The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-13 00:00:00

Awning finit

LONDON, TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1844.

' The great meeting at Alloway Kirk, to honour the
memory of BURNS, deserves a few brief remarks. It
was honourable to the people of the United Kingdom,
for men, and women too, from England and Ireland,
were present to celebrate this great national tribute
to the most remarkable poet of modern times. There
could nut be a better proof of the irresistible force of
genius, than the fact that a peasant wrote songs in
what has been called the Doric tongue, but unintel-
ligible to Englishmen and Irishmen, and in time they
were compelled, by the beauty and vigour of his
poetry, to learn the barbarous language, and sing his
divine airs with all the enthusiasm of nationality. No
man ever wrote so many songs destined to immor-
tality, and if,we except the beautiful odes of lIoaAcE
non© have been so generally diffused over the habit:
able glcke. In India, America, in nearly all the
islands of the ocean, and now even in China, the
songs of BURNS form a necessary accompaniment of
every festival, and the "Banks and Braes of Bonny
Doon," Highland Mary,'' and " Scots wha hae
wi' Wallace bled," are as well known and as much
admired as on the banks of Ayr. Such a man was
worthy of a nation's gratitude, and nobly was the
tribute paid. The crowds who thronged to celebrate
the festival far exceeded expectation ; and at the head
of them was appropriately placed a chief whose family
and domains BURNS has rendered immortal. None
could be better fitted for the chair than the proprietor
of the " Castle of Montgomery," and in justice to
nobility, no one performed his part better than the
Earl of EGLINTON. His speech was by far
the best that was made on the occasion.
It conitt.ned nothing extraneous. It was all directed
the main object of the day. It glowed with pa-

triotic feeling, and embodied sentiments which will
only make the world regret that the present heir to
that illustrious family did not live in the time of
BURNS, to screen him, as he would willingly have
done, from the pangs of poverty, and rescue Scotland
from the disgrace of allowing the first poet of the age
to pass his latter days in an ignoble employment.
The speech of Lord EGLINTON was all good, but
the following passages deserve particular notice,
and will thrill the heart of every Scotchman :
" Oh I that he could have foreseen the futurity of
fame created for him this day, when the poet and the
historian, the peer and the peasant, vie with each
other in paying their tribute of admiration to the
humble but mighty genius of him whom we hail as
the first of Scottish poets. Such a foresight might
have alleviated the dreary hours of his sojourn at
Mossgiel —might have lightened the dark days of his
pilgrimage on earth. Well does he deserve our
homage who has portrayed the ' Cotter's Saturday
Night,' not in strains of inconsiderate mirth, but in
solemnity and truth, who breathed the patriotic
words that tell of the glories of our Wallace, immor-
talising alike the poet and the hero ; he who
could draw inspiration from the humble daisy,
breathed forth the heroic words of ' The Song of
Death,' strains, the incarnation of poetry and love,
and yet of the bitterest shafts of satire and ridicule
—obeying but the hand of nature, despising all the
rules of art, yet trampling over the very rules he set
at nought. At his name every Scottish heart beats
high. He has become a household word alike in the
palace and the cottage." These sentiments, though
expressed in glowing language, are only matters of
fact, but they do not come up to the truth. The
words of BURNS make every Scottish heart, it is
true, beat high ; but what heart do they not move ?
His words are sung on the banks of the Ganges, of
the Indus, and the Mississippi ; his fame has extended
over the world, and his songs of liberty hold out
hopes even to the most wretched slave. Scotland
may well be proud of a " ploughman" who has
spread her fame far and wide, and made a rude and
uncultivated language familiar to every civilised
nation.

