The Sun.
London, England, 1869-09-28 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 28, 1869.

tion is said to be so-and-so—mentioning some mon-
strous absurdity, full of the most sinister significance.
We don't believe it ourselves, but we give it for
what it is worth—they well knowing it at the
time to be utterly and irremediably worthless.
Knowing these things to be untrue, to be the wildest
extravagances, without one atom of foundation.
Why, one naturally asks, Why, if they are so utterly
valueless, as they are, why, in heaven's name,
mention these lying rumours one after another,
only to have them, one after another disproved in
every particular ? Why ? Simply because these
deadly foes of the actual regime are conscious
that with the vulgar multitude, shallow artifices
like these, may, by persistence and by repeti-
tion, be damaging in character to the last degree.
It is a base mode of attack, and what is more, it
is mean—because upon the very surface of it blazons
its meanness. It instantly says I know that is a
handful of mud I have picked up out of the kennel,
and I have not the slightest doubt it won't stick ;
but, at any rate, it may, and, therefore, here goes !
Referring to some of these creatures, a witty cor-
respondent of the Athenmum, writing to that journal
last week, says—under the heading "In the EM-
PEROR'S Bedroom"_" Dip your spoon into his soup ;
slip finger and thumb under his sleeve, and feel his
pulse. When he sleeps, lay your head against his
heart and count its beatings. Does he cry aloud in
the fiercest passages of his pain, be at hand and keep
the register upon a tally-stick, a notch to each
paroxysm. CESAR is ill. He is in a blue flannel
dressing-gown, ungloved, unshorn, with drooping
moustache and lack-lustre eye ; the monarch put
away, and present only the creature, tortured and
shaken like any peasant of the swamps ! Then have
at him. Sketch him when he winces ; be at his elbow
when he turns away from his food ; reckon narrowly
the chances against him ; and be sure he remembers
day by day that his funeral can, at the most, occupy
only two hours, let the car crawl as it may between
the Tuileries and the Invalides. Then, when the
old soldiers of the Empire shall have fired the last
round, and the director of Funeral Pomps shall have
folded the black cloths and carried off nimbly in the
familiar green vans, who will give another thought
to the thing that will be left in the vault under the
new gilded dome, or to the Sword of Solferino that
will lie beside that of Austerlitz ? Spare him not,
albeit he has been a mighty worker in history. Rend
his heart, if you can, while it is feeling flesh, by put-
ting under his eye all his littleness and all your in-
gratitude. Be quite sure you remember no good he
has wrought; no nobility of intelligence and of soul
which he has discovered ; no pledge of his desotion
to France which he has given through the Herculean
labours of his most marvellous life. Respect the
burden,' said the uncle of the be-sick CiEsart of St.
Cloud ; but hearken not to the voice from Marengo
appealing for a pinch of justice to the flam-
ing sword that delivered Italy out of bond-
age. The lion is smitten : look then to the heavi-
ness of your hoofs." Deliberately though the lash is
handled, in all this, it is stinging, it strips off the
epidermis, and flays the offenders, sometimes, to the
bone. The cruel side of the character of these cor-
respondents, the writer to the Athenceum maintains,
has peeped out ominously of late in this way, under
what has been evidently an irresistible temptation. "In
the thousands of light-hearted readers who can enjoy
fantastic dancing by the banks of the Styx," he writes,
"who can find no better use for a poor human skull than
to fix a gala candle in it; and who can laugh and be
merry over the daily- visits of three doctors to their
SOVEREIGN—there is surely something wanting ! In
this fierce, cutting levity, this banqueting on a sur-
gical table—and this utter forgetfulness of every
item of a debt to the man whom they covered with
garlands when he came along these boulevards at the
head of his conquering army from Italy—there is a
leaven inexpressibly repulsive to men of calmer race
and blood." If only the writer's reproof could, for
once, he take❑ to heart by these wrong-headed and
(worse !) wrong-hearted Correspondents, the news
from Paris would not so very often be irritating to
the last degree to the man of the world, and de-
pressing to the last degree to the student of human
nature.

