The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-25 00:00:00

LATEST INTELLIGENCE. 1 MR. CHARLE

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

ITALY.

FLORENCE, APRIL 25.

The journals of this city publish news from
Venetia, according to which the Austrian Govern-
ment has ordered all its land and naval forces to be
placed upon a war footing by the first of May next.
All soldiers on furlough are said to have been re-
called and armed, and arrangements made for an
extraordinary concentration of troops in the pro-
vince of Rovigo.

The Nazione believes that Austria desires to mask,
under the pretext of measures of defence against
Italy, an infraction of the understanding between
the two great German Powers for mutual disarma-
ment. " Prussia," says the Nazione, " much more
than:ltaly, should at once direct her attention to the
Austrian armaments in Venetia."
The rumours of a conflict in Rovigo between
the Austrians and a body of Italian volunteers is
absolutely unfounded.

PRUSSIA.
BERLM, APRIL 25.
The semi-official Provinzil Correspondenz of to-

days says:--
«
The reform of the Federal Constitution will be
undertaken with an earnest determination to carry
it through. From present indications it is evident
that the Prussian Government is striving to establish
the Federal organisation upon a basis which shall
secure the solid rational development of Germany
in all positive and practical matters, especially in
the organisation of the national army and fleet, the
common treatment of questions affecting German
commerce, such as the customs, railways,
telegraphs, and posts, the due representation
of these interests before the Federal Diet, the com-
mon representation of Germany by Consuls, and
the protection of German subjects abroad.
Count Von Bismarck will receive to-day the
Roumanian deputation which arrived here this
morning from Dusseldorf, where Prince Charles of
Hohenzollern is at present staying.

AUSTRIA.

VIENNA, APRIL 25.

The Oesterreichische Zeitung of to-day says :
"Nothing is known in well-informed circles in this
city of the alleged incursion of freebooters into
Venetia, or of the reported encounter between them
and the Austrian troops near Rovigo."

RUSSIA•

ST. PETERSBURG, APRIL 25.

The man who recently attempted to assassinate
the Czar is named Varokosow, and is a native of
the province of Saratof. He is a hypochondriac.

TURKEY.
CONSTANTINOPLE, APRIL 25.

The Sublime Porte has instructed its Ambassador
in Paris to protest at the next sitting of the Paris
Conference against the election of Prince Charles
Von Hohenzollern to the throne of the Principalities,
and against any infraction of the Suzerain rights of
the Sultan, as settled by treaty.

SPAIN.

MADRID, APRIL 24, Evening.

To-day the Minister of Finance brought forward
in the Congress a bill for assisting the railway
companies by lending them Treasury bonds upon
the security of a deposit of railway bonds.

THE BOMBAY MAIL.

SOUTHAMPTON, APRIL 25.

The Peninsular and Oriental Company's steam-
ship Syria arrived here this morning with the heavy
portion of the above mail, 133 passengers, £1,988
in specie, and 255 packages of general cargo. She
experienced east-south easterly gales across the Bay
of Biscay and up Channel. On the 16th inst. she
spoke the bark Dorothy, of Shields ; on the 17th
the brig Azof, of Plymouth ; and on the 20th the
bark Mary Elizabeth, of Cardiff, and the Belgian
bark Alcida. The steamers Dido from Liverpool
and Cromwell and Sabrina from Cardiff have
arrived at Gibraltar. Exchanges and freights at
Gibraltar unaltered.

INDIA AND CHINA MAILS.
SUEZ, APRIL 23.
The Messageries Imperiales steamer, Cambodge,
with_the above mails, arrived here to-day.

FRANCE.

PARIS, APRIL 25.

The Constitutionnel of this morning publishes an
article upon the German question signed by M.
Paulin Simayrac, demonstrating that France could
do nothing better during the German difficulty than
preserve, with entire neutrality, all liberty of action
and every means of influence for the moment when
they might be usefully employed. " Facts," the
writer continues, " justify the course taken by the
Emperor. Left to themselves Prussia and Austria
have agreed to disarm, but it is very doubtful
whether foreign interference would have more
easily or promptly obtained a similar result."
The traffic receipts on the Atlantic 'and Great
Western Railway for the month of March amounted
to $388,480, against $399,870 for the correspond-
ing month of last year, showing a decrease of
$11,390.

The bulletin of the Paris Observatory gives the
following as the atmospheric situation yesterday :
—" A barometrical depression exists over Spain,
the Mediterranean, and Central Italy. Tinder
its influence the wind is blowing rather strongly
from N. and E. throughout France. The sky con-
tinues clear, and the sea is calm on the coasts of
the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. A gale
took place on Sunday over the Adriatic, advancing
from the E. The wind is strong at Florence,
Ancona, and Lesina, and is menacing the Medi-
terranean."—At Paris yesterday the weather was
fine but colder, the wind being from the N.E. At
three the thermometer marked 16 Cent. (60-4.5
Fakir.)

