The Sun.
London, England, 1837-04-24 00:00:00

JACK BRA G. Three Vol.g
Bentley, London, 1837.
Those who relish a hearty laugh will do well to
Pertisa this tale. It is the most side-splitting work of
.ne season. Jack Brag, the hero, is one of those
lying, vulgar, upstarts who, being cursed with an ambi-
tion above their capacity, and smitten with a passion
for fashionable notoriety, are constantly getting them-
selves into scrapes. He is a grotesque compound of
Congreve's Captain Bluffe, and Foote's young Wild-
ing, possessing all the swagger and cowardice of the
one, combined with the inventive faculties of the
other. His habit of lying, in fact, amounts to a dis-
ease ; and the manner in which he packs up his false-
' hoods, and bolsters up one, by another still more pre-
posterous, would do credit to " plump Jack" himself.
That the, author, while drawing this character, had
an original in his eye, we have not the slightest
doubt ; but in his seal to convulse his readers with
laughter, he has allowed himself to depart from the
life, and degenerate into a thousand extravagances.
Jack Brag is thrown into situations which no man is
ever thrown into, except in a farce. His whole court-
ship, for instance, with the widow Dallington and her
sister' where he makes love to both, and is accepted
by 'ooth, is irreconcileable with even the remotest pro-
b'ability. But Mr. Hook is by no means fastidious
in the selection of his incidents. He cares little about
their fitness, provided they be such as to furnish mate-
rials for laughter. To keep his reader's risible muscles
in constant play, seems to be the chief object of his
ambition ; and it is but justice to say, that in this
respect he is successful beyond any other writer of his
day. There are scenes in Jack Brag, where the
reader, however anxious to preserve a grave face and
hurry on with the narrative, finds himself compelled
to lay down the book, and fairly have his roar out.
Were he to resist longer, he would split. Next to the
hero, the two best characters in this novel are those
of the quiet, polite gambler, Colonel Stiffkey, and the
hen-pecked Mr. Peckover, who is always enforcing
his own opinions by the authority of Mrs.
As for the females, with the exception of the vulgar,
good-humoured Mrs. Brag, they are pure nonentities.
In describing his amiable and beautiful heroines Mr.
Hook catalogues their attractions in the matter-of-fact,
business style of an auctioneer cataloguing the items
of a sale. Hence we take little or no interest in them,
and feel relieved when they are shuffled aside, to make
way for one of those worldly male portraits in which
the author, addicted though he is to caricature, always
draws from the life.

T-; AND PROGRESS OF THE BRITISH
POWER IN INDIA, VoL. I.
Allen, London, 1837.
Mr. Auber, the author of the present work, has
brought to a difficult task, much skill and research.
The volume before us commences with the year 1600,
and goes down to the year 1785, when the English
Government in India was settled on a firm basis, to
which the judicious and vigorous system of Warren
Hastings not a little contributed. In alluding, at the
close of his volume, to the impeachment of this cele-
brated statesman, which, as is well known, was almost
exclusively the work of Burke, Mr. Auber states that
" Burke even at the close of his life, when suffering
under severe domestic affliction in the loss of his son,
still retained the strongest feeling against Mr. Hast-
ings, and the idea that he was to be rewarded with a
peerage seems literally to have haunted his imagina-
tion." This is a curious, and to us novel, trait of
character in the author of the imperishable " Reflee- •
tions on the French Revolution," which, however, will
trot surprise those who know the tenacity with which
he Clung, through evil report and good report, to a
prejudice which he had once adopted. It is a singular
circumstance that Warren Hastings not only outlived
all the managers of the impeachment against him—one
of whom, Burke, would have brought him to the
scaffold, if he could—but on his last appearance in St.
Stephen's in 1813, where he attended to give evidence
on the renewal of the Company's charter, was wel-
comed with enthusiasm by that very Legislature, which
upwards of twenty years before, had been all but unani-
mous in the determination to have him impeached !
Mr. Auber's history, so far as we have been able to
judge from a hasty perusal, is written in a tone of im-
partiality ; but its greatest recommendation is the re-
search that it displays in every page.

