The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-04 00:00:00

THE STATE OF TRADE.

LEICESTER, Nov. 2.—Thehosiery trade is in a very
healthy condition, and the demand continues toler-
ably brisk for all articles suitable for the season.
There has been an excellent business doing in most
branches for some time past. At Hinckley and
Loughborough the hosiery trade is in a satisfactory
state. Yai ns are in fair request at high prices. The
wool market is firm, without change in price.
NOTTINGHAM, Nov. 2.—The lace trade
remains exceedingly dull, and this week there
has been less doing than in the preced-
ing. No really beneficial change is looked for-
ward to for the present. Buyers are merely satis-
fying their requirements, which are very limited.
The silk branch is extremely flat, more so than for
some time past; consequently many hands are
only partially employed. Stocks on hand continue
flat, and goods are still being produced, for the
most part to order. In hosiery there is a fair
amount of business doing for export; the demand
for goods for home consumption is not active, but
there are numerous other orders on hand, and the
operatives are on the whole well engaged. Yarns
continue firm, and late prices are fully sustained.
Silks are extremely high in price, and still have an
upward tendency.

THE CHAIRMANSHIP OF THE WEST KENT
QUARTER SESSIONS.—The Earl of Romney has signified
his intention of retiring from the chairmanship of the above
sessions, which his lordship has so ably dischm ged since
the year 1846. The election of his successor has been fixed
for the 29th instant. It is understood that Mr. Gathorno
Hardy, M.P., will succeed him.
A NEW CUNARD LINER.—The Cunard Company
has just contracted with Messrs. Napier, of Glasgow, for
the construction of an iron paddle steamer of 4,000 tons,
with corresponding horse-power. She is to be named the
Scotia. and will be in every way larger and more powerful
than the Persia, which is of 3,500 tons. The new vessel,
we understand, is expected to surpass anything afloat, both
as regards speed and internal arrangements, and to sustain
the reputation of the Cunard line, as well as of the Clyde
builders.
- - -

IS CONSUMPTION IscunAßLu ? —lnvalids labouring
under Consumptive Maladies, and families who have
Buffered from the ravages of Consumption (and what
family in the empire is them who has not to deplore a
loss caused by this scourge of the human race ?) will find
a satisfactory answer to the question, " Is Consumption In-
curable," in an original article by Dr. DENIS CRONIN,
M.D., 35, Bruton-street, Berkeley-square, W. Published in
the "Household Physician," in numbers, one penny each,
by G. Berger, 19, Holywell-street, Strand. From Ito 9 now
ready.

[AnvuarrsrmENT.]—Mothers and nurses will find Du
Barry's delicious Revalenta Arabica Food admirably
adapted to remove all disorders of the stomach and bowels to
which infants and children are at all times liable, such as
indigestion, flatulency, colic, dysentery, diarrhoea, consti-
pation, debility and restlessness. It strengthens, non-.
rishes, and is used with more advantage than milk in
rearing infants. We quote a few out-of many testimo-
nials :—" Amsterdam, 31st Dec., 1852.—Dear Sir,—Our
child, up to the age of eleven weeks, was very delicate, and
wasting away, and milk, sago, and arrowroot turned sour
on its stomach, causing great suffering. We then fed it
upon Du Barry's Revalenta Arabica, which agreed won-
derfully with her ; and she is now, at the age of nine
months, a plump and lively little girl.—Daniel Servos."
" Wilder. yank, Holland, 20th Sept. 1853.—Dear Sir,—Our I
baby, which Heaven presented us with ten months back,
was attacked, when four weeks old, with a disease of the
stomach and glands, by which our seven previous infants
had aIY, been carried off, and this last child seemed destined
to follow its sisters and brothers before many days, for our
doctor, a, very able practitioner, had, during three weeks,
exhausted all his skill, and was at a loss what to prescribe
next, when he advised Du Barry's Revalenta Arabica,
which, I am happy to say, worked a great change for the
better in a few days ; and in six weeks' time the child was
perfectly well, and is now a cheerful/ blooming boy—a
source of the greatest happiness tons all.—L. H. Vaalman."
In tins, at Is. 6d. ; Ilb., 3s. ; 21b., ss. 9d.; 51b., 125.; 121 b.,
265. The 101 b. and 121 b. tins carriage free, on receipt of post-
oilier. order. Du Barry and Co., 77, Regent-street, London.
Fortnum, Mason, and Co., 182, Piccadilly ; Abbis, 60,
Gr acechurch-street ; 4, Cheapside ; 63, and 150, Oxford-
street; 330 and 451, Strand • 49 and 60, Bishopsgate-
street ; 85, Tottenham-court-road. Also at Dublin,
Bewley and Draper ; at Edinburgh, Raimes and Co.;
at Liverpool, Nixon and Thew; at Manchester, Sharp and
Se.r,tt ; at York, Raimes, Blachard, and Co,; at South-
. vapton, Randall and 504.