The Imperial Commission for the Exhibition of
1867 has decided that, in order to have a complete
record of the progress of the works for the new
palace, weekly photographs of them shall be taken
to be appended to the reoorts of the architects and
engineers.

The Academy of Fine Arts has just elected as
corresponding members M. Jerichan, of Copenha-
gen, in the room of M. Kiss, deceased, and M. Hess,
of Berlin, in place of M. Strak, promoted to the
rank of foreign associate.

BOURSE, April 24, Th
has closed on the followin
1-1. per Cents 97
Do. end month —

tree o'clock.—The market
g quotations :
Bank Shares 3560
Italian Loan 53 60
Do. end month 53 60
Mexican Loan 4l
Do. Bonds 2BB 75
Spanish Threes
Home Debt
Deferred

3 per Cents. 67 70
Do. end month 67 70
Credit Mobilier 602 50
Do. end month 603 25

Unis
Do. end month

RAILWAYS.
Cash.

Amt.
Orleans
Northern ... 1120
Lyons and Mediterranean 853 75
Southern 550
Western ... 542 50
Eastern 537 50

Sardinian
Austrian
Lombard .„ 388 75
North of Spain ........... 142 50
Saragossa
Ditto to Barcelona.,..~„ B2 50
Rornattwissmitimis ..... et

" Doctor Marigold" and " The Trial from

Pickwick."

(LAST EVENING AT THE ST. JAMES'S lIALL.)
Any one who has never heard and seen one of
these Readings by our great Novelist can form no

conception whatever of their remarkable and

wholely exceptional excellence. According to all
ordinary acceptations of the phrase, a Public Read-
ing means nothing more than a piece of elocutionary

display, signifies nothing better (at the best)
than a specimen of clever, occasionally of brilliant,
and in very rare instances indeed of even af-
fecting declamation. It is no extravagance,

however, to assert at once that Mr. Dickens's

Readings are nothing whatever of this kind. They

arc no mere recitations. They are distinct im-
personations. They are visible, audible, sub-,
stantial incarnations of an extraordinary variety
of characters—with the distinguishing peculiarities
and idiosyncracies of which the vast majority of
the audiences listening to Mr. Dickens's Readings
have long previously been perfectly well fami-
liarised through his writings. But the consum-

mate art with which these creatures of the author's

imagination become realised to the eye and ear
through these so-called Readings—as though, one

by one, they were brought actually before us, ac-
cording to Mr. Gladstone's unpleasantly anatomical
and sanguinary phrase, in flesh and blood—no one
who has not been present upon one of these occa-
sions can even proximately conjecture. 'With a
light, elastic step, and a face radiant with health

and animation, there steps upon the platform, and
advances towards the reading-desk, one whose fea-
tures, thanks to photography, are almost as well
known by this time as any one among those famous

books of his which have won for him his world-

wide and delightful reputation. A small volume
lying open on the reading-desk, with the author of
that volume standing there before it—behold all

there is upon these occasions in the way of prepara-
tion or in the shape of accessories. And yet, though
this is literally all there is before us during the

two hours occupied by one of these Readings, it

is almost impossible to imagine how real, how
actual—as if presented to our view and hearing,
as already remarked, in living flesh and blood—are
the people, the creations that are brought before us
by the protean form, the variable manner, the
flexile voice, the mobile "features of the great Novelist
of whose brain they were previously no more than
the subtle and intangible emanations. Of all
his numerous successes, however, in this way—that
is in his extraordinary manifestation of power
in the impersonation of his own creations—be-
yond all manner of doubt and question, the most
wonderful in its way, in every respect, as a
complete and perfect realisation, is the very

latest of all, the one that he has but just now
realised as Dr. Marigold. In spite of its being Mr.

Dickens in propria persona, who is there all the
while conspicuously before us in his own unmistak-
able identity—it is, at one and the same time,in every
glance of the eye, in every inflexion of the voice, in
every casual movement, in every syllable articu-

lated, in every sentient line about the mouth,
in every emotional tone imparted to the
voluble words poured forth in that irrepressible and
irresistible patter—the itinerant Cheap Jack himself,
and no other than the itinerant Cheap Jack, that we
are listening to ! It is Doctor Marigold, and no
other than Doctor Marigold, who thus holds us spell-
bound, who thus commands, at his own absolute will
and pleasure, our tears and ourlaughter—now alter-
nately, now at one and the same moment ! It is
Doctor Marigold and not Mr. Dickens ! The trans-
formation, the transmutation one might rather say,
thus literally accomplished, is so complete, is so
absolute in its way and of its kind that,

