The Sun.
London, England, 1861-10-04 00:00:00

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THE SUN.

LONDON, FRIDAY, OCT. 4, 1881.

Some of our contemporaries seem disposed to
amuse themselves with guessing the topics which
the King of PRUSSIA and the EMPEROR are to dis.
cuss at Compiegne on Sunday evening. What
some of them will be can be little doubted; it
would be strange, indeed, if i the affairs of all
Europe were not matter of conwrsation, especially
when we are assured that the visit is one of cour-
tesy and goodwill, not of business. Perhaps we
should have been more ready to think so if pains
had not been taken to assure us of it. As it is,
the meeting of the two monarchs will suggest all
kinds of speculations to those who " put no confi-
dence in princes,"—and especially in princes who
have done everything in their power to destroy
confidence.

It was not very long ago that the last threat of
Earl RUSSELL was that we were to look round for
new alliances in the event of a neighbouring Power
showing itself so ambitious as to desire fresh
accessions of territory. Prussia was commonly con-
sidered and understood to be one country between
which and ourselves diplomatic cords were to be
closer drawn, and a kind of offensive and defensive
understanding to exist. We naturally, therefore,
ask, what means this visit of our ally presumptive
to our antagonist presumptive ? Has England any
interest whatever in it ? If we may answer specu-
latively, we should say none whatever. So far
from caring a straw for the Prussian alliance, we
should think it enormously dear at the price we have
to pay to supplement the poverty of the KING and
his son, when we found the latter a wife, whom
he could not maintain without a good round sum
per annum out of our treasury. We wonder how
much our German consorts, male and female, have
ever received from the Fatherland ! Englishmen
cannot look to Prussians as allies. They have
deceived all round too often. They would sell us
again at a day's notice if by doing so they could
ward off an invasion, or appropriate another little
principality, or set up a German fleet, or obtain as
neutrals the carrying trade between two bellige-
rents, one of whom they knew to be violating, and
the other maintaining the public law of Europe.
We must say it openly, notwithstanding the differ-
ence in religion, and the long rivalry, we would in-
finitely sooner have the French for allies in any un-
dertaking than the Prussians. We should expect more
sense of honour, and if not the absence of selfish-
ness, yet a greater reluctance to exhibit it too bare-
facedly.
As to the present KING, we know of nothing to
give us better hopes of him than we had from his
brother. He is not so capricious and vacillating, it
may be said. But then he is a dull, stubborn old
Conservative, of the most leaden German type. Not
one noble deed has he done since his ascent to the
throne. Italy has had as little as she could of his
sympathy, though his Chambers, to do them justice,
were better to her than he. As to Denmark, he
has used her disgracefully; the shabby man is
actually joining with other Germans to demand
liberties for the German population subject to the
King of DENMARK, which, rather than give to his
own subjects, he would see them bayonetted first.
He has actually driven the brave inhabitants of
the little kingdom to prefer a war with Prussia
to enduring farther intermeddling.
We cannot wonder that there should be again
a little flutter among the German Princes. Were
we in their place we should not have the smallest
doubt that our territories would be discussed as
matters of convenient exchange between the two
greater territorial potentates. How much else-
where in Germany, would compensate for arrang-
ing natural boundaries on the Rhine, is a question
which Louis NAPOLEON would certainly not
scruple to put, if he thought its answer might
conduce to the glory of the dynasty; and as cer-
tainly his Prussian MAJESTY would not shrink
from an answer involving a notice to quit to some
of his neighbours, if he supposed the whole thing
would be to his advantage. Right or wrong, such
would be the opinion of all parties who could afford
to speak their minds, and that being the case, all
the Sovereigns likely to be affected by the discus-
sions at Compiegne must feel more or less un-

easiness.

