The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-19 00:00:00

Commence at 7 o'clock.

CANTERBURY HALL CONCERTS.-
EVERY EVENING.—The Music of Verdi's Opera of
MACBETH (now first made public in England at these Con-
Oerts), the extraorainary Violin Performances of the cele-
Lrated Infant DELEPIERRE FAMILY, and the usual
Vocal Conceit.
Comic Vocalists -Messrs. George Hodson (the Irish Come-
dian and Mimic), W. T. Critchfield, and E. W. Hackney.
Several interesting Pictures are added to the Fine Arts
Gallery. The suite of Halls have been re-decorated and
beautified, and constitute one of the most unique and brilliant
sights of the metropolis.

Will shortly be produced, a Grand Selection from Meyer-
beer's new opera of DENNORA.

THE WEATHER.-SUN OFFICE, SEPTEMBER 19.

THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
68—highest since noon yesterday.
64—lowest this morning and during the night.
62—this day at noon.
BAROMETER-29.93.

WIND, North-Westerly; strong, with fine weather now.
It rained heavily in the night, and this morning, and was
quite stormy.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.

THIS DAY.—Morning, sh. 41m.—Afternoon, sh. 3m.
To-Moßßow-Morning, 6h. 28m.—Afternoon, 6h. 58m.

Foreign news seem to be at a sort of " stand'
still. All is rumour and expectancy—each particu-
lar section drawing its own veritable (rather ques-
tionable) conclusions. There appears, however, to
be something brewing for better or worse, for King
LEOPOLD'S journey to the Emperor NAPOLEON at
Biarritz will surely lead to something ; whether it
be lasting, or merely passive, will soon be seen.
That there is something in the wind is past all
doubt, for not only is Lord CowLEY going there
to-day, as the Representative of England, but
Count WALEwsKi follows, on the part of France,
to learn the wishes of his Imperial Master, and to
act on them, or so far mystify the other parties as
may best suit the end in view. The object of the
visit, or Cabinet Council, is evidently to get for
Austria the reinstatement of the Dukes, or some-
thing else, in consideration of her behaving herself
better in future.

For years Education has been the hobby of a
small class of politicians ; and Parliament, and the
clergy of all denominations have been doing their
best to promote it. Their efforts, however, have
all been directed to the lower classes—to those who
were supposed to need charitable aid. Till very
lately, indeed, it never occurred to them that the
classes which did not need charity, which even be-
sto wed it on those below them, themselves needed
stimulus. The middle classes, it was thought would,
from the highest professions down to the humbler
trades, take care that their own children were
educated.

And in a certain sense they have done so. But,
the very excellence of the instruction provided for
the working classes in British and National schools
soon revealed the fact, that great numbers of those
who paid fairly for the education of their children,
did not gain for them such good education as was
obtained by those who were taught in great part
gratuitously. Many a tradesman was subscribing
to a British School or a National School to get the
,children of the poor better drilled, at least, in the
elements of education, than his own. What was
to be done. Some said the poor were being edu-
cated above their wants, but the tide had set in, and
it would not ebb. The only thing to be done was
to raise the standard for the middle classes. They
could keep their children longer at school
than the poor, and if their schools could
be improved, they might still maintain their
educational ascendancy. It became plain that, in
any case, something must be done; or the well-
taught boys, from the schools supported by Govern-
ment grants and voluntary contributions, would
completely distance their compeers of the classes
above them, whose education had cost ten or twenty
times as much.

From this necessity arose the happy conception
of Middle Class Examinations, furnished by
the two Universities. They were to be
conducted on the rigidly impartial plan of the
University examinations themselves, modified of
course by the youth of the candidates. The object
was to be, to test the efficiency of middle-class
schools ; to try how far they succeeded in impart-
ing correctly and adequately such knowledge and
discipline as they professed to give. Hitherto
there had been no means whatever for parents ge-
nerally to form any idea of the quality of the
education received by their children. It was the
interests of schoolmasters to praise their own
boys, and even to give prizes ; but not one
parent in ten could tell by examining his
children what was fhe value of the testimonial
received. The University examiners were to
furnish the much needed test, and they have fur-
nished it.

