The Sun.
London, England, 1839-11-19 00:00:00

UNIVERSI

LLIGENCE.

OXFORD, Nov. 16.—Yesterday Evan Thomas
Evans, Thomas Owen, and John Peter Evans, of Jesus
College, were elected scholars on the foundation of
that College.

John G:Cazenove, Edward Pedder, Henry Dam-
bleton, and John Booth, have been elected scholars
on the Duchess of Somerset's Thornhill Manor Foun-
dation, and Vero G. Driffield and Frederick E. Mar-
shall, on the Somerset Iver Foundation of Brazenose
College.

The President and Fellows of St. John's College
have presentedithe Rev. Lancelot A. Sharpe, Fellow
of that Society to the Rectory of Tackley, in this
county.

W. L. Childe, Esq., has presented the Rev. G. W.
Murray, of Merton College, to the Vicarage of Kinlet,
Shropshire, to which he has been instituted by the Lord
Bishop of Hereford.

The Rev. Edward Ryder has presented the Rev.
Alfred Gatty, of Exeter College, to the vicarage of Ec
clesfield, Yorkshire.
The Rev. W. North, late of Jesus College, has been
installed Professor and Tutor of St. David's College ;
and the Rev. D. T. Jones has been installed Professor
of the Welch language of the same College.

CAMBRIDGE, Nov. 16.—At a Congregation on Wed-
nesday last the following degrees were conferred :

DOCTOR in DIVINITY.—The Rev. Benedict Chap-
man, Master of Caius, by Royal mandate.

BACHELOR IN DIVINITY.—Rev. John Chapman,
Fellow of St. John's, by Royal mandate.
HONORARY MASTER OF ARTS.—Sir Claude William
Champion de Crespigny, Trinity.

MASTERS OF ARTS.—Roger Wood and Henry
Clarke, Caius.

BACHELORS OF ARTS.—John Bax Marriott, Corpus
Christi College ; Gerard Nevile and Alex. Woodward,
Catherine Hall ; James Limbray, St. John's ; and
Charles George Taylor, Emmanuel.
On Monday last Rowland Williams, Esq., Scholar
of King's College, and Baffle's University Scholar, was
elected a Fellow of that Society.
The following gentlemen of St. John's College were,
on Saturday last, elected proper Sizars on the founda-
tion of Dr. Dowman : Henry John Bull, George Ed-
ward Tate, George Masters Gould, Francis Bagge
Scott, John Pettit Beard, John Miller, and William
Grieve Wilson.

MATRICULATION, 1839.—King's, 2 ; Trinity, 106 ;
St. John's, 90 ; St. Peter's, 18 ; Clare, 15 ; Pembroke,
14 ; Caius, 21 ; Trinity Hall, 15 ; Corpus, 28 ;
Queen's, 24 ; Catherine Hall, 20 ; Jesus, 12 ; Christ's,
21 ; Magdalene, 11 ; Emmanuel, 17 ; Sidney, 7 ; 421.
NORRISIAN PRIZE ESSAY.—The subject for the
present year is, " The Holy Scriptures contain suffi-
ciently all doctrine required of necessity for eternal sal-
vation through faith in Jesus Chribt."

ENGLISH AND FRENCH COMMER-
CIAL DUTIES.