to all intents and purposes, he who is thus talking
to us for the best part of a whole hour, as nearly
as possible exactly one whole hour, is—not a gentle-
man in evening costume, but a rough chap in a
sleeved waistcoat—whose favourite attitude (though
he stands before us all the thne)is sitting down—whose
taste (in the way of personal jewellery) runs in favour
not of mere diamond studs but of good-sized
mother-of-pearl buttons--whose cherished necktie
instead of being a delicate ribbon of white cambric,

is a pretty loud-patterned shawl wore loose and easy!
And perhaps the most wonderful thing of all about
this Monologue of " Doctor Marigold " is this;
that just as distinctly as he thus brings him-

self visibly and audibly before us, we have
also brought before us by him, in succes-
sion, through the • medium of his variable look,
and voice, and manner, all the other charac-
ters who come to be associated with him, who get
mixed up with his story, who are mentioned by
him in his rapid and chequered recollections.
There's the Parliamentary Dear Jack on the
footboard of his cart, the hustings, tempt-
ing his hearers to a bid with all sorts of lots on
their own terms, take 'em, or leave 'em—their
own railways carried and their neighbours railways
jockeyed—all their sons in the Post-office—Bri-
tannia smiling on them—the eyes of Europe on them
—the Wrongs of Men and the Rights of Women—
total abolition of flogging in the army, or a dozen
for every private once a month all round ! There's
Little Sophy—with her bright eyes still wet, and
her little face still flushed, and her shining dark
hair all curling natural about her shoulders—hold-
ing on with a love strong in death to the poor Cheap
Jack's neck—clinging tenderly to the last to his
worn sleeved-waistcoat ! There's Doctor Marigold's
Own Wife, before marriage and after—courted
from the footboard, and drowning herself in de-
spair—when first seen like one of your lovely Suffolk
dumplings, biling over with beauty—when last seen
banging herself (when the Furies took her) to that
extent that she was forced to be held! There's

Mim's Travelling Giant, Pickleson by name, though
known upon his travels by the more euphonious
title of Rinaldo di Velasco —the languid young man,
with a little head and less in it, with the feeblest

circulation, and a voice apparently coming from his
eyebrows ! One whose excessive languor our
reflective Cheap Jack thinks must be attri-
butable somehow to the distance between his
extremities ! That elongated specimen of male
youth, capable, even in the midst of his con-
stitutional dejection, of being cheered almost
beyond belief by the gift of no more than a
sixpence (poor Pickleson we are told, being kept as
short as he was long) and so bricked up by merely
two threepennorth's of gin and water, that he sings
off-hand, without being asked for it, the Favourite
Comic of Shivery-Shakey, ain't it cold ! There's
Mim himself—the Giant's Proprietor—a very hoarse
man and a most ferocious swearer—now ferocious
outside his own carawan—now swearing most hor-
rible and terrific, at the slackness of the public, in a
pink calico pay-place up a green-baize alcove lead-
ing to an Auction Room ! There's Doctor Marigold's
very Dog, too—that sagacious animal of whom we
are told that whenever Sophy's mother was going to
break out, be would spontaneously wake up, even
out of the soundest sleep, give a howl, and bolt—
the dog about whom we learn that he taught himself
to bark at any one who bid as low as sixpence—alto-
gether an animal not unworthy of consorting with
that other noble specimen of his species, the Pug Dog,
with his muzzle blackleadod for an evening party,
and his tail extra curled by machinery ! There's even
the blushing butcher who gets handed to the front
to take the lot he didn't bid for—constrained some-
how to become a purchaser in spite of himself by the
irresistible patter of this incomparable bamboozler
among Cheap Jacks —who'll throw us in a warming-
pan for nothing, and lend us a toasting-fork for life
—tempting us now with a frying-pan, artificially
flavoured with beefsteaks to that degree that we have
only got for the rest of our lives to fry bread and
dripping in it, and there we are replete with
animal food--now with a genuine chronometer
watch in such a solid silver case that we may hammer
at the door with it when we come home late from a
social meeting, and rouse our wife and family, and
save up our knocker for the postman—now
with a rolling pin of such uncommon excel-
lence that if the baby can only get it well into
its mouth when its teeth are coming, and rub its
gums well with it, they'll come through double in a
fit of laughter equal to being tickled! There's
Sophy Number Two—dumb, but realised to us (how

vividly !) by her every look and gesture. Thore's
her dumb lover, afterwards her husband ! And

—to crown all, to perfect all, to bring all at the
very last to one exquisite conclusion—there's the
little child—child of those two dumb parents—the
little child who comes clambering with a light tread
up the steps of the cart, just after Doctor Marigold
has been regaling himself with a dinner off
that wonderful beefsteak-pudding of his own manu-
facture, pronounced by himself to be a pudding
to put a man in good humour with everything but
the two bottom buttons of his waistcoat—there's
thebright little comely girl with large dark eyes,
the tiny creature in her mite of a straw hat—at
the first sound of whose pretty voice greeting him,
all the poor tender-hearted Cheap Jack's fears as
to her hereditary dumbness get blissfully scattered
to the winds upon the instant. " Grandfather !"

