The Sun.
London, England, 1857-11-24 00:00:00

STRAND.

After the popular little trifle entitled "Very
Obliging," in which Mr. Tilbury sustains the principal
character, an apropos sketch was produced last night,
under the name of "A Telegram," written by Mr. John
V. Biitigeman. The plot turns on the dispute lately
carried on in the public journals, by certain learned
pundits, as to the correctness of the new verbal combi-
nation "telegram." The little piece was perfectly
succesful, and a crowded audience seemed very much to
enjoy the fun produced by Mr. Emery's, Mr. Tilbury's,
and Mr. Summer's performance.

A new burlesque, founded on the story of Richard
Coeur de Lion, was produced, and met with the most
triumphant success,.

The Lessee of thii tbeatre, by the engagement of such
actors ai Mr. Emery asd Mr. Tillbury, and the con-
tinued production of clever novelties, deserves the
success he attains.

B')YAL POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTION.

It is the privilege of talent to give to common-place
things an air of nevel-y and a flavour of interest, and in
illustration of this fact Mr. J. 11. Pepper has made so
familiar a matter as a scuttle of coal the subject of as
unique and entertaining a lecture as has ever been de-
livered in the theatre of the Polytechnic Institution.
The di,couree is divided into two parts. In the first,
the lecturer treats of coal in a mineralogical sense, de-
scribing 'he var proco.s4sss of its formation, and
in the second he enters into a minute
eitxspliaiiinsciroigvetrhye;
detail of the manner in which a coal-mine is worked,
describing with interesting particularity the succ-seiva
-tag,s through which the mineral is made to pass in its
journey from the pit to the scuttle, and enlivening the
story with aneedotos illustrative of the social character
and the domestic habits of the miners. He analyses
the "antecedents" of a block of coal with surpas-
sing ingenuity and research, showing that for a
shilling a hundred the Lyndon costerrnonger can
warm himself with the petrified pines of pre-Adamite
forests—can burn the bones of the Mammoth
to cook his chop, boil his pot with the fossil Masto-
don, and broil his herring with the carcases of the
grandfather of the whale. The sketches of life and
manners in a coal-mine are not derived from books, but
have all the freshness and fidelity of personal obsk rva-
tioo, the lecturer having qualified himself for the task
of description by spending a day in one of the large. 4
Durham mines. Among many other droll stories, show-
ing the delight which the miners take in "astonishing"
a Cockney when they can catch one in their subterranean
realms, he tells an anecdote of a London tailor who was
bundled into a basket, and down into the pit while in a
state of intoxication. On recovering his senses, after the
lapse of some hours, he fancied himself in Tartarus, and
being addressed by a tall, stern man, as black as ebony,
who asked him, " Who are you ?" he fell upon his knees,
and, supposing his interrogator to be Satan himself,
replied, " Please your Majesty, I was a tailor up above,
but be anything you please down here."
Mr. Pepper delivers his lecture in a forcible and im-
pressive minner, illustrating it very effectively as he
goes along by means of diagrams and dissolving views.