The Sun.
London, England, 1859-07-21 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.-SIIN OFFICE, JULY 21.

THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
77—highest since noon yesterday.
62—lowest this morning and during the night.
73—this day at noon.
BAEord-ETER-29•97—falling•
WIND, Easterly ; rather fresh, with dull cloudy weather,
and occasional sunshine. Early this morning we were
visited with another storm of lightning, thunder, and rain,
which continued for some time—the rain especially.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
This DAY.—Morning, sh. 32m.—Afternoon, sh. 49m,
To-Moituow-Morning, 6h. 7m.—Afternoon, 6h. 26m,

When a conqueror deems it expedient to explain
his conduct after repeated success'is it implies that
he has left something undone. This is the case of
the Emperor of the FRENCH. He now feels that
he has committed a great mistake ; and what is
worse still, he grieves under the conviction that his
very friends lament it. Indeed the peace which he
made with the hope of taking the world by sur-
prise has only served to awaken it more keenly
to its absurdly pantomimic failure. He had
either promised too much and failed in its perfor-
mance, or he should have endeavoured to carry out
the programme of Italian freedom, for the due ful-
filment of which the expectant friends of liberty
placed such dear reliance, that they cheered him
to the echo on his departure from Paris. And
what do they do on his sudden and unexpected
return ? Why—but for that, the less said the
better. NAPOLEON had so truly anticipated
their feelings that he would not risk their
explosion. We cannot but pity him. To some
the child of destiny seems to have lost his balance.
He who had dared even fate in his apparently
reckless career, seems to have shrunk from facing
the idol of his hopes when most he needed their
all-assuring sympathies ! If wilful ambition re-
quired a more edifying example of the uncertainty
attendant on its pursuit, the late sudden
irruption into Italy has afforded one. People
look around in utter bewilderment, and ask
is this the sorry end of such glowing promises?
Alas ! that even monarchs are not exempt from the
mortification which they think, and priests teach,
is only the lot Of poor mortals.
True to our purpose of giving all sides fair-play
in a matter where the universal public are so
vitally concerned, we have given, from day to day
the opinions of our contemporaries on this pain-
ful and most inauspicious subject.
It would appear that when people are in a hurry
to steal a march on others they but deceive them-
selves, for the adage of " most hurry least speed" is
exemplified in a most Imperial degree by the Empe-
rors of AUSTRIA and FRANCE, for both give variorum
editions of the same story, in which each would be
right, but both appear to be wrong. FRANCIS
JOSEPH has made a virtue of necessity, and seemingly
told the truth, while; NAPOLEON, in his endeavour
to mystify the truth, only flounders the more he
stirs !

A conftrence is proposed to be held at Zurich to
patch up matters ; but the Plenipotentiaries, or
whatever name they delight in, will find themselves,
after many weary discussions, much in the predica-
ment of the Irishman who cut a piece off the tail
of his blanket and put it to the head in order to
make it longer ! he was cold but could not help it;
nor more can they.

Whenever or wherever it is least wanted, it is
the easiest thing in the world to get up atestimonial.
Let any one obtain an enormous fortune for ex-
ample, in the exercise merely of his professional
abilities, and his admirers (he is sure to have plenty
of them) may at once, if they please, make a pot of
money for him forthwith. A portrait with the
inevitable curtain and pillar—a bust with a table-
cloth drapery looped and folded across the shoulders
--an equestrian statue of the old uncomfortable
classic species before saddles or stirrups were in-
vented—a colossal epergne that would break the
back of the strongest mahogany telescope-dining-
table ever turned out of the pantechnicon—the
freedom of a city (that no one so endowed can ever
find the slightest use for afterwards) carefully
locked up in a gold box too large to hold snuff and
too small to hold anything else of the least
possible utility : these and similar presentations
are numbered up abundantly year after year usque
ad nauseam. There is, as the Yankees say, " no
end" of them. They are "fixings"
that decorate
all kinds of public banquets, and tend to the glori-
fication of all kinds of individuals.
But supposing you are still here in the land of '
the living and wealthy and prosperous—there really
is but small advantage in these most inappropriate
pecuniary testimonials. Supposing, on the other
hand, you have gone the way of all flesh, what
upon earth is the benefit to your shade, to
your manes, to your memory, of those pedestrian
or equestrian monstrosities in bronze or granite
erected in our most public places to " fright the
isle from its 'propriety ?" Cui bono ? Where is
the gain ? Who is the gainer ? Say in the
instance of the greatest of our own military heroes
—ARTHUR Duke of WELLINGTON. ACHILLES in
bronze. throws himself into an attitude like
a street acrobat during his Grace's lifetime,
at the behest of the ladies of England, within

