English and Foreign.

Lyttelton Times, Volume X, Issue 632, 27 November 1858, Page 3

English and Foreign.

METROPOLITAN GOSSIP. (From the • Liverpool Albion.'^ London, Saturday evening, 7th August. The Idee Napoleoni&me uppermost in the Cockney tnind at this moment is, that the Cherbourg fete has been a humbug; that it was iao fete at all; that it was s second edition of that dismal Scotch farce at which the nephew of his uncle appeared in pawnbroker's finery, the Eglinton Tournament ; that it was a fraud, delusion, and snare; a hoax, swindle, sham, imposture, take in, anything that is everything most mendacious and Old Baileyfied. Where- ■ fore these hard words ? Well, it isn't easy to say, but said it is nevertheless ; and to be candid, people are delighted at the opportunity of being able to say it; for there has been all along a latent dislike to the whole thing, and considerable contempt for those who voluntarily embarked in it. Some of the adventurers. are", back to-day, and report the British^ Lion to have carried his tail between his legs in" a-most" hang dog fashion : in fact, to have been snubbed confoundedly by our most polite-puissant and pugnacious neighbour who loft the barbaronai isliuiders under no sort of mystification as to the meaning of the empire being peace—peace at any price indeed, that is the price of the »tt«

dependence and self-respect of every other nation under the sun, particularly the nation that has no sun, perfide Albion to wit. The Pera, which carried the one hundred com' •tnoners, ought to' have been called the Peri, the attempts she made to get over 'the boom that barred -the paradisiacal portals of the inner harbour, and attempted in vain. Very -disconsolate pens looted the'unpfam'ed senators an consequence.^just as when they were shunted off the rail with the dilapidated locomotive that "didn'ttjarrv'them down to the Spithead review, 4»nd enabled them to breakfast by supper-time. Slather different kind of spiritstfrom perk some -of the bold Britons on this occasion are described as having figured i and if any of the •many magistrates present were to have exacted •the customary fine of five shillings for every, ■optnalmaic and paralytic invocation upon the visual and corporeal organs of our beloved allies, and have handed the proceeds to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, we might look for such a state of the revenue as would ensure the repeal of *he paper duty at least, long before there is otherwise a prospect of attaining that foolscap millennium. > Not oniydia the more important of the English guests not see half what they were invited *o see, and the moiety they did behold wasn't quarter what it should have been, but there were not present anything like the notabilities 1 enumerated in the newspapers; arid you may I expect to fiml letters in the journals all next week protesting that the writers were not within a-thousand: iirHes, more or less, of the 'Channel, although stuck there in print. Many of these names were published on the principle ■adopted at the late aristocratic Cremorne gatherIng, by way of a joke.; and -a grave business it will be for some of.the victims of the pleasantry to disabuse their serious Friends, Quakers, and -others less pensive. People are puzzled to make .. -out how it Is that only two lords should have beenpresent-as representatives of the Heredistary Chamber, and that these pair should be 'Sheffield and Kingsale, names wholly unknown to fame now, though not always, and the ancestral antecedents may perhaps account for the apparition. The first peerage was acquired within the memory of men still living, by J. Baker Holroyd, for having raised at his own expense a regiment of light dragoons (the 22nd), when the combined fleets of France and Spain appeared off the British coasts; aud he was afterwards much petted by the.Earl of Liverpool for electoral services of the kind, dear to that discriminating rewarder of such patriotism. Perhaps it is with an eye to the probable necessity of raising another regiment that the present Earl has been to Cherbourg, though it must be a regiment of horse-marines, or mermen hold, to do battle with the terraqueous Gauls of that locale. Sheffield took with him his filial blade—not the sharpest in the world —to wit, Viscount Pevensey, the juvenile oldtory member fer East Sussex, but a veteran in diplomatic service, though a greenhorn in the ways of the every-day world. Then, as to JOngsale—why did he go ? To keep his hat on. On where ? Why, on his head, to. be. sure. Well, there » nothing curious in that. Yes, there is something very curiousj considering the circumstance, which is:the- privilege of Ws remaining .covered in the presence of a ■crowned head, that is the head that wears the crown of England. He alone of all the subjects of the sovereign of these realms Is entitled te «port his heaver before the British 3ion. What if he. should have gone to test that immunity with Louis Napoleon ? Supposing Bonaparte were to cry "hats off," and that «the er-proprietor of the eagle that eat the «ausage at Boulogne should have him Cayenned in consequence; and that England wouldn't stomach it ? Casus belli, war with Nap about • hat! What a theme for Wilson, who is already as combustible as an Orsini bomb, and is writing such fiery articles in the ' Economist' w to suggest that he roust have burnt his lingers in some sulphur and brimstone contract, and wants to saltpetreize us into a pugnacious for his own pecuniary preservation. A war on this head (that is in this hat) would *c justifiable aa nine-tenths of the wars that *«r were waged. Didn't Spain and Venice go to loggerheads because a Doge wouldn't doff his cap to the ambassadorial hidalgo on the last step on the .Giant's Stairs, as well as the last but ole; and hasn't etiquette ruled .the world Bjoce the globe was the sire of a taw in theling? Only the other day/as it were, when the news of the assassination of the Due de Berri was brought to, .the. Tuilleries, Charles X., though in a tremendous hurry to see what was the matter, took three hours to set the feather an Ms hat becomingly, ua.ying it wasn't proper that a descendant ,©f St. Louis should appear before the profane populace nave en grande ienue. Though there isn't much of the saint, but a good deal-of the other thing, in the present Louis', he' has' nearly' as great a reverence for tailory a* had our ewn George IV., and ■would .probably order Eingsale's hat to be nailed to.his head, according to Algevine precedent, if the Hibernian didn't remove it, which the Hibernian,, wouldn't,' if he had any respect for big great, grandfaiher, the man who, by squashing .a'Frenchman, won the pnyilege of retainanfc,bie «ombr«ro while all other polls were bare W>o was he* John de Couroy, first Earl of XTlster,-the sight of whose terrible aspect and 4rigantie (stature »put to flight the champion of •Philip Augustus of .France; whereupon sthe Irishman cleft in twain a massive brazen-helmet at a blow," and thereupon John, King of England bade him ask what favour .he would, which was the privilege aforesaid, to this day retained by his descendants, one of whom maintained it against no less a personage than Macaulity*B hero. TheJTew.Zealiinder? No, the Dutchman, of glorious pious, national debt, and .cat-o'-nine-

