The Sun.
London, England, 1869-04-23 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, APRIL 23, 1869.

TILE " NATION" AND ITS CORRESPON-
DENTS ON 7HE ALABAMA CLAIMS.

(From the Anglo-American Tinzes)

There was a remark in the Saturday Review last
week which strikingly illustrates its untruthfulness
when writing on anything in the United States.
The English public do not know the American press,
whose leading papers even, are seldom to be met with
at the great clubs and libraries of London. The
Saturday Review can with impunity state the tone
of that press as far as its own readers are con-
cerned, just as it might tell anything of the political
principles and the moral depravities of the chief advi-
ser of the ruler of Timbuctoo. What it persistently
states, and what we, writing for men who know
these papers, persistently deny, k that the Ameri-
can press gives utterance to unrestrained malignity
against England. Last week the Review, singling
out the Nation as a journal intellectually on the foot-
ing of the best in Europe, says it can never allude
to England without falling into hysterics. As these
hysterics have all been reproduced in the Anglo-
ilmeriean Times, our readers have had the oppor-
tunity of judging for themselves, and as many of
the class for which the Saturday Review writes, show
an inclination to test the truth of its remarks on
America by a reference to our columns, we will
continue our summary of the controversy lately
carried on in the Nation on the Alabama Claims,
which will give them further means of ascertaining
what the Saturday Review* considers Anglophobia
in a New York paper. " America," in reply to
the letters of " Integrity," and " M.," denounc-
ing the mode of reparation he advocated, says
—" England may be assured that a large num-
ber of Americans, weary of her bad faith, quibbles,
and delay, are prepared for exact retaliation, and
ready to do, delay, permit, obstruct, foster, and
abet belligerents against England, precisely as she
delayed, permitted, obstructed, fostered, and abetted
the proceedings of Mr. Laird." Belligerency once
recognized, nothing could prevent the hostile use of
American ships by the wearied holders of Alabama
Claims, and it is a mis-statement to assert
that an adequate proffered compensation had
been refused, as England had never proffered it.
" Ile pays twice," says America' " who pays
quickly ; and a frank atonement from England for
her wrong, would have been accepted with a friendly
disposition to condone the irreparable injury. Hope
defer red has made the heart sick ; and many Ameri-
cans are ready to say to England, unless she at once
acts like the gallant old England of the first Lord
St. Germain's times and temper :—' We were strong
and you hated us ; we became weak and you in-
sulted and assailed us as the late United States of
America.' You prematurely recognized our rebels,
who by your own precedents in regard to Rochelle
were your enemies on land and your pirates at sea,
because they were such to us, a friendly power.
Your hasty act of unfriendliness gave a maritime
status to pirates and encouraged blockade running,
prolonged a disastrous war, filled our homes with a
hundred thousand more of dead, swept our com-
merce from the seas, and brought our flag under
the deep humiliation of seeking British cover to
avoid corsairs that your own loudly-cheered mem-
ber of Parliament had built. We were too much
oppressed by a gigantic rebellion to do more than
protest against your wrong doing. It might have
been manly' and ' chivalric' to add you to our open
enemies at your strongest, and our weakest hours.
But this nation knew too much of war to court
defeat." In the next number appeared a letter from
11. Lee Warner, from Rugby, England, in reply to
" America's" first letter. He says the Washington
Government proclaimed a blockade, and because
England accepted the state of things thus declared
America is angry. The Alabama Claims proper,
England has consented to pay. Why, asks the
Englishman, has the Senate rejected the Conven-
tion its accredited Minister was sent to England to
negotiate. " Are we to receive him with open arms,
as the representative of old friends and near rela-
tions from whom we have been temporarily
estranged, or to say that we will not make a treaty
with a man who obviously does not represent
the real feeling of his country ? If the latter,
we insult your representative ; if the former,
we run the chance of being snubbed in our
turn by the rejection of our treaty." 'lle was
either America's Representative, and the Senate
was bound to accept his act, or else to have
recalled him during its operation, as he must have
telegraphed for instructions, or he was not sent out
in good faith, and the English who accepted his
compliments as your Representative have been pur-
posely insulted. Then Mr. ',Varner puts the same,
question to the Nation that the Pall Mall Gazette
asked it last Monday. " Perhaps an illustration
will help our mutual understanding. The United
States are not only at peace with Spain, but have
only quite recently expressed strong sympathy with
its present Government. Yet before Spain pro-
claims the blockade of Cuba, you have hastened to
promise recognition of belligerent rights to the
rebels there. Is this justice? A long-lived nation
can wait for ample justice,' as your correspondent
says. But justice is not ample unless it is imme-
diate and consistent." The editor, in reply, said
ntcthuioaartlet.nstoohteTnlifihumeenahatpiion r
proclamation
ohn
neloeafansti recognitionntei ofobn o A maesr i
tc
ha
ant ii rt r iwt an ts i opt;
nwl an s-
-7as is
blockade
huaedd bbeefeourerethneeivoeftid-,
or Lord Russell had had an opportunity of hearing
Mr. Adams on the condition and prospects of the in-
surrection. " That the proclamation would have
had to be issued eventually, we have ourselves no
doubt, but the unprecedented haste iu issuing it
was, or is taken as, a proof of animus; in other
words, as an indication of unfriendly feeling."
Americans recognize England's right to choose its
time, but likewise claim the right to take offence if
the time chosen be a manifest sign of hostility. 'We
were not angry, says the editor, because we were
taken at our word, but because England did not
wait to hear what our word was. The majority of
the Senate and of the public think the Convention
has the fatal defect of not providing proper ma-
chinery for the redress of what Americans consider,
and Englishmen now acknowledge, to have been a
great wrong. Mr. Lee Warner:is reminded that the
dispatch of the Alabama from an English port was
followed by years of pillage, accompanied by the ap-
plause of the English press and the most influential
portion of English society, coupled with hearty
abuse of the North. We bate to recall these things,
adds the Editor ; but when pressed for an explana-
tion of American irritation we have to do it. No
calm observer of the course pursued by leading
Englishmen on this question, in the years 1862-3-4,
but foresaw years of mutual hate and recrimina-
tion, and the "ignorant rant" of the Lairds, the
Roebucks, the Times, and the Saturday Review are
especially mentioned. Perhaps this is the hysterics
to which the Saturday Review alludes. The Nation
then contrasts the feteing of Mr. Johnson with the
attitude of English society towards the American

