The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-03 00:00:00

heart of the brave Sea Captain is still in death,
and when these who had the honour of personal
acquaintance with him are mourning for his loss,
But—to compare him with NELSON, with our im-

mortal NELSON, with the greatest warrior that has
ever sailed the deep, the hero of a hundred fights,
the victor of the Nile, of Copenhagen, of Trafalgar !
Why, we should have shrunk—as from the proffer-
ing of a very left-handed compliment indeed—
from instituting any such farcical comparison be-
tween our glorious and matchless NELSON and
a great Sea Captain, happily still living, with whom
Lord LYONS cannot for a single moment
be seriously compared—we mean THOMAS Coon-
ItANE, the dauntless Earl of Dundonald. It would
be perfectly ridiculous to compare Lord LYONS 9
with Lord DUNDONALD. It would, we re-
peat, be a singularly dubious and left-handed
compliment to eulogise even the Earl of DUNDO-
NALD (and a braver man than he, we nevertheless
believe, never trod the deck of a line-of-battle ship)
by comparing him with Lord NELSON, the greatest
of all the world's sea captains. Yet what would
be out of the question even in regard to Lord DUN-
DONALD, the Times has actually done in regard to
Lord LYONS. Under the weight of all those extrava-
gant and overwhelming exaggerations of pane-
gyric, poor Lord LYONS' fair fame sinks down
crushed and all but annihilated. It is the fate of
TARPElA—crushed to death, beaten down into the
dust, under the golden bracelets and the brazen
shields. Crown an ordinary mortal with the
diadem of a giant and a demigod--and the poor
human hero is at once rendered a wholly ludicrous
spectacle—he is fairly bonneted and extinguished.
Funereal panegyrics, like the one just pronounced
by the Times over Lord LYONS, are surely the very
reverse of decorous. They are calculated to pro-
voke—not honour, but ridicule—not tears, but
laughter—not sympathy, but scorn and indignation.

An honourable testimonial, we rejoice to observe,
has just been awarded to Captain H. JOHNSTON,
for his admirable intrepidity in saving the passen-
gers and crew—two hundred and twenty-six souls
altogether—of the ship Eastern City ; which vessel,
it may be remembered, was totally destroyed by
fire last August, in latitude 31 S. and longitude
32 W. The recognition of this heroic service in
the cause of humanity was no other than the pre-
sentation to Captain JOHNSTON of a gold medal
commemorating the event—the gold medal but
rarely awarded by the Shipwreck and Humane
Society of Liverpool. Than precisely this
kind of tribute the British sailor can
hardly receive any nobler decoration. It is
the badge of true valour—equivalent, in its way,
as a symbol of honour, to the presentation of a
civic crown in the old classic era. A single medal
like the one placed on Wednesday last in the
hands of Captain JOHNSTON in the Underwriters'
Rooms in Liverpool, weighs more in the balance
than a thousand ordinary crosses dangling from a
scrap of ribbon from the buttonhole. Here was a
gold medallion, stamped with the record
of an act of heroism far beyond the
storming of a battery, or the rout of a squadron,
or the leading of a forlorn hope. It was a blood-
less victory over the perils and horrors of the two
dread elements of water and firc—on the deck of a
flaming vessel, far out at sea—a victory won by
nerve, by coolness, firmness, determined courage,
and unflinching resolution, under a combination of
the most appalling circumstances. With the mo-
desty becoming a man of true honour, Captain
JOIINSTON deprecated the tributes of praise
offered to him on Wednesday at Liverpool,
remarking that he had done no more than his
duty. But England, above all things, loves and
honours those who do no more than this. The
most heroic Englishman who ever lived has im-
mortalised the truth in the famous battle-signal by
which he led his conquering men-of-war into
action off Cape Trafalgar. Honour, then, to this
gallant sailor who, by merely doing his duty in
August last, saved the lives of 226 of his fellow-
creatures. And honour to the Liverpool Shipwreck
and Humane Society for its spontaneous recogn
tion of so glorious an act of gallantry.

Viscount BURY'S speech, on the 13th ultimo, at
Toronto, we regard as full of happy auguries. It
was expressive, above all things, of a confident
anticipation of the possibility of certain future
achievements in the new world—achievements to
which we ourselves have for years past looked
forward hopefully, and advocated strenuously upon
every available opportunity. Speaking at Toronto
so very recently, to an assembly of intelligent and
influential Canadians, Lord BußY—a rising young
member of the British House of Commons, a personal
friendofseveral distinguished members of the present
Ministry—expressed himself candidly and explicitly
enough, as sanguine that the time would yet, before
much longer, arrive, when, "in the present gene-
ration, men will see a railroad, a ship canal, and a
telegraph between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
on British territory." This is precisely the
triple enterprise we ourselves—in the columns
of this journal—have for years and years
past pleaded as a project worthy of eliciting
the direct and earnest encouragement of the Im-
perial Government. The Trunk Railway across
North America, as many as ten years ago, was a
favourite scheme with an able officer in the QUEEN'S
service, Major R. CARMICHAEL SMYTH. The mag-
nificent project was clearly sketched out by that
gallant officer in one or two convincing and unan-
swerably pamphlets, in the shape of letters addressed
by him to a shrewd British North American, " Sam
Slick" to wit,the Hon. Justice HALIBURTON. Another
advocate of the same enormous undertaking ap-
peared long since in the person of a clever Yankee,
Mr. ASA WITNEY—who, after the dissipation of
his own long-cherished hopes to the effect that
the railway across North America might be carried
through the territories of the United States, has
magnanimously given in his cordial adhe-
sion (so to express it) to the still pos-
sible, rather let us hope, we may say,
the still probable scheme of constructing this
trunk railroad through the British Territories.
These hypothetical enterprises in the New World,
however, let us now believe, are coining within
the scope of actual realisation by Englishmen—the
trunk railway from the Pacific to the Atlantic,
from Canada to Columbia, parallel with which may
eventually run the stream of a ship canal and the
wires of the electric telegraph.

Mr. CHARLES PEARSON, the City Solicitor, is a
true, practical philanthropist. His long-meditated
and carefully-matured project has at length been
happily made public under a conjunction of the most
auspicious circumstances. If realised, it will cer-
tainly constitute the noblest of all our great metro-
politan improvements. It will give more freedom
to daily traffic in the streets of the capital. It will
tend at once to secure its comfort and to enhance
its adornment. It will be a wonderful sanitary
benefit to the population. It will be even yet more
signally a great social amelioration. The pro-
position, moreover, in its present ripened form, is
no mere abstract imagining. It is something better
than the indulgence of a delightful daydream, of