The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-03 00:00:00

FRANCE.

The tolls and half of the tonnage dues, abandoned
by the Government to the town of Havre for the
execution of the harbour works amounted during
the month of January to 48,066!r.

BOURSE, Feb. 2.—The market continues very
heavy, and Stock having been offered the business
done has been at a decline. Threes, for the end of
the month, are now at 66fr. Mobilier has receded
to 980 fr. Railway Shares are dull, and in some
cases lower. The market improved towards the
the close, and left off as follows :

41 per Cents .. 95 20
Do. end month....
3 per Cents • 66 90
Do. end month 66 2,)
Credit Mobilier 982 50
Do, end m0nth...J.042 50
Bank Shares 3272 50
Credit3Foneier 1192
Roman
RAIL 1

Italian Loan 67 35
Do. end month —
New ditto —
Do. end month —
Russian

Austrian .. 79
Spanish Threes 50
Home Debt .. 4Bl
Deferred
FAY'S.
Cash. Account.
982 50 .. 980
940 942 50

Orleans
No: thern
New ditto
Lyons and Mediterranean
New ditto
S anthem
Western
Eastern
SarJinian ..
Austrian
Lontbard
North of Spain
Saragossa. ..
Ditto to Barcelona

915 - .. 915 --
880 - .. -
635 - .. 640 -
510 - .. - -
478 75 .. 477 50
376 25 .. 377 50
380 - .. 390 -
497 50 .. 525 --
470 - .. 472 50
565 - .. 565 -
297 60 .. 292 50

LITERATURE,

Travels and Adventures of an Officer's Wife in
India, China, and New Zealand. By Mrs.
Muter. Two Vols. Hurst and Blackstt.
The experiences of an officer's wife, if ahe chooses
to follow the fortunes of her husband, are usually
varied and interesting ; but it is not often that a
lady undergoes such rapid changes of scene and
climate, or passes through so many startling adven-
tures. Mrs. Muter had need to be gifted with an
amount of courage and coolness very rare to the
feminine nature ; for, during the brief interval
when the din of battle and the anxiety of watching
the enemy did not form part of her daily pro-
gramme, she was subjected to perils and disasters
that might well affright the most hardened travel-
ler. She tells us her story pleasantly and simply,
having, as we learn, made her notes her companion
on shipboard, when she and her husband beguiled
the monotony of a tedious voyage by arranging and
correcting them. To this joint supervision we
owe the occasional introduction of professional
topics, and the free expression of Lieut.-Col. Muter's
views on many points eonnected with the soldier
and the service. Mrs. Muter's narrative of her resi-
dence in India, which opens the book, begins simply
thus:—" On Sunday, 10th' May, 1857, I was at
Meerut." These few words lead us to the history
of the following days of terror through which Mrs.
Muter and her husband happily escaped unhurt.
Even at this lapse of time those days can hardly
be thought of calmly by those who had no active
part in them, and the fearful scenes and deeds of
blood, then too familiar to Ecglish eyes, can never
be effaced from the recollection of the witnesses.
Our authoress, a fully competent authority,
although she gives few details, fully confirms the ac-
counts of the barbarities practised by the Sepoys. The
horrible character of the outbreak is not yet, she
says, fully understood in England. From the ex-
treme of credulity people passed to the extreme of
unbelief, and this tendency to underrate the horrors
of the mutiny was increased by the accounts of those
" who saw the retribution but not the provocation ;
who beheld the cringing figure and ciapsed hands
of the wretch mercilessly consigned to the gallows,
but not the yelling fiend, with dripping sword and
hands red with blood, mutilating the bodies of those
who had never injured him." According to Mrs.
Muter, the mutiny broke out at Meerut, owing to
an attempt to punish the 3d Cavalry. It is well-
known that its commencement was precipitated,
and the authoress tells us that the original scheme
would have been most disastrous. On the celebra..
tion of the Queen's birthday, a fortnight later, it
was intended that the conspirators should, while
professing to fire the customary salute, load with
ball and aim at the heart of the English soldiers
around them. This, " if carried out with secresy
and resolution, would have swept every European
soldier from the face of India in one and the same
hoar." After the memorable 10th, many anxious
days and nights had to be passed. " The very air
of India was charged with horrors. The weary
watching, the sickening expectation, and the wear-
ing effects of the climate had a depressing effect
that required much resolution to struggle against,
and all the consolations of religion to sustain. The
men were relieved by action, but for the women
there was not this resource." From time to time,
too, came the news of fresh horrors, and the massacre
of Cawnpore lent additional strength to the resolve
of all Englishmen to conquer or die. After the
fall of Delhi, Mrs. Muter joined her hus-
baed, whose duties placed him in that city.
She gives an interesting account of its appearance
after the siege, and of the palace of the Moguls,
which she describes as a mixture of splendour and
dirt. From Delhi the authoress subsequently ac-
companied Colonel Muter to Murree, a hill station
in the Punjab, a long and tiresome journey, rendered
doubly uncomfortable by the unruly conduct of the
palkee bearers, who had grown insolent and extor-
tionate, with the news of the outbreak. To add to
her uneasiness, the Colonel's health had been much
affected by his exertions, and the tricks played -by
the bearers were by no means likely to improve it.
But they were not destined to have peace when
they arrived at the depot, for shortly after the
cholera broke out with the fearful 'virulence belong-
ing to the climate. Those attacked in the day
could hardly hope to see the sunset, and in asking
for the orderly who had brought a message it was
to learn that he was dead and buried! So severe
an attack of the epidemic was remarkable at a hill
station, but Mrs. Muter records her conviction that
these sanitary establishments are by no means the
most healthy of the stations. It would be well, if
such is the fact, that this should be examined :nto.
The intense cold of the winter in the Himalayas
proves a singular contrast to the summer in the
plains. After describing the dazzling brilliancy of
the landscape when the rays of the sun were every-
where reflected on snow and ice, Mrs. Muterex-
claims, " Could any one believe this to be India—
was it not rather Siberia or Spitzbergen ? One
evening she was terrified to hear the bugle give
the alarm, and on looking out saw the glare
of fire. We can fancy the feelings of one who
had passed through the horrors of Meerut
on beholding such a spectacle. Happily, however,
it was nothing but an accidental conflagration.
After some time Colonel Muter and his wife pro-
ceeded to England, turning their backs on India
with feelings of relief and gratitude. They em
barked in the Eastern Monarcb, said to be the
fivest merchant ship afloat. They arrived safely
within sight of Portsmouth, and the night before
they were to land Mrs. Muter listened with a
thankful heart to the sound of letting go the
anchor. Musing on their escape from the dangers
of India she fell asleep, to be roused by the shock
of a catastrophe as perilous and as unexpected. The
vessel went on fire, and being loaded,with saltpetre
a fearful explosion took place, killing some, and
injuring many more. A scene of great danger and
anxiety had to be passed through before Colonel
and Mrs. Muter were safely landed in their native
country, without any of their possessions. This
scarcity procured them but a sorry welcome from
the hotel-keepers, and it is not surprising that Mrs.
Muter's long-tried health and spirits gave way
when she was at length safely housed. Her ad,