Representative five short years ago, and English-

men must be sensible that the contrast is little to

their advantage. Finally, Mr. Lee Warner assumes
that belligerent rights have been promised to Cuban
rebels, while no such promise has been made, nor is
it likely to be made, until the Government are in
possession of information which will justify such a
course. In the next issue of the Nation, that is on
the Ist April, the following letter appeared from
Professor Goldwin Smith, with the Editor's remarks
thereon :--.

Sir,—lt is with unfeigned hesitation and diffidence that,
as a stranger resident in this country, I say a word on any
question connected with its public affairs. But lam
moved to do E o by your reference to the impression pre-
valent among Americans, and apparently shared by you,
thr.t the time chosen by the British Government for the
recognition of the Conference as belligerents was a mani-
fest sign of hostility to the Union, and may be taken rs
evidence of animus in interpreting the conduct of the same
Government on other. occasions. That an irresponsible
though largo and pow, rful party in England was actuated
by the bitterest hostility to the Union of course cannot be
denied. But I speak of the responsible Government of
the country. As one of those who believed that the cause
of English liberty was bound up with that of the Union,
I jealously watched, in the interest of both causes, the
actions of our Government. Though perfectly independ-
ent of it, and on many questions opposed to it, 1 had per-

* " The Nation, which stands on the intellectual level
of the best European periodicals, descends into a blind
and hysterical fury whenever it refers to England."—
Saturday Rake, April 10.

sonally good opportunities of informing myself as to the
real disposition of its members. And it is my firm con-
viction that its settled policy from the outset and through-
out the struggle was strict neutrality, practical as well as
legal ; and that if it erred (as I am myself inclined to think
that it did) in its choice of the time for the recognition of
the Confederates as belligerents, the error was the result
not of any sinister bias, but of misconception alone. Of
this I assure you upon my honour. My testimony is that
of r n Englishman. But it is that of an Englishman whose
feeling on this subject was as keen as that of au American,
and who has as little inducement as any American can
have to defend against truth and right the conduct of the
governing class of England.—l am your obedient servant,
GOLDWIN SMITH.

