The Sun.
London, England, 1855-11-15 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Law and Practice of Limited riability. By E. W.
John Crookford.
• To all parves desirous of becoming acquainted
with the law and practice of limited liability this
work in ty he recommended as a useful manual.
conßid 'rung that without the Joint-Stock
O. anpailis Rygistration A.t the Limited Liability
Act is useless and unintelligible, the author has put
the two acts together, and prefaced them with a
short practical treatise on the law and practice of
joint-stock companies, in which the proceedings to
be taken for the purpose of forming and conduct-
ing a joint-stock company, together with many
useful suggestions of a practical nature, are given
in such a manner as to be intelligible to the public
as well as the profession. Though apparently un-
friendly to the principle of limited liability the
author has not the less succeeded in giving ft po-
pular exposition of its application by recent enact-
ment.

The North British Review.

Pursues its way as steadily, and with as much
practical purpose as can reasonably be desired. It is
quite possible that you may meet occasionally with
articles of greater brilliancy in some of its contem-
poraries, but you repair to it with the certainty of
, finding subjects of interest ably handled, and a
number of them chosen with a more than usually
direct application to the necessities of the times.
The opinions advanced may not, it is true, in some
instances, meet with your approbation, nor the
conclusions drawn your assent, but it would be
difficult to withhold your admiration of the flesh-
and-blood earnestness perceptible throughout its
pages, an earnestness you would desire to meet
with more frequently elsewhere. In the present
number the subject of education engrosses a large
share of consideration, and is treated with a direct
application to the necessities of the times. In the
opening article, which, with numerous and striking
faults of style, is evidently the production of one
essentially qualified for his task, the need and pos-
sibility of a special education for manufacturers,
in order to the improvement of manufactures, are
forcibly pointed out. Owen's College, Manchester,
suggests to him a nucleus for the establishment of
the sort of institution required, viz., ono where in-
struction in both abstract and applied science may
be carried on, and that without interference
with the studies now pursued there. " The
Paris Exhibition and the Patent Law "
attests the appropriateness of the preceding
article and the judgment of its writer.
With irresistible logic the painful truth is enforced
that unless we advance at a more rapid rate in me-
chanical art than we are doing we will be beaten
out of the market by foreigners, and especially
Frenchmen, who are rivalling us in branches of
manufacture in which our superiority had long
been incontestible, at the same time surpassing us
in others of a nice-character, and all owing' to a
better education. Even Mr. Mechi is forced to
confess that French cutlery is now equal to ours.
A third article on the subject of education deals
with " Home Reformation and Christian Union,"
on the whole in a fair and enlightened spirit.
" France under the House of Orleans" is the least
satisfactory paper of the number ; its attempt to
show that the Citizen King eschewed goVerning by
corrupt means being to our thinking by no means
so successful as its strokes at the statesmen of that
day. Tho speculation of the writer respecting the
present ruler of France we will only advert to to
remark that if the Emperor relies on his own judg-
ment and instincts, and resists the Circean spells of
German flattery and wile, his " star " is not likely
to fail him till his work is accomplished. "Books
from Ireland," and "Government by Parties or by
Statesmen," suggest many important reflections,
and contain a number of valuable remarks on our
past and existing political condition. " Samuel
Butler," and " Fielding and Thackeray" are bonne
bouches for the literary palate, the former present-
ing us with some interesting information of a
biographical nature respecting the author of " Hu-
dibras" and his career, and the second doing pretty
much the same for the author of " Amelia," as well
as successfully vindicating, Thackeray from the charge
so urgently preferred against him of representing men
and women as worse than they arc : "Let the reader
take a glance," says the writer, "first over the
score or so of portraits in the Newcomes,' and then
over a score or so of his own acquaintance—in-
cluding, of course, himself,:and let him candidly say
whether, the numbers pre-supposed being eqnal, he
knows as many worthy people as Mr. Pendennis,
in his editorial capacity, pretends to depict. Of
course we are assuming, though this is, perhaps,
unfair, that our reader knows his own friends and
himself as intimately as he is allowed to become
acquainted with that 6 most respectable family,' the
Newcomes, and those who are associated with it.
This, however, being premised, we certainly should
judge him happy if, among his peculiar score, he
can find matches for the great-minded gentleman,
Colonel Newcome ; the high and sweet lady, the
Countess of Florae ; the (considering the disadvan-
tages of her bringing up) remarkably right-minded
Miss Ethel ; the frank and honourable boy Clive ;
the honest and independent, and withal amiable,
Miss Honeyman ; the immaculate matron, Mrs.
Laura ; the unpretentious wife-and-homeloving
member of Parliament, her husband • the meek
man of genius, J. J., not to speak Of others of
less significant, or a more mixed quality, as F.
Bayham, Sherrick, George Barnes, Lady Walham,
De Florae, Lord Kew, Miss Cann, and half-a-
dozen others, who are right at heart,' as the
cant and very questionable phrase goes. Against
this galaxy of excellence, what have we of the ut-
terly abominable to put in the scale ? Only Barnes,
Newcome, Mrs. Mackenzie, Mrs. Hobson New-
come, and Lady Kew, all of whom, except the last,
let it be allowed (for it is true), are extremely com-
mon characters, though we have not, commonly,
the means of becoming so thoroughly and philoso-
phically acquainted with them as in these instances.
Why do we go on calling ourselves ' miserable sin-
ners' on Sundays, if we are to abuse Mr. Thackeray
on week-days for making out many of us to be
somewhat less than saints " The plain fact is, that
Mr. Thackeray is decried for exactly that quality
which constitutes his originality, namely, his faith-
fulness to some important point or points of truth
hitherto denied or disregarded. We are all, nomi-
nally, orthodox on the point of human imperfection
in the abstract, but now that Mr. Thackeray insists
on proving in detail that there is really some sub-
stantial verity in the charge, he meets with a most
heretical roar of di.-approbation. He is the
Athanaeius of the doctrine of human peccability."
The writer is not far from the truth when he re-
marks that "we are all disciples of that school of
the new science of moral anatomy of which Mr.
Thackeray is the master ;" and " it is emphatically
true of him, as of all other great writers, that he is
only sustaining the age in the direction which it is
spontaneously taking." The number conclude:
with an earnest exposition andenforcement of The
Significance of the Struggle," the grand
objectmind' the
the writer being to impress on the public
all-important truth that "the Crimea under
be red
no circumstances and on no conditio nos,
vincesstore must
to Russia, and her Transcaucasian pr
be wrested from her."