NEW S PAPE R
THE FRENCH 2 K-1
- 1
• s.tFafiq
ihe4rench law of the Press is a\ti-id •
nal regulation with which we have notifileitri g/
duty frequently or pointedly to meddle' It It
part, and. perhaps an indispensable part, of
system under which the French nation is content
to live, and so long as they do not complain of it
neither shall we'. But the case is altered when
a severe reflection on the English Government is
made the ground of a warning; and when it id
assumed that the good-will of a nation which
allows to itself the most unlimited liberty in can=
vassing publicly its own acts and those of its neigh-
hours is to be conciliated by censure or punishment
directed against its critics, it is time for us to say
a word on our own behalf. So far as the warning
recently given to the • eriodical in which have
lately appe.,-__ e ants of M. do Montalem-
bert on the present s a e of Italian affairs may be
considered as a proof of the good-will of the
French Government, we appreciate the act just in
proportion as wo appreciate that good-will—that
is, we need scarcely say, very highly ; but, so far
as the warning seems to imply that there is any
wish in this nation that the already impaired
liberty of speech and writing in France should
be still further curtailed in deference to our feel-
ings and susceptibilities, we beg entirely to repu-
diate the assumption. To say truth, such an attempt
to spare our feelings comes a little- too late. We
have for years been the target at which a large
portion of.the French press have been in thibabit
of launching their arrows, the only mark at which
they could aim with perfect harmlessness. By all
means let that impunity continue. On our own
ground, and on our own domestic topics, we ought
to be ashamed if we are not a match for the whole
press of France without requiring a too powerful
Government to enter the lists in our behalf. In the
field of reason and argument we are quite willing
to confront even M. De Montalembert himself, and
we desire no triumph over him except such as rea-
son and argument can give us. Little as we agree
cnwuoisrts,hi
oihnniFeaeni
indeed, reached
h‘rviesea Ccf3ehllee ;di
humiliated
eno nil hti hasetesd not transgressed,
°a beine' ft
freetnodbflaigd irediste
combat an open and honourable adversary, who,
while we can write and say what we will, is obliged
to measure every phrase and to exclude every con- •
struction which a jealous and hostile Government
can force upon his words, if he would not buy his
rhetorical triumph at the expense of fine, of impri.
sonment, or of banishment.
M. De Montalembert has written with his usual
force and eloquenes an appeal in favour of the Pope
and his Government. As far as the restraint under
which every political writer in France labours
would permit, and further, indeed, as the result has
proved, than was prudent, DI. De Montalembert
has expressed his disapproval of the conduct of the
French Government. England, of course, could ex-
pect no better treatment. M. De Montalembert
has, indeed, done us the justice to show, what can-
not well be denied, that for the present state of
affairs in Italy in general, and in the States of the
Church in Particular, England is in no degree respon-
sible. We did all we could to prevent the war,
we did nothing whatever to impede the peace,
for which we were avowedly most anxious,
and the whole of our offence is strictly limited
to an open sympathy with the people of the
Legations in their anxiety, if possible, to be
emancipated from the leaden despotism of the
Pope. 111. de Montalembert considers the conduct
of England to be ignoble. The word is harsh, but
from such a man, on such a subject, we could ex-
pect nothing better. M. de Montalembert is of all
men best calculated to represent the conflict be-
tween the spiritual and temporal elements. He is
a complete duality, two souls in one body—a tem-
poral Montalembert, who is a Whig of the school
of Somers and Walpole ; a spiritual Montalembert,
whose views, whose prejudices, whose animosities,
aro not a hair's-breadth above the level of the
monachism of what lie delights to call the great
ages of faith—the barbarous, the ignorant, we had
almost said the brutal, middle ages. He has made
to himself an eclectic theory with regard to England.
He admires, he extols her laws, her constitution,
her free spirit, her gigantic progress; he sees but
one grievous fault in her—her Protestantism. This
learned and acute man has actually persuaded him-
self that England is what she is, not in conse-
quence, but in spite of her respect for individual
opinion and private judgment, and that, while her
industrial, commercial, and martial greatness would
remain the same, her moral and intellectual tone
would be much raised if she could only be induced
to exchange Protestantism for Catholicism. He
actually believes that a nation which has risen
to an unparalleled pitch of grandeur and prosperity
by allowing to its people freer action., freer speech,
and freer thought than have ever been enjoyed
elsewhere, would set the seal on its success by
abandoning the very means by which it was at-
tained, by abstaining from the perusual of almost
