The Sun.
London, England, 1865-06-26 00:00:00

FRANCE,

BOURSE, June 24.—Although the rates of the
chief Securities have experienced no material modi-
fication, the markets to-day have shown less activity
than has prevailed during the past two or three
days. Threes, for Account, have slightly receded,
and are now quoted at 66fr. 42ic. Mexican New
Loan has also been done on somewhat lower terms
—the present rate being 331 fr. 25c. Italian Five
per Cents. are unchanged at 66fr. 80c. The depres-
sion which existed during the earlier hours has
continued to the close, and in many instances prices
show a further reduction. The following were the
last quotations:—

4- per Cents 95 50
Do. end month —
3 per Cents.
Do. end month 66 35
Credit Mobilier
Do. end month 725
Bank Shares 3600
Credit Foncier 1255
Italian Loan 6O 80
Do. end month 6O 70

Ditto Threes
New Mexican
Do.'Bonds 330
Russian
Austrian
Spanish Threes
Home Debt -
Deferred
Roman

RAIL'

Orleans

-AYS.

Cash. Acct.
821 25 ... 818 75

Northern lO7O ... 1068 75
Lyons and Mediterranean B3B 75 ... 837 50
Southern 575 578 75

Western
Eastern
Sardinian .

Austrian
Lombard

522 50 ... 525 -
503 50 ... 505 -
307 50 ... - -

415 - ... 413 75
430 25 ... 487 50

North of Spain l7B 75 ... 182 50
Saragossa
PittO to Barcelona.

LITERATURE.

Charles Dickens's Serial Story,

Our Mutual Friend. By Charles Dickens. No,
XIV. C&pman and Hall. .

Since the first appearance thirty years ago of our
Great Humorist, the Greatest of all our Humorists,
then a very young man—since his first memorable
appearance as the author of what, all things
considered, we must still regard as the most
humorous book he has ever written, the im-
mortal " Pickwick," his audiences, work after
work, have been perpetually increasing in number.
Each successive book he has produced since then has
had a wider and a wider circulation. He has
mentioned this pretty frankly, indeed, once
or twice, in his later prefaces. And, that the
fact should have been so is only precisely what
might reasonably enough have been predicted.
The circulation of a new serial story by Charles
Dickens is a thing quite apart and exceptional.
There is no sort of parallel to it in the annals of

light literature. Coupled with the rare originality
of his own genius, he was himself the originator of
the system of the shilling monthly serial
illustrated. Since the first issue in that form
of " The Pickwick Club," he has proved, himself
to be, in the mere circulation of his books, beyond
the reach of competition. Story after story—
and he has written now altogether some thirteen or
fourteen elaborate works of fiction—has proved as
distinctly beyond its predecessors in the extent of its
circulation, as the enlarging rings in the grain of
the trunk of a growing oak, or as the expanding
circles upon the surface of water that has been moved
by the dropping of a pebble into it. Apart from this
customary advance beyond any one among its re-
markable predecessors, the current serial story now
in its fourteenth number, " Our Mutual Friend,"

to wit, has secured to itself a peculiar, and we be-
lieve an unprecedented evidence of its author's
increasing popularity beyond the limits of the
language in which he writes beyond the

boundary line of our own empire whether insular or
colonial. "Our Mutual Friend" appearing, now, long
before its completion, in a serial form, translated
into French, as the feuilleton of a Paris newspaper !
L'Ami Common appearing in this way, at uncer-
tain intervals, chapter by chapter, at the bottom of
the front page of our Parisian contemporary
L'Opinion Nationale. The translator—who acts in
that capacity " avec autorisation de l'auteur"—is
Madame Henriette Loreau, a lady who, it
should be said, is doing her part, alto-
gether, as an idiomatic interpreter, very cre-
ditably. This is a fresh, and, we believe, an un-
exampled, certainly in any case, a very signal
attestation of the firm hold acquired, even,
so to speak, through the gauntlet of a trans-
lation--the sensitive and vigorous bold acquired
by our author upon his new world of readers over
yonder in France. The fourteenth number of
" Our Mutual Friend"—in the original—the present
number, that is, for this month of June, is chiefly re-
markable, by reason of the very noticeable advance
made within its four chapters in the general develop-
ment of the plot. After reading it, much of the be-
wildering haze and mist hitherto enveloping the plot,
seems to be so far clearing away, that while we re-
cognise more distinctly than ever, the complication and
elaboration and manifold intricacies of its machinery,
we nevertheless apprehend with more accuracy than
has been in any way possible to us hitherto, the
relative bearing, so to speak, upon one another, of
its constituent parts. "In the Dark" is the sig-
nificant title of a chapter relating to us, as
Dickens alone could so relate it, a conversation held
at midnight in the London Streets, between the in-
furiated and malignant rival of Eugene Wrayburn,
the Schoolmaster, Bradley Headstone, and that
Honest Man who earns his living by the sweat of
his brow, one of the most original of our author's
creations, Rogue Riderhood. His indignant way
of explaining himself to Bradley when the latter is
bewildered for the moment by Riderhood's talk
about "'_'other Governor" can anything in
its way, be more whimsically ridiculous ?

