The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-07 00:00:00

THAMES.

ATTEMPT TO MURDER.—Harriett Penn, a surly-looking
woman, was charged before Mr Partridge with attempting
to murder George Allen, a sailor, at his lodings, Cornwall-
street.

It appeared from the evidence that on the previous even-
ing about 9 o'clock complainant returned home, when he
found the prisoner lying drunk on the bed. He told her
to get up and get him his tea, and observed that he supposed
she intended to serve him as she did a week ago. As she
objected to do as he wished, he remarked that he would
pack up his goods and go away in the morning. He was in
the act of tying up his things and stooping down for that
purpose, when the prisoner, who was behind him, gave him
a violent blow on the head with a chopper, which caused
the blood to flow profusely.

Mr Partridge—Did she say anything when she struck
you ?
Complainant said she called him a b—, and was about
to strike him again, when a policeman came in.
Mr Partridge—Have you felt any serious effects from the
blow ?

Complainant—Yes, sir. I have not been able to work
since. I went to the station-house, where the wound was
dressed by Mr. Ross, the divisional surgeon, who said it
was a very bad wound.
K 245 stated that he hoard the disturbance, and that
when he got in the room he found the complainant covered
with blood, and the prisoner was wiping the blood from the
chopper, (The constable produced the instrument, which
had blood on it.)
The prisoner was remanded.

MARKETS—This Day.

MARK-LANE.

The arrivals of English wheat, fresh up to our markets
to. day, were very moderate. The trade, however, was
quiet for all qualities, yet no change took place in prices,
compared with Monday.
With foreign wheat, the market was well supplied. In
most descriptions, a limited business was transacted, at
previous quotations.
Floating cargoes of grain moved off slowly, at late rates.
There was a moderate supply of barley on the stands.
Generally speaking the trade was dull, and prices had a
, drooping tendency.
100} The malt trad® was quiet, at late rates.

The supply of oats on sale was large. There was less
activity in the demand for most descriptions; nevertheless,
prices ruled firm.
Beans and peas were in limited supply, and both articles
commanded extreme rates.
Flour was in moderate request, at Monday's quototions.
ARRIVALS THIS VIZEK.
Wheat. Barley. Malt. Oats. Flour.
English 320 GO 530 110 290
Irish
Foreign 3,110 1,670 10,900 380 brls.

BOROUGH HOP.
The supply of new hops on sale is tolerably largo, and
the trade rules heavy, at drooping prices,

WIIITECHAPEL.

The supply of meat on sale is moderate, and the demand
rules inactive, as follows :
Of Beef, from 2s 10d to; 4s 4d; mutton, 3s 8d to 43 8d;
veal, 33 6d to 4s 4d; and pork, 3s Qtl to 4s 6d per Blbs by
the carcase.

THE BIRKENHEAD STREET RAlLWAY.—Birken-
head, which resembles many American cities in having the
advantage of an extensive street railway system, is to be
subjected to law for this reason. Mr. Gough, hotel pro-
prietor, and Mr. Evans, omnibus proprietor (whose traffic
the street railway interferes with), have intimated that un-
less the line of rails in Bridge-street are at once taken up,
they will take such steps to enforce their removal as the
solicitors acting for them may advise,