Cornell University, Ithaca, March 27.
IWo did not ourselves believe that the hasty recogni-
tion of the Confederates was due to animus. We have
always supposed that it was one of Lord Russell's little
bursts of blundering impetuosity; but it can surprise no-
body that it should, when English society went over to
the Confederate cause a year later, have been set down as
the first expression of a prevalent feeling of hostility.
Americans naturally, and iudeed inevitably, viewed the
first official act of the Government in connection with its
subsequent official acts, and viewed all acts of the Go-
vernment in connection with the state of public feeling,
as revealed by the more influential portion of the press,
and by the tone of conversat:on in society. As far as our
own limited experience went the English public was in a
state of doubt and bewilderment until the battle of Bull
Run. By that time the despatches of Mr. Seward, and
the articles of a portion of the New York press, showing
first that slavery had nothing to do with the contest; and,
secondly, that the right of the Federal Government to co-
erce was at least doubtful, coupled with the appearance of
Mr. James Spence's " great work," showing the rotten-
ness of Northern society and the madness of the North-
ern enterprise—his statements, too, receiving a kind of
confirmation from Federal reverses in the field—turned
the scale against the North, and prepared the way for the
insane demonstrations of hostility which marked the years
1862-3-4. Already in 1862 a man who ventured to main-
tain in most English circles that the cause of the North
was a justifiable one, and would probably succeed, was
apt to be set down as a mixture for the silly crea-
ture and low fellow. The best he could hope for was
to be treated as an amiable enthusiast. Now, those who
were on the spot, as Mr. Goldwin Smith was, and, above
all, who enjoyed as he did exceptional opportunities of
watching the various stages in the growth of English
opinion about the war, and the influence of "society" on
the Government in its dealings with the belligerents, can
readily draw the line between the mistakes of the Go-
vernment and its wilful wrong-doing. But it is easy to
see how and why the American public, looking on from a
distance, saw in the whole course of the Government and
people one transaction only, and found in the hasty re-
cognition of the state of war an explanation of the escape
of the Alabama ; and in the enthusiasm for Semmes, and
the toleration and even applause of Laird, and the monu-
ment-building to Stonewall Jackson (a foreign general
fighting for slavery), support for the belief which to-day
is as strong as ever, that the Alabama was employed by
Liverpool merchants, with the connivance of the Govern-
ment, to sweep American shipping from the seas, and
transfer the American carrying trade to English bottoms.
A more maddening belief could hardly get into the heads
of a commercial people, but there it is. Professor Goldwin
Smith did his part in fighting against the folly which put
it there ; but wo doubt if he, or anybody else who has the
faculty of seeing the two sides of a question, can think
the present state of mind of the American public anything
wonderful. It is not, we admit, the most exalted or
philosophical or Christian frame of mind; but there is
something thoroughly human about it, and, in our opinion,
time will change it.—ED. Nationd
As the Saturday Review has selected the Nation, we
ask if there is any hysterical hatred of England in
these remarks? And we honestly state that we
have picked out the most severe that we have seen
in that paper, after a careful perusal, almost from
its start.

UNITED STATES ORDNANCE.

