The Sun.
London, England, 1867-01-24 00:00:00

efficient monarch, they are doing their best to
write finis to their politicalc areer.

Last Monday the annual meeting of the Brad-
ford Chamber of Commerce took place, and some
interesting speeches were made on the occasion.
In seconding the report, Lord F. CAVENDISH, M.P.,
observed that they should look to the end and ob-
ject of commerce, and then they would recognise
that capital and labour should be spent where the
best effects would be produced, and also that those
various gifts which have been bestowed on different
nations should be thus brought by its mighty agency
within reach of all in every land. This is, indeed,
the real object which all should have in view ;
and surely, when one comes to dwell upon

it, one becomes more and more convinced
of the desirability of doing all in our power to pro-
mote and further the important work. It is to be
regretted that owing to the war in Germany very
little progress has been made with the Commercial
Treaty with Austria, and as to the new countries,
colonies, and the United States, it cannot in reason
be expected, as the noble lord said, that free-trade
will be adopted very readily there ; but still perhaps
it is.no matter of surprise that some should feel in-
dignant at the slowness with which they take up
the notion. There is a good deal of sense
in the advice offered in this speech respect-
ing those interests, and no doubt it would be
far wiser and better if, instead of raising vexatious
questions in discussing the subject with them, we
were to keep to the point, and intimate to them
what would constitute their real source of strength.
The manufacturers would gradually obtain a firmer
hold and increase their trade if the colonists would
trust to the gradual growth of local wants, instead
of rearing industries which are sickly and weakly.
Respecting the financial panic and the suspen-
sion of the Bank Act, the noble lord made some
observations, and he gave it as his opinion
that the issue of the notes should be en-
trusted to a separate department, because if
the Bank continued to have anything to do with the
issue many would think that the Bank had limited
means. Very likely we may hear of some such
change taking place before long, for the subject is
said to be under the consideration of the Govern-
ment, and some striking changes will probably
occur. It is, indeed, high time that something de-
cisive was done:in the matter, because the risks and
losses are very considerable under the present
scheme, which has been tried long enough in all
conscience to suit the views of its most devoted
partisans and most prejudiced upholders.
Another momentous subject of consideration in

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

AUSTRIA.

VIENNA, Jan. 24.

The Emperor received yesterday, at noon, the de-
putation charged to present to his Majesty the ad-
dress of the Hungarian Diet relative to the Imperial
Patent upon the organisation of the army. The
Emperor, iu replying to the speech of the spokes-
man of the deputation, said that he hoped that
an Imperial rescript, to be promulgated shortly,
would remove all the apprehensions expressed in
the address. The Emperor added that he was
ready to give satisfaction to the wishes of Hun-
gary as soon as mutual confidence should render
it possible to remove the difficulties still opposing
the formation of a responsible Ministry.
The Empress of Austria left yesterday afternoon
for Zurich, on a visit to her sister, the Countess
Trani.

the present day is that of " Strikes," and, as the
noble lord said, it is one of great difficulty and im-
portance. It has been suggested in some quarters
that it might be advisable to get rid of these evils
by putting an end to these " troublesome trades'
unions ;" but he thought that such an effort would
in all probability be attended with failure, and it
would certainly be a hazardous attempt. This
opinion we coincide with ; but we think with the
noble lord that the Legislature can be very profit-
ably employed in securing " more completely the
working man from the intimidation of trades unions."
Strikes and lock-outs are fast becoming some of the
greatest evils. Among us they are a positive loss
to the employers, and a source of frightful misery
to thousands of the operatives. We wish we could
see any chance of the noble lord's hope being realised
that in a short time we should see less of those dis-
astrous affairs taking place ; but we think, in wait-
ing for mutual consideration to take place, that
the laws might be made more effective, and
stronger measures put in force, to check all intimi-
dation, and to secure that real freedom of choice
to the workman which at present he certainly
does not possess in many cases.

Mr. FORSTER, ➢I.P., proposed that at the next
meeting of the Associated Chambers of Commerce
the council be requested to support the: resolution
proposed by the Hull, Leeds, and Bradford Cham-
ber, to appoint a Select Committee of the House of
Commons on the subject of Tribunes of Commerce
and of Courts of Conciliation between masters and
servants. Mr. FORSTER said very truly that it
would be extremely difficult to establish these tri-
bunals in England, for we should " have all the
lawyers against them, for they cannot see with-

out concern. ,that disputes should be settled
without them." However, the time has come
when these constant disputes should be checked in
some way or other, and the arbitration that is pretty
generally employed on the Continent may be of
service among us. This motion was carried, and
we hope that sooner or later it may be productive
of good results, for the subject referred to is one
that cannot fail to be one of interest and importance
to society at large, in consequence of the many and
great evils that abound from the matter not being
set on a satisfactory footing—evils that affect,
directly or indirectly, all classes of society, from the
highest to the lowest.