When they first broke in last year upon the raw
in the common middle-class
mass of lads educated
schools, all of them being the elite of those schools,
the country, and the Dominies still more, seems to
have been taken by surprise. Considerably more than
one half could not pass a preliminary examination
in reading, writing, arithmetic, and spelling.
Many who could construe well a Latin sentence, or
perform a tolerably difficult operation in algebra,
were incompetent to spell correctly, or to work
easily sums in the first four rules of arithmetic.
The elementary part of education had been su-
perficially hurried over to make a show with
something higher. These cases, however, were
the exception. The fact was, that more than
half the boys, for all of whom their parents
had paid handsomely or fairly, and who were sent
up by their masters as fit for an examination, could
not pass one in things which all parents would con-_
foss to be the most necessary school subjects. The
most surprising revelation was that of the ignorance

of the masters. It became evident they held such
imperfect knowledge to be quite sufficient,
or they would not thus have placed the
pupils in the hands of the examiners. The
examinations of last year have at least had
the good effect of reversing the proportions of
the rejected. This time less than half were rejected
at the preliminary examinations. Too many still;
yet a great improvement on last year.
Sincerely do we hope the improvement will con-
tinue. We entirely agree with Sir JOHN COLE-
RIDGE in the remarks made by him in his
speech at Exeter, at the distribution of the certifi-
cates awarded by the Examiners, for instance,
and which appeared in Saturday's Sun, on the vast
importance of thorough elementary instruction—
"sticking to the elements," an d permitting " nothing
to supersede accuracy in the lower and rudimental
parts of education." He gave some curious illustra-
tions of his meaning. Au examiner found
lads puzzled to set down from dictation sums
for addition. " Suppose, for instance, he said,
set down, a thousand and forty-nine, not one in
the class was able to put down that sum
correctly; they could not make count for the
ciphers" ! So in inverted sentences, such as "my
right there is none to dispute," they could not tell
what governed "right." How common we fear
has such incapacity been among thousands for whom
confiding parents had paid, for their means, very
handsomely. It may be hoped that the new
examinations will soon render such hurried and
superficial teaching a thing of the past.
But the principle adverted to by Sir JOHN COLE-
RIDGE is one which cannot be too conscientiously
applied in the teaching of children. The great
benefit of school education should be, not the mere
amount of knowledge communicated, but the habit
of acquiring knowledge thoroughly. Sir JOHN'S
description of the way in which his teacher initiated
him into the first book of Homer is the description
of what should be done with e very boy, in everything
he learns at school. " The boy is father to the man,"
and had boys generally been disciplined never to
rest content without such an understanding as boys
could have of whatever they took in hand, the men
into whom such boys grew up, would both have the
desire to master, thoroughly, every subject of inte-
rest or utility to them, and the sense not to
form precipitate judgments before adequate
investigation. They might never be able to
open their " Horace," their " Homer," or their
"Euclid" after they left school, but the habits ac•
quired by their studies, if required to be thorough
would never be lost. Like military gait, or the
sailor's walk, it would accompany them ever after
for life.

The middle classes will owe very much to the
University Examiners if they compel the school-
masters to think more of the quality than area
of instrnction. A youth fond of study
or reading may add what he pleases in after
years, according to his leisure and means ; but
if he have not in his first lessons formedthe essential
conception of what right study is, he will rarely
acquire it for himself. Boys should be taught tho-
roughly, as far as they are taught. If they cannot
be taken, for instance, beyond a small portion of
Caesar and Virgil, yet if up to that point
they have been throughly drilled in the lauguage,
been made to see its relation to our own, or to
French, if they read that also, and been made
masters of the principles, not the mere rules, of
etymology an d grammatical construction, they
have gained something far more valuable than the
ability to read just so much Latin. Their minds
have been put into that course of thorough investi-
gation, and of all-sided examination of whatever
they study in future years, which they will not
easily forsake. In education at least any school-
master should be a STRAFFORD—his motto should
be " Thorough."

