The Sun.
London, England, 1861-10-31 00:00:00

THE ARMI,

In order to provide some rational kind of amuse-
ment for the men composing the sub division of the
depot brigade, Royal Artillery, stationed at Sheer-
ness, during the winter months, the officers attached
to the division aro making arrangements for
the formation of a Shaksperian amateur thea-
trical club, to consist of a limited number of officers
and men of all ranks. Excellent accommodation
exists in the garrison school-room for the produc-
tion of various pieces, and by permission of Col.
Needham the building will be used, when required,
for theatrical purposes. A similar attempt was in-
troduced into the garrison about two years since,
and was attended with the most marked su2cess on
every occasion of amateur theatrical performances
taking place. The Royal Artillery officers at Sheer-
ness have undertaken to provide the necessary
scenes.

Yesterday the sth and 17th companies of Royal
Engineers, which have just arrived at headquarters
Chatham, the former from Woolwich and the latter
from Malta, were inspected at Brompton barracks
by Lieut.-Col. J. F. M. Browne, C.B. The sth com-
pany, prior to its being sent to Chatham to be held
in readiness for embarkation for foreign service, was
stationed at Woolwich 11 years. It is composed al-
most exclusively of tailors, who were employed in
the Royal Engineer clothing establishment at Wool-
wich in making up the clothing for the entire corps
of Royal Engineers, under the direction of Quarter
master J. Mutch, commissary of clothing, assisted
by a staff of sergeants and cutters. The latter remain
at Woolwich, where the soldier tailors are to be su-
perseded by civilian workmen. A considerable ad-
ditional expense will be incurred to the Government
as the Royal Engineers, who are excellent work-
men, made the clothing at considerably less cost
than the private workmen. On the sth company
being augmented for foreign service it will, of course,
be made up by a due proportion of men of various
trades. The 17th company had been at Malta six
years. The excess of tailors in the sth company will
be attached to the depot companies at headquarters.
With the view of carrying out the provisions of
the royal warrant of July 31, 1861, wherein it is
provided that soldiers who have become entitled to
one good conduct badge after three years' service
shall not be allowed to obtain their discharge by
purchase on more advantageous terms than those
laid down in the Royal warrant of the Ist of July,
1848, a circular from the War-office, signed by Sir
B. Hawes, K.C.8., Under-Secretary for War, was
yesterday received at Chatham, directing that, in
order to carry out the intention of the beforemen-
tioned warrant, the scale of rates for soldiers pur-
chasing their discharge, according to the War-
office regulations, shall stand as follows :—Above 5
and under 7 years' actual service, with one distin-
guishing mark ; Europeans—cavalry, £25; infantry,
£18; blacks, £ll. The same prevision is to be in-
troduced in the Artillery scale of the finance regu-
lations.

The other night, says the Tuanz7Heraldi a man
named James Healy, from Aghlosk, while returning from
the fair in company with his wife and some friends, was
waylaid on the road, knocked down, and beaten with sheep
crooks, by two men named Pat and Dennis Mullin, of Gal-
lagh, and received such injuries that he died next day. The
murderers, who are brothers, made no attempt to escaPN

2HE PRINCE OF WALES AND TIIE
TEMPLE.

