The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TlMES.—Great men have sometimes to nerve
themselves to decisive acts of will, and, what is still
harder, to decisive acts of change of will. There is
nothing in which a great mind differs from an in-
ferior one more than in this power of change. The
inferior man is the slave of the resolution he took
last week or yesterday—he is a slave to himself ; be
is too weak to unfasten any mental tie by which he
has bound himself, and therefore he is obliged arbi-
trarily to assume that at a given moment he had
possession of absolute truth, and assumed a position
in consequence from which he cannot afterwards
move a step. But power of change is the first con-
dition of a statesman, for he knows that judgment
should follow knowledge, and that knowledge varies
and grows. This pliancy, this flexibility, however,
requires two muscular a mental act for-averag-e men.
The Emperor Napoleon's withdrawal of his claims
on German territory is another proof to the world
of his remarkable intellectual fibre. No one knows
better than he the sort of comments which such a
change of mind gives rise to • no one knows better
what kind of criticism it will provoke in France ;
but he has braved the censure of hostile, acute, and
inflamed critics, and he has appealed from passionate
and aggressive France to France considerate and
wise. He has had very little time for this re-ar-
rangement and fresh consideration of the data before
him • he has had to form his last resolution very
quickly; but a rapid review hasbeen enough to take
ih the differences which the result of the war had
made, and he has had enough confidence in himself
to avow the conclusion which a fresh state of affairs
has forced upon him. He refuses to involve
Europe in a war, and to expose French interests to
a great risk on a small question of territory ; and
he will be supported in this conclusion. There will
be abundance of taunts. There are, in the first place,
plenty of people who think all change of mind in
itself weakness, and are ready to cry out against
it at once, without the slightest reflection ; and
there is, in the second place, the war party in
France. But men of sense know that change of
mind is sometimes the mark both of the strongest
intellect and the highest courage, and the war party
in France should know that petty territorial wars
are now obsolete. There was a time when a French
monarch would have thought nothing of expending
the blood of a hundred thousand Frenchmen upon
one or two forts in the Netherlands or a small strip
of Bavaria ; but those days are past, and a new
atmosphere of opinion has risen upon these subjects
even in military France, hitherto so apt to be dazzled
by dreams of unsubstantial glory. T her e has been
a new growth of feeling in that country, the mer-
cantile class has been gaining ground, and every
year has added to the strength of that more sober
and more practical and reflecting portion of the
community which thinks the happiness and pros-
perity of a nation lie in peace rather than in war.
French military enthusiasm has been replaced by
less showy but more solid tastes and aims, and the
people have shared in the great progress shich utili-
tarian sentiment has of late years made in the world.
The French Emperor has doubtless not overlooked
this growing change of feeling in France, and he
knows that he does not govern quite the same people
that his uncle did. He has never, indeed, accepted
the First Napoleon as an infallible oracle. He has
taken him only as a guide to be followed with the
proper qualifications and exceptions which the
changing circumstances of the world suggest. The
uncle ruled France by the motive of military glory;
but that is no reason why the nephew should do the
same when the French are a very different people
from what they were. There has been an origina-
lity in the whole of the present Emperor's plan of
government ; he has thought for himself and ob-
served for himself ; he has never gone upon assump-
tion of any kind, or supposed things to be in a certain
state in France because they once were so, and the
national spirit to be the same as it once was. No ;
he has accurately watched the current of facts, and
he sees that the France of the present day is not
the France of the beginning of this century. The
age has produced the new power of an informed and
practical public opinion, and the new power, when
once it has arisen, is just as real and just as great
and influential a power as any former one that
existed and swayed the mass in its day—the military
sentiment and love of conquest. This new power
must be recognised now just as the ruling principle
of any former age was recognised' in its day. This
great arbiter now receives the homage which was
formerly paid to the spirit of ambition and conquest.
The Emperor Napoleon has just now paid an act of
homage to it in the withdrawal of his claims on
Prussia. But this act of homage, so far from indi-
cating any defect, is only another proof of his pro-
ficiency in the science of government and of the in-
tuitive sagacity with which he has mastered the secret
of success—that a ruler must follow, and not be at
war with, his age. Collision must, sooner or later,
produce a crash ; the only strong and vigorous prin-
ciple of government is an essential concurrence with
the age. Even the first Napoleon followed the spirit
of his age, though he exaggerated it, and fell by that
exaggeration ; but his age was unlike this. Had the
present Napoleon taken blindly his uncle's pro-
gramme, he must have been crushed by a European
coalition ; but he has accommodated and adapted
the Napoleonic idea to the altered circumstance and
temper of this age, and therefore he has been a;
strong and successful ruler. The French Emperor
may rest assured that his courageous avowal of a
changed intention in withdrawing his claims on Ger-
man territory will be appreciated by the whole intel-
ligence of Europe, and the more so because it, is no con-
tradiction to, but strictly of a piece with, a general and
systematic policy which has always watched and ac-
commodated itself to facts. This is no new manifes-
tation of his character ; no new turn in his course ;
it is only what might have been expected from the
whole tenour and principles of his government as
shown from the first. He has rejected the idea of
a paltry territorial war as contrary to the spirit of
his age. But this, although no new proof, is another
proof of the respect in which he holds the public
opinion of Europe ; it is a signal indication that the
France which he desires to stand high and challenge
admiration is social and prosperous, rather than
fighting and aggressive France ; and it is an im-
portant additional guarantee to the world that
,4 the Empire is Peace."