The following is the testimony of Norman Wiard
before the Joint Committee on Ordnance in answer
to a question by Senator Cameron. It bears out
the Joint Committee of Congress in their recent
Report on Ordnance, which we summarized. It
must be accepted, we presume, as the testimony of
a rival inventor ; but its value is shown by the
Report of the Committee above alluded to, which
will be found in our issue of March 27.
"1 am familiar with the calibres of our guns ; and when
I relate some of the facts within my knowledge, I think
you will agree with me that our ordnance departments
have got our small arms, Artillery, and guns into most
reprehensible confusion, for want of uniformity in calibre
and ammunition. The ordnance departments of France
and England have no 3reater differences embodiedin the
systems they have adopted than there is between the two
branches of our service. The calibres, models, chambers,
and ammunition of the navy are utterly unlike those
adopted fer the army. The navy rifled 12-pounder boat
howitzer has a calibre of 3 4-10 inches, while the army
12-pounder rifled guns are of the calbres of 3 inches,
3 2-10 inches, 3 67400 inches, and 3 80-100 inches. The
navy 12-pounder has a parabolic form of chamber, while the
army gun has either no chamber or it is cycloidal. The
navy 12-pounder smooth-bore, although of the • same
calibre as the army gun, has a different form of
chamber. Apparently eachl of these chambers has
been devised to prevent the use of navy ammu-
nition in the army gun or army ammunition in the
navy gun. The models of the two guns are entirely dif-
ferent, and neither will go on the other's carriage, the
army gun being furnished with trunnions and the navy
gun having the loop and loop-bolt of the old* carronade.
The sights are of an entirely different kind in the two
guns, and so graduated as to make it impossible for a
navy gunner to use an army gun, or an artillerist of the
army to use a navy gun for an emergency—one being
graduated to seconds of time, and the other to degrees of
elevation. The 20-pounders and.3o-pounders of the navy
are different from time army gunzeof the same kind, the
navy guns having a shark's mouth for the breeching,
which is not on the army guns. The navy Dahlgren
20-pounder, 30-pounder, and 50-pounder are of a different
model, calibre, form of chamber, and kind of rilline•
from any other gun in the navy or army, all purposely
different, seemingly, to insure the use of a certain kind
of projectile which Captain Dahlgren claimed to have
invented, being essentially the same as the so-called Dyer
projectile, but which was found latterly to have been
used and patented by others long before. The Dahlgren,
like the Dyer, was abandoned after large numbers of
them had been produced. The Dahlgren 50-pounder has
a calibre of 5 1-10th inches, as if the inventor, from pau-
city of ideas, could only produce a new diameter of calibre
which no other person Lad thought of. The army 3-inch
gun, it has been said, was rifled in a peculiar way to adapt
it to the Dyer projectile, which, being condemned, it was
happily found could be used with the Hotchkiss projectile.
The navy have, then, a 60-pounder Parrott, adopted, as
shown by the lucid explanation of Captain Wise Chief
of
Ordnance, so as to have something between thes6-pounder
and the 100-pounder; and no other reason is given for its
adoption ! The navy has VIII inch, IX-inch, XI-inch,
and VIII-inch smooth-bores, as if the navy chose odd
numbers of inches for luck. The army smooth-bores
are 6-inch (32-pounders), 8-inch (64-pounders), and 10-
inch (130-pounders). The navy chose the old Roman
numerals to describe the calibre of their guns, probably
because the army had some fanciful pre-emption right to
the more common figures. In the guns adopted and
actually issued to service, in the two branches of the ser-
vice, there is nut a single example of uniformity, in either
rifle or smooth-bore, in 20-calibre adopted of those below
the calibre of the 30-pounder. I append a tabulated state-
ment of calibre models, weights, chambers, and charges.
How long it has taken to complete organizations of
ordnance officers, educated at the public expense, ex-
