The Sun.
London, England, 1868-07-23 00:00:00

OP THE PUBLIC JOURNAL,- S.

The Times advises those who find the summer heat
altogether unbearable in England to fly to Italy for relief.
We do not say this merely because, as it would seem, the
climates this year are reversed, because parallels and
meridians are at sixes and sevens, and while the Pope and
his priests are holding Trieluos for the cessation of the
drenching showers which afflict them at Rome, we begin
to be afraid that our children have so often bidden " Rain,
rain, go to Spain," that we may never live to see one
blessed drop " back again." No, if we advise a south-
ward move, it is not only because, meteorologically
speaking, since last April England has been in Italy, and
Italy in England; but also because in Italy one may find
oneself at home with the heat, while in England we are
always on the terms of a short, casual, and therefore shy
and awkward, acquaintance with it. The Italians are
aware that they have so many degrees of heat tO
encounter ; they take their measures accordingly: Within
their narrow streets, under shelter of their tall houses,
they bid the sun defiance. In the larger squares
they have porticoes ; they have verandahs to
every balcony ; they have awnings on their flat
roofs. They have windows that close or open,
not " guillotine sashes" hanging half-way like ours.
They have thick walls, solid cellars, titanic masonry im-
pervious to any change of outward temperature ; church
aisles and palace courts to which summer and winter are
one and the same thing. Within doors every man's house
is his castle ; open to the night-breeze, closed against the
day's glare. The Italian makes his provision of coolness
from sunset to sunrise, and bottles it up for home consump-
tion from sunrise to sunset. The question is not there as it is
with us, how many are the degrees of heat in the shade
and how many in the sun, but how many at noon and how
many at midnight ; for, in his hermetically sealed
apartment, the Italian enjoys the hour of his own
choice ; the hour he likes best of all the twenty-four.
Having found out that the night is his friend in summer,
and that within his own dwelling it is in his power to make
it always night, the Italian shapesJais, life accordingly ;
very early to rise and very late to bed is the lesson of his
wisdom. The raging hours of noon are given up as
unprofitable. The very reaper in the field knows that for
what is lost by the siesta he can easily make up by star-
light industry. We have got the heat of Italy here
this year, but we have none of Italy's contrivances
against the heat. Our faith is in thorough draughts
through the open windows; we do not see that
together with the air, the glare also, the
dust, the flies, all the scourges of summer invade
our rooms. We disdain to break our habits. We never
get up till the sky is high in the heavens ; we crowd the
streets when they are ablaze with the sun. Alas! 110
degrees in the sun and 86 in the shade have taken us by
surprise. Were we to have in succession ten such summers
as the present, and were we also, for a wonder, to survive
them all, we might, perhaps, at the end of the time know
better ; but, in the meantime, there is no doubt that,
great as is the evil under which we are suffering, every-
thing in our domestic and social, private and public
arrangements seems calculated to make it a thousand times
worse than it is.

If the heat continues, says the Telegraph, we must con=
form to our new climate. We can't suddenly change the
character of our ill-prepared towns and cities, and it is idle,
we suppose, to expect that the proprietors will ventilate
and sweeten cabs and omnibuses, or spread an awning over
river-boats, or provide railway stations with cool drinking
water, after the fashionwhich is followed at every stopping-
place in the East. But we might cease to suffer the
ridiculous ills which our unvarying and desperately un-
suitable costume inflicts upon us. To wear a black coat in
such days as these is like the torture which the Hindoo
fakir inflicts upon himself ; and a chimney hat is a direct
premium upon coup de soleil. Add to these the stiff collar,
the starched waistcoat, vainly and delusively white, with
underclothing of perhaps sub-wintry composition, and it
is not wonderful that perspiring Britons " want rain "
more than the turnips or the trefoil. The Telegraph
recommends a daring revolution in dress—a coup
d'ete in costume. Our contemporary counsels the
citizen to break away boldly from the trammels
of fashion, which may be—all— well enough for
ordinary summer seasons, and to dress himself in accord.
ance with nature, and with grace (for a cool costume may

look as well as a rigid and intolerable garb). Let
slaves of habit break away from their ludicrously unfit
black hats, black coats, and all the other caprices of the
sartorial art, which are so incongruous with the caloric
that now forms our atmosphere, and lead the way at once
with rational garments made of white linen or holland,

