mr. Hepworth Dixon's New Work.

Her Majesty's Tower. By W. Hepworth Dixon.
One Vol. Pp. 406. Hurst and Blackett.

Dedicated by Express Permission to the Queen—
Mr. Hepworth Dixon's new_work is worthy of him
as a lettered Englishman. The subject he has
chosen is thoroughly national. The very title of his
book is like a.blast upon a trumpet. Opening his
pages we see at a glance that Her Majesty's Tower
is no other than the grand old Tower of London.
The " Towers of Julius." The Tower sacred to us
by so many heroic memories. The Tower around
which the whole of our historical annals wind like
some gorgeous and tragical procession. " White
with age and wrinkled by remorse," Mr. Dixon
describes the structure as being externally--and
as we read the picturesque epithets, the ancient
building starts up before us with the distinctness
of a photograph. Often as it has been written
about before now—the historian of Bacon, and
Penn, and. Howard, and others of our English
worthies—the luminous delineator of New Ame-
rica and the Holy Land—biographer, critic, tra-
veller, archaeologist, all in one—has made " The
Tower of London," or as he prefers to call it " Her
Majesty's Tower," all his own from this time hence-
forward. He has traversed it through and through.
He has examined it as an antiquary, as a student
of history—as a writer at once of profound re-
search and of vivid imagination. Externally and
internally—upon the walls, and the leads, and the
crumblingbattlements—subterraneously, among the
very foundations L—in cells so gloomy and hidden
that they are like so many earth-pits or excavations
in the solid rock, damp with the river ooze, black-
ened by time, rivelled over with the mural inscrip-
tions of prisoners dead and vanished (even the dust
of them centuries ago)—inside and outside, above and
below, to the right and to the left—literally, as we
have said, through and through, Mr. Dixon has ex-
amined " Her Majesty's Tower" searchingly, and,
having thoroughly mastered his theme, he has then
described it—he hats then descanted upon it. And he
has done so, as it seems to us, in
,the wisest manner
possible. He has not noted its history in any way
consecutively. His narrative is not sketched out
chronologically. Ile takes the building exactly
as it is in its entirety. He reviews the mass
of its grand old associations. He selects from
among these the salient incidents—the most memor-
able personages being grouped in the foreground,
and the times in which they lived being recalled to
existence on his pictured page. There is but a
single illustration in the whole ponderous volume—
a folding frontispiece, presenting to our view at one
glance " Her Majesty's Tower" as it was when it
acquired that name for itself—namely, in the great
reign of Elizabeth. There we recognize upon the
instant the Inner Ward and the Outer Ward,
while the eye loiters at will inter-mediately
along the Wall. Lettered around the circuit of
the inner Ward, we perceive from A to L inclu-
sively--the White Tower, the Wardrobe Tower,
Cold Harbour, St. Peter's Church, the grimly
Block on Tower Green, the Officer's House, the
Lieutenant's House, the Garden, the Queen's Apart-
ments, the Queen's Garden, and the Gunner's Quar-
ters. Lettered from Ato P inclusively—On the
11 all we note— ThanchampTower, Prisoner's Walk
Cie Belfry, Ilaleigh's Walk, the Bloody Tower, the
Lantern, the Salt Tower, the Broad Arrow Tower,
Constable Tower, Martin Tower, Northumberland's
Walk, Brick Tower, Bowyer Tower, Flint Tower,
and Develin Tower. Numbered from Ito 16 again
inclusively we observe on the Outer Ward—
Postern, Middle Tower, Byeward Tower, Gate-
way under Bloody Tower, Hall Tower, Great
Hall, Queen's Stairs, Traitor's Gate, St. Tho-
mas' Tower, Well Tower, Galleyman Tower, Iron
Mount, and Soldiers'
Gate, Brass Mount, Legge
Quarters. Twenty years ago, as Mr. Dixon tells
us in his brief one-page of Preface, dated New
Year's Day, 1869—twenty years ago he wrote some
especially on the human
chapters on the Tower-44
interests which cling around it." Since then, during
this last score of years, his has casually, it may
be, but evidently very carefully, noted, now in State
Paper, now in Printed Volume, whatever passage
see msling to his view, light
threw, "into the cells
once occupied by the heroes and heroines of English
story." Hence, as the fruit of a long and loving
now given to us in its
search—this goodly volume
ripened maturity—as fir. Dixon modestly calls it
himself na book of identifications." It is more
than that, or at the least we may be permitted to
call it so—speaking of it, as we are fain to do, as
in many respects Hepworth Dixon's masterpiece.
In the bold, manly eloquence of its Saxon English—
he has done nothing finer than this. It is the
work of a thorough Englishinan. It describes the
grey old Tower, but under a glory of magnificent
colouring. History rolls back to our view as we
turn the leaves of this noble volume. And in
demonstration of the fact, we would, without
further parley, let the author speak for himself
hi his own radiant language. A panoramic view
will thereby be spread out before the reader very
vividly indeed by means of a few almost haphazard
quotations. As for example thus—where Mr.
Dixon discourses in the manner following upon the
venerable antiquity of " Her Majesty's Tower" :
Set against the Tower of London—with its eight hun-
dred years of historic life, its nineteen hundred years of
traditional fame— all other palaces and prisons appear like
things of an hour. The oldest bit of palace iu Europe, that
of the west front of the Burg in Vienna, is of the time of
Henry the Third. The Kremlin in Moscow, the Doge's Pa-
lazzo in Venice, are of the fourteenth century. The Seraglio
in Stamboul was built by Mohammed the Second. The oldest
part of the Vatican was commenced by Borgia, whose name it
bears. The old Louvre was commenced in the reign of Henry
the Eighth ; the Tuileries in that of Elizabeth. In the
time of our Civil War Versailles was yet a swamp. Sans
Souci and the Escurial belong to the eighteenth century.
The Serail of Jerusale:n is a Turkish edifice. The palaces
of Athens, of Cairo, of Tehran, are al of moderate date.
Neither can the prisons which remain in fact as well as in
history and drama—with the ono exception of St. Angelo
in Rome—compare against the Tower. The Bastile is
gone ; the Bargello Las become a museum ; the Piombi
are removed from. the Doge's roof. Vincennes, Spandau,
Spilberg, Magdeburg, are all modern in comparison with a
jail from which Ralph Flambard escaped so long ago as
the year 1100, the date of the First Crusade.