England can but look on with unconcern. We
could desire indeed a strong Austria, a strong
Prussia, a strong Italy, and a strong Spain. But
Austria refuses in her despotic pride and selfishness
the first condition of strength—justice and loyalty
to her nationalities. Prussia is worthless as a
leader of Germany, and helpless as a military
power, sprawling as she does over half Germany
and what she has robbed from poor Poland.
We can only look to ourselves. That we mean to
do ; and the Kings and Emperors must settle
matters as they best can. We are ever ready to
give our moral support to nations struggling for
liberty, but we care not for the schemes of despots.
Louis NAPOLEON may be very liberal of other

English—our own good, honest native tongue,
and the honours due to it, is one of the topics of
the moment. A right sort of lecture on English
teaching, by the Rev. A. J. D'ORSEY, 8.D., Eng-
lish Lecturer at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,
now lies before us, urging the necessity of instruction
on our language itself; and daily letters in the
newspapers are demanding that clergymen shall
utter it in a manner worthy of its merits. The
clerical delinquents, on the latter point, seem to be
the worst, judging at least by the numerous com-
plaints and the humble excuses. It is a clergy-
man, the Rev.J.D'OßsEv, who writes of his order,that
we " might listen to the way in which the Ch arch
service was read in nine cases out of ten as a proof
(indistinct utterance, incorrect pronunciation, pro-
vincial accent, false emphasis, drawling; monotony,
&c.)---to the dull, listless style in which sermons
were composed and delivered, and to the painful
attempts of most clergymen to d o what the barrister
or the member of Parliament did—speak without

paper."

To be sure our Parliament itself, where if we I
regard its name speaking must be held to be an
essential qualification, incurs a tolerably wholesale
censure. "With some dozen exceptions, in neither
House were there any really good public speakers.
Of the 10,000 speeches made last session, 5,000
might have been spared, and the rest given in a
tenth of the time, if the spealers had been trained
to speak to the point, to say -lOW. they had to say in
the fewest words." We musl confess our fears that

most of our readers will shrug their shoulders and
pronounce the lecturer of Corpus Christi College

right.

Mr. FORSEY would begin at the beginning.
He does not in his lecture forget even the nursery
and the first instructors of children. -He quoted
QIIINTILIAN as to the choice of nurses with good
pronunciation, and censured the carelessness
of English parents in allowing vulgar, un-
educated servants to surround their children ;
but it was to our National Schools and Universities
that he chiefly addressed his observations. He ad-
verted to the sad condition of English teaching in
our National Schools, proving his assertion from
the reports of the inspectors. " He had ascertained
that in our great public schools, no direct attention
was paid to English ; no recognition of the dignity
of our own language and of its idiomatic structure,
so different from that of the ancient tongues ; no
organized English department with an able Saxon
scholar its head : most of the head masters being of
opinion that sufficient provision was made by the
ordinary practice of translation, writing an occa-
sional theme, or declaiming a passage from SHAKE-
SPEARE on ' Speech-day.' Some exceptions
existed,—the City of London School, King Edward's
School at Birmingham, and the School at Bury St.
Edmund's."

We can all of us witness to the truth of these
statements, unless we happen to have been in boy-
hood at the schools he names. Few, indeed, are the
schools in which the grammar and structure of our
own language are studed at all in proportion to its
importance. Germans and Frenchmen do not treat
their vernacular with such contempt as to leave it
to chance whether it be spelt correctly and written
grammatically and in good taste. We have, per-
haps, the richest language on earth, yet we seem
as if we knew it not. We smooth it somewhat, no
doubt, on the grindstone of Latin and of Greek ;
but, like the diamond, its beauty and worth can
be fully developed only by friction with itself.