FRENCH politics have suddenly sunk into insignifi-
cance. The EMPEROR, though better, is yet in deli-
cate health, and his well-being is as much as ever a
question of absorbing importance. The great political
crisis of the year can hardly be deemed at an end.
There is some prospect of a complication with Prussia
respecting that old sore—the Grand Duchy of Baden.
But the French people, with its ever eager interest in
all that relates to crime, has forgotten these trifles
in the absorbing excitement of the Pantin murders.
The magnitude of the crime, the mystery in which
it is shrouded, and the dramatic capture of the leading,
if not the only, assassin, contribute to form a story
which surpasses the horrors of the Marseilles poison-
ings. Very early on the morning of Monday week
the bodies of a woman and five children were
found lightly buried in a piece of waste land
at Pantin, a small village to the north-east
of Paris. A farm labourer going to his
work, observed pools of blood on some freshly-dug
ground ; then he discovered a handkerchief covered
with a clod ; a very little search revealed a human
hand ; and soon the bodies of a mother, three boys,
and two girls were uncovered. The Parisian police,
despite their perfect organisation, could for some time
make nothing of this amazing discovery. The bodies
were evidently those of a respectable family, but their
identity remained unknown for some little time, and
the first collection of evidence was a curiously-
tangled skein of errors.
The murdered persons were found to be the wife
and children of a prosperous wood-turner named JEAN
KINCK, who lived at Roubaix. Besides the mother,
father, and five children, there was aso nnamed
GUSTAVE. M. KINCK was a native of Alsace, and
wishing to devote his residence at Roubaix to
business, he proposed that the family should live in
Alsace, where he had property. The wife objected,
and on this point a quarrel, it was said, ensued. The
father and the son GUSTAVE left Roubaix and went
to Alsace, about a month ago ; and, shortly after-
wards the husband made a demand for £220 from his
wife, which she reluctantly sent him. Then M. KINCK
and his eldest son met in Paris. On a pressing letter
from her husband the wife quitted Roubaix with her
children, and proceeded to the Hotel du Chemin do
Fer du Nord, in the French capital. This was pretty
nearly all that was heard of them previously
to the murder. How the family were de-
coyed to Pantin no one could tell ; but that
they had been enticed to the village by the father
and the eldest son, and that these two latter perpe-
trated the crimes, the evidence at first seemed to
establish conclusively. Neither M. KINCK nor
GUSTAVE were heard of for some days after
the butchery. It was ascertained that a young
man who described himself as JEAN KINCK, engineer
of Roubaix, had spent several days at the Hotel du
C'hemin de Fer du Nord. It was certain that a lady-
with five children had called twice at the hotel on the
evening of Sunday week, and had inquired for M.
JEAN KINCK. The same evening the entire party
of six gave up their tickets at the Paulin railway
station. The bodies were found at three o'clock the
next morning. At eight o'clock, the man who called
himself M. JEAN KINCK came to the hotel with
another man, changed his clothes, and left
in a hurry never to return. In the
drawers of his room were found a bloody
shirt and trousers. These facts might well seem
decisively to prove that the father and the eldest son
had done the unparalleled deed. The man who
called himself at the hotel M. JEAN KINCK was,

indeed, very young, whilst the real, JEAN
Knrcx was 45 years of age ; but it appeared
not unreasonable to conclude that the son
had for some purpose taken the name of the
father. No sufficient motive for such a crime could
be discovered ; but one fact was unanswerable—it
had been done.

