The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-27 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 27, 1863.

ca
ogai n
nnese t the progress t
ing linkpro rbestswoef e freedom,n
ourselves
and a
na ids os
oams
eb epionwg ear
with which we have little or nothing in common.
This is not of course the object which is of pri-
mary importance to us, but still it might interest
many and influence more to take up the cause with
more heartiness. The Chairman explained the
feeling which animated the League in their con-
sideration of this affair. They knew that the
Poles were fighting against " fearful odds," but
then they made the' fewest errors," and they
trusted that victory would finally crown the side
of those who made the least mistakes. This
sanguine notion may not be so quixotic
as some may deem it expedient to call it,
and long after the prophecy has been uttered
amid denials and disclaimers, we may see its
happy fulfilment, and rejoice in the splendour of
its successful accomplishment. It is a significant
study to trace the gradual working of events which
are here chronicled in the order of their occurrence,
until we come to the one fatal record, which was
like a torch applied to a train that had long tempted
fate, and coveted destruction. That recruitment
with which all Europe has rung, and condemned as
a gigantic error, has been the keynote of rebellion,
and the signal for resistance to the heart of Poland
ever since. It has lived on in the spirit of the land,
and the dying have bequeathed its memory to their
survivors to perpetuate, with the tenacity which
animated the brave in days of
" And still his name sounds stirring unto the men of Rome,
As the trumpet blast which calls to them to charge the
Volscians home."

So deep in the feelings of the country will exist
the recollection of that gross outrage on the rights
and liberties of a nation. Therefore Lord CAMP-
BELL expressed a sincere hope that so many errors
of judgment would be sure to bring their perpetra-
tors to ruin, and from those failures might spring up
a bright and better futuro for Poland. Mr. HEN-
NESSY exhibited his usual animation and zeal in
this cause, and very effectively addressed the meet-
ing. He moved the resolution that the heroism of
the Poles had entitled them to the admiration and
support of Great Britain. The hon. member went
over the features of the case as regarded the parti-
tion of Poland by the three great robber Powers—
Russia, Austria, and Prussia. He also made a
strong point of the error committed by Lord
PALMERSTON in the former insurrection of the Poles.
It had been concealed for thirty years, but now
has come to light. It certainly was a lamentable
mistake of the noble lord's, because had matters
been properly adjusted then, the present grievous
state of things might never have come to pass.
The plan that was proposed by Louis PHILIPPE
was in every respect one which was likely to prove
beneficial to the interests of Poland; and it is greatly
to be deplored that from misguided motives the
good opportuuity was lost, and that generation and
the next allowed to sustain the calamities that
thence ensued. Earl RUSSELL did not escape the
searching scrutiny of the speaker, and he de-
nounced with natural indignation the course he
had pursued in writing a despatch which expressed
delight at the friendly intentions of the CZAR to
the Poles. It is to be feared there is too much
truth in the opinion of Mr. HENNESSY that our
Government in this crisis would do nothing but
keep themselves in office. This a very difficult
matter to settle in a satisfactory manner, but there
is every reason to approve its discussion and exa-
mination. It may suit the creeds of diplomatists
and the doctrines of peacenaongers that a brave
people should be immolated on the shrine
of tyranny and cupidity, that the tenets of an
absurd theory may be carried out ; but such argu-
ments will not suit the general feeling of the people
of this country. They will expect that justice
should be heard and the claims of right attended
to, although mighty potentates be discomfited, and
ruanwavring politicians be out in their reckonings
as to the crushing of all national feeling through
the limits of a patriotic land.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

SPAIN.

MADRID, Nov. 26 (Evening).
The Senate has passed the Address in reply to
the Queen's speech.
The Congress was declared definitively consti-
tuted yesterday. Senor Rios Roses was elected
President.

LITERATURE.