a stone's-throw of the hero's town residence.
A monstrous effigy, as of a mounted policeman
in an ordinary oilskin cape, and an extra-ordinary
cocked hat of the old school, points ceremoniously
with a baton at all things in general, or at nothing
in particular, and for no apparent earthly purpose
whatever, up in the clouds, on the top of the
triumphal arch at Hyde Park-corner. Further
away eastwards, in the heart of the City, in front
of the Exchange—(why such a site for such a sight
was ever selected no one can up to this moment
even conjecture)—there is another effigy of his.
Grace on horseback, placed there incongruously
enough (as Punch, if we remember rightly, re-
marked at the time) like an old farm wife—looking
up the Poultry! Posthumously a sic sidebat statue of
Fame (all knee and elbow) comes out later on at the
bidding of Signor MAROCHETTI to mourn over the
garden railings of Apsley House for the departed
warrior—bent apparently, by the selection of that
particular locality as the scene of her silent lamen-
tations, upon distracting her gloom, if possible, by
having a full view of all the gaieties of Rotten-
row during the height of the London season. It
were simply preposterous to argue in exte-
nuation of all these sculpturesque extravagancies
in honour of the Duke of WELLINGTON, that
they really do confer honour either upon the
memory of that great man, or reflect credit upon
the taste of his contemporaries. Latterly another,
perhaps the strangest of all kinds of posthumous
evidences of respect for departed worth yet thought
of, has come into vogue a token of honour,
the possible risk which that all wise SHAKSPERE
of ours beheld some three centuries ago by a sort of
prophetic prevision! One that he himself so re-
coiled from that he deprecated the mere notion of
it in regard to his own tomb, solemnly guarding
that tomb through his epitaph by a sort of hypo-
thetical malediction—
" Good Friend, for JESUS' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here;
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones !"
Yet latterly—such has been our homage for the
memory of JOHN HUNTER, the great surgeon, and
of General PICTON, who fell gloriously at Waterloo,
that we have been industriously digging up their
dust and carting the poor ashes off, here to West-
minster Abbey, there to St. Paul's Cathedral.
Far better would it be if instead of wasting
our time and frittering away our hero-worshipping
enthusiasm over these unholy ceremonials—we were
caring for the impoverished descendants of other
great public and national benefactors. There is a
remarkable case in point just brought under gene-
ral notice very forcifully by one of the most
eminent scientific men of our time—WILLIAM
FAIRBAIRN, of Manchester. That munificent
and distinguished citizen has just now prof-
ferred £lOO, as the nucleus for a pecu-
niary testimonial to be raised as he proposes
with all convenient haste—to what end ? To
relieve henceforth from absolute want the three
surviving children out of the thirteen children of
the late HENRY CORT—one son and two daughters,
the united ages of whom amount to two hun-
dred years ! HENRY CORT having been the
veritable discoverer of the arts of puddling,
piling, welding, faggoting, and rolling iron—
processes which have, at a moderate calculation,
enriched this country by some £600,000,000 ster-
ling, besides giving employment in round numbers
to some 600,000 of the working population ! Here,
surely, was a great public, a great national, bene-
factor. And what is more in HENRY CORT'S re-
gard at this moment—it should be borne in
mind while his three last surviving children, his
now venerable son and two daughters are
left by an ungrateful country in actual poverty,
that, besides the genius and ingenuity of HENRY
CURT (their father) as an inventor—his magnani-
mous expenditure in the furtherance of those bene-
ficent inventions of his, was very remarkable.
£20,000 he is said to have lavished him-
self in the costly labour of perfecting
them. Yet robbed of everything he pos-
sessed by a swindling partner—" a red-tape official
in a high department of Government"—HENßY
CORT bequeaths a penniless family to his country,
and to his country inventions giving, as we have
already said, labour to 600,000 souls, and wealth
reaching at last the hardly conceivable aggregate
—(nearly the amount of the National Debt)—that
stupendous total of £600,000,000 ! The daughters
and the son of HENRY CORT have a distinct claim
upon the British people and the British Govern-
ment.

The greatest SHAKSPERIAN actor yet left upon
the stage—the greatest histrionic revivalist of our
time—the gifted son of an illustrious sire—
CIIARLES KEAN, tragedian, manager, artist,
archaeologist, received last night some portion at
least of the meed of praise and thanks due to him
in each and all of those five remarkable characters
from the hands of his contemporaries. His Grace
the Colonial Minister was in the chair
upon the occasion of that noble banquet
in St. James's Hall, which was selected for the
presentation to Mr. KEAN of this eminently deserved
testimonial. And the Duke of NEWCASTLE ap-
propriately acted thus as Chairman having—now
some thirty years and more gone by—once upon a
time pulled at the oar, handled the cricket-bat,
thumbed the dilectus and the dictionary, side by
side with CHARLES KEAN, as brother Etonians.
We have very great pleasure in directing attention
to the record of last night's proceed-
ings, as given at some length in ano-
ther part of this evening's impression of our
journal. These proceedings will long, we hope, be
borne in happy remembrance by the gifted pair they
were designed to honour—CHARLES and ELLEN
KEAN—a brilliant episode in two brilliant careers,
the crown of their kindred and enviable and
honourable reputations.

Whatever may be the general effect of the local
penny papers, they have had one good result, in
bringing into public view many local evils that
otherwise would have remained unregarded, or
dormant, except for mischief. "De niinimis non
curat lex ;" and great London journals rarely
notice the grievances of country places, how-
ever important to the parties concerned, or even
when they may contain in themselves some prin-
ciple that must evidently extend to other commu-
nities.

For the knowledge of two such evils—for they
can scarcely, from their nature, be confined to one
place only—we are indebted to the acute and active-
minded editor of the Chatham News. It seems
that that military town, or possibly only martial
" manor," is entirely dependent upon its clerical
neighbour, the city of Rochester, for its law, and
upon the county for its police. If an embryo hero,
in the form of a recruit, arrives at Chatham on his
road to glory, he must be taken to Rochester to be
attested. If, disappointed in his hopes of a martial
career, some military aspirant should return to
civil life, and be eventually brought back to
Chatham as (we must say it) a deserter, he must
equally be taken to the metropolitan black coats
before the red coats can deal with him. Wheri the
Chathamists quarrel among themselves they have
to carry their disputes and the costs of them to the

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THE SUN.
THURSDAY, JULY 21, 1859.