The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-16 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 16, 1868.

conclude that for the moment peace will be main-
tained, but who can feel much confidence in its
permanent nature, when, over and over again,
these disturbances arise, and speakers and
writers vie with each other in putting forward the
whys and wherefore of peace, and the extreme
likelihood of war ? This is not a time, of all others,
when Europe can afford to have another war, more
especially one of such a character as an engagement
between France and Prussia would be ; and hence
we are led to hope the misfortune will be averted.
Experience, however, shows that there is no foun-
dation for this but the idea of making the best of
it, and when all has been said and suggested that
ingenuity can devise the matter must still be left
to the doctrine of chances.

Mr. ROEBUCK'S address to the electors of Shef-
field will be read with interest, not that any one
can expect to find much change in the opinions of
the stanch Liberal champion, or much modifica-
tion in his outspoken manner of expressing them.
Mr. ROEBUCK'S trenchant and fearless sentences
strike both friends and foes, and yet no honest and
conscientious politician can fail to respect an oppo-
nent who so steadfastly upholds what he. believes
to be the right through good and evil report. That
confidence which he himself deserves from others,
he is willing to accord to those who differ from him,
and in the address before us he acknowledges that
age has made him more tolerant and more patient.
" Now," he says, "when my career is nearly ended,
I am far more readily to believe than I was when
first I became a politician that those who were op-
posed to me and my views are deserving of respect
and attention ; that Liberal politicians have no
monopoly of wisdom and virtue ; that differences of
opinion need not necessarily lead to enmity and
strife ; that men may be friends though they habitu-
ally take different sides upon political questions."
This spirit is happily less rare amongst us than it
was, and the intense bitterness has died out of political
men, who no longer regard a man who differs from
them on a question of policy, or finance, as a mortal
enemy ; and, as the course of enlightenment goes
on, we may hope to see the same spirit extend itself
still further. Mr. ROEBUCK says that the great
guiding principle of his life has been the desire to
see the great body of the people taking part in the
government of the country, by selecting the men
who should legislate for them. All his votes on
Parliamentary Reform have been given with this
aim, and now he sees it attained. " The people,
properly so called, have now the power
to choose their representatives ;" and Mr. ROEBUCK
not unjustly takes some credit to himself for having
helped on the good work. If we had had more such
fearless and independent politicians, who would
neither obey the dictates of a Minister nor flatter
the prejudices of the people, the battle of Reform

would not have been so hard to fight, nor would the
struggle have been so long and so tedious.

LEIGH HUNT.

-~--

We have more than once taken occasion to refer
iu The Sun to the movement set on foot some time
since by the Editor of the " Art Journal" for the
purpose of raising over the still unmarked grave
of Leigh Hunt in Kensal Green Cemetery some
suitable memorial. With a view to the realization
of this object now, as speedily as possible the fol-
lowing statement has recently been put forth by the
Hon. Secretaries, who first of all quote from the
"Art Journal " the original suggestion of a memorial
tomb, as expressed in the subjoined paragraph :
" He was buried at Kensal Green, but, unhappily, there
is, as yet, no monument to record his name and preserve
his memory ; that is a reproach to all who knew him, and
to all who have read, admired, and loved his many works
—a generation that reaps the harvest of his labours. His
works will, indeed, do both—they will be his monument—
more enduring than any of piled up stones'—and they
will preserve his name for ever among the foremost men
of his ago and country. But it is not right that the
crowded ' graveyard' which contains sculptured tablets of
so many illustrious authors, artists, and mon of science,
should be without one to this great writer, and I appal to
the thousands by whom he is estimatod to remove from
England the reproach. It will gratify me much if I can
obtain contributions for that purpose in addition to my
own. A large sum is by no means requisite. Such a
monument as Leigh Hunt would have desired should be
unassuming and unpretending, as was his career in letters ;
andif I am so happy as to receive responses to this invi-
tation, I will set about the work."

Having transcribed the foregoing passage, ex-
tracted from " A Memory of Leigh Hunt" in the
Art-Journal, the Hon. Secs. go on to observe in
their joint statement : Some time ago the observa-
tions printed above were circulated by the writer,
Mr. S. C. Hall, among his personal friends and
those he knew to have been the friends of the poet.
He received in payments and promises of payments
about £7O, and obtained from Joseph Durham,
A.K.A., a design for a monument, the estimated
cost of which would be about £l5O, Mr. Durham
being willing to undertake the work for the mere
expense of unemployed labour and materials. Vari-
ous circumstances compelled Mr. Hall to suspend
operations, which are now renewer], and, it may be
said, with assurance of speedily accomplishing the
purpose in view, by placing in Mensal Green Ceme-
tery a modest monument to one of the most grace-
ful, genial, and popular of British poets, essayists,
and critics, whose own line best illustrates his
character,—