The will and codicil of the late Mrs. Fitzherbert has
been proved at Doctors' Commons by Sir George Francis
Seymour, Knight; John Gurwood, and Samuel Foster, Esqrs.,
the executor:. The amount of personal property is sworn un-
der 35,0001. The testatrix has bequeathed several legacies,
among which are two to her nieces, Mrs. Smythe and Lady
Bathurst, of 1,0001. each, and a like sum to Mrs. Craven. By
a codicil in her own handwriting, dated April, 1836, are be-
quests of annuities to her servants, from hO/. to 2001. The
resirine of the property is left to her t•.to daughters.
Ice, four
.inches thick, was found o:le day last
Week in a garden at Brighton. —/Irly hton Gazette.
The Sultan has appointed a Frenchman to teach
hip native language at Constantinople, at the charge of the
Government.

,
It is in contemplation to substitute a first-rate
lata.`ue of his late Majesty, in place of the brick and mortar
burlesque on royalty that now ornaments the summit of the
Police-station at Battle-bridge.
MR. MORIER'S NEW NOVEL " ABEL ALL-
Wurr."—Mr. Morier has hitherto confined himself almost ex-
clusively to the delineation of oriental manners, and certainly
Be work of the kind has ever le,:en more popular than " Hajji
Baba," the Gil Bias of the East. His romance of e Zohrab
the Hostage," showed that he possessed a still higher vein—
Proving that the most humourous writer always possesses the
ezftirest command over the finer and deeper feelings of the heart.
" Abel Allnutt" is of a different class from either of the pro-
ductions we have noticed. It presents a succession of Eng-
lish domestic scenes and characters, varied by the introduction
cf those eccentric personages who abound in all artificial so-
wtles- In these volumes the author exhibits an acquaintance
with English characters, feelings, habits, and modes of life in
a great variety of grades, and depicts individuals with a degree
c'f nicety and tact which at once places them before the mind's
It3'ie s°l the reader. " Abel Allnutt " is a very interesting story ;
4z
."fl r4rfn. morever, by the hand of a master."—Edinburgh
Post.
FALSE PROPIIETS.—
There were some prophets in
"" last century who foretold the end of the eorld with the
be Crack of doom, the end of the world was adjourned, and
A , and anther, and another last day appoited. When
most
ignoranot and credulous began to reflectn on the num-
er cf fine doomsdays they had passed in vain, fears there was
an end; of faith in the prophets who had run their authority
aare ga`rist the existence of the world. Our political prophets
committed to the same discredit by their repeatedly prog-
nostications of the destruction of the country, which never is,
bui.t always to be,
11 ruined. There has not been a measure of
propo.sed within the last seven years which has not car-
often,a a doomsday with it, according to his political seers. Heave
then„ indeed: have we been reminded of Swift's spider, which
ht that the world was at end when its web was swept
SevenvaY by a broom l—Fonblanque's England under the Last
Administrations, just published.
ALGIERS UNDER THE FRENCH.---" We found
inarselves, after we had passed the gate, in the broadest street
he town ; the houses right and left were in ruins, the
street is
Prette
haying thrown them down to increase the width of the
: 1 everywhere the stones and rubbish lay about, the trans-
t)vort of which caused unceasingtumult. The porters. often
_ oet or six for one object, mostly ran along ; and those who did
rdlowlook before them ran au imminent risk of being knocked
e
dno, particularly by the long beams which some of them car-
black n their heads. Costumes of every kind surrounded us,—
spiend dabyles from Mount Atlas, in white cloaks ; Moors in
many-coloured dresses ; Negroes in harlequin jackets,
embroidered all over with bright, variegated flowers and stars ;
°lll,losoant French officers; Suaves and Spahis in Oriental French
littterrin ; Parisian waiting-maids and
Aloorish matrons, the
covered with linen in such a way that only their eyes are
viQi'le, and looking exactly like corpses risen from the bed of
_mate,atc_,toe gaze once more upon the living; Jewesses, their feet
o'er dwitinly wearing
sandals, but in recompense glittering all
long, In
filligree and having on their heads tuyans three feet
in the streot f : all these different costumes swarmed
e
s, intermingled with as strange a medley of ani-
Sensilesso in Africa," by
Mr. Prince Puchler Mushau.
Lover's new Irish Story, " Rory O'More,"
to be Published on Wednesday next by Mr. entley.
expect d fromtees are full of that rich comedy which might be
e Mr. L • The
work, Lover. re songs introduced in this
illustrative are very nurnurc'us and beautiful, and the fifteen
not less .etching-s by the author, will render " Rory O'More"
unique than attractive.