The Sun.
London, England, 1852-05-06 00:00:00

T
2 .x.. 4

Dick Swivisller.. His roaring voice, his intense
lieperlatives, bi 3 boisterous laughter, his grey
hairs, his young heart, his good humour, and
his canary, all win upon one immediately. A
terrible dragonness of a Mrs. Plrdiggle (with her five
restrained boys) is introduced in like manner, and
sweeps us away in spite of ourselves, into a visit to
the hovel of an abandoned bricktnaker. Ada and
Esther are of the party who are thus characteristically
addressed by the lord and master of the hovel, the
brickmaker

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you're
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saaagn toesinnadgeontfdo
bope fionl tgl
pe
rsdyer
al iwabneeddi tieslciku
eteos otaiko
nw
bait
adel igc
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custom—l know what you're a going to be up to. Well!
You haven't got no occasion to be up to it. I'll save
you the trouble. IJ my daughter a washin? Yes; she
is a washin. Look at the water. Smell it! That's wot
we drinks. lioN do you like it, and what do
you think of gin, instead! Au't my place dirty?
Yes, it is dirty—it's nat'rally dirty, and it's
nat'rally onwholesome; and we've had five dirty
and oawholesouie children, as is all dead in-
fants, and so much the better for teem, and for us be-
sides. Have I read the little book wot you left? No,
I an't read the little book wot you left. There atet no•
body here as knoWs how to read it; and if there wos, it
would'nt be suitable to me. L'l3 a book fit for a babby,
and I'm not a babby. If you wos to leave me a doll, I
should'ut Taus it. How have I been conducting. of my-
self? Why, I've been drunk for three days; and. I'd a
been drunk four, if I'd a had the money. Don't I never
mean for to go to church? No, I don't never mean for
to go to church. I shouldn't be expected there, if I did;
the beadle's too gee.-feel for me. And how did my wife
get that black eye? Why, I giv' it her; aad if she
says I did'ut, she °s a Lie!"
Before Ada and Esther leave the room, but after
Mrs. Pardiggle and her children have departed, the
poor child, in the arms of the brickmaker's wife, dies.
0 Esthe; I' cried Ada, sinking on her knees beside
it. Look here ! 0 Esther, my love, the little thing!
The suffering, quiet, pretty little thing! lam so sorry
for it. lam so sorry for the mother. I never saw a
sight so pitiful as this before! 0 baby, baby l'
While they are still there, a poor woman, calling out
"Jenny ! Jenny !" hurries in and falls upon the
neck of the bereaved mother.
" She hed no kind of grace about her, but the grace
of sympa:hy; but when she condoled with 'the wo-
man, and her own tears fell, she wanted no beauty.
I say condoled, but her oely words were ' Jenny !
Jenny!' All the rest was in the tone in which she said
them.

"I thought it airy touching to sce these two woram,
coarse and shqbby and beaten, so united; to see whet
they could be to one another; to see hour they felt for
one another; how the heart of each to ouch was soft-
ened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the, best
side of such people is almost hidden from us What the
poor arc to the poor is little known, excepting to them-
:elves and God."

Our friend Harold Skimpole appears for a moment
in this number, but in that moment utters thoughts
anent the Bet that we should have liked to have re-
ferred to the consideration of Dr. Watts. It is at
breakfast, and he is eating honey when he thus die-
courees

" Ho had no objection to honey, be said (and I should
think he had not, for he seemed to like it), but he pro-
tested against the overweening assumptions of Bees. •
He didn't at all see why the busy Bee s:loold be proposed
as a meth' to him; he suppth(d tie Bee liked to make
honey, or he wouldn't do it—nobody allied him. It was
not neciesary for the Bea to make such a merit of his
tastes. If every confectioner went buzzing about the
world, banging •against everything that came in his
way, and egotistically calling upon everybody to take,
notice that he was going to his work and must not be
interrupa-d, the world would be quite an insupportable
place. Tnen, after all, it was a ridiculous position to be
smoked out of your fortune with brimstone, as soon as
you had made it. You would have a very mean opinion
of a Manchester man, if he spun cotton for no other
purpose. He must say he thought a Drone the embodi-
ment of a pleasanter and wiser idea. The Drone said,
unaffectedly, Yell will excuse me; I really cannot at-
tend to the shop! I find myself in a world in which
there is so much to see, and so short a time to see it in.
that I must take the liberty of looking about me, and
begging to be provided for by somebody who doesn't
want to look about him; This appeared to Mr. Skim-
pole to be the Drone philosophy, and he thought it a
very good philosophy—always supposing the Drone to
be willing to be ou good terms with the Bee: which, so
.fer as he knew, the easy fellow always was, if the con-
sequential creature would only let him, and not be so
conceited about bis honey."
By the way Esther obtains some delightful nick=
names, such as Old Woman, Cobweb, Mother Hub-
bard, and Dame Durden. And, by the way, again,
this same Dame Durden has a love passage in the
ninth chapter—Mr. Guppy formally filing a declara-
tion, or in other words popping the question. The
scene is described with infinite humour. After Guppy
has departed, of course rejected—saith Esther :--
, "I sat there for another hour or more, finishing my
books and payments, and getting through plenty of bu-
siness. Then, I arranged my desk, and put everything
away, and was so composed and cheerful that I thought
I had quite dismissed this unexpected incident. But,
when I went up-stairs to my room, I surprised myself by
beginning to laugh about it, and then surprised myself
still more by beginning to cry about it. In short, I was
in aflutter for a little while; and felt as if an old ohOrd
had been more coarsely touched than it ever had been
since the days of the dear old doll, long buried in the
garden."
The closing chapter of the number has reference to
Mr. Snagsby, law stationer, of Cook's-court,
Cursitor-street, who is described as emerging
from tea, " greasy, warm, herbacious, and chewing ;
to Mrs. Snagsby, wife of the aforesaid, whose sharp
uose.is said to have been "like a sharp autumn even-
ing, inclining to be frosty towards the end," to'Gnster-
(er, by some supposed to have been christened 4 asAhu-:
gusts"), their poor slatternly 'servant girl, who
fits," and who regards with such admiration " the little
drawing-room up stairs always kept, as one may, say,
with with its hair in papers and its pinnafore on." _Besides
these, we are introduced again to Mr. Tulkinghorn,
the solicitor of Lincoln's Inn-fields, whom we acoom-
pany to Brook's rag and bottle shop, and up to, the
mysterious second-floor lodger, " The Law Writer,"
strongly suspected by us and by others, we opine, to
be one of the family of the Jarndyces. So ends the
number on the threshold of his apartment.

