The Sun.
London, England, 1858-09-06 00:00:00

he son of an English gehtleman is thrust iiit
working life through almost. as -much hardship the son son of a decent peasant. Who of us cannot:
remember his neophyte days at, the publi&katiol
It was not only the Eton Graminak. -and e
sense verses, but it was the euffini-from- - he
boys and the fighting one's way among the little
ones. How hard it was at first ; but how '
equalitysatisfac
tory it was afterwards. What a comp
reigned ; how little reverence for social distinctions
existed among those saucy boys. If we con-
descended for a moment to think that any one was
better than ourselves, it was not only Lord Fitz-
funk whom we envied, but Brown witt6the strong
aria, or Robinson with the quick .rff•
enough, quite soon enough, the castes of society,
with a rude shock to some of us and a pleasant sur-
prise to others, vindicated their dominion, and
heroes became drudges and drudges became com-
manders ; but were all bettered by that early con-
flict of body to body and mind to mind. It must
do the proudest noble some good to remember what
a heavy light he had with Jones; and the applause
of the House of Lords is less intoxicating to a man
who can remember how he used to be cut up by
Smith at the Oxford Union. This early rough dis-
cipline does much to keep our aristocracy sensible
and manly, and to preserve them from foolish notions
with respect to the classes beneath them. Perhaps
a ship of war is a still rougher introduction to life
than a public school. So utterly is all rank ignored,
except the rank of the service, that its possessor
finds it a fact to be rather apologised for than
paraded. Men would laugh to see Lord John That
giving himself airs in the gunroom of the Light-
ningbolt. The irrepressible ridicule and incessant
persecution of his fellows would soon melt him
down to the mould of the ordinary middy-.
Among that class of spirited youths who are kept
at hard work on board our ships, and spoken of
officially as " young gentlemen," but who are more
generally addressed familiarly as "small boys," now
ranks one of the Princes of the Blood Royal of
England. It is a wise step. It is in full accord
with all our English feelings that this English boy
should pass through the portal of labour to that of
honour, and should learn in the practice of
obedience the duties of command. In a few weeks
Prince Alfred will " join his ship ;" he will, we are
told, mess and live with the midshipmen, and will
be kept as strictly to the duties of his position as
if he had been the son of a naval officer or a country.
clergyman. Perhaps it is not -within the possi-
bilities of life that he should be stripped bare of
all rank and be treated in every respect as if he
were not the son of the Queen ; but he will at
least have to depend in some measure on his own
personal qualities ; he will as nearly as possible be
placed in a position to see the world from a footing
of equality with the rest of the human family. He
will live for a period a life of temperance and
labour. His home will be neither in the captain's
cabin, nor even in the wardroom, but 'anions, the
juniors in the gunroom. Up to the present time he
does not appear to have been treated with any
unwise indulgence. For a lad of fourteecn the
examination he has been put through may appear
sufficiently wide in its area. Latin, French,
German, and English dictation are not reached by
Royal roads. Many a youthful headache has been
incurred over each one of that terrible catalogue o
",arithmetic, algebra, plane trigonometry, Euclid,
geography, sacred history, and history of England,"
in which he seems to have passed a four days'
examination. If the young Prince Alfred is
soundly grounded in the principles of all this know-
ledge, he already possesses the solid materials for
thought which help a man best in the work of life ;
and it is not desirable that a Prince should be
either a savant, or a pedant.- Quite sure we are
that he is not likely to find in the .:gunroom
of the Euryalus many companions who know
these branches of instruction well. He will
be a well-informed man, let us take the
opportunity of his first entrance into active life to
hope that he will be a wise one. For the event none
can answer, but all that human caution can do
seems to be done and doing. Our Queen, in the
education of her son, seems to be acting with that
common sense which has obtained for her the con-
fidence no less than the affection of her people. She
now gives a good example to the matrons of Eng-
land by sending her second son into the naval ser-
vice of her country.
But there are also Prince Arthur and Prince
Leopold. We must hope that no one of these
Princes is destined to the throne, for to hope otherwise
would be to hope that the PrinCe of Wales will die
childless. The position of a Prince of the Blood
Royal, cramped as custom cramps it, is one which
no sensible Englishman envies. It is too high or
too low for happiness. It would be a kindness to
bring these boys up with the hope of an inde-
pendent career before them. If they grow up to
be worthy of their mother, they will yearn after
some more substantive place in life than that of
a Royal Duke with an Act of Parliament pension.