We are glad to see that Lord Lord JOJIN MAN-
NERS, as Chief Commissioner of the Board of Works,
has given orders for the lake to be drained in the
Regent's-park, which has been lately the scene
of such painful events. A body of men are now
engaged in the task by excavating a trench. His
lordship intends to have the bed so filled up that the
water in future will have no more than an uniform
depth of four feet. This will be a very good thing,
and prevent, for the future, the recurrence
of such dreadful calamities as that which
has recently horrified the metropolis. It is
yet uncertain if any more bodies will be found,
but of course the thaw will materially assist the
operations of those engaged in the sad search. No
better proof can be afforded of the recklessness with
which people go on in the pursuit of their favourite
pastimes than is given by the records of the Humane
Society's office yesterday. It is astonishing that
people will be so infatuated, and children were
allowed to go on the ice. In St. James's Park two
were immersed, but were saved in time to prevent
serious consequences. The public will appreciate
the wise course pursued by Lord JOIIN MANNERS,
and the promptitude he has shown in the matter
on all sides ; indeed there has been a readiness dis-
played to mitigate, as far as possible, the bad effects
of the late grievous accident, which it is very grati-
fying to witness ; and we trust it will be long be-
fore the services of the humane and well-disposed
will be so urgently called for again.

LITERATURE.

TliE SUN, LOisIDON, THURSDAY EVENING, JANUARY 24, 1867.

