The Sun.
London, England, 1860-08-21 00:00:00

trollable feeling of this country would compel any
Ministry, be the consequences what they might,
to aid GARIBALDI against the odious Hapsburgs,
should they attempt to interfere in behalf of the
equally loathed Bourbons. It would never be en-
dured that we should spend our blood and treasure
to prevent the oppression of the SULTAN and the
waning independence of Turkey, and that we should
quietly permit Austria to crush, if she could, the
new-born liberties of Italy. We have no objection
to the cry " Germany for the Germans,"
as against a French invader ; but we
claim equal respect for the cry " Italy
for the Italians," as against the Empire of the
HAPSBURGS and the stick. Never again will
England and France permit the most brutal of
what are called civilised Governments to bastinado,
imprison, shoot, and hang every lover of freedom
from Verona to Naples. That day is past. The
sooner the doomed HAPSBUILGS know it the better
—if, as was said by the prophet to another Royal
madman, "it may be a lengthening of thy tran-
quillity."

Perhaps:there is not one single department of ad-

ministration that admits of more numerous exploits

being achieved in it, than the department variously
known as that of Public Works, of Woods and
Forests, of Parks and Palaces. A whole world of
improvements lie open to the choice of the Chief
Commissioner. If he is a man of ambition, of
energy, of enterprise —he can satisfy
,the
promptings Eof his nature at once, and estab-
lish for himself while so doing an eminent
and enduring reputation. Whatever he
puts his hand to he accomplishes in the way of an
actual improvement, small or great, remains thence-
forth substantially behind him, after he has quitted
office, as a monument of his administration,. There
is every inducement to a Chief Commissioner of
Public Works to do Something Anything.
Vanity prompts him to action, among other noble
incentives. If this Minister in particular
wishes tb acquire a name for himself—he has
every facility for doing so. The materials
are ready to hand—upon all sides—and in the
utmost conceivable abundance. There are evils to
be got rid of—there are benefits to secure. He can
—if he only resolves to set about it in earnest—
adorn the Metropolis on the one hand, and ensure,
upon the other, in a variety of ways, the comfort
and convenience of its vast population. Consider
only for a few moments even some among the
more conspicuous opportunities afforded for bene-
ficial action in this way to our Chief Commissioner.
There are the Thames Embankments. The
securing of these alone would constitute any Chief
Commissioner in perpetuity the Benefactor of the
swarming millions of people inhabiting London
and Westminster. Coupled with an energetic
development of the main drainage scheme, divert-
ing the sewage matter of the metropolis from the
river, would render the Thames once more the Silent
Highway—the noblest thoroughfare sweeping
through the capital—a source No longer of pesti-
lential diseases, but a broad channel of salubrity—a
current securing to the metropolis of England its
beautification and purification. A resolute Chief
Commissioner, putting his shoulder in veritable
earnest to the wheel of change in these two in-
timately, almost inextricably associated particulars,
might, if only in earnest, secure to London within
a reasonable interval of time—the accom-
plishment of the Main Drainage Scheme,
and the building up, on either side of the river,
here on the Middlesex side, there on the Surrey
side of the two noble, broad, majestic, parallel lines
of the Thames embankments. These embankments
—properly constructed, duly planted with trees—
might readily eclipse the sylvan vista of the very
finest of the Parisian Boulevards.
Subsidiary to this—perhaps the noblest possible
metropolitan improvement of all—subsidiary to this
there is the opening up freely to the public—with-
out any further trafc•stricture of a petty toll-gate
with its clicking-valve of a turnstile—the opening up
freely in this way to the public of how many of
our finest bridges ! Waterloo-bridge, for example,
the envy of CANOVA—or at least the object of that
great sculptor's unstinted admiration. The iron
bridge at Southwark, and so many of the other
minor bridges over the Thames above Westminster!
There are vacant sites, too, in the very heart of
our metropolis, tempting a really energetic Chief
Commissioner to fill them up with public works of
conspicuous utility and importance. The site of
the old Fleet Prison, for instance, on the east side
of Farringdon-3treet, for years past as much a
memento mori in its way as a caput mortuum.
Descending to mere minutive, there is even a
vacant pedestal standing this long while in one
corner of the Finest Site in Europe—not spelt,
however, by any means the Finest Sight in Eu-
rope—beseeching the statue (equestrian, if possible)
of some one, of any one among our English
Worthies (if only by way of contrast to that royal
ostler, GEORGE the FOURTH, leading his charger to
water at the adjacent fountains !)—a vacant pedestal,
we say :imploring some statue, any statue that
might suggest itself as appropriate to the imagina-
tion of an enterprising Chief Commissioner.
Then there is the completion of Nelson's Column
to expedite—there is the facade of the National
Gallery to reconstruct—there is the projected
Palace of Justice (say upon the proposed site
between Clement's Inn and Carey-street) to
raise from its foundations—there is the
long talked-of viaduct to build at Holborn
Hill—there is Smithfield to turn to good
account somehow, anyhow almost we might say

rather than leave in its present lamentable state of

total unadornment.

Instead of attempting to carry out in genuine
earnest any one of all which obvious, and some of

them urgently required improvements, our present
pattern Chief Commissioner has been directing his
immense energies to spoiling, as far as he can pos-
sibly contrive to do so, the most beautiful of all our

London "lungs"—more beautiful than any one of the

parks—Kensington-gardens ! Mr. COWPER makes

his Horse-ride—as the itinerant musician made his

violoncello—all out of his own head ! And we have

no reason to doubt that he could as truthfully as
the itinerant musician aforesaid, add that he has

plenty of -wood left for many similar achieve

ments. The perverseness with which the road in

quest ion was origin ally made at Mr. COWPER'S behest

(without anybody asking him to make it) has only

been equalled, it has even—if that be in any way

possible—been surpassed by the stubborn obstinacy

with which he refuses to consent to its removal.

A petition for its retention has been got up with

great effort, and signed (after much touting) by
one or two thousand individuals. Another peti-

tion (addressed to the QUEEN herself and not to
her Chief Commissioner) has been signed on the

other hand (pleading for the removal of the ride)
by from thirty to forty thousand persons! Yet

the former little selfish class-plea is now being
advertised flagrantly—we should rather say
at once impudently—as having been eminently
successful! After which—the matter surely
cannot be allowed to rest quietly in its present
position: COWPER'S FOLLY—that is, the Horse
Ride—tnust
be got rid of, and that immediately,