The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-24 00:00:00

ItAILV►AYS.

Cash. Account.
Orleans l3Bl 25 .. 1380
Northern 956 25 .. 957 50
New ditto B9O
Lyons and Mediterranean 910 908 75
Geneva 367 50 ..
Southern 5OB 75 .. 507 50
Western ... 551 25 .. 551 25
Eastern ....... 592 50 .. 588175
Sardinian 373 75 ..
Austrian
Lombard ...... 466 25 .. 466 25

AUSTRIA.

VIENNA, JAN. 20.

The Wiener Zeitung of this date contains an
Imperial ordinance for the raising of a loan of
30,000,000 of florins.

The subscriptions to the loan are to begin on the
21st of January, 1861. The conditions are as
follows ;-1. Each subscriber of 88fi, Austrian
currency will receive a State bond for 100f1. 2.
The bonds to bear 5 per cent. interest. 3. The
sum subscribed will be repaid in five years, and
in five equal parts. The first-part (one•fifth) will
be paid on the let December, 1862; and the last
on the Ist December, 1866.
In the proem to the ordinance, which is counter-
signed by the eight members of the Cabinet, it is
said that a loan must be raised " because the neces-
sity for protecting the frontiers has rendered an
increased outlay for the army necessary ; and the
Hungarians are in arrear with their taxes." It is
added, that the necessary steps for getting in the
outstanding taxes is Hungary have been taken.

The day before yesterday a very energetic
rescript was sent by Government to the Lord-
Lieutenants of the Hungarian counties, but it has
not yet found its way into the public papers.

DEATH OF SIR HUGH LYON PLAYFAIR.—The
severe and protracted illness of Sir Hugh Lyon Playfair
terminated fatally at his residence, St. Leonard's, at a quar-
ter-past 11 o'clock on the evening of Monday last, and has
cast a deep gloom over the whole community of St. An-
drew's. Sir Hugh was the son of the distinguished Prin.
cipal Playfair, of the United College, St. ;Andrew's, and
was born at the manse of Meigle and Newtyle, of which
parishes his father was then minister, on Nov. 17, 1786.
He was thus at the tine of his death in his 75th year. In
1804, having previously joined the volunteers, in the colo-
nel's staff of which he occupied a distinguished place, he
received an artillery appointment in Bengal, and his career
as a soldier in the East India Company's service was of a
somewhat eventful Bind, and led to repeated promotions.
In 1815 he was appointed captain, and in 1827 major,
which rank he held when, in '34, he left the service and
returned to St. Andrew's. He was subsequently honoured
with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. It is, however, more
for what he has done for St. Andrew's during the 18 years
he has filled the chair of Provost of that city that he has
been more generally esteemed. He was elected Provost in
1842, and from the hour of his appointment he devoted
himself with great aad appreciated energy to the improve-
ment, physical, social, and intellectual, of his native
city. The surviving members of his family are Lady
Playfair, three sons, and four daughters, with whose be-
reavement the highest sympathy is felt. For his varied ser-
vices the Queen was pleased to confer on the late Provost
the honour of knighthood in 1856, in which year the uni-
versity also conferred on him the degree of L L.D. By his
death and that of Sheriff Monteith there are now two va-
cancies in the trusteeship of the Madras College,—Scots•
man.

THE UNITED STATES.

LONDONDERRY, JA.. 23.

The Canadian screw steamer North American,
Captin Aiton, from Portland, Maine, on the 12th
inst., has arrived. She brings news via Cape Race
to the loth inst.

The Nova Scotian and Glasgow had arrived out.
Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida had seceded.
The excitement at Charleston had abated in conse-
quence of Pacific news from Washington. The
Federal troops had abandoned all the forts at Pen-
sacola except Fort Picken (?). Three hundred men
had gone from Mobile to take possession of this
fort.

Several forts and the Baton Rouge Arsenal had
been taken in Louisiana by the Secessionists.

New York had offered the whole State force to
the general Government.
A Washington correspondent of the New York
Times says that the Virginia delegation in the Con-
gress had, with three exceptions, signed a call for
a Convention in Virginia, with a view to immediate
secession.

It was intimated that the Brooklyn and the
Harriet 'Lane would accompany the Star .of the
West in the next attempt to enter Charleston har-
bour.

COMMERCIAL.

NEW YORK, JAN. 11.