Nevertheless, this connected theory has turned out
to be quite erroneous. It is now all but certain that
neither the father nor the son GUSTAVE had anything to
do with the assassination, and it is quite positive that
they were not the only nor the principal actors. The
" JEAN KINCK " who stayed at the hotel was
captured at Havre last Thursday, and the arrest of
the son GUSTAVE was forthwith proclaimed. It was
not, however, GUSTAVE, but an Alsatian named
TRAUPMANN, a friend of the KINCK family, who had
taken up his residence at the Paris hotel under the
name of JEAN KINCK, and who was captured at
Havre. This man TRAUPMANN is, on his own con-
fession, the real murderer. The story has now assumed
quite a different aspect. The son GUSTAVE, it
transpires, was little more than 16 years of age, and
of a very inoffensive disposition. The quarrel between
the husband and wife appears to have been merely a
difference of opinion : the first insisting on removing
his business to his native town, Guebwiller,
in Alsace ; the second preferring to remain
at Roubaix. The husband prevailed, and
set out for Guebwiller to make preparations for the
establishment of his business there, parting from his
wife, with whom he had lived on very good terms,
in a friendly manner. The £220 was sent in a regis-
tered letter to the Post Office at Guebwiller, in order
that M. linsrcx might get it on his arrival. But
though the father set out for his native place, he was
never seen there, and the registered letter still
lies at the Post Office. A young man answering
to the description of TRAUPMANN called nearly a
month ago, and demanded the letter, representing
himself as JEAN KINCK. The postmaster, however,
knew the wood turner of Roubaix, and refused to give
up the money.
The whole tragedy thus becomes tolerably clear.
It is not quite certain whether TRAUPMANN com-
mitted the murders alone or in conjunction with the
father and son, but the evidence is much in favour
of the former supposition. TRAUPMANN in his
confession affirms that the crimes were the work of
th• three. The difficulty of one man murdering a
woman and five children in such a place, is, however,
the only fact in support of this avowal. The
supposition to which the circumstances now point
is that TRAUPMANN murdered the father and the son
GUSTAVE, in order to get the £220 which he knew
was lying at the Guebwiller Post-office. Defeated
through the postmaster's knowledge of M. KiNcx, he
may have thought that the destruction of the whole
family was his only hope of safety. With that object he
endeavoured to lure them to Paris. It is noticeable
that the letters which Madame KINCK received,
ostensibly from her husband, were in another hand-
writing—the reason assigned being that M. lUNCK
had sprained his hand, and was unable to write.
One of the letters announced that the
husband had given up his idea of settling
at his native town, and had found a place
of business at Paris, to which city he requested his
wife and children to proceed. The poor woman,
overjoyed at the thought of getting free from the
Guebwiller project, which she disliked, at once started
for Paris, and then proceeded to Pantin, whither
TRAUPMANN had been beforehand and dug the graves
of herself and children. Such an explanation is not
wholly satisfactory, for the madness which designed
the butchery seems scarcely compatible with the
ability with which it was executed. Moreover, it
still remains to be known how the wholesale massacre
was so completely effected by one man. But
this is undoubtedly the most trustworthy theory..
The intelligence that the son GUSTAVE has been
found dead, with a knife in his throat, almost sets
the question at rest. TRAUPMANN must have been
the only murderer, or, at all events, he can have re-
ceived no aid from the father or the son.

CHARLES DICKENS iN BIRMINGHAM.

BIRMINGHAM, Monday.

This evening the winter session of the Birming-
ham and Midland Institute was opened with an
inaugural address in the Town Hall, by Mr. Chas.
Dickens. There was a very large and brilliant
audience.