with caps or hats of reasonable tropical build, light, and
padded against the rays of the noon.
The Times observes that the trilogy at Romsey was con-
summated on Wednesday by Mr. Gladstone. On Tues-
day Lord Granville commemorated the official perfection
of Lord Palmerston's career, and Mr. Lowe dwelt with
great felicity upon his mastery of the House of Com-
mons. On Wednesday Mr. Gladstone made the
Hampshire memorials of his departed chief an occasion
for dwelling upon the policy which the inheritors of his
teaching should pursue in the future. At the foot
of Lord Palmerston's statue Mr. Gladstone dis-
coursed upon the duties which those who revered
his name were called upon to undertake at the
present crisis, and he vindicated for himself and
his associates the distinction of following in Lord
Palmerston's footsteps. Burke at Beaconsfield, Lord
Chatham at Hayes, Mr. Pitt at Holwood, Mr. Fox at St.
Anne's, are pictures which must be associated with that
of Lord Palmerston at Broadlands and in Romsey. We
cannot spare any of those memorials, which recall at once
the affection of our statesmen for rural life, and the inte-
rest common to all the inhabitants of the kingdom in the
course of their political careers. The statue in the Market-
place at Romsey is a monument of the pride the Hamp-
shire men took in their neighbour and friend. The great
Englishman may be buried in Westminster, but his
memory will, perhaps, be freshest, and the incidents of
his life most vividly remembered, in the country town he
loved to adorn, and which has hastened to show its grati-
tude for his affection towards it.

The Post notes that three years have passed since the
death of Lord Palmerston, and again and again in their
eventful course have we all experienced the loss we sus-
tained when a tomb that kings might wish.to die for was
closed. Beautiful; then, as the memorials which were mr
veiled on Tuesday are, we needed them not to preserve the
memory and to witness to the name and fame of the
"Minister of England." The "gleam of sunshine" to
which Earl Granville recurred in a speech that was pro-
perly appraised by Mr. Lowe can never be forgotten. It
must still be radiant in the recollection of those who stood
round the open grave which it illuminated. Nevertheless,
not only, as the Bhhop of London remarked, has the
bitterness of party strife increased, but, in a series of
critical junctures, the absence of the master-mind which
inspired confidence has been conspicuous.
The Daily News remarks that the neighbours and
friends of the late Lord Palmerston at Romsey have natu-
rally been anxious to erect some memorial which shall
permanently associate their little town with his career
and achievements. A bronze statue in the market-place,
and a painted window in the Abbey Church, will remind
visitors to the place and future dwellers in it of its share
in the name and fame of a great English worthy and a
politician of European fame. The usual sacred and
secu'ar offerings were made to the manes of the
deceased statesman. Lord Palmerston's virtues and
merits were not of the order that lend themselves
readily to the conventional language of pulpit
eulogy ; and probably a certain maladroitness
in the Bishop of London's encomiums may have been due
to a consciousness of this fact. The homage paid by Lord
Eversley, Lord Granville, and Mr. Lowe was, perhaps,
happier than the episcopal tribute, A tone of cordial
sincerity distinguished Lord Granville's tribute to the
domestic attachments, the neighbourly good feeling, the
faithful work, the administrative ability, the courage, the
chivalrous loyalty, the happy temperament, blending
Irish vivacity with English sense, which marked Lord
Palmerston. Mr. Lowe's enthusiastic eulogy of him as a
" great manager and manipulator of mankind," was evi-
dently quite as genuine. Lord Palmerston had the best
qualities of a man of the world—prudence, wit, good
humour, directness of intellect and terseness of speech,
pride in his country and devotion to its interests and
honour, as he interpreted them, fidelity to his colleagues,
energy and promptitude in business.
The Standard thinks there is something in the rumours
which have been for some time in circulation, of an attempt
to establish a commercial and military union between
France, Belgium, and Holland—i.e., a French protec-
torate over the two smaller countries. The scheme is
one we might naturally expect from the Emperor of
the French. By opposing such a commercial and mili-
tary union to that which Prussia has just formed to her
profit, he fight; lter, and, in a sense, beats her with her
own weapone. A:)ou',; one point of the proposed union
t7.ere cannut bc the slightest pretext for interference
by foreign Powers. France, Holland, and Belgium
have quite as much right to enter into a commercial
union, as Prussia, Saxony, and Bavaria had. All that
other Powers can ask is, that the new arrangement shall
nut deprive them of any commercial facilities which their
treaties with any one of the three States had secured
them. As fur the military union, the other Powers of
Europe would not be justified in the slightest interposition
so far as two of the parties to it are concerned. France
and Holland are perfectly independent States, under no
obligations whatever to Europe which restrict their free-
dom of action in the conclusion of alliances, and a military
union between France and Holland, although it might be
regarded in some quarters with apprehension, could be
objected to in none.