The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-17 00:00:00

Tilt SUN*, LOND6N, TUESDAY EVEXINGt, DECEMBER 17, 1867.

THE FEMALE SCHOOL OF Ant

On Saturday afternoon the distribution of medals
and prizes to the successful students of the Female
School of Art took place at Burlington House,
Piccadilly. Notwithstanding the wetness of the
afternoon there was a good attendance of visitors,
the larger portion of whom were ladies. The chair
was taken by Sir Francis Grant, president of the
Royal Academy ; and among the occupants of the
platform were Lady Grant, Professor Donaldson,
the Rev. J. Bach, and Messrs. R. Westmacott, R.A.,
R. Redgrave, R.A., O'Neill, R.A., Pocock, Good-
win, Valpy, Henderson, H. A. Bowler, J. H.
Fordham, and G. Harding. Miss Gann, the super-
intendent of the school, sat at the table on the right
of the chairman.
Professor DONALDSON read the annual statement
of the committee, of which the following are the
most material portions :—The committee are happy
in being able to state that the school continues in
all essential points to progress favourably, mainly
due to the able management of Miss Gann, the
superintendent, and to the unremitting attention
bestowed upon the pupils in their studies by Miss
Wilson and Miss Bellaneye, and by Miss Williams,
the teacher of wood engraving, and all whose ser-
vices the committee are happy thus to acknow-
ledge. At the present time there are 107 students
on the books, being 34 more than at the same date
last year. At the close of the summer session the
number was 130, and the committee have little
doubt that, as the advantages offered by the school
become more extensively known, a very short period
will suffice to raise the number from 150 to 200
students, which it can easily accommodate. At the
annual second grade examination in March, 1867,
36 students presented themselves for examination,
25 passed in one or more of the papers, and
13 prizes were taken, which will be presented by
the chairman, Sir F. Grant, to the successful com-
petitors. At the annual national and local exami-
nation of the drawings at South Kensington last
April, one national silver medal was awarded to
Alice Elfrida Manly, and one national bronze to
Margaretta Clarke. Ten local prizes No. 1, and
four prizes No. 2 were awarded ; and three students
were awarded honourable mention. The examiners
were Daniel Maclise, R.A., Professor Richard West-
macott, R.A., J. C. Horsley, IRA., Fred. Leighton,
A.R.A., Richard Redgrave, R.A., and 11. A. Bow-
ler. Two prizes for design offered by Miss Bell, of
Alton, have been awarded, the first prize to Sarah
M'Gregor, the second prize to Emily Austin. The
first gold medal given by her Majesty, to be com-
peted for annually by the students of this school,
has been awarded to Alice Elfrida Manly for three
groups of flowers in tempera from nature. The
adjudicators were Mr. R. Westmacott, R.A., Mr.
C. W. Cope, R.A., and Miss Mutrie. The report
then dwelt upon other circumstances connected with
the working of the school, and concluded with a
congratulatory reference to the circumstance that
the gold medal of the Royal Academy and a scholar-
ship of £6O this year had been won by Miss Louisa
Star.