ventures, however, had not damped her spirit, for
it was not long after that she accompanied the
Colonel to Canada, of which country she gives but
a brief account, and subsequently to Hong Kong,
on the occasion of the Chinese war, Of this place,
less often described by English visitors, we have a
fuller account. Its unhealthiness is terrible.
"In Hong Kong men take to their beds
and die, and neither they nor the doctors
who attend them can tell what is the matter. There
is some great element of life wanting in the atmo-
sphere; what it is I cannot tell." The explanation
which some have found for this, in the dissipation of
the victims, is not accepted by the writer. The
health of the soldier is, she maintains, a fair test of
the salubrity of a climate ; and she compares the
condition of a regiment in New Zealand and Hong
Kong. In the former they are quartered in sheds,
and exposed without thought of weather or season ;
in the latter, every care and precaution is taken,
even to the supply of coffee or wine when on night
duty. " Yet, years on years of New Zealand pro-
duce little effect on the battalion ; while a few sea-
sons of Hong Kong sweep out of existence the
eoldiers that landed with the regiment on its bane-
ful shore." Mrs. Muter penetrated as far as Pekin,
being one of the only three European ladies who
have entered that city, but her impressions of the
Celestial Empire were by no means favourable, and
she was glad to leave it. Not, however, to rest ;
for after a brief period we fad her visiting New
Zealand, en route to India once more, though only
for a short time, as the regiment which her hus-
band went to join was about to return to England.
A trip round the world, however, had no terrors
for a lady of such varied experience, and, accord-
ingly her last chapters are devoted to recording her
visit to New,Zaaland, which she considers the finest
colony we possess. Her work is animated, and
interesting alike from its doporiptions of foreign
parts and from its narrative of personal adventure.
It has fallen to the lot of few ladies to pass through
such startling scenes, or to visit so many places ;
and in her double capacity of heroine and tra-
veller, Mrs. Muter has powerful claims on the
attention of the public.