Hamlet : Tragedie en 5 Acts de TV. Shakespeare.
Traduite en vers Francais. Par le Chevalier
de Chatelain. Bvo., pr. 142. Rolandi.
Our hopes in regard to the Chevalier de Chate-
lain as a translator of Shakspere into the French
language are being realised. His first daring ven-
ture in that direction, it may be remembered, was
Macbeth. His next, the present one—a venture
still more daring of its kind—has been Hamlet.
Has been—for the work is here before us accom-
plished! Upon its accomplishment we would at
once offer to the Chevalier our cordial felicitations.
And they are, indeed, deserved. For we take the
production of a successful version of a wondrous
masterpiece such as Hamlet into French, to be
equivalent, as an intellectual achievement, to
the production of an original work of very con-
siderable importance. Among all the fifty odd
dramas of Shakspere we should he disposed at
once, and unhesitatingly, to regard the transla-
tion of " Hamlet" as about the most difficult of
accomplishment. In many respects, the language
in it, is the most idiomatic in all the Shaksperian
literature. The marvellously mixed characters of
three of the principal personages in this
great drama Hamlet himself, old Polo-
nious, and his fair young daughter Ophelia—
impart to the strangely alternating wisdom,
pathos, humour, tenderness, sublimity of the
poetry, an almost bewildering incoherency. And
this for very sufficient reasons. In the instance
of Ophelia, by the exquisitely affecting incident of
her love-distraught brain becoming crazed by her
many and most bitter misfortunes. In the instance
of Polonius, by senility clouding over an intellect
originally keen and luminous : hence the blending
in his words of the profoundest worldly wisdom
with the shallowest silliness, almost amounting at
times to mere drivel and buffJonery. The sanity
or insanity of the Danish Prince himself is still (as
Dr. Connolly's recently published medico-literary
treatise very pointedly indicates) a matter for con-
tinued discussion—to some even a matter in dispute
distractingly problematical. Yet it is this same
mystically confused and all but bewildering tragedy
of "Hamlet" that the Chevalier de Chatelain has
here " done" into French with admirable exacti-
tude. Better then any words of comment from our-
selves as to the skill with which he has performed
his task—a task to him manifestly (in spite of its
difficulties) a labour of very love—better than any
words of ours will be one or two exemplars, by way
of extract, of the manner of his translation. In
selecting our quotations, moreover, from the five
acts of the Tragedy, we shall purposely cite pas-
sages with which the readers of "Hamlet" are the
most intimately acquainted. Selecting in this
way, therefore, a few specimen-fragments from
the Chevalier de Chatelain's version of Hamlet in
French, we will give here the famous apostrophe to
the Ghost :
Quo tu sois un Esprit frais produit de l'ether,
Ou bien damns lutin eehappe do l'enfer,
Que tes intentions soient bonnes ou mechantes,
Tu revets a mos yeas des furmes si vivantes
Que je veux to parley. Je t'appellerai Roi
Pere, Royal Danois, Hamlet—oh I reponds-moi ;
Et ne me laisse pas croupir dans l'ignorance ;
Mais, oh I dis-moi pourquoi tes ossements par chance
Deposes dans la tombs ont brise leurs liens,
Pour to jeter ici comma une langue aux chiens.
Que vent dire, quo toi, fait et parfait cadavre,
Tout revetu d'acier, tu viennes a ce havre
Pour effrayer la nuit, faire trembler nos ccours,
Et pubs nous injector de sublimes horreurs I
Par to venue ici, dis I quo pretends-tu fake I
Quel en est le pourquoi ? quel en est le Luster° ?
Where the Chevalier appears to have failed in the
mere manner of his translation, the failure we can-
not but look upon as attributable in the main to the
genius of the French language,ascontradistinguished
in many ways from our own far bolder, more
rugged, vigorous, and, even, in its capabilities of ex-
pressing the loftier emotions, we would venture to
say, sub!imer Saxon Speech. Quel en est le pour-
quois 4 seems illustrative in this way of the mean-
ing of our contrast, a contrast in no respect to be
regarded as invidious : any more than it could be
deemed invidious to remark upon the simple fact
that in all French literature there is no paral-
lel to the sublimities either of the Shak-
sperian tragedies themselves, or of the divine epic
of Milton. Hero, however, is a still more notable
illustration of the Chevalier de Chatelain's powers
as a translator of Shakspere, to wit, that discernable
in his version of Hamlet's immortal soliloquy—