PREMATURE SHONE a.—Like many other pro-
found thinkers, Mr Punch is fond of smoking, and
he naturally entertains a sympathy for smokers. To have
his sympathy, however, smokers must smoke sensibly, and
not commit excesses. Xi l'unih likes moderate drinking,
but he hates to see men drunk; and he regards immoderate
smokers as only a shade less to be despised by hint than
drunkards. Smoking prematurely is, to Illr Punch's think-
ing, the worst form of excess, and the one which moves in
him Most hat: ed and disgust. Smoking prematurely
is a selfish, snobbish practice, and it is matter for re-
gret that there are not more means to stop it, Clearly it
is nonsense to pretend that boys can really have a need or
liking for tobacco, or be a whit the better or the happier for
using it. Boys who prematurely smoke do so not because
they like it, but because they think it manly to be seen able
to smoke, Such smokers aro, in fact, mean, silly little
snobs, and all right-minded people justly hold them in con-
tempt. Nature does her best to act as their tobacco stopper;
but by practice they acquire the power to smoke without
being made sick by it, and this done they delude them-
selves by fancying that tobacco has become a vital need
to them, and when they smoke they try to think
they really relish it. This, however, is sheer
nonsense, for the true taste for tobacco comes alone
with age, like the appetite for turtle, and it is not to be
acquired by those who prematurely seek it. Moreover, bo3 s
who take to smoking have nut the sense to put due bounds
on their indulgence, and they are apt to smoke at times when
it does them the most injury, and is to others the worst
nuisance. Unable to control themselves, they smoke in
business hours and in going to their business; and when
going out to dinner they take a furtive pipe, and even come
into a drawing-room with coats that stink of stale tobacco.
Now, tobacco is a good thing, and good things ought not
to be wasted. Smoking prematurely is a worse than
waste, tir it annoys people about him and only harms the
smoker. Ono cannot well doubt this, if one but sees
the pimply cheeks and tallowy complexions of the young
short-pipe sucking fools who meet us everywhere. Every
whiff they take up helps to blow their brains out, and put
out of tune their organs of digestion. Few mon can smoke
ear ly,in the day w thout hurting them, and any boy who
does so must assuredly be weakened both in body and in
mind by it. A boy (which word applies to all youths under
20) who goes to business daily with a pipe between his teeth
has put on enemy into his mouth, that will steal away his
brains, and it is well that his employer should bo warned
against the robbery. Smoking prematurely is a habit as
injurious as taking early morning drams, or drinking port
wine before dinner ; and as the evil has increased to really
serious dimensions, Air Punch may be excused for nicking
serious remarks, and not making a joke of it,—.Pum/t,

