The Sun.
London, England, 1842-10-05 00:00:00

less than a war of the multitude against the in-
stitutions of society. How many persons may be
lying in gaol awaiting the deliverance of the
Special Commission we know not, but they are
not fewer than half a thousand. In former
times the journals attacked political parties and
political leaders—they now assail classes, and
assail them with fury. On the one hand the
landlords, on the other the manufacturers, are
described as oppressing the multitude. If we
have no longer war betwixt nations, we have
war betwixt classes; if we have not war abroad,
we have fierce conflicts at home. We aim not at
each other's lives, but at each other's prosperity;
and, though death be not inflicted, destitution is.
Men perish not amidst the inspiring sounds of
the trumpet, but amidst the cheerless gloom
of cold and creeping poverty. It is this kind of
war betwixt institutions and the people, betwixt
class and class, growing out of a traditionary and
unjust partiality to ancient employments, and an
antipathy to new occupations,which, in the midstof
peace betwixt nations, is one of the main sources
of general distress and general discontent. We
know of no nostrum, for our parts, to cure this
general disorder, but we rely principally on the
spread of information, and the progress of
accurate knowledge amongst our rulers, as well
as amongst the people.

One of the objections made by sentimental
writers and sentimental statesmen to the pro-
gress of manufactures is, that they are un-
poetical. They destroy all the charms which
these writers and statesmen ascribe to rural life.
The undeviating rail, running betwixt high
earthern walls, or passing through a hole in the
earth called a tunnel, or running along on the
top of high embankments, is merely dark, ter-
rific, and mechanical. As the clattering carriage
whirls furiously along, frightening the graceful
animals who are grazing peacefully in the velvet
meadows which it intersects, it is the very anti-
podes of all that to youthful poets and poetesses
is charming in the country; and an opinion
is formed which is not without its influence in
the Legislature, that mechanical improvements
are odious, soul-less things, which only deform
the fair face of nature. We shall borrow, there-
fore, from a leading Tory publication, the florid,
but certainly not the successful or the reasonable,
defender of Sir R. PEEL'S policy, a few observa-
tions on railroads, to show that they are not
without a poetry of their own. The Quarterly
Reviewer says--

Yet our age is not asleep. Great movements, va-
rious activities, are heard and seen on all sides. In
the lowest department, that of mere mechanics, cot,-
sider what fifteen years have done. It was only in
the autumn of 1830, following close on the French
three memorable days of July, that the Duke of Wel-
lington opened the Manchester and Liverpool Rail-
road. The population of the busiest region on this
earth were assembled round him, whom all acknow-
ledged as the greatest man in England, at the inau-
guration of a new physical power, then felt to double
the strength and swiftness of human beings. While,
among the myriads of gravely joyous faces, the new
machines travelled at a speed matching that of eagles,
the life of a great statesman shot off on a darker and
more distant journey, and the thrill of fear and pain
at his destructioh gave the last human tragic touch
to an event which would at any rate have retained for
ever an historic importance. The death of Mr. Hus-
kisson startled the fixed bosom of the veteran sol-
dier, and those who were near perceived a quiver of
the lip, a movement of the eye, such as had hardly
been caused by the most unlooked-for and dreadful
chances of his mighty wars. To a calm observer the
emotion of the whole multitude, great and small,
might strangely have recalled far-distant ages, and
the feelings with which ancient peoples held every
great event as incomplete, wanting tne blood of a vic-
tim—too often human—solemnly shed. In the most
prosperous and peaceful of national triumphs the dark
powers again claimed a share, and would not be for-
gotten.

