The Sun.
London, England, 1863-02-04 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, ~--:;DNESDAV FWENING, FEBRUARY 4, 1863.

CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT.---This Day.

LITERATURE.

OLD COURT.
(Before Mr. Justice Wightman.)
CHARGE OF FORGERY.

Herman Stiller and Marcus Stifler, two foreigners, were
indicted with forging an order for the payment of money
with intent to defraud the Bank of Poland.

Mr. Sergeant Ballantine and Mr. Sleigh appeared for the
prosecution, and Mr. Metcalf for the prisoners.
From the opening statement of the learned counsel, it
appeared that in November last, the first prisoner, who had
been in London!some time, went to the shop of Messrs. Tuer
and Field, engravers and lithographers, in the Minories,
and produced two tickets, and asked Mr. Tuer if he could
manufacture a ticket like the one he then held in his hand.
Mr. Tuer said he could, and he then asked Stifler
what they were, when he replied, '• They belonged to the
Society of Poland, that Polandwas in a state of insurrection
and they were going to have a new king, and that was the
reason that the tickets would be required and that they
were equal to our promissory notes. The prisoner left the
tickets and afterwards called for them, and said he
had heard from his father that they would not now be
wanted. He brought some other tickets with him, and
asked Mr. Taer if he would engrave more like
them. He said he would, but suspecting they were
money, told him to call the next day, when the prisoner
Herman called. He told him he would do them
in the manner ordered, one h ndred copies of each
colour. The prisoner called several times to see how the
work progressed, and impressed upon Mr. Tuer the neces-
sity of the tickets being done, so that no one could tell them
from the originals. On one occasion the prisoners came
together and examined the stones for which the impressions
of the tickets were, and expressed themselves satisfied. The
two prisoners called again after that, and Marcus expressed
himself dissatisfied at the ticket not being done, as he said
his friend was going to Poland, and he wanted to take them
with him. The tickets were promised on a certain day,
and when the prisoner called Mr. Tuer gave Marcus
52 tickets, with which he left the shop. A detec-
tive officer of the City police, named Scott, was waiting
close by and saw the prisoner Marcus give the tickets to
Herman, who took them under a gas light to examine them,
and while they were thus engaged the officer came up and
asked them what they had got. They appeared as if they
did not understand, but Herman eventually said he had got
the papers he held in his hand from the printers. Scot
then told them they must come to the station house. He
took one of the prisoners, and Brett, another detective, took
Here an.

Mr. Sliwawski, chief of the cheque department of the
supreme direction of the Polish Landholders' Association,
said the notes of the corporation circulated in that country
under the sanction of the Imperial Government, and the
papers put into his hand, which were those found on the
prisoner, Herman, when captured by the officers, repre-
sented bonds for the payment of the half-yearly interest of
the Landholders' Association, but they were all forgeries.
The jury found the prisoners
Sentence deferred.

