The Sun.
London, England, 1858-09-07 00:00:00

THE EUCK - OF LONG LIFE.

Time, the metaphysicians tell us, is nothing but
a succession of ideas. And a very odd succession
of them it must sometimes bring, if one can only
have had enough of it. Everybody feels an inte-
rest in a case of extraordinary longevity, even if it
be of a .slave on a plantation, or of a day labourer
who has never been out of sight of the old church
spire under whose shadow he was born. One can-
not help remembering how many great events have
occurred since he came into the breathing world,
Wand how many great men have begun, continued,
and ended a famous career since he has breathed
the air of the planet. The Revolution was not
thought of when Washington was a schoolboy—
Bonaparte had not even entered,into the heart of
man to be conceived, when he came into the world.
And so on and so forth. Such a cas&:beeomes yet
more interesting when the party is of a higher rank
in life, and did, or might, know the actors in mighty
dramas, and who was, at any rate, an intelligent spec-
tator of them. For example, there was the Dowager
Countess of Hardwicke, who died the other day,
whose long life; touching at its beginning on
an-
other long life, brought points of time together which
commonly seem separated by impassable spaces.
She was born in 1763, and was, consequently, only
95 years old ; but her father, the Scotch earl of
Balcarras, having been well stricken in years at
the time,of her birth, their two lives extended back
to before the beginning of the 18th century. It
sounds queerly enough to hear that a person just.
dead this summer could speak of her father as
having been "out in the Fifteen" (1715) with Lord
Derwentwater and Forster, and having been begged
off by the great Duke of Marlborough ! And yet
such was the fact. And not only so, but her grand-
father, having been born in 1649, the year that
kings received the useful lesson, according to old
Lord Auchinleck, Boswell's father, in the example
of Charles 1., " that 'they have a joint in their
necks," the three lives of grandfather, son, and
granddaughter's stretched over a period of 209
years. And when her grandmother was married,
Charles 11. gave away the bride ! This venerable
lady must have had a chance at some pretty good
company in her own time. Pitt the younger was four
years old when she was born; Fox a young pickle
of 14 ; Sheridan, a not particularly clever lad of 12,
so that they were strictly her contemporaries ;
Burke was turned of 30, but the most brilliant part of
his public life was passed after she was old enough
to remember him ; she was 21 years old when Dr.
Johnson died, and a well grown girl when Gold-
smith was inconsiderate enough to do the same
thing, and she might have known them both,
though it is not likely she did ; Sir Joshua may
have painted her, and probably did, as she was
near 30 when he died. Of course, all the litera-
ture of this cmtury, running back to the birth of
Scott and Wordsworth, eight or nine years after
her own, was as much hers as ours. She was married
and six-and-twenty before the French revolution
began, and the whole of our own revolution most
have been within her personal recollection. The
thought of such a consciousness is enough to make
one giddy. Then there was Viscountess Keith,
who dial within two or three years, at about
the same age, who was "the plaything often,
when a child," of Johnson, and who received
his last blessing on his death-bed. She was
the daughter of Mrs. Thrale, and was a link that
directly connected us with the Literary Club at
its foundation, all the members of which she must
have seen, and most of whom she was old enough
to know well as a grown-up young lady. Lady
Louisa Stuart, the daughter of the famous Earl of
Bute, actually remembered her grandmother.
Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who died in 1762.
She died herself since 1850; and was the intimate
friend of Scott, and one of the few original depo-
sitaries of the Waverley secret. And Miss Berry,
who might have been the Dowager Countess of
Orford, as the widow of Horace Walpole, if she had
so pleased, died within a year or two. These
favoured persons really seem to have had too large
a share of the world's plum-cake. But none of
them had such luck as befell the Marquis Di Manso,
who lived long enough to be the personal friend of
Tasso and of Milton, though the first died more
than 10 3-ears before the other was born. Really,
one would almost be willing to have been dead for
a couple of hundred of years to have had such a
chance.—New York Times.

THE ENGINEER OF THE ATLAIVTIC
TELEGRAPH.

Yesterday his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant
conferred the honour of knighthood on Mr. Charles
S. Bright, the talented engineer, whose name is
honourably associated with the great work of the
completion of the Atlantic Submarine Telegraph.
The occasion selected by his Ecellcncy for the con-
ferring of this well-earned distinction was immedi-
ately previous to a grand dinner which he had
given in honour of Mr. Bright at the Viceregal
Lodge, to which a large company was mvited.
Mr. Bright, on his arrival, was conducted by Mr.
Willis (gentleman usher) and Mr. Cockerell,
into the presence of his Excellency, who was at-
tended by Col. Dunne, Mr. Lambert, Lord Otho
Fitzgerald, Major Bagot, Mr. Lowry Balfour,
Captain Moore, \fr. ETerar,d, and other members
of the household. I!,xcellency received Mr.
' Bright with much cordiality, and conferred upon
him, with the usual ceremonial, the order of knight-
hood, after which Sir Charles S. Bright received
the warm congratulations of all present. The fol-
lowing is a list furnished to us of the company pre-
sent at the dinner :—The Duke and Duchess of
Manchester, the Marquis Conyngham, the Countess
of Mayo, Lord Naas, Mr. and Lady Fanny Lam-
bert, Lady C. Coningham, the Hon. R. Burke,
Lord Otho Fitzgerald, the Knight of Kerry, Sir C.
S.-Bright, Mrs. Dunne, ,Miss Noakes, Mr. Willis,
Mr. Lowry BaltOur, Colonel Doyle, Major Hume,
Colonel Taylor, M.P., Archdeacon Goold, Mr. Pepys
Cockerell, INfr. V. O'Connor, Mr. Graham, and Air.
Andrew Cockerell, A.D.C. in waiting.—Freeman
of yesterday.

TIfIS Dii F'S MARKETS.