every great author she has produced, in obedience
1. to the Index Expurgatorius, and by submitting her
actions to the control of Bishops and Cardinals and
her thoughts to the direction of monks and friars.
This is M. de Montalembert's theory, but it is not
ours. We believe that it is not in spite of, but
mainly by reason of her Protestantism, that Eng-
land has become what she is, and that it is not in
spite of, but by reason of her Catholicism that Italy
has become what she is. If it be true that it is by
the independence and self-reliance of individuals
that England has attained her present greatness,
we hold that w hatever tends to diminish that inde-
pendence and self-reliance tends to diminish the
elements of success. We cannot all be two persona
distinct from each other—slaves one-half the day,
and free the other half ; and as we have cast in our
lot with freedom, we must even take it altogether
and claim for our people the right of selecting for
themselves the means of their eternal as well as of
their temporal welfare. M. de Montalembert tells
us that the days of Wellington and Nelson, •f
Burke and Chatham have gone by, and he warns
us against the folly, in our declining.state, of pro-
voking the wrath of 100,000,000 of sincere Catho-
lics. We should like to know why they
should have more to fear—now that we have re-
moved the temporal disabilities from the Roman
Catholics, under which they groaned during the
lives of the great men who, as M. de Montalembert
truly tells us, are dead—from his devout 100,000,000
than we had at the time when we debarred our
Roman Catholic fellow-subjects from the rights and
duties of citizens. The temporalities of the Church
of Rome must be valuable, indeed, in the eyes of
her faithful sons, if they prize their retention
more highly than the emancipation of their co-reli-
gionists from laws which pursued them through
every period of their existence, and endeavoured,
not in vain, to embitter and degrade their life from
the cradle to the grave. From such a censor we
may accept the epithet of ignoble without shame
and without surprise.
The position which M. de Montalembert takes
up with regard to the question between the Pope
and the Legations, when clearly defined, over-
throws itself. He admits the right of resistance in
case of misgovernment as broadly as any Whig
member of the Convention which placed 'William
and Mary en the throne of these Islands. He does
rot deny that there has b( en misgovernment, if not
by, at any rate in the name of the Pope ; but he
refuses altogether to permit the subjects of the Pope
to be the judges whether the extent of that mis-
government justifies them in deposing their present
ruler and placing the Government in other hands.
To allow the people to judge of this would be,
according to M. de Montalembert, to sap the founda-
tions of all government. With whom, then, is the
decision to lie ? Not with the Pope himself, for
that would be to deny the right of resistance
which M. de Montalembert distinctly admits ;
nor yet with the misgoverned people, for whom,
indeed, he has not the slightest sympathy, and
of whose intolerable grievances he never says a
single word from one end of his pamphlet to the
other. They have the right of resistance, but
that right they must not exercise until their right
is made clear to the apprehension of minds like
that of M. de Montalembert himself; and to him,
and such as he, the right will never be clear,
because he tells us distinctly that the spiritual
and temporal power must be united in the Papal
States in order that they may be separated
elsewhere. The upshot of all this is that the sub-
jects of the Pope are alone, of all mankind, bound
to submit with patience to any degree of tyranny,
corruption, and injustice ; that they are selected
from the rest of the human race to fill the honourable
part of victims to the spiritual necessities of the
foreign members of the Roman Catholic faith ; and
that, once having been given to the Pope by Charle-
magne, and again secured in their allegiance by the
presence of a French army, they are bound in fetters
which they must never attempt to break. If it be
ignoble to dissent from this view we are willing to
undergo the stigma. IN e have never held that it is
our duty, either by secret intrigue or by open force,
to deprive the Pope or any other bad Sovereign of a
single subject or a single square mile of territory;
but we are equally clear that the question whether
the Government of the Pope is any longer endurable
is a question not for M. de Montalembert, nor_ the
n
Archbishop of Bordeaux, nor the Emperor Napoleq
G.
nor the Emperor Francis, but for the people wh
misfortune
them thesfortunet right t
oliveuno decide thatderthatGo uvern:tneinot.
111 Va ve
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for themselves,
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BENSON'S WATCHES.
" Perfection of mechanism."--111orniug Post.
Gold Watches .................. 4 to 100 guineas.
Silver Watches ................ 2to 30 guineas.
33 and 31, Ludgate-hill, London, E.C.
Send 2 stamps for Benson's Illustrated Pamphlet on Watches

