The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-19 00:00:00

Prom the Owl.

While the telegrams grow fiercer, our information
from the best quarters in Germany assumes a more
re-assuring character. We are informed that war,
however apparently imminent, becomes daily more
difficult to bring about, for while Count Bismarck
is the only man in Prussia who wishes it—and he
by the way has the gout, and, as the joke goes,
can't march—on the other hand the Austrians are
hourly more and more resolved not to fight, and
are pressing upon the Prussian Government over-
tures for simultaneous disarmament. This measure
is also warmly advocated by the minor States, and
of course this policy is strongly urged by the repre-
sentatives of the Great Powers. Whether the mis-
chievous fatuity of one man can nevertheless preci-
pitate a collision and bring about what is really a
civil war remains to be seen.
We are in a position to state that the Great
Powers have declined to countenance the totally
illegal election of Prince Charles of Hohenzollern
as Hospodar of Moldo-Wallachia. Tho Conference
of Paris have fowarded to the Provisional Govern-
ment their urgent advice to keep strictly within the
limit of the treaties which determine the status of
the Principalities, and have pointed out to it how
completely the election of a foreign prince would
violate the spirit and text of those acts which have
been framed with strict regard to the assurance of
the integrity of the Ottoman empire.
We have reason to believe that the llon. Arthur
Gordon, at present Lieutenant-Governor of New
Brunswick, is to succeed Mr. Manners-Sutton as
Governor of Trinidad. It is not yet decided whether
any successor of Mr. Gordon will be nominated, the
approaching federation of the North Atrkerican pro-
vinces making such an appointment unnecessary.

The Rev. 11. G. Alington, master of Marlborough
College, has been appointed one of her Majesty's
Inspectors of Schools. Mr. Alington obtained an
open Demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford ; a
First Class in Moderations ; and a Second Class in
the Final School in 1859.

We are assured, on authority which is incontest-
able, that it is again sought to introduce arms into
Servia and Montenegro. No less than 40,000 mus-
kets have been forwarded to Semlin to be smuggled
into the Turkish provinces. Russian agents are at
work spreading disaffection wherever they can in
the Danubian States. These facts, together with
the dangerous condition of the Danubian Principa-
lities, render the aspect of affairsin Turkey in Europe
extremely critical ; and, unless the dangers which
menace the peace of the Ottoman empire are met
firmly, and suppressed immediately, we shall have
the great Eastern question reopened to add a new
chapter of discord and war to the history of Europe.

MICROSCOPIC PHOTOGRAPHS.—Has any one among
our readers ever seen these wonderful little rhoto-

graphs? If not, they are zeally worth hunting up
and looking into—for they are beyond any
doubt of it among the most extraordinary
achievements resulting from the application of
optical science to the development of the chemical
marvels of photography. Fancy a minute rod of
glass, flattened at one end (so that you could stand
it up on a level surface) and rounded off
at the other end into a convex extremity—fancy
this little atom of a glass rod, so short, so small
altogether, that you can barely hold it between
finger and thumb without a fear of dropping it! And
yet—thus holding it between finger and thumb—if
on bringing the convex end of it close to the eye you
look through it lengthways you will see there, quite
distinctly, magnified by the convexity of the glass, a
picture, or what not, nay, sometimes even a group of
pictures, or a whole page of printed matter, the original
or germ of which (imbedded in the very substance
of the glass) is the merest dot or atom of a micro-
scopic photograph ! Two products of this really
astonishing contrivance we have just now very care-
fully examined—one revealing a cluster of photo-
graphic likenesses of the Royal Family, very prettily
grouped together—the Queen, the late Prince Con-
sort, the Prince of Wales and the rest of their royal
Highnesses—the other (as clearly readable as the
printed words of this present paragraph) " The
Lord's Prayer !" Conceive to yourself, for a mo-
ment, the marvel of a little minute atom, or dot,
of a photographic picture--a, tiny dot of about the
diameter of a
Pin-prick—turning out to
contain within it a whole gallery of por-
traits of the Royal Family, or, more wonderful
still, that microcosm of devotion, that prayer of
prayers, the "Pater Noster." It is only fair to add
that the manufacturer of these astonishing little
Photographs (he calls himself, we observe, the Sole
Manufacturer of them in England) is Mr. Frank
Stanley, of 61, Snow-hill, and of 4, Devonshire-
street, Oxford-road, Manchester.
LIFEBOAT SERVICE, MARYPORT, CUMBERLAND,
April 17.—This morning intelligence was brought
that a schooner was ashore on Dub Mill Scar, about eight
miles E.N.E. of this place, with a flag of distress flying
(says Mr. H. Lindsay, Collector of Customs). It was
blowing a strong gale at the time from W.S.W. The life-
boat of the National Lifeboat Institution was at once
launched, and went •away through the heavy surf under
canvass, in the direction of the wreck, which was reached
in about an hour. Tho lifeboat's anchor was then let go
and she dropped down alongside the vessel, which was
then afloat. Finding tho master ignorant of his where-
abouts, the coxswain and four of the lifeboat's crew went
on board. Ono of the crew was in the rigging, and the sea
was making a complete breach over the ship. Shortly
afterwards one of the cables broke, when the coxswain
slipped the other one and ran the schooner into Silloth,
thus saving both life and property. The lifeboat was taken
back to her station in tow of a steam tug which had come
out to the vessel. The schooner was the Treaty, of Goole,
bound from Newcastle, Ireland, to London, with a cargo
of granite. This is the first service performed by this life-
boat, which has only recently been placed by the National
Lifeboat Institution on this station, through the munifi-
cence of Mr. H. Nixson, of Manchester. The boat is re-
ported to have behaved admirably in the surf and better
than the crew o'er anticipated.