After the reading of the statement, the cards,
prizes, and certificates were distributed to the suc-
cessful competitors, who, upon their names being
called out, advanced to the platform and received
the rewards of their exertions from the hands of Sir
Francis Grant. Several of the young ladies had
gained more than one mark of distinction, and
they were on each appearance warmly applauded by
their fellow-students and their friends. The
warmest and most general expressions of admira-
tion were reserved for Miss Alice Manly, who re-
ceived a silver medal for three groups of flowers,
painted from nature, and a gold medal, presented
by the Queen, for the best drawing executed in the
school during the twelvemonth ; and Miss Marga-
retta Clarke, who had gained a bronze medal for a
sheet of botanical studies ornamentally arranged.
To many of the young ladies Sir Francis said a few
words of approval or encouragement as he shook
them cordially by the hand. Miss Manly he espe-
cially complimented upon. the beauty of her draw-
ings, which he described as works of " surpassing
excellence." Having concluded the distribution,
Sir F. GRANT, who was received with loud ap-
-1 plause, said—l am now permitted to address to you
a few brief observations. First, I desire to express
the great satisfaction that I have experienced from
listening to the statement which has been read by
Professor Donaldson ; and next, I am anxious to
offer my congratulations to those young ladies who
have been successful in obtaining prizes. I must
also say a word of encouragement to those who have
not gained prizes, but whose works have received a
great deal of admiration ; and I particularly desire
to impress upon all the students the necessity of
persevering in the earnest labour which they have
already displayed, and which must certainly lead to
excellence hereafter. I rejoice to hear that this ad-
mirable institution has received substantial aid from
the Queen, from the Princess of Wales, and from
other members of the royal family. I am glad to
have the opportunity of saying how much art has
ever been indebted to the enlightened sup-
port it has received from her Majesty. The Queen
is herself an artist of no ordinary ability, and there-
fore well able to appreciate talent in others, and on
those occasions on which I have had the honour in
my professional capacity to be admitted to her pre-
sence I have been highly gratified by the interest
which she has graciously expressed in the progress
and prosperity of the younger artists of the country
who are coming into public notice. (Applause.) I
learn with deep satisfaction that her Majesty has
become the purchaser of one of Miss Manly's beau-
tiful water-colour drawings, and I cannot but feel
that it must be an encouragement to all the students
to know that their labours and their merits are not
overlooked by their Sovereign. One day last
week I had the pleasure of going over the Female
School of Art, accompanied by its valued
and excellent superintendent, Miss Gann.—(ap-
plause)—and I can assure you that I was highly
gratified. I found there numerous students receiv-
ing a sound and valuable education, and I saw '
many young ladies displaying great ability in draw-
ing from the antique, from the life, from the flat, or
from model. I was especially struck with one
beautiful painting in monochrome, from the antique,
and upon inquiring by whom it had been executed
I was delighted but infinitely surprised to find that
it was the work of Miss Manly. (Applause.) It is
very extraordinary to see such varied excellence in
such different departments of art ; and having
already admired her remarkable drawings of
flowers, I cannot but prognosticate a brilliant
future from so successful a beginning. I hope she
will allow me to remind her and all the other stu-
dents that true genius—l rejoice to think that true
genius is always accompanied by modesty and
industry—true genius, ever learning and ever
ascending, in its own estimation never reaches the
summit. (Applause.) I take the most lively inte-
rest in the remarkable progress which female art is
making in this country. It is delightful, to reflect
that young ladies of good education and limited
means are no longer confined to one profession,
alwayslaborious and sometimes anomalous- —the pro-
fession of a governess. I speak with the deepest
respect of that honourable and accomplished class,
but at the same time we must all rejoice that the
door has been thrown wide open leading to another
profession in which ladies have proved themselves
so eminently qualified to excel. For my own part
I have always been a warm advocate of the
admission of lady students to the Royal
Academy, and I hope they will always enjoy the
same privileges as the male students. When the
medals are awarded at the Royal Academy, the
❑ames of the winners are never known until the
moment of distribution. Last week, when I had
to present the gold medal and scholarship, I was
surprised and delighted to read out the name of
Miss Louisa Star. A young and graceful lady was
led with trembling steps to receive the highest
prize the Royal Academy can confer, amid raptur-
ous applause ; and, to their honour be it said, none
more enthusiastic in their praise than the very stu-
dents whom this young lady had successfully dis-
tanced. (Applause.) I think this is a very seri-
ous consideration for us men who call ourselves the
lords of creation. We may well tremble in our
shoes when we see this great " storm wave" of
female talent and enterprise rolling rapidly for-

ward and threatening to overwhelm us ; but while
I shall ever be the advocate of an open field, fair
play, and no favour, I trust the result will be bet-
ter art, and a friendly, peaceable, and even affec-
tionate rivalry. I will now give place to others who
are better able than I am to inform you as to the
details of the working of this admirable institution
—but before I sit down, allow me to express the
hope that those ladies who have gained prizes to-
day will continue to reap fresh laurels, and that the
younger students will never flinch from the
labour which is necessary to acquire excellence.
(Loud applause.)

Mr. WESTMACOTT, R.A., made a few observa-
tions, in the course of which he chs elt with especial
emphasis upon the advantages which the school de-
rived from the superintendence of Miss Gann, than
whom it was impossible to find a more able or de-
voted teacher. (Hear.) _ _

The proceedings closed with a vote of thanks to
Sir F. Grant, which was moved by Mr. REDGRAVE,
R.A., and seconded by Mr. O'NEILL, R.A.

MR. OTWAY, M.P., ON POLITICS.

