The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-05 00:00:00

particularly the latter. But even on secondary
matters the Austrian Government appears to act
with the utmost slowness, and there hardly passes
a day that Count COLLOREDO does not think it ne-
cessary to send telegraphic messages, or even Cabi-
net couriers, to Vienna for orders. One would sup-
pose that he arrived at Zurich without any in-
structions whatever. On the question of Lom-
bardy some points are said to be settled affirma-
tively. For instance, whether the Lombards, who
have become subjects of King Victor Emmanuel,
can become Austrian subjects if they please, or
whether those who remain under Austrian rule can
change their nationaiity, and become subjects of
tipper Italy ? When is Austria to relieve from
their oath of allegiance the Lombard soldiers who
still serve in the Imperial ranks ? On this point
it is resolved that the said oath of allegiance shall
cease to be binding so soon as all matters in de-
bate relating to Lombardy shall have been defini
tively arranged. The Lombards actually employed
in the civil service of Austria are at liberty to
continue or retire as they may think proper or
convenient.

A happier era has during the last few years
opened upon Ireland. The history of the sister
island has latterly been one of steady advance-
ment. Seldom has there been a more striking
illustration of the truth of that old symbolic saying
about the Darkest Hour being the one immediately
Before the Dawn. The prosperity of Ireland,
dating from those calamitous months during which
—now more than twelve long years ago—the
population of that unfortunate country was deci-
mated simultaneously by famine and by pestilence!
Scarcely had the ravages caused by the potato
blight and choleraic diarrhoea ceased, when a new
source of. apparent disaster to the doomed commu-
nity commenced. Emigration, at all times consi-
derable, then reached a magnitude up to that time
altogether unexampled. The inhabitants of many
localities appeared to be bodily flocking down to
the seashore for embarkation. GOLDSMITH'S
" Deserted Village" was no mere vague poetic

imagining. It was a pathetic reality again and
again renewed. Lissay or Auburn seemed to lie
repeated here and there all over the broad country-
side. Like the " halls of Balcleutha" in Ossian,
the mud cabins in many and many a cluster were
" desolate." The movement was, numerically, so
remarkable in its way, that it received the name
of the Irish Exodus. And the title was scarcely
used as a figure of hyperbole. It was more a phrase
of matter-of-fact than an exaggeration. In more
than one quarter the land was actually depopulated.
Looking around at that time, you would have said
that the Darkest Hour had indeed arrived for
Ireland—but it was in very truth at the same
moment the precursor of the Dawn of the national

prosperity.
Another and remarkable security that it was in
point of fact that auspicious Hour Before the
Dawn, was the coming into operation of that new
and beneficent enactment which, to say the very
least of it, tended to facilitate a change in the
Irish proprietary. The Encumbered Estates Act
was the open sesame to a hidden treasury. It un-
locked stores of buried wealth. It removed
from the land the curse, so to speak,
of chronic bankruptcy. Its passage from a
Bill into an enactment--those magic words,
la _Reine le vent, transforming it into part and par-
cel of the law of the land—sounded at once the
knell of the old make-shift epoch, and the signal
for the inauguration of a novel and a hitherto un-
dreamt-of epoch (for Ireland) in the history of mo-
dern civilisaiion. " Castle Rackrents " were there-
upon at once in a fair way of becoming obsolete,
and of passing altogether out of view soon in the
luminous pages of Maria Edgeworth. Nor was it
alone upon the title-pages of that Mitford of the
Emerald Isle that Irishmen could no longer read
Veluti in Speculum—the truthful motto emblazoned
over many a proscenium. Under the influence of
wiser and newer laws, and of happier and more
propitious circumstances, the darker era of duelling
and improvidence has already, in an incredibly
short space of time, receded to the extremity of an
apparently remote perspective. So that many a
comparatively recent delineator of the national
character survives now quite ds much a describer
of lopg-vanished habits and customs as SMoLLETT
or FIELDING in regard to bygone Englishmen.
Nay—for that matter—the Ireland of To-day is
hardly more unlike the Ireland of " The Collegians'
and of " Florence Macarthy," than it is unlike the
Ireland depicted in the earlier romances of CHARLES
LEVER and WILLIAM CARLETON, novelists yet
happily in their full vigour among the number of
our own immediate contemporaries. Systematic
improvidence—if we may write this by an expres-
sive antithesis not inaptly Hibernian by its very
extravagance—systematic improvidence and sys-
tematic duelling are no longer among the essential
characteristics of the Irish population. Thrift,
if not indigenous, is at any rate becoming fast
a thriving exotic. Industry, both agricultural
and commercial, is spreading. The incentive pro-
posed by Lord GEORGE BENTINCK to be applied to
railway speculation in the sister island upon a scale
of such daring magnitude, and with a prodigality
of millions so wisely statesmanlike in its magnifi-
cence—that nobly proffered but unhappily discarded
incentive we have stili frequent reason to lament as
a lost opportunity. But—without it—how much
has already been accomplished ! And now that the
transatlantic traffic promises to flow in its natural
and straightforward course to and fro across the
Galway route—to run eastwards and westwards
between the new world and the old via Valentia—
what prospects are there not opening up of in-
creasing and still increasing prosperity !
Taking the ordinary tokens of progress made in
the way of steady mercantile advancement as our
guide (by analogy) from the Past to the Future—
is it not significant, we may ask, that, while out
of the twelve ports of the United Kingdom, one-
half (viz., of course, six), show a positive increase
of trade during the last twelvemonth, and the
other only a moderate diminution—the increase
at Glasgow, for example, being nearly 11- per cent.,
it is as much as 2 per cent. at Cork—the increase
at London being only 31 per cent., it is no less than
53 per cent. at Dublin ! ! Actually fifty-three per
cent. increase of trade at Dublin achieved, as a
rise, within the brief compass of a single twelve-
month! And the watchword social and political,
agricultural and commercial, still continues to be
throughout the now flourishing and advancing
part of the Irish population, the one noble and in-
spiriting watchword " Excelsior?' May its happy
augury still continue also to be thus rapidly
verified.

His Excellency the Sardinian Minister leaves
town early in the present week on a visit to the Earl and
Countess of Shaftesbury at St. Giles's, Dorset.
The Earl and Countess of Caithness are staying
on a visit to the Earl and Countess of Fife at their seat in
Banffshire.

The Earl and Countess of Harewood propose
giving a grand entertainment early in the ensuing month
at liarewood House, the family seat in Yorkshire.
The Earl of Carnarvon will receive a large circle
of friends at Highclerc House the week after next.
Viscount and Viscountess Palmerston intend t•
leave town within a few days for Broadlands, near Romsey,
Hants.