_....--
The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland. By
Thomas Moore, F.L.S. Bradbury and Evans.
a new process designated
The eighth part a this splendid production
Bradbury.
which, as our readers may remember, is edited b;
the most learned of our living botanists, M •
r. Lind-
Printing, by
bAyir.
Henry
Ferns-presented in this instalment _ The
ValuarendPriiini
„ are the " Las-
• dilatata Glandulosa "
ti ea the
Chanterice," and the ciL L.astrea dilatata
m " beautiful specimens
ru 9astrea dilatata dumeto-
faithfully rendered. A. of a beautiful tribe most
a scale, cannot but work of this sort, on such
art, as well as contribute to the progress of
sug-
gestive is the r promote the study of botany, so an-
thereing aceful and delicate tracery,
withillus-
trated so much fidelity and skill.

The Hand Place Book of the United Kingdom.

Blackie and Son.

The value of this abstract from the Census of
1851 will be apparent when it is stated that within
the compass of an exceedingly small pocket volume
(you may put it in your waistcoat pocket) will be
found references of daily use to upwards of 15,000
localities in Great Britain and Ireland. These em
brace the population of all the parishes of the
United Kingdom, the area of the parishes of Eng-
land and Ireland (the area of Scotland was not re-
turned), the population of all the towns, town-
ships, villages, and hamlets of 500 inhabitants and
upwards, and the days on which their markets are
held, together with the population of the counties
and the smaller inhabited islands of the United
Kingdom. In addition to this mass of useful infor-
mation, which is presented in the most immediately
available form, tabular abstracts of the educational
and ecclesiastical statistics of the country are given,
which statistics, of course, contribute to the utility
digested work.
of this happily-conceived and well-

A return issued yesterday shows that the number
of resident students at the University of Cambridge is
1,844, being 52 fewer than at this time last year.
AUSTRALIA..—GoId arrivals from Australia continue
to be anxiously looked for from day to day, the Ballarat,
which made the passage in 69 days, and the advices by
which were received snore than a fortnight back, having
brought intelligence of several vessels being about to sail
almost immediately after her departure. Among these
were the Oliver Laing and the Surprise, which, if the!
sailed at their aointed time, have been out 86
pp
the White Star out 77 days, and the Kent out 68 WV