Telle eat la question: E tre ou bien ne pea etre :
A savoir, si, l'esprit de lui-memo eat plus maitre,
En supportant les coups, les inches du destin,
Plut tit qu'en se cabrant sur des soucis sans fin,
S'aneantir 2 Mourir—Jormir—pas davantage ;
Dire qu'en s'endormant soudain on met I'ancrage
Stir les peines du ccour, sur les maux, lea ennuis
Dont l'humaine nature eat l'inaondable puits.
C'est la la fie des fins, oui da I la fin dernie:e,
Quo l'on doit desirer de facon singuliere.
Mom•ir—Jormir—dormir—peut-etre pour rover,
Oui di, voila le his; it le faut observer:
Dans ce sommoil do mort quand d'hurneur misanthrope
Nous aurons rejete notre frele enveloppe,
Queles roves, surgiront ? . . Cola donne a penser,
Et le pour et le contre it nous le faut peser.
Car quel est celui-la qui serait asses bete
Pour supporter du sort l'incessante tern pete,
Les torts de l'oppresseur, de I'orgueilleux le " Moi I "
Les peines de l'amour, les delais de la loi,
Dea employes hargneux le dedain, l'insolence
Qu'endure le merits aux mains de l'ignorance,
Quand avec un poignard it pourrait mordicus I
S'exempter de l'impot, et gagner son quitus ?
Quel eat-il celui•la qui sans fin et sans cease
Pot terait des fardeaux jusques a la vieillesse,
Pour grogner et suer, maugreant sur son sort,
Si n'etait la terreur de ce qui suit la mort :
La mort, pays lointain, qui se perd dans les brumes
De la pensee humaine, et dans ses amertumoa
Pays inexplore dont jamais voyageur,
N'est encor revenu, jette le fruid au cellar,
Et nous fait supporter nos mama et nos miseres
Da l'ioconnu plutot qu'aller Bonder les spheres.
La conscience ainsi Fait do nous des poltrons ;
La resolution chez les plus fanfarons
Forte en couleur d'abord, et bleinit et se fans,
Au penser do la mort, a son sublime arcane ;
Et des projets ainsi grands de dimensions,
A l'etat de projets meurent—sans actions.
With one other excerpt (a very brief one)—also in
elle original sufficiently familiar to render its cita-
tion here of especial value—we shall content our-
selves. It is that of Hamlet's epigrammatic couplets
on the mutability of dead Cmsar's clay—
L'hnperial Cesar heron d'un attentat
A fait pendant un temps le monde eoltec et mat,
raeurt : quo devient-il ? . . -Ca gacheux le befouo,
11 recrepit un mur en tripotant sa bone,
Si quo co mort fameux l'epouvante d'hier,
Nous sort de bouche•trou pour la bise d'hiver.
Enough, however, in the way of mere illustra-
tive quotation—always, even when the most
happily selected, unsatisfactory, because by neces-
sity fragmentary. Upon his title-page we observe
that the translator entitles himself not the Author
of Les Moines de Kitkre, of Les Contes de Cantorbery,
of Les Fables de Gay, and of so many other pro-
dnctions of varied merit, but simply yet proudly—
Membre du "National Shakspero Committee !" His
dedication of this French version of " Hamlet,"
moreover, is given thus—" Aux Manes de Shake-
speare, 23 Avril, 1864. Hommage du Traducteur."
It is a noble garland thrown in anticipation
at the base of the pedestal of what we
trust devoutly may prove a fitting monument to
the glory of Shakspere, and a worthy attestation
of the love, gratitude, and admiration of posterity
towards him whom ,Theodore de Banville, as the
Chevalier reminds us upon a flyleaf, has apostro-
phized as—
" Shakespeare ! . . ce penseurl Orabre I Ocean I Eclair I
Abime comnie Goethe! atuo connne Schiller 1
Lyre dont cheque note a des manteaux de flamme I
Gail ouvert gravemont sur la nature et lame I
Phare quo, pour guider ses pales matelots,
L'Art a fait rayonner sur sea alpes de fiots I"

The Country Genitor-Icm. By " Scrutatc,.r," Author
of " Toe Master of the Hounds," One vol., pp.
355. Chapman and Hsi
This book is a combination of sentiment and
sports. It contains a romantic love-story, in which
the heroine deserts the hero and marries the
wrong man. Shortly afterwards her death is an-
nounced, but the sequel of the tale bears some
resemblance to the " Glenara" of Campbell—
" Empty that shroud and that coffin did seem, ,
Glenara, Glenara now read rue ray dream.'
Mingled with this romantic narrative are ;some

spirited sketches of country sports, from which
we extract the following account of how

BARON STEENREIM TAKES THE RIVER.

In this manner the hounds had traversed four large
pasture fields, although with little improvement as to pace,
when Will Lane said, "Perhaps, sir, we had better hold on
at once to Moor Copse ; that's his point, sir—and get out of
the crowd of gentlemen who keep pressing forward."
"Not yet, Will—an old cunning fox, when not found by
hounds, will lie in a hedge-row sometimes. Give them a
few minutes more; and look I the young ones are getting
on now. Work ot this kind will do them good."

" Dia v.ra slow," the Baron remarked ; mine horse, he
pull so to get on."

_
"It will be fast enough presently," the captain replied;
"this is what we call walking up to our fox,"
"Ah 1 vara good I we walk truly ; dis no grand vox

chasse."

The words had scarcely passed his lips when, on the other
side of a thick sedgy hedge-row, a sudden chorus burst forth
troll, the whole pack, which sent every man's heart bound-
ing to his throat. The fox had sprung out just before the
hounds reached it.

