The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-20 00:00:00

___,...
CAPE OF GOOD HOPE MAILS.

PLYMOUTH, May 20.
The Golden Fleece, from Calcutta on Feb. 20,
Madras, March 6; and Table Bay, April 9; passed
off here this morning.
She brings 19 days later Cape news; 90 pas-
sengers from India, and 22 from the Cape; and a
cargo of rice,
indigo, and cotton.
Governor
At the Cape Wodehouse had re-
turned to Graham's Town, having declined
to arbitrate between the Free State and Basutos
in their boundary line dispute, because the Free
State Yolksraad would not give him unfettered
discretion, they stipulating that the Warden
boundary line of 1849 should be nmintained entirely.
The Governor proposed to assist in suppressing the
Frontier Castle thefts, by rigorously enforcing the
pass system upon all frontier travellers, without
distinction of race, character, or colour.
d
The Colonial Gazette, of April 8, contained the
bills of the new measures proposed by the
Governor for the consideration of Parliament,
,which was to meet on the 27th April. The most
important were a bill for creating a supreme court
for the eastern districts, and an appeal court for the
colony, a bill for establishing a registry office for
all deeds in the eastern districts, and a new road
bill, throwing the maintenance of existing roads on
the Circle-road boards formed in the districts con-
cerned. Tbe formetion of new roads and passes
to be charged to the general colonial revenue as
hitherto. Three taxation bills provide for the
existing revenue deficiency. They increase the
stamp charges, make Jarger additions to classes
of documents chargeable with stamps, and impose
duties on property, sueoessiong, and epon bank
notes. With the additional revenue they will bring,
h r
lhadnrda ws
sales,
ll
eosf, tiee mai of road chargescftrooe withdrawal
the general revenue, the extension of the
it was hoped to equalise the revenue with retrenchment,
the ex-
penditure.

The mission in Moselikatses country was pro-
4ressing favourably. The missionaries were about
o make an application to the old chief for Fermis-
iion to establish a station in Matabele country.
Her Majesty's ship Salamander arrived at the

Cape on the 28th March, and the Lyra on the 6th
April, and were lying with the Conqueror and the
Narcissus in Simon's Bay.

The Centaur sailed for England on the 3d April.
The Pearl arrived at the Uape on the 28th March,
and sailed for England on the Oth April.

The Golden Fleece land her mails and three pas-
sengers at Plymouth by pilot boat.

LITERATURE.

Miss Braddon's New Novel,

Henry Dunbar:. The .S.ltory of an Outcast. By the
Author of "Lady Audley's Secret." Three vols,

_
Second Edition. John Maxwell and Company.