Last evening Mr. A. Otway, M.P. for Chatham,
addressed his constituents in the Lecture-hall of
that town, which was well filled. The chair was
taken by Mr. Vincent Hills, Mayor of Rochester,
who briefly introduced the hon. member.
Mr. OTWAT commenced his address by denying
Admiral Elliot's statement that he had neglected
local interests. The hon. member quoted as the
witty saying of a learned man, that all that the Re-
form Act contained of the Reform Bill was the word
" Whereas," and said that the bill belonged to the
Government and the act to the House of Commons,
and that all the improvements made in the bill were
due to the Liberal party. The act was by no means
perfect. In the November session he had pointed
out a serious blunder, corrected by the first act of
the session—(laughter)--and no doubt in February
many shortcomings and defects would be made ma-
nifest and corrected. There must be a larger re-
distribution of seats, and the compound househol-
der, although said to be dead, was certainly not
buried. (Laughter, and " Hear, hear.") The lat-
ter question was one of peculiar interest in the
borough, and a gentleman acquainted with the local
working of the Small Tenements Act, wrote him that:
"The parish of Chatham contains about 1,200
houses that formerly came under the Small Tene-
ments Act, the landlords paying the rates. Now
this burden is thrown on the tenants, the collectors
have called on these people for the money, they will
not pay (possibly cannot) ; appeal days have been
fixed for those persons to appear before the guar-
dians who are too poor to pay. I have, as their
clerk, attended ; hundreds upon hundreds have been
down ; in fact, the crush has been so great that the
assistance of the police has been called in to pre-
serve order. I have repeatedly called appellants'
attention to the fact that by the guardians excusing
them any portion of their rates they would not be
on the Register of Voters at the next election. To
this in every case their reply was, ' We can't pay,
we do not care about our vote;' and not in half -a-
dozen cases that have come before us have the
guardians thought it right to make an order on these
people." This was a most unsatisfactory state of
things ; an enfranchisement of the people was con-
ceded with such conditions as made it unacceptable
to them. Mr. Gladstone was throughout right
in the view he took of the matter. (Cheers.) The
personal payment of rates, as a principle of the Act,
was doomed to disappear. The statement that the
Conservatives were Liberals at heart, and from 1859
had made up their minds to household suffrage, was
refuted by the fact that Lord Derby, when called to
power, asked the co-operation in office of Mr. Lowe,
who was opposed to any reduction of the suffrage.
If Lord Derby had been in favour of household suf-
frage he should have applied to Mr. Bright. (Cheers.)
Lord Derby in his time had made one or two un-
fortunate party statements. In 1852, when the
question of Protection was alive, he said he was
looking to the time when he could say to his followers,
" Up Guards and at them." Before 1859 he said it
was his mission to stem the tide of Democracy.
Neither statement could be compared with that made
with reckless firmness in 1866 that his determination
was to convert a minority into a majority rather than
to maintain any principles. These had been sacri-
ficed to maintain place—(hear) —he would not say
power. The conduct of the Conservative party last
Session had struck a fatal blow at the confidence
people had for some time reposed in public men.
The question arose what was to be the limit of the
policy Lord Derby had adopted in order to carry
the Reform Act. Was it to be adopted in the
settlement of all the great questions now at issue?
Were church-rates to be opposed to the last and the
Church then thrown over? The question might
appear unimportant at Chatham, which had no
church-rate for many years ; but the people of
Chatham had some feeling for their fellow country-
men. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in reply to
a question, said that a man imprisoned for nonpay-
ment of church-rates had been ill-advised by his
lawyer ; but the House of Lords was more " ill-
advised" when it threw out the bill for the abolition
of church-rates. (Cheers.) Was the Government's
majority principle to be applied to the questions of
the Irish Church and the government of Ireland ?
The population of Chatham would abhor and
stigmatise as cruel, barbarous, and horrible the
diabolical outrage perpetrated by Fenian conspira-
tom in London—(hear, hear)—and would detest
and execrate Fenianism, aslithad showed itself, as
an insane and wicked conspiracy ; but who could
conscientiously say that we had not committed
wrong towards Ireland ? On this question was the
Liberal party to be opposed to the last, and then
more than it had advocated conceded by the Go-
vernment in order to convert a minority into a
majority ? In such a policy there was no states-
manship, which determined what was right and
just, and yielded to reasoning and not to agitation
and violence. Such a motive animated the Liberal
party, of whose cause he did not despair, for its
mind was made up on the questions of the day,
and it wanted to deal with them in a large sense.
On the questions of church rates, the Irish
Church, Irish tenant right, and education
—(cheers)—the Liberal party had a programme
distinct from that of the Conservative party,
so that there must be antagonism between them.
It was said that the passing of the Reform Act
would make the country Conservative ; but three
out of four late elections—those for Leicestershire,
Coventry, and Manchester—had resulted in Liberal
victories and the displacement of Conservatives.
(Cheers.) In one respect the Liberal party con-
trasted unfavourably with the Conservative party,
and that was in acting as a clique and not acknow-
ledging great services—but this fault he hoped
would be corrected in future. Referring to the
increase of the income tax, he said commerce was
not flourishing and the trade of the town was de-
pressed, so that it was an unfortunate time to aug-
ment the tax. With regard to the Abyssinian
difficulty, he admitted that the present Govern-
ment ',inherited it, and that we were bound to
demand the release of Mr. Rassa:n—first by ne-
gotiation, and that, failing, by force ; but he
thought it would have been strange if King
Theodore, with whom he hal entered into rela-
tions, had not been offended at the non-receipt of
answers to two letters which he had addressed to
the Queen. One of these bad been mislaid, the
King had not been answered, and we were at war.
It was the old story —seine ono had blundered, and
the English people bad to pay. It was hard upon
them that they should be plunged into a war in
which they had no interest because slights bad been
put upon a King like Theodore through the negli-
gence of the Foreign-office. It would have been
better if Government had revealed its intentions to
Parliament before the close of last session ; but
Lord Stanley's explanation had gone far to excul-
pate the Government in this respect. On the autho-
rity of Sir Samuel Baker and of the Belgian diplo-
matist who had resided in Abyssinia two years, and
whose despatch to the Government was given in
the Blue-book, ho held that our greatest danger
was in a large expedition. It was said the King
had not the means of putting 1,000 men
in line at any time, and that there was
no possibility of opposing thd march of 500