It is a hard condition of Royal rank to be de-
prived of domestic relations which the humblest
aniZng us may-,fteely take to himself I)3ntit
be unendurableAW find a family 'growing into
a population as a Btahmin class, to whom labour
is forbidden. It is not easy to see why the
army and navy, or even the Church, should not
afford careers to younger branches of the Royal
family. It may, perhaps, shock our prejudices a
little, and we shall, of course, be told of the abuse
of patronage that such a breach of present custom
would be certain to entail. We believe this to be
much over-estimated. It could not be very much
worse than what we have seen in favour of certain
English families which arc not Royal, and it is
rather in the interest of the aristocracy than in that
of the commonalty that this notion has been so
carefully nursed. We, however, of course, con-
template a real, honest professional career. It
would never be endured that the H.R.H. should
be imported into the ship of war or into the regi-
ment, or should lift an undeserving clergyman to
the bench of bishops. It is not to be conceded
that any English family derogates from even
the highest rank by placing its cadets in those
professions which require the exercise of the
highest qualities and which lead to the highest
offices of the State. The army and the navy, how-
ever, certainly offer greater facilities and present
fewer inconveniences as a career to a Prince than
the civil professions. If it ever should be decided
that the Princes of our Royal House shall mix as
equals with the ranks below the Throne, and com-
pete with those who seek for reputation in profes-
sional success, it will probably be in the army or
the navy that they will be found. We
say to
ke
suchitt a
that
to V
all the hn,glish public would have
step would be to desire that they should have fair
play-, but that they should be educated to their pro-
fession, that they should be rewarded only as other
men arc rewarded, and that they should be treated
in exact accordance with their professional rank.
We say this much more in the interest of these
youths
than in that of the public. The real happi-
ness of a man consists in his personal independence
and in a consciousness of being useful. We cannot
think that the biographies of defunct Royal Dukes
have generally been the histories of happy men.—
Times.

THE FERRY STAIRCASE AT NlAGAltA.—Every-
body who ever trusted himself to the sharp grade of the
ferry staircase, as that rope unrolled itself on whose strands'
strength his life hung, has exercised himself in calculating
to what degree of destruction his physical nature would be
crushed if those fibres should separate. The experiment
has recently had an unexpected trial, and the result is
worthy of record for the comfort of the adventurous. In
the month of March the Ferry-house took fire, and in the
conflawration the rope burned, and a car rushed the full
length of the steep track, and went into the river unbroken,
almost without a fracture, instead of being shivered into
fragments. The reason seemed this :—the weight of the
chain which is attached, and which serves to steady the
craft, operated as a break, and the car was taken through
its fearful journey to this regulator in safety. It is a trial
which in its pleasant result will give assurance of security
that will calm the mind, while the body is relieved from
the interminable stair journey.—New York, Com*r
[ADVEILTISEMPNTI—SIGHT AND HEARING.—SPEC-
TiCLES.—POWERFUL TELESCOPES.--OPERA, RACE, AND
PERSPECTIVE GLASSES.—S. and B. Solomons, opticians,
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Royal Letters Patent
for valuable and improvementsextraordinary in the most
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Opera,
'Telescopes
and Perspective
possess suchpectiveGlas extraordinaryses,tokn powerthedist hanteeast.
some,liese three and a half inches, with an extra eye-piece, will
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double stars ; with the same .telescope can be seen a person's
countenance three and a half miles distant, and an object
from 16 to 20 miles. For the waistcoat pocket, and are of
larger, and all sizes, with increasing powers accordingly.
The Royal Exhibition, 1851. A valuable, newly-invented,
very small, powerful Waistcoat-pocket Glass, the size of a
walnut, by which a person can be seen and known one and
a half mile distant. They answer every purpose on the
Race-course and at the Opera-houses. Country scenery
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valuable for shooting, deerstalking, yaehti, tooort _er ,
gentlemen, gamekeepers, and tourists. Opera, -
spective, and Race-course Glasses,
—lnvaluable persevering Spectacle
hule powersgr a t es.
d becomes preserved and
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t
eh
ey with
d o
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the
can an
bg
ee rou s effects of
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lensessi g sight atof
athe
uienho site
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from the eye they can read small print with it, and those
who have not made use of spectacles by stating their age.
Deafness.—New Discovery.—The Organic Vibrator, an ex-
traordinarily powerful, small, newly-invented instrument
for deafness, entirely different from all others, surpassing
anything of the kind that has been, or probably can be, pro-
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ceptible. It enables deaf persons to hear distinctly at
church and at public assemblies ; the unpleasant sensation
of singing noises in the ears is entirely removed, and it
affords all the assistance that possibly could be desired.-391
Abelnalle-Etreet) Piccadilly, oppouto the Yak 11901, W.