A Daughter of Eve. A Novel. By Hain Friswell,
Author of " Sham," " Ghost Stories and Phantom
Fancies." 2 Vols. Bentley.
This is a most striking work, full of brilliant de-
Lcription, exciting incident, and ably drawn cha-
racters. The style throughout is animated, and
the dramatis personee most life-like. The chief
point on which the story turns is kept secret in the
most artistic manner until the conclusion, and one
seldom meets with so well defined a plot, sustained
throughout with such care and caution, and at last
taking one by surprise. The circumstances are most
painful, but that does not detract from the interest,
indeed it serves to increase the excitement. as no
straightforward conduct could have created so much
confusion and caused such fearful suffering. Some
of the chief actors in this fitful drama of life are
sketched in a finished style, sharp and satirical
are the decisive touches put to their portraits
and the heartless roue, the cold hard man of the
world, the cunning schemer, the wild enthusiast,
and the selfish woman of fashion and her train of
senseless followers; the unfortunate outcast, who
brazens out her shame by affected indifference, and
the more mediocre mortals, who pursue their course
in an humbler style, all appear before us in their
strength and their weakness, in their sin and their
subtleties, in their wilful perversion of gifts, and
their conceited assumption of graces. Mrs. Vesey
Boultbee is a leading personage in these chapters,
and is thus introduced :—" Mrs. Vesey Boultbee
was in the ton ; not the observed of all observers ;
not the very cream of the cream, perhaps, but of
very good standing. She was a good woman also,
but had a woman's tongue—her only fault, she said.
She gained, however, as much as she lost by that
instrument, for her sayings and doings brought her
into notoriety. Society talked often of what Mrs.
Vesey Boultbee said and did. Mrs. Boultbee was
known to everybody, from the royal personages
downwards. She did not dine at the palace, per-
haps, but the people in the palace often heard of
the bustling, energetic, good-natured, gossiping
Mrs. Vesey Boultbee. Happy in herself, particu-
larly pleased with her position in the world, and
thoroughly satisfied with her entourage, Mrs.
Boultbee, woman of fashion and bon ton, fulfilled
her duties of life, -which seemed to be those of
making matches, advertising jewellers and milliners,
proclaiming what was the last new method of
spreading the table, or serving the soup, curling
the hair or wearing the ribbon, and fluttered on
through life with the gaiety of a butterfly, which
thinks it is doing a good turn to the bees of exis-
tence. 'But it is certain that some of the bees, so
far from thinking themselves benefited, be-
came grumble-bees, rather than humble bees,
and railed against such delightful butter-
flies as Mrs. Vesey Boultbee." The devices
to which this lady had resort are most entertaining
to notice. She wished to visit Paris but dreaded
the expense, hence she hit upon a plan which suc-
ceeded in a wonderful manner. She selected a
friend who was as eager to ape her ways as she was
those of the real grandee, and asked her to share
expenses. She contrived that the visitor should
take the heaviest share of payment in return for the
inestimable advantages she enjoyed of a presenta-
tion to the French Court and the endless gaieties of
a recherche class. Mrs. White, the favoured fair
one, in her turn was now a graide dame, and quite
extinguished some rival claimants to the honour of
being among the elite of the fashionable world.
The news of the trip to Paris spread discomfiture
among the clique at Surbiton. " Mrs. Waite
' forged ahead' of her two companions. She was at
once accepted as the leader of the ton at Surbiton,
and the alderman's widow hid her diminished head,
whilst the wife of the excellent proprietor of the
patent medicine, who had always been of a serious
turn, felt that the world was a very vain, wicked,
and foolish world, and that it was not worth cul-
tivating, She therefore abandoned the pursuit of
fashion, and, taking a seat in the chapel of a popular
Dissenter, told all her friends that she had at last
found what she had long been seeking—the way
to a higher and a better world." The adventures
of little Ishmael also are characteristically described,
and the event of his joining the housebreakers gives
a true picture of the manner in which idleness
leads to mischief and to crime. " Pauline,"
is another natural delineation. Her career of dis-
grace had not hardened her heart, though it had
roughened her manners, and it is only in accord-
ance with the spirited style in which she defended
her house that she should come forward in the same
fearless spirit to protect her prisoner. There was
sufficient evidence of good intention in both these
pariahs of society to justify the account here given
of their prosperity in a foreign land, where they
would be removed from pernicious influences, and
able to start afresh in the great highway of life
after their devious wanderings and crooked paths.
Mr. Saul Yennem is a very likely presentation of
a disagreeable man, who was invited everywhere
and tolerated by everybody because he was
rich. " A man cannot well have a very
large fortune without being asked to the
houses of his friends." He was a selfish, arrogant,
and pretentious man, but covered with a cloak that
hides a multitude of sins in the shape of a golden
disguise, he went merrily on hie way and enjoyed
himself, as he made it the object of his life to serve
and please himself. Count de la Biche, who plays
rather an important part in this story, is a real
villain. Ever intent on evil and planning mischief,
he might have dragged at the chariot wheels of his
triumph injured men and ruined women who had
been necessary sacrifices in the cause of his career.
His end is indeed a retribution ; he died by the
hand of the man he had most deeply injured, and
whose succeeding years would be embittered by the
fearful knowledge he had gained of the Count's
conduct and the deceit practised on him by his wife
and her mother. It was the Count's own wish that
he and Colonel Escombe should fight, and thus he
brought his doom on his uwn head. " The hour of
reckoning" to that guilty career was a fearful
struggle and an appalling sight. He could hardly
have passed a more painful night than that which
began so brilliantly at the hall of Mrs. Boultbee,
bat which saw no morning in this world. To add
to the retribution, his servant David, whom in his
iniquitous and profligate career he had also injured,
contrived to load the pistols, and loaded the Count's
with powder, so that his adversary escaped, while
he fell mortally wounded. The fact of Arthur's
challenging the man who was his own father is
a fearful warning of the denouements to which
crime brings its votaries, and even in this
world anticipates the judgments of the next.
The Count thought himself safe from all exposure
or annoyance, and one by one his victims rose up,
like Banquo's ghost, to confront him and to anni-
hilate. All the resources of his craftiness, and the
skilled manoeuvres of his cunning deserted him in
his hour of need—
"A lifetime's ts, in vain essayed,
Seemed bursting on the artist's head."
When his dying gaze rested on the luxurious cham-
ber he had so decked and decorated with luxurious
refinement to minister to his comfort, he seemed
like the sinner, who bade his soul take its rest, as
it had much good laid up for many years ; and the
warning voice proclaimed, " This night thy soul
shall be required of thee." Colonel Escombe is
rather a weak man, who seems more ready to run
away from a difficulty than to stay and face
it in the best manner. This book, which
chronicles the sad careers of so many
daughters of Eve, presents us with two happy ex-
ceptions in Florence Escombe, and her governess,
Miss Parsons. Florence is a fine dispositionf andte
an attractive maiden; she, too, had to taste ohcup of bitterness that sin had filled
house-
hold, but she rallied from the shofeolar,Ahaieni rsde never
knew the real extent of the calamity.h
Par-
sons is an estimable woman,ewffheoragspassed through
with a heroism
many scenes of trial ands
to any one, however
that would have. done
exalted they might be. honourShe was the mainstay
the unhappy
home of the Escombes, and by her un-
tiring
kindness and patient watchfulness she did
her best to make crooked things straight, or
at least to mitigate the extent of the
unavoidable calamity. The description at the
commencement of the dismay that seizes on
Colonel's friend nt his mysterious melancholy, and,