A charmingly readable little violet-coloured sit•
penny brochure, is this timely tribute to one, alas,
now dead and gone—Robson, of the Olympic! It
ought, however, to have had its authorship more
accurately defined upon its title-page. The" Sketch"
of Robson as here given to us, is—in spite of what
the title-page asserts—not by Mr. Sala. Three gen■
tlemen are, by that random assertion, coolly rolled
into one, like (as Mrs. Malaprop would say) Cer-
berus. One of the three, if you will, is the famous
New York correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, that
capital, comical, vivacious, sparkling, delightful
ready-writer of reports, novels, newspaper articles,
anything you please—whom it was the fashion once
upon a time to sneer at as Dickens-and-water I G. A.
Sala, to wit, of " Twice Round the Clock," of the
" Seven Sons of Mammon," of " Gislight and Day•
light," of the Temple Bar lifacazine, of the staff of
Household Words, and All the Year Bound, author
of " Quite. Alone," photographer of " The
Streets of the World," Reporter, Romancist,
Essayist, Correspondent I Nee, here, too, as
a Sketcher of poor Robson, as a celebrant
of his genius, as a delineator of his peculiarities—Mr
Sala is—how shall we put it ? Well, he is not the
least bit in the world like his last heroine in being
" Qaite Alone !" He is, here, oa the contrary, as we
have said, but as One Out of Three. And—as it
happens—in spite of all his brilliant powers, as a
Sketcher of London People, and especially of
London Celebrities—Mr Sala is here simply as—
the last and the least of the three. His
colaborateurs in the production of this most
acceptable, because wonderfully well-timed memo-
rial of Robson, being—the anonymous biographer
of Robson (immediately after the latter's recent de-
mise) in the columns of our very able and
thoroughly and most consistently liberal contem-
porary the Daily News, and—in this, not only
making up the third, but fairly leading them off—
the publisher himself, Mr. Hotten, of Piccadilly. In
point of feet, therefore,whatever there is in this little
memorial sketch of Robson, that is perfectly fresh
and original, is Mr. Hotten's. The rest of it, being
simply so much reprint—here from the Daily
News—there from the American journal for which
Mr. Sala pencilled his limning of Robson while
Robson himself was yet living. What we are
especially thankful for, therefore, in the matter of
this livraison, is precisely this fresh fragmentary
morsel of information in regard to Thomas Brown-
bill, otherwise Frederick Robson, penned by Mr.
Rotten, of Piccadilly, and penned by him in the
manner following. Quoth Mr. Rotten (after a
graphic sketch of the locality referred to)—in a little
out-of-the-way back-alum hard by the Strand, in a
strange cluster of holes and corners, yclept Bedford-
bury, there in the year 1836, and while he was yet
no more than fifteen years of age—
bne Thomas Robson Brownbill, a little boy from Mar-
gate, was apprenticed to Mr Smellie, the copperplate en-
graver and well-known printer of Mr George Cruikshank's
humorous plates.
Master Brownbill's friends had found him crazy after the
stage as other urchins sometimes are after a sea life. Various
professions, less romantic but conceived to be more respect-
able, were mentioned to him, but, with the exception of the
graver's art, he would not listen to any one of them. This
he thought he might like, so his mother resolved to try him.
The lad soon became an immense favourite with his master
and the workmen, and they familiarly nicknamed him
"Bill," "little Bill," a sort of jocose shortening of his sur-
name, Brownbill—for he was not known as Robson until
some years later, when he adopted a christian name as his
theatrical title, adding Frederick, which he considered de
cidedly stylish and quite out of the common ; a custom, not
very unusual I believe, with other ladies and gentlemen of
his profession. I met one of the workmen the day after his
death, and told him of his old comrade's departure. " What,
little Bill gone I" he said. "Ah he wee a merry lad, but
he had better by half 'a stuck to the bench."
" Little Bill" soon began to exhibit his theatrical tastes to
the workmen, and his powers of mimicry kept the estab-
lishment from morn until night in a continual state of good
humour. It a knife grinder or other travelling oddity en-
tered the court, Bill buttoned up his coat, cocked his hat, and
bawled in imitation until the tears ran down the men's faces
with laughter. The apprentice always dressed showily, and
usually had his hair artificially curled in ringlets. His hat
was an extra size with a twisted brim, and as he wore this
somewhat jauntily set upon a rather large-sized head, the
vulgar boys of the court used to called him the " little big
head."
Alas for the uncertainties of parental authority! Although
the days were occupied over the graver, the nights were
almost as regularly spent on the two or three amateur stages
which were then to be met with in this neighbourhood, end
the costume we have just mentioned, and the ringie•ts, were
simply the effects of the mind's bent and the evening's re-
creation. The youth, however, never shirked work fer
play ; and his master used to say that there was not a man I
or boy in his shop who was so regular in the morning's at-
tendance as little Brownbill. At this time he lived with his
mother—his father had been dead many years—in Henry-
street,Vauxhall, so that he had some distance to walk daily.
He was bound for seven years, but only stopped four with
his master. An unforeseen circumstance happening, the
now skilful engraver and amateur theatrical found himself
at 19 out of his time, and his own master. Whether it was
a promise made to his mother, or that he feared to rely en-
tirely on the stage for a livelihood, we do not know, but
certain it is that immediately upon obtaining his liberty he
did not go and enlist, without more ado, in the dramatic
corps of one of the London theatres. In his old apprentice-
ship days, he used to say he would do so directly an oppor-
tunity offered itself; but this was probably one of those
little threats with which sanguine young people are apt to
thoughtlessly alarm their fidgetti elders. His master gave
relinquished.
oFo
maTtthheete
the amateur theatrical, finding himself free, very wisely
Brownbill now took a shop in Bryd
up business in the old court, and removed to Scotland, and
conceived that a little business might be formed out of the
"Lord Lovel"—
ma e he continued to
paper attached
old customers that Mr Smellie had
gabesar.isdtroeneetcl;cll,olvreßnto-bgsaorn.
Covent-gar-
den, and here he carried on business as a master engraver for
both
2otmh ownitthhs.himDsuelrfinagndthheiswahuodlieeetfc te:iswtai
Croffrne ri nog ah icsonueni
take part in amateur performances, and a favourite song,
adpur eosledu t
friend ho lass atshba et ehnebeforene never
e
r
semthrraeneratrCootwbesTne.trFyi
yYll's :epnt piecehe at business had been
takengh-
provincial,home hisbut toolslatte
latterly
hgt
to unt
hre rei na
shutterslßyrsYudngge tf-
keep as curiosities, and had accepted the
firstnt igmsrmea engraver
small thehaaPl
try
I have just said that he kept his
a large public--one u b manager.lai
nc —c
tools when h© gave up
his business, He used to say to
metropolitan—as Frederick Robson.
looked at or handled them without pleasant reminiscences
of those early apprentice days passed in the quaint little
Bedfordbury-Ntuare days unalloyed by the cares of
managerial life or mental dejection.
Of this strange, eccentric, Tragic-Comic actor—
this pre-eminent Grotesque—Robson, of the
Olympic--there appears, upon the cover of this
sixpenny brochure, the vera efit.ies in the shape of
a little woodcut presenting hits to our view as
The Wandering Minstrel! In respect to the won-
drous representation of which dilapidated (not to'
say squalid) character by Robson) We remember our
selves hearing Douglas Jerrold remark one day,
with a pretended shudder....“ I could fancy his
playing it—on his Benefit Night—with real ver-
min !" An anecdote entirely at Mr. Hotten's service
—in the event of his reprinting this admirable
sketch of Robson.