- Since then, about twelve years have passed, and
behold what they have brought forth. Some seventy
millions of money have been expended—more, at the
lowest estimate, than four times as much as the
Papacy was able to raise in a century and a half for
the construction of its greatest monument, the
costliest the world has ever seen. These seventy
millions of pounds have been subscribed by private
persons at their own choice in one small country, and
have created nearly fifteen hundred miles of railroads
—structures that surpass all pyramids and Cyclopean
walls, and machines that would puzzle Archimedes,
by which myriads of men are perpetually travelling
like the heroes of fairy tales. It is probable that the
roads of the Roman empire, the work of many
centuries, did not cost so much of human labour, and
they certainly did not exhibit so much greatness of
thought, as those that we have built in less than
twenty years. In the state of society that has pro-
duced such results there may be, we know there is,
enough torpor, even rottenness. But it cannot be,
on the whole, an insignificant stage of human ex-
istence, one barren for imaginative eyes.
From the Reviewer's remarks, of which the
above is but a specimen, it is plain that he
regards our present world, our workshops, and
our exchanges, our tall chimneys and our straight
rails, our busy marts and our crowded streets
—teeming, as they do, with life, with tragic and
with comic interest—instinct, as they are, with
all the passions of man, to be full of poetry ; but
the feeble and helpless complainers of an un-
poetical and unpicturesque world, are so dull
that they cannot perceive it, and so little learned
in the love of the passions that they cannot inter-
pret them. We quarrel not with their imbecility,
but we protest against society being made to
suffer because some of the most feeble-minded
of our writers and statesmen are smitten with a
vain desire of distinction, which they cannot
gratify. They are unable to find out the poetry
of the existing world, because it is not the poetry
of their books; and, seeing nothing picturesque
hi the occupations of more than half the commu-
nity, would fain suppress them. As long as such
foolishness was confined to the novels of the
Minerva Press, no person thought it worthy of
notice; but when Tory writers, day after day,
decry manufactures, on sentimental grounds, and
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COURT CIRCULAR.
WINDSOR, TUESDAY.--His Excellency Count St.
Aulaire, the French Ambassador, arrived to-day at
the Castle, on a visit to the Queen.

_
Lord Ashburton and the Earl of Aberdeen alio ar-
rived on a visit to her Majesty.
In the morning the Queen and Prince Albert en-
joyed their usual walk in the Slopes and:Home Park.
The Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal were
taken an airing.
Lord Rivers, the Hon. Capt. Duncombe, Mr. Geo.
Edward Anson, and the Hon. C. A. Murray, had an
excellent run this forenoon, in the neighbourhood of
Datchet, with his Royal Highness's harriers.
This afternoon her Majesty rode out in a pony
phaeton and four, accompanied by the Dowager Lady
Lyttelton. The Prince of Wales and his attendants
were in the next carriage. The Countess of Mount
Edgecumbe, Hon. Miss Stanley, and the Hon. Miss
Hamilton followed in another pony carriage.
His Royal Highness Prince Albert, and the Gen-
tlemen of the Court were on horseback. The Royal
party rode into the Great Park.
Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent, Lady
Charlotte Dundas' Dowager Lady Lyttelton, Hon.
William Henry Lyttelton, and Miss Lavina Lyttelton,
will join the Royal dinner circle at the Castle this
evening.

Her Majesty the Queen Dowager and suite left
Marlborough House soon after ten o'clock yesterday
morning in several carriages and four, for the ter-
minus of the South Western Railway at Vauxhall.
Her Majesty was attended by Lady Frances Clinton,
Lady in Waiting ; Hon. Miss Mitchell, Maid of
Honour in Waiting ; Earl Howe, Lord Chamberlain;
Earl of Denbigh, Master of the He r3e ; Sir Andrew
Barnard, Clerk Marshal ; and the Rev. John Ryle
Wood, Chaplain.
Soon after her arrival at the R: ilway station, her
M!tjesty, attended by the ladies aid gmtlemen of her
suite and her household, took her departure, by a
special train, for the seat of Lord De Mauley, Canfoid
House, near Wimborne, Dorset.
Sir James Graham transacted business yesterday at
1 the Foreign-office. Dispatches were sent off last
evening from the Colonial-office for the Governor of
the Mauritius.