Nr. DICKENS, who was received with cheers,
said—We often hear of our common country that
it is an over-pauperised one, that it is an over-
colonised one, that it is an over-taxed one. I
have entertained, especially of late times, the
heretical belief that it is an over-talked one—
(laughter)—and that there is a deal of public
speech making going about in various directions
which might be advantageously dispensed with.
If I were free to act as your president for
the time being upon this conviction, I
should immediately subside into golden silence,
which would be of a very edifying because of a
very exemplary character. But I happen to be the
Institution's willing servant, nor its imperious
master, and it exacts tribute of some silver or
copper speech, not to say brazen, from whomsoever
it exalts to my high office. I became rather
alarmed when I was duly warned that my speech
would be termed an inaugural address, for, be-
sides that the phase is something high sounding
for my taste, 1 avow that I do look forward to
that blessed time when every man shall inaugu-
rate his own work for himself, and do it. I be-
lieve that we shall then have inaugurated a new
era, indeed, and one in which the Lord's
Prayer will become a fulfilled prophecy upon
this earth. You cannot need from me any rheto-
rical declamation concerning the abstract ad-
vantages of knowledge or the beauty of
self-improvement. (Hear, hear.) If you have such
a requirement you would not be here. I conceive
that you are here because you have become fully
impressed with such truths—because you feel the
welfare of a great (chiefly adult) educational esta-
blishment, whose doors stand really open to all
sorts and conditions of people, to be inseparable
from the best welfare of your great town and its
neighbourhood. Nay, we may take a wider range,
and say that the benefits of such an establishment
must extend beyond the limits of this midland
country's fires and smoke, and must comprehend in
some sort the whole community. It was suggested
by Mr. Babbage in his ninth Bridgewater Treatise,
that a mere spoken word—a single articulated syl-
lable thrown into the air—may go on reverberating
through illimitable space for everand forever, seeing
that there is no rim against which it can strike,
no boundary at which it can possibly arrive. Simi-
larly, it may be said, not as an ingenious specula-
tion, but as an absolute fact, that human calcula-
tion cannot limit the influence of one atom of
wholesome knowledge patiently
acquired, modestly
possessed, and faithfully used. As the astronomers
tell us it is probable there are in the universe in-
numerable solar systems besides ours, to each of
which myriads of utterly unknown and unseen stars
belong, so it is certain that every man, however ob-
scure and however far removed from the general re-
cognition, is one of a group of men impressible for
good and impressible for evil, and that it is in the
eternal nature of things that he cannot really im-
prove himself without in some degree improving
other men. (Cheers.) And this is especially the
case when he has improved himself in the teeth of
a Iverse circumstances, as in a cultivated maturity
succeeding to a neglected or ill-taught youth—
when a man in the few intervals of a toiling life
has wrested some enlightenment and self-respect
from what Lord Lytton finely calls " those twin
gaolers of the daring heart—low birth and iron
fortune." (Cheers) There could be very few per-
sons in Birmingham, of all persons under heaven,
who would contest the truth which you have esta-
blished, that the more cultivated the employed the
better for the employer, and the more cultivated the
employer the better for the employed. In sixteen
years your institution has outgrown the ample edi-
fice in which it receives its 2,500 members and stu-
dents. It is a most cheering sign of its vitality that
of its industrial students almost one half are artisans

in the receipt of weekly wages. hear.) Four
hundred others are clerks, apprentices of tradesmen,
and tradesmen's sons; and the attendance in your
educational classes is always greatest on the part
of the artisans•--the class within my experience the
least reached in similar institutions elsewhere,
but whose name is oftenest and the most constantly
taken in vain. (Cheers.) That class has been
specially reached, not improbably because it has
been specially addressed. A bold and triumphantly
successful experiment has been the introduction of
evening classes, in which the student may receive
lessons on subjects bearing directly upon his daily
usefulness and happiness, for the astoundingly low
fee of a penny every time he attends a class. (Hear,
hear.) I look upon that as one of the most remark-
able schemes ever devised for the educational be-
hoof of the artisan; and if this institution had done
nothing else I would take my stand by it on its
having done that. The practical results have been
highly satisfactory, for, with one exception, every
one of the industrial students who have taken
prizes within ten years has since climbed to a higher

station in his way of life. (Cheers.) The-ex-
tent to which it teaches the artisan to think,
and so, for instance, to rise superior to the little

