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

The Rolf Krake was twice repulsed and was sat ranged in radiant array the well-thumbed volumes
on fire. of the Boz library.
Two thousand four hundred Dines, including
one hundred officers, were taken prisoners.
Colonel Kaufmann was severely wounded,
The Danish loss is severe. The Prussian lose is
three officers killed and 17 wounded, with 300
men killed and wounded,

Ca? 4 you Forgive her? By Anthony Trollope.

No. VII. Chapman and Hall.
From the beginning to the end of the number
we are with Alice Vdvasour at Matching Priory.
About the only incident in the whole instalment is
that of the moonlit talk between Alice and • the
Lady Glencora in the Priory ruins—to the exceed-
ing vexation of Mr. Plantagenet Pdliiser. Lady
Glencora is seemingly upon the very brink of a
fathomless pool of trouble, in which she appears to
meditate precipitating herself suicidally. Mr.
I3ott, the red whiskered giant of an M.P., renders
himself more odious than ever. So also
does old Lady Midlothian, who makes her ap-
pearance for a brief interval at Matching Priory,
with the intention of rating Aice, there, however,
getting rated herself by Alice instead. Dios:
of the characters in the story are very odious, and
the situations, into which these are thrown, oftan
intolerable, almost sometimes to the extent of being
disgusting. Instance—Alices causeless jilting of
the man she loves, and to whom, as such, she wits,
reasonably enough, engaged to be married. In-
stance—sill more flagrantly—the unlawful love
yet cherishes by the Lady Giencora for her former
suitor Barge—even though she, Lidy Glencora, is
by this time the wife of Mr. Pillieer.

LITERATURE,

-.410.-•

Charles Dickens's New Serial Story,
Our Mutual Friend. No. 3. By Charles Dickens,
Chapman and Hall.

Chapter Nine 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 hypercritics as not Oily enigmatical,
but ungrammatical. The elec:dation of the little
mystery is complete an'.l triumphant. And, remem-
ber, it is one not inlerpelated by an after-thought for
the purpose of explaining away a difficulty but—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. Beffin—(a
strictly ungrae matical 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. Wilfer) that
mysterious occupant of the first floor at Wilfer's,
Mr. John Rokesmith to wit! " I may call
him Our Mutual Friend," said Mr. Boffin. " What
sort of fellow is Our 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,will be infinitely preferable, given one by one, than
any simple statement as to the fact of their being
here 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 refinementand department ot
clerk," in Mr. Mortimer Lightwood'a (the soli•
citor's) chambers 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. Yung
Blight's interview with Old Boffin must be turned
to and read as a whole, in its entirety. Ditto the
interview that afterwards takes place between
Noddy Boffin and Mortimer Lightwood. As the
former is leaving the latter's chambers at the end
of it, enter the young blasé barrister, Eugene
Wray burn ! Who—on being told by Beffin
"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 camels ! " I freely
admit," Fe says, "that tee camel, for instance, is an
excessively temperate person. But he has several
womachs to entertain himself with, and I have only
one." As to the bees, however, he maintains that
he whole case is assumed. " Iney work—ye-ee '
t u t asks Eugene, "don't you think they rather over-
do it ? They Rork 60 much more than the)
need—they make so much wore 'than they can
eat—they arc so incessantly boring and buzzing at
their one idea till Death comes upon them—that,
don't you think they overdo it ?'' Noddy Boff'in's
street-talk with Mr. Rokesmith (who offers himself
as his Searetart ) is capital—particularly where at
the outset Mr. Beffin is divided in his doubts as to
hether the stranger will propose a game of skit ties,
or meet a country gentleman, or produce an article
of jewellry—Noddy, at the mere conjecture of such
possibilities, carrying his Familiar Spirit, the Big
Stick, in his arms, as Punch carries his, ready for
any euergency. Yet more droll, however, is the
description, in the next chapter, of the Boffios' turn-
out iu a four wheel chaise—liable to hiccup itself apart
et 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-gut rolls
into the street—such as "Down with the dust,
Bof-fin !" and the like—prepares us, as by an appro•
priate flourish of trumpets, for the morning cails
made by those wonderful newly-installed carriage-
folk. Calis—first upon the Milveys—afterwards
upon the Wilfers, The poor curate's family of the
Milveys consist iog of " a quite young man, expert•
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
great perseverance on the part of the
nemmer-headed young man entombed in the
Sepulchre) into the Wilfer'S tittle hall—inex-
pressibly ridiculous fun, is made of the three
pairs of listening legs upon the stairs above—Mrs.
Wilfer's legs, Miss Bella's legs, Mr. George Samp-
son's legs—of the strained attention on the part of
those same three pair of legs—and, in the end,
.of
their excited fl,ght. Tne meaning of the two
visits, here to the Milveys, there to the Wilfers,
being simply this, that at the curate's the Boffins
are in search of an orphan (to adept and re name as
John Harmon), while at the clerk's they are bent
upon hospitably inviting to their habitat Miss
Bella, the dissaprointed 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-
tug's, and now married I Alfred Lammle, with the
gingery whiskers, and Soperoeia, née Akershem,
powder and all ! A horrid pair—only tolerable in

deed as we track them along the sands, during their
Honeymoon, on the coast of the Isle of Wight, only
purely tolerable as we track them there, and thus
tolerable simply for the casual mention of Mr.

Laramie (previously spoken of as being "rather like
spurious Mephistopheles, and an unacknowledged
member of that gentlem.n's family") the casuil
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
-idmirably clever touches, bring oat vividly to
view the incidents and the people at the wedding of
this wretched twain at the Veneerings. Twemlow's
increasing bewilderment as to the Veneering's in-
imacies—the panegyric upon Shares as the Be
All and End Ail of City Life—(" Where does he
come from ? Shares, Where is he going to ?

Shares. What are his tastes ? Shares: Has he

4ny 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 (" kuighted
in mistake for somebody else by his Mjesty
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

rho Veneerings with the Buffers whispering

Thirty Thou-sand Pou-nds! " with a smack and

relish suggestive of the very finest oysters"—the
Pokey Unknown, amazed to find how intimately
they know the Veneerings, plucking up their spirits,
folding their arms, and beginning to contradict him

before breakfast—the said combined unknown,

after the bridal pair have gone, returning to the
gorgeous drawing-rooms, and there doing " malig-
nant things with their legs to ottomans, and taking
is much as possible out of the splendid furniture"—

11 these and how much more in the way of
inimitable touches of the richest, raciest humour

still continue to render the pages of " Our Mutual
Friend" r.ot un worthy additions to that be►oved.

shelf in the National book-room, on which stand