The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-30 00:00:00

FRANCE.

B Oct. 29.—The market has been rather
firmer,° REasnd' prices improved. Threes for the Ac-
count are now at 67t. 10c. Mobilier have also
recovered to 1,102 f, 50c. Railway shares show a
slight improvement. The market closed as follows :
41 per Cents .. 95 Italian Loan 73 15
Do. end month.... Do. end month 73 20
3 per Cents - New ditto
Do. end month.... 67 05 Do. end month —
Credit INlobilier.... Russian
Do, end month...• Austrian .. B4 50
Bank Shares 3300 -- Spanish Threes.„ .. 53 25
Rome Debt .. —
!Deferred
Creditßoa :
--oneter .... 1270 .....

RAIL'

'ATB.

Cash. Account.
Orleans ... 975 .. 975
Northern
Lyons and Mediterranean 1005 ..
N evr ditto
Geneva 493 75 .. 498 75
Southern 690 .. 690
Western
Eastern ....
.. 507 50
..
Sardinian
Austrian
Lombard
North of Spain
.. 540 _
Saragossa..
Ditto to Barcelona
..
340

AN APPEAL TO ENGLAND,

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

LONDON, Oct. 23.
SIR,--Allow me to call your attention to the ac-
companying circular, the object of which must needs
excite your sympathy. 11. de Larnartine has not
met in France with the assistance he was entitled
to expect, and he now appeals to England to help
him out of his sad position. Under these circum-
stances, I trust, sir, you will not refuse to grant him
the publicity of your columns.
Both in his name and mine, I thank you before-
hand for your kind concurrence.—l am, sir, your
obedient servant,

ALFRED AZUR,
Representative of M. de Lamartine
117, Jarmyn-street.

SUBSCRIPTION FOR M. DE LAMARTINE, THE GREAT
FRENCH POET.
Nous parlons ici-bas des langaes 4trangeres;
L'onde de rues torrents nest pas I'eau qua to bois;
Mais l'arne comprend Fame, et la pitie rend ft eres
Tous ceux dont le cceur est la yoix.

LIMARTINE : Recueillements Patiques.
Notwithstanding the reiterated appeals which M. de La-
martine has addressed to France his debts are still enormous,
and this illustrious poet, this noble veteran of genius, whose
utterances for nearly half a century have been anxiously
looked for by the whole of Europe, this great statesman, by
whom in 1818 civilisation was saved, cannot now save him-
self, and ho is doomed to see the asylum of his old age, the
seat of his ancestors, become the property of the stranger.
Like Tasso, t✓amocns, Sheridan, Chateaubriand, and
Balzic, he has drank and still drinks of the cup of poverty,
and unless aided by his sympathisers, he is condemned to
pass his last days in a sort of moral ergastuluna and to de-
part from this world without acquitting his debts—debts
originated by his generosity, doubled by his liberality, and
increased threefold by his devoted patriotism—debts not
only honourable in themselves, but which are to him a title
of glory.
There can surely be no more touching spectacle than that
of the unceasing efforts, the superhuman struggles of M.
de Lamartine during the last ten years to enable him to
achieve his liberation—his only care, his sole preoccupation
—for which result he would doubtless willingly sacrifice
the better part of his lame.
The anxious efforts of this great man to wrest his honour
from the hands of his credirors, add another magnificent
poem to those he has written.

Thanks to his unremitting literary and mental labours a
portion of the debt has been paid, but the residue is still
heavy.

To these anxieties are added other afflictions more poig-
nant still, because they strike direct to the heart ; within
two months M. de Lamartine has had to deplore the loss
both of his wifo and his sister.
Still France is forgetful—forgetful of the glory he has
shed upon her, of the services he has rendered her. France
unaided cannot save her poet
Deeply sympathising with his sad position, his friends
have advised him to make a last appeal to those noble minds
who, although not of the-same country, are nevertheless
compatriots by elevation of intellect and the exquisite sen.
timents of the heart.

I have assured M, de Lamartine that I knew enough of
England to be able to guarantee that she would not only
contribute to this work of rehabilitation, but that she would
insist on taking a prominent part in it. tie at first dissented
from this idea, but subsequently sanctioned it in the follow-
ing letter to me, dated October 1 :
" I could not be otherwise than deeply sensible of the
affectionate zeal inspired by your friendship for me. I send
you, according to your wish, my definitive reply. lam so
weary of the struggle that I can flatter you with no hope of
success. But I will not dishearten you. In friendship
sometimes lies the secret of success.
" I consent to your making in England the attempt you
speah• of, and I herewith send you my authorisation.
" Accept my thanks, and believe me, Szc_.
" A. Inc LAMARTINE.'.