" Come on I" screamed the Captain, as he sent his horse
at the double fence, getting iu and out of the opposing
quickset very cleverly, on the other side, over a drop leap
into a dark peaty meadow. "Now, gentlemen," he said,
looking back, "take your places," as men and horses came
floundering down, many of the former showing the way,
headforemost, to their astonished steeds. Firebrand would
have it now all his own way, and the Baron, remembering
his owner's advice, and thinking it most prudent not to
dispute the point with him, gave him his head.
"Mine —, what a leap," he muttered, as he was
thrown forward upon the pommel of his saddle, by Fire-
brand's coming down upon his knees; " die horse, he jump
terrible; but where de dogs—rue no see them—how me
follow ?"

" Go along, sir I" roared a first-flight man, dashing past
him ; and along he was carried, amidst a shower of peat
mud dotting him all over like a catueleopard. The fox had
skirted the corner of Moor Copse, through which the
hounds dashed like lightning, and were now streaming
away across the second meadow at a terrific pace, with
Edmund, Will Lane, and Charley only in their wake.
" Come along, ■ir," shouted the leader, whom Firebrand
seemed determined to follow, " come along I" as he sprang
over the fence into the thicket ;" we shall see them the
other side."

" Oh I mine head I mine hat," cried the luckless Baron,
being torn through the stiff blackthorns at the mercy of
Firebrand, held only by one hand, the other being raised to
defend his face from the sharp prickles, " Dis place
terrible,"

" Never mind, sir ; come along I" again reached his ear,
and the Baron showed on the other aide a figure to behold ;
without his hat, his long hair hanging in wild disorder over
his scratched and bleeding forehead.
Some dozen pink jackets were now added to his company,
who all boldly encountered the stiff fences and deep ditches
of some half score rough pasture fields. Firebrand carry-
ing his rider cleverly over all without a stumble.
"The river, by Jove 1" exclaimed the leader, "and not a
bridge in sight ; have it we must."
"Me no swim, sare," cried the Baron in consternation at
the wide, rapid streaw, within one field of them.
"Your horse can—so come along I" and splash went
horse and rider into the bed of the foaming torrent.
" Oh 1 mine got," exclaimed the now terrified Baron, as
Firebrand sprang high in the air, to clear it in a bound.
Oh I dis is terrible work; dis gentleman vox, he der Freis-
cuhtz, ds red liable." Further words were stopped, by the
.spouting and splashing of water about his ears, from which,
when emerging, the only visible sign of Firebrand was his
head above the eddying current.
" Give him his head to follow me, and don't pull the
reins," was again shouted forth from the bit of pink cloth,
now sailing rapidly down the stream, which in a few
minutes was seen to elongate up the bank, at a place where
cattle came down to drink. "All right again—here we are
on terra firma once more—now for it, to catch them I"
and away sped the first-flight man like an arrow from a
bow, renovated by his shower-bath for fresh exertions,
‘. Hark I I hear thew; hark I—they have reached Hazle-
wood. Oh I for two turns there in my favour and we shall
be up with you, my young master. Ah 1 how they rattle
him round the covert—every hound seems to have him in
view. Ay I there's Charley'a holloa ; hark back 1 he has
been headed I"
A moment's pause—the pack have swung a few yards
outside the wood hedge.
" Hark back I" again cried Charley, with a rate and crack
of his whip. They turn like lightning to the well known
tongue of Old Solomon, who has met the fox, and in a se
tend the wood re-echoes with the full chorus of the pack,
crashing and dashing through the stuff, which bends before
them like reeds to a flood of outbursting waters. " Twang
—twang—twang" goes the horn : " Forward, away 1"
screams the master; "yonder he flies, up the side of the
hedge row to the right."
"Ay, ay I a hit of luck for me new," exclaims the loader
of the Baron; " they are turning our way ; but, hang it
all, that double post and rails, with a blown horse 1 • Must
do it steady, in and out—come *long 1"
Our leader on his made hunter bounds in and over
cleverly the opposing bars; Vat hearing a crash behind him
turns his head, and there lies the Baron on his back, ana
Firebrand disentangling himself from the splintered

timbers.
"Hurt, sir ?" asks one of the dozeß, now pressing on.
" Oh I mine vriend—mine arm,"
" Ah I nasty fall, very," replied the other, passing on ;
" can't stop ; doctor behind,"
"Come along, sir ?" roared another voice, your horse k
caught for you, and they are at check."
The Baron, however, recovers his courage and his
seat, and is, after all, " in at the death," and receives
the crowning honour of " the brush."

