The Sun.
London, England, 1855-08-15 00:00:00

THE SON, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, AUGITSII 15, 1855.

Market closed heavily, at about Monday's cur-
.', ,!,

urin,ir -inark7t, for pu7)lic., securities,
the destruction of Sweaborg having imparted con-
fidence. Consols opened at 91,- I for transfer, but
lifv-e since been 997, as it is thought money will be
scarcer. For account they have been 91 to
Alxchequer Bills at 2d. have dropped to 15s. and
I\Bs. premium. The-New a per Cents. are 22
and the Reduced 91i to 92. Bank Stock has risen
to 2141 and 215.

' The-Sultan steamer, with the rest of the Indian
mail and China dates of June 10, has not yet
arrived. She. left Malta July 30, and has been
now out 16 days at sea. The voyage is generally
made in nine or ten days,-and the contract time is
eleven days.

The effect of the terms of the new loan have
been to depress Turkish Stock, although upon what
precise ground we are rather at a loss to conceive,
except that holders of the existing loan sell out in
order to have funds at disposal to participate in the
new loan. The quotations have been 932 to 93±,
and are since 92f to Z. Sardinian Stock has
realised 87, Peruvian is 812, and Buenos Ayres
56k. Dutch 4 per Cents. are 961 to 961.
The following are the nominal prices of foreign
stocks :—Grenada Deferred Bonds, 7 to 712 ;
Mexican, 21i to 21± ; Peruvian, 81± to 8212 ;
ditto Three per Cents., 59 to 60 ; Portuguese
Four per Cents., 43 to 45 ; Russian Five
per Cents., 100 to 102 ; ditto Four-and-a-
Half per Cents., 89 to 91 ; Spanish New Deferred,
181 to 19 ; ditto Three per Cents., 37 to 371 ;
ditto Certificates, 41 to 41 ;. ditto Passive, 4 to 41.
This is " ticket-day" in the Railway Share Mar-
ket, and attention is principally directed to the
necessary arrangements for the settlement of the
account. The principal lines are at an improve-
ment generally, and Great Western are not so
heavy as they were. The foreign lines are very
quiet, and Great Western of Canada are higher.
St. John del Rey are firmer. Bank Shares are
steady, and the Miscellaneous dull.

BRITISH FUNDS THIS DAY.—CLOSING PRICES
( From the Oficial List.)
Bu 1n,..., done

B Ink Stock .... ..... .
3 per Cent. Reduced Annuitias........
3 por Cent. Consols Annuities 91,14 i 90i 18 1
',ew 3 per Cent. Annuities
Long Annuities, Expire sth Jan., 1860 ,_
Ditto 30 Years, Expire sth April, 1885 16 15-16
T, its ,A,•ids Xlill'il
Consols for Account, 6th September 9li $ iii 21.
£lOOO .I.xuntaii.w. _::sulb, 21d.
21000 ..... ,... l9 15 18
2500 l7 18 20
Small ~
.. 18 19
Exchequer Bonds 1858, 31 per Cent.... 10 :1 i
Ditto 1859, „ ~. 100 i i
PRICE OF FOREIGN FUNDS THIS DAY.
Brazilian Bonds 5 per Cent.
Ditto New, 1852, 4 per Cent 951
Buenos Ayres Bonds, 6 per Cent - 56
Peruvian Bonds, 4h per Cent....
Portuguese Bonds, 5 per Cent., Con. 1811
Ditto ex. all over due Coupons 4l
Sardinian Bonds, 5 per Cent.
Spanish Bowls, 3 per Cent —
Ditto New Deferred, 3 per Cent.
TarVhll Buds, 6 per cent 934 1 23 ti 1
Ditto for the account
I)ividends on the above payable in Wri ,
Ditch Exchange, 21 per Cent. 12 Gnil 641 5
Ditto 4 per Cent. Certificates .. ..
THREE O'CLOCK.
Consols
Ditto for the Account.... 9ll /

LITERATUB E.