Under these circumstances I now solicit your kind con-
currence in the work to which I devote myself. Do not
withhold it, for time presses and the case is urgent.
M. de Lamartine has himself become the publisher of his
general and complete works--poems, romances, literature,
politics, history, and speeches ; he has also added numerous
fragments, and even entire works hitherto unpublished. It
forms a magnificent literary monument, and it is also an
edition of uncommon splendour. .

It is for a copy of this edition that your subscription is
earnestly solicited. Its price is fixed at seventeen guineas,
and M, de Lamm tine undertakes to have it delivered to you
in London or any other part of Great Britain. If, then, you
will kindly remit me a post-office order or a cheque for the
above sum, M. de Lamartine, to whom I shall transmit the
amount of your subscription, will himself forward you the
said complete copy of his works.

I will also thankfully acknowledge in his name, by return
of post, any donation you may be pleased to offer him, and
I should likewise feel grateful if you would acquaint your
friends with the contents and purport of this letter.
Thanking you beforehand for our great poet, and trusting
that British generosity will achieve what France has failed
to acccmplish,—Believe me to be, your most obedient ser_
vant, ALFRED AZUR,

Rreprcsentativo of M. do Lamartine.
117, Jormyn-strwit, London, Oct. 14, 1863.

MRS. NIGHTINGALE'S TOMB IN WESTMINSTER
ABBEY—one of the most remarkable works of the
great sculptor Roubilliac—is scornfully declared by the
Athenceurn to have been made at a time when Gothic art
was supposed to b 3 one of the "follies of our ancestors."
The monument in question, says our contemporary,
shows a frontispiece after the fashion of many books
of the Georgian age, A tomb, with iron doors ajar,
allows a half-shrouded skeleton, Death—dart in hand,
and with the action of muscle-clothed vitality —to
start forth and menace a lady, who, by some strange
process is placed, wearing her night-dress, upon the entab-
lature of the grave porch; she faints, probably as much at
the thought of her attire and situation as at the sight of the
marble terror. Mr. Nightingale, also strangely arrayed,
sustains with one arm his sinking spouse and with the other
makes as if he would divert the dart. He does not, how-
ever, do so in any way that would be effectual, nor with the
slightest evidence of an intention to interpose his own boo y,
as a sculptor would make hire do if filled with the subject
and :earnest in its expression. The gentleman's fingers,
between which the dart might pass, his shrinking air, and
stagey expression of fade, with eyes and mouth wide open,
hair uplifted and dilated nostrils, represent an actor making
a " point '' for the delight of the galleries, not a man in
mortal terror for another's life. If Mr. Nightingale is
meant to be thinking more of himself than of his wife, the
designer has missed the noblest point of his theme; mean-
ing the reverse, the artist has failed to express it, because
he studied, not life, but the stage, where the heartless actor
strutted his little hour before the crowd that came, not to be
taught but struck by the shallow emotions of men no more
in earnest than their audience. As a work of sculpture, no
less than as an architeotonic decoration, this composition is
absurd, because it attempts to represent that which only
painting can fairly render, and parts with the grandeur,
stilled emotion, and abstraction of monumental art.
_ _

The youngest daughter of the Count de Monta-
lenibert took the veil on Tuesday last in the Chapel of the
Dames du Saore Cesar at Conflaus, the Bishop or Orleans
officiating,