perimenting, with the Treasury of the United States
to pay the bills ; what the cost of the effort has been
in money; how much treasure has been wasted in fur-
nishing the arms to the extent to Which they have been
supplied after they were adopted; how-much-life of citi-
zen soldiers and honour of the nation have been misdi-
rected and wasted, it is not within my power to even esti-
mate. 1 am, however, confident that no example of such
imbecility ( f invention and paucity of practical results ever
before attended an effort conducted with so much flourish,
on so grand and expensive a scale, with objects so im-
portant, and where the class of persons charged with so
important a branch of the public service for so many
critical years have brought their departments into such
confusion. They are entitled to the execrations of every
citizen, and would receive them, too, Were the facts known.
The calibres of small-arms and the ammunition for them
—although it would seem impossible, so minute must be
the differences where the greatest is .70 of an inch—are as
diverse as in the field, siege, and heavy guns, and similar
want of uniformity exists. In order to find divisions for
sufficient diversity, the dimensions of calibre are given
in hundredths or thousandths of an inch, and our muskets
and carbines alone range from .40 to .69. We have an
Enfield rifle of .57 and a Springfield of .58, but no instru-
ments common in the hands of inspectors or soldiers for
determining the difference. Hence, during the war, the
army has frequently found itself on the field of battle
facing the enemy with ammunition one-hundredth of an
inch too large to be inserted in the gun. About 20 dif-
ferent calibres of ammunition were furnished the Burnside
expedition, from .44 to .69 ; and, lest one transport carry-
ing all of one calibre should be lost, each vessel had to be
supplied with an assorted cargo made up of certain pro-
portions of the whole. It was the same with the Banks
expedition, making it necessary to stow away the cargo
with considerable skill, so that any of the various kinds
could be got at upon the recurrence of an emergency —a
prelithinary caution likely to be overlooked in the hurry
of the embarkation of an army ; the consequences of neg-
lecting which—end no cautionary order by the Ordnance
Department is given on such an occasion—are easy to con-
ceive. • A great many hundred thousands of Springfield
muskets are now to be sacrificed to uniformity of calibre.
The Ordnance Department in this, as in the question
whether it was better to have breech or muzzle-loaders,
were undecided during the war, only concluding their
cogitations when the emergency had: passed. In 1861, when
every tyro knew that a breech-loader was best—in fact,
nobody but an idiot of an officer of our Ordnance Depart-
ment would ever decide otherwise—the Chief of Ord-
nance of the United States held and advocated that " a
Harper's Ferry smooth-bore muzzle-loading gun, with
buck and ball, was the best arm that could be placed in
the hands of a soldier ;" and asserted would have no such
gun as a breech-loader in service, because it would re-
quire a male to carry the ammunition for each soldier—it
would be shat away so fast! Now it is proposed to alter
all the Springfield rifles on hand to breech-loaders; end
in order to got uniformity of calibre. i.e., to have the
musket conform to the calibre of the cal bine, the barrel
is to be reamed out, another barrel insulted, the new
lining is to bored out straightened, and rifled ; the
breech of the barrel is to be bedeviled by the insertion of
a complication of parts, and thus a new gun is to be
made. But, gentlemen, this will cost more than to make
a new gun ; and that is not all, for although it is an ap-
proach to uniformity of calibre, it brings no nearer to
uniformity of ammunition than we were before, because
the carbine charge is not sufficient for the musket; and
when this improvement is adopted we shall have another
slight diversity, as in the case- of the Enfield of .57 and
the Springfield of .58, for the chamber of the carbine is
not long enough for the musket cartridge, and the car-
bine charge is not heavy enough for the breech-loading
musket.

