The Sun.
London, England, 1844-11-30 00:00:00

Morning /Alll,.

LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1844.

Sir ANDREW AGNEW, like the once celebrated
ROMEO COATES, appears to be smitten with a passion
for notoriety, which ridicule cannot extinguish nor
grave remonstrance keep within reasonable bounds.
As the one gentleman was never easy but when ex-
hibiting himself on the stage, in order to convince the
public how admirably qualified he was for burlesquing
the actor's art ; so the latter seems never to be in his
element but when engaged in the edifying task of
proving to the satisfaction of the world how consum-
mate a master he is of all the resources of puritanical
cant, and how utterly he mistakes the true, vital
spirit of Christianity, which is but another term
for charity, forbearance, and toleration. We have
never had the good fortune to see the ultra-pious
Baronet ; yet, strange to say, we seem to be perfectly
acquainted with the peculiarities of his outer Adam;
and never, by any chance, do we meet in the streets
a tall, straight, elderly gentleman, with a demure ex-
pression of eye, and a phiz as long as the Irish tra-
iersers' monster indictment, and as sour as that of
the Bishop of EXETER, when anguished by the recol-
lection of his lost rectory of Stanhope—we never
meet with an individual of this peculiar cut in the
street, without feeling strongly tempted to ex-
claim, in the excess of our respect and admira-
tion, " There goes Sir ANDREW AGNEW !" We
have said that the one dominant feature in the
character of this evangelical Baronet is a passion for
notoriety. his speeches in the House of Commons
on the subject of Sabbath observances, and Tore es-
p cially his letter to one of the QUEEN'S Blanisters,
when she was resident at Blair Athol—wherein he
delicately intimated his regret that her MAJESTY
hail
allowed herself to be inveigled within the walls of a
Presbyterian kirk—are instances in proof of the truth
of our assertion; and now we find a third instance, in
the shape of an epistle, as "grand and verbose," as
that which TIBERIUS addressed to the Roman Senate,
which Sir ANDREW AGNEW has recently written to
the High Sheriff of Cavan, on his favouri'e
topic of Sabbath desecration. In this epistle,
whose logic is as loose a.; the spirit that pervades it
is straight-laced, the writer vehemently reproaches
the railways with their wickedness in allowing them-
selves to be run upon on Sundays, observing that
a "great desecration of the Lord's-day is caused by
every railway ;" and then proceeds to say :—" Is the
word of GOD to lose its power, as the sword of the
Spirit, on the human conscience, because in his provi-
dence a new system of traffic has been developed ?
Undoubtedly there was with the MosT thou the
foreknowledge of every shape and form of work and
traffic in this our day and generation ; and
the work of railways, both as to their for-
mation and their traffic, is comprehended in the
words, thy works,' to be done in the s'x
working-days of the week." We infer from this that
the omniscient CREATOR of the Universe foresaw that
the time would arrive when the Great 'Western arid
all the other railways would be carried into execu-
tion, and, consequently, he had a special eye to them,
as well as to the spinning-j nny, the Thames Tunnel,
and other " forms of work and traffic," when he laid
down the law to man that he should work six days in
the week, and rest onlitke he seventh I Sir ANDREW AGNE W
is, we believe, ;
but most
it fanatics, a well-ia-
tentioned
.person
in a more familiar, irreverent
to allude
ntsss
pirit
hto the
awful attributes of the DLizz,
done in the above passage ? Would any one e
than
ib'uaat
himself have ever dreamed of representing his
CREATOR as endowed with a " foreknowledge" 4
the railway system ? The saintly Baronet next