The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-23 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, NOV. 23, 1868.

An explanatory pamphlet by Mr. GLADSTONE, en-
titled " A Chapter of Autobiography"—a Fenian
demonstration in Hyde Park under the direction of
Mr. FINLEN, the ex-judge and jury advocate and po-
litical incendiary—an accident befalling the Prince of
Wales when out hunting with the Emperor NAPO-
LEON at Compiegne—a Banquet at Brighton to the
American Minister, during his speech at which Mr.
REVERDY JOHNSON almost pledged himself to the eter-
nal amity of England and the United States—these,
together with the formal rejection of the Liberal
Leader, as their Chancellor, by the members of the
University of Edinburgh, upon his being brought into
competition before them with the Lord Justice-General
as the Conservative candidate for that distinguished
position, are to-day among the principal items of news
contending with each other for our more particular
consideration. And yet each in its way, when it
comes to be looked at, has, comparatively speak-
ing, hardly any importance whatever. Happily
it is so with regard to the, at first, alarming
announcement of the casualty at Compiegne. The
accident, there, to his Royal Highness the Prince of
WALES being of apiece with those previous accidents
of a similar character by which the public at large
have at different times before now been startled.
Once when his Royal Highness was unhorsed in
Rotten Row by a chance collision with a restive
horse, ridden by a gentleman who, in point of fact,
was rather to be pitied than assailed, yet who
nevertheless was scurrilously dubbed by an
over-zealous loyalist contemporary the Galloping
Snob, a sobriquet by which he is still held in many
peoples' remembrance. Another accident more nearly
resembling the one which has just now befallen the
the Prince at Compiegne occurred, it may be remem-
bered, during his sojourn as a guest at the Russian
Court—when, not as now a stag, but a far more for-
midable antagonist, a wild boar, was the cause of
H.R.H. being unhorsed. Fortunately, in each in-
stance, the injury inflicted was insignificant. A
Pagan Prince would have now turned back after an
incident (as he would have regarded it) so peculiarly
inauspicious, and would have abandoned the pro-
jected tour altogether. Christians not being fatalists,
however, all thought of the casualty is dismissed with
an Absit omen; and—with a sense of relief even
among the most loyal subjects in the land, and a
feeling of gratification that it was happily nothing
worse—the generality turn at once to the considera-
tion of the other items of intelligence. As to that
contemptible firebrand Mr. FINLEN, who was the
means a few months back, according to the Saturday
Review, of dragging Mr. GLADSTONE down into the
Gutter, he would beneath any one's notice for a single
instant, only that his appearance thus at intervals at
the head of even the most despicable mob in London,
in the most conspicuous and fashionable of all our Me-
tropolitan Parks, and that, moreover, in the midst of
the dull decorum of an English Sunday, is really and
truly, in point of fact, a flagrant outrage to public
opinion, the recurrence of which henceforth any one
might naturally rejoice if the authorities could but hit
upon some effectual means of preventing. As to the
American 'Minister's latest expression of good feeling
towards the English People and the English Govern-
ment, while there is hardly anyone amongst U 3 but
will regard it with sensations of complacency, we
cannot but fear that the ultra cordial sympathy it
articulates is being rather too gushingly reiterated,
and that JOHN and JOHNATHAN are hardly to be
thus festooned together by garlands of roses and
myrtle.