METROPOLITAN GOSSlP.—Thursday.

The Ministerialists preserve an unbroken phalanx. The
prophecies so loudly, but perhaps not very confidently,
made a few weeks ago, that the "unnatural coalition"
between the Ultramontanes and the Nonconformists—
between Cardinal
_Cullen and Mr. Miall—would not last,
have, so far, been completely falsified, nor is there the
slightest prospect of their realisation. Night after night
Liberal M.P.'s answer to the Whip with an alacrity
which shews how determined they are that there shall
he no repetition of the blunders of three years ago. On
the other hand the Opposition are getting discouraged,
and the natural result of discouragement—absence—
follows. Mr. Disraeli was not present in the House on
Monday. He was kept away, his friends said, by a severe
attack of the gout. That inveterate foe of statesmen proved
akind friend on the present occasion, for it spared the Con-
servative leader the pain of three overwhelming defeats in the
course of one evening. The same foe shewed himself equally
kind by taking his departure as soon as that humane
purpose was served. Mr. Disraeli, the martyr to gout on
Monday, was the genial host to a very distinguished circle
of guests on We3nesday.
But while all is going so well with the Government as
regards its main business, there are murmurs of complaint
scarcely faint with respect to other matters. Mr. Lowe's
Budget does not improve upon closer acquaintance, and
French journalists, whose liberalism is undoubted, are
severely criticising the new Chancellor's coup de tla'atre.
Our own M.P.'s are grumbling against him because of the
way in which he treated them with regard to the site of the
new law courts. They ask, and with some show of justice,
why it was that at such a time as this, in which every
night is of importance, he allowed a whole evening
to be wasted in discussing the advantages and the dis-
advantages of the Carey-street site when the Government
had fully determined to abandon that site. They
say that these theatrical surprises can be bought too dear,
and they hope that Mr. Lowe will not make fools of them
again. Then there is perplexity, to use no stronger word,
at the seemingly erratic way in which the Home Secretary
counsels the exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy.
Men cannot understand the recent numerous reprieves,
especially that of Wiltshire, the atrocious monster who
first violated a woman and then murdered her. The
explanation which is to be asked for to-night by Sir George
Jenkinson may perhaps prove satisfactory ; it is certainly
expected with some anxiety by the friends of the Govern-
ment. But the most serious matter of all is the conduct
of the Government with regard to the Irish land question.
Even the Liberal journals, and especially the Times, have
severely censured the Cabinet for not introducing a
measure this session, or, failing that, adopting Lord
Clanricarde's. It is asserted that delay in this matter is
exceedingly dangerous, and that the Irish tenants and the
peasantry are entertaining the wildest expectations of what
the Government mean to do for them next year. Mean-
while these are resorting to agrarian murders in the hope
that they may frighten Ministers into a scheme of whole-
sale confiscation, believing that it was the Fenian outrages
which frightened them into disestablishing the Church.
Clearly this is a very undesirable state of things, and
ought not to be allowed to continue.
I have still nothing definite to tell you with respect to
the course which the Lords will take on the Irish Church
Bill. The rumour gains ground that they will
" transmogrify " it so effectually that the Commons will
refuse to accept it, and that then all the labour of this
session will have to be repeated next year. The large and
sustained majorities in the Lower House are scarcely
likely to encourage the Peers to such a course. More
probable is the supposition that amendments will be made
which the more Conservative Liberals will accept rather
than bring about a collision between the two Houses. Much
will depend upon the conduct of a few Whig peers like
Lords Russell, Grey, and Westbury. .All three of these,
it is pretty well known, are favourable to a concurrent
endowment of the three Churches. But it is early yet to
talk of what the Lords will do. The bill is not nearly
through the Commons, and as there are no fewer than
fifteen printed folios of amendment notices, it is clear that
the Lower House has plenty of work cut out for it. There
is a rumour that Mr. Gladstone will knock off the Whit-
sun holidays if these amendments are not quickly dis-
posed of.

We are now in the first spring of the picture season. Almost
every day there is some fresh exhibition either of a single
picture or of a collection. Among the first is " The Last
Supper," by Bonifacio, of Venice. It is a very fine work,
originally painted for the high altar at St. Mark's Cathe-
dral, more than 300 years ago. When Napoleon took to
ravaging the galleries and churches at the beginning of
the century this work was stowed away, and after the
conclusion of the great war was discovered
rolled up in a place of safety. It was then bought
by an Englishman, and remained in his possession until
his death, which has taken place quite recently. The pictire
is now for sale. It is in wonderful preservation, and, with