Ah, my God!" I cries out, "She can speak!"

Immediately after -which rapturous cry- of de-
light from the lips of the itinerant Cheap Jack,
the Reading of " Doctor Marigold" comes almost
abruptly to a conclusion. Insomuch so that—before
the echo of that cry, last evening, had well ceased
ringing upon the ears and hearts of the im-
mense audience assembled there in the Hall—an
audience that until then had been listening to the
closing passages of the Monologue with breathless
attention—Mr. Dickens had disappeared from the
platform. The spell was still there, but the
magician had vanished.
Afterwards—when an interval of but a very few
minutes had been as usual allowed to elapse—Mr.
Dickens, although suffering yesterday from what
we fear must have been to himself, at intervals, a
very distressing hoarseness, crowned the evening's
entertainment as radiantly as ever with his far-
famed and irresistibly-humorous record of " The
Trial from Pickwick." Here, in his rendering of
that most famous chapter of all from the most
famous of all his books—about the most laughter-
moving and hilarious book sarely that ever was
penned•—the twofold marvel is the rapidity of his
facial and vocal transformations, coupled with the
astonishing number and diversity of his impersona-
tions, while reading it. From the testy little Judge
upon the Bench, Mr. Justice Stareleigh, at one mo-
ment looking about him with an inflamed glare
of the eye, half suspicion, half indignation, at an-
other waking up from a doze to make an elaborately
suppositious note with a pen that has no ink in it !
To Mr. Pickwick—that " angel in tights," accord-
ing to Sam's preposterously felicitous description of
him—even, we say, to that great man who, although
no more than casually referred to during the Read-
ing, seems, somehow, to start before us, then, upon
the instant, arrayed, so to speak, in all his attributes,
including among these, we might also say, his very
gaiters and barnacles, so complete is our realisa-
tion of his bodily presence while listening to this
mere momentary mention of himself by Mr.
Dickens ! From Sam -Weller, best of all the wit-
nesses, to Mr. Winkle, indubitably and doubly
among them all the very worst, but drollest.
From garrulous little Mrs. Cluppins (with her
domestic confidences uttered in open court)
—that worthy precursor of " Anastasia Piper,
gentlemen," afterwards introduced to our notice at
the inquest in Bleak House—to Master Bardell in his
skeleton-suit and Sugarloaf-buttons, fearfully expec-
tant of a summons to instant execution, as he stands
there conspicuously within every one's view upon
the floor of the court-house ! Besides all of whom,
there are Sergeant Buzfuz and Sergeant Snubbin,
together with Mr. Skimpin and Mr. Phunkey the
juniors. To say nothing of the whole assembled
bar with its astonishing and pleasing variety
of nose and whisker. Ther© are Messrs. Dod-
son and Fogg, the rascally attorneys for
the plaintiff. There is little Mr. Perker, the
solicitor for the defendant. There is Old Weller

—that glorious_Old Weller, of whom, by the way,
we are almost inclined to speak as the very finest
character of all in the book—bawling, gutturally
from the gallery, " Quite right, Sammy, quite
right—put it down a we, my Lord!" One after
another, turn by turn, as the trial proceeds, we
seem to see and hear these people to the very
life, as if we were there actually in the court, instead
of merely listening to an account of the proceedings
recorded in the great case of Bardell v. Pickwick.
It is a wonderful gift, indeed, this marvellous and
wholely exceptional capability on the part of our
great Author to realize thus magically by his look
and voice to the eye and ear of such as may be there
attentively watching him and listening to him, those
purely hypothetical creatures of his imagination,
which his pen, like a wizard's wand (as it is), has
already conjured into life upon his pictured page.
it is a gift, however, that, in the very midst of our
marvelling over it, seems to explain to us in some
measure how it comes to pass, after all, that Charles
Dickens is so wonderfully realistic in his capacity as
a Novelist. The obvious truth being, that he, first
of all, realizes his dreamings so intensely to himself,
that when he afterwards comes to relate them to us,
whether by written or by spoken words, they appear
to be far more like actual events and living people
than any mere incidents and creatures born of his
imagination.