(From the Journal des Debats.)
The period for opening the Session is arriving, and
no increase of duties has taken place on the impor-
tation of British thread. The present duty is 24f. the
100 kilogr. The duties recommended by the Council
of Commerce in lieu of this were to be 201. duty
per 100 kilogr. on from No. 1 to 20 ; 30f. duty per
100 kilogr. on from 21 to 40 ; and 50f. duty per
100 kilogr. on from No. 41 upwards. This would
have been a protecting duty of 10 per cent. on
the first, of 71 per cent. on the second, and
of 6- on the third category. The making of thread as
connected with agriculture is of more than common
importance ; and instead of protecting it by a duty of
from 7 to 10 per cent., it ought, in the opinion of many
men, to be protected by duties of from 10 to 20 per
cent. The proposed tariff was rejected, however,
by the Commerce Minister, in order to offer
a pledge to England that the negotiations
would be resumed for a commercial treaty with
serious intentions of liberality. It is, indeed, highly
desirable that the war of prohibition should cease be-
tween France and England, and that no duties should
exist, save fiscal ones, for the good of the revenue.
Other nations have adopted this. The United States,
from 1842, will not pass the maximum of 20 per cent.
duty ; the German Union not more than 30 per cent.
Policy dictates similar laws to France and England.
France should renounce her prohibitive duties on a host
of articles, especially on those of wool and cotton. It is
an insult to French manufactures to suppose that after
20 years' prohibition they need a greater protecting
duty than one of 20 or 30 per cent. The late exhibition
has proved such not to be wanting ; and as to prohibit-
ing finer tissues, it does but encourage their introduc-
tion by contraband. That must be permitted which
cannot be prevented ; and moreover, all the odious
practices of personal search may be done away with.
But England must meet us half way. She has duties
as high as 60 per cent., and a host of French produc-
tions pay at least 30 per cent, in England. Such is the
tariff for painted or gilded porcelains, bronze, embroidery,
lace, perfumes, turned articles, leather, peltries, and
furs ; our velvets, ribbons, and figured silks are similarly
charged ; but the agents of the English Custom-house,
abusing the right of valuation which is left to them, levy
a duty which, in reality, amounts to 40 and 45 per cent.
On this point nevertheless the merchants of Lyons
had given England an example on commercial li-
berty, in recommending with all their efforts the
exportation of French silk thread. Upon other ar-
ticles, which we could export with advantage to
England, the duty in Great Britain is still much
higher : thus, white paper is taxed at ninepence the
English pound, from actual current prices, which is
about 136 per cent. The duty upon painted paper is
double or treble ; upon Bohemian glass it is 250 f. per
hundred weight ; upon mirrors it is excessive ; but upon
our wine and brandy it passes all limits, since it reaches
400 and 700 per cent. Even the articles for which
England has no competition are, from precaution,
charged with a heavy duty. Thus polished or cut
glass pays 30 per cent. ; pit coal, 50 francs per ton of
1,000 kilogr., that is to say, ten times its value in the
mines ; copper ore, 34 francs the quintal ; blacking, 90
francs the quintal. Steel and iron not in heavy bars,
and cotton tissues, three articles for which no nation
equals the English, are taxed at 20 per cent. In
upon damask linen, in which France now excels, the
duty is prohibitive. Thus we do not dare to tax mode-
rately the linen thread of England, whilst it rejects the
tissue manufactured in France with the thread :vhich it
has sold us. To this system of excessive protection, it
joins the prohibition of exporting English looms, in
order to obstruct as much as possible the establishment
of manufactures on the Continent.

It is to be feared that the concession of not touching
the duties on thread may obstruct instead of furthering
the final negotiation, by rendering the English more
exigent. The Ministry has incurred a grave responsibility
by such a decision. It thereby sacrifices entirely to the
English a branch of national industry employing a
number of people ; and, moreover, it contracts the
engagement of altogether altering the French tariffs ;
for since English linen threads are not to pay more
than four or five per cent. duty on entering France,
our porcelains, bronzes, embroideries, perfumes, and
other objects of taste, ought not to pay more than 10 or
15 per cent. on their entrance into England. As for our
silks, the English tariff should be reduced to 15 or2o per
cent. duty, not nominally, but in reality ; on our papers it
should not exceed 20 or 25 per cent., and on our wines
and brandy England might have the magnanimity of
being content with a duty of 75 to 100 per cent. If, in
return for its excessive condescension with respect to
linen thread, and for the concessions that are possible
and legitimate with respect to iron and engines, threads,
woollen and cotton tissues, the Ministry does not obtain
reciprocal advantages, which, after all, English interests
could but applaud it, will have merited the most grave
reproaches for having, without necessity, without nego-
tiation, and consequently without having obtained any
advantage to French commerce, and in spite of the re-
sistance of the French Commissaries at the time of the
conferences of last winter, consented to the annihilation
of an eminently French industry inherent to the soil.

EXHUMATION OF HUMAN BON ES. For the
last few days much curiosity hasbeee n excited in the
neighbourhood of Old Brentford,
in us
been e
consequence of the
discovery of a large quantity of human bones
in an
traordinary state of preservation, after in-
terred,haviln it is supposed, upwards of two hundred x-
ed
years.
The ground where the discovery has been made is it
the occupation of Mr. Robinson, a brickmaker, and is
situated at the commencement of the town, just in the
rear of the Salutation public-house. The earth had
been removed some time since to the depth of four feet,
aboutinrn
withoute anything particular being observed ; but at the
layers of
of last week, on the workmen digging
bones, &e
,five feet lower, making nine feet, they came to
of human '
bones, consisting of skulls, arm and thigh
it is said
in a high s'
In most '
of the skulls the teeth were most perfect, and
toaftesuch extent as to fill several wheelbarrows.
The spot, of preservation, as was also the hair.
by some of the oldest of the inha-
bitants, used formerly to be called " Deadmen's
Graves," and there
a tradition extant in the town
that during the great plague in London a female called
Moll Rawson" used to
drive a cart, on which she sat,
through the streets, e
that she brought down rhytiinagd,
reds of bodies, which were
interred in heaps in the ground
in
question. Information
of the finding of the bones
Wakley, the Coroner, but it isas been forwarded to Mr.
not supposed ho will con-
sider it necessary to hold an inquest.
EMBEZZLEMENT AND Ron v„,
derable sensation has been produced among a ---Y.---A consi-
classes in Dundee, by the embezzler"
the working
of a friendly society's funds. The alarm'e embezzlement
and robbery
Saturday morning last, that John Millth the was
given on
treasurer to
a friendly society in Dallfield Walk, had
absconded,
and carried off the whole funds in his hands' senmni`ille;l'
by trade a mason, and precentor in the -s
SecessionHe
n
Church, under the Rev. Matthew Frazer.
employed before the robbery superintending the masons
as
engaged in erecting the new church for this conmrega
tion. He left Dundee via Perth on Friday night.