Then again —just in the same way as Coleridge
compared Edmuhd Dean's acting to " reading
Shakspere by flashes of lightning"— one might say
of the following rapid record of Richard lll.'s
crimes in the Tower of Loudon, that it resembles
the glitter of h's murderous steel, to and fro, in the
gloom of the past—

Thanks to tlie great poet, no name is stamped so darkly
on the Tower as that of Gloucester. Richard seems to
haunt the pile. If the word Tower crops up in talk, nine
persons out of ten will throw his figure into the front.
They see, in their mind's eye, Gloucester witli'his knife
at King Henry's throat ; Gloucester denouncing Hastings
at the board ; Gloucester in rusty armour on the wall.
Men picture him as drowning his brother Clarence in the
butt of wine; as murdering his nephews, King Edward
and the Duke of York. The localities of his crimes, and
of the crimes imputed to him, are shown. He stabbed
-King Henry in the Hall tower, now the Jewel house. Ho
accused Lord Hastings in the Council chamber, and
struck off his head on the terrace below the keep. He
drowned his brother in the Bowyer tower. Ho addressed
the citizens from the terrace, now known as Raleigh's
walk. Brackenbury was kneeling in Bt. John's Chapel,
when he received the King's order to kill the princes.
Tho boys were lodged by him in the rooms over the en-
trance gate, then known as the Garden tower. They were
interred in the passage, at the foot of a private stair. The

bones of these royal youths were afterwards dug out from
behind a stair in the keep.

Thus is it that Mr. Dixon, by a word or two, re-
calls to life the gentle and venerable form of
Cardinal Fisher—

Cardinal Fisher, eighty years old,was seized as a plotter,
tried for his offence, thrust into a barge, and pulled down
the Thames. When his boat &lipped under the archway
of the Water-gate, he toddled on shore, and turning to
the crowd of guards and oarsmen about him, said,
"As they have left me nothing else to give
you, I bestow on you my hearty thanks." Some
of the rough fellows smiled, though they must
have felt that hearty thanks from a good old man who
was about to die could do them no harm. Lodged in the
Strong Room he suffered much from chill and damp. The
Belfry not only stood above the ditch, but lay open to the
cast wind and to the river fog. Fisher told Cromwell, in
piteous letters, that he was loft without clothing to keep
his body warm. Yet the fine old prelate never lost
either his stoutness of heart or his quick sense of humour.
One day, when it was bruited about the Tower that he was
to suffer death, his cook brought up no dinner to the
Strong Room. "flow is this ?" asked the prelate, when
he saw the man. "Sir," said the cook, "it was commonly
talked of in the town that you should die, and therefore I
thought it vain to dress anything for you." " Well," said
the bishop, " for all that report thou seest me still alive ;
therefore, whate'ver news thou shalt hear of me, make
ready my dinner, and if thou see me dead when thou
comest, eat it thyself."
Another, but a very different form indeed, is that
which is thus glowingly pourtrayed—the liero:c
form of Sir Walter Raleigh—
Raleigh was a sight to see ; not for his fame and name,
but for his picturesque and dazzling figure. Fifty-ono
years old ; tall, tawny, splendid ; with the bronze of
tropical suns on his leonine cheek, a bushy beard, a round
moustache, and a ripple of curly hair, which his man
Peter took an hour to dress. Apparelled as became such a
figure in scarf and band of the richest colourand costliest
stuffs, in cap and plume worth a ransom, in jacket powdered
with gems ; his whole attire, from cap to shoe-strings,
blazing with rubies, emeralds, and pearls ; he was allowed
to be one of the handsomest men alive. The Council got
alarmed at the crowds who came down to see him. Har-
vey was thought too careless; and a stricter gaoler was
appointed to abridge the few liberties which Raleigh then
enjoyed.

Lady Jane Grey is depicted with a pencil of subtle
and delicate appreciation—the White Roses bloom
again—the Good Lord Cobham comes back once
more to life—Anne Boleyn passes twice across the
scene, to her bridal, and to the block--Henry VIII.,
our English Blue Beard, is there, with rues in his
shoes and the George upon his breast —we
are in the White Tower, we are in the
Beauchamp Tower, we are one is the
Pilgrimage of Grace. The book is a world in
little—it is a microcosm of our English History.
It is the Tower—it is London—it is England. Ana,
throughout, it is penned with an eloquence as re-
markable for its vigorous simplicity as for its lumi-
nous picturesqueness. It more than sustains Mr.
Dixon's reputation. It enhances it.

bt.
-
t
(Ql,l rPri