The Sun.
London, England, 1839-10-04 00:00:00

MEXICAN NEWS.

LIVERPOOL, THURSDAY.—By the Wilberforce,
Captain Harrison, which arrived yesterday afternoon
from Maranham, the following highly interesting letter
was received by a commercial house in this town
" MARANIIANI, AUG. 21.—The interior of this pro-
vince is in a blaze of rebellion. Caxias, a city in the
interior, embracing half or more of the trade of this
city, has been taken and sacked by the rebels, and the
loss estimated at some 200,000/. or 300,0001. All com-
munication is entirely cut off with the interior, conse-
quently no produce is arriving, and there is no busi-
ness doing, nor is there any rice coming in. The pre-
sent is planting time, and the disturbances will prevent
the planters from doing anything, and thus there will be
no crop next year. In this city peace and quietness,
and union of parties, prevail, and every one seems en-
thusiastic in determination to defend this city. Some
thousands of Portuguese volunteers are in drilling under
an officer who has served in Portugal ; large numbers
of troops have arrived from Pernambuco and Para, and
munitions in abundance. A battle took place within
twenty.four hours' sail of this city on the 9th instant, in
which the Government lost 14 killed and 108 wounded,
among the former were one captain and one ensign.
We shall remain in a miserable plight until this state of
anarchy is put a stop to. Nothing can be done in any
way. The Rival left this in ballast for Quebec, the
Wilberforce is not full, and the Sherbrooke will leave
in a day or two with less than a third of a cargo."

We learn from Vera Cruz papers to the 26th of
July that General Santa Anna had retired to his country
house at Manga de Clavo, near Vera Cruz. Before he
withdrew from the Presidency, he addressed a long pro-
clamation to the Mexican people. He is said to have
been desirous of retaining the Presidency, by keeping
Bustamente away at the head of an army of invasion
against Texas, but his scheme did not succeed. On the
13th the High Court of Justice of Mexico condemned
to death Colonel Don Juan Yanez, and his accomplices,
who had been guilty of several assassinations and acts
of pillage. The Swiss Consul was among their victims.
On learning his condemnation to death, Don Juan
Yanez cut his throat in prison, but his body was con-
veyed to the scaffold on which his accomplices were
executed. General Urrea, the former chief of the
Federal party, who had at first been included in
the general amnesty, had received orders to embark at
Vera Cruz, and not to return to Mexico for six years.
Several of his principal officers had also been exiled for
different periods. Twelve regiments of permanent in-
fantry and eight of cavalry have been re-organized, but
the Government still kept up the coast-guard and other
temporary corps. General Don Antonio Gaono, who
commanded the fortress of St. Juan d'Ulloa when it was
taken by Admiral Baudin, had been tried by a council
of war, acquitted, and restored to his functions. The
English packet, the Hope, from Falmouth, arrived at
Vera Cruz on the 18th, having called as usual at Ha-
vannah and Belise. The greater part of the crew had
the yellow fever, and the captain and several sailors had
died. The Government had decided on laying out
383,000 piastres for the repairs of the mole of Vera
Cruz, which was in a state of ruin, and very dangerous
for shipping. It appears from these papers that since
the conclusion of the treaty between France and Mexico
all insults and acts of violence against foreigners bad
entirely ceased.—Galignani.

VIENNA, SEPT. 24.--Her Majesty Maria
Louisa, Duchess of Parma, arrived here at the end of
last week from Ischel. Dr. Neuner, who was lately
chief physician to the Sultan Malimoud, has arrived
here from Constantinople. Prince Pucklcr Att!;slP4
daily expected.

LITERA.TURE.