English soldiers through the country. Sir Samuel
Baker recommended an expedition of 500 men, and
the Belgian Minister one of 1,000 ; and he, there-
fore, wanted to know why we had sent 12,000 men,
or, with camp followers, 50,000. This was hard on
the British taxpayer, and still more on the British
soldier, because of the difficulties of transport and
of maintenance. That dey's news was that water
was scarce, and that the troops were being moved
forward, and that animals were dying for want of
nourishment. If, as he believed, a small expedition
would have insured success, a large one would frust-
rate it with proportionate responsibility on the Go-
vernment. It was most extraordinary that the gene-
ral in command and his large staff—a large staff re-
quired a large army— (laughter)—as wrll as a large
army a large staff—had not left Bombay yet. If a man
like Outram bad gone into Abyssiuia as Outram
did into Affghanistan, we might by a sharp adven-
ture have rescued the captives from Magdala, where
they were entirely cut off from the King. Theodore
he believed to be a different man from what he had
been represented to be by the Foreign-office. We
had not heard him yet. He was an acute, shrewd
man, who knew something of our habits and laws ;
and it might be that he would give up the English
captives and retain the Germans and Hessians. We
must then retire with our large force and leave them
in captivity, or rescue them at the cost of the British
taxpayer. We bad blundered from the beginnicg,
and the only thing we could be certain about was
the valour of our troops. (Cheers.) The conduct
of the War Department did not inspire confidence.
The sending a regiment on board a transport past
Plymouth to Portsmouth, and back to Plymouth
by train, the keeping of a regiment on board a
transport three days between Plymouth and Alder-
shott because tides were missed, and Sunday
" didn't count"—(laughter) —the payment of
£B,OOO to the inventor of a destructive roc-
ket, and the non-supply of such rockets to
the Abyssinian expedition, and an interminable
correspondence about the repair of a pump showed
that there was a want of system which would
shame the organisation of a ragged school, that we
frittered away the energies of public servants upon
trifles, and that we wasted thousands of pounds by
mistakes while we haggled with a gas company and
deprived the soldier of light. Satisfied from such
things as these that there was something wrong,
he intended to move for a committee to inquire into
the organisation of the War Department and its re-
lations with the other departments of the Govern-
ment. He hoped that the non-purchase system
would soon be that of the whole British army,
and that in the meantime, the scheme of
promotion in non-purchase corps, devised by
the committee on which he sat, would be
adopted. He also hoped that the recommenda-
tion of another committee on which he sat would
be adopted, and that election committees would
be superseded by judicial tribunals. Atten-
tion must be directed to the administration of the
revenues of India, which amounted to £150,000,000,
and were at the disposal of the Secretary of State
for India in Council. Pensions of from £BO to
£2OO a year had been paid to officers dismissed for
drunkenness, peculation, and insubordination ;
£l,BOO compensation had been offered to an officer
who had been ill-used ; and the revenues of India
had paid for the ball to the Sultan, who did not
dance, and was hated by Hiudocs. No man had a
higher character than Sir Stafford Northcote ; but
it was a question whether one man should have the
control of such revenues. Having expressed his
confidence in Lord Stanley and his foreign policy,
and his approbation of the course taken by Lord
Stanley on the Luxemburg question and the Ala-
bama claims, the honourable member concluded by
saying that when they next met many would
have entered into possession of those political
rights from which they bad hitherto been excluded.
We, he said, are about to part with power, and to
confide to your keeping the destinies of a nation
which has achieved great things. There are men—
naive and foreign—who say that our country has
reached the apogee of her glory and power, that
henceforth we must look for her decline. Ido not
share ,this opinion, but I feel that on you and all
those about to be enfranchised depends greatly the
future of England. Make it your task to preserve
her mighty empire, to cherish her freedom, to pro-
mote by all means in your power the happiness of
her loyal and industrious people." (Loud cheers.)
A resolution, expressing high appreciation of Mr.
Otway's Parliamentary services, entire satisfaction
with the principles enunciated in his address, and
undiminished confidence in him as a representative,
was agreed to.