shackles and the prejudiced observances existing in
his trade when they will not bear the test of in-
quiry, is only to be equalled by the extent to which
it encourages him to feel. There is a certain tone,
a modest manliness, prevading all the little records
I have looked over which I find remarkably im-
pressive. The decided objection on the part of in-
dustrial students to attend the classes in their work-
ing clothes proves this tone as being a graceful, and
yet, at the same time, perfectly independent, re-
cognition of the place and of oue another. (Hear,
hear.) I will now come to that which, in my
opinion, it remains for the institution to do and not
to do, and then, as Mr. Carlyle says towards the
closing pages of his grand " History of the French
Revolution," " this, with due brevity disposed of,
then courage, oh, listen ! I see land." (Cheers and
laughter.) I earnestly hope, and I firmly believe,
that the Institution will do henceforth as it has
done hitherto—that it will know among its mem-
bers no distinction of person or creed of party—
(cheers)—but that it will conserve its place of as-
semblage as a high pure ground on which all such
considerations are merged into the one universal
Heaven-sent aspiration of the human soul to be
wiser and better. I hope and I believe, that it will
ever be expansive and elastic; for ever seeking to
enlarge the circle of its members ; never any more
disposed to stand still than time, or life, or the
seasons do. I hope it never will allow itself for
any consideration, to patronise or be pationised—
(cheers)—for I firmly believe that the bestowal and
the receipt of patronage iu such wise has been the
curse of England—(hear, hear)—and it has done
more to pervert really good objects, and to lower
really high character, than the utmost efforts of
the narrowest antagonism could have effected in

twice the time. I have no fear that the walls
of this Instititution will ever tremble re-
sponsive to the croaking of the timid opponents of
intellectual progress—(cheers) ;—and in this con-
nection I cannot forbear from offering a remark
which is much upon my mind. It is much too com-

monly assumed that this age is a material age, and
that a material age is an irreligious age. I have
been pained lately to see this assumption repeated
in certain influential quarters. lam afraid that by
dint of being onstantly reiterated without protest,
this assumption—which I take leave altogether to

deny—may be accepted by the more unthinking

part of the public as unquestionably true. Just as
some caricaturists and painters, professedly making
a picture of some public man—not in the least
like him to begin with—have gone on repeating
and repeating it, until the public have come to
believe that it must be exactly like bim, simply
because it was like itself, and really have at last
in the fulness of time grown almost disposed to re-
sent upon him their tardy discovery that he was not
like it. (Laughter.) I confess that I don't un-
derstand that much-used and much-abused phrase,
"a material age." I cannot comprehend—if any-
bndy can, which I very much doubt—its logical
signification. For instance, has electricity become
the more material in the mind of any sane, or rno-
derwely insane— (laughter) man, woman, or
child, because of the discovery that in the good
providence of God it was made available for the
service and use of man tc an immeasurably greater
extent than for his destruction ? Do I make a

more material journey to the bedside of my dying
parent or child when I travel thither at the rate of
60 mi;es an hour than when I travel at the rate of
six? Rather, in the swift case, does not my ago-
nised heart become overfraught with gratitude to
that supreme beneficence from which alone can
have proceeded the wonderful means of shortening
my suspense? What is the materiality of the cable
and the wire compared to the immateriality of the
spark ? What is the materiality of certain chemi-
cal substances that I can weigh and measure,
imprison or release, compared with the imma-

teriality of their appointed affinities and repulsions
prescribed to them from the instant of their crea-
tion to the Day of Judgment? When did this so-
called material age begin ? With the use of cloth-
ing? With the discovery of the compass? With
the invention of printing? Surely it has been a
long time about. Which is the more material ob-