Railroads are undoubtedly among the most ori-
ginal and characteristic features of the material eco-
nomy of our times. Their uses and relations are so
multiplied, so intimately mixed up with the business
and interests of all classes of the community—they
form so indispensable and prominent an element in
the scheme of modern European society—they are so
obviously the high roads of moral as well as physical
intercommunication between the remotest localities of
empires—and, in this country, the vastness of their
iesign, the magnificence of their execution, and
the perfect system of their administration are
so far superior to those of any other
State, that there are no public works in the
management and welfare of which the solicitude of
the English people is so universally manifested. The
proverbial passion of our active races for travel is
gratified by railway locomotion, though within the
circumscribed limits of their own islands, with a
facility which appears to be absolutely magical, and
with a velocity of transition that more than realises
the demands of even our unreasonable appetite for
speed. No wonder that the progress and manage-
ment of undertakings so closely identified with the
constitutional temperament of the people have been
watched by that people with an incessant
, and scrutinising jealousy. All kind of :hard
things (it must be confessed) have been
suspected—and not a few have been openly,
said—about the overwhelming monopoly, and reck-
less selfishness, and unprincipled extension of profits,
which, alone, railway companies it was supposed
would consult, in comparative indifference to the great
interests of the community, and utter disregard of
the wants, the wishes, and the limited means of the
poorer classes, who might, whether for business, or
health, or relaxation, be solicitous of journeying by
the only conveyances, with few exceptions, now avail-
able for such a purpose.
It is not necessary for us to inquire whether the
disposition manifested, and the conduct and proceed-
' ings adopted, by particular railway companies in the
first years of their operations, justified to any—or to
what—extent, these fears and anticipations. It would
be, moreover, ungracious in us to ask, in what de-
gree the active part recently taken by Parliament,
'll _ onmbining a series of catefully considered
• .11

roads and their affairs, may have quickened the
tendency of Boards of Directors to give a liberal
and humane consideration, to the exigencies of that
numerous body, to which we allude, who with the
most inadequate means for paying highly for railway
accommodation, have the most need for its ;facilities
of occasional transport from the metropolis,
and other swarming marts of long-continued
and all but incessantly-plied toil, in their
brief and scanty intervals of leisure. Much
more to our purpose and our taste, it is to express
the feeling of unfeigned satisfaction with which we
regard the liberal and ever generous spirit in which,
month after month, the great Railway Companies
come forward to announce the arrangements they
have made for procuring the most valuable, healthful,
and instructive of all recreations to the sons and
daughters of industrial labour, at a cost cheaper than
we had really supposed it could ever be afforded.
The second and third-class passengers, the latter
more especially, are the objects of these excellent
arrangements. The London and Birmingham,
Great Western, London and Dover, London
and Brighton, and Eastern Counties Railway
Companies, we most particularly notice as en-
titled to the best thanks of the public for the
efforts they hare made in this direction. They have
reduced the charge per head on the several pleasure
or holiday excursions, which they have opened to the
enjoyment of hundreds—of thousands, rather—who,
but for such manifestations of a kindly spirit in these
bodies, might never have come within sight of the
chance of such enjoyments, to a point which cannot
reimburse their expenditure, unless the numbers who
avail themselves of their offers be immoderately great;
but which, in that case, must yield a corresponding
profit to which their spirited liberality establishes in
these companies, the most legitimate of claims. Who
that remembers a Sunday in Manchester, but twelve
years ago, with the gin-shops swarming, as
we have seen them, with whole families
of artisans, well behaved, indeed, and attired
in their best, but compelled, as it were, to make out
their day of rest in such unfitting quarters, from the
utter hopelessness of penetrating into the country—
were they ever so disposed—by dragging their ex-
hausted limbs, say through the dreary length of the
brick-and-mortar suburb of Oldham, for example, a
weary four or five miles, unreclaimed by an open
space half as big as Kennington-common ;—who
that has seen, on Sundays, the suburbs inhabited by
the poorest weavers of Glasgow, or the operatives of
Huddersfield, but must rejoice at the light and easy
terms on which the Act of the Legislature has now
secured, to such as are desirous to avail themselves
of it, the privilege of being conveyed, for a few happy
and refreshing hours, once in every week, through
the purer air, and cheerful inspiration of large tracts
of open country—over moors and through vallies and
round the bases of breezy hills, or near the banks of
fresh and sparkling rivers—far away from the polluted
atmosphere, and oppressive monotony of the town in
which they have to earn their hard subsistence ?
After excitement and gratification like those of the
the "railway trip," we may be sure they return with
kindlier feelings to all the world—increased self-
respect, and augmented alacrity. The prospect of re-
newing at short intervals their glimpses of " the world"
beyond the dingy streets of mills and factories, in
which they have been so long over-wearied denizens,
will lighten the toils of the week, strengthen the re-
lations and good understanding between the manu-
facturer and the operative, the master and the ser-
vant, and gradually extinguish that painful sense of
virtual exclusion from the enjoyments common to all
classes above them which has too long, and most un-
wisely, been permitted both by the Government and
the capitalist, to pre-occupy and poison the mind
of the labouring artisans. The Legislature has done
nobly in providing that there shall be on all the great
lines of railway, where passenger-trains of any class
are run on Sundays, third-class trains—and in
spirit, energy, and liberality, we must say the Rail-
way Directors have gone ahead even of the Legis-
lature. Witness the last announcement of the
Brighton Railway Company.
At what angle of elevation the Bishop of LoNnosT
up-turns his episcopal eyes at monster trains of forty