FINE AItTS.

THE HOLY FAMILY. Painted by Murillo;
engraved by Bridoux. M'Lean. ,
A superb line engraving of this celebrated master-
piece has very recently been issued from the esta-
blishment of Mr. Thomas M`Lean of the Haymarket.
Of late years the graver has been b 0 generally super-
seded by the mezz Ainto-rubber, and the etching.
needle, that we regard with very peculiar satisfaction
its employment in the highest department of
what may be called in a twotold Sense
the " imitative art" par excellence. More particu-
larly are we rejoiced to witness the appearance of a
line engraving with anything like superior preten-
sions about it, when the artist has selected for
representation some more than usually remarkable
original. Precisely thus is it with reference to the
magnificent production before us, in which the mas-
ter-skill of A. Bridoux has admirably interpreted the
master-genius of Murillo. It is now many years
since the "Holy Family," painted by Murillo some-
where about 1660 (namely, in the forty-seventh
year of his age, and twenty-five years before his
demise), came to be regarded as amongst the noblest
evidences of his powers by the people of this country.
Produced originally at Cadiz for the Marquis of
Pedroso, the picture was valued according to Cean
Bermudez at 800 pesos of 15 reels or 600 crowns,
being ultimately bought for the English
nation in 1837, together with Rubens'
" Breecm Serpent, " for the sum of 7,3501.,
and deposited in the National Gallery by order of the
Government. Every one who has visited that melan-
choly repository of the artistic treasures of Great
whole r
Britainbt must have paused before that, if before no
rillo, with the
numbered,
rbepiecdture in the collection in admiration. It is
, indeed, with the masterpieces of the
teaching
thend the
gallery, with the
"St. John," also- by Mu-
of Guido,
Cupid," of Correggio," with the "Sussnnah
Leonardo da Vinci,
with, '' Eece Homo" and the "Mercury
and the Elders',
zarus" of Sebastian adnedl "Lot and his Daughters,"
" Christ and the Doctors" of
the more conspicuous beautiesa withoftthheis""RHaoisliyngraomf La
;
To expatiate_ on
ofch Murillo—lovthe
y
the serene
efeelaettiutiresPcaolntbenance of the Divine
e
the Blessed Virgin,
colouring, the
maternal tenderness of
solemnity,
of St. Joseph—the
psteuhceueliflarities- of
exquisite
meditative aspect
matchless grouping, thee 1
of them transferrede
and all the other glorious pathos,
are
ux_all
the composition would be worse than
would be even out of place here, but that we and
en-
abled to remark that they are all
to the engraving by the skilful hand of Brido
with one exception, of course—that of colouring. The
plate, which is 23 inches high by 20i wide, does
signal honour to Mr. Bridoux, while no inconsiderable
portion of credit will be reflected upon the establish-
ment of Mr. ArLean by the issue of every successive
impression.

NEsDAy, MAY s.—The Brunswick
Thursday, saw the Penin-
Harvey, which left this port last
SOUTLIA3IPTON V. PLYMOUTII.
—stileatY-mpa°cUkTellt,' CWapEtaDin
ngd with the mails for
—say, five or six miles an hour—bound
Docks the day
is:l
the
ea
Needlesn d Oriental
Passage,Com p
iannya' s
thicksteamer o S!ulgtoa
inn,
gCaatp .
halfß r osopkeeesd,
the Mediterranean. She left Southampton
sbiexto
milesre e 2i
n 3
80i
xPt.Asle.n, and had
Had she sailed from r
thus accomplished aboutltywmeonutya;
she would have cro:sed the Channel and have made the en-
trance to the Bay of Biscay, while she
was threading the
difficult navigation of the Southampton waters and the
Needles Passage. On Sunday morning, the 2d instant, at
half-past ten o'clock, the Peninsular and Oriental Company's
steamer Madrid, Captain Weeks, from Spain, was seen by a
fisherman to the southward of the Eddystone, within two
hours' sail of Plymouth. She arrived at Southampton on
Monday night, and her mails reached London on Tuesday
forenoon. had the Madrid come into Plymouth, hex letters
would have reached the metropolis on Monday—more than
twenty-four hours earlier thaw by the course adopted.