The Sun.
London, England, 1869-03-27 00:00:00

LONDON, 542 URDAY, MARCH 27, 1869.

Reading the particulars of the Demonstration yes-
terday, in Trafalgar-square, in honour of the late
Mr. ERNEST JONES, is very much like reading a pas-
sage selected haphazard from " Hone's Everyday
Book." There were imitation fasces, there, sur-
mounted by red caps of Liberty. There was a dis-
reputable mock clergyman, wearing a dog's-eared
band and a battered college-cap, attended by his
clerk, and offering up, for the dole of a few pence,
a comic prayer or two from a burlesque liturgy.
There were itinerant vendors of cheap creature-com-
forts in the shape of oranges and gingerbread. There
were distributors of religious tracts—some of them
tridding milk-and-water—some of them breathing
fire-and-brimstone. There were specimens of all the
ragamuffins and gallimaufry to be found in the back-
slums, and rookeries, and thieves' quarters of the
metropolis—what T. PERCY JONES, otherwise W.
EDMONSTOUNE AYTOUN, sang of long ago in his great
serio-comic drama of " Firmillian " as—
" The tag and rag and bob-tail of the town !"

Extempore preachers were there to enforce (?),
in the homeliest phrase and with the idioma-
tic force of the merest vulgarisms, the aw-
ful truths of Holy Writ. There were extra. trum-
pery, Political Orators, "stumping" after our Eng-
lish fashion—that is, at the street corners, and not
in the recently peopled clearings of the back-woods.
There were " roughs " ad libitum—" cads " unnum-
bered—" duffers " in singular (one can hardly say
pleasing) variety—intermingled .with many of those
obscene forms only seen in public places and in broad
daylight on some exceptional and wholly abnormal
occasions, such as had, yesterday, as it happened, called
them all together ! Of all good days in the year—on
Good Friday ! A day that would have been altogether
incomprehensible, as having been thus selected for a
so-called popular demonstration only for the circum-
stance that by our bewildering national habit this
austerest of purely and essentially Christian anni-
versaries—Good Friday—is the day beyond all other
days in the whole year for "an Outing !" If on
finove7otThoer dss,paylcolcu,tanodf
uthAeßntyli,reweithhunadllred theainrdsixty-
belong-
ings, make a day of • it (to say nothing of a night at
the close of it)—they do, as a rule, almost, it would
seem, as a necessity, on Good Friday. There is cer-
tainly one "institution" seemingly in some measure
to sanctify it, we are left to presume,—the salt
fish appearing then upon every English dinner
table, as on Ash-Wednesday—just as inevitably
as the sugar-frosted plum-cake on Tafelf th -
Night, as the pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, or as
the mincepies at Christmas. Barring the, in some
mysterious way, sacred significance, we suppose, of
the salt-fish with its accompaniment of egg-sauce,
Good Friday, year by year, is chiefly remarkable
here in England as a day for—what the working
classes so perfectly well know, and so curiously enjoy '
after theii fashion, as—" an Outing." This year
London had the privilege of celebrating Good Fri-
day in an additional, and as we have said in a
strangely exceptional manner, by having the " finest
site in Eutope," as the late Sir ROBERT PEEL once
called it, made the rendezvous for all the Chartist
enthusiasts and Fenian sympathisers in the
metropolis, in honour of one of the most respectable
champions of the former, himself but very recently
deceased, to wit, the late Mr. ERNEST JONES, son of
the late Colonel JONES, godson of ERNEST, KING OF
HANOVER, a barrister of the Middle Temple, a
cultivated man-of-letters, and, therefore, in other
words, au educated gentleman. To honour the me-
mory of Mr. ERNEST JONES, the rabble of London
were gathered together yesterday in Trafalgar-square
—yesterday, being Good Friday—there to listen,
among other things, to an oration delivered by Mr G.
J. HOLYOAKE, who, if anything at all is kno rn of him,
is known most certainly as what is- called a Free
Thinker, or, in other words, as an avowed
unbeliever in Christianity. Consequently— a
most decorous, and suitable, and appro-
priate demonstration, to have been held in the most
conspicuous public place in London—on Good Friday !
There is one consideration which almost reconciles
us to the remembrance of this same most extraordi-
nary demonstration. And it is this, that it is pro-
bably the last we shall hear of anything whatever of
the kind. The Reform L3ague has recently evi-
denced its own keen sense, at last, of the fact that the
time has gone 123, for the continuance any longer of
this description or species of political tom-foolery by re-
ceiving and accepting the resignation of its Presi -
dent, Mr. EDMUND BEALBS, M.A. That of itself has
been a sufficiently significant Sign of the Times.
The failure, the notorious and utterly contemptible
failure, of Mr. FINLEN'S last demonstration was an-
other. And now yesterday's —Good Friday's—de-
monstration, in honour of the memory of Mr.
ERNEST JONES, is the last, and not by any means
the least significant among them all. The whole
thing is ridiculous. And it is not only ridiculous, it
is disreputable. London has had more than enough
of it. From first to last it has been a public nuisance.
For the prevention of its recurrence, we look now to
Mr. BRUCE and to Colonel HENDERSON.

SOME fifteen years ago a cutting article appeared
in the short-lived " Oxford University Essays,"
decrying the system of education pursued at the
London University, and magnifying that pursued at
Oxford. The writer of the article was, of course, an
Oxonian, and has since become known as a brilliant,
and yet painstaking, historian. Mr. FROUDE, the
writer to whom we refer, has just delivered his address
as Rector of the University of St. Andrew's. It was elo-
quent and earnest, as any words of his were sure to be.
But there is one point specially noticeable in it.
Mr. FROUDE no longer holds up Oxford as the
typical university. He has foundhis modelnorth of the
Tweed. In fact, he seems to have been smitten with
that love for everything Scottish which now seems
to be the prevailing fashion. It is not so many
years ago that the Scot was the Southron's butt.
His poverty, his breechless legs, his snuff-laden
nose, his clannishness and nepotism, his in-
sensibility to wit, his love of getting on,
were all stock subjects for the English j ester. But
now all is changed. Mr. BRIGHT points Churchmen
to Scotland for an example of what the voluntary
principle can do for religion ; Sir ROBERT COLLIER
borrows his Bankruptcy Bill from Scotland ; Scotch
bulling has long been held a pattern for English
bankers to imitate ; Scotchmen have long been the
principal rulers of India ; Scotch engineers are con-
structing half the railways of Europe; BURNS is a
far greaterpoet than BYRON ; ADAM SMITH is the father
of political economy ; Sir WIL
chief of 'philosophers ; Mr. cART:i
L ElTiAsMtihLeTporNiniseethoef
historiansfound;
that t the e
he author onro
eo ornf he
i Scotch Reform
Dill
ptoind householders to
deal with north of the Tweed ; Scotland has already
solved the great question of popular education which
has so long troubled, and is still troubling, England ;
and the Scotch universities are the only insti-
tutions of the kind which answer to their name by
offering instruction to the poorest student. In this
last statement Mr. FROUDE is fully borne out by the
report of the royal commissioners on endowed schools.
In fact, no one who knows anything of our universities
can doubt it. At an English university, says
the distinguished Oxonian Rector of St. Andrew's,
the furniture of a noble earl's room may cost, includ-
ing the pictures of opera-dancers anti racehorses and