leatdi
n a
To-day is the Templars' jubilee. At the end of
theirhwil. long vacation, just before putting off all
ranks.bett better
pastimes and sitting down to serious work,
they are preparing for a great gala day. The Prince
o f Wales comes down to the Temple to enrol himself
in their
isrhsls'nfnnhs
oaotft Ihiceaonhuaistl
thatoi
sn gki
mnbeen
ne
(la a
bsntyd a
u dan epnrt
inetro;
dinners in any
elated by the people of this country. He is pro-
bably more intimately acquainted with the history
of oar legal system, and has a better appreciation
strange medley produced by feudalism, civil
olafwt,hae ndmodern jurisprudence,
of the students who will emerge than the majority
from
and
himp.leaders' and
conveyancers'
ta orank
chambers
asa
w cheerye rto He ea y nowthe
come comes to k
compliment of formal fellowship to a profession
which has always been to Kings of
critical England a
powerful aid, and occasionally intimes
a wholesome admonition. There is no Royal
road to the acquisition of knowledge, and the
heir apparent to the Crown Las had to work
up his military and his legal education as sedu-
lously as any youth at a Military College or an
Inn of Court; but the ascents which are so rugged
to the ordinary aspirant naturally and properly
become plain to the foot of a Royal Prince. The
knowledge of the sword and the law is proper.
and appropriate in a young man who will, in
the course of nature and of all ordinary proba-
bilities, have to direct the exercise of the one for
the protection and the administration of the other ;
but no one wishes that he should work his way
from the ranks to his military command, or that he
should test his powers of digestion by an arduous
course of practice upon the Temple commons. The
Prince is already a Colonel ; to-day he becomes a
Counsel learned in the law, and a Royal and learned
Master of the Bench of the Middle Temple.
The Templars have made extraordinary efforts to
receive their Prince, and to induce the old Temple
to look as unlike itself as possible. One might
think, looking upon the tents and pavilions that are
set up, that the successors of the Knights Templars
had all been converted to Judaism, and were going
forth to live in their own gardens during the Feast
of Tabernacle. Had it been possible, we had rather
the Prince saw this quaint old lawyers' haunt in its
every-day dinginess. There is a great deal of cha-
racter about the place, which might not be without
its suggestions to a mind open to youthfui impres-
sions. It is easy to see that this Temple is not that
.which was built by Solomon, and a fertile thought
might pass into Royal memory that a princely
student learns the law that he may aid to improve
it, and becomes one of a profession of lawyers in
order that he may know how far they are to be
trusted with such improvement. When the Prince
is asked to open a library of many thousand volumes,
and is told that in books it is the least complete of
all the Inns of Court Libraries, it must naturally
occur to him that a science must be in a very un-
satisfactory state when it is scattered through such
a mass of mouldering tomes. The walls themselves
in the Temple will sometimes remind him of the im-
pudent defences of old absurdities not unfrequently
met with in those admirable Conzwentaries written.
within a few feet of the spot on which he will stand.
Upon the most dreary and decrepit brick wall in
the neighbourhood he may read the lively boast,
" Aster phanicis revivisco," and he may think
of some now dead and buried anomaly belauding
itself in the pages of Blackstone. If he looks up
in the Fountain-court, he will see two sundials
carefully painted and preserved as traps to catch
any stray sunbeam that may venture into the Tem-
ple, and to serve it with process ad testificanduni ;
and he will also remark that the Benchers have
sensibly added.g very hardworking and trustworthy
clock, in case the efforts of these solar tipstaffs should
fail. The Prince will not fail to recognise in this
elaborate machinery for determisiing the time of
day a fond illustration of the maxim which lies at
the bottom of all a lawyer's profits, of all a counsel-
lor's prolixity, of all a conveyancer's wordiness, and
of all the voluminous incomprehensibility of the
statute-book. It is an illustretaaa ia dialling and in
clockwork of the time-honoured maxim—Amps-Jews
non nocent. Moreover, if the Prince could have
quietly contemplated this collection of little lanes
and small quadrangles in its natural semi-monastic
state, the echoes which have slept during the lon g
vacation just sluggishly awakening to the steps of
the first hurried attorney's clerk, he might have
had a better idea of the place whereof
he is to become a Governor, and of the
sort of life which leads an ordinary man up to
the position of a Master of the Bench. We would
not ask him to people the place with the tenants of
other days ; to see the Templars in gaudy suits
and burnished swords jostling forth through the
gates to fill the neighbouring coffee-houses and try
a tilt with the lion of the day, be he the great
Ben Johnson, or glorious John Dryden, or other
hero of his generation. Nor would we ask him to
see Goldsmith and Johnson and Boswell forgather-
ing under the cloisters and walking off towards the
Mitre. These were in days before the London gas-
works. But we could wish that the Prince could have
seen in their normal state some of those hard-read-
ing denizens of the fourth floors, who are much too
excited just now by his presence and the Benchers'
cheer to appear in their natural state. We, do not
mean the noisy gentlemen who are but what the
student class all over the world is, but the pale young
men whose cheeks have taken precociously the
parchment tint. These are they who are bartering
their youth for the chance of a distinguished old
age. They are the Maynards, and Holts, and Yorkes,
and Jocelyns, and Murrays, and Cansdens, ana
Thurlows, and Eldons of the future. Tremendous
will be their labour before they become Masters of
the Bench. But, when this and other successes
have been achieved, it is possible that the Prince
may have to deal with some of them, when he and
they are gray, as Chief Justices or Lord Chancellors,
and they shall become the progenitors of future
nobles. This is a large wheel in the social machine
of England. Here in the Temple is the breeding-
ground for future noble families; here are the nests
of all who shall crawl and of all who shall soar to the
high places of the law. It should be interesting to a
Prince to look upon the starters in this race. Let
none, however, grudge those who succeed, for it is
a toilsome life, and often thrown away.
But if the Prince, wandering in thought from
the artificial spectacle before him, might find in this
lawyers' hive some things which are decrepit with-
out being interesting, and weak without being
venerable, like the law itself, whereof the Temple
is the school, yet there are other things which,
again like that law, have strong roots in the past
and a worthy hold upon the present. He will say
his prayers in a church where Crusaders
vow and the badge. He will feast in a hall where
took the
Queen Elizabeth held solemn revel, and which is
adorned with the spoils of the Spanish Armada. In
the long lines of emblazonries of the officer-bearers
of the Society he will read a proof of the quiet
security with which, for century after century, the
custom of succession is observed in this conservative
country, and especially in these conservative haunts ;
and he may reflect how easy it must be to retain
the affection of such a people. There is history all
round him in this place, and history is not a mere
shadow, it is a living power. History not only tells
us that things we see have been before our time,
but makes us love them because they impersonate
old memories, and preserve them because we love
them. The education of the Prince is said
.to
have been so judicious that we may believe him
to have already acquired sufficient constitutional
learning and legal knowledge to make good use of
the impressions created by what "tot be to him
a novel and interesting sight. It is not much he
can discover of the real nature and the habits of the
lawyers by seeing them in their holiday mood, but
we hope he will recognise the
good influences of
modern improvements when he contrasts the wea-
pons of the old Templars which now decorate the
hall with the efficiency of the soldierlike volunteers
whom the Temple has been able to muster from its
own members as his guard of honour. If illustra-
tion were wanted on the other hand, and if it wero
wished to point the moral that things may be new
without being necessarily more handsome or har-
monious, perhaps this good office might be done by
the building which the Prince is about to open.
Times.—

