The Sun.
London, England, 1869-01-29 00:00:00

made up his little pellets and silvered tl.em,
in the hope that they would bring him in gold. His
faith was rewarded. He did so well at i e
that he brought up his son to regular medicine. The son
went to an adjacent county, where he hoped the fame of
the silver-coated pills would not follow him. Unfor-
tunately, the facilities for changing one's name were not
so great as they now are, and one day, at a large dinner
party, the doctor was asked if he bore any relation to the pills.
He could not deny the soft impeachment, but he was so
annoyed at it that he sold his interest for a very handsome
figure, and bought with it a share in the practice of a
London surgeon who a few months ago got into some
unpleasant quarrels. The practice turned out less satis•
factory than the pills, and the seller of the second and
purchaser of the first has had to begin life again by work-
ing up a new clientele for himself.

There have been some rather sharp debates lately in
the Ritual Commission. The commissioners comprise
men of all schools. The usual result of opposing antago-
nistic forces has followed ; the body does not move.
Various propositions have been made to effect alterations
in the services and the formularies of the Church, but
the cautious men have negatived them on the venerable
though scarcely time-honoured plea, "if you once begin,
where will you stop ?" This remark was made aforetime
by a parish clerk, when on the death of George IV. the
substitution of William" in the State prayers was
ordered. I think the clerk was as right as the commis-
sioners. If, as these seem to suppose, the Church is only
a house of cards that will come tumbling to the ground
when it is touched, cui Bono the commissioners?

In spite of the cold night there was an immense gather.
ing at St. Paul's on Sunday evening. The new Canon, Mr.
Gregory, was the preacher of the evening. In face he is not
unlike Mr. Bright ; his voice is an enlarged edition
of the Bishop of Oxford's. The sermon was but
half an hour in length, and was in no way
remarkable. The service was marred by the indis-
position of the organ, which had a very severe
cold, and grunted and groaned to such an alarming extent
that it had to be silenced. The spectacle of this vast as-
semblage, with the soft light falling upon them from the
row of innumerable gas-jets round the dome, was very
impressive ; and one of the recent preachers said that,
though a by no means timid man, thisight did make him
nervous. The special preachers for February will be ap-
pointed by the new Bishop of London, and some curiosity
is felt in the matter, as the selection will give an indica-
tion of the manner in which Bishop Jackson will treat the
various theological parties. He can scarcely do better than
follow the example of his predecessor, whose impartiality
is admitted even by those who differ from his religious

opinions.
Of literary news I have little to tell this week ; but that
little is interesting. The Bishop of Oxford is getting £l,OOO
for the papers which he is bringing out in Good Words. The
Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol refused an offer of £5OO
to write in the same periodical. Messrs. Black are
bringing out a new edition of Lockhart's Life of
Scott, in the same style as the Roxburgh edition of Scott's
novels. Dean Milman's "Annals of St., Paul's" I
have just read in preparation for a quarterly review, and
I find the book interesting enough, but containing some
strange blunders as to dates, and even in grammar,
which no doubt so veteran a litterateur as the
Dean would have corrected if he had lived
to read the proof sheets. The first number of
the Queen's Messenger made its appearance to-day ;it is
a sixpenny weekly journal, intended to advocate admini-
strative Reform. The first number of the Temperance
Times comes out on Saturday. It is to be the weekly
organ of the London Auxiliary of the United Kingdom
Alliance, and is edited by Mr. Dawson Burns. 'The
shoemakers are starting a special organ, called
St. Crispin, which will contain the lives of cobblers who
have risen to eminence, such as Hans Sachs, Savage the
poet, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, Fox the Quaker, Gifford of
the Quarterly _Review, Kitto of the Bible Encyclopcedia,
&c.

