The Sun.
London, England, 1837-02-28 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

SUPPLEMENT TO MACCuLLOCH'S COM-

.111E1?Cl A L DICTIONARY.
_Longman. London, 1837.

As we have riot yet seen Mr. Maccullocl►'s Coanuercid
Dictionary, we cannot of course give any opinion upon it

we may, however, say that the work before us, which is in•
tended as a supplement to it, is full of the most valuabh
information on matters exclusively relating to trade ant
commerce, and professes to bring down the information con.
tained in the Dictionary to December, 1836.

IBBOTSON ON THE CORN LA WS.
E. Wilson. London, 1837.

The best—that is to say, the most consistently—rea-
soned chapter in this little volume is that wherein the
author endeavours to prove that the English landholders
have nothing to fear from a competition with foreign corn-
He here maintains his ground with marked
success ; and his arguments, which are all of a direct, prac-
tical character, are well worthy the grave consideration of
those—and they are a rapidly increasing class—who have
turned their attention to one of the most important subjects
of the day.

growers.

FAMILY POETRY.
Tilt. London, 1837.

Family Poetry, like Album Poetry, is our abhorrence,
for, in nine cases out of ten, it is sure to be twaddle ; and,
in the tenth, absolutely unreadable. There are exceptions,
however, to every rule, and this elegant little volume is one ;
for it contains, for the use of well-disciplined families, se-
lections from the works of the best modern poets, made
with skill and judgment. The hest extracts arc those which
have been taker► from the writings of James Montgomery,
of Sheffield, the stately and impressive close of whose
" West Indies" must be familiar to every lover of poetry.

MEDI C US -MA GUS.
Whittaker. Sheffield, 1837.

We do not know why this poem should be called " Me.
dicus-Magus," for it is, with scarcely an exception, a de•
scription of the scenery in the neighbourhood of the Der•
byshire Peak, and of the domestic habits and peculiaritie:

of the miners in that romantic district. The author, Mr.
Furness, is himself a miner, and shows throughout his
poem that he is possessed of genuine sensibility, and a
quick apprehension of what Mr. Bucke has somewhere
called, " The harmonies, beauties, and sublimities of na-
ture." Some of his sketches are quite Crabbe-like in their
minuteness—take, for instance, this description of a miner's
daily occupation :
" When winter nights hung on the silent dale,
And wond'ring gossips listened to his tale,
As curfew tolled the darksome hour in chime,
Some useful knickknacks occupied his time;
Then would he dress a helm, repair a shoe,
Or scoop a ladle from a sallow's bough,
Bore fuses, deftly plat, an osier hive,
Make stows, and keep the heavy hours alive,
Till nine had warned, when he with toil opprest,
In holy silence sunk to balmy rest."
For plough and cart he owned a crop-eared mare,
That knapt the knolls and kept his pingle bare ;
One brindled cow, that grazed the herby dale,
At eve and morn for Agnes filled the pail ;
Spring plucked him creases from her weedy floods,
And summer berries from his wilds and woods ;
For him brown autumn reaped a southern hill,
And winter thrashed, and plied for him the mill."
h e xpression in th 4 above passage, " Autumn reaped a
southern hill," proves that Mr. Furness does not derive his
ideas, like so many of our small coterie poets, from books, but
direct from nature, as her processes are witnessed in his own
bleak, but picturesque locality. We perceive, throughout his
unassuming little volume, that he is a man of a strong but
undisciplined mind, who has turned to the best account the
few opportunities he has had of hiving various knowledge.
We therefore say to him " Go on, and prosper ;" we sym-
pathize with the struggles of a healthy vigorous nature, to
raise itself in the scale of intellectual eminence, and would
cheerfully do our humble best to encourage it, when we
would leave half the sickly " Annual" scribblers of the
day to sink or swim as the case might happen.

DEVELOPEMENT OF FEMALE CHARACTER,

Virtue. London, 1837.
This is a pious publication, and had it not been quite so
prosy and prolix, might have been more successful than,
we apprehend, it is likely to be. But why does this author
entitle it " A Developement of Female Character ?" It
is no more that, than it is a development of an Egyptian
mummy. Woman—" varium et mutabile semper, fcemi-
na," as Virgil phrases it—is a riddle whom it requires a
greater conjuror than Mr. Phillips to expound. Had he
called his work " Spiritual Advice to the Female Sex,"
the title would have been appropriate enough, but we pro-
test against its being mis-nomered a " Developement."
The most effective chapter in the volume is that entitled
the " Heart Unveiled," which is penned throughout in a
spirit of zealous, unaffected piety.