LITERATURE.

PREFERMENT. 3 Vors.
Colburn, London, 183 u.

Notwithstanding our dislike of the school to which
this novel belongs, we have read it with much
pleasure, for it is full of sparkle and brilliancy, and
lashes the follies and the heartlessness of fashion-
able life in a laughing, sarcastic spirit, that occa-
sionally reminds us of some of the arch sallies in
the " School for Scandal." In force and pointed-
ness of style, Mrs. Gore surpasses, with the excep-
tion perhaps of Disraeli, all contemporary novelists;
her analysis of character too is minute, and true to
the life ; but she fails in the conduct of her plot. The
incidents in " Preferment," move slowly and lan-
guidly ; but the dialogues are admirable, and the re-
flections scattered throughout the tale show a vigorous
mind, able and willing to think for itself. The
main points of the story may be summed up in a
few words. The hero, Julius Egerton, an enthu-
siastic, romantic young man, but poor, and con-
demned to the obscure labours of a Kentish curacy,
receives an invitation to spend some time with his
rich and fashionable uncle, the Earl of Tiverton.
While on a visit to his pompous relative,
he takes the opportunity of falling in love
with his youngest daughter, Lady Henrietta,
and believes that his attachment is returned.
Unfortunately, however, he is undeceived by the let
herself, and in a style of such polite indifference,'
as to throw him into a very dangerous fever, from
which, when he recovers, it is to curse his own self-
conceit and presumption, and marry a deserving girl
moving in his own rank of life. This conception will
at once recall to the reader's mind Crabb's beauti-
ful poem of the " Patron," which is founded on
precisely the same idea. Butit is on her
characters, that Mrs. Gore must most depend for
success. Her caustic sketches of the two young
Ladies Tiverton ; of their uncle, " the dowager
dandy," as he is quaintly called ; of the metho-
distical Duchess. of Dumbarton ; and more parti-
cularly of the simpering sycophant. Dr. Nicewig,
Dean of Darlington—these various characters are
hit off with consummate skill and spirit.
The Dean is thus happily sketched Dr.
Nicewig glided along on his golden rail-road,
mild as a moonbeam, soft as a swan's-down muff,
insinuating as a silken-eared spaniel. While Dr.
Macnab succeeded with his congregation by kicking
and bullying them along the path of grace, the Dean
held out his finger with a coaxing air and gentle chir-
rup, like a bird-fancier decoying a canary !" Mrs.
Gore must give us more brilliant tales of this sort.

TRIALS OF MARGARET LYND SAY.
Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1839.
The republication of the " Lights and Shadows
of Scottish Life," and of the delightful little tale
before us—both, we believe, by the same author--
is a proof that the taste for the refined, simple, and
imaginative in literature is not yet wholly extinct
among us. From the disposition evinced by the
public within the last few years to pore with avidity
over the sayings and doings of thieves, swindlers.
murderers, and vagabonds of all sorts, and even to
accept them as legitimate heroes of romance, we
had
.begun to fear that a republication of the
" Newgate Calendar" would be the only one likely
to answer a bookseller's purpose ; but the re-
appearance of this little work has agreeably disap-
pointed us ; for it shows that an author may take
nature for his guide, and write, as she prompts,
with the feelings of a gentleman and the fancy of a
poet, and vet maintain his hold on public estima-
tion. We should be glad to see more tales penned
in the sound, healthy, and refined spirit that
everywhere characterizes " Margaret Lyndsay."
The present age is sadly in want of them, for there
is no denying the fact that—•so far as fictitious lite-
rature is concernedit is an age of infinite pre-
tension and poor performance, when gross carica-
ture is substituted for genuine nature, and the spas-
modic efforts of a sickly, perverted fancy, for the
vigorous promptings of genius.