.M...1...M% ••••••11.

Nathaniel
Hawthorne.as Hotten.
Pansie. By
It
teroetnd
es "Pansie" is simulta.
In appearance--ig
neously with the foregoing
_,a
pansies
to be looked into—ah,
°"'""a Companion publica-
tion. But—when
(" To Annie,")
°off it ! Yes, here in "Pansie"
how different! The nameless odour of death, it is
:;h:eudintlueororf the little book—the death,
true, is upon each--what Edgar Poe, in his most
wonderful poem
r red Puritan
to,
defines,,....,, at
"-=the
et hdee ‘ll'
death,
siens
inmart'"Robson,",
,i,iondbioeo,,
fo"
fo
tr
theh
" justbeUtrierUfel
—not one of the
Poe'e death-songPansies"but
charming little sketch of the child Pansie—we have
the last little fragrant efflorescent morsel of Haw-
thorne ! A spray of Hawthorne, as it were, put-
ting freshly into leaf and flower and perfume just
before the goodly tree itself was cut down so suds
&lily and prematurely. It was the beginning of a
new story by the world-famous American Poet-
Romancist, Nathaniel Hawthorne_a new story by
him to be entitled " The Dolliver Romance." Of
that new story the novelist of the " Scarlet Letter"
was destined only to write the opening chapter, a
chapter hero presented to the English reader under
the name of the childsheroine of it—Pansie! How
gracefully and graciously it is written, this last
outpouring from the fancy of Hawthorne, let the
subjoined fragment attest ;
"Pansie, darling," said Dr Dolliver cheerily, patting her
brown hair with his tremulous fingers, " thou has put some
of thine own. friskiness into poor old grandfather, this fine
morning ! Doat know, child, that be canes near breaking

In this merry humour they sat down to the table, great-
grandpana and Pantie side by side, and the kitten, as soon
appeared, making a third in the party. First, she showed
her mottled head out of Pansie's lap, delicately sipping
milk from the child's basin without rebuke ; then she took
post on the old gentleman's shoulder, purring like a spin-
ning-wheel, trying her claws in the wadding of his dress-
ing-gown, and still more impressively reminding him of
her presence by putting out a paw to intercept a warmed-
over morsel of yesterday's chicken on its way to the doctor's
mouth. After skilfully achieving this feat, she scrambled
down upon the breakfast-table and began to wash her face
and hands. Evidently these companions were all three on
intimate terms, as was natural enough, since a great many
childish impulses were softly creeping back on the simple-
minded old man ; insomuch that, if no worldly necessities
nor painful infirmity had disturbed him, his remnant of
life might have been as cheaply and cheerily enjoyed as the
early playtime of the kitten and the child. Old Dr Dolli•
ver and his great-granddaughter (a ponderous title, which
seemed quite to overwhelm the tiny figure of Pansie) had
met one another at the two extremities of the life-circle ;
her sunrise served him for a sunset, illuminating his locks
of silver and hers of golden brown with a homogeneous
shimmer of twinkling light.
Little Pansie was the one earthly creature that inherited
a drop of the Dolliver blood. The Doctor's only child, poor
Bessie's offspring, had died the batter part of a hundred
years before, and his grandchildren, a numerous and dimly
remembered brood, had vanished along his weary track in
their youth, maturity, or incipient ago, till, hardly knowing
how it had all happened, he found himself tottering onward
with an infant's small fingers in his nerveless grasp.

Apply those closing words—not, as here hinted, to
old Dr Dolliver, but to Nathaniel Hawthorne him-
self—and see how marvellously, pathetically, mys-
teriously they express the sudden straying away and
evanishing of the dreamer of this dream of Pansie,
away into the land of dreams—" hardly knowing
how it all had happened, he found himself tottering
onward with an infant's small fingers in his nerve•
less grasp." And so—passing from our ken with
the child Pansie's hand in his—adieu to Nathaniel
Hawthorne!