New America. By William Hepworth Dixon.
With Illustrations from Original Photographs.
Two Volumes. Hurst and Blackett.
It was but yesterday as it almost seems to us
that we were being conducted in imagination by
Mr. Dixon among the hallowed ruins and arid plains
of the Holy Land. Turning the pages of the two
eloquent and noble volumes which were produced
by him last year as the record of his pilgrimage
through Palestine, we were conducted by him, in a
reverent and believing spirit, to the regions ren-
dered sacred eighteen centuries ago by the divinely
affecting and unutterably awful incidents of the
Redemption. Under the shadow of the mountains
of Lebanon, along the slopes of the hills of Galilee,
down the valley of the Jordan, across the plains of
Acre, from the shores of the Dead Sea to those of
the Sea of Galilee, otherwise known as the Lake of
Tiberias, to Mount Tabor, to Mount Hermon,
through Nazareth, through Bethlehem, through
Jerusalem, we were led by him in a mood so well-
befitting the regions we were thus traversing
together with himself that we had a consciousness all
the while in regard to our author that while he
moved thus with a firm tread onward in his pil-
grimage his knee would never disdain to bend upon
occasion—that while he gazed around with a glance
always keenly penetrant and observant it was with
eyes not infrequently suffused with emotional tears
—that while he pointed this and that out to our ob-
servation, as with the steady index-finger of a guide
who had mastered as far as might be in any
way practicable the geographical, the topogra-
phical, and the archonlogical outlines of his sub-
ject, it was not only in the spirit of a traveller of
nowadays, who, had well thumbed his " Murray,"
but of one also who had both the Old and the
New Testament perfectly well by heart. Alto-
gether, we retain not merely an agreeable but a
very grateful remembrance of Mr. Dixon's two last
volumes—the two volumes of his " Holy Land."
We bear distinctly of course in our remembrance
that he had already otherwise long previously
made good his very substantial claims to re-
cognition as a man of letters. As the biographer
of Nicholas Bacon, of William Penn, of Robert
Blake, of John Howard, he had vindicated the
fair fame of men whose reputations, to say the
least of them, in very deed and truth, were not
unworthy of vindication. He had, at a still
earlier period in his career, sketched with a
wonderfully graphic vigour—as with an iron stylus
dipped in vitriol—the Literature of the Lower
Orders. He had described —as the future
biographer of Howard might have been ex-
pected to describe them, namely, with an uncom-
promising truth, mingled with a most humane
suggestiveness—the Prisons of London. In writing
the Life of Penn, he had contended, and, what is far
more, had successfully contended hand to hand with
Lord Macaulay. In writing the Life of Blake, he
had, in recording the deeds of that great English
Worthy, Admiral and General, laboured harmo-
niously side by side with Lord Dundonald. In
writing the Life of Bacon, he had triumphantly
scattered to the winds the aspersers of the Father of
Inductive Philosophy, and, while doing this, had con-
trived rather seriously to mar the reputation acquired
by Lord Campbell as the historian of his own official
predecessors, theLerd High Chancellors of England.
It was after the accomplishment of these and other
kindred labours in the pleasant paths of literature,
that Mr. Dixon only last year gave us such good
reason to welcome him with more satisfaction
than ever, by the publication of his book upon
" The Holy Land," a work which we are still dis-
posed (though without any disparagement whatever,
let us add, to these present volumes) to regard as
his masterpiece. As if resolved upon the production
of the most startling contrast that could well
have been contrived, he now claims public attention
anew, immediately afterwards, by presenting to the
world two companion volumes of a diametrical
opposite character to the two but just now particu-
larized. Traversing with him but yesterday, as we have
said, the regions of Palestine, we are to-day spirited
away by him to " fresh fields and pastures new."
New America, that is—the very title of these two ex-
hilarating and vivacious volumes, the key-note to
the vivacity of which is struck clearly and reso-
nantly at the very outset, thus :—[Time: by the Iva)",
August, 1866 —Place : Atchison City, Missouri,
U.S.—lnterlocutors : a couple of Western boys,
hailing, each of them, from Bleeding Kansas, and
taking stock (while they converse as follows) of our
author and his companion voyageur, Mr. Charles
Wentworth Bake, to whom, by the way, these
volumes are affectionately inscribed by Mr. Dixon:]
"Guess these Yanks must look alive on this side the
river, unless they should happen to enjoy having their eye-
teeth drawn--eh, Judge ?"
The man to whom this appeal is made as judge lifts up
his chin from a dish of hominy and corned beef, glances
first at myself, then at my fellow traveller, and, after wink-
ing an eye to the right and left, says slowly, " Guess you
are right there, Sheriff."
Thereanent--about the drawing of those same meta-
phorical eye-teeth—quoth our traveller (anecdotally
and quite par parenthese) "Five or six years ago,
when calling on my old friend Landor in his Flo-
rentine house, and expressing my joy at finding
him so hale and bright (he was then eighty-four), I
heard, in reply to my congratulations, these notice-
able words My dear fellow, say no more
about it, I have lost four of my teeth.' When
I smiled, the veteran added, Do not laugh at
me ; I would rather have lost all my intellect than
one of my teeth.'" A phrase so over-strong, in the
emphasis of it, that one is almost tempted to hint
that no; only four of his teeth had then left him, but
that, say, four out of his five wits had already gone to
keep them company. So divergent are the views of
poets no lessthan of other men as to whether the loss
of teeth be matter for lament or gratulation, that we
would here offer to our author's consideration as a
sort of companion picture to this reminiscence of
his own in regard to Savage Landor immediately
before the close. of his long life, our own recollec-
tion of Leigh Hunt's remarking to us shortly
before the close of his life, that he had just been
exulting over .the loss of the last of his teeth
Observing whimsically that ho felt thereby so
much the more etherialized 1 Reverting, however,
to the threatened drawing of the eye-teeth of any
Yank or supposed Yank coming over the border-
line separating Missouri from Kansas—as plea-
santly intimated to our author and his travelling
companion by those two Western boys designating
'each other respectively Judge and Sheriff—we would
here again remark that the interchange of
those comments of theirs across the hotel table
at Atchison last August, strikes the keynote, as we
have said, to the prelude of these two most animated
and entertaining volumes. Better still, however,
than the commencement, is the conclusion
of that same opening chapter of the First Volume,
where an incident is related that, as Mr. Dixon
says, with a twinkling sense of the fun of the thing
in telling it—at once raises him and his companion
in the estimation of those two sardonic hinters
about the drawing of eye-teeth (Judge and Sheriff)
--" Raises us in their good opinion to a height yet
higher than that from which we had evidently fal-
len, enabling us to quit the town, morally speaking,
sword in hand and with flying colours. Saunter-
ing down the street, enjoying our gossip and cigar,
we note the word Post-office on a shop front,
anti on going inside we find there is one letter
With my name on the cover, written in an un-
known hand, on which three cents are due. Pay-
ing the money and breaking open the seal, I find
the letter is not for me ; on which I fold and re-
store it to the postmaster, saying it is not mine,
and should be kept for the owner, to whom it is
perhaps of moment. Eyeing me in a queer way,
the postmaster takes the letter, and gives me back
my change of three cents. Do you see ?' says
the sheriff to his nearest friend, d—d smart that
—read his letter and got his money back ! Hang
me if I think they are Yanks after all.' One
touch of roguery, it would seem—[here remarks
Mr. Dixon, serio-comically, in conclusion, when
relating the incident]—Oue touch of roguery, it
would seem, is enough to make the whole world
kin." Wide as the poles asunder, it hardly needs
be said, are these recollections of New America,
when contrasted or brought into direct compari-
son with their author's previous book about " The