The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-10 00:00:00

PRANCE.

13ouRsE, August 9.—The market has bean rather
more animated, with a further slight improvement
for the Account, are now at 66f.
45c. Mobilier have advanced to 1,015 f. Rail way
In prices. Threes,
Shares firm, with a
_
slight rise on some of the lines.
The market closed as follows

•
41 per Cents •. 94 60 Italian L0an...... 68 15
Do. end month.... Do. end month.... GS 25
3 per Cents ..... . 66 20 Ditto Threes......
Do. end month.... 66 40 New Mexican .... 56 25
Credit Mobilier...• 1010 Russian ........ ^ --
Do. end month...•loll 25 Austrian ........ w
Bank Shares ...... 3395 Spanish Threes....
Credit ',ender Rome Debt ...... Debt......

Roman

Deferred .....•••

RAILWAYS.
Cash. Account.
885 d. 882 50
980 .. 98:5
915 .. 917 50

Orleans ..... e•,...,
Northern
Lyons and -.leditQrranean
New ditto
Southern
Western
Eastern ....
Sardinian
Austrian
Lombard
North of Spain .. .. 441 25 .. 441 25
Saragossa 505 .. 503 75
Ditto to Barcelona

Marine Insurance Company,DROWNED WHILE BATHlNG.—Francisco Manero,
was accidentally drowned on
assistant underwriter to the Thames and Mersey
Friday, the sth inst., while bathing in the Thames, off
Richmond, where he was spending the summer months.
Only one man was near to witness the sad disaster, which
took place at Duke's-hole, a place 15 feet deep, and well
known to the inhabitants, but which, it is to be regretted,
A
was not marked out as a warning to bathers. The deceased
gent leman was very well known at Lloyd's, and was greatly
beloved and respected.
WIFE SOLD FOR A SHILLING.—On Monday
Hannah Parkes, boatwoman, was indicted at the
,ihester AsiizJs for unlawfully marrying Samuel Thomp-
son, her former husband, Thomas Parkes, being then alive.
A witness named Rachel 'Woodward, the wife of a boatman,
stated that the prisoner was sold for a shilling in " Brum-
magem" fair, where sho was taken with a halter round her
neck. This was done by Thomas Parkes, her alleged former
husband, and consented to by the prisoner, who had " had
enough of him." She was bought by Sany;:el Thompson,
who married her, and afterwards Henry Noon took her to
wife. These marriages took place some years ago, since
which time Parkes had died. The jury returned a verdict
of acquittal.

THE SLATE QUAREIES OF WALES. —The demand

for elate continues. far in advance of the supply, and
where good slate is produced there are 12 months' orders
on the books at the present time. A number of companies
hive recently been promoted with tho view of commencing
operations on new ground, but, with very
few exceptions,
complete failure has been the result. In one instance no
less than 530,000 was expended, and the deluded share-
holders found in the end that there was no vein of slave
whatever in the property, and, in fact, they might as well
have thrown their money into the sea. Many of the
schemes that have failed were no doubt promoted with the
express object of securing "preliminary expenses," and
after the promoters had secured their bait nothing more
was heard of them. Certainly, some half a dozen substan-
tial projects have been brought forward, and, with the
good and honest management which prevails, the share-
holders have a fair expectation of getting a reasonable
return on the capital. Elate quarries, like mining generally,
require a special knowledge of the geology of the district,
or else disvpoi4tments are pretty certain to be the ulti-
mate result.

LITERATURE,

Charles Dickens's New Serial Story.