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.
Chapman and Hall, London, 1839.
Nicholas Niekleby is here brought to a close,
maintaining to the last the life and freshness that
marked the earlier Numbers. 'We have seldom
failed to give a short account of each Part as it
appeared, but now that the work is completed, we
shall take the opportunity of saying a few words of
it as a whole, and also of what we conceive to be
the great secret of its author's unrivalled popu-
larity. •As an artistical production, we are not
prepared to rate Nicholas Nickleby very high. It
shows no indications of the constructive faculty—
that is to say, of that faculty which Fieldinge. Ifas
developed with such extraordinary skill in Tom
Jones, and with success, not much inferior, in
Joseph Andrews, where the incidents rise natu-
rally, and almost necessarily, one out of the other,
assisting, not encumbering, the progress of the
plot ; and where all parts of the narrative cohere,
and are neatly dovetailed together, so as to form one
compact and consistent whole :—Nicholas Nickleby,
we say, exhibits few or no proofs of this rare fa-
culty ; but is merely a striking collection of de-
tached scenes, characters and incidents, drawn
with infinite truth and spirit, but strung so
loosely together, that any one might be omitted
without the slightest detriment to the conduct of the
story. In what way, for instance, does the divert-
ing family of the Kenwigses, who occupy so large a
portion of the tale, assist its progress, or tend to its
consummation ? We should be sorry to lose them,
for they are admirably painted, and full of strongly-
defined traits of individuality ; still it is impossible
not to see that they are episodical—in fact, mere
superfluities. To enjoy and appreciate Fielding's
master-pieces thoroughly, you should begin with
the beginning, and go regularly through them,
taking care not to omit a page, lest you should lose
the clue to something of moment, that follows ; but
the works of Dickens demand no such close atten-
tion. You may commence them where you please,
in the middle or towards the close ; or even begin
with the last chapter, and so work your way back,
crab-fashion, towards the first. You will lose little
by such an irregular process, for any one Number
will serve nearly as well as another, to give you an
insight into the author's peculiarities; but read
Fielding in this way, and you will be apt to think
him a dull, prosy fellow, instead of the most artisti-
cal writer of fiction that ever existed.
The main secret of Boz's popularity we take to
be this. He has presented us, in his favourite
sketches, with all the most obvious points—all that
lies on the surface—of every-day character ; all that
we ourselves have observed a thousand times, but
have never thought worth remembering. Hence he
is perpetually flattering our self-love ; for lie arro-
gates no superiority ; developes no profound or ori-
ginal views of humanity ; but has the tact to
persuade us—and our vanity confirms the de-
lusion—that he is one with us, and that what has
most struck him, has struck us also. In the ener-
getic and poetical creations of Scott, all taking
human nature as their ground-work, but elevating,
and refining it by the power of a fancy of the highest
and rarest order ; in the impassioned and profound
workings of character developed by Hope ; in the
subtle and philosophical analysis exhibited by God-
win, the reader is constantly impressed with a sense
of his own inferiority ; but with Boz he is hand and
glove ; he imagines he recognizes in him precisely
his own faculty of observation, and esteems him for
precisely the same reason that he esteems himself.
But let Dickens plume his wings for a higher
flight—and we feel assured that he is capable of
it—and, we apprehend the case will be materially
altered: and that he will find his popularity di-
minish with the majority, in the same proportion
that it rises with the select few. Having so long
viewed humanity from the same level as our-
selves, his viewing it from a higher elevation will,
we fear, be resented as presumption, and that he
will be considered as going beyond his mark.
Another cause of our author's popularity, is the
fine sense of humanity that pervades all his writ-
ings. There is nothing exclusive or conventional
about him, at least where feeling is concerned. He
is, like Scott, an advocate -for fair play between
rich and poor, the peer and the plebeian. He
cares little for the suffrages of Almack's ; and writes
with a manly and diligent forgetfulness of the
West-end. The coronet has no glitter for him.