!MEMOIRS OF COUNT DUMA S.-2 VoLs.
B. ntley, London, 1839.

From the stirring and chequered life led by the
Count Dumas, we had expected more entertaining
Reminiscences than he has here furnished us with.
Spirited sketches of character, exciting incidents,
anecdotes in abundance—these, we thought, would
have been found in every chapter of his Memoirs ;
but we have been disappointed, for though his
volumes will be read with eagerness by those who
take an interest—and who does not ?—in the asto-
nishing period of which they treat; and will also
supply many useful materials for some future his-
torian of the American war, and of the first reVo
lutionary outbreak in France in the memorable year
1789 ;_though they certainly posesss this recom-
mendation, yet there is no denying the fact, that,
as a whole, they are dull ; and chiefly because the
range of the autobiographer's sympathy is limited,
and he cannot take any lively interest in what does
not immediately concern himself. He was young
and enthusiastic when our first disastrous war with
the American colonies broke out, and therefore he
writes with spirit on this subject. He was a member
of the Constituent Assembly when France had de-
cided on limiting the powers of the monarchy, and
therefore the Assembly is uppermost in his thoughts ;
but still, in both instances, he places himself in the
van, and notices the distinguished personages of the
time, only as they affect himself personally. We have
an able sketch of Washington ; but why—because Du-
mas was one of his favourites. We have an equally
graphic portrait of Lafayette ; and for the same
reason, because Dumas was in high favour with
him. But we have no account of IVlirabeau ; of
the earlier career of Danton ; of the Bishop of Au-
tun ; and the other celebrated people of the time,
though our author, being a not undistinguished
member of the Constituent Assembly, must have
been competent to give us much information about
them—in fact, added considerably to our stock of
knowledge. But, as we have just hinted, Count
Dumas is an inveterate egotist, and possibly thinks
that by diminishing the pretensions of others he shall
exalt his own. We have more of his own sav-
ingsatnod
kl ens
os
wof w tal et
lri so, t e
ohfa
ov
liec
y like.ho
N 'Ve daondnodtoiicugasre
adopted in the Assembly on the subject of the
emigrants, and of tithes; but we do desire to learn
by what means Danton, and Robespierre, and the
fiery Chabot"—as Thiers calls him—who were
just then rising above the political horizon, con-
trived to organise an opposition against these two
important questions at the Cordeliers and the Ja-
cobins. Again, we are anxious to be better ac-
quainted with the tactics pursued by that Cory-
phaeus of political swindlers, Dumouriez, at the
period when he first joined the French Ministry ;
and with this knowledge, Dumas could have fur-
nished us; but lie is comparatively silent on the
subject, contenting himself with just a few trite
common-place details which every one knows ; evi-
dently because lie cares not to speak of a man in
whom he feels no direct personal interest, even
though that man held for some months the des-
tinies of France in his hands
We have always thought the character of Du-
mouriez one of the most difficult problems to solve
of any in the Revolution. A man of wit and
pleasure—a courtier under the old regime, a demo-
crat under the new—skilful, enterprising, and full
of resources as a commander—thoroughly ac-
quainted with the world—intriguing, unscrupulous,
and bent only on personal aggrandizement ;—this
extraordinary man seems to have blundered at every
step he took ; and to have acted on every great
emergency, save only at the Camp of Cmsar, from
sheer impulse, and without any strong impelling
motive, though he was the very opposite of a man
of impulse, and had the strongest possible motives
to take a decided part, and persevere in it. One
day we find him coquetting with the Girondins ;
the next he is hand and glove with the Jacobins ;
now, he is intriguing with the King against his
Ministers, and now with the Ministers against the
King. Flattering the mob by his complimentary
speeches at their favourite club, he yet personally
insults Marat, their great oracle ; and attaches the
nick-name of " Jesuits" to the Brissotins, at the
very time when his own political interests are bound
up with theirs. In. a word, from some strange pe-
culiarity in his mental constitution, the intriguing,
quick-witted, aspiring Dumouriez never took one
step forward but lie took two backward ; and wound
up his brief, meteor-like career by throwing up the
cause which he professed to have so much at heart,
and refuge with the enemies of his country !
stey,
taking
Count Dumas, who was living in the most
irl
influential Parisian circles of that day, should have
said something woith reading about a man like
this ! Why, too, is he so reserved on
the subject of the Girondist chiefs ? He tells us
indeed that he dislikes them—and we agree with
him in his aversion to these flashy, pedantic theorists,