Our Mutual Friend. By Charles Dickens. No. 4.
Chapman and Hall.
A wonderful number is this Number Four of
" Our Mutual Friend." It is subdivided into
three chapters. The Eleventh being descriptive of
' "Podsnappery !" The Twelfth revealing to us
what the Honest Man himself evidently regards as
the sacred droppings of " the sweat of his (the
honest man's) brow !" Chapter the Thirteenth
recounting with eli the vividness of reality " The
Tracking of the Bird of Prey I" To which/ of these
three subdivisions of the August instalbaent of
" Our Mutual Friend," we should have to give the
palm were we required to do so, we hardly know
—and we say this, moreover, after having read
teem through (as, in truth, we usually do in regard
to these green numbers) twice consecutively. Pod-
snappery, we may be certain already, is a phrase
that will stick. It is a something distinctly
generic. In its way, too, it is in a
certain sense socially, as a thing generic, here in
' England, one almost, we knight say, among our
1 National Institutions, Podsnappery, in effect, is a
. something we Lave known, every one of us, more
or less intimately, all our lives. And yet it is a
something, too, for all that, that, until now, has
remained altogether unnoticed—at any rate wholly
undescribed—until at length, in one of his happy
moments of `..;oservation, Mr Dickens has turned the
lens of ;,is marvellous camera upon it, hitting it off
in, its every shade and outline to a very hair,
to the veriest nicety ! The precise flourish
of Mr. Podsnap's arm, sweeping everything
behind him, and consequently clean out of ex-
istence—don't we recognise it upon the instant ?
The "young person," again, she who is described
—in a sense wholly opposite, of course, to that
which might be implied by any slangular applies-
tion of the phrase—she who is referred to, as in a
manner " all cheek"--a human institution perpe-
tually liable, so to speak, to burst into blushes at
any or indeeu at no provocation—are we not in-
timate with her long ago as a sort of social riddle
of the Sphinx, defying ail attempts at any rea-
sonable solution of it P " There appearing to be
no line of demarcation between the young person's
excessive innocence, and another person's guiltiest
knowledge!" The delineation here of all the perfectly
new and yet perfectly familiar forms and hues of
Podsnappery, is thoroughly enjoyable and laughter-
moving. The Company, the Plate, the definition of
the Fine Arts according to the rules of Podsnappery
—the irresistibly ridiculous application of that de-
finition to the quadrille figures as danced in the
Podsnap drawing-rooms—["l, Getting up at eight,
and shaving close at a quarter past; 2, Breakfast.
ing at nine; 3. Going to the City at ten; 4. Coming
home at half-past five; 5. Dining at seven, and,
the grand chain !"]__the "furniture walk,"
like a " revolving funeral," after the perform-
ance of the Podsnap quadrilles—the " haunch of
mutton vapour-bath "—the " bathers " in it—the
" well-conducted automaton " who is hired to play
the pianoforte—the Foreign gentleman who is
treated like a deaf child—who is talked to about
" London Londres London "—who is told " We do
not say Ozer, we say Other—the letters are T and H,
their sound is th, th ! " The rash gentleman who
startles everyone at the dinner table by essaying to
talk to this unfortunate Foreigner, with a sudden
" Esker "—and then stopping (with the eyes of all
Europe upon him)—" Mais, oui," says the foreign
gentleman, so addressed, "Est-ce que ? Quoi,
done ? " Nothing coming of it, however,
even under that embarassing encouragement—
the gentleman with the lumpy forehead who
has cried "esker" finding nothing more than "esker"
behind the lumps, and so lapsing into silence. The
fun of all this, the extravagant humour of it, dis-
cernible at every minute touch in these wonderful
little sketches from the life at the hands of our
master humorist—we commend not with words,
but with laughter. The very arrival of " the
Nutmeg "—as though it were a cannon-ball
bouncing open the drawing-room door, and so dis-
solving the procession of bathers in the midst of

their funereal walk among the furniture—the very
arrival of " that fragrant article, dispersed through
several glasses of coloured warm water," rises,
as one may say, to the dignity and importance
of an event in the records of Podsnappery Won-
derfully different in every way is the account sub-
sequently given in this number, of the way in which
the already tangled skein of the plot is beginning
to be rapidly, yet further and more inextricably,
tangled together. The character of the whole story—
according to our estimate, meaning that most de-
_ _