Sir Goodwin's Folly. A Story of the Year 1795.
By Arthur,Cocker. Three Vols. Chapman and
Hall.
This is a most complicated narrative, and will
puzzle the reader who does not take pains to study
its numerous dramatis persona, and to bear in mind
all the chief points of its elaborate plot. Being in
the last century, it of course brings before us quite
a different style of society to that which exists
nowadays ; and as the epoch described is a very
critical juncture, we meet with some very notice-
able incidents in the lives of individuals, and trace
some important events in the history of nations. It
was a trying time for English rulers when the
great French Revolution broke out in all its vio-
lence and vehemence. Even many well-disposed
individuals became infatuated by the notion that
a glorious era had dawned upon the world, and
that the establishment of freedom in one country
would be but the herald of regeneration in another.
Too soon was the bright dream dispelled, and the
fair vision vanished away. While the rapt enthu-
siasts were exclaiming with delight, and spreading
the glad tidings through the land of the liberation
of one country from oppression, which should be the
signal for the happy deliverance of another, sober
and earnest men learned a different lesson, and,
sadder but wiser, they strove to impart their intel-
ligence to others. While they had been singing
in their rejoicing exultation of spirit—
" O'er the vine-covered hills and gay vallies of France
See the day-star of liberty rise,"
the dictates of reason bade them know
that what they had hailed as the advent of
mercy was the introduction of a reign of terror.
These sentiments are fully discussed arid fairly
exemplified in these pages. In a vivid manner and
with a glowing style the author puts before us
some of the chief characteristic of the times. We
thus meet with a work that blends historical inte-
rest with romantic sketches, and puts before us a
most stirring and animated picture of adventures.
These chronicles of " Sir Goodwin's Folly" belong
to a past generation, but the pride and passion, the
deceit and cunning, the vanity and envy, appertain
but too truly to every time, and form part of every
phase of human society, and every condition of
mortality. It would be quite impossible to give an
account of the plot, it would be a work of superero-
gation to undertake it, but some of the chief points
of interest and excitement in it may be enume-
rated. In the first place there is an excellent
moral to be deduced from the finale of Sir Good-
win's attempts at matrimony. It is always most
presumptuous for any one to fashion his own doom
as it were, and to resolve that all shall give way to
his desires. Time, place, and circumstance, the
chances of life, the changes of death, must all
work together to accomplish the desires and fur-
ther the ends of such excited and infatuated indi-
viduals. Sir Goodwin was spared the mortification
of rendering himself amenable to the laws of his
country for uniting himself to, one whose husband
was alive, and also he escaped the shame of
bestowing upon his daughter a second
mother, who was not worthy to bear
that title. Yet he was morally guilty
in the sight of all, and he futthex more
might reflect that he had by his vile machinations
hurried three individuals into the grave. Are there
not many, nowadays„ who for greed or gain, ex-
cited by the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, or
the pride of life, press madly on to wreak their own
doom and ensure others' ruin. Mrs. Norland was a
sad proof of the fatal effects of sin, in luring the
thoughts from rectitude;and making the downward
road of sin all too easy and enticing. She and her
confederate in crime sought to compound felony, as
it were, with their ingenious contrivances, and after
all were completely foiled in their efforts. Major
Norland himself was a dexterous sharper, who
outwitted himself at last with his machinations and
mysteries. His inveterate desire to get the bribe,
Sir Goodwin held out so improperly, incited him to
lay plots for the destruction of his friend. Thus
one crime leads to another, and too much craft will
always betray itself in the long run. The author
of this work may be congratulated for having
brought out so skilful a story, and described with
such eloquence and earnestness his exciting pas-
sages of romantic incident. Besides the graver
portions of the tale, there are several secondary
personages introduced with much skill, and the
adventures of little Chiqwood are most ludicrously
painted. Altogether there is enough to suit all
tastes in the contents of this remarkable novel, and
it may well aspire to attract notice from its various
events, vivid details, and ingenious illustrations of
character, all given in a spirited style and a
sparkling manner.

The New Scientific Quarterly.

The Quarterly Journal of Science, No. I. Churchill

and Sons.

We have no distinct remembrance of any new
Quarterly making so auspicious a commencement.
It is as the chipping of the shell, not simply when the
bird is fully fledged, but when it is already strong
upon the wing. There is no 'prenticework any-
where apparent in the whole of the goodly number
before us—the initial number, as we cannot but feel
persuaded it will turn out to be, of what must in all
human probability grow year by year into a very
voluminous publication, Half-a
-dozen Original
Articles lead off the contents—highly elaborated
articles almost every one of them. Before the be-
ginning, however, as one may say, without much
extravagance—certainly before the beginning of the
regular staple commodity in the way of contribu-
tions, there is prefixed to the inaugural number of
the journal a very noble and admirable well-written
and carefully-thought-out " Scientific Survey," by
way of introduction. It is beyond any prospectus that
could possibly have been issued by the originators of
the entire enterprise. Besides which it has a dig-
nified air of self-respect that seems wanting some-
how to almost every preliminary prospectus that ever
came under our observation. There is in this Intro-
ductory Scientific Survey none of that egotism that
jars so offensively upon the reader of almost any, if
not indeed of every, prospectus. Instead of fair pro-
mises, moreover, as to the future numbers of the
new Quarterly, we have here a series of thoroughly