The Sun.
London, England, 1860-08-11 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, AUGUST 1 1860.

GEORGE HOTEL, PORTSMOUTH.-
DIGBY DENT solicits the attention of Commercial
Gentlemen to this Hotel, which has been newly furnished
throughout, assurinp; them that they will receive his best
attention, and find all their requirements specially attended

GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY.-
CHEAP EXCURSION to GLOUCESTER, CHEL-
TENHAM, HEREFORD, &c.—On SUNDAY, August 12th,
an Excursion Train will leaTe Paddington at 7.30 a.m., for
Cirencester and Stroud (es. and 55.), Gloucester and Chelten-
ham (10s. and 65.), and Ross and Hereford (125. and Bs.), re-
turning the same day from Hereford at 6.30 p.m., and inter-
mediate stations as per bills.

GREAT WESTERN 'RAILWAY.-
CHEAP EXCURSION to BATH and BRISTOL.
On SATURDAY, August 18, an EXCURSION TRAIN
will leaTe Paddington at 6.40 a.m., for Bath (12s. and 65.),
and Bristol (14s. and 75.), returning on Monday, August 20,
from Bristol at 5.30 p.m. and Rath at 6 p.m.

REAT WESTERN RAILWAY.-
CHEAPG EXCURSION to READING, HUNGER-
FORD, OXFORD; &c.
On SUNDAY, August 19, an EXCUIZSION TRAIN
will leave Paddington at 7.45 a.m. for Reading, Theale,
Aldermaston, Woolhampton, Thatcham, Newbury, Kint-
bury, and Hungerford (ss. 6d., 48., and 35.); Pangbourne,
Goring, Wallingford Road, Dideot, Culham, Abingdon, and
Oxford (6s. 6d., 58., and 45.), returning the same day from,
Oxford at 7.15 p.m., and intermediate stations as per hand-
bills.

RGYLL ROOMS, Windmill-street, Picea-
dilly.—Open every Evening, with the celebrated Band
conducted by Mons. Lamotte (chef d'orchestra. to the Em-
perm Napoleon). A magnificent SMOKING SALOON
added to this Establishment. Doors open at 8 o'clock. Ad-
mission, is.
Licensed pursuant to Act of Parliament.

TEETH—IMO—Post free,' three stamps. A
TREATISE EXPLAINING Messrs. GABRIEL'S
IMPROVEMENTS in ARTIFICIAL TEETH and
FLEXIBLE CORALITE GUMS, whereby one set will wear
longer than three ordinary ones, and being fitted without
springs, wires, or metals, and without any operation, prove
a valuable desideratum to all who have occasion for the den-
tist's; services. None but pure first class materials and
workmanship employed, while the expense is even less than
half the ordinary cost. To be obtained only of Messrs.
Gabriel; dentists to the Prince Dottajana, established 1815,
see diploma, No. 110, Regent-street, W., (next Mechi's) and
33, and 34, Ludgate-hill, City.
" The advantages obtainable by Gabriel's system render it
pre-eminently superior, and the nearest approach to perfec-
tion yet attained."—Observer.
" GabrieVß treatise should be read by all who value health;
their system will save much money and more annoyance."—
Morning Herald.
For obvious reasons it is necessary particularly to note the
name, and that the entrance to the city establishment is up
the private passage between Benson, the silversmith's, and
he State Fire Insurance Office.— Liverpool, 134, Duke-street

FROM THE GAZETTE OF LAST EVENING.

FOREIGN-OFFICE, AUG 7.

The Queen has been pleased to approve of M. Jules Car-
ron as Consul at Edinburgh for his Majesty the Emperor
of the French.

BOARD OF TRADE, WHITEHALL, AUG. 10,
The Right Hon. the Lords of the Committee of Privy
Council for Trade and Plantations have received a copy of
a notice issued by the Portuguese Board of Health, declar-
ing the port of Malaga to be considered free from cholera
morbus.

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.

KENSINGTON GARDENS.

