The Sun.
London, England, 1864-07-01 00:00:00

The Rolf Drake weo twice repulbed and was *et
on fire,

Two thousand four hundred Danes, including
one hundred officers, were taken prisoners.
Colonel Kaufmann was severely wounded.

The Ihnish loss is severe. The Prussian loss is
three officers killed and 17 wounded, with 300
men killed and wounded.

LITER&TURE,

Charles Dickens's New Serial Story.

Our Mutual Friend. No. 3. By Guarles Dickens.
Chapman and Hall.

Chapter Nice of Book One, page 84 of Number
Three, has at length brought the hypercritics the
explanation of Mr. Dickens's title—the title flouted
by those same hypereritics as not only enigmatical,
but ungrammatical. The elucdation of the little
mystery is complete and triumphant. And, remem-
ber, it is one not interpolated by an after-thought for
the purpose of explaining away a difficulty bat—as
the very fact of the phrase being the title of the
book plainly enough indicates on the surface of it—
appearing quite as a matter of course in the pre-
arranged flow of the narrative. " Our Mutual
Friend," then, is the phrase by which Mr. Boffin—(a
'strictly ungratematical personage as all the world
knows by this time)—the phrase by which
Noddy Boffin of the Bower, and the dust
binns, and the ash mountains at Harmony Jail,
designates (while addressing Mrs. Willer) that
mysterious occupant of the first floor at Wilfer's,
Mr. John Rokesmith to wit! "I may call
him Oar Mutual Friend," said Mr. Boffin. " What
sort of fellow is Oar Mutual Friend, now ? Do you
like him ?" And so forth. What sort of fellow we
take him to be, we have already*, now a couple of
months ago, when noticing the first number, pretty
plainly indicated. But of that—not a syllable more
shall we write henceforth until our author
makes, at his own good time and pleasure, his own
revelation. To say that the number before us—No.
3, just issued with the July magazines—is crammed
full of good things, of intensely humorous whims
and oddities, is, as usual, with any instalment of a
serial tale from the same Master Hand, to give ex-
pression to a mere matter of fact. Specimens of
some few among the good things, however, we take
it,wiil be infinitely preferable, given one by one, than
any simple statement as to the fact of their being
hero in the lump. Young Blight, the dismal boy who
is in his small person the " managing clerk, junior
clerk, common law clerk, conveyancing clerk,
chancery clerk, every refinement and department of
clerk," in Mr. Mortimer Ligie.wood's (the soli•
ei'or's)chattibers in the Temple is the first good thing
we come to in this number—and he for that matter
is thoroughly good from beginning to end. Y. ung
Blight's interview with Old Boffiu must be turned
to and read as a whole, in its ent:rery. Ditto the
interview that afterwards takes place between
Noddy Botha and Morimer Lightwood. As the
tomer is leaving the latter's chambers at the end
of it, eater the young blasé barris.er, Eugene
Wroyburn ! Who—on being told by Bufren
"Nothing like work. Look at the Bees!"—pro
tests (as a biped) against being referred to the bees,
to the dogs, the spiders, or the eetnele ! "I freely
admit," he says, " that tee camel, for instance, is an
excessively temperate person. But he has several
teomecles to entertain himself with, and I have only
one." As to the bees, however, he maintains that
the whole cases assumed. " rney work—ye-es ! '
taut asks Eugene, don't you think they rather over-
do it ? Tney work co much more than the)
need—they make so much gore than they can
eat—they are so incessantly boring end buzzing at
their one idea till Death comes upon them—that,
don't you think they overdo it P.' Noddy Buffs l'e
street-talk with Mr. Rokesmith (who offers himself
as his Seeretarj ) is cepital—particularly where at
the outset Mr. Baffin is divided in his recants as to
whether the stranger will propose a game of skittles,
or meet a country gentleman, or produce an article
of jewellry—Noddy, at the mere cot jecture of such
possibilities, carrying his Familiar Spirit, the Big
Stick, in his arms, as Punch carries his, ready for
any erreergeney. Yet more droll, however, is the
