The Sun.
London, England, 1868-03-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC4JOURNALS.

he Times has a leader on Louis,thi, ex-King of Bavaria,
whose death is just announcedi," It comments upon
the story of the ex-sovereign and the dancing girl.
,lipu4
as the revolutionary storms raged over Europe ilk gie
early months of 1848, the strange romance of the old Kiig
and the dancing girl was heard above all the din; how the
adventuress was introduced at Court as the King's "best
friend ;" how the rights of Bavarian citizenship, the barony
of Rosenthal, the county of Lansfeldt, a newly-built palace,
and a pension of 20,000 florins were lavished upon her; how
,the Queen was compelled to confer upon the dancer, with
her own hand, the great cordon of a Chanoiness of the Order
of Theresa, instituted by her Majesty herself, and bearing
her name ; how ministries rose and fell at a nod from the
arrogant favourite ; and, finally, how, after coquetting
with and betraying now this and now that party, she
made herself obnoxious to all, and excited such an out-
burst of indignation that it was only at the cost of his
dignity, and very nearly of his life, the King was able to
smuggle her across the border, whither he was soon to
follow her. Danced by the fatal charmer out of his Court
and his kingdom, King Louis regained in his retirement
that public favour which be had forfeited on the throne.
He had been an artist before he was a king ; and
an artist he was both as a crowned and as a
discrovnied king. In the intervals of rest during
his early campaigns, in the midst of administrative or par-
liamentary labours, as a prince hereditary, Louis had
always been devoted to art. He went to Italy as to his
real home and country; he brought Italy home to his own
German country. His talents were appreciative, not
creative. He did not attempt to excel or even to rival the
works of Italian art ;he merely reproduced them. The
Pitti Palace, the Loggia di Lanzi, obelisks, churches,
basilicas, all Florence, Rome, and Ravenna, rose to a
new life in Munich. Every ward in the city was like one
of the courts at the Crystal Palace. The buildings
outside were mere copies ; but the treasures within
were genuine. Real genius will not rise at a king's bid-
ding ; Germany had her own type of the beautiful ; she
need not have borrowed that of Greece or Italy. Quaint
Nuremburg and dingy Augsburg are a hundred times more
interesting than classical Munich. But King Louis was a
man after his own fashion—a man of his own time.
Away from Italy he was out of his own element.
He was a placable, amiable man, and soon reconciled
himself with his subjects. He had his choice of
the royal residences in town and country, but he became
a wanderer, and was to be seen at Rome, at Nice, at Paris,
wherever the skies were bluest, wherever .men made
colours, or forms, or sounds, or dreams the real business of
life. A courteous prince, and sociable, sympathetic
gentleman ; a poet, too, in a small way, leaving behind
three volumes of his juvenile pieces ; taking his diamond
collar from his neck at Weimar, and putting it with his
own hand round Goetbe's neck ; he had a gracious
winning, kingly way of his own, and, many as were his
faults and his foibles, neither his son nor his grandson has
supplanted him in the affections of the Bavarian people.
The Post, in a criticism of the army estimates, takes up
the statement that as we only get a force of 136,650 men
for £15,450,000, we may calculate that each man costs us
about £ll3 per annum, or " about four times the cost of
efficient labourers in Dorsetshire." This is hardly a fair
way of putting the case, for, setting aside the vast dif-
ference between the trained soldier and the plain plough-
boy, the personnel of the regular and reserved forces costs
only £10,216,000, and allowing an additional £2,124,900
for pensions, &c., the cost of our effective soldier
is something under the normal rate of £lOO per man.
We cannot get a man for less, and if wages con-
tinue to rise and the value of money to depreciate
in the same ratio as in the last fifteen years, we shall
very soon find that he is not to be got even for that.
Indeed, it is very little use dogmatising about what the
British soldier should cost. We must have him whatever
be costs, and our chief business should rather be to take
care of him when we have got him, and give him no reason
to feel on his discharge that the years he has spent under
his colours have not been the happiest years of his life.
His food, his dress, his diet, his exercise, and, above all,
his lodging, should be made matters of the first considera-
tion, and commanding officers should be taught that the
sanitary condition of their regiments reflected as high,
perhaps higher, credit upon them than the efficienc) of
their men in drill, and that ill-selected encampments and
unwholesome food have already destroyed too many
thousands of stalwart British soldiers whose lives might
have been easily saved to their country.
Some sharp recriminations have lately been exchanges
between the official press at Berlin and at Vienna on the
subject of the recent royal Hanoverian banqiiet and de_
monstration at Hietzing, and the more serious fact of the
passports delivered to the Hanoverian deserters in Switzer-
land by the Austrian police. But the Daily NM., cannot
for a moment imagine that Count Bismarck would treat
that lamentable and ludicrous demonstration of poor King
George of Hanover as an offence of the Austrian Govern-
ment. It is but an incident—an inconvenient and untoward,
but not very alarming incident—of the deposed King's
sojourn near the Anstrian capital. It must be far
more disagreeable to M. de Beust, whose policy
it disturbs, than to Count Bismarck, whose policy it assists.
To Baron Beust it is what the presentation to the
Chamber of a bill granting to King George an enormous
pension was to Count Bismarck—an awkward self-assertion
of " the monarchical principle," which the Minister of a
monarchy must accept with a shrug. The supply of pass-
ports to the Hanoverian deserters is undoubtedly some-
thing worse than an irregularity, and Baron Beust cannot
affect to be indifferent to the demands of his own dignity
and reputation in such a case. But Count Bilmarck, who
has his own little difficulties of the same kind, can make
allowance for the secrecy with which some obscure subor-
dinate agents of a few irresponsible conspirators in high
places may compromise the discretion of a Government
and the peace of a State.
The Herald asks plainly of Mr. Mill if he thinks that
there ought to be a fixed minimum rate of wages or not.
If he does, will he be good enough to shew how he can
maintain the doctrine that there is anything peculiar in
the possession of land as distinct from all other property ?
If he does not, will he be good enough to shew why
there should be a fixed maximum rent of land ? As we
have seen, capital and land are equally limited, but capital
is practically even more limited than land ; whilst, in
each case, the demand for occupation—in the one instance
in the shape of would-be tenants, and in the other of
would-be employed artisans—is unlimited. We can
understand that a man, looking at these analogous facts,
should insist upon the State fixing both the rent of land
and the rate of wages. We have our own ideas, though
they are certainly not peculiar, as to where a State,
proceeding on such a principle, would ere long find itself ;
but its road to ruin would at any rate be a logical one.
Perhaps Mr. Mill, in his heart of hearts, means to be
logical ; and if he could only once establish a fixed maxi-
mum rent, it is possible that he would make use of his vic-
tory to wring from the State a fixed minimum rate of
wages. If this be so, it is scarcely honest to pretend that
his present limited aim is concerned with an exceptional
case.