lie is not awe-struck by the chink of gold
in the pocket. He is a Cosmopolite in the
best sense of the term—in that healthy,
bracing sense which prompted Burns's happiest
lyrics. As a proof of his quick sense of humanity,
we may instance the last words which he puts into
the mouth of his Yorkshire schoolmaster, Squeers.
This wretch, it may be remembered, is represented
as grovelling—avaricious—crafty—sycophantic—
and tyrannical—to a degree that inspires our ut-
most disgust ; yet, on taking leave of him, we are
compelled to blend pity with abhorrence, when we
find him saying, in his cheerless prison, "The images
of Mrs. Squeers, my daughter, and my son Week-
ford, all short of vittles, is perpetually before me I"
Here, in our sympathy with the husband and the
father, we lose sight for the moment of the despot
and the hypocrite. Again, Ralph Nickleby, the
usurer—the miser—heartless, sceptical, and un-
principled—possesses no one feeling from which
we do not shrink with horror; yet how are
the harsher points of his character softened
down, so as to bring him within the pale
of homanity, just previous to his suicide ! In
his solitary walk home, whence he is never to come
forth alive, we are told, " Ralph Nickleby now
began to think that his son's supposed death and
his wife's flight had had some share in making him
the morose, hard man lie was. He seemed to re-
member a time when he was not quite so rough and
obdurate ; and almost thought he had first hated
Nicholas because he was young and gallant, and
perhaps like the stripling who had brought disho-
nour and loss of fortune on his head." These re-
flections are exquisitely true to nature, for no man
ever yet was so hopelessly depraved, as that some
better sense of humanity did not at times stir, how-
ever faintly, in his breast. The divine image within
us may be sadly blurred and marred, but it is never
wholly blotted out.
In calling to mind those every-day portraits
of the Dutch and Flemish school, to which
Boz originally owed his fame, and by which
he is still best known—his Sam Wellers—
Mrs. Raddles—Pickwicks—Kenwigses, and the
like—we are struck with the sagacity and quick
insight into the public taste that timed them so hap-
pily. From his connection with the daily press,
Mr. Dickens must have seen how popular were
those Police Reports in the Morning Herald
which placed the every-day follies and eccentricities
of humble London life in so diverting a light before
us ; and accordingly in his first work of fiction, he
did little more than present us with a Variorum edi•
tion of these ; for though new as the hero of a
novel, Sam 'Weller was no stranger to those who
bad been in the habit of reading " 'Wight's Morn-
ings in Bow-street ;" but was merely a dexterous
combination of some of the low Cockney oddities
therein described. And here we are reminded that
it has often been brought forward as a charge against
Boz that he is a vulgar writer. Now, there is not
the semblance of truth in this accusation. There
is nothing vulgar in humanity, but there is much
that is so in affectation and assumption ; hence, we
can detect more vulgarity in one fashionable novel,
whose scene is laid in the West-end, among the
great exclusives of society, than in the very lowest
sketches that our author has yet penned. But if
Boz be vulgar, what are Hogarth, Fielding, Foote,
Cobbett, and many other noted names in Art and
Literature that we could mention ? Above all, what
is Crabbe, who has gone to the work-house and the
squalid haunts of vice and beggary, for some of his

_
most admired sketches ? For our own part, we
had rather be vulgar with Dickens than genteel
with D'lsraeli ; far rather be the author of " Ni-
cholas Nickleby," than of that lively impertinence
" Vivian Grey."
We cannot compliment Boz on the sentimental
tone which he is sometimes pleased to adopt, in
deference, we presume, to the tastes of the circulating
library. When he affects this, he generally fails and
becomes maudlin, as In his account of the death of
Smike, which is wholly made up of pensive prattle
about flowers, angels, and similar childishness. His I
Rose 'Wadies, KateNicklebys, and Madeline Brays,
are failures in nearly an equal degree ; but whe4 he
collies to draw such characters as Mr 4, Niel;telly,
Mrs. John Brodie, and the schoohw.ster's daughter,
With her outrageous pa5,(.,1,0* fox the genteel, then
his quick talent
and microscopic observation
co 7;3,c4. into, pray, and he exhibits to the greatest ad-
vantage. In the preface to his last novel, he ex- ,
pressly states, we see, that the brothers Cheeryhie