In the good old days, " the fool of the family"
was put into the Church. 111-natured people pre-
tend that the Chief Commissionership of Works is
a providential institution for the disposal of the
" weak brother" of an Administration. The com-
plement of her Majesty's Government, as of her
Majesty's ships is made up of idlers and non-com-
batants, not of executive officers only ; and the
Office of Works is a department essigned to the
most agreeable and useless class of functionaries.
A man may possess all the instincts of an orna-
mental gardener or a farm steward, without owe-
ing any other qualification for responsible employ-
ment. The philosopher and wit of a fashionable
tea party may be great in a small circle, and a
petit maitre may be a prodigy of wisdom in a draw-
ing-room, but take him out of his element and he
sinks intd a frivolous and vexatious bore. Now
there is nut a word to be said against the selection
of Mr. Cowper, as a genial dilettante gentleman
who by universal consent was to make a model
Minister of parks, and gardens, and public places.
It is Mr. Cowper's misfortune rather than his fault
that—in a very small way—he enjoys the reputa•
tion of a bel esprit. Hence the ambition to break
through the silence which surrounds the services of a
Commissioner of Works, and' the determination at
all risks to make a noise about his name. It was
not enough to purge the Serpentine by a Niagara
of sewage ; something must be done before the
end of the Session to convince an indifferent
public of the undeveloped capacities for mischief and
annoyance of that enlightened despotism, the Chief
Commissionership of Works. The " encroachment
on the privacy of Kensington-gardens," which has
not only stirred the wrath of all the metropolitan
vestries, bat mated the equanimity of the great tax-
paying and long-suffering public, is, we are fully
persuaded, nothing but a freak of restless vanity on
the part of an amiable and intelligent, though
flighty and fussy chief of a department too limited
for his energy and importance, This we believe to
be the head and front of the Chief Commissioner's
offence, against which we are receiving daily letters
enough to fill our columns ; but as Mr. Cowper has
obtained an indemnity for his railings and hurdles
from the rump of a derelict House at a morning sit-
ting in August, and as, moreover, he is supported by
the bullying impudence of powerful backers out of
doors, we must say our say again upon this unwar•
rantable and intolerable proceeding. We learn from
a very old proverb -what class of equestrians it is
that rides with the most reckless disregard to conse-
quences. Perhaps it is the " beggar-on-horseback"
interest that a great mounted contemporary repre-
sents on this question. It is a stale trick enough to
set up an "Aunt Sally" in the shape of" aristocratic
invasion of the rights of the people, 'a bugbear which
it may be convenient to set up because it is so easily
knocked down. But no reasonable being who has
by speech, or letter, or petition, protested against
Mr. Cowper's horse-ride, has charged the " aris-
tocracy" as a body with a wilful and wanton blun-
der, repugnant alike to the tact, the spirit, and the
liberal social feeling of English gentlemen of an-
cient rank and large estate. Assuredly there is
nothing of the grand seigneur in the air of Mr.
Cowper's patrons and apologists. It is not the
country gentlemen who have parks, and fields, and
gardens of their own, and whose acquaintance with
the saddle is not confined to a park-hack in Rotten-
row, that wout.d grudge the quiet possession of Ken-
sington-gardens to the vast numbers of their unpri-
vileged fellow-citizens who are condemned to
trudge afoot through life, to dwell the long year
through in weary streets, and seldom to get a
glimpse of leaves and grass, except in those public
parks which, according to Mr. Cowper, are not
parks, and in those gardens which, by the same
authority, are not gardens. It is our fate to be
divided in politics as far as the poles asunder
from Lord John Manners ; but we do him sim-
ple justice when we say that we are not sur-
prised at his generous defence of the rights of
the public, whose comfort and happiness Mr.
Cowper and his friends hold so cheap. Whatever
may be, to our thinking, Lord John Manners's
failings as a politician, he is too genuine an aris-
tocrat to abet a paltry encroachment which a
purse-proud epicier might be ashamed to commit.
No; it is not the much-abused aristocracy, in any
authorised sense of the word, for whose favour
Mr. Cowper has catered and canvassed so frivo-
lously and so unscrupulously—it is the great Snob
leer-est—the brilliant Stuckupocracy, the power-
ful tribe of Fungi, to whose vulgar love of osten-
tation he has pandered, and whose patronising com-
placency he has conci,liuted with evident success.
It is the Snobs, who claim the supreme right to
prance and caracol before astonished nurserymaids,
and to display the horsemanship of the haute ecole
to admiring women and helpless children, under the
shade of Kensington-gardens, among the quiet
haunts of the poor, the sickly, and the infirm, and
who cannot be content with the stare, the blaze,
and the scandal of Rotten-row.

To the great Snob interest, however, it is only
fair to add another, to whose influence, in a ques-
tion of this nature, no social reformer can be in-
sensible.. And Mr. Cowper, we know, is a social
reformer. We speak of course of the great Demi-
rep interest; of what at Paris might be denomi-
nated the Rigolboche persuasion. With these commie
it en faut members of society Rotten-row is some-
thing more than an institution—it is a business;
and as Mr. Cowper is also a sanitary reformer, it
may be that the shady avenue of the Gardens is
purposely surrendered to the suitors of Thais and
Lais in order to purify our moral Serpentine by
diverting it into more sequestered paths. We are
anxious to imagine the best we can for Mr. Cow-
per; for nothing can be flimsier than the imperti-
nence of his apologists, while nothing can be more
audacious. One contemporary, for instance, who
mounts an uncommonly tell animal on this occa-
sion, pretends to assume that people who walk in
the Gardens and desire to retain their quiet enjoy-
ment, know nothing of the question; that a
few families in the surrouding parishes are the only
people who visit the Park and have a monopoly of
its enjoyment. These are pretty strong assump-
tions ; but what shall we say of an attempt to re-
verse the question at issue by representing the en-
croachment of a few hundred riders on the Gardens
as a popular advantage—as a concession of Mr.
Cowper s, in the interest and for the sake of the
general public ? So that according to this defini-
tion " the public" are the few who ride, and the
" aristocrats" are the many who walk. This may
be a capital joke for a mounted cynic ; but Mr.
Cowper will do well to listen to less dangerous
logic, though it be conveyed in the plain language
of a sermo pedestris. After all, the Chief Commis-
sioner has probably achieved his object; his lofty
soul has emerged from the mists of a popularity too
like indifference, and has bravely confronted a rising
storm of public dissatisfaction and disgust at an
encroachment which was not called for, is not
wanted, is of a doubtful advantage to very few, of
pasitive annoyance to numbers. The petitions
against it do not of course come from Cumberland,
or Connaught, or Caithness, but only from Pad-
dington, Marylebone, and Kensington; whilst the
petitions in its behalf are actually touted for, as we
are confidently assured, by paid servants of the
public. Meanwhile the avenue from Kensington
to Bayswater, between the Broad walk and the
Round Pond, is already a quagmire, and the foot-
paths are becoming a labyrinth of sheep-peas.--
Daily News.