lightful fellow, the nonchalant Barrister Eugene (a
perfect original and a perfect gentleman I)—is here
brought out, more vividly than ever, to view, and is
already taken to our hearts, permanently, as one
among the very best of Charles Dickens's creations.
"My respected father," otherwise M. R. F., sounds
' military, says Eugene, "and rather like the Duke
of Wellington"—" Without lime my existence
would be unilluminated by a ray of hope"—" Two
burglaries and an assassination under the meanest
circumstances"—" In reply to the question of my
honourable and gallant friend, I can have no hesi-
tation in replying (it not being inconsistent with
the public service) that those accents were the
accents of the T'other Governor"—any one who
has read this new number of " Our Mutual
Friend" will recognise as reminders of the in-
imitable touahes of quiet humour imparting a very
charm to that delightful character—Eugene!
Happily though Marcus Stone augured by his ar-
tistic pencilling of the first illustration in No. I.
" The Bird of Prey," he has been getting, since then,
simply worse and worse as en illustrator of Dickens,
vice Phil; and Cruikshank—the most characterless
among all his embellishments to "Oar Mutual
Friend" being these two vapid woodcuts in
Part 4, entitled respectively " Waiting for
Father" and " Podanappery."

Trifles for Travellers. By Robert Henniker, M.A.

Pp. 150. Murray and Co.

Whether the third word of the title of this
voiumette refers to Travellers on the Road of Life
who may be in quest of a few apophthegms,or to mere
everyday Travellers by Railway who are in quest
of a little light reading with which to wile away
the tedium of a long journey, there is no chance
whatever of uncertainty in regard to the meaning of
the first word of the title, namely, " Trifles." And
it is a phrase that is here not only perfectly com-
prehensible, but precisely applicable. rhe con-
tents of the little book are, to a t, just that—
viz., the merest Trifles. They are so many literary
waifs and strays (from the same pen all of them)—
collected together, for the nonce, from such out of
the way corners as an odd column here or there in
the illnwick, Mercury. Added to this, they are, in
one sense, about all things in general, and yet, in
another, about nothing at all in particular. If there
is wisdom in them, it is certainly la sagesse en pan.
touifics. The costume of the writer is a sort of
scholarly deshabille. There is a taste of Greek
upon his title page and a flavour, too, of Latin.
He deals here, moreover, in the body of his tiny
work, with not a few old saws, applying them
sometimes rather aptly by sundry modern instances.
The Trifles of Mr Henniker are at any rate of this
value, that they are hardly to be described as—
unconsidered. They are sometimes well thought
out, and are—some of them at least—in their little
prattling way, entertaining.

Select Anecdotes, from Various Sources. By J. S.
:I;4aurie. Pp. 248. 'Thomas Murby.
Another charming little volume has here been added
to a delightful series, one that we have already had
seven good reasons to commend under the title of
"Laurie's Shilling Entertaining Library." These
seven good reasons being the issue in the series,
one by one, of pocket editions of-1. Robinson
Crusoe-2. Christmas Tales-3. History of the
Pl&gue 4. Gulliver's Travels 5. Sandford and
Merton 6. Evenings at Home— 7. The Swiss
Family Robinson. Added to which seven rare old
favourites, very pets of little books as they are—we
have here, in the eighth instalment of the series,
these "Select Anecdotes." And even no w—" there
be pippins and cheese to follow," as Sir Hugh
Evans says, while standing with his table napkin

in his hand, under Master Page's flowery
porch in the old street of Windsor. Yes, here, too,
" there be pippins and cheese to follow"—for is there
not promise in 9 and 10 of " The Pilgrim's Pro•
gress" and the " Vicar of Wakefield Published
at the outset by the Messrs. Longman and Com-
pany, Mr Laurie's Library is now issued from the
press at uncertain intervals by Mr Murby, the
school-book publisher of Bouverie-street. White-
friars.