The Sun.
London, England, 1830-08-02 00:00:00

MAGAZINE DAY.

BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.—PAnT

Blackwood consists this month of " an excess
of sweets ;" that is of two parts, and both good.
" The Great Moray Floods," which is the first
article in the first number, bears frequent proofs
that it proceeds from the pen of Professor Wilson.
It is a highly animated and interesting notice of
Sir T. Dick Lauder's account of the inundation
which swept the Moray Highlands at the com-
mencement of the August of last year. We
subjoin a description of one of the more serious
portions ; it is a sketch of a tempest among the
Grampians
" From this magnificent picture, of Auld Reekie in a
flood, turn for a moment to the Grampians. You are all
alone—quite by yourself—no object seems alive in exist-
ence—for the eagle is mute, the antlers of the red-deer,
though near, invisible—not one small .moorland bird is
astir among the brackens—no ground bee is at work on the
sullen heather—and the aspect of the earth is grim as that
of heaven. Mark ! From what airt moans the thunder?
'Tis like an earthquake. Now, it growls. Yonder cloud,
a minute ago, deep-blue, is now black as pitch. All the
mountains seem to have gathered themselves together under
it—and see—see how it flashes with fire ! Ay, that is
thunder—one peal split into a hundred—a cannonade
worthy the battle of the gods and giants, when the Sons
of Terra strove to storm the gates of Uranus. Would
that •Dan Virgil were here—or Lord Byron ! 0 Dr.
Blair ! Dr. Blair ! why didst thou object to the close of
that glorious deseription—‘ Densissitnus Luber ?' Jupiter
Pluvius has smitten the Grampians with a rod of lightning,
and in a moment they are all tumbling with cataracts.
Now every great glen has its own glorious river—some
red as blood, some white as snow, and some yet blue iii
their portentous beauty as that one thin slip of sky, that,
as we are looking, is sucked into the clouds. • Each rill,
each torrent, each river, has its own peculiar voice, and
methinks we distinguish one music from another, as we
dream ourselves away into the heart of that choral an.
them. Woe to the wee bourracka o' houses,' bigot' on
the bohn-lands ! Bridges ! that have felt the ice.flaws of
a thousand winters rebounding from your abutments, as
from cliff to cliff you spanned the racing thunder, till.,
night will be your last! Your key-stones shall be loosened,
and your arches, as at the springing of a mine, heaved up
into the air by the resistless waters. There is no shriek-
ing of kelpies. That was but a passionless superstition.
But there is shrieking—of widows and of orphans—and
of love strong as death, stifled and strangled in the flood
that all night long is sweeping corpses and carcasses to
the sea."

" The Reigning Vice" is an elaborately,and,

many respects, an ably-penned satire, of a com-
prehensive character, and not destitute of thought
or vigour. It is now concluded, and seasonably
so, as latterly the matter became rather atte-
nuated. " Letters from the Peninsula" gives
a lively picture of some skirmishes of the
British army with Marshal Marmont, during
the late Peninsular campaign. The style in
which these letters are written is easy, light, and
captivating. " The Silent Member" has a ca-
pital analysis of the Whig Attorney-General's
public character. It is very severe, but true to
the life. We regret that our limits will not allow
us to quote it.

PA R r 11.

