The Sun.
London, England, 1866-09-18 00:00:00

Yesterday the Working Committee bad under
consideration at their meeting the question of deal-
ing with the orphans, for whom, as has been stated,
they had set apart the sum of £5,000. There were
present the Lord Mayor, Sir M. Wells, the Rev. F.
G. Blomfield, the Rev. W. Rogers, Mr. T. F. Bux-
ton, chairman of the house committee, Dr. A. Clark,
physician to the London Hospital, Mr. R. B. Wade,
Mr. H. Ripley, Mr. R. Wigram, Mr. P. Glyn, and
Mr. R. Hoare. Having agreed to set aside the sum
mentioned to assist in maintaining orphans, and
having elicited from the Bishop of London's Com-
mittee that they were prepared to devote a like sum
of £5,000 for the same humane object, the Mansion-
house authorities called upon the local committees to
furnish returns of all the.children made orphans by
the disease in their several districts, with a statement
of the attendant circumstances in each case, and, 23
of the committees in the East of London having re-
sponded to the invitation, Sir Mordaunt Wells has
been engaged during the last few days in digesting
and tabulating the information thus obtained for the
use of the committee. The result has been to show
that in those 23 districts 810 children have been re-
duced to orphanage. Of these 59 have lost both
parents, 644 their fathers, and 107 their mothers.
These are all cases in which the parents were never
in the receipt of parochial relief, except here and
there, where a wife, since her husband's death from
cholera, has been compelled by the exigencies of her
little family and herself to resort to the parish for
temporary relief. Yesterday, in stating the general
result of his inquiries, Sir Mordaunt Wells observed
to the committee that it presented a fearful catalogue
of misery. In some instances a commercial traveller
had died of the disease, leaving a wife and eight de-
pendent children ; in others a clerk or a skilled me-
chanic ; 300 women had been made widows, 37 of
them in one district alone, all of them, according to
their station, respectable persons : and the returns
showed in an extraordinary way the strong desire
of the mother in such cases to maintain her humble
home, and the dislike there appeared to be to or-
phanages. Those returns, he said, also bore out in
a remarkable manner the wisdom of the suggestion
recently made by that able and benevolent man
"S. G. 0." as to the desirability, especially for the'
sake of the children themselves, of parcelling out the
orphans among relatives, and even strangers in de-
fault of relatives, with a little allowance for their
maintenance until they could do something for them-
selves. He felt satisfied that, by making such allow-
ances to aunts and other relatives in respect of such
orphans, a great number of them would be absorbed.

The LORD IIAYoR said several distressing letters
had been addressed to him in respect of orphans
by cholera in districts in which there were no
local committees ; and the committee would
have to lay down some principle on which to
distribute the sum set apart for orphans through the
agency of the local committees, and, if possible, make
some provision for those isolated and very distress-
ing cases. He was convinced there were many in-
stances were a widow would not wish to part with
her children, but who with some timely assistance
from -the committee would do her best to support
them. _

The committee were engaged some time in settling
the conditions on which the money should be distri-
buted among the local committees and applied by
them, and eventually Sir Mordaunt Wells, the Rev.
w. Rogers, and the Rev. G. Blomfield were ap-
pointed to confer with the Bishop of London's com-
mittee on the subject.

A local committee in St. George-in-the-East, to
whom the Mansion-house committee had made three
grants of £lOO each, attended yesterday and reported
that the total number of deaths from cholera and
diarrhoea there up to the Bth inst. in a population of
48,000 had been 424 ; that 300 cases had been re-
lieved, including 57 husbands ill, 38 mothers ill, and
55 families in which there has been much sickness ;
44 husbands had died, leaving 82 children dependent
upon their mothers ; 16 wives had died, leaving 38
children dependent on their fathers ; 38 widows had
been relieved, many of them with large families de-
pendent upon them ; six single women, and two
single men.
The committee made them a final grant of £25
and adjourned.

The following is the official return of deaths from.
cholera and diarrhoea registered on Saturday, 15th
Sept.:—

West districts
North districts
Central districts
East districts
South districts

Cholera. Diarrhcoa.
... 2 •.. 3
... 5 •.. 2
.441 3 •.• 3
10 ..• 5
4 6
••• ...

Total in London ...

... ~'~

ONE OF SIR EDWIN LANDSEER'S FINEST PICTURES
painted when his eye, hand, and judgment were in their
fullest vigour, has been bequeathed to the National Gal-
lery, under reasonable stipulations, by the late Mr. New-
man Smith. The picture is the celebrated "Member of
the Royal Humane Society," the noblest figure of a dog
that ever looked out from canvas. The picture is to re-
main with the testator's widow for life. It is then to pass
to the National Gallery.
PROFESSOR LONGFELLOW has written in the Sep-
tember number of the Atlantic ifontkly the following very
Catholic sonnet "On Translating the Diving Commedia
I lift mine oyes, and all the windows blaze
With forms of Saints and holy men who died,
Here martyred and hereafter glorified;
And the great Rose upon its leaves displays
Christ's triumph, and the angelic roundelays
With
Bthsepalteirlideeo,uagar upon
at p
onspleanntu,srsmidule,tiplied ;
And
No more rebukes but smiles her words of praise.
And then the organ sounds,. and unseen choirs
Sing the old Latin hymns tofipeaoe and love
And Benedictions of the Holy-MP:At ; •
And the Melodious bells among the sires
O'er all the house-tops and through heaven above
Proclaims the elevation of the Host !