The Sun.
London, England, 1867-08-28 00:00:00

'THE SUN, LONDON, WEDENSDAY EVENIN

is large, the quality of the stock good, and the
general interest has been strongly awakened. The
mast effectual means of getting rid of Fenianism
anti all its attendant annoyance and expense will
be to render the population more occupied and more
educated, and consequently more contented. Agri-
culture offers many particular attractions to the
Irish peasantry, and the great natural resources of
the country render a return of their labours abso-
lutely certain. The dreary and hopeless lives led
by many of the Irish people would be wonderfully
brightened by cheerful and remunerative la-
bour ready at their own doors, instead of
entailing the sacrifice of home and country de-
manded from the emigrant. The crowds of Irish
labourers who cross over annually to Liverpool
might very certainly find plenty to do in their own
country if Irish agriculture were in a more thriving
condition, add it should be the aim of every well-
wisher to Ireland to assist in the development of
those natural capabilities of the country and the
people, which will infallibly remunerate all effort a
thousandfold. We are glad to find that many of
the principal English manufacturers are sending
specimens of their machinery to Dublin, so that the
Irish agriculturists will be able to profit by the
latest discoveries and adaptations in scientificknow-
ledge.

your pockets. I send you back your pocket-book
and papers, which are quite useless to me, as well
as your watch. I might have made a profit of the
latter, but I should be desperately grieved to deprive
you of it, for I see by the inscription on the case
that it was given to you as a reward, which I have
no doubt was well merited. I, therefore, think it a
duty to restore it to you. You see there are honest
people everywhere. Your servant, a French pick-
pocket."

Yesterday was the thirtieth anniversary of the
opening of the first railway in Paris, that from Paris
to Pecq on the line to St. Germain, having been
opened for traffic on the 26th of August, 1837.
The following are the dates of the opening of the
principal railways in France : —Paris to Orleans,
May 5, 1843 ; to Rouen, May 9, 1843 ; to Lille,
July 7, 1846 ; to Havre, March 22, 1817 ; to Bor-
deaux, September 20, 1852 ; to Strasbourg, July 25,
1852 ; to Lyons, July 10, 1854.

There is now in course of demolition in the Fau-
bourg Montmartre the house where Vestris, the
most celebrated dancer of the eighteenth century,
died on the 27th of September, 1808. Vestris
reigned like a sovereign at the opera for half a
century, and was familiarly called handsome Vestris.
There were no bounds to his pride and vanity. He
called himself the " god of the dance." He often
said seriously, " There have been only three men in
Europe—myself, Voltaire, and Frederick the Great."
This Vestris was, I believe, the father of the late
Madame Vestris.

The Lords of the Admiralty at Portsmouth,

Mr. Corry and his colleagues resumed their in-
spection of this establishment yesterday morning
with a muster of the officers and men of the Steam
Reserve at the port, borne on the books of the old
sailing line-of-battle-ship Asia. The muster was
held on the ground between the office of the Admiral
Superintendent and the main line of storehouses.
The force mustered on the ground was under the
command of Capt. W. C. Chamberlain, and com-
prised Commander Wells, chief inspector of machi-
nery afloat, George Murdoch, and 19 other non-
commissioned officers, with 107 engineer officers of
all grades. The remaining numbers consisted of
154 warrant-officers, 261 stokers,
,460 pensioners,
and 354 seamen, marines, and servants, &c. These
numbers include all men lent on board ships in the
harbour—such,
for instance, as the Osborne—and
only 26 leading stokers are really available for ser-
vice, while the majority of stokers have never been
to sea. After the reserve officers and men had
passed inspection a brief examination of some pre-
servative cements for coating the bottoms of iron
ships, and other little matters in the office of the
Admiral-Superintendent, brought their lordships'
morning labours to a close.
After luncheon the turret-ship Royal Sovereign
was visited, where it is to be hoped their lordships
gained a true measure of the value of the system of
working ordnance at exceptional weight afloat.
From the Royal Sovereign the Board went on
board the boys' training ship St. Vincent, and thence
to Haslar, where they went over the Naval Hospi-
tal and the " Deserted Village" of the navy—the
gunboat yard and shipway. The hospital contains
at present 484 patients, but has beds for 1,200.
It has an admirable organisation under its
medical staff, but its government by a post-cap-
tain of the Royal Navy is as great an absurdity as
ever existed in the worst days of the great naval
hospital at Greenwich. If it is necessary to provide

some adequate rewards for naval captains or other
officers of the military branch who have done good
service in their professional career, this should be
done by any other means than by thus placing them
in command of purely medical establishments. What
can possibly be more ridiculous than to submit a
document drawn up by such men as Sir David Deas
on important medical questions to the inspection of
a captain of the navy, and for his signature, before
such document can be sent on to the chief medical
authorities at the Admiralty for submission to the
Board ? Nor does the ridicule of the whole affair
end even here, for in the absence of the Captain
Superintendent, the Inspector-General of ifospitals'
document must be laid before some old—and, no
doubt, very worthy—lieutenant, who represents
temporarily his immediate chief.