The Recorder, in condemning Mrs. Ann Radcliffe to
five years' penal servitude for atrocious cruelty to her ser-
vant—a child of tender age—has, in the opinion of the
Standard, rendered an important service to society. It is
long since a sentence so severe for a crime of this cha-
racter has been passed. There has been exhibited a strange
disposition on the part of the judges to regard such offences
as no more than aggravated misdemeanours. Light penal-
ties for wickedness of this kind inspire no terror. The
facts from being thus indifferently disposed of, assume no
prominence in the sight of the public, and are speedily
forgotten. Not so .when a woman of respectable position,
herself the mother of three children, is removed from a
comfortable home to undergo, during five years, the degra-
dation of a gaol for inhuman treatment of a miserable
little dependant, who, even after some weeks of medical
care, could not stand to give 11Pr evidence. The class
—more numerous, we fear, than is commonly suposed—
of people who play the tyrant over drudges hired grom the
workhouse may see in it a salutary warning, and the
example of this woman's fate may induce them slightly to
soften their discipline.

What the Telegraph calls a most righteous sentence has
just been passed on Edward Charles James Shaw, a
surgeon, who was tried and convicted at Hertford, on
Saturday, fur taking charge of an insane lady without the
medical certificates and orders required by the statute.
Convicted of two offences, Edward Shaw was condemned
to a fine of £2OO, and to imprisonment for periods of two
and six months. The case recall the old atrocities brought
to light before the Committee for Inquiring into the
State of Madhouses, some fifty years ago—in 1816.
The parliamentary blue-book of the evidence given before
the committee contains stories which make one's blood
curdle—instances of male and female lunatics gagged,
manacled, scourged, and starved, or locked up half-naked,
wild b6.sts in cares. The publicity given to these
11,3 ro4, and the legislative action taken in consequence—
by no mans too hastily--were supposed to have, even now,
extirpated a revolting system of cruelty and oppression ;
3e„,
-within twenty miles of London, a surgeon coolly sets
a re.3pecta,ble married lady to blacken shoes, clean knives,
and bruise oats, while a gentleman is left to lie naked upon
straw in a back kitchen, in unutterable neglect.

It is stated in a Southampton paper that there is
no church living in the city of Winchester worth £2OO a
year, and this precludes curates there from getting assist-
ance from the recently-established Curates' Augmentation
Fund, because no assistance is given to a curate unless
he receives £lOO a year from his incumbent; and no
incumbent can afford to give his curate £lOO a year out of
£209,