People's Edition of Macaulay's History of
England,

The History of England, from the Accession of
James the Second. By the Right Hon. Lord
Macaulay. Part I. Pp. 96. Longman and Co.
The commencement, in a serial form, of a popular
edition of Macaulay's great fragment of a master-
piece, is nothing less than an event in literature.
We know of no work, the publication of which, in
a serial form, at a price so very moderate, and in a
shape in every way so well worthy of preservation,
is calculated so immediately to justify its title by
becoming "Popular." In fourteen monthly instal-
ments, the present edition will be completed—that
is to say, it will be completed in just about one
twelvemonth's time, the initial number being here
already within our hands, and the two last parts
being secure (as usual with all serial issues)
of appearing, a year hence, simultaneously, as a
double number. When thus completed the work
will range upon the subscribers' bookshelves in four
goodly volumes, each volume consisting of some
three hundred closely printed doubled columned
pages. The fourteen numbers or parts—of which
the one here under notice is the first—being, in
effect, then, on that close of their periodical issue
—quartered by the binder. So much for the
material part of the enterprise here adventured upon
by the publishers, an enterprise, the happy thought
of which, we may rest assured, will be bailed, far
and wide, not only in England, but throughout the
whole British Empire, with satisfaction. For,
what, in point of fact, is the work which is thus
being brought directly within reach of the million ?
As a political or religious guide, in any way, we
believe it, for our own part, to be utterly value-
less. But, as a master-piece of noble
writing, we believe it, quite as confidently,
to be, in a manner, unrivalled. It is, so far
as life permitted it to be extended, the most care-
fully considered and the most wonderfully executed
literary performance of the greatest prose writer
in the language. Upon its first appearance, upon
the publication of the first two volumes of the work
—a work its author intended, and its readers hoped,
might in the fulness of time prove very volu-
minous—it was hailed, as one may say, with accla-
mation. Hardly a single dissentient voice was
raised against it as a very marvel of literary com-
position. As a specimen of political partizanship,
"its offence," we shrink not from protesting this, was
" rank and smelt to heaven." The most cynical
among the few critics who really fell foul of it, the
late Right Hon. John Wilson Croker. who had
notoriously a heavy score to clear off, if that
might have been in any way possible against
one who had been years previously utterly
pitiless to himself—in " the " Quarterly ,Review,
in a word, Mr. Croker dubbed the work at
once, with a burr-like sarcasm that still sticks to
it, in the popular remembrance, " a great Whig
pamphlet." Another distinguished writer on the
fory side, but one very different, if only by reason
of the geniality of his temperament, meaning no
other than Sir Archibald Alison, spoke of the great
Whig Historian, the great Whig Fabulist, as
his political foes would rather term him, spoke most
happily of Lord Macaulay as an annalist, as one
sailed not to the bench, but, on the contrary, to
the bar of history. Declining, as assuredly we must
—even, be it said, with a sort of indignation—de-
clining altogether to regard Lord Macaulay as a
mere magnificent pamphleteer, we must nevertheless
recognise the aptness of that phrase of Alison's, as
to his beiog called to the bar of history, and not to
the bench. He is the advocate, the impassioned,
the wondrously eloquent, the absolutely enthralling
advocate—not the judge, who sums up with a
most serene, a most persuasive, and a most
impressive deliberation. And it is by rea-
son of the very fervour of his partisanship that
we do seriously believe the book, as one with a bias,
to be in a manner harmless. Its very fervour puts
the rational reader, from the first and throughout,
upon his guard. And, with regard to its effect
upon the majority of rational men, we rest per-
fectly well assured that when the book is finally
closed, after the most careful, or after the most care-
less, perusal of it, it leaves its reader's judgment
altogether unwarped. " The Devil is not so black,"
even the most infatuated of Whigs would say to
himself, with a shrug of the shoulders, on shutting
up this marvellously vivid series of historical por-
traits—" is not quite so black as he is here painted."
While, upon the other hand, great man as William
111. undoubtedly was, as Prince, as King, as
Statesman, few—none—no, not one, other than
Macaulay himself—could consent to regard him as
nothing less than a hook-nosed Archangel! It is as
a literary masterpiece that we yield up to the work
our unstinted admiration. As a political guide it is,
to our mind, worthless. As a prose composition it is
simply inimitable. As the last and most highly
elaborated production of the greatest master of style
in our literature, as the magnum opus of the most
superb writer of prose in the English language
" The History of England," by Lord Macaulay,
is always secure of winning to itself at once
our eager welcome, no matter what the form
or aspect of the edition in which it may come
to us, whether in one the most modest or
the moat magnificent, the most cheap or the most
costly. But the reception accorded to the People's
Edition here commenced, we may be absolutely
certainovill be ono in every way commensurate
with the comprehensiveness and the splendour of
the lofty reputation enjoyed (wherever the English
language is spoken or read) by the Great Essayist,
Orator, Lyrist, Critic, Annalist, Statesman.