Stocks dull, and lower. Illinois, 77 ; New York
Central, 77 ; Erie, 371. Money inactive. Exchange
yesterday was firm, at closing quotations by last
steamer. Cotton rm—Sales to-day, 2,500 bales ;
Middling Upland, 13kc. Breadstuffs and provisions
firm. Rice steady. Freights quiet.
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 10.—Sales of cotton to-day,
27,000 bales. The news by the last steamer from
Europe has caused an advance. Middling is quoted
111 c. to 121 c.
[LATEST RV TELEC4RAPII VIA CAPE RACE.]

KEW YORK, Jan. 15.—Stocks higher. Illinois,
781, ; Erie, 391; New York Central, 781.
The cotton market is heavy. Middling Upland
121-e. to 12t-c. Breadstuffs a trifle lower.

THE PROTOGRAPRIC SOCIETY.

EIGHTH ANNUAL EXHIBITION.

But a very few years since and this exhibition
of the Photographic Society would have been looked
upon as little less than miraculous.
Having sauntered round the large apartment of
the gallery at SA, Pall-mall East, where (upon the
four walls and upon the four screens together) there
are exhibited now, in this eighth year of the
Society's existence, no less than 622 Photographs
and Daguerreotypes—we turn back, for a reason
immediately to be mentioned, to one of these re-
markable specimens, to the one, namely, marked
(No. 56) in the printed catalogue. It is the produc-
tion of one of the most skilled photographers of the
age—Roger Fenton—whose " magic glass" has
perpetuated for the wondering gaze of posterity
almost all the incidents and localities of the
Crimean War. The picture here presented to us
by the Collodion process, delicately manipulated by
this master of the Photographic Art, is a charming
little view of a " Bridge in Patterdale." Pausing
before it, and looking into its wonderful lights and
shadows, we hear the lake poet whispering to us
through the quotation—

" Thus having reached a bridge that overarched
The hasty rivulet where it lay becalmed
In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw
A double image."

Not content with giving us this poetic mor eau,
we read further in the copious but far from
correctly printed catalogue—and we wince as we
read Veluti in speculo ! Grammatically put, the
three familiar words might be applied not one jot
less appositely than it is applied to No. 50—to
every one of the 622 specimens of photography in
the Exhibition. Veluti in speculum ! It is the
very motto for the perfection of the photograph !
For there truly—whether it be through the col-
lodio-album, or waxed paper, or Fothergill process,
or malt process, or Taupenot's process, or metage-
latine, or through the exquisitely translucent medium
or agency of pure collodion—there assuredly (by
some means or other, it matters little which com-
paratively), there, through the perfection of the
photograph, everything is Reflected as in a Mirror
or looking-glass ! How accurately, how wondrously
these reflections can be produced and perpetuated
through this extraordinary art—art though it is
but of yesterday—let the present collection at-
test, this eighth of the Photographic Society's
Annual Exhibition.

Out of the whole number of 622 pictures die-
played upon the walls and rooms of the Society's
gallery, we have failed to discover even one of a
really inferior character. There is not a single
photograph in the apartment, we believe, but is in
some way or another meritorious. There are many
of them in the highest degree entitled to our admi-
ration, and every kind of test appears to have been
applied to the art. Every process seems to have
been tried in turn by the exhibitors. Every kind
of object seems to have been selected in turn for
experiment. " The human face divine "
in abundance. Me face of nature in all her
varying aspects—winter and summer, shower
and sunshine, land and sea, garden and
moorland. Art too has been marvellously imitated
by this most marvellous of all the arts of imitation.
Sculptured masterpieces from the Elgin marbles
are here shadowed forth, as in No. 163, by Caldesi,
Blandford and Co.—faithfully copied in every flaw
and crack, in every tint and granulation of the
original material ! Elaborate engravings are here
repeated in a twinkling, as in No. 51, by H. Her-
ring—a copy of an engraving by Dominechino.
Yonder, in No. 65, is Bingham's photographic
transcript of a painting by Rembrandt. The Earl
of Caithness (No. 78) gives us a snow scene. Mr.
Robinson (No. 136) affords us a glimpse of a Holi-
day in the Greenwood. Not only oil paintings
are copied by the sunbeam as above instanced, but
water-colour drawings—as in No. 172, the Fisher-
man's Children, photographed by Mr. Ponting,
is copied with a charming exactitude. There are
Studies of Fruit, too, in the gallery—a number of
them from the hand of Roger Fenton, as Nos. 148,
149, 150, and 157—that must make George Lance
look to his laurels, or ought we not rather
to say of this Prince, or, at any rate, Duke of Fruit
Painters, must make him look well to his straw-
berry leaves. And, then, turning from small things
to great, from the tiny and delicate productions of
nature, to the gigantic and symmetrical fabrications
of art—what shall we say of such astounding
photographs as those two brought to us from Rome
by P. Donizielli ; No. 30, the Coliseum, the grand
old ruined Coliseum, and No. 52, St. Peter's sub-
lime and world-famous Cathedral ? What—Lbut
that they are the very paragons of architectural
photography ! Yonder it is the very effigies of
that grim and wondrous pile, before the mere idea
of which poor Edgar Poe thus mused in poetic
contemplation—
" Here, where a hero fell a column falls,
Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold,
A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat I
Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair

Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle I"
Yonder it is the veritable shadowing forth of that
marvellous masterpiece of the Titanic intellect of
Buonarotti before the &pile of which the two
gigantic fountains are, as Robert Browning has
sung—

" - growing up eternally,
Each liko a musical water-tree."

Having sauntered round the gallery to survey the
miscellaneous contributions there exhibiting,
let us turn now once more, and retracing our steps,
round the apartment and about the screens, examin-
ing more particularly the sufficiently abundant
specimens of the human countenance here reflected
upon glass, or paper, or metal by the magic art of
the photographer. As we have already intimated,
we have in this special department a really abundant
variety of specimens. The majority of them won-
derfully full of interest. Hardly one portrait
among them all without its particular attraction.
And yet scarcely one of them, scarcely one at least
of the pure photographs what we might mention
without any mental reservation at all as completely:
satisfactory. There are some very striking photo-
graphic portraits, for example, by those well known
and deservedly popular photographers, the Megfill!

Maull and Polyblank. Almost always effective—
yet scarcely one, as we have said, of photo-
graphic portraits generally—scarcely one com-
pletely satisfactory. One only out of all the numer-
ous portraits that we remember to have seen from
this firm—one only taking all is there,
that we should call, without any hesitation, com-
pletely satisfactory. It is their portrait of George
Cruikshank, the greatest of all caricaturists. And
that, of course, is not among their contributions to
the gallery in Pall-mall, being amongst their ear-
liest, as it is still to this day, to our thinking, about
the happiest of all their photographic achievements.
The photographic art, in point of fact, lacks almost
invariably that magic touch—the je ne sail quoi of
expression" imparting animation, vitality,
identity, to the otherwise lifeless effigies drawn
upon canvass or wood, upon ivory or cardboard, by
pencils guided by the hands of master painters of
portraits and miniatures. Combine the two arts
together—the miraculous art of photography and
the still more miraculous art, if that be possible,
born of the genius of the true portrait painter—
and you have the very perfection of the miniature,
the ne plus ultra of vraisemblance. Is any
one desirous of recognising this now as-
suredly indisputable truth at a glance ? That wish
may be realised now any day, and that, moreover,
upon the instant after crossing the threshold of the
Photographic Society's Gallery. Turning, there—
upon that threshold—to his right hand, the visitor
to the Gallery will come immediately upon a series
of some eight-and-twenty portraits (several of them
precisely of the duplex character we have indi-
cated) half painted, half photographed—eight-and-
twenty portraits clustered together, all of them
ft om the same hand, a hand long familiar to the
frequenters of the miniature-room of the Royal
Academy as that of one of the most gifted and popu-
lar among all our miniature painters—the hand of
Thomas Carrick, now achieving to himself a new
reputation as Artist Photographer ! Several of
Mr. Carrick's portraits in the present exhibition
are really and truly nothing less admirable than
simple, veritable masterpieces. We will in-
stance but a few of them that have more
particularly caught our fancy. No. 362, George
Routledge, the eminent publisher; No. 364, J. W.
Carmichael, the well•known sea painter; and No.
366, Major Elliot, one of the young heroes of the
heavy Cavalry Charge at Balaklava. Dr, Charles
Mackay, too (No, 346) is excellent—about the hap-
piest portrait we have yet seen of our charming and
world-famous song-writer. Capital, also, are Mr. Car-
rick's portraits of (No. 352) Frederick Goodall, the
Academy's Associate, and of (No. 365), Samuel
Lover, the witty Irish novelist. These and others
in the same frame really leave nothing to be de-
sired—the brush of the artist has there given
warmth, and life, and expression to the cold, dead
outline of the original photograph.