The Sun.
London, England, 1844-07-25 00:00:00

4116 e,

1.0:,D0N, THURSDAY, JULY 25, 1844.

The Lords did not sit yesterday.
The Commons met at twelve o'clock, and went into
Committee on the Turnpike Trusts Bill. Sir J.
GRAHAM, on the first clause being proposed, said, it
was not the intention of the Government to continue
the Turnpike Trusts Committee beyond the 29th of
September, 1845. The Bill went through Committee,
and the report was ordered to be brought up this day
Mr. MACKINNON gave notice that, on the 3Qth of
July, he would call the attention of the House to the
report of the Committee on the health of towns.

A brief discussion took place relative to printing
more copies of the report on the Custom House
frauds, when Mr. T. DUNCOMBE announced that on
the House going into Committee of Ways and
Means, the Chancellor of the Exchequer should go a
step further and allow the whole evidence to be pub-
lished. But of what use is evidence taken with
closed doors ? If the evidence taken under such cir-
cumstances is so bad that Mr. GOULBURN is afraid
to publish it, what disclosures would have been
made if the investigation had been conducted in an
open and manly manner ? The Committee, no doubt,
is composed of honourable men ; but if they wish the
public to give credit to their honour, why should they
adopt a course which the public believe is only in-
tended to screen the guilty, the sleepy Commissioners,
and the protegees of Whigs and Tories, who have
Tobbed this country to an incalculable amount ? It
matters not, however. The 658 copies which are to be
printed will spread over every county in the United

The Horse. Slaughtering Bill went through Com-
mittee, and the report was ordered to be received on
Friday.
On the report of the Poor-law Amendment Bill
being brought up, Mr. P. BOBTHWICK moved the in-
troduction of four clauses, the object of which was to
allow husband and wife above sixty years of age to
-reside together in the workhouse, and to provide that
4.l3ildren under seven years of age shall not be sepa-
rated from their mothers.

Sir JAMES GRAHAM resisted the amendments, on
;the ground that the law provided paupers above sixty
with out-d'Oor relief, and that there was already an

order of the Poor-law Commissioners, sanctioned by
the Secretary of State, that children under seven
years of age should not be separated from their
mothers.

After considerable discussion the amendments were
rejected. The report will be brought up to-day at
twelve o'clock.

The House having resumed, disposed of the other
business on the paper, and adjourned at One o'Clock.

Upwards of half a century has now elapsed since
• the death of BURNS, and so far is the poet's fame from
having been in the slightest degree dimmed by age,
that every year it seems to have acquired additional
lustre. While the sardonic school of Braos, the
chivalrous and picturesque school of SCOTT, the me-
taphysical school of COLERIDGE and SHELLEY, the
milk-and-water school of HATLEY, and the ultra-
pastoral school of the Cockney THEOCRITUSES ;
while all these various schools of poetry have risen,
flourished, and in a great degree passed away, BURNS,
like those "dead and sceptred sovereigns," of whom
MaNritED speaks, still continues to " rule our spirits
from his urn." The cause of this potent spell which
he exerts alike over our reason and our sensibi-
lity is obvious enough, and may be ex-
plained in a few words. He was a profound
and impassioned student in the school of Nature.
He was not influenced by nice rules and regulations,
nor carried away by subtle theories. He had no
faith in the pedantic dogmas of scholars and critics,
but looked to his own heart as his surest and safest
guide, and drew thence his inspiration. In all the
poems of BURNS we see how exclusively he consulted
his own ardent impulses, and what entire and noble
confidence he had in them. Whether frolicking with
his strapping " queans" among the barley-rigs;
giving utterance to devotional sentiments in his
4‘ Cotter's Saturday Night," or to patriotic sentiments
in his " Scots wha hae ;" conjuring up alternately
images of ghastly horror, wonder, and broad humour,
in his unequalled " Tam O'Shanter ;" or pouring
forth touching and mournful ideas in his " Lament
for Glencairn "—no matter what the theme on which
BURNS expatiates, still we find Nature his sole
prompter, and his own manly heart his sole inspira-
tion. Perhaps of no other poet in the language can
it be said with so much truth as of BURNS, that there
is net one false, or maudlin, or unhealthy sentiment
in his works. We allude here exclusively to his
poems, for his prose letters, in the midst of many
beauties, contain passages of dreary bombast and
tinsel sensibility. But regarded solely as a poet, he
stands forward in our literature, the best because
the truest intepreter of Nature we have had since the
days of SHAKSPEARE. Hence the emotions which he
pourtrays find an echo in the hearts of universal
humanity ; and it is the surest proof we know of, of a
man's healthy condition of intellect, that he is able
fully to appreciate the works of BURNS. We have
been led to these reflections by the public announce-
ment in The Sun of this day, of a grand festival
" in honour of the genius of the poet," which is to be
given " on the Banks of the Doon" on the 6th of August
next. At this festival, which will of course be attended
by immense numbers of BURNS' admirers, the Earl
of EGLINTON will take the chair, and Professor WIL
sox—of whom, in his own peculiar walk of intellect,
Scotland has quite as much reason to be proud as of
BURNS —will officiate as Vice-Chairman. We can
imagine the high and pure gratification that will be
felt by all who are present at this festival, and the
delight and admiration with which they will listen to
the copious eloquence of CHRISTOPHER NORTH
poured forth by the banks of that stream which
BURNS has rendered immortal. It is the first time
we believe, since his death, that a public compliment
on so magnificent a scale, has been offered to the
memory of the author of " Tam o' Shanter,"—that
bold, warm-hearted, strong-minded Ayrshire peasant,
whose independent spirit poverty could not crush,
and whose frank, cordial nature the world's neglect
could not chill nor pervert—and we take for granted,
therefore, that the festival will be attended by all classes
of his countrymen, and that the Scottish peasantry
will have their representatives at this national gather-
ing, as well as the aristocracy and the gentry.