A General Election" is a seasonable article,
and one which will assuredly excite attention, and
that in no ordinary degree. It is rather too much a
Jeremiad—too exclusive in its opinions, and too
zealous in upholding ; hut it is powerful, and, at
the same time, replete with observation. "
Fowl Shooting" is an amusing, spirited sketch
of a pastime much in vogue among country
gentlemen, and those who have nothing better
,
to employ tneir time with. There is hu-
mour about the article, and description
and sentiment, .. all blended together after a
most heterodox fasfnon, in a most strange
heterogenous hodge-podge. It is entertaining
however, and this is the great desideratum in a
Diary of' a late Physician, Chapter 1," contains
magazine contribution. " Passages from the
the history of a life, a great portion of which
has been passed in difficulties and embarrass.
.
meets. It is impossible not to sympathize with
.
the writer in some of his struggles, which
are simply and feelingly detailed. " Noctes
Ambrosiante" are rather prosing and.insufferably
long. There is a pretty considerable lack of
their fire and humour. Tlowever, their author
cannot be always on the broad grin. " Col-
man's Random Records" is a severe notice of a
trashy book, the crude abortive .offspring of dui-
,
ness anti dotage combined. The Reviewer's
estimate of Mr. Colman is a vary just one :--
" We know not whether we are glad or sorry to find
proved, beyond all contradiction or doubt, by these Ran-
dom Records, a fact which we had all along shrewdly
suspected, to wit, that George Colman the Younger is,
intua et in cute, one of the very poorest of all possible
creatures. We suppose we must somewhere and some
when or other, have either read, or seen acted, some of
his trashy plays; but we cannot just now by any effort of
recollection, charge our memory with the names of any
one of them, except it be Octavian, a farce, which it
toes the whim of John Kemble, Black John, the well-be»
loved, to get up as a tragedy, wherein he enacted the
principal character with a certain grave humour, to our
minds far more amusing than the drollest lace-fun of the
Cockney -idol, Liston. For John, in his own way, was
a sad wag, We have frequently heard old George Colman.
junior, (for he was always younger than his father) spoken
of in town as an almost insupportable funny fellow, nay,
as a fellow of rare mirth and most excellent -fancy,!
quite a Yorick ; and Byron thought, or at least said,
something to this effect, that at the genial hoard, as it is
called, Colman was the'wit of all wits, and th.it he scat-
tered his pearls, we shall not say before whom, so pro-
fusely, that the multitude became oblivious to vulgar
viands, in the divine enjoyment of that celestial food.
f3yron'e authority in such matters is, we presume, a high
in a good humour, which fell
one; and we wish the ancient buffoon to have the full benefit
ntitanteelelFnetdowhirha°vere:t
Gconstitutional
of it. But, thfinen
been amiable
eome
weakness
nkoleiislits
oinr
by the most common place conversational powers that
ever were /suffered to,drivel. His Lordship, too, at such
times, was much taken with certain sorts of wit which
the aged 'Junior! is,. we believe, esteemed a proficient
among the roost obscene ',facile princepti—auch, .for
example, as are displayed in those somewhat filthy facetite,
which, in his own coterie,
were the glory of !tie manhood,
and out of it one of the bugbears of the Society for the
Suppression of Nice----IlttoAn-Gstills. We do not mean,
to insinuate that the table-talk of this indecent scoffer, now
notoriously in his table-dotage, was equally distinguished
by its grossness with the writings in which he wal-
lowed, or that the poetry (poetry !! of his ripe, may
not be beastlier than the prose of his rotten age; but we
maan to assert, if on no other foundation, even on the sole
grouud of these wretched t Random Records,' that he is
pow, and always must have been, a low, vulgar, coarse,
and shallow persion. Indeed we are altogether at a loss to
conjecture how he should ever have contrived to acquire,
even in the company he kept, the fame of being so much
as low: lurk tl ; for his humour lies solely in a few pustu-
lated expressions, which do not seem even to have been
native to his constitutiun, but to have been inoculated
Into him skin-deep by a series of quacks with whom, from
his boyish days, lie bad been familiar, 'even to the very
moment that they bade him tell it.! There is souse.
thing unhealthily fetid in all hit jokes; in their nastiness
his jeers absolutely stink in the nostrils; his sneers have
all a rankest smell; and in reading his lucubrations—we
know not how it may be with his body Corporate in a
room--we inatinetively—though get given to lie squea-
mish—rise and open the window, that the fresh air may
be let in upon our :sickness. Such company is far from
being pleasant to the senses ; and one is entitled to com-
plain of it, we think, without any violaCtio of good man-
ners. :It-is not that we are disgusted, in the 41-lee:lads,'
with much that is very immoral, but with all that is most