The Sun.
London, England, 1866-10-05 00:00:00

HER MAJESTY.

BALMORAL, Wednesday.

The Queen, Princess Louise, and Prince Arthur,
attended by the Marchioness of Ely and Lieutenant-
General the Hon. Charles Grey, drove to the Spital
of Glenshee on Monday, and rode on ponies over
the bill to Kindrogan, from whence the royal party
drove to Dunkeld.

11cr Majesty remains at Dunkeld on a visit to the
Dowager Duchess of Athole.

The Drama in the Provinces.

It has become the custom, within the last few
years, to try, in some provincal towns, plays which
have been afterwards produced in London, but their
trials have been confined to such houses as Glasgow,
Liverpool, and Manchester. Bradford may now be
added to the list, as a new play, entitled " The Man
and the Shadow," has been produced at the Alex-
andra Theatre, which has met with extraordinary
success. The play, says the Bradford papers, is as
original as any of Shakspere's. The plot alone is
founded upon a German play by Carl von Holtei,
and the author, Mr. W. G. Wills, has greatly added
to the already high reputation which his admirable
novels, such as " David Chantrey," the " Wife's
Evidence," and others have long earned for
them. Arthur Bruce, the hero, is a poet of
original genius, who has not yet acquired
that stamp which we call " a name," and
without which the solid success which money repre-
sents, is not to be attained. In that position he is
advised by most of his friends to abandon what they
consider an unprofitable taste, and to apply himself
to the prosaic drudgery by which very mediocre
minds may yet earn a living. Poverty compels him
to follow their advice, but his mind, deprived of its
natural food, poetry, gives way under the enforced
burden of prose to which it is degraded. His Pega-
sus, yoked to an ox, breaks down under the
uncongenial toil. Domestic troubles and an
unfortunate passion for a lady who had
excited his gratitude, by a heartfelt recog-
nition of his genius, complete the ruin of a
noble intellect ; and when for his mad conduct he
is expelled from his employer's house, he disappears
under circumstances which lead to the supposition
that he has committed suicide. Twenty years after
his supposed death, his works having become fa-
mous, a statue is erected to his memory in the pub-
lic park of his native town, and here we have a situa-
tion invented entirely by Mr. Wills, which is not
only completely novel and original, but unsurpassed
for dramatic effect. While the supposed dead poet's
friends unveil and inaugurate his statue, the poet
himself, now a mad beggar, appears, and is hustled
by the crowd at the foot of his own statue ; he is
protected from violence by his own son. His old
friend and townspeople sing a song of his, which
he himself had sung in the first act. The melody
and words strike a chord in the old man's disor-
dered brain, and bring back his senses. He takes
up the song himself, but breaks down through ex-
citement, and his identity with the original of the
statue is established. His friends crowd round him,
and welcome his return to life, but the joy has been
too much for him. His heart is broken, and he
dies on the day of his triumph.
Mr. Hermann Vezin, for whom this play has been
written, and who has already, by his performance
of Shakspere's heroes in the metropolis, placed him-
self in the foremost rank of living actors, advances
his reputation by his rendering of this original part.

An excellent map with Metropolitan Railway and
its branches vividly defined in scarlet has just been pub-
lished. It will be found very useful for reference.

