The Sun. — 1859-10-21 (London, England)

THE SUN. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1859  Already we have had several distinct celebrations of one of the most memorable events of 1859—the virtual completion of the grandest of all modern achievements in naval architecture. The Great Eastern, however, is worthy, indeed, of this reiterated jubilation. It is worthy of it as one of the most signal products of our engineering genius and commercial enterprise. Wednesday, howbeit, at length it may be observed, witnessed the gratifying incident of its crowning inauguration. For uron that evening, at the Roy al Hotel, Holyhead, the directors of the Great Ship Company were entertained at a grand banquet, in company with a numerous gathering of distinguished public characters, by the London and North-Western Railway Company, termed by one of the speakers, the greatest railway company in the world. Conspicuous among those who participated in these festivities, it will be seen through the interesting report of the proceedings published in another part of our impression of this evening, were the late First Lord of the Admiralty and the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. Between the speeches delivered by those two prominent members of the House of Commons —one, a man of rare genius, the other, a man of remarkable common sense, energy, and general intelligence—there is, of course, observable a very marked difference indeed. But the kind of difference is not, perhaps, altogether precisely what the majority might have anticipated. Mr. GLADSTONE, in returning thanks for his own "health," not contented 'with giving a dry toast, must needs give one, if we may venture upon the vulgarism, very thickly and over abundantly bultered. He it is who tells his hosts that their's is " the first railway company in the world." He speaks of the Chairman (the Marquis of CIIANDOS) to his face, as " an honour to the order to which he belongs." He has a word of panegyric to be pronounced over the recently devoured banquet itself, declaring it ecstatically to have been "so admirably served !" He has, almost we were going to say the indelicacy, but we will call it instead of that the effrontery, to tell the audience he is addressing that it is " incomparable company 1" Altogether piling the Pelion upon the Ossa of flattery, and making the Olympus of ordinary compliment quite a wart by comparison ! Besides which, there comes blown to us in the rather empty -wind-bag of Mr. GLADSTONE'S after-dinner oration on Wednesday, a distorted fragment of a ridiculously applied extract from Dr. JOHNSON, and one admirably selected quotation, qUite the gem of the speech, from POPE'S " Windsor Forest." As to the former—that is, the Johnsonian " elegant extract"—quoth Mr. GLADSTONE, "Dr. JOHNSON, I says"—so that the right hon. gentleman is actually not quite certain about the right authorship of a remark that must surely, to the ordinary run of English students, be familiar as household words—a remark which the Chancellor of the Exchequer thus goes on to murder in cold blood for the purpose of a preposterous misapplication —" Dr. JOHNSON I think says that whatever induces a man to live more in the future and less in the present exalts him in the sale of creation." If Mr. GLADSTONE will but take down from his bookshelves the volume ofiOIINSON'S worksontaining the Doctor's account of his " Tour to the Hebrides," he will find  the original passage in its integrity and entirety--one of thz; most exquisitely beautiful rhe4°rical passages in the English language : we