The gunboat yard and shipway at llaslar, with
its 45 covered building-sheds, and its costly parallel
lines of railway and launching stages, has at pre-
sent the following number of men employed there :
—Master - Shipwright's Department —2O ship-
wrights, 40 labourers, 2 smiths. Engineers of
Steam Reserve Department —4 engineers, 14 stokers
(mechanics), 4 seamen, 1 warrant-officer. In the
yard there are six wood-built screw gunboats, nine
mortar floats (iron), and a number of ships' boats
and remnants of machinery boilers stored away
under cover.

Three of the gunboats—the Wave, the Cherokee,
and the Peacock—are in frame, after rebuilding,
and have been in frame seven years. They are,
therefore, well seasoned in all their timbers, and
now it is supposed they will be planked and fitted
with their machinery again. The remaining three
it is proposed to convert to coal depot vessels to
convey fuel to ships at Spithead. They will cost
each to make them fit for this
duty they are now fit for,
apuniaiotrsdews, obonufl dtit
soa
s(t)he wellonly t o utilize them even in this
manner. Two of the mortar floats have been con-
verted into dockyard lighters ; ons has been con-

verted into a receiving vessel for coastguard duty ;
for Cowes' harbour
at Malta as a
oneionff
oofr oi
Trinitynrga l img
lui pier;tde-re. e
and
on
ugorn
remaine bargeforfitatitnpgresent unappro-
priated.
What the Board may eventually decide upon
doing with this yard would be as yet premature to
hazard any opinion upon. What it appears to be
suitable for in any adaptation of its space and capa-
bilities generally is a general boat-building-yard for
the Navy, and especially for steam launches, the
machinery of the latter being fitted and afterwards
kept in repair in the yard by the engineers
in the port belonging to the Steam Re-
serves. In addition to this kind of work there
might also be built at Haslar such small twin-
screw gunboats as would be serviceable for duty
between harbours and roadsteads, as Portsmouth
harbour and Spithead, or Hamoaze and Plymouth
Sound, and which must sooner or later supersede
the present decrepit and expensive small paddle
steamers. Machinery for such vessels can be picked
up in plenty out of the surplus stock in the several
yards.

One thing prepared for their lordships' inspection
at Haslar Yard deserves special notice. This was
a composition for cleaning the bottoms of iron ves-
sels when placed in dock. The present method of
cleaning the bottom of an iron vessel is by the use
of metal scrapers, with one of which a man may
clean about eight square feet per day (working
hours). With the composition he would be enabled
to clean off nearly 1,000 feet, and with this advau-
tagc—all paint or composition on the face of the
iron plates would be effectually removed withont
affecting the surface of the plates by scratching, as
with the scraper, and out of inequalities where the
scraper would be unable to act.

The Duke of Wellington, seamen's training ship,
Capt. C. Fellowes, has been visited by their lord.
ships during their stay at Portsmouth, and the
" Grant's" cooking (roasting, boiling, and bread-
baking) apparatus, with other novelties under trial
experimentally on board duly examined. The Vic-
tory and other vessels have also received brief visits.

This morning the Board of Admiralty were to
leave Portsmouth as early as five o'clock for Port-
land, Dartmouth, and Devonport in their yacht En-
chantress, accompanied by the Black Eagle, and
their official visit to Portsmouth of 1867 will be
happily ended—happily
ended because such formal
visits, previously announced and prepared for, are
a matter of dissatisfaction to all concerned. They
are unsatisfactory to the majority of the officials be-
longing to a yard by reason of their knowledge of
the hollowness of the affair for any permanently
useful end, and they must be unsatisfactory to the
Lords themselves from a well understood feeling
that they have neither seen matters in their normal
working condition, nor have they had time to under-
stand one-hundredth part of what they have seen,

3, AUGUST 28, 1867.

LA TEST INTELLIGENCE,

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

THE SPANISH INSURRECTION.
MADRID, Aug. 28.

Despatches received by the War Minister state
that the bands of fugitive insurgents, formerly com-
manded by Pierrad, are hiding in the mountains.
A small band of insurgents has made its appear-
ance in the province of Cuenca.

A seditious indvernent in Bejar has been sup,

pressed.

ITA LY.

FLORENCE, August 28.

The ofTwial Gazette of to-day says
" Certain journals, referring to the disagreeable
incident which has occurred between Italy and
France, relative to the formation of the Antibes
Legion, have spoken of occult influences, of
repeated notes on the one side, and threatening
notes upon the other. Negotiations still pending
the Government is obliged to impose upon itself the
greatest reserve, but is even now able to declare
that all such statements are entirely incorrect."

Advices from Silsa to the 26th inst. announce
that a train from Saint Michael has passed Mount
Cenis for the first time very successfully.

AMERICA.
NEW YORK, Aug. 27.
The Ville de Paris arrived here this morning.

THE BOMBAY MAIL.

ALEXANDRIA, Aug. 27.
The Syria sailed at noon yesterday, and the
Bangalore leaves at the same hour to-day.
The former may be expected at Marseilles on
the Ist and the latter at Southampton about the
9th September.

POLAND.

BRESLAU, Aug. 28.

The Breslau Gazette of to-day says that one of
the points agreed upon at Salzburg by the two
Emperors was au understanding on the Polish

question.

CRACOW, August 28.

The Archduke Albrecht will in a few days make
Lis third tour of inspection through Galicia. As
his Highness travels incognito, there will be no