FOXI-HUNTING.—One of the greatest charms of
fox-hunting undoubtedly is that it disposes of all
the dirty weather which goes to make up three-fourths of
an English winter. Wet, and drizzle, and muggy fog (the
characteristics of our brumous and insular climate, accord-
ing to numerous French authorities) are the capital on
which it trades. To the hunting man a rainy morning
in winter, which to most other country folk can
promise nothing better than a long yawn with
book or newspaper in hand, and a prospect over a
miserable stretch of sodden country, means sport, and
society, and
,enjoyment. It is nothing to him that the
ground rides saddle-girth deep, and that ho is splashed
with mud from head to foot, so long as the scent is good.
Ho will only enjoy the more by contrast the charm
of his own fireside, when he has cast his slough, and
makes his appearance in the drawing-room before dinner,
hungry, and happy, and a little tired. This, indeed, to
my mind, constitutes ono of the principal benefits which
accrue from fox-hunting considered in an ethical light. It
enables certain rich people occasionally to realise some of
the conditions of poorer humanity, to feel themselves, if
only for a short time, to be mon, and not only lords or
squires or groat merchants and manufacturers. When he
gets off his horse after a long wet day in the clays, my
lord is very much in the same draggle-tailed condition
in which his labourer Hodge is, just emerging from
the oozing ditch in which he has been engaged for
some hours plashing a fence. The hardness which it
necessitates, together with a small amount of danger that
accompanies it, takes fox-hunting out of the category .of
tame sports, such as battue-shooting, for example, than
which I know not any amusement more despicable and
inane. And ono of the least favourable signs of the times,
to my mind, is the increasing fondness of the noble and
wealthy for this latter sport, if sport we must call it. For
the spirit of civilisation and refinement which has exor-
cised from the higher ranks of the community drunkenness
and swearing, and that roughness which still had some-
thing of hardihood in it, is not an unmixed gain to society,
if the English mind is to be emasculated thereby, and,
losing its coarseness, is to lose also its manliness and self-
roliauce.—Macmillan's Magazine.
CLEVER CAPTURE OF £1,300 FORGED SCOTCH
UNION BANK NOTES.—For some time past the officials
at the head offices of the Union Banking Company in Edin-
burgh have been aware that a number of forged Union
Bank £1 notes were. being put in circulation, and on Wed-
nesday upwards of 20 were intercepted at the various banks
in town. On that day forenoon two men, apparently
very "flush" of money, arrived in Dalkeith from the
north, and in the course of the day visited different shops
there, making small purchases, for which they tendered in
payment Union Bank £1 notes. In the third shop which
they called at the lad who served them bad luckily seen a
paragraph which appeared in one of our contemporaries
this morning, calling the attention of the public to the
fact that it was suspected that a number of forged Union
Bank notes were at present in circulation ; and on receiv-
ing a £1 Union note in payment of the goods purchased—
which only amounted to a few shillings—he took it to his
master. On examination it was found that the paper on
which it was printed was much thinner than the genuine
notes, and the " ono pound" so oft repeated in the body of
the note was just " dotted" up. Information was imme-
diately lodged with Inspector Copeland, 'of the county
police, stationed at Dalkeith, and he immediately went in
quest of the " two strangers," whom he found in a shoe-
maker's shop, each trying on a pair of boots. He apprehe-
hended them, and upon them were found about £3O in gold
ancl a few forged £1 Union notes. Later in the day it was as-
certained that they had left their luggage at the Inveresk
Railway Station, intending merely to pay a flying visit to
Dalkeith on their way to Carlisle, for which they were to
leave in the evening. Inspector Copeland proceeded to
the railway station, and on opening their travelling cases
found £1,300 of forged Union Bank £1 notes tied up in
bundles of £5O, also about £6O of silver, and between £5O
and £6O of gold. The whole property was secured, and
the prisoners were locked up in the cells at Dalkeith, front
whence they will bo conveyed to Edinburgh. It Is thought
that the prisoners hail from Aberdeen, and in all probabi-
lity notes of the same kind may have been passed at the
various towns and stations on the route.—EdinburyhEveniny
Courant.

THE SOUTH WALES COAL TRADE.—Last year the
coal trade of South Wales suffered materially from the
want of a sufficient number of skilled colliers, and it was
with difficulty the increasing requirements of buyers were
met. This scarcity of labour was brought about mainly by
the emigration movement to the United States, a: large
number of the best hands having left for that country. In
the spring of the present year there was every likelihood of
the movement becoming still more general, and if the pro-
posed reduction is wages had been carried out there is no
doubt that a large number of the colliers and miners would
have left for the States and the colonies. The withdrawal
of the notice for a reduction had a most favourable effect
on the men, and many who had determined to emigrate if
wages were reduced then decided to remain in the land of
their birth rather than try their fortunes elsewhere. The
effect of the monetary crisis on the iron trade also placed a
number of hands at the disposal of colliery proprietors, but
even with this assistance there is a difficulty still in obtain-
ing the requisite supplies of coal. It has been suggested
that the Cornish miners out of employ would find it easy
to become skilful coal hewers, and steps are new being taken
at several Welsh collieries with a view of trying whether
the surplus labour of Cornwall and Devon can be turned
to account in South Wales.