ject—the farthing tallow candle that will not give
me light, or the flaming gas that will ? (Cheers.)
No ; don't let us be discouraged or deceived by
vain, vapid, empty words. The true material age
is the stupid Chinese age in which no new and
grand revelations of nature are granted, because
they are ignorantly and insolently repelled, instead
of being diligently and humbly sought. (Cheers.)
The difference between the antique fiction of the
mad broggart defying the lightning and the mo-
dern historical picture of Franklin drawing it
towards his kite in order that he might the more
profoundly study what was set before him to study
(or it would not have been there), happily expresses
to my mind the difference between our much-
maligned material sages and the certainly, in
one sense, very immaterial sages of the Celestial
Empire school. Consider whether it is likely or
unlikely, natural or unnatural, reasonable or un-
reasonable, that I, being capable of thought, and
finding myself surrounded by such discovered won-
ders on every hand, should ask myself the ques-
tion sometimes and put to myself the solemn consi-
deration, " Can these things be amongst those
which might have been disclosed by divine lips
nigh upon 2,000 years ago, but that the people of
that time could not bear thorn?" But whether that
be so or not, I being so surrounded on every hand,
is not my moral responsibility tremendously in-
creased thereby and with it my intelligent submis-
sion of myself, as a child of Adam and of
dust, before that shining source equally of
all that is granted and all that is withheld,
who holds in His mighty hands the unap-
proachable mysteries of life and death ? (Cheers.)
Let me give the students of the industrial classes
generally a short motto in two words—" Courage,
persever." I don't give them that motto be-
cause the eyes of Europe are upon them, for I do
not in the least believe it—(laughter)—nor because
the eyes of England are upon them, for I do not
in the least believe that either ; nor because
their doings will be proclaimed with blast of
trumpet at the street c )rners, for no such musical
performance will take place-- (laughter)—not be-
cause self-improvement is at all certain to lead
to worldly success, but simply because it is good
and right of itself, and, therefore, will assuredly
bring with it its own resources and its own re-
wards. I would further commend to them a wise
and witty piece of advice on the conduct of
the understanding which was given more than
half a century ago by the Rev. Sydney Smith—
wisest and wittiest of the friends I have lost.
Speaking to a circle of voluntary students, he
says :--•" There is a piece of foppery which is to
be cautiously guarded against—the foppery of
universality, of knowing all sciences, of excel
ling in arts—chemistry, mathematics, algebra,
dancing, history, reason, riding, fencing, Low
Dutch, High. Dutch, and natural philosophy. In
short, the modern precept of education very
often is—take the Admirable Crichton for your
model, and be ignorant of nothing. My ad-

HER MAJESTY.

BALMORAL CASTLE, Sept. 24.
The Queen, accompanied by Princess Louise
and Prince Leopold, and attended by Lady
Churchill, drove out to-day.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

AMERICA.
(Per French Atlantic Cable.)
NEW YORK, Sept. 27.

The Gold Board held no sitting to-day.

The outside transactions were small and irre-
gular. Settlements are nearly completed. There
will probably be no failures.

Mr. Boutwell, the Secretary of the Treasury, has
ordered the sale of $2,000,000 in gold and the pur-
chase of $2,000,000 worth of bonds weekly until
the Ist November, in addition to the fortnightly
purchase of $1,000,000 worth of bonds under the
Sinking Fund Act.
M. de Bille, the new Danish Minister, was offi-
cially received by the President on Saturday.
Dr. Hall, the Arctic explorer, arrived at New
Bedford yesterday from Repulse Bay, after an
absence of five years. He discovered the skeletons
of several of Sir John Franklin's party at King
William's Land, and he brings numerous relics of
the Franklin expedition.
The Inman Royal Mail steamer City of New York
arrived out yesterday.

COMMERCIAL INTELLIGENCE.
CLOSING PRICES.

Gold closed at 131; ; the highest quotation dur-
ing the day was 131; the lowest, 131.
Sterling Exchange on London lOB.
5-20 U. S. Bonds, ISB9
44 "
1885 ll9l.
4t " 1867 llBl.
10-40
Illinois
Erie 3Ol.
Cotton—Mid. upland 29c.
Petroleum—Standard White 32c.
Flour, extra state, $5.95c. to $6.55c. Corn, old
mixed, sl.6c.

MONTREAL, Sept. 27.
llis Royal Highness Prince Arthur visited the
Niagara Falls to-day.

QUEBEC, Sept. 27.
The Allan (Glasgow) steamship Hibernia arrived
out yesterday.

BOSTON, Sept. 20.
The extra Cunard steamship Malta arrived
here to-day at 9 a.m.
PLYMOUTH, Sept. 28.

Her Majesty's ship Perseus arrived here to-day.
Yesterday she parted company with the Orontes,
which proceeded to Plymouth with a fair wind.

SPAIN.

MADRID, Sept. 27.

Reinforcements for Cuba left Cadiz yesterday.

The number of prisoners arrested at Barcelona
amount to 124. No further disturbances have
occurred.

The National Guard of Madrid have offered their
assistance in maintaining order.

PORTUGAL.
LISBON, Sept. 28.
The Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon and Count
Farrobo are both dead.