The Sun.
London, England, 1869-06-11 00:00:00

THE FRENCH ATLANTIC CABLE.

A farewell entertainment was given on Thursday by tne
Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, on
board the Great Eastern steamship, now lying off
Sheerness, where she has shipped her cargo of electric
cable, 2,752 miles long, in tanks of an increased size to
accommodate the length of coil, which is greater by some
400 miles than was paid out by her between Valencia and
and Heart's Content, A special train took down from
Charing-cross to Strcod a large party of guests, who were
conveyed on by boat to the anchorage of the big ship,
fourteen or fifteen miles down the Medway ; and the
assembled company on board the Great Eastern in.
eluded Lord Houghton, Sir Samuel Canning, Sir James
Anderson, Sir William Thompson, Baron d'Erlanger,
Baron and Baroness de Stern, Captain Forbes, Lieut.-
Colonel Glover, RE., Lord William Hay, Mr. George
Elliot, M.P., Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Elliot, Captain and
Mrs. Barrow, Mr. and Mrs. John render, Mr. Crampton,
Captain Sherrard-Osborne, Mr. Thomas Brassey, M.P.
and Mrs. Brassey, Professor Jerkin, Mr. Reuter, M.
Henry Clifford, and Mr. Cromwell Varley, who accompanies
the expedition as consulting engineer in place of Sir
William Thompson. Sir Daniel Gooch, M.P., the chairman
of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company,
was president on Thursday at the luncheon served in the
magnificent though somewhat over-decorated saloon of the
Great Eastern. This floating island, as the ship was
called by Lord Houghton, looked lower in the water than
usual, and indeed was lower, by a foot or more, than she
has ever been. She is somewhat cumbered by deck
houses, and has, in other respects, been made to resemble
a floating American hotel more than the island of Lord
Houghton's fancy Though it is impossible so speak with
praise of the alterations about ♦he ship, there are.improve-
ments in her mechanism which are of some moment and
value. Her rudder, formerly worked by twelve men, now
answers the bidding of steam machinery. A single helms.
man now turns the wheel. The paying-out machinery has
been perfected, and there is less chance of injury to the
cable than there has ever been. The Great Eastern
forthwith proceeds. to Portland, and will there coal. It
should be mentioned that her departure on the 12th
instead of on the 30th of June, a clear gain of eighteen
days, is fairly ascribable to the completion of the company's
contract so much within the limits of their time. It must
be satisfactory to them to learn, as they did from the
south of Lord William Hay, that already the Anglo-
French Company regard the cable as perfect, even while
it lies below decks waiting to be spun out and trailed
astern. From Portland the ship proceeds to Brest, where
the operation of laying the cable will have been
commenced by the Chiltern, a vessel entrusted with
a few miles of the heavy shore end. The ships will meet
at an appointed spot ; and the Great Eastern will pick up
the buoyed cable at sea. Then, after splicing and testing,
she will continue the work begun by her attendant ship.
She will have other attendant ships in this critical voyage
—the Scanderia and the William Cory ; or, rather they
will have preceded her across the Atlantic, to lay the
American shore end of the cable at St. Pierre. Sir
Samuel Canning has charge of the expedition ; and
Captain Halpin, who was chief officer under Sir James
Anderson, will, in consequence of that officer's resigna-
tion, take the command of the ship.

NE7 ROPOLITAN GOSSlP—Thursday.

When some weeks ago I mentioned that the House of
Lords contemplated the rejection of the Irish Church
Bill, I expressed my incredulity ; that incredulity I still
feel, though that rejection is actually threatened.
The course now proposed is fraught with such
serious consequences to the Lords, at the same
time that it must fail of its purpose—the salvation
of the Irish Church Establishment—that I cannot
conceive how any body of rational men can take it.
Let it be granted, for the sake of argument, that the Irish
Church ought to be saved if possible, that Mr. Gladstone's
measure is sacrilegious, and all the rest of it; still that does
not alter the position, nor render possible the impossible.
The nation, by the mouth of its Constitutional assembly,
has pronounced the doom of that Church ; the Queen has
already given her consent to the measure by
accepting as her chief adviser the Minister who
came into office expressly to carry it out ;
it is the Lords alone who resist it. Does anyone, does
the most fervid Orangeman believe that they can defeat
it? Ni. doubt it is necessary to do something, or rather
to make a show of doing something, in order not to loss
the support of the Irish Conservatives; and this is the
real explanation of Lord Harrowby's notice of motion.
There is no longer any talk of Lord Westbury and Lord
Russell opening fire upon the flank. They are wise enough
to see that the Liberal party are in earnest, and that any
defection will be considered an unpardonable offence.
In the improbable event of the Peers proceeding to an
extremity and throwing the bill out, there will be two
courses open to Mr. Gladstone—an immediate prorogation,
followed by a new session during the present summer, or
his resignation. The latter alternative is not inconsis-
tent with the former. He may resign, advise the Queen
to send for Mr. Disraeli, who will, of course, be unable
to form a Government, and will advise that Mr. Gladstone
be recalled. In that case the Liberal leader will be
able to make his own terms, such as a prorogation and
subsequent session, and the making of a number of new
peers. It is to be hoped that the Sovereign will by that time
have returned to her capital, instead of being 600
_miles
away from it, as she was during the crises of 1866 and
1868.

