The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-25 00:00:00

THE OCEAN ST. LEGER of 1866.—What
Lord Lyon was to his owner was the Taeping to her
Captain, viz., winner of the race, having distanced all com-
petitors, as the fCASC INDIA TEA. CONIPANY have in-
fariab y done In their choi e and sale of fine new season's
teas, now selling at importer's prices. Warehouses-9, Great
St. ffelen's-churchyard.

AVALUABLE CHRISTMAS PRESENT.-
A CHINESE; CADDY, containing Nibs. of really
good Black Tea, sent carriage tree to any railway station or
market town in England, Ireland, Scotland, or Wales, on re-
ceipt of 405., bj PHILLIPS and CO., Tea Merchants, 8,
King William-street, City, E.C.

TEA IS CHEAPER TITAN EVER.-Is. 6d ,
25.. 2s 6 s. per lb. are the prices at which PIIILLIPS
anti CO Tea Hierchants, 8, King William-street, City, Lon-
don, E.C., are selling.' good and fine BLACK TEA. A. price
current post tree. 40s worth Cnrciage free to anv railway
•tstion or mark.A town in the United Kingdom.—Observe—
PHILLIPS and Co. have no Agents or any connexion with
any house in Worcester or Swansea. Sugars are supplied at
market prices.

SPLENDID SPECULATIONS.
G REAT SUCCESS.
With a singr'e stake ot £l, you can realse £2s,nro ! !
With a single stake of X?, you can realise .£27,5 !!
With a single stake ot XS, you can realise £37.000 !!
With a single stake of XlO, you can realise £45,000! !

For prospectuses and particulars apply without delay to
lir. EUGENE TILLOT, General Merchant, Guernsey.

FAMILY GATHERINGS.

It is rather a fashion (says a Saturday Reviewer)
among the cheerful young cynics who have seen to
the bottom of all things alike in this world and the
next to scoff loftily or acrimoniously, acc)rding to
temperament, at the practice of observing holidays
and festivals. They esteem it a mark of the very
highest superiority to keep protesting that Christ-
mas-day, for example, bores them ; that it is neither
a Sunday nor a week day ; that people would be
much better employed in attending to their affairs
than in going to church and afterwards over-
eating and over-drinking themselves ; that family
gatherings are a mistake, because relation% gene-
rally agree best when they are apart, and so forth
It may be noticed that, as a rule, the people who
thus gird at their neighbours are themselves not much
taxed with work, and therefore have no reason for
enjoying one day more than another in their year
of indolence. Again, on principle they object to the
whole theory of the family, preferring to look at the
individual as the unit of social life; and hence the
name of a family gathering recalls all those ideas
which jar most unpleasantly with their conception of
duty to self as the first and highest of all possible
duties. They scoff at the notion of people being mirth-
ful and gladsome at Christmas, only because they
scoff at the notion of mirth and cheerfulness at any
and all times. Considering that all life is a mere
piece of acting and pretence, nothing better than a
ppet show in their far see-
badly organised kind of pu
ing eyes, it is perfectly natural that they should be
more than usuallycontemptuouswhen the puppets give
themselves airs of enjoyment, and try to make-
believe that life has some real advantages about it
after all, which do something towards making it
worth having. The agreeable cynic of modern times
despises pleasure as bitterly as an old Puritan hated
it. The Puritan detested the unseasonable joviali-
ties of Christmas because he thought them wicked
in beings with souls to save. The cynic in patent
leather boots and lavender kid gloves who has suc-
ceeded him as the Mentor of mankind detests jovi-
ality, because he looks on it as an impudent attempt
on the part of a shadow to pass himself off as a
reality.
In some respects the nnaimiable theory about the
celebration of anniversaries is in accord with other
and wider tendencies. Circumstances combine to
lessen, not the old strength of the sentiment of the
family, but at all events to lessen the number of
occasions on which it may be realised and exhi-
bited in the old-fashioned gatherings of which one
reads in the novels of a couple of generations back.
What may be called the superstition that clung
about the ties and duties of family, like everything
else of a similar kind, fades away before the ad-
vance and penetration of a rationalistic spirit into
all sorts of sacred nooks and corners. The sense
of family obligation is, very likely, stronger than it
ever was. But it is a prosaic kind of obligation ;
and, above all, it is narrow. People who can only
call themselves relations are thought less and less
of. A man cannot deny that his second cousin or
his great-uncle is of kin to him, but then, unles3
kinship is of the very closest and most direct sort,
he does not feel that it ought to count fur any-
thing. Ile excludes from a practical sense of kin-
ship all who do not belong immediately to his own
special twig of the family branch. Of course any
decent person will admit the claims of anybody in
the direct ascending or the direct descending line.
A man's father and mother, or his grandfather and
grandmother, his children or his grandchildren, can-
not be excluded from the very slenderest and
most select conception of the family. But do
people look upon uncles and aunts and cousins and
nephews as close kinsfolk in the way in which they
used to do ? Blood is still thicker than water, it
is true. Other things being equal, a nephew
stands nearer than a stranger. Only a constantly
diminishing weight attaches to the argument in the
nephew's favour. Where, a generation ago, the
nephew's start might have been represented by 100