ROYAL ENGLISH OPERA
COVENT-GA EDEN.
Linder the management of Miss L. Pyne and 3Ir.W. Harrison
THIS EVENING, DINORA IL Messrs. Santley,
Corri, St. Albyn, and W. Harrison. Misses Pilling, Thisl
wall, and Miss Louisa Tyne.
Conductor, Alfred Mellon.
-D EVE RT IS SEIIE N T. Mdlles. L equine, Pasquale, Pier-
ton, and Mons. Vandrls.

Commence at 8 o'clock.

•.
THEATRE-ROYAL, HAYMARKET.
I.esiee, Mr..T. R. Bucketone•
THIS EVENING the nerformances will commence with
THE CONTESTED ELECTION. Mr. and 3118. Charles
Alathews, Mr. Buckstoue, &c.
After which, USED UP. Mr. C. Mathews.
And JACK'S RETURN FROM CANTON.
Commence at 7.

ROYAL PRINCESS'S THEATRE.—
Lessee, Mr. A. Harris.
THIS EVENING, the performances will commence with
a new drama, entitled TTIE MASTER PASSION. Messrs.
Ryder, G. Melville, Graham, R. Cathcart, Garden ; Miss C.
Lec ercq and Mrs. Charles Young-.
After which, ru-ss ; or, 3fetempysycliosis. Miss L. Keeley.
To be followed by a dramatic tableau in Watteau colours,
by J. R. Planche, Esq., entitled LOVE AND FORTUNE.

IVEW THEATRE - ROYAL, ADELPHI.
J.l Sole Proprietor and Manager, Mr. Beni. Webster.
THIS EVENING, THE WILLOW COPSE. Luke, Mr.
Ben.. Webster ; Hulks, Mr. D. Fisher ; Augustus, Mr. J. L.
Toole ; Stwrgers, Mr. Paul Bedford.
After which (by desire), ONE TOUCH OF NATURE.
Messrs. B. Webster, Billington, Moreland, Miss 11. Simms.
Atter which, the new farce, entitled A ROW ON I'ITE
PREMISES. Mr. David Fisher, P. Bedford, C. Selby, Miss
H. Simms, K. Kelly, Mrs. Billington.
Doors open at half-past sir—Commence at seven. Box-
Oince open from 10 to 5. No charge for securing seats,
nor for bills of performance. All fees to servants of this
establishment are strictly prohibited.
Acting Manager—Mr. Wm. Smith.