" Write me as one that loves his fellow- men ;"

of whom it was said by one of his many friends,
Lord Lytton,—
"Ho had that great requisite of a good critic—a good heart;"
to whose merits Macaulay bore earnest testimony,
and who was thus described by Thomas Carlyle :-
4, He is a man of the most indisputably superior
worth, a man of genius in a very strict sense of
that word, and in all the sense which it bears or
implies ; of brilliant varied gifts, of graceful fer-
tility, of clearness, lovingness, truthfulness ; of
childlike, open character ; also of most pure, even
exemplary, private deportment ; a man who can be
other than loved only by those who have not seen
him, or seen him from a distance through a false
medium." A sum of £75 is in the bank of Messrs.
Ransom, Bouverie, and Co., Pall-Mall East, where
a book of subscriptions has been opened-; and the
following gentlemen have agreed to act as a com-
mittee for the due application of such sum as may
be collected :—The Chief Baron, Sir F. Pollock,
Bart., Thomas Carlyle, Esq., John Forster, Esq.,
LL.D., B. W. Procter, Esq., Charles Dickens, Esq.,
Sir John Bowring, Charles Ratcliff, Esq., F.S.A.,
E. M. Ward, Esq., R.A., Sir Percy Shelley, Bart.,
W. C. Macready, Esq., Robert Chambers, Esq.,
LL.D., George Godwin, Esq., F.R.S., Charles
Kent, Esq., William Barry, Esq., Bertrand Payne,
Esq., F.R.S.L., and Alexander Ireland, Esq. S.
C. Hall, F.S.A., and Edmund 011ier, Hon. Secs. ;
S. K. Townshend Mayer, F.R.S.L., 25, Norfolk-
streeb, Strand, Hon. Treasurer. Subscriptions will
be received by Mr. S. R. Townshend Mayer ; or
they may be paid into the bank of Messrs. Ransom,
Bouverie, and Co., Pall-Mall East. Full details,
with the names of all the subscribers, will be trans-
mitted to each subscriber in due course, with an
engraving of the monument.

Mr. John Martin, of Rostrevor, leader of a sec-
tion of the " Nationalists " of Ireland, states, in a
letter to the Nation, his " deliberate opinion that
Irish representatives may far better serve Ireland
by going into the London Parliament to refuse to
vote there than by go:ng in to vote." He would
have them thus " protest, in Ire'.and's name,
agatuA the English usurpation of the sovereign
rights of Ireland, and to demand the restoration
of our own National Parliament." He is not a
follower of Mr. Gladstone, because, " if Mr. Glad-
stone sincerely desires to do justice to Ireland he
will follow Lim " (Jlr. John Martin).
DEATH' OF AIR. JO:•EFTI CROSSLEY OF HALIFAX.
—We have to record the sudden death of lir. J. Crossley,
ichroh took•plaso at his residiAloc, Iroolutold,Jilear-114i-
-41417 on Kowlay alter/N(4.

.AN ARCHDEACON ON THE IRISR

CHURCH.

The Rev. Frederick Goold, Archdeacon of RAPIN,
written to the editor of the Dublin Evening Nag thanktni
him for a leader on the "Church and its Friends." He says
—" I dread Mr. Disraeli's treachery much more than Mr.
Gladstone's open and undisguised hostility." He believes that
the hour has come when, if Irish Churchmen would wish to re-
tain one shred of purity, freedom, or independence, they must
dissolve connection with the State. He says, "Let us
trust God and take courage for the future. There are
many warm hearts in the crew of the noble old vessel, and
with good pilotage, my life on it, we shall not only
' weather the storm,' but 'skim the waters like a thing of
life,' and though these waters 'roar and be troubled,' we
shall career prosperously through them—because, sir, our
cause is the cause of truth, meekness, and righteousness:
We may, therefore, confidently believe that though we
may be losers in things temporal, yet that in things
spiritual 'the Lord of Hosts will be with us, the God
of Jacob will be our refuge.' Sir, lam now in the sere
and yellow leaf of my existence ; there is but little to gladden
the prospect of coming days—troublous times are before
us- but no sight would gladden my heart more than to wit-
ness tho inaugur..tion of an Irish Free Church by the conse-
cration in the venerable pile of St. Patrick of ten godly and
able men to those bishoprics which the State so unrighteously
suppressed. Tho postscript of a letter is supposed some-
times to contain the pith of it. Tho Archdeacon adds in a
P.S. :—" While advocating a dissolving of our connection
with the State solely through the unfaithfulness of tho rul-
ing powers, I must not be understood as advocating disen-
dowment. Far from it."