the exception of a few minor details, the colouring is Its
fresh and brilliant as though the work had been painted
but fifty years. To-morrow I go to the private view of a
painting which is likely to cause no small sensation, " The
Death of Rossini," by Gustave Dora. Friends who have
seen the work in the artist's" studio at Paris, speak
in the highest terms of it, and consider it his masterpiece.
Saturday is the private view ( f the Old Water Colour
Society. On Monday the National Gallery reopens, after
having been closed two months for extensive alterations,
caused by the removal of the Royal Academy to Burling-
ton House. On the following Saturday the Royal
Academy dinner takes place ; and on the Monday after-
wards all the world will be thronging to Piccadilly to see
the Academicians in their new quarters.
The Institute of Water Colours had its private view on
Saturday. The collection is a good average; but there
are few striking pictures. Mr. Corbould is nowhere this
year, and his "Joan of Arc " is one of his least satisfac-
tory works. Carl Werner has but few of his striking
Eastern interiors. Mr. Vacher has been in Italy and the
Tyrol, and his picture of Desenzano, on the Lago di
Garda, is a fine view of one of the most beautiful spots
in Italy. Mr. Tidy has but one, and that a not important
work. Mr. Prout has a few exteriors of Norman and Breton
churches, and Mr. Haghe some fine ecclesiastical interiors.
Mr. Philip Mitchell is better than usual, and his various
moorland pieces spew that land rather than water is
his proper element. Mr. Henry Warren's chief contribution
is a fine study of Eastern life, representing Abra-
ham's purchase of the Cave of Machpela-.1. Mr.
. .

Edmund Warren has four works, two of them harvest
scenes, one of them a study of beeches, for which
he is renowned, and the fourth sheep-washing. But
undoubtedly the gems of the exhibition are Guido Bach's
studies of heads, which are marvellously fine, and Hine's
landscapes, which are absolutely perfect in their
atmosphere. Mr. Mogford follows hard upon Mr. Hine's
heels. I must also notice Mr. Kilburne's clever picture
of " Enoch Arden," and Mr. Hayes's " Commencement of

a Gale," which is redolent of the sea.
The last flower show at the Royal Horticultural
Society's Gardens, in South Kensington, was unusually
poor. The attendance was small, and the people seemed
more bent in mobbing, after a genteel fashion, a young
Indian girl, dressed in gorgeous costume, than in listening
to the music or looking at the flowers. Loyalty, of the
old-fashioned . demonstrative kind, has disappeared
from the capital simultaneously with the Court. When
the " National Anthem " was played only about three bald-
headed old gentlemen, evidently of the straitest sect
of the Tories, uncovered. The rest of the people took no

notice. I suppose it is a case of out of sight, out of mind
though one would have thought that there, if anywhere

on that spot which is known as Albertland, and which
has been specially favoured by the Queen, the old marks
of homage to royalty would have been preserved. Close
_ .

behind the great conservatory rises the Central Hall of Arts
and Sciences, a building something like the Colisseum at
Rome, and not quite so useful. It is intended, I believe, to
give lectures in it on art and science, but the lecturer will

simply be inaudible in a space as large as the transept o 1

the Crystal Palace. Behind the hall rises Mr. Gilbert
Scott's great Gothic cross to the memory of " the great
and good," which has now attained its full height. It is
still very far from completion, for though a few coloured
marbles have been introduced, the greater part of the
decoration remains to be done. The presiding genius

is, of course, King Cole, C.B. He intends to remove, if
he can, all the Government departments of science and

art to this district. " Even the School of Mines will go
there in time, and the artisans of East London will have

to find their way to the extreme South-West. King Cole
is not a man to be baffled. Between him, on the one
hand, and Mr. Beresford Hope and the late Mr. Cook,
on the other, there was personally no love lost,
and the Saturday .Revictv was almost ferocious
in its attacks upon him. The Review put a stop
to the precious scheme by which some three or four
thousand pounds were to be paid by the nation to the
proprietors of the Times for advertising his Majesty's art
catalogue. But the irrepressible monarch is now quietly
advertising it in Notes and Queries, and as few persons see
that publication, no one has called attention to the matter.
One good thing the King has done. Ile has promoted a
series of lectures for ladies, which are now being delivered
at the South Kensington Museum by really first-class men.
The fee charged is small, and more than 100 ladies at
once joined the classes. It is better for them to be hearing
science in the Museum than playing at Mumbo-Jumbo in
the Gardens.