Again Miss Braddon has given evidence of her
brilliant powers as a novelist. " Henry Dunbar"
justifies her reputation and will extend her popu-
larity. As a fictitious narrative it is as enthral-
ling as either of the two most celebrated among
her romances—meaning by those (need wo say it ?)
"Aurora Floyd" and " Lady Audley's Secret."
But Miss Braddon herself has a Secret no less
than her first heroine, Lady Audley—that formid-
able, delicate, ghostly, ghastly, blue-eyed adven-
turess, with the golden aureole of hair—a Secret
that our authoress would fain guard as long as
possible and with as jealous a care as that with
which Lady Andley guarded hers even from the
prying eyes of Robert Audley, of the Temple,
barrister-at-law, and amateur-detective, in the in-
terests of his noble•hearted old uncle, the baronet
of Andley Court, Lady Audley's deluded husband.
Miss Braddon's Secret having, moreover, relation no
less directly than Lady Audley's Secret to the ins
and outs of a peculiarly horrible murder—the murder
which is, as it were, the mainspring setting in
motion all the intricate cogged wheels, (fitting so
deftly and accurately, tooth by tooth, one with
another) in the wonderously-fabricated machinery
of the plot of this new three-volumed novel of
" Henry Dunbar." Following the example of " an
eminent novelist"—Miss Braddon alludes of course,
as will be recognised upon the iestant, to Mr.
Wilkie Collins (vide the preface to the " Woman in
White")—the authoress of "Henry Dunbar" makes
a brief but earnest " appeal to the critics not to de-
scribe the plot." Having ourselves an especial
antipathy to that always unfair system, as
it seems to us, of epitomising the plot of a story,
by which soma reviewers eke out their remarks,
without any advantage whatever to their own
readers, and certainly with no advantage at
all to the intending readers of the novel then
nominally under criticism—we should instinctively
have abstained from doing the very thing the
writer of " Henry Dunbar" would now especially
warn us from attempting. We don't care in the
least, for our own part, at any time, in regard to
any fictioe, to weary ourselves or our readers by
writing a dull matter of fact epitome of the chain of
incidents constituting the plot of the imaginative tale
submitted to our consideration. And, naturally
enough, we should here have less inclination than
ever, if that were in any way possible, to undertake
any tedious little task of the kind, after the appeal
thus addressed to our sense of fair play by our
authoress. Common courtesy, in other words, there-
fore, it might be said, only confirms us in following
out the course dictated beforehand by our own
individual predilection. Having read the whole of
the three volumes throughout, rapidly, yet with the
most eager attention—as we have always found
ourselves constrained to do as yet with regard to
each successive work from the same gifted hand,
from the same pen of glamour and fascination—we
shall here remain inscrutably reticent in regard to
the inner secret constituting the charm of the pro-
found interest, colouring, pervading, permeat-
ing, as one may say, the whole plot of "Henry
Dunbar." It is the most daring idea of a plot that
even Miss Braddon has yet adventured upon ! The
plot of " Henry Dunbar" having, we are almost
tempted to assert this, more audacity and, in some
respects, more ingenuity about it, than the audacity
and ingenuity woven together in the pictured tissue
of " Aurora Floyd" or of " Lady Audley's Secret."
Here, however, we must let our authores.
herself deprecate, after her own inimitable
fashion, the censure hitherto lavished overmuch, as
it has always seemed to us, upon what, in the cant
phrase of the day, is entitled, for want of a better
name, the Sensation School of Itomance-Writing.
Miss Braddon's deprecation of this excessive cen-
sure being put forth here, very effectively and, at
the same time, ♦ery briefly, not in her own words,
but in words borrowed by her from one of the very
greatest of our English classics in imaginative litera-
ture. That is to say, from:theyritings of Daniel De-
foe—first among English story-tellers, first among
English journalists—that famous author (among
other immortal books) of " Robinson Crusoe" and
the " History of the Plague of London"—he who
was in his time (for writing at once boldly and ex-
quisitely) subjected to the double indignity of being
himself thrown into prison and of having his
works burnt by the hands of the com-
mon hangman ! Quoting from Defoe's writ-
ings, Miss Braddon here puts forth, in
vindication of her own works and of whatever in-
fluence they may have had upon the tone of cur•
rent literature, the following " notable declara-
tion," as she justly calls it, of that Great National
Worthy:—" Throughout this book this fundamental
is most strictly adhered to : there is not a wicked
action in any part of it, but it is, first or last, ren-
dered unhappy or unfortunate; there is not a
superlative villain brought upon the stage, but he
is either brought to an unhappy end, or brought to
be a penitent ; there is not an ill thing mentioned,
but it is condemned even in the relation; nor a virtu-
ous, just thing, but it carries its praise along with it."
And by this standard Miss Braddon contents her-
self with requesting—surely with full reason P
—that her story may be judged. So judging it
—so weighing in the balance her former writings,
her narrative of " Eleanor's Victory," her world
famous romance of " Lady Audley's Secret," above
all, what we are still disposed (in spite of our
admiration for this enthralling story of " Henry
Dunbar"), above all, we say, what we are still dis-
posed to regard as Miss Braddon's masterpiece, her
tale of "Aurora Floyd "—we hesitate not, we have
all along never once hesitated, to pronounce these
so-called sensation stories, in no one jot more dele-
terious than—even, we will go so far as to say those
drearily didactic, not to say priggish moralie
ties, the awfully high-society novels of the
late Henry Plummer Ward, author of " Tre-
maine !" First gift of all in a novelist, we take to
be the power of awakening interest, and afterwards
of sustaining that interest through the whole course
of a fictitious narrative. The which gift is certainly
and beyond any doubt of it Miss Braddon's, and
her's supremely. What is more—in her regard—
she has no affectations of style: affectations such as
are often glaringly apparent in the instance of
her brilliant contemporary, Mr. Wilkie Collins.
The blue fire is, no doubt, frequently
burnt, as one may express it, in the drama-
tised versions of her stories, as, for exainple,
in that closing scene of " Lady Audley " as
represented last season on the stage of the St.
James's, But the blue fire is never burnt in the
stories themselves. There are landscapes in
Miss Braddon's narrative that are exqui-
site specimens of word painting. Her "in-
terior s," too, as mere specimens of genre pictures
are often really admirable. Instance this, in
her very first novel the description of Audley Court
both inside and out—her delineation of the barris-
ter's bachelor-chambers in the Temple—her limning
of the Lime Walk, musical with bees, fragrant with
blossoms, twinkling with lights and shadows like
the veriest sylvan cloister I And then, the portraits of
her different characters—touched off with a lumi-
nous pencil as though they were sketched with
coloured phosphorus--the blonde Lady Audley,
already mentioned—the more voluptuous beauty of
Aurora Floyd—the manly Yorkshire squire—the
aristocratic Cornish cavalry officer—the savage,
drunken, red-headed boor of a tavern keeper
—the slang dog-fancier—the deformed stable-
help one and all—alike the refined and the
brutalised—she brings before us vividly like so
many living and breathing fellow-creatures. As in
her former stories, so it is here in this new work
of hers, "Henry Dunbar." Whether we are with
her in London or in Paris, in the great banking
house of St. Gunolph'eelane, the banking house of

Dunbar, Dunbar:, and Balderby, or for a brief in-
terval in the qtelier of Mr. Kerstall, senior, "Look-
ing for the Portrait"—whetlur we are at. Maudeley
Abbey or at Jocelyn's Rock, down in v. rwickshire,
the former being Mr. Dunbar's, the latter Sir
Philip Jocelyn's—the localities are brought before
us in all their details with the comprehensive yet
minute vividness of photography. As for the
brilliancy of the character-painting in " Henry
Dunbar," we shall not rest contented unless our re-
marks .re at once graced and justified by a quota-
tion in the way of exemplar. Here, therefore, is
Miss Braddonis charming delitreation of—