The Wabash ; or Adventures of an English C7l-
- Family in the Interior of America.
By J. Richard Beste, Esq. 2 vols. Hurst and
Blackett.
As delightful volumes descriptive of travel and
adventure as we remember to . have perused for
many a long day—a narrative, moreover, which we
can conscientiously declare to be in our estimation
not less instructive than entertaining. It has been
with a peculiar sense of enjoyment that we have
read from "preface" to "finis" Mr. Beste's amusing
account of his personal experiences. And not of
his personal experiences alone, but of those also
of the various members of his rather nume-
rous family numbering altogether that omi-
nous total of thirteen, which is diminished
to twelve before the travellers can retrace their
steps from the interior to the Atlantic coast of the
great North American Continent. It must be per-
mitted us to remark that, although wecommenced
the examination of the work before us as entire
strangers to the author and his companions, we
did not complete its perusal without having ac-
quired from its pages a habit of regaiding each and
all in that charming group—the wandering English
gentleman, his lady-wife, and their youthful chil-
dren—with sentiments of affectionate interest—
with feelings, indeed, not altogether easily distin-
guishable from those of actually personal friend-
ship. We cannot close the concluding volume, in
truth, without finding our thoughts in regard to the
author and hiS family involuntarily resolving them-
selves into an aspiration for their future wel-
fare, for their ultimate reunion, and for
their continued and protracted happiness. It may
be advisable to acquaint the reader of these critical
remarks of ours, at once, with the constituent ele-
ments of this genuine English family Robinson—
so far, at least, as we have been enabled to under-
stand the relative position and distinguishing
characteristics of the roving household, now that
we have carefully collected together divers particu-
lars in reference to the thirteen wayfarers, particu-
lars given by Mr. Beste, quite incidentally, as it
were, or strictly par parenthese, but which we
have taken pleasure in gathering up from their
scattered position in the narrative, with a view to
some such ulterior explication. Reviewing, in this
manner, the whole of what we have here read in al-
lusion to the author and his co-voyageurs, it appears
that, strictly speaking, it was in quest of health for
an ailing daughter, andl of fortunes for his younger
sons, that Mr. Beste adventured, when he origi-
nally undertook this rather extraordinary expedi-
tion. Extraordinary it must undoubtedly be
admitted to have been, when we have remarked
that the bead of the family, an English country
gentleman, then residing at Bordeaux, determined,
as it seems to us, somewhat suddenly, though at
the same time without anything like undue preci-
pitation, to take ship at Havre, and after travers-
ing the Atlantic, to move onwards by railway-cars
and river steam-boats, and other conveyances when
necessary, into the remote interior of some of the
back states of the North American Continent—not
alcne, not accompanied by one or two fellow tra-
vellers, but having with him, we will not say, as
encumbrances, but certainly as sources of the
weightiest of ales maginable responsibilities, a lady-
wife and not e than eleven carefully nurtured
and some of them delicate children. The leader
of this goodly party seems himself to have been
conscious that his enterprise might be re-
garded by many as somewhat Quixotic. How-
ever, he manfully deprecates any such repre-
hensive imputation, and while doing so, avows the
existence of certain occult reasons of his own, not
here explained, impelling him to the apparently
eccentric course already described—wherefore the
most captious censor of other men's doings
amongst us, must perforce hold his peace, if only
from motives of decorum : permitting Mr. Baste
to judge for himself in a matter over which lie
alone could by possibility be said to possess any
positive right of adjudication. Well, whatever his
motives—and two of them, all-sufficient motives of
themselves to our thinking, he has already, as we
have intimated, explained ; namely, a search after
health (happily not in vain) for one of his dangle-
tern, and after fortunes (ultimately, let us hope,
too, quite as effectually) for, two of his sons—Mr.
Beste quits the coast of France (May, 1851) on
board that excellent teak-built vessel the Kate
Hunter, Captain Parsons, commander, leaving
with him his wife, and eleven of his children,
the latter numbering amongst them five
boys and six girls, or let us say (place aux
dames), more explicitly—Catherine, a young
lady of twenty summers, with her younger sisters,
Ellen and Lucy, besides twins (Agnes and Louisa) of
thirteen, and Isabel, a darling little cherub of nine,
with laughing blue eyes, and "a wilderness of
pale, pale flaxen curls," who is left by the rest,
when they return homewards, in the green grave-
yard of the Wabash, in the recesses of the lovely
State of Indiana, and with these six fair daughters,
sons, as we have said, to the number of.five, in-
cluding Kenelm, a youth of sixteen, Frank, aged
fourteen, Constable, ten, a little boy of four, and a
two-year- old baby-boy named Bruno. Such were
the members of the English gentleman's family
who quitted Bordeaux on the 2d of May, 1851,
and after penetrating as far into the interior of
America as the fatal Wabash bottom in Indiana,
where they left, as we have seen, one of their
cherished treasures under a verdant hillock, re-
turned some months later by the Asia steamer, as
we find amusingly intimated by our author, while he
musingly turns over the exorbitant bill of the Vic-
toria Hotel, Euston-square, to, in more senses than
one, dear old England—sadder from some of their
recollections, wiser from many of their experiences.
Eleven children, we have observed, have been
among the companions of our principal traveller
in these curious peregrinations across ocean and
continent, but with these, too, what numerous and
weighty encumbrances—heavy packages by way of
luggage, including among them (par example) three
substantial cases containing altogether 784 pieces