I do not think that provincial politicians have any
idea of the rapid progress which Republicanism is
making among the most highly cultivated men
of the metropolis. They rejoice with exceeding joy
at the threatened action of the Peers. They had not
ventured to hope that their lordships would be seized with
the madness which precedes destruction, and even now
they fear that the news is too good to be true. They
rejoice no less at the virtual abdication of the Queen, and
think that her Majesty is one of the best of sovereigns
because she is teaching her people to do without any.
They tell you that no one is more firmly persuaded of the
approaching downfall of monarchy than the Queen herself
—that it has been openly discussed at royal tables whether
she or her son will be the last to wear the Crown of Eng-
land. Some of them are writers in able and well-known
journals, where, however, they do not say all they think,
because the time is not yet come. But be assured that
they are watching events with the utmost keenness, and
are skilfully turning to account any event that tends to
weaken the popular faith in the old constitutional tradi-
tions.

Mr. Candlish is considered to have made a good hit by
calling attention to the extravagant expenditure on the
Abyssinian expedition. Clearly something or somebody
must be grievously wrong, when an estimated expenditure
of £3,500,000 turns out to be nearly £9,000,000. Mr.
Munciella, (who was to have seconded the motion, but who
was forestalled by Sir S. Northcote) threw some light upon
the matter, and Colonel Sykes threw more. It turns out that
a large number of vessels were engaged to carry out hay at
so much for the voyage, and so much for every day's
demurrage. They waited about for several months until
the charge for demurrage had reached a frightful total.
By that time their cargoes were not wanted ; and, in
one instance, at least, they were told to throw the cargoes
overboard. Another instance of shameful carelessness
was the purchase of mules in Syria, where
they cost £4O, and in Spain, where they cost £BO,
a head, when they might have been bought in
Syria for £4 a heal, these same mules being afterwards
resold for an old song. A third illustration was the impor-
tation of a large number of women from India to grind
corn, the said women after their arrival doing
nothing. I mentioned several months ago that certain
gentlemen were sent out to purchase mules who knew
nothing of the language of the countries to which they
went, and were thus entirely at the mercy of interpreters,
and that these gentlemen were preferred, because of poli-
tical reasons, to agents well accustomed to this kind of
business. Here is a hint for Mr. Candlish.
I was at Oxford a few days ago, and found, among
other novelties, the Keble College in a very advanced
state so far as the buildings are concerned. I confess that
Ido not greatly admire them. They are too flat, and
contrast very unfavourably with the new buildings at
Balliol. These, it may not be known to your
readers, owe their existence to the family pride of a lady
who believes that she is descended from Sir John Balliol,
the founder, and who having no descendants, wished to do
something for the institution originated by her illustrious
predecessor. The Dons of Balliol were not at all disposed
to scrutinise too nicely a lineage which was likely to lead
to such satisfactory results, and they suggested to their
intending benefactress the erection of newlsaldings. One
of the oldest of the inns in Oxford has lately disappeared,:and
is giving place to the new "schools," in the Oxford sense
of the word.
The Commemoration this year has been shorn of it
most notable incident, the conferring of honorary degrees.
This is due, I believe, to two causes: the fact that the

two great parties—the Broad and the High—could not
agree upon the men to be selected, and to the increasing
uproariousness of the undergraduates during the ceremony.
The omission had small effect in checking their manifesta-
tions. The "men" were more obstreperous and boyish
than ever. At last the Vice-Chancellor, Canon Leighton,
left the theatre in disgust. It was not expected that the
disturbance would have been so serious ; for, owing to a
recent change of arrangements, a large number of " men "
go down before Commemoration begins. It is not unlikely
that this will be the last scene of the kind.

There is to be another Ritual prosecution. It has been
commenced under the most extraordinary circumstances.
As the papers have already announced, a deputation
from the Church Association waited upon the Archbishop
of Canterbury, at Lambeth, on Tuesday, to request his
aid in putting down Ritualism. It was stated that the
association had determined to prosecute Mr. Purchas of
Brighton, and a London clergyman. Who the second
was was not stated, and the intended victim was reading
the account and wondering to himself who the unfortunate
man could be, when a friend, who was present at the
Lambeth meeting, called and told him, " thou
are the man." Now the clergyman fixed upon
happens to be, like Mr. Mackonochie, one of
the most devoted and hardworking parish priests
in London. He has, I have reason to know, sacrificed an
inheritance to a large fortune that he would have enjoyed
had he but abandoned his peculiar views, and he has
settled down amidst the most degraded class that all
London can produce in order to do among them a work
as arduous as any that missionary ever undertook among a
heathen people. In the course of his teaching he has
found it absolutely necessary to appeal to them through
visible representations of religion. He feels that while
an intellectual West-end congregation may be taught
best through a sermon, the teaching of the poor and the
unintellectual is undoubtedly greatly -13elped by ritual.
Ritual is, in his opinion, the picture alphalA-Of the lower

classes so far as religion is concerned. Whether he is right
or not is little to the point. The main faetis that Mr. Lowder,
who is simply one of the most devoted clergymen that
ever gave himself up to the work of a Christian minister,
is to be put to the worry and the expetise of a prosecution
by this irrepressible association of easygoing Churchmen,
who, above all things, hate zeal. Nor is this all; they
have not even had the grace to tell Mr. Lowder of their
intention, but have left him to learn it unofficially. In
other words, not content with stirfn; up fresh
litigation, and squandering in law the money
that they might so well spend in spreading the Glspel, they