Scarcely anyone to whom that Great Name was
in any way familiar, but will have learnt with pro-
found emotion that—in what seemed the very hey-
day of his mid-career—Mr. BRUNEL breathed his
last on Thursday night, the 15th of this present
month of September. It is an immense eulogium
—yet, at the same time, it is but the simplest truth
—to say of him that he was one of the greatest of
all the great engineers in this great age of engi-
neering. He was so confessedly—he was recognised
as such during his lifetime by universal consent.
His many wonderful achievements are the attesta-
tions of the reasonableness of this eminent reputa-
tion. He has left the Impress of his genius
indelibly marked upon his Age and upon his
Country.
Immediately upon his birth, now scarcely fifty-
four years ago, ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL may
be said, and that hardly alone figuratively, to have
been cradled in the lap of Science. His distin-
guished father, Sir MARK BRUNEL, was at that time
engaged in the fabrication in the dockyard at
Portsmouth, of what still remains to this day
among the number of the world's wonders--the
marvellously complicated block machinery ! That
astonishing maze of delicate yetpowerful mechanism,
in their mysterious passage through which, mere
shapeless fragments of wood and lumps of metal
appear to be all but instantaneously transformed in to
smooth and perfected blocks for the rigging of our
men-of-war ! Between his birth in 1806, at Ports.
mouth, and his death in 1859, at 18, Duke-street,
Westminster, BRUNEL the younger has in many
ways nobly proved himself to be worthy of his
eminent progenitor. It appears indeed to be a
peculiar privilege among some of the more illus-
trious chiefs of Science—a privilege almost in-
variably denied to Poets and Artists—that abilities
of the highest order may be transmitted without
diminution, sometimes even with increase, from
father to son, and that in this exceptional depart-
ment the rarest genius becomes in a manner
hereditary. SHAKSPERE, BYRON, SCOTT—and so
many others renowned in Song and Romance—
left no son to emulate their fame in literature. It
has been happily otherwise in three conspicuous
instances in our own times, among men illustrious
by their scientific reputation. The discoverer of
Georgium Sidus hasleft his fame to be renewed, un-
dimmed, by his eminent son and successor Sir JOHN
HERSCHELL. The Founder and Father of the
whole Railway System, old GEORDIE STEPHENSON
of the Colliery Districts, has even had his renown
enhanced, and diffused far and wide over the globe,
by his celebrated son and successor, ROBERT
STEPHENSON, civil engineer and member of Par-
liament. The constructor of the block machinery
at Portsmouth and of the double tunnel under the
river Thames, Sir MARK ISAMBARD BRUNEL be-
queathed to his son and successor a reputation
which that son and successor has in many respects
we cannot but think very considerably surpassed.
Cradled, as aforesaid, near the dockyard at Ports-
mouth in the midst of the drone and clatter of the
block machinery in 1806—BRUNEL the younger
was twenty' years later, namely of course in 1826,
so to speak, schooled in practical engineering at
the Thames Tunnel, of which extraordinary work
he was eve
age, appointed resident
engineer. Itn at
hasthat b
early
eensaid of him in CHARLES
KNIGHT'S " English CyclopEedia of Biography"
that here—in the Thames Tunnei_,, Being the
last to quit his post, he was more than once in