OYAL ST. JAMES'S THEATRE,
King-street, St. James's. Lessee, Mr. T. B. Chatter-
ton: The nearest Theatre to Chelsea, Pimlico, and West-
minster. the Park being open to carriages and foot passen-
gers all hours of the night.
THIS EVENING, Poole's comedy, THEY'RE BOTH TO
BLAME. Messrs. Leigh Murray, Barrett, Walter Carle ;
Mesdames Frank Matthews, Murray, Catharine Hickson.
Followed by MAGIC TOYS, support_A by Miss Lydia
Thompson, Miss Clara St. Casse, and a numerous Corps de
Ballet.
After which, the new Comedietta. entitled CUPID'S
LADDER. Reuben, Miss Lydia Thompson.
Reduced Prices—Gallery, 6d; Pit, is. The Box-office open
from 11 to 5 daily. Doors open at half-past sir; perform-
ance commences at 7.

ROYAL STRAND THEATRE.
Lessee and Directress, Miss Swanborough
THIS EVENING, TRYING IT ON.
Followed b (2d time); ROMEO AND JULIE r. Mr. J.
Clark, Mr. J. Rogers, Marie Wilton, and Charlotte Saunders.
And THE GOOSE WITII TIIE GOLDEN EGGS.
Commence at 7 o'clock.

ASTLEY'S ROYAL AMPHITHEATRE,
Westminster-road.

Sole Lessee Mr. William Cooke.
Every Ninht the successful Drama, by Tom Taylor, Esq.,
entitled 'GARIBALDI, supported by Mr. Ti. Phillips, Bet-
more, Raymond, Miss Kate Carson —PoNterful Company—
Full stud of trained Steeds—Great Military Tableaux—
Scenes in the Circle by Manlle. Martruerite, Signor
the wonderful Italian Equestrian, Miss Rosins and Jolla
Henry Cooke—Clowns, Messrs. Croueste, Rowena, and the
Parisian Grotesques—terminatinz with an exceedingly droll
Ballet entitled LOVE'S VAGARIES.
Stage Manager, Mr. R. Phillips

CANTERBUR Y HALL CONCERTS.-
EVERY EVENING.—The 3tusic of Verdi's Opera of
MACBETH (now first made public in England at these Con-
certs).

And a Grand Selection from Meyerbeer's new opera of
DINORAII.

Comic Vocalists —Messrs. George 'Tolson (the Irish Come-
dian and Mimic), W. T. Critchileld, and E. W. Mackney.

Several interesting Pictures are added to the Fine Arts
Gallery. The suite of Halls have been re-decorated and
beautiffed-. and constitute one of the most unique and brilliant
sights of the metropolis.

ROSA BONFIEUR'S celebrated PICTURE -of the HORSE
FAIR is now added to the already magnificent Collection of
Paintings in the Canterbury Hall Fine Arts Gallery. Th•
gallery is open from 9 am. till 12 p.m. Admission, Six-
pence.

THE WEATHER.—SUN OFFICE, NOVEMBER 4. i
TIIMAMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
55—highest since noon yesterday.
50—lowest this morning and during the night.
54—this day at noon.

BAROMTER-29.13.
WIND, South-Easterly ; fresh, with continuous rain tmd
muggy weather.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tins DAY.—Morning, Bh. 30m.—Afternoon, 9h. 14m.
To-Moßßow-Morning, Oh. 50m.—Afternoon, 10h. 21at

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TII E SUN.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1869.