No doubt much might be done from the com-
mencement to the termination of what we commonly
mean by a child's and youth's education to give him
a much better mastery of his own language.
If required from childhood to express him-
self, on topics suitable to his age, in the most
perspicuous, condensed, and correct language, we
should not surely be bored as we are with sermons
chiefly, and speeches in fair measure, which task
our patience to the uttermost with empty verbosity,
andby theviolationof almost every rule of good taste.
To some, just perceptions of propriety in language
could, indeed, never be imparted. In regard to
style, they resemble persons who have no ear for
mvsie playing an air mechanically. But, during
the time which the great majority of the middle
as well as of the upper classes attend school, even
boys might soundly learn the principles of good
writing. If, in regard to that comparatively early
age, we might suggest a hint to schoolmasters, it
would be to set their pupils to practise English
composition, on topics thoroughly within the compre-
hension of boys. A greater error cannot be, we
imagine, than to give a boy or even a lad such
topics as the passions, or the virtues, or the cha-
racter of persons beyond their power to appreciate.
The best description of cricket or football ; or of
the different ways in which boys spend their money,
or of their last excursion, or of a family of child-
dren's common characters, filled up from his own
knowledge under fictitious names, would be far
better practice, both for thought and composition,
than anything not thoroughly under their command.
General topics, on which a modern GOLDSMITH
or a BACON would not find it easy to be pleasantly
or profoundly original, are too often given to
children. The result is a stilted artificial, or
imitative effort. The thing required is to give
the best expression to thoughts natural to a
child. The child who can do this will be "father
to the man " who can do it. Too often, we fear,
from early habit, the man who sits down to
write, or tries to make a speech, attempts
something unnatural and artificial—something
beyond—if we may a lludo to the oft-cited expression
—first catching his thought, and then cooking it.

As to our adult writers and speakers—the
clergy especially, who have been so much before
us of late, it is not for us to tender much of
our advice. The Bishops, it seems, have taken
their pulpit enunciation in hand, and certainly
not too soon ; the worst is, it would now appear
that Bishops have already tried their best, and
with what results Mr. D'ORSEY has
just told us. This augurs but unfavour-
ably for them as elocution masters ; or
elocution examiners. The open expression of public
opinion will, however, do much. All the pulpit
readers and:orators will know that they are hence-
forth under special observation. Many of them
will take prompt steps for self-improvement. All,
except in the very rare case of utter indifference to
what their fellow-creatures think of them, will feel
some concern to get rid of awkwardnesses which have
been publicly censured and voted intolerable. In-
deed, we have but little doubt that if the press does
its part, if it does not suffer the thing to sleep, if it
returns to the criticism, and to the demand for im-
provement, from time to time, this alone will be
enough. The clergy will soon begin to discover
the way to desk and pulpit reformation, if the pub-
lic does but tell them,—We must have it.

CHARLES DICKENS has somewhere written—it is
in one of his picturesque fugitive pieces published
originally, if we recollect rightly, in household
Words—" When the wind is blowing, and the
sleet and rain is driving against the dark windows,
I love to sit by the fire, thinking of what I have
read in books of voyage and travel." And who
amongst us all does not ?—though he may not have
the capacity to conjure up the scene before his
" mind's eye " as vividly as the Great Novelist.
" Such books," adds the latter, in the same place,
" have had a strange fascination for my mind from
my earliest childhood; and I wonder," he exclaims
with a whimsical astonishment at himself, "I won-
der it should have come to pass that I never have
been round the world, never have been shipwrecked,
ice-enviror.ed, tomahawked, or eaten." In a vague
way similar reflections must have oecurred often
enough before now to many other English " Gen-
tlemen who live at home at ease." Islanders as we
are, citizens of the greatest maritime power upon
the globe, we have all of us an instinctive hanker-
ing after the sea-flaring life. The veriest landsman
amongst us has an unaffected interest in everything
relating to that element which has been,
throughout our history, at once our securest
defence, and the noblest arena of our glory.
Honoured though the Royal Army is, it is the Royal
Navy that is regarded by one and all alike as
the National Profession. Among all the warriors
who have ever won the admiration of their com-
patriots in this country, the one who has incontesti-
bly gained for himself the enviable pre-eminence of
greatest oc
joi
du
hr
oSo eaa Cn a p
thist i nes
0.
being the " darling Hero of England," is the
ifsavtohuernitaerrsatotirvye-
u countrye
of the adventures of
a poor shipwrecked sailor. The
best-thumbed pages of our annals are those in which
the marvellous exploits of
our great sea-fights are
recorded, from the glorious feats of BLAKE down to
those of DUNDONALD, And were it otherwise, it