PosT.---It is a heavy penalty that we Londoners
have to pay for whatever convenience the extension
of railways into the heart of the capital may have
brought to us. We have to put up with the hideous
disfigurement of our streets ; the displacement of
property and of the trade connected with it ; the
eviction of the poorer classes by hundreds; and the
destruction of our thoroughfares by the works in
progress. All this is bad enough, but it is dwarfed
to nothing beside the great danger to life which
keeps pace pari passe with what we may, by strain-
ing a point, call intramural railway extension. The
increase of public accommodation and comfort
ought to be enormous to compensate for all these
evils. Take, to begin with, the disfigurement of
our streets by the abominable girder-bridges which,
thanks to the insolvent Chatham and Dover line,
intersect every thoroughfare south of the Thames,
and deface Ludgate-hill and St. Paul's. The utter
ugliness, the unredeemed coarseness, the sheer
vulgarness of these structures are a disgrace to
architecture. Once, the prospect that met one's eye
in walking over London-bridge from the City was
somewhat imposing. The thoroughfare was wide,
the buildings on each side were good, and the hos-
pital straight in front looked, on the whole, hand-
some, and spoke of charity if not of art. But now
Christendom does not hold a thing so ugly as the
immense bridge that spans Wellington-street. That
it is very creditable engineering we do not deny,
but it is a monstrous deformity without a single at-
tempt to mitigate its hideousness or to soften its
bare, broad, brazen, and repulsive features. Granted
that nothing less ugly in form could satisfy the en-
gineering conditions of the task of making a girder-
bridge of such dimensions, yet are we to understand
that neither architect nor artist could soften down
with lines of beauty the hard nakedness of those
horizontal, segmental, or rectangular abominations
which meet one at every turn ? Take, again, the
bridge across Ludgate-hill. It pretends to have
some ornamentation ; but what must have been the
attainments of its designer ! As a piece of art it is
a piece of impudence—a mere mockery and a sham
—bearing about the same relation to true artistic
work that a painted mask does to a real face. It
is no slight grievance that we cannot have a line
between Farringdon station and Blackfriars with-
out a nuisance of that kind and magnitude. But,
worst of all, these bridges are as dangerous as they
are hideous. We might have expected—seeingthat
we have a Board of Trade—that some code of
stringent rules would have been issued showing
what might and what might not be done in transitu
across a crowded thoroughfare, over the heads of
thousands of people, and over horses and vehicles of
every description. But, so far from that, it would
seem as if all parties had combined to make these
bridges a constant source of annoyance and injury.
In some instances the bridge over some large tho-
roughfare is used as a ticket platform. The ugly
bridge over the Westminster-road is so used by
the South-Western Company. At any hour of
the day, if you are driving near that bridge, you
may have your horses frightened out of all manage-
ment by the hissing of steam and the puffing of an
engine just moving on. But if any particular
bridge be not also a ticket platform, as in the
Waterloo-road, at Ludgate-hill, or at the Elephant
and Castle, the danger to horses and people below
is even greater. Over such bridges the trains
whirl with alarming noise and clatter, and gene-
rally with a sharp and startling whistle. This
same whistle is becoming one of the great
nuisances of London, and it is time that it was

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put tfnder some more salutary restriction. No
doubt the whistle is of immense necessity and ser-
vice. It is wholly indispensable. But it need not
therefore be a source of annoyance and danger.
The cases must be exceptional in which it is neces-
sary to use it in passing over crowded streets. It
can never be ;used in such places without alarm,
while in many instances it is impossible to avoid
mischief. The evil is forced upon public attention
just now by the lamentable accident in the Water-
loo-road. A gentleman is riding a well-bred horse
near the South-Western terminus. A train comes
dashing over the girder-bridge. The engine-driver
takes that opportunity to sound his whistle, the
horse below is startled and becomes unmanageable,
plunges against a cabman, and so injures him that
he dies shortly after, though his rider miraculously
escapes. The jury at the inquest append to their
verdict an appeal to the Board of Trade, calling
attention to the danger of the practice of whistling
in the midst of the traffic of the metropolis, and
stating that it has been represented to them that
this practice is the cause of numerous accidents
and frequent deaths in London. We wish we could
think that the Board of Trade would take some
effective steps to stop this dangerous and unneces-
sary practice, but experience forbids. The man
killed was only a cabman, so his case is not likely
to attract much observation. But some of these
days a London, Chatham, and Dover engine may
send the Lord Mayor's horses dashino. down Fleet-
street, smashing the state carriage, and leaving the•
highest civic functionary sprawling in the mud, or
a peer or member of the House of Commons may
be killed, and then the Board of Trade will begs
to move. Till then it is only by constant reitera-
tion that the public can be made to see the danger
and speak out. If accidents are to be avoided the
bridges ought to be so screened as to prevent pass-
ing carriages being seen from below, and it ought
to be a punishable offence to use the whistle within
a prescribed distance of a public road. The price
we have to pay for the passing nf railways through
the metropolis—if limited only to actual discomfort
and disfigurement of the streets—is heavy enough
but when to -this is added a constant danger to
human life, it is time that a sufficient check upon
the recklessness of engine-drivers were promptly
established and rigidly enforced. If the Board of
Trade has any care for its own credit it will look
to this.