The Dudley Gallery has its private view to-morrow.
There was some talk of discontinuing this exhibition
after the opening of the new Royal Academy, but
although that building will have five times the space of
the present, the idea of closing has been abandoned, as it
may well be when I state that there were about 1,200
pictures rejected last year from the Dudley Gallery, a large
number of them simply from want of room. The Exhibi-
tion of British and Foreign Artists this year is not up
to last year's level. There are few works by
the leading French artists— none at all, for instance,
by Meissonier ; and there are several works which have
been exhibited on previous occasions. But the exhibition
is well worth a visit, for the sake of Mr. Edwin Long's very
fine work, which occupies the post of honour. This
gentleman, who is the son of a Bath tradesman, is
rapidly rising to the foremost rank of artists. His
present work is an advance upon that which he
exhibited at last year's Academy. Like that, it
is a Spanish scene, and it represents a fair-haired lady
giving the Christmas alms in Seville Cathedral to a
swarthy gipsy. The contrast between the two is admi-
rable, and is well carried out in all the surrounding figures,
of whom there are about twenty. Bougareau has some
good works ; but Perrault's, " A Morning Meal " must,
after Mr. Long's picture, carry off the palm.
The Skating Club are in despair. We had two days of
frost, and there was a slight
,cream of ice over the ponds
in the parks ; but a thaw has set in, and to-day we are sit-
ting with extinguished fires and opened windows, those of
us who are skaters, and sighing for the frozen Arno and the
bitter cold of sunny Italy, mentioned in to-day's papers.

MISCELLANEOUS NEWS.

THE. LORDS OF THE ADMIRALTY.

The Carlton Club will certainly say that "the
country is going to the dogs, sir," and the United
service and other professional clubs will re-echo the
cry. The members of the new Board of Admiralty
have just paid their first visit to Chatham, and instead
of having " private " (hired ?) carriages to meet them,
they drove from the station in cabs, just as though
they were Jack Tar himself. The customary guard
of Royal Marines was dispensed with. Their
lordships meant business, and they did it. They
had the usual conference with the heads of
the departments ; they visited four vessels in course
of construction, inspected the new steam factory, the
timber stores, which contain timber to the cost of
more than a million, but to the value (so far as the
dockyard is concerned) of a tenth of that sum. They
regarded " Seely's pigs " with special interest, and
no doubt we shall shortly hear that these famous
animals, reprieved by Mr. Corry, are at last brought
to the slaughter. They walked through the new
works, the dockyards, basins, &c., which will •be com-
pleted some four or five years hence : and they
wound up their visit by a rather rapid tour of the
ropery.

"Hippoph THE VOLUNTEERS.
Guard "—criticises in the Times Lord Elcho's recent
Ylax"—well-sounding Greek for "Horse
letter on the volunteers. " Hippophylax" points out
that "the volunteers accepted service as volunteers,
and have no claim to expect payment, either in
the shape of capitation grant or in any other
form, for their voluntary service. If they do so
they cease to be volunteers, and enter the category
of paid soldiers. Should they do this, they ought
to consent without hesitation to be subjected
to military law, and to resign to the established
military authorities the nomination of their officers.
A paid volunteer force would be the most expensive
force which this country could maintain, for volun-
teers are theoretically only available in the last
extreme of defensive war, and are useless for any
purpose of offensive campaigns." " Ilippophylax '
doubts if " practically" the volunteers could be
made of any use at all, since to call them out per-
manently would be to inflict such a paralysis upon
commerce as to force the country to make peace.
At present they could not keep the field for twenty-
four hours, for there is no sort of organisation,
no transport, no commissariat, no hospitals. More-
over, if the volunteers were paid, they would become
rivals of the regular army, would no longer draw
their recruits from the richer class, which can afford
to serve without pay, but would compete for recruits
with the line. "Hippophylax " evidently has the
utmost contempt for the volunteers, and scarcely
veils it in courteous words. " They are ill-equipped
riflemen, who are only liable to fight on their own
doorstep." An invader who had run the risk of
defeat by our navy and regular army and militia
would not hesitate to encounter a force which, how-
ever efficient in its individual elements, is totally
unprovided for the organisation r
sixmonths.
of war,and
could
not be equipped
d
The volunteers are the result of a panic,
and the panic was as senselessly allayed as it
aroused. liheteuNsvoslpuenntdeeoruartnaloeneyin
Itheir
was.egi senselesslyfilar
soldiers,
and
bu acnhc
ics—t
id;
ei s be
oa
ltifthey
ls
inn ofl kteh, fore
wthhey
ole w-on' t
matter, b
amc
ci missed.
Sd-
ine ta,him of the Horse Guards.