carriages of all classes, running down "at early
dawn" to Dover or Brighton on a Sunday
—a delicious, holy, sunny Sabbath, in its truest
and most sacred sense ; a Sabbath of calm
and innocent enjoyment, and, therefore, of
inward thankfulness and praise to the vast majority
of those who participate in its pleasures—with what
emotion the mitred master of the palace at Fulham
reflects, on his river terrace, or amidst the luxurious
repose of his saloons in St. James's-square, on the
abomination of 1,000 people—of the middling and
lower classes—(for this meekest of Christian prelates
never objected to the Sunday travelling of the rich,
in their own carriages, nor eves to the vicarious of-
fences of railway carriages in locomotion on that
day, provided always they were " first-class" passen-
gers who were to be carried, his Lordship's repu-
diated amendment haring been levelled at third-class
trains)—we know not ; but we do care. We are
anxious that he should practically learn "the luxury
of doing good," by contemplating, on a Sunday, the
happy faces assembled at a railway station. We
strongly advise him to book a place in the next
" railway excursion" at reduced fares, taking care to
secure himself a "return" ticket by a train that shall
bring him up in good time on that day se'nnight, for
the service at the Chapel Royal, or any other equally
courtly duty.

We have given elsewhere a short article from the
Times, relative to the announcement of the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, that it was not the intention
of the Government in future to furnish a return of the
stamps issued to each individual newspaper, but
merely the aggregate of those used by all. Our
Contemporary justly admits the fairness of this re-
turn to the old custom, and, we may add, in a hand-
some manner, willingly gives up any advantage that
may be derived to the proprietors of the journal by
a publication of the returns. As regards ourselves
it is a matter of indifference whether they are pub-
lished or not; but it is not so with newly-established
papers, or with those which, from some temporary
circumstances, or unforeseen accidents, may have
fallen off in their circulation. To the proprietors of
such papers, the quarterly returns caused great in-
jury—the country papers, in particular, suffered
severely from the practice ; and we are, therefore,
glad that Mr. GOULBURN has admitted the evils of
the system, and resolved to abate them.

Madrid journals of the sth have been received, but
they contain no news. The Court was not expected
to return from Barcelona till the 22d instant.

The Three per Cents. were done at 27/ at GO days,
and the Five per Cents. at 20.

On Sunday the French Government received the
following telegraphic dispatches :
" TANGIERS, AUG. 2.

" The EMPEROR., who is coming from Rabat, is ex-
pected at Alkazar, within a march of a day and a
half from Tangiers. It is said that Mr. HAT
with him."

" TANGIERs, AUG. 3.

