The Sun.
London, England, 1869-07-16 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, JULY 16, 1869,

and Sudden Death. There is a very little man,
with a particularly lively, jerky sort of gait. He has
been christened " the Flea." A man who looks like a
hideous caricature of a Jew, with the most forbidding
countenance ever seen, and a young woman by his side—
never the same young woman two weeks together—is
known as " Satan." He is a money-lender, and his
average rate of interest for loans on good security is not
more than 150 per cent. All sorts of good wishes attend
this gentleman as he takes his fair companion out for an
airing. This class of frequenters is increasing, while the
country squires and the young bucks of the very first
water seem to be deserting the Row. The Regency is re-
turning upon us in an aggravated form.
The huge pile of scaffolding which the frequenters of
Kensington Gardens have noticed for some time past will
soon have given place to a colosseum-looking building,
known as the "Central Hall of Arts and Sciences."
In the foundation of this structure 2,000 tons of concrete
have been used, and the whole building will absorb six
million bricks. The organ will be the largest in the world.
Who is to pay for hall and organ and who will use them
are matters not yet at all clear.
That victim of the aristocracy, Mr. Grenville Murray,
is to be sat upon at an inquest instituted by the Conser-
vative Club, whereof Mr. Murray is a bright particular
star. But the club will, I believe, concern itself less with
the Carington affair than with the reason which led to
Mr. Murray's dismissal from his post as Consul at Odessa.
That the season is drawing to a close there are evident
signs and tokens. The picture galleries are announcing
the day of their closing, and actors are taking their
benefits. To-night, by the way, John Parry gives a fare-
well performance at the Lyceum, which has been reopened,
after being shut for many months. Before Londoners
leave town they will have an opportunity of seeing
something new in the way of statues. Yesterday, as I
was passing through Trafalgar-square, I noticed
some figure being erected on the only one vacant
of the four pedestals in the Square. The figure was veiled,
but I fancy, from the glimpse that I got of it between the
canvas, that it was fearfully and wonderfully made, as
all our statues are.

I was at Warwick a few days ago, and had the misfor-
tune to go over the grand old Castle with the worst
cicerone that it has ever been my bad fortune to come
across. " Very fine Murillo ; Rubens much admired ;
Limoge enamel, the best in England ; the ceiling ; the
mirrors, the furniture," and so on, gabble, gabble, as fast
as she could speak, so that I came away almost as
ignorant as I went in. Why don't our great peers get rid
of these pests?

Poor old Jerdan has gone at last. Some fifty years ago
he was editing the Sun, of which be was partly a pro-
prietor. It was, however, in connection with the Literary
Gazette that be was best known. His autobiography,
published some seventeen years ago, was an amusing
work. He was writing to the last, and in his 87th
year be was contributing to Fraser. Another
notability has been taken from us this week—Lord
Taunton, the Henry Labouchere of days gone by.
He did what, I suspect, no other nobleman has done. He
paid back £lOO,OOO compensation money which the Bristol
and Exeter Railway Company had paid his father for
cutting through his lands. Lord Taunton had the honesty
to see that his estate was enhanced in value by far more
than the ordinary price of the land taken from him.
The Khedive of Egypt means that the opening of the
Suez Canal shall be a great event. He has given invita-
tions to a large number of London journalists to he pre-
sent, and some of them are likely to accept the offer.
Let me commend to your readers two books which II
have just been reading with great interest ; for light read-
ing, Walter Thornbury's " Vicar's Courtship," a novel
full of incident ; for grave reading, Mr. Stopford Brooke's
Sermons, which are equally- full of original thought.

MISCELLANEOUS NEWS.

Tur, POLITICAL CRISIS.

At last the Times is compelled to confess that there
is no chance for concurrent endowment. Behind a
cloud of words it conceals the retreat which was
inevitable from the first. It still likes the principle,
just as the men on board the Tarshish ship liked
Jonah, who was no doubt very good company. for
all that the prophet had to go overboard when the
storm came. So is it with the principle. It
is, says the Times, a good principle; it " marks a
certain progress towards religious progress on the
part of the Lords. But "no change of front can
be effected in the face of the enemy." It might
have been explained to the constituencies at the last
election, and the constituencies which vehemently
repudiated Lord Mayo's proposal to level up would,
the Times thinks, have approved Lord Stanhope's
proposal. It is all the fault of the bishops that this
was not done. If instead of pronouncing at St.
James's Hall against any alteration of the status of
the Irish Church, they had but gone about the country
pointing out the supreme advantages of giving glebes
and manses all the way round, the position would,
at the present moment, be different. " However, it is
now perhaps too late for this via media, and with it
must assuredly be abandoned the hope of re-endow-
ing the disestablished Church directly or indirectly
out of funds declared to be State property." The
Times then goes on to tell the Lords, whom it has
hitherto encouraged to resist the Government, what
they must do. We need not go into details. The
various points insisted upon are, of course by a mere
fortuitous coincidence, just those which Mr. Glad-
stone had previously made known he would insist
upon, just those which the Liberal journals generally
have insisted upon. The leading jouinal has come
to the same conclusion by a rather roundabout way,
and considerably after time. But then it is "
leading journal.