description, in the next chapter, of the Boffins' turn-
out in a four wheelchaise—liable to hiccup itself apart
at the crossings—drawn by a hammer-headed old
horse and driven by a hammer headed young man
—the latter "entombed by a jobbing tailor of the
district in a perfect Sepulchre of coat and gaiters,
sealed with ponderous buttons." The juvenile chaff
of the neighbourhood, as this imposing turn-out rolls
into the street—such as "Dawn with the dust,
Bof-fin'." and the like—prepares us, as by an appro•
priate flourish of trumpets, for the morning calls
made by those wonderful newly-installed carriage-
folk. Calls.—first upon the Milveys—afterwards
upon the Wilfers. The poor curate's family of the
Milveys consistiog of "a quite young man, expen-
sively educated and wretchedly paid, with a quite
young wife (charmingly emphatic in her conversa-
tion), and half-a-dozen quite young children."
Wonderful fun—on the Boffins' getting (after
;rent perseverance on the part of the
re,mmer- headed young rnen entombed in the
Sepulchre) into the Wilfer's little hall—inex-
pressibly ridiculous fun, is made of the three
pairs of listening legs upon the stairs above—Mrs.
Witter's legs, Miss BAla's legs, Mr. George Semi,-
eon's legs—of the strained attention on the part of
those same three pair of legs—and, in the end, of
Their excited fight. Tne meaning of the two
visits, here to the Milveys, there to the Wilfers,
tieing simply this, that at the curate's the Beffias
Are in search of an orphan (to adopt and re name as
John Hsrmon), while at the clerk's they are bent
upon hospitably inviting to their habitat Miss
Bella, the dissappointed wife, set apart by
old Harmon for—the supposed deceased. The
tenth chapter of Book 1., closing this third
number of " Our Mutual Friend," makes us
disagreeably acquainted with an odious couple,
to wit, the mature young gentleman and the
mature young lady, previously met at the Veneer-
rug's, and now married ! Alfred Lammle, with the
gingery whiskers, and Soperottia, nee Akerehem,
powder and all ! A horrid pair—only tolerable in-
deed us we truck them along the sands, during their
honeymoon, on the coast of the Isle of Wight, only
barely tolerable as we track them there, and thus
tolerable simply- for the casual mention of Mr.
Lammle (previously spoken of as being "rather like
a spurious Mephistopheles, and an unacknowledged
member of that gentlemen's family") the etteu
mention of him here as he trails his stick after
him along the wet sand, "as if he were
of the Mephistopheles family indeed, and
walked with a drooping tail!" Numberless
admirably clever touches, bring out vividly to
view the incidents and the people at the wedding of
this wretched twain at the Veneering's. Twemlow's
increasing bewilderment as to the Veneering's in-
timacies—the panegyric upon Shares as the Be
All and End All of City Life—(" Where does he
come from ? Shares. Where is he going to ?
Shares. What are his tastes ? Shares. Has he
any principles ? Shares.")—horrible old Lady Tip-
pins's checking off' the bridal array and its para-
phanalia—that delicious record in one of Dickens's
marvellous parentheses of that same old Lady
Tippins's dead husband's having been (" knighted
in mistake for somebody else by his M jesty
King George the Third, who, while per-
forming the ceremony, was graciously pleased
to observe What, what, what ? 'Who, who, who ?
Why, why, why ? '")—the wedding breakfast at
the Veneerings with the Beff,es whispering
Tiiir-ty Thou-sand Pou-nds! " with a smack and
relish suggestive of the very finest oysters"—the
Pokey Unknown, atnt.zed to find how intimately
they know the Veneerings, plucking up their spirits,
toldiug their arms, and beginning to contradict him
before breakfast—the said combined unknown,
after the bridal pair have gone, reurning to the
orgeous drawing-rooms, and there doing " malig-
nant things with their legs to ottomans, and taking
as much as possible out of the splendid furniture"—
all these and how much more in the way of
eimitable touches of the richest, raciest humour
still continue to render the pages of" Oar Mutual
Friend" not unworthy additions to that Beloved
shelf in the National book-room, on which stand