The Sun.
London, England, 1845-05-13 00:00:00

MR. D'ISRAELI'S SYBIL.

The following are extracts from this highly in
;eresting work :

THE QUEEN'S ACCESSION.
" Hark ! it tolls ! All is over. The great bell of
the metropolitan cathedral announces the death of the
last son of George the Third who probably will ever
reign in England. He was a good man : with feelings
and sympathies ; deficient in culture rather than ability ;
with a sense of duty ; and with something of the con-
ception of what should be the character of an English
monarch. Peace to his manes ! 'We are summoned to
a different scene.

" In a palace in a garden—not in a haughty keep,
proud with the fame, but dark with the violence of
ages ; not in a regal pile, bright with the splendour, but
soiled with the intrigues, of courts and factions—in a
palace in a garden, meet sceije for youth, and innocence,
and beauty—came the voice that told the maiden she
must ascend her throne !

" The council of England is summoned for the first
time within her bowers. There are assembled the pre-
lates and captains and chief men of her realm; the priests
of the religion that consoles, the heroes of the sword that
has conquered, the votaries of the craft that has decided
the fate of empires ; men grey with thought, and fame,
and age ; who are the stewards of divine mysteries, who
have encountered in battle the hosts of Europe, who
have toiled in secret cabinets, who have struggled in the
less merciful strife of aspiring senates ; men, too, some
of them, lords of a thousand vassals and chief pro-
prietors of provinces, yet not one of them whose heart
does not at this moment tremble as he awaits the first
presence of the maiden who must now ascend her throne.
" A hum of half-suppressed conversation which would
attempt to conceal the excitement, which some of the
greatest of them have since acknowledged, fills that
brilliant assemblage ; that sea of plumes, and glittering
stars, and gorgeous dresses. Hush ! the portals open
She comes ! The silence is as deep as that of a noon-
tide Forest. Attended for a moment by her royal mother
and the ladies of her court, who bow and then retire,
Victoria ascends her throne ; a girl, alone, and for the
first time, amid an assemblage of men.
" In a sweet and thrilling voice, and with a composed
mien which indicates rather the absorbing sense of
august duty than an absence of emotion, the Queen
announces her accession to the throne of her ancestors,
and her humble hope that Divine Providence will guard
over the fulfilment of her lofty trust.
" The prelates and captains and chief men of her
realm then advance to the throne,find kneeling before
her, pledge their troth, and take the sacred oaths of
allegiance and supremacy.
" Allegiance to one who rules over the land that the
great Macedonian could not conquer ; and over a conti-
nent of which even Columbus never dreamed ; to the
Queen of every sea, and of nations in every zone.
" It is not of these that I would speak ; but of a na-
tion nearer her foot stool, and which at this moment
looks to her with anxiety, with affection, perhaps with
hope. Fair and serene, she has the blood and beauty of
the Saxon. Will it be her proud destiny at length to
bear relief to suffering millions, and with that soft hand
which night inspire troubadours and guerdon knights,
break the last links in the chain of Saxon thraldom ?"
THE STATE OF THE PEASANTRY.
" Their wretched tenements seldom consisted Of more
than two rooms, in one of which the whole family, how-
ever numerous, were obliged to sleep, without distinction
of age, or sex, or suffering. With the water streaming
down the walls, the light distinguished through the roof,
with no hearth even in winter, the virtuous mother in
the sacred pangs of childbirth, gives forth another vic-
tim to our thoughtless civilization ; surrounded by three
generations whose inevitable presence is more painful
than her sufferings in that hour of travail ; while the
father of her coming child, in another corner of the
sordid chamber, lies stricken by that typhus which his
contaminating dwelling has breathed into his veins, and
for whose next prey is perhaps destined, his new-
born-child.

" The town of Marney was a metropolis of agricul-
tural labour, for the proprietors of the neighbourhood
having for the last half century acted on the system of
destroying the cottages on their estates, in order to be •
come exempted from the maintenance of the population,
the expelled people had flocked to Marney, where, during
the war, a manufactory had afforded them some relief,
though its wheels had long ceased to disturb the waters
of the Mar.

" Deprived of this resource, they had again gradually
spread themselves over that land which had as it were
rejected them; and obtained from its churlish breast a
niggardly subsistence. Their re-entrance into the sur-
rounding parishes was viewed with great suspicion;
their renewed settlement opposed by every ingenious
contrivance; those who availed themselves of their la •
bout- were careful that they should not become dwellers
on the soil; and though, from the excessive competition,
there were few districts in the kingdom where the rate
of wages was more depressed, those who were fortunate
enough to obtain the scant remuneration had, in addition
to their toil, to endure each morn and even a weary
journey before they could reach the scene of their la•
hour, or return to the squalid hovel which profaned the
name of home. To that home, over which Malaria
hovered, and round whose shivering hearth were clus-
tered other guests besides the exhausted family of toil
—Fever, in every form, pale Consumption, exhaust-
ing Synochus, and trembling Ague,—returned of er
cultivating the broad fields of merry England the bold
British peasant, returned to encounter the worst of dis-
eases with a frame the least qualified to oppose them; a
frame that subdued by toil was never sustained by animal
food; drenched by the tempest could not change its
dripping rags; and was indebted for its scanty fuel to
the windfalls f the woods."