THE FRENCH AT ROME.—.The following letter
has been received from Rome, dated the 22d of October :
" The departure of General de Goyon has given rise to the
most extraordinary and contradictory reports. The ad-
vanced party assert that the General is recalled. Others
say that the Emperor of the French has changed his poli-
tical views, and that he will soon withdraw the army of
occupation from Rome. The fact is that General de Goyon
was called to Paris by the telegraph. Before he left he
went to see the Pope, who said he blessed him with all his
heart, and that he was convinced the General would defend
the cause of the Holy See in presence of the Emperor and
of his Ministers. lam certain that General do Goyon will
not be absent from Rome more than three weeks. In his
absence the army is commanded by General de Gerandon.
The Roman National Committee have opened a subscrip-
tion to raise a monument to Lucatelli. The Cardinal Vicar
has given orders that the:prayer "pro temporabellt," which
was recited at the Mass since 1859 by command of the
Pope, shall be discontinued. It is a fact that Rome is per-
fectly tranquil. Everybody is thinking of amusing himself,
or making pleasure parties to Frascati, Albano, or Civita
Vecchia, Tke Transteveri have come in great ntunbers,
and have shown themselves in the streets in their original
costume. It is asserted that the Roman Government has
sufficient funds to pay all expenses for ten months to come.
The floly Father visited yesterday the Military
of the kkPly Ghost wad the Lua tic Asylum." "Pi