As forcible and sensible a speech as we have for
some time past read was the one delivered by Mr.
CA IRD on Tuesday last, to his constituents, in the
Corn Exchange at Dunfermline. The hon. gentle-
man,-in the course of that address, brought toge-
ther a number of facts and figures, often before
now loosely quoted, but seldom if ever arranged in
a cluster so irresistibly argumentative, in demon-
stration of the sore need (now for a long while
pressing upon us) for a wise econo and a judicious
retrenchment. Not one sixpence arc we disposed
to grudge in the furtherance of our national de-
fences. But occasionally the thought will force
itself .apon the taxpaying and toilworn millions of
England; whether the cost of our army may not be
after all somewhat exorbitant. Particularly when
there is glaring upon us the indisputable
fact that we are paying annually very
considerably more for tho maintenance of our
army of 122,000 men, with a militia foi ce of 50,000,
than our neighbours across the Channel pay for a
gigantic military organisation, comprising within
it 500,000 of the finest soldiers in Christendom.
Another and a very startling demonstration of the
prodigality of our expenditure in the way of mili-
tary disbursements, the member for the Stirling
district burghs mentioned on Tuesday namely,
that ',DUring the last two years of the war with
Russia; When both countries were putting forth
their strength, though in numbers of soldiers the
French greatly exceeded us, the total charge for
our armaments was £89,000,000, while that of the,
French at the same time was only £36,000,000
Now," observed Mr. CAIRD, " if in two years we
absolutely threw away £50,000,000 more than the
French in doing much the same work, it seemed
reasonable to conclude that this was the branch of
the national expenditure in which a great saving
might be made." At the same time the hon.
member acknowledged, or rather, we should say,
insistdd, that any attempt at reduction in our
expenditure upon the army ought to be made only
with the utmost possible degree of circumspection.
There is not a rational man in England but must
be forcibly impressed by the consideration of the fact
that we are annually spending in one way or an-
other in the conduct of the Government of these
realms somewhere about £70,000,000 ! The rate
of increase in our expenditure having moreover been
latterly most alarming ; insomuch that, as Mr.
CAIRD reminds us, " within the last six years the
annual expenditure had increased by upwards of
£10,000,000, and he could not anticipate
any material diminution for many years to
come." Altogether the hon. member went on to re
mind his constituents and through than the country
at large on Tuesday " £50,000,000, or live-sixths of
the whole, were comprised ill the two great items
—the interest of the national debt and the cost of
the array and navy. The interest of the debt was
1:28,000,000—X12,000,000 a-year more than that of
France, and borne by a people one-fourth less
i
numerous. Sir ROBEILT PEEL n 1813 reduced
this burden by £2,000,000 a-year, but, except by
the falling in of terminable annuities, there was
little chance of a further reduction being for some
time mail e." Whereupon it might have been re-
garded as almost superfluous to add that—" It was
in the cost of the army and navy that the recent

peat increase had taken place." But it was not
by any means superfluous under the circumstances
for a liberal member like Mr. CAIRD, addressing a
thrifty constituency like that represented in the
Corn Exchange of Dunfermline on Tuesday, to add
thereupon immediately and earnestly, " Now he
desired here to guard himself against the possi-
bility of misapprehension, for, whatever the cost
might be of defending the country or maintaining
its honour, he believed the stake to be worth it a
hundred times over." Whereat the hall rang with
•beers expressive of cordial acluiescence ! " But,"
continued Mr. CAIRD (and surely with sufficient
reason), " efficiency might be had without sacrific-
ing economy, and when he compared the total cost
of the French army and navy with ours he could
come to no other conclusion than that in those
great public departments id this country there was
monstrous waste and extravagance." And then
comes the contrast already referred to, as drawn
by Mr. CAIRD, between the cost of our English
army of 122,000 men and the cost of the great
French army of 500,000 ! Followed by that allu-
sion, if possible, still more convincing in its way,
the pertinent allusion to the total charge upon the
French armaments during theßussian war, amount-
to £36,000,000, whereas the total charge upon
our own armaments, during the same interval,
reached, as we have seen, and long since felt very
bitterly, the frightful aggregate of £89,000,000—
only eleven millions short of the scarcely conceiv-
able sum of £100,000,000 ! It has been already
observed, however, that Mr. CAIRD, though an
advocate for economy in our expenditure, is still
more earnestly an advocate for increased expendi-
ture, if need be, in the revision and re-organisation
and extension and general improvement of our
system of national defences. He even goes so far
as to say, "Beyond all considerations of economy
we must make the country secure from the risk of
invasion, the advantages of our insular position
having been greatly impaired by steam." And while
opposed, like the rest of us, to a large standing
army as incompatible with a free constitution, he
is heartened by the assurance given to us by the
most competent military authorities, " that if we
had a regular army large enough to withstand the
first shock of invasion, there would be time enough
for the whole country to rise like one man in its
defence." So heartened is Mr. CAIRD by this con-
fident opinion of competent military authorities
that he hesitates not to declare his conviction that
"if we had a volunteer force of 300,000 practised rifle
shots in the British islands no foreigners would dare
to trouble us." Subsequently, Mr. CAIRD reminds
his constituents—" Exactly 100 years ago there
was an invasion panic in this country, and we
actually imported foreign mercenaries to help to
defend us. But," he goes on to add, rather in a
tone of manly conviction than of boasting, " small
comparatively though our army was, no man in this
country for a moment now dreamt that we could
not defend ourselves." It is the feeling, more or
less strongly realized,'of the whole mass of our popu-
lation. And, assuredly, while such feelings are
rife amongst us, there can be no cause whatever for
panic, though there may be, as there undoubtedly
is, every reason for preparation.