" The Governor of Larrache has received from the
EMPEROR full powers to negotiate. The Prince DE
JOINVILLB has delegated, on his side, M. DE NION.
All hostilities are suspended, and a pacific solution is
anticipated."
In addition to this intelligence we learn that on
the Bth inst., a telegraphic dispatch from Paris reached
Toulon, ordering the immediate departure of three
ships of the line, the Ocean, Inflexible, and Neptune.
These vessels were to put to sea next morning, and
sail without delay to Tangiers. The object in
ordering ,this reinforcement to the squadron under
the Prince DE JOINVILLE, is probably to give more
effect to the negotiations and bring the affair to a
speedy conclusion.
Most of the Paris journals make fresh comments
on the discussions in Parliament relative to Otaheite,
and, we are glad to find, in a more peaceable tone.
The Siecle, though it cannot conceal its hostile feel-
ing to England, thus adverts to the awful conse-
quences of a war :—" When one reflects on the ad-
mirable progress made by our manufacturers since
the re-establishment of peace, on the frightful misery
which would oppress our operatives if our manufac-
tories were closed by war, on the enormous amount
of sums voted for railroads, on the difficulties and em-
barrassments which make a regency to be feared, one
is certainly disposed to wish for the maintenance of
_ upi vitt; it-
ing our Government for sincerely endeavouring to ac-
complish that object. But we cannot without pain
see the continual sacrifices in vain made by France.
It is a singular fact, that whilst we are told that
England is our only ally in Europe, it is with her we
are continually quarrelling—on the question of the
Marquesas Islands, on Otaheite, on Algiers, on the
right of search, on Egypt, on Syria, and on Spain.
To pretend, therefore, that between her and us there
exists a cordial understanding is a real derision."
The Journal des Debats expresses satisfaction with
the reserve manifested by Sir ROBERT PEEL and the
Earl of ABERDEEN, and confidently hopes that the
exertions of the two Governments to preserve peace
will be successful. " Sir ROBERT PEEL," it says,
" following the wise advice which he gave to Lord
R.U.MERSTON—that second thoughts are best—re-
fused to enter into any discussion relative to a sub-
ject which requires the utmost reserve. Lord ABER-
DEEN, in the House of Lords, was similarly discreet.
It may be permitted to us to believe that the example
given by M. GUIZOT in the French Chambers was
not unconnected with the change effected in the atti-
tude and language of the British Ministers. We
cannot but congratulate the two Governments on
this fact. There existed already so much cause of
irritation between the two countries, that it became
necessary for the men who were to direct public
affairs scrupulously to watch their words. Lord
ABERDEEN expressed a hope that the moderation of
the two Governments would still frustrate the designs
of the enemies of peace, foreign and domestic. The
reproach made against the Conservative Governments
is, that the good harmony existing between the two
countries has been compromised by the mutual con-
cessions made. In truth, we admire the patriotism
of the Opposition, whether in France or in England.
Their efforts appear to be directed each to sacrifice
the honour and dignity of their country, and to see
which of them shall represent it as the most humi-
liated, the most sacrificed, or the most dishonoured.
Fortunately these accusations,. as absurd as odious,
neutralise each other. Let the two Governments,
which, in the midst of so many critical circumstances,
have succeeded in maintaining peace, so gravely com-
promised, continue advantageously their exertions,
and they will be supported, we are certain, by the
great majority of the two nations."
Even the Courrier Francais has become pacific :
" The maintenance of the dignity of the country is
not to be found in war. In spite of the management of
M. Guizot and his colleagues, France is not yet fallen so
low as to require a remedy so heroic. War no longer
enters into her manners nor her ideas, and peace is no
more threatened by the party which has exposed M.
Guizot than it is maintained by the eloquent theories
and the problematic capacity of that orator Minister.
Thanks to the diffusion of wholesome democratic ideas,
to the conquest of the civilising over the brutal and war-
like element, war has ceased to be popular, and will not
break out unless English arrogance las the madness
to place us in the alternative to draw the sword or to
submit to insult."

The Commerce announces that three telegraphs are
now being constructed at Paris which are to be placed
on three ships, which will be stationed between Dover
and Calais, during the KING'S stay in England. By
this means the London telegraph will directly com-
municate with that of the Home Department at Paris.
At TORTONI'S on Sunday the Three per Cents. were
quoted at 81f. 55c.

f Mr.
metropolitan Tho ma
police,Ba er
hsausp superintendent eanl
allowed
of the
dby C
the
division
Secretary
of State to retire from the force on a pension of half-
fwoarmrdesrl ofy
sergeant
afterea
u t
major
jori
periodn theof 15
Coldstreamyears' Guards
service.uardisiefo was
upwards
twenty-five years, and was present in Egypt in 1801,
where the sight of one of his eyes was injured, and is
now entirely gone, and throughout the whole of the
Peninsular war, ending with the battle of Waterloo.
Upon his being pensioned from the army he was made a
warden of the Palace, and presented by his Royal High-
ness the Duke of Cambridge with a very handsome gra-
tuity, and by the officers of the regimen. t with a piece of
plate and a clock, with an inscription of his services, as a
testimony of their high opinion of him, and of his con-
duct and bravery in action.
WEST INDIA PlNES.—Yesterday afternoon there
was a last sale for the season at Monument:yard, of
5,000 pine apples from the Bahamas. The fruit was of
excellent quality, and the prices averaged from Is. ed. to
ss. each. The pine season in the West Indies is now
over, but it is probable, judging from the success of the
present speculation, that there will be a very large im-
portation of this esteemed fruit in future years.