I have referred to the School of Mines. One of the most
gratifying features of this institution is the eagerness with
which working men attend lectures given by Professors
Huxley, Tyndall, Mr. Etheridge, and the other lecturers
attached to the institution. The room is crammed
every week with an attendance twice as large
as that which it will comfortably hold, So great

is the rush for tickets when they are given out
on Monday morning that policemen have to guard the
doors. lam sorry to say that this is not the only duty
which the police have to perform. There have been some
serious robberies from the Museum in Jermyn-street
lately. In some instances the thefts have been serious,
for the articles stolen have been not only intrinsically
valuable, but absolutely irreplaceable. Among these
is an ancient gold chain, worth as old gold
£2OO, but as an antiquity far more. Quite
recently, on one of the working men's evenings, a
beautiful tazza of some rare material was stolen while the
policeman did but turn his head. It was impossible to
search six or seven hundred men, and so nothing could be
done. This conduct is very disheartening to those who are
labouring for the improvement of the working classes, and
who give them their time and thought without the smallest
remuneration.
I paid a visit last Sunday to a district of London which
is little known to us in the West-end, but which is well
worth visiting. It is called Haggerston, and has a popu-
lation as large as that of many an important town. Ad-
jacent to it, but actually within the region of Bethnal
Green, I passed a striking group of Gothic buildings,
and on asking what they were, learnt that
they were a church, a model lodging-house, and a
public library, all built by Miss Burdett Coutts. The
last building is a magnificent structure, quite putting to
shame the library in the Temple Gardens. A little
further on I came to a lofty brick church • this was known
as St. Chad's, and was to be consecrated on
the following day. This is one of four
churches built for districts carried out of the
old parish of Haggerston. One London merchant
has contributed £lO,OOO towards the erection of them. I
then went to the mother church, a quasi-Gothic structure
erected some forty years ago, and at the time without
chancel, but with galleries. The present rector, Mr
Ross, has completely transformed the building. He
has pulled down the galleries, erected a very
handsome chancel and a reredos of costly and
beautiful marble, and has filled the windows with
beautiful stained glass. He has abolished the pews,
and adopted the weekly offertory, established a capital
choir, has daily prayer and weekly communion, and
gets his church thronged with the working classes. All this
energy is the more praiseworthy because he has powerful
attractions elsewhere in the shape of a pleasant country seat.
He has refused preferment, and labours among the poor of
this squalid part of London with an energy that deserves
all praise. He has avoided the mistake of adopting ex-
cessive Ritual, such as, unfortunately, has been adopted in
some of the district churches, with the result of almost
empty benches. The incumbent of St. Chad's, for
instance, intended to have introduced a second altar for
low celebrations, and the sanctus bell; but the Bishop
absolutely forbade these novelties.

The arrangements for the new civil Service Journal,
which I mentioned in a former letter, are progressing
very favourably. The promoters certainly may say with
reason that they intend to supply an acknowledged want.
It is really surprising that so powerful, influential, and
numerous a class should not before this have established a
journal which will give them the latest information in
their departments. The new journal will be owned and
conducted by gentlemen in the Government offices, and
will, therefore, have the earliest information of the
changes which are constantly occurring in the service. It
will also he a newspaper for the general reader.
We are to have another new theatre—the Royal Charing
Cross, in King William-street, Strand. It will be ready
in May. Her Majesty's will not be used for opera in
future. The Lyceum will open with operatic per
formances on Monday week.

The parks are now thronged every afternoon,
and, though in saying so I may seem a
Cockney to your readers, I affirm that they are
really beautiful in their fresh and varied spring tints.
Alas that the smoke should make their beauty so short-
lived ! An addition has been made to Rotten-row:
The new Row starts from Albert-gate and runs
beside the carriage drive to Queen's-gate, where
a loop joins it to the old Row. This ride will
form a delightful lounge under the trees in summer
evenings. But why is it that the loungers persist in the
heresy of preferring to gaze upon the houses in Knights-
bridge instead of on the Serpentine?
I have no literary news this week, except that Mr.
Walter Thornbury is writing a novel on Wiltshire life,
entitled " A Vicar's Courtship ;" that Mr. W. B. Scott
is writing an account of Albert Diirer and his works;
and that an addition is to be made to the numerous exist-
ing Christologies by Mr. Henry Ward Beecher, who has
just written a Life of Christ.