danger from the frequent breaking-in of water '
during the progress of the excavations, and only
saved himself by swimming. The final irruption
of 1828, when one man was drowned," it is
there also added, " surprised him 600 feet from the
end of the tunnel; be was borne along by the
stream, and rose to the surface near the top of the
shaft." From which incidents it will be seen that
the eminent man of science, son to the eminent
man of science, served to science no unadventurous
apprenticeship.
Recompensed though BRUNEL the younger has
been by many initial...tributes giving the timbre of
official recognition to his scientific distinctions—
Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and D.C.L.,
and Fellow respectively of the Royal Society, of
the Society of Arts, of the Astronomical Society,
of the Geological Society, and of the Geographical
Society—his distinguishing and pre-eminent rank
to the last was that indicated by the two letters
C.E., the symbols of his wonder-working profession.
And as a civil engineer few, if any, have—but one,
if any has—been at once more daring
and more industrious. Comparisons, always
invidious, are peculiarly so when instituted
between two friends, one of whom stands
beside the premature grave of his recently deceased
contemporary. From no comparison, however,
need the younger BRUNEL have shrunk—even
though it had been a comparison with that—
" Brother in Science, and Rival in Renown "
ROBERT STEPHENSON. The nobly characteristic
absence of all jealousy between those two kindred
men of genius was reciprocally evidenced, by each
in turn, upon two very memorable occasions. First,
when STEPHEN SON'S Conway and Britannia tubular
bridges were floated and raised—labours in which
Mr. BRUNEL conpicuously participated, and of which
CHARLES KNIGHT'S " Biographical CyclopTdia,"
speaks as " operations not less remarkable for their
novelty and magnitude than for the friendly co-
operation of the engineers by whom they were suc-
cessfully accomplished." Secondly, this generous reci-
procity of interests and ambition was marked more
recently when the constructor of those grand
tubular bridges, aided by his advice in facilitating
the completion of the interrupted launch of BRU-
NEL'S last and greatest work of all, the leviathan
of the deep now floating triumphantly off Portland.
The engineering labours of Mr. BRUNEL scarcely
admit of very easy enumeration. They are alto-
gether too many, and too diversified to be
readily catalogued. Conspicuous among them, in
their abiding usefulness, were his dock labours in
many of our principal out-ports, as at Bristol, at
Cardiff, and at Sunderland. His railways, his
bridges, his tunnels, his steamships, however, are
his chief and most resplendent master-pieces. In
constructing these he has repeatedly striven--and
striven successfully—to attain, not simply a high,
but the highest point of excellence. His beautiful
foot-bridge across the Thames, at London, for in-
stance—the Hungerford Suspension-bridge--is the
longest span in the United Kingdom ! His railway
bridge across the Thames at Maidenhead is the
longest and flattest of brick arches yet constructed !
His other railway bridge over the Tamar, in Corn-
wall, is "as near as may be from coincidence of
natural causes, of the same span and height as
the Britannia-bridge, and has a central pier, rising
from a depth of 80 feet of water; the deepest yet
encountered in railway engineering !" His railway
tunnel near Bath—the famous Box Tunnel—is,we be-
lieve, about the longest railway tunnel yet in existence!
His gauge along the line of the Great -Western is, as
we all very well know, the broadest of the gauges,
though this, we will admit, is, to say the least of
it, a somewhat questionable distinction! His first
large steam vessel, named like his grand trunk rail-
way through the western counties, " The Great
Western," was the first steamship built to cross the
Atlantic How it did cross the Atlantic, in spite
of Dr. LARDNER'S predictions as to the impossibility
of its doing so, is upon record in the history of
Steam Navigation. As it is also upon record how
" to oppose her, or to run away if they could with
the merit of being first to cross the Atlantic, an
inefficient steamer was started from Cork eight days
before her, but the absurdity was soon made apparent
by the two vessels arriving on the same day"—not-
withstanding the Cork one had those days prece-
dence ! But further, is it not, there, also upon
record how " the supply of fuel on board the Cork
steamer was exhausted, while the Great Western,
notwithstanding the predictions of Dr. LARDNER,
had coals enough left to steam four days longer at
her full rate of consumption." Finally, there is
this crowning triumph of his life, this grandest
achievement of his'engineering genius—The Great
Eastern Steamship—the most gigantic vessel ever
set (float upon the great deep since the waters of the
Deluge subsided! No wonder, with a recollection
of those marvellous works vi; idly brought to mind
by the late lamented and premature demise of Mr.
BRUNEL, no wonder that one of the earliest to
grieve over the tidings of that regretted death
should speak of " the stupeadous talents" of the con-
structor of the Great Western Railway and of the
Great Eastern Steamship ! In the phrase, there
is no exaggeration—for the talents of this remark-
able man were, in very deed and in simplest truth,
nothing less than stupendous. After times, in view-
ing his Grand Works both upon sea and upon land,
and those too of his great and worthy contemporary,
ROBERT STEPHENSON, may say with reason and
-without hyperbole, as has been said of earlier gene-
rations in the history of the world, " There were
Giants in those days .!" The works actually com-
pleted by the genius of this one man—now, alas !
no more—are like the works of the Cyclops. The
fabled thunderbolts forged upon the anvil of Vul-
can were hardly grander to dream of, than the limbs
of those gigantic engines heaving and throbbing in
the iron caverns of the Great Eastern. As one of the
formest, as in some respects about the very fore-
most among the great material benefactors of his
time and of his country, the genius of BRUNEL is
indeed entitled to our earnest and lasting admira-
tion; his memory is indeed worthy of being per-
manently held in England's grateful remembrance.

Lord Clyde retires from the command of the In-
dian army at the close of this year. He will be succeeded
by General Sir Hugh H. Rose, who recently acquired dis-
tinction in suppressing the rebellion in Central India.

The Duke of Somerset arrived at his official re-
sidence at the Admiralty on Saturday morning from Devon-
port, expressly to attend the Cabinet Council.

The Duke of Newcastle returned to town on
Saturday from his seat, Worksop Manor, Nottinghamshire.
The Earl of Elgin arrived in London on Satur-
day from Scotland.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer arrived in town
on Friday night from Hawarden Castle.

The Earl and Countess Delawarr have, during
the last week, entertained a succession of visitors at Buck-
hurst Park, Sussex.

Viscountess Jocelyn and family have joined Vis-
countess Palmerston, at Broadlands, Ilants, after passing
a few days in town on her way from the Earl of Roden's
seat in Ireland.

Lord Ebury left town on Saturday on a visit to
his Excellency the British Ambassador at the Court of the
Tuileries

The Right Hon. Sidney Herbert arrived in Lon
don on Friday evening.

Sir G. C. Lewis arrived in London on Saturday
morning from Harpton Court, Herefordshire.
ARTIFICIAL STATUARY MARBLE —Mr. Jobard,
of Brussels, has invented an artificial statuary marble, which
is to be prepared for sculptors in a liquid state, and can be
moulded with the plaster figure. It is said to be pure and
spotless as Carrara—transparent, polished, and hard as the
real substance taken from the quarry.

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THE SUN.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1859.