tail memory. Another de Courcy did the same thing with the first Gaelph, and the Hanoverian had to submit to it. Has it ever been tried with,a CoburgP Fancy the fiiry of a Saxe Gotha at the indignity! Perhaps it was to try it on <the hat), at Cherbourg, that Kingsale went there. He is just as good -as either of them, Prince or Emperor, in point of blood, even if -they had th« blood they pretend to, which one of them hasn't, at any rate* or else Count Flahault is a much misrepresented individual in connection with the late authoress of \ Partant pour|la Syrie.' Kingsale might set up for a French king himself, and perhaps would be less of a pretender than any engaged in that trade, for he is descended paternally through the the Dukes of Lorraine, and maternally through the Dukes of Normandy, titles anterior to that of constable Bourbon, saying nothing of special constable Bonaparte, April 10, 1848. Whether Kingsale, who is a dashing young Milesian enough, scarcely turned thirty, really wore his hereditary hat, or attempted to wear it, is not yet known. Perhaps it was the apprehension that he would wear it which prevented the Emperor allowing of his approach and that of his fellows.

After the return of the Niagara and the Agamemnon, in consequence of their recent failure, the chairman of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, it is said, set his face against the second trial, saying it was useless; that he had as much enterprise as most men, and was as little daunted by difficulties; but that when an experiment had thoroughly failed, he thought people ought to know when and where to stop. Being out-voted; he retired from the direction, or rather sent in; his resignation, which from some cause or other was neither formally accepted nor recorded, there being no Captain Cuttle at the helm at the moment to " make note of it;" and, moreover, there being^ a natural delicacy in regard to the idea of getting rid of one who had stood by the undertaking most zealously up to what, seemed to be the! last minute. Well, when the news of success was flashed from Newfoundland, his .friends, flocked round with that profusion of philanthropic sympathy which prosperity nesern $*)!*; to awaken anywhere, especially in that home.of the primitive virtues, and unsophisticated benovolence, the Arcadian glades ■of Corn-hill. He galvanised the congratulatory with the electric tidings that he was no longer chairman ; and, of course, they wished him a remarkably fine afternoon, with all the cordiality of Timon's guests when invited to dinner and finding emptiness under the done-up host's dish covers. But, behold, his name remained in its old place, and he was de facto and de jure chairman ; and so he is now; and of course so he,will remain till all the codlings at Cape Hae are turned into gold fish, which tbey must be doing fast, if we may judge by the auriferous metempsychosis going on in the shares. These hare sprung up from £200 to £920, and hare even been spoken of at £1500 per share; but, odd enough, the books of the stock exchange -do not show one single transaction ! The fact is, that those who have shares hold them, despite the wild prices offered; and consequently the quotations, which are not entered, arc in reality but nominal.

But there is briskness in other quarters also; and as proof take one significant instance, that nearly 5000 copies have just been subscribed of the new half-crown edition of Miss Martineau's edition of Deerbrobk, one of the perhaps most characteristic works of as remarkable a mind as this generation has given birth to.