The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-03 00:00:00

say progress, but rather, if; should be added,
stagnation, of the Serpentige—it seta at rest
for ever all anxiety as to the chance of that
dirty and preposterous scheme of Mr. HAWKSLEY'S
being nary and seriously carried out—the filthy
and foolish project of perpetual filtration; Yet at
one time Kensington and Bayswater seemed to be
irrevocably fated to undergo that most pestilential
and sickening infliction. A preliminary sum of no
less than £17,000 had been actually voted by the
House of Commons for the purpose of setting on
foot this elaborate piece of scientific folly. Let
anyone take the trouble now to go to the northern
extremity of the long water in Kensington Gar-
dens—and he will there fins secular demonstra-
tion of the manner in which those £17,000
were going to be fooled away. Unsightly heaps
of rubbish are there littered in profusion
upon the bank of that unhappy sheet of
water. There, lying prostrate among these
heaps of rubbish are spectral little cylinders
and pistons, with valves and handles complete—
ready to be marshalled at Mr. HAWKSLEY'S bidding
into regiments of pumps clacking and gurgling all
day long in tune to the bleat of those weary steam
engines that were to have gone on for ever and ever
idiotically pumping dirty water out into the filter
beds, and dribbling the partially cleansed water
back again from the filter beds in the old dirty
channel of that loathsome stream or pool, lake or
river, called the Serpentine. All this nonsense is
now, thank Heaven, at an end. The pumps
and the rubbish will have to be cleared away,
and give place once more to the flower beds
and the green sward. The bulk of the £17,000
already voted by the House of Commons in a
moment of hallucination is not to follow the few
hundreds already unhappily expended upon the
preparation of this nasty crotchet. The Com-
mittee of Inquiry, ably presided over by Mr.
COWPER, who bids fair to follow worthily in the
footsteps of Lord LLANOVER—the Committee of
Inquiry, we say, has formally decided, and has
explicitly so expressed itself in the fourteenth
section of its Report—" After much patient inves-
tigation w• have arrived reluctantly at the con-
clusion that the proposed filtration will not be effec-
tual for the desired object, and that this cleansing
process ought not to be carried on in one of the most
beautiful spots of Kensington Gardens. We recom-
mend therefore that the project of filtration BE ABAN-
DONED !" No other decision, in fact, than this could
in reason have been arrived at. The evidence was
altogether overwhelming. So far as the Committee
has now gone we avow ourselves to be perfectly
satisfied. A solemn and emphatic protest has
now been uttered by it against Mr. HAWKSLEY'S
costly and futile scheme of filtration. That scheme
cannot now be persisted in. Upon it the rest of
the £17,000 cannot be squandered► Kensington
Gardens is no longer doomed to undergo in what
the Committee justly terms one of its
most beautiful spots, a permanent, an unsightly,
and a most noisome disfigurement. Happily there
has been a slip, in the very nick of time, between
Mr. HAWKSLEY'S perpetually replenished cup of
nastiness and the lips and the nostrils of many
hundreds of thousands of Londoners ! Against
the project of filtration now peremptorily put
aside by the report of the committee, we have the
satisfaction, at any rate, of remembering that,
through these columns of the Sun, we ourselves
protested from the very commencement. We did
so at a time, too, when Mr. HAWKSLEY was backed
up in his preposterous scheme by the official ap-
proval of Mr. FITZROY, then Chief Commissioner
of Public Works, by the applause of an eminent and
experienced contractor like Sir MORTON PETO,
above all by the persistent and (still to us) astound-
ing approbation of that pre-eminently gifted and
world-famous engineer, the late Mr. ROBERT
STEPHENSON. It did require the genius of a
STEPHENSON, however, or the experience of a
PETO, or the administrative aptitude of a FITZROY
to recognise upon the instant (as we certainly
claim to have done) what the Committee of Inquiry
has now asserted and demonstrated in its report—
that the filtration project of Mr. HAWKSLEY would
be at once extremely ineffectual, and to all intents
and purposes absolutely preposterous.

Fortitude in adversity is much more common
than moderation in success, and, consequently, the
address just circulated among the operative
bleachers and dyers, by the Short-time Committee
sitting at Bolton, is a somewhat remarkable docu-
ment. The men who issued it, and the men who
would reseive it, are assuredly not amongst those
turbulent and ill-disciplined masses who afford the
strongest support to the tyranny of masters by their
own violence and injustice. The advice given to
the operatives in this address is in every way ad-
mirable. It reminds them of the.gtatitude due to
GOD and man for the success of their cause, and
warns theril against over-elation at their brightened
prospects. Further, the committee charges them to
prove the justice of their claims by the excellence
of their conduct in the hour of unexpected triumph.
" We have never had a strike, and we have always
been desirops to be just to our employers, as well
as to have justice for the employed. Let us show,
by striving more than ever to work well and regu-
larly, that we are anxious to study the interests of
the master bleachers, so far as it does not interfere
with the health and lives of our wives, sisters, and
ehildren
and. Among the masters we have many kind
friends,
depend on it, if we act rightly, that
number will increase daily. Do not let us, by ex-
cesses of any kind, give our opponents—they are
now only few in number—an opportunity to argue
so as to injure our good cause." Language such as
this will do much to further their cause, by conci-
liating the masters, and proving to them that their
interests will meet with better attention from the
men, when they feel that a great wrong to them-
selves and their families has been redressed. It will
also still further convince the public that the bill,
so earnestly desired by these operatives, is not
the demand of a factious and discontented
party, but the earnest appeal of a crass
of labourers who know what is due to their em-
ployers as well as to themselves ; who acknow-
ledge their own obligation to work fully and fairly
a reasonable time, and who thus leave their oppo-
nents no argument against their emphatic ap-
peal to the justice and humanity of the community.
We are glad to find from the Address that the sym-
pathy and interest met with by the delegate, among
all classes in the metropolis, was most gratifying,
and we have little doubt that the third reading of
Mr. CROOK'S Bill, announced to come on next
month, will be carried by a large and decisive ma-
jority.

Without female society, it has justly been said
that the beginning of men's lives would be helpless, the
middle without pleasure, and the end without comfort. Mr.
Harcourt, who has left behind him £300,000, the bulk of
which he bequeaths to Mrs. Harcourt (who has reached
the venerable ago of eighty-seven) in a will, remarkable for
wisdom and good sense, makes a reflection that does honour
to the female sex and to the feelings of the testator. In a
codicil, after alluding to his wife's attention during fifty-
five years of matrimonial bliss, and particularly during his
long illness, he says, "We are, all of us, in want of the
society of a gentle and amiable woman, when our passions
have subsided, to participate our cares, calm and alleviate
our sufferings, and enable us to support our infirmities.
Happy is the man possessed of such a friend I And more
happy still, if, like myself, he preserves her, and escapes
the misfortune of a survival."—Court Circular.