The Sun.
London, England, 1859-12-23 00:00:00

the land and buildings he requires fora residence,
for himself and his ecclesiastical staff, be exempted
from the jurisdiction of the Government of Rome.
Let him have the privilege of ambassadors and
other representatives of nations. Let his appeal in
any dispute, and appeals against him also, be to
all the Catholic Powers. Let his person be sacred ;
as being, in a sense, the common representative of
Popedom, and let him be supported in a degree of
dignity worthy of his position, by the contribu-
tions of all the Powers who avail themselves
of his headship over their faithful ones. The
pecuniary suggestion we, and others, had made be-
fore our author proposed it. To us the kind of free-
dom from subjection we now suggest seems far
preferable to the miserable freedom he now enjoys.
The freedom to keep his seat as long as the French
keep him on it ! We doubt not, on the other hand,
that the Romans would be but too happy to acquit
him of all allegiance to any civil rulers they might
chose, and to confer on all Popedom the convenience
of keeping its spiritual head at Rome responsible
to Popedom only.
There is something ineffably ludicrous in the
picture M. DE L. GUERRONIERE draws of the
condition of the happy creatures whom he contends
must be left in the papal cage. " Destiny," he
tells them, places them where they are. Rome
would be but a town if the POPE were not
a Prince ; now she is the " Eternal City." She is
to be " a small corner of the earth free from the
passions and interests which agitate other peoples,
and devoted solely to the glory of GOD." They are
to be a people who will be ruled less by a King
than by a father !" (Perugia!) Their " rights will
be guaranteed rather by the heart of the Sovereign
than by the authority of laws and institutions" (!)
—" no army, no forces, no magistracy 1" The
Roman will be for ever disinherited of that noble
portion of activity which in every country is the
stimulus of patriotism ; his contemplations must
be on " the arts," and " the study of ruins." There
" ean be no aspiration either to the glory of the
soldier, or the triumphs of the orator or the states-
man"—and much more, in this strain, is the poor
Roman indulged with, as the picture of the nega-
tive beatitude assigned him by his Majesty the
Emperor of the FRENCH.
We really do believe that all this must be meant
as serious fun. Such a description of men, emas-
culated by ecclesiasticism, we never saw before. It
is the picture of an ecclesiastical harem, in fact, in
which the POPE and priests are the immaculate
Sultanas and concubines, and the poor Romans the
political eunuchs who serve and keep them. If
our proposal of making the POPE an independent
person, not an independent prince—which, as a
petty one, can never be—be not adopted, then we
should suggest that the Romans who retain the
" passions and aspirations " of men should be pro-
vided with a locality elsewhere, and the old city
handed over literally to the priests. Let every
woman be excluded the ,city, and the unmarried
POPE reign over a community of unmarried monks
and clergy. Archbishop CULLEN will recruit for
them.

Nothing could well be more thoroughly delight-
ful, as nothing could certainly be more entirely
characteristic, than the principal speech delivered
last evening, at the London Tavern, by Mr.
CHARLES DICKENS, in his capacity as Chairman at
the annual dinner there given in aid of the funds
_ .

of the Commercial Travellers' School. Listening
to an after-dinner speech like that is more warming
to the heart, or to those mysterious anatomical
regions popularly termed " the cockles" of the
heart, than any number of glasses of the fruitiest
old crusted port in all the bins of all the
cellars of all the wine merchants of

Oporto, or, for that matter, of Portugal. It
must certainly be far better for digestion. And it
is calculated,.we do sincerely believe, as we do also
most earnestly hope, to forward materially the in-
terests of a very benevolent and praiseworthy in-
stitution. An appeal thus corning before the Com-

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menial Travellers of this country ought surely to

be received by them as little less than irresistible.
It comes in so un-questionable a shape ! So genial,
and frankly, and fervently enforcing the claim of
these schools upon their kindlier consideration—
doing this, moreover, of all good seasons of the
year, at Christmas!
The excellent Secretary of this very excellent
charity has often before now shown his tact in
caring for its interests, in appreciably forwarding
its prosperity, by his selection of the eminent men
who have consented, under his appeal to their gene-

rous sympathy, to fill the chair upon these annual
occasions of mingled conviviality and benevolence.

As he (Mr. GEORGE MooRE) himself reminded the
assembled guests yesterday when responding later
in the evening to the customary toast of his own
health as Secretary, they have had there presiding
over their festivities in succession such men as
Sir BULWER LYTTON, as Mr. CHARLES DICKENS,
and as Mr. W. M. THACKERAY—worId famous in
the highest department of the most popular branch
of literature. And now once more they have had
there as Chairman again over their proceedings
that incomparable humourist whose last work
of imagination we hardly hesitate to pro-
nounce as in many respects in our estimation
his masterpiece. The author of that exquisitely
pathetic "Tale of Two Cities," however, spoke
last evening less in the spirit of his latest than in
that of his earliest serial production. The frequent
parenthetic interlarding of (laughter), (loud laugh-
ter), and (rears of laughter) which will be observed
elsewhere in our impressiOn of this evening, in the
accurate report there given of his speech of yester-
day, will afford sufficient evidence at a glance that
the chairman was addressing his audience with the
broad humour of the. Author of " Pickwick." And
when we come among other similar fragments of fun
to that record of his about the hotel at Leeds, " where

he happened to be staying about seven weeks be
fore, where the chamber appurtenances belonged to
a period far anterior to the present, and where the
night candles were nothing less than mutton trun•
cheons of the most exaggerated dimensions—
(roars of laughter)—and couldn't by any possi-
ility be blown out." (Great laughter.) When
we come to reminiscences like those we have a crowd
of other irresistibly ridiculous Inn recollections
crowding upon us from his own pages
from those all but real realms of laughter !
Mr. PICKWICK in that double-bedded room
with the single lady—when his nightcap strings
were hopelessly entangled in a knot ! "My friend
the waiter" who eat most of the pudding and
nearly all of the chops prepared for poor little
D. COPPERFIELD, The Yorkshire School-
master, in his short trousers, and with his one eye,
mending a pen in the coffee-room of the Saracen's
Head, Snow•hill! The river-side public-house, in
the backyard of which QulLr, performing a demon
dance in a paroxysm of exhilaration round the dog
; kennel, nearly drove its occupant into a state of
; hydrophobia! And so on, for the remembrances
, throng upon one so abundantly as to threaten to be
almost interminable. The facetious likening of his
own embarrassments as to the copious supply of ora-
tory expected from him as Chairman, to the anxiety
of mind burtheuing the life of Mrs. Todgers from the
strong passion and insatiable thirst existing among