Scarcely has the Coroner's Jury commenced its
melancholy labours down at ikloelfra, with a view
to the discovery, if possible, of the precise causes of
that frightful destruction of human life through
the deplorable shipwreck of the Royal Charter,
than new disasters of a like kind, though
happily, far less destructive, come flashing to
our knowledge through the electric wires
from all parts of our coastline. One fearful gale, or
rather hurricane, has succeeded another with a
rapidity we:might almost venture.to designate unpre-
cedented. They have hardly completed at LLOYD'S
the full catalogue of the first series of calamities, of
ships wrecked, ships foundered, ships grounded,,
lives lost, and property destroyed—vessels to the
number of upwards of 150, lives to the number of
nearly 500, property to the aggregate amount,
in specie or the precious metals alone, of more
than £soo,ooo—when another, fortunately this
time a lesser list, has forthwith to be commenced.
Out of these disasters, however, we may draw,
thank heaven, some deductions replete with conso-
lation. There is that last wonder of the
world, our magnificent ocean steamer, the
Great Eastern, which has thus been triumphantly
tested. to the very uttermost by a suc-
cession of tremendous gales or hurricanes.
Through this double ordeal the leviathan of the
deep has passed, we repeat, triumphantly. No ill
whatever has befallen her in consequence—she has
weathered the storms that have blown upon her
with boreal fury—after having been threatened
with destruction by the accidental shutting of one
little trumpery stopcock. This, surely, is some-
' thing gained to us through these otherwise most
lamentable hurricanes. The Great Eastern not
only rides through the first dreadful gale off Holy-
head, while the unfortunate Royal Charter, with
upwards of four hundred souls, is crashing to
destruction upon the rocky coast off Point
Lynas, and while the shores of our whole island are
strewn thickly with the debris of 150 shipwrecks
more or less disastrous ! But upon the morrow,
almost in the midst of the later gale, the
Great Ship steams majestically, in defiance of roar-
ing wind and rolling waves, from Holyhead
back to Southampton. She is seen at 8.30 this
morning off the Isle of Wight—at a quarter past
nine off Warner Light, steaming towards the Solent
—five minutes later, passing through Spithoad—
and at 10.45, within a mile of her old mooring
ground, in Southampton Water, with steamers
going out to welcome her arrival,. and with a
salute of seventeen guns firing from the
Platform Battery, by way of greeting her
on her return to her former destination !
A better opportunity, or rather sequence of oppor-
tunities, could hardly have been wished to con-
vince us of the extraordinary powers of resistance
peculiar to this gigantic and wondrous specimen of
naval architecture.

Another source of peculiar satisfaction dis-
coverable among the records of this stormy
weather off the shores of Old England, is
the notable and glorious riding out of the
first great gale by our newly-created Channel
Fleet. The hurricane coming on suddenly, sur-
prised that gallant cluster of line•of-battle ships—
surprised them so suddenly that they began, among
other picturesque but perilous manceuvres, to drive
over the raging waters of the Channel in critical
vicinity to, and with critical velocity past, the
Eddystone Lighthouse. It is no unparalleled
'circumstance, of course, for a British Elect or
1 a British squadron to survive, without the loss of a
spar, a gale, or hurricane that has strewn the coasts
with the evidences of its destructiveness. But in
respect to this recent and none the less glorious
surely, because bloodless, achievement of our
Channel Fleet—it must be borne in mind
that it is a Fleet which has but just
now been abruptly summoned into existence,
insomuch that its late victorious passage through
its conflict with the elements is really and truly to
all intents and purposes its inaugurative triumph.
Added to which, it is the first great Channel Fleet
England has had since the introduction and organi-