The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-01 00:00:00

burnished
goad--below, the grim old cedar trunks wer
scarlet, the cedar
boughs were bronze, each leaf of the
glittering, copper beech was a littering, blood-red ruby, and the roses
burned
fire. Far away to the left, in one of
the ahrkstOOd up sharp and clear and purple-black
trees
against the amber sky a thrush was singing his evening
Bong. All this
like
w Which
3 'unconsciously noted by both Everard
and Sydney, and the
calmness and gorgeous beauty of that
evening would come back vividly to their memories some
future day.

Some readers may be disappointed with the con-
clusion of the story,
but all will be deeply interested
and enthralled by its Perusal. It is a work of a
higher class and better tone than the majority of
the novels which coma before us, and it is likely to
benefit as well as to delight the reader—to benefit
him by lifting his thoughts for awhile above the
sordid interests of meaner creatures, to contemplate
the struggles of a noble heart, not for gold or gain,
not for pomp or place, but for principle, and virtue,
even at the cost of all things.

71t9 Biglow Papers. By hoes Russell Lowell.
One voi,, pp. 200. John Camden Hotten,
If by no more than the publication of this delight-
ful little volume—comprising within it the whole
of the world-famous Biglow Papers—Mr. flatten
may be very fairly said to have here 11203 t auspi-
ciously inaugurated his movement across Piccadilly
to a new and ampler tenement than the old one
hitherto (and, for that matter, still for
the time being) occupied by him, hard
by the north-east corner of Green Park,
It augurs well for his career as among our London
Publishers. For, it testifies at once his taste and
his enterprise. It conveys to the reader of it
—this choice little book—proof
positive Of the
soundness of Mr. Hotten's judgment
and of the
niceness of his judgment. And we speak this die,
tinctly and individually of the publisher of this
London Edition of the Biglow Papers,
because he
is at once, in regard to it, the Editor of the Volume
as well as the Publisher of it. The Editor of it, not,
be it understood, just nominally, but searchingly
and thoroughly. And—the work itself ! This won•
derfully comical book of " The Biglow Papers !"
For genuine Yankee wit, it is a masterpiece. Any
one who has a relish for the grotesque freaks of
rhyme indulged in by Tom Hood, for the racy and
abounding humour of Sidney Smith, for the capricious
rhythm and inexhaustible tun of Thomas Barham,
otherwise Thomas Ingeldeby—any one who has a
recollection of having years ago shaken his sides over
Colman's " Broad Grins," over Haliburton's laugh-
tersmoving but imperturbable " Clockenaker," over
Cenning'e extravagantly ridiculous " Anti-Jacobin,"
with its Friend of Humanity disco:easing in immor-
tal sapphics to the needy KnifeeGrinder--any one,
in a word, who has an eye for real mother wit,
keen appreciation of the truly humorous, and
risible muscles susceptible of entering into the
Sun of a joke with an instant and com-
plete enjoyment—may .be certain of this that
the "Biglow Papers" are just the very thing for
him! Wherever he opens them, they are sure of
hitting him to a nicety in the midriffl If adaptable
to any known tune, they are certainly adaptable to
the air of "Away with Melancholy." The illustra-
tor of the very cover of this shilling reprint of the
work in its popular London Edition, has caught the
very genius of the book upon th 3 point of his comic
pencil. For, there, upon the centre of_that outer
title page, has he not (this ingenious draughtsman)
pourtrayed a very model or beau ideal of a Yankee
Volunteer ? With the old constitutional initials—
that once renowned "U. S." that seemed
to say (monosyllobbically), and with the true
Yankee twang, US can whip all creation !
The world-famous " U.S." by this time all but
" U imprinted here on the crosabelt of the
uniform of the Yankee Volunteer pur et simple
(in one sense anything but pure or simple),
this
elite creature with the broad-brimmed hat upon his
cranium, his lantern jaws fringed with a pointed
stubble of beard, his olfaotories just inhaling a
flavour of snuff from the point of his right thumb,
his left yet holding before him the open snuffbox—
indicative probably of his being, par excellence, one
who is (in his own estimation) always " up to snuff."
Beneath this spectacled effigy of your Fighting Yan-
kee—as a sub-title to
,the " Biglow Papers" there
appears (as we presume the English publisher's and
Editor's definition of these same " Biglow Papers"
not tho author's)—the intimation that the little
book contains within it " The Choicest Rumorcus
Poetry of the ,Age." And, really, for that
matter, if we prefix to that statement the
two additional words, " Some of"—the asser-
tion, thus qualified, will have just hit it ! For the
fact of the matter is simply this—these Biglow
Papers are, in their own classic phraseology,
" true
grit." Whether we accept them as from James
Russell Lowell (merely as the mouthpiecee--of Hosea
Biglow of Jaalam—of Increase D. O'Phace, Esquire
—or of Bridofreduna Sawin), these wonderfully
fanny,wise and witty,bitingly-causticyet thoroughly
good humoured effusions, are, in truth, the truest of
"true grit." The Poet, in quaffing his pot of
Helicon-liquor, has drawn it evidently from the right
tap—one worthy of the name given (rather doubt-
fully) by the burly landlord to that memorable glass
of beer drunk by poor little David Copperfield on
his birthday—" The genuine stunning." Here it is
it last—not dubiously foaming up in the tumbler
handled by David Copperfield, but sparkling and
bubbling—as fresh as ever—never for that matter
stale, flat, or unprofitable, in the g‘ native pewter"
fingered with an adept's touch by Hosea Biglow of
Jaalam aforesaid. Take the merest taste of it, and.
say whether in spite of its profanities, its vulgarities,
and its stupendous eccentricities, it be not as we
have said—the genuine stunning—
We begin to think it's nator
To take sarse and not be riled ;
Who'd expect to see a tater
All on eend at bein' killed I
Or again—and surely the reach of profane, fami*
iiarity could scarcely any further go---*
God hez sod so plum an' fairly
It's ez long ez it is broad,
An' you've gut to git up airly
Ef you want to take in God.