The Sun.
London, England, 1869-05-03 00:00:00

LONDOW, MONDAY, MAY 3, 18G9.

The Roy al Academy Dinner is always the choicest
banquet in the Tsar. Saturday's, however, was one
of an especially interesting character. It inaugu-
rates the second centenary of no Academy's exist-
ence. It did so, moreover, when the Academicians
could for the first time receive in a house of their
own es their most welcome guests the pick of the most
illustrious personages in the land. The reigning dy-
nasty, the- Government, the Lords, the Commons,
the Bench ef Bis'lops, the Cour's of Law, the aris-
tocracy alike of birth and of genius—Are, Science,
Literature—were all, there, (as usual) fittingly an I
worthily represented. After the loyal toasts had
been duly honoured, his Royal Highness the Field-
Marshal Commanding-in-Chief returne I thanks for the
Army, aptly recalling to the remembrance of those who
were listening to him the circumstance that that very
date, the first of May, was the centenary of the birth
of " that great and illustrious general and patriot the
immortal Duke of WELLINGTON." In a humorous
speech, the ex -Chancelor, Lord CH E LMS FOnD,by reason
of his having once upon a time been a middy in the
Royal Navy, returned thanks for the National Ser-
vice, saying when he did so that it reminded him of a
circumstance that occurred to a noble friend of his, a
most distinguished lawyer, who many years ago being
at a public dinner, by some mistake, when the navy
had been proposed as a toasoe was getting up to ao
it honour, when he was pulled down by his neigh-
bour, and told that navy was not spelt with a " k."
Called upon to return thanks for the Navy, upon the
spur of the moment, the ex-Chancellor, Lord CHELMS-
FORD, passed it off as a capital joke—good humouredly
deprecating his selection as the mouthpiece of the
maritime profession, simply because of his having once
been a very small officer in the navy, and this not-
withstanding the well-known fact, as he said, that if
there is one thing more than another that a sailor dis-
likes it is a lawyer—Jack generally designating him a
land shark—and (added the noble and learned lord
whimsically) " I don't know that I should be looked
upon with more partiality because I had passed for
some time into a great seal." For the Volunteers,
stßea 1. vAn e
y,
not laeasasottng the younger of them, cer-
tainly responded—,,aubduo m
the n,”e of the Royal Academicians them-
President distinguished—Major
s e
ricomLi
cEatIGI
yl TN 0,
ex-
plained, " not of the Royal Artillery." Coupled
with the toast of " Her MAJESTY'S Ministers" was of
course the name of the distinguished Chief of the
Government, Mr. GLADSTONE, the First Lord of the
Treasury. In recognition of his eminent dignity as
the personage coming next in the order of prece-
dence immediately after the Royal Family, the Arch-
bishop of CANTERBURY was selected as the one to
propose the Toast of the Evening—to wit, that of
"Prosperity to the Royal Academy," coupling with
it, as a matter of course, the name of Sir FRANCIS
GRANT, the Academy's President. Speaking him-
self as an ecclesiastic and addressing him-
sAf to the Academicians in their capacity
as artists, his Grace observe 1 very beauti-
fully,—" We have this in common—and it is
common to us with those who give their lives to lite-
rature—that it is very generally to old masters and
their excellencies that we have to look back for our
own improvement and to theta that we point the ad-
tniration of those we would influence; for the know-
ledge and appreciation of the beautiful, like the
knowledge of the Holy, is not a thing to be gained
through experimental empiricism, but seems to come
in some sort from above." The Archbishop of CAN-
TERBURY adding—" Therefore both of use are linked
with the love of old things; and while we, I trust,
as you, are rising daily to greater efforts and making
fresh progress, yet we ever look reverentially back-
wards and upwards, and are not occupied entirely
with the I resent nor even with the future,
greatly as they must interest us, since here
now aad in the years to come must lie the
especial Scene of our own present ucefulness.'•