The result of the experiment with Captain WAR-
NER'S destructive invention for extirpating ships (any
other phrase would but inadequately express the
completeness of its terrible operation) came off on
Saturday afternoon last, at Brighton. Of the con-
duct and value of this experiment our readers will be
enabled to form their own conclusions from the ac-
counts we have published of the transaction. As to
the satisfactory nature of this test, we cannot imagine
that there can now be much difference of opinions.
The certificate or report, signed by Captains Lord
INGESTRE, HENDERSON, and DICKINSON (all of the
Royal Navy), who had the control and direction of
the affair, demonstrates, we think, that there can
have been nothing like collusion—no clandestine in-
troduction of combustible or explosive materials into
the hold or stowage of the ship to be experimented on.
These gallant officers declare that it was impossible
for Captain WARNER to know beforehand when they
would give the signal for him to set his invention in
motion; that when they did make their signal, it was
answered with the one agreed upon, by Captain
WARNER, who was at that time in a steamer three
hundred yards distant from the John o'Gaunt (the
" doomed vessel"). It is also clear that on this re-
turn signal (the hauling down of the union jack on
board the steamer), Captain WARNER commenced
immediate preparations for this memorable experi-
ment. With all perfect respect for that gallant and
able officer, we take leave to have our own opinions as
to the motives which induced him to send all hands
below from the deck of his tug, with the solitary
exception of the mate. We are also free to confess
that we consider that motive to have been perfectly
justifiable, if there be any foundation in fact for the
conjecture we are about to hazard as to the tre-
mendous power actually employed by Captain WAR-
NER. We do not believe, with some of our Contem-
poraries, that such an effect at such a distance could
have been produced by the discharge of a voltaic or
electrical battery, the shock of which must have commu-
nicated by wires within the strands of a cable stretched
from the tug to the John o'Gaunt beneath the surface
of the sea. The notion of the line and trigger, we
should reject as equally unfounded. The difficulty
remains to account for any projectile, sufficient to
have caused such instantaneous and absolute destruc-
tion, having been discharged at so short a distance
from the shore, without any flame being visible, or
any report being audible from the steam-tug. Taking
the report of the naval officers, in conjunction with
the accounts given by the reporters for the public
press and other eye-witnesses, and with the important
averment in the communication of Mr. WALESBY,
the barrister, to the Morning Post, to the effect that
" Captain WARNER was never once on hoard the John
o'Gaunt from the time of her having left Gravesend
ten days before the experiment came off;" we are in-
clined to dismiss all suspicions of pre-arrangement
or technical preparation on board the craft itself, for
the purpose of this experiment. We look, therefore,
at a few of the facts Which immediately preceded the
phenomena of annihilation. 'We find that a little be-
fore 6 r.m., the towing tug-steamer, having Captain
WARNER on board, on her passage from Shoreham,
suddenly put about, and for a few seconds hove to
close to the John o'Gaunt. Then she resumed her
former situation, and brought up between one and
two miles off the shore, almost opposite the Old Ship
Tavern, but in such a position as to present, it would
seem, her broadside to the tug, which took up her
station at about three hundred yards' distance. One
account says—" The moment after Captain WARNER
had answered the signal from the battery"—another
" with a lapse of exactly five minutes after that
action," the various heralds of the lightning-like de-
struction which had enveloped the John o'Gaunt
were perceived from the shore.
Now, it strikes us, that the sudden return of the
tug (the Sir William Wallace) to almost alongside of
the craft, was perfectly compatible with a desire, on
the part of Captain WARNER, to take a last glance at
her hull, or her sheer, with a view to detect the most
advantageous position for striking her; and that her
being brought up in so favourable a position to be hit
from the Sir William Wallace, 'was in furtherance of
this design. But what, if any, were the projectiles
employed which could thus rend, break up, scatter to
the winds of heaven, and remove almost every frag-
ment and vestige of a strong-built and powerful ship,
with all her rigging and masts, upwards of more than '
300 tons burthen ? And how happened it that the
explosion was heard anterior to the low, booming,
submarine dull murmur that arose from the destroyed
craft herself? The absence of any flash—the absence