Theodore Parker's Works. Vol. V.—Discourses

on Slavery. Vol, I. Thibner.

The fifth volume of the new edition of the works
of Theodore Parker contains the first series of his
eloquent discourse on slavery. The editor very
truly observes that "few will read them and see
how deeply their author's heart was engaged in the
cause of negro emancipation, without being touched
by the thought that in the great struggle now pass-
ing in America the voice which would have spoken
loudest for right and justice has been silent, and the
brave soul which would have exulted in the triumph
of freedom has passed away from earth_" Among
the discourses contained in this volume the most
eloquent is entitled " The Function of. Conscience."
In it the author, after relating the escape of a run-
away slave who took refuge in his house, declares
that no law could justify his surrender of that man
to his pursuers. He charges all to remember " that
nothing in the world without is so sacred as the
eternal law of God ; of the world within nothing is
more venerable than our conscience, the permanent,
everlasting oracle of God. If," he goes on to say, "
am consciously and continually false to this, it is of
no avail that 1 seem loyal to all besides; 1 make
the light that is in me darkness, and how great is
that darkness ! The centre of my manhood is gone
and lam rotten at my heart. Men may respect
me, honour me, but I am not respectable, I am a
base, dishonourable man, and like a tree, broad-
branched, and leafed with green, but all its heart
gnawed out with secret worms; at some slight
touch one day my rotten trunk will fall with
horrid squelch (!) bringing my leafy honours to
dishonoured dust, and men will wonder that
bark could hide such rottenness and ruin."
Among the other discourses are some on " The
Nebraska Question," `‘ The Boston Kidnapping,"
" The Abolition of Slavery by the French Republic,"
&c. We need not say that we do not fully coincide
in all Mr. Parker's opinions, but they have the merit
of being straightforward and thoroughly in earnest.

An.li-Colenso : an Essay towards Biblical Interpre.
Cation. A handbook for Thinkers. By Johannes
Laicus. One Vol. Pp. 358. Hamilton, Adams,

and Co.

Although the title and object of this work would
ensure our sympathy, we must confess that we have
been somewhat dismayed by the grandiloquent
style of the introduction. The author tells us that
his book is " the creative effort of a layman," and
gives, as matters of supreme importance, the dates of
its first conception and final accomplishment. Many
passages in the work evidence a good deal of thought
and a rational spirit of inquiry, and will prove, in-
teresting and perhaps useful to those "thinkers for
whose benefit it has been prepared—if such can
really require a negation to tho preposterous
subtleties of Colenso.

DON'T CALL THINGS BT
THEIR BlGllaTy;f3NdeheAsiMcldrEiisbshe.
—lf a gentleman bus occasion to write about such
transactions as those which made Robson and Redpant
notorious, he must not say that they were gross frauds. It
he reviews a very bad novel, he
must
must
teaalwl if
nonsense, and warn persons disposed to road it that to do
so would be a sinful waste of time. In shert,evagwer.ttleman
must never call a spade a spade. He
it as an agricultural implement —Saturday lie
THE LATE 'AIIIRDEhRiIsNtNriOaRIFfOOI;
aNitoirnfolk, two months since, has died in Nor-
g
Kthe murder of hib
—James Sayler,
Wwwife
ho atM
CastEaSl iena tgwh'is week after two or three days' illness. The
• murder was attended kith circumstances
to have rcumastances of great barbarity.
but
natis Naylor i
wind,
di d n
not pa
been in a thoroughly
it is doubtful whether, even assuming
that he had been convicted, the extreme sentence of thelaw
would ever We been carried out.

,

7;l'fi t
galk.
l• 4 •
(MITE 11Dlat

HER MAJESTY.

WINDSOR CASTLE, NOV. 26.

The Queen, accompanied by her Royal Highness
Princess Beatrice end her Serene Highness Princess
Hohenlohe, drove out yesterday afternoon in a
carriage and four, attended by Mejor'General Hon.
A. Hood on horseback.
Her Majesty, accompanied by her Royal High-
ness the Princess Helena and her Serene Highness
Princess Hohenlohe, visited his Royal Highness
Priuce Arthur at Greenwich-park this morning,
attended by the lion. Mrs. Bruce, Major-General
lion. A. Hood, and Col. F. Ponsonby.
Their Royal Highnesses the Crown Prince and
Princess of Prussia, Prince William, and Princess
Charlotte, attended by Countess Hohenthal and
Count Furstenstein, went to Claremont to visit
Queen Marie Amelie.
Earl de Grey and Ripon arrived at the Castle last
night, and had an audience of the Queen.