" Why, look here," hooking his proposition
on his left hand fingers with . the forefinger
of his right, " There's two Governor's, ain't
there ? One and one, two—Lawyer Lightwood, my
first finger, he's one, ain't he ? Well ; might you be
acquainted with my middle finger, the Tether ?"
His indignation afterwards, when avowing his in-
tention " to have the law of a busted b'low-bridge
steamer which drownded of him"—declaring " I
" ain't agoing to be drownded and not paid for it !"

—is equally comic. Bradley looking at him, while
he talks thus, as if he were claiming to a Ghost—
and, doubtless, not the less intently when Mr. Rider-
" I mean to be paid for
thhoeo
dcer oawsnsthaell bist yaY
easmeig,
rntook !" The apparently
trivial and quite casual circumstance of this
same Mr. Riderhood stumbling thus across
the pathway of Bradley Headstone, gives
promise of the knitting together of two
threads of the narrative hitherto wholly apart from
one another. And the same might be remarked in
reference to the incident closing the last of the four
chapters in this new number—a very important
chapter, so far as relates to the plot of the story,
a chapter whimsically entitled " Mr. Wegg prepares
a Grindstone for Mr. Boffin's nose"—the said Boffin
" that foxey old grasper and griper," as the literary
manordswith aw o
at
very
a t h
e the gratefully dubs him, being
broughtclose of that chapter, in other
end of this current number of
w there
tod en leg
"Our Mutual Friend," face to face with the carissima
sposa of Alfred Lammle, or as we may surely
call her, if only on the strength of her pearl
powder, the fair Sophronia. Boffin's being secreted
by Venus,
odi lebehind the smile of the
rosuddenly surprised by the
approach of that odiously selfish old rascal Wegg,
c ,whenvery hurriedly,they
are
is one of the most laughable incidents in the whole
number—" Get your head well behind his smile,
Mr. Boffin, and you'll be comfortable there ; you'll
find plenty of room behind his smile. He's a little
dusty, but he's Very
---e you in tone. Are you
right, Sir ?" The rascality of that old vagabond
Wegg is brought out more than ever with strong
relief to the vivid apprehension and appreciation at
last, even of his benefactor, the Golden Dustman.
Out of this circumstance alone we begin to have
glimmerings of what it may all come to—though
the miserly demonstrations of the once open-handed,
open-hearted Boffin still remain—to say the least of
them —problematical ! Intermediately between
these chapters, the first and the last in this four-
teenth number of " Our Mutual Friend," there are
other two not yet particularised—chapters each of
these wonderfully elaborated in the humour of the
dialogue— in fact, hardly do we know in which of
the. two the more effectively. One is entitled
4, Meaning Mischief,"—What Hamlet, the Dane,
calls Miching Malecho—the other taking as its
heading, the old proverb, " Give a dog a bad name
and hang
him !" The former relates, with inimit-
able whimsicality in every minute touch of it, a
confabulation between Sophronia and Alfred
Lammle (betwitching creatures ! prospective
claimants surely for the Flitch of Dunmow !) fol-
lowed up by an equally amusing interview between
Alfred and that other delightful innocent, Fledgeby
The upshot of this being the most delectable of
non - sequiturs a new illustration of the
biter bit. As to the pennultimate chapter in the
number, it tends more vividly than ever to
realise to us the double-dealing of that
whiskerless mouser--the smooth-cheeked and close-
fisted principal of Pubsey and Co., usurers and bill-
discounters, and takers-in generally. Mr. Fledgeby,
revealing more plainly than ever, his rare powers of
most despicable dissimulation indiscriminately upon
every one who approaches him, whether it be a person
as conventionally innocent, as poor little Twemlow,
a keen-witted atom such as the Doll's Dressmaker,
or such ruddled old black-sheep of society as the
gentle-minded Lammle and his unsophisticated
Sophrouia. Altogether, while we are thus getting
deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of the plot, we
begin to catch glimpses here and there of that
central goal, or heart of the maze, towards which
we are now only too rapidly approaching.

THERE WILL 13E NO MINISTERIAL WHITEBAIT
DINNER at Greenwich this year, says the 06server, in con-
sequence of the probable absence of many members of the
Government in the Lower House, the business of the ses-
sion in the HOUSE, of commons being virtually over. ..

MARKETS--This Day.

MARK-LANE.

The wheat trade in the county markets held on Satur-
day was firm, and previous quotations were well supported.
For barley, oats, beans, and peas, the supplies of which
on sale were limited, the market was steady, at extreme
rates. There was a fair demand for flour, at late prices.
On the continent, the wheat trade is somewhat firmer,
and all descriptions of spring corn support previous quota-
tions. At New York, both wheat and flour are in limited
request, on European account.
Up to our market last week the arrivals of English grain,
Lice., were very small. The imports from abroad were
limited—they consisted of 4,945 quarters of wheat, 13,690
barley, 14,203 oats, 1,725 beans, 283 peas, 7,599 linseed,
5,957 oilseed, 10 maize, 106 sundry seeds, and 670 sacks of
flour.

The arrivals of English wheat fresh up to our market
to-day were very moderate both from Essex and Kent, but
the condition of the produce was good. The limited re-
ceipts last week both of English and foreign produce, as
well as the small number of Irish samples on the stands
this morning, induced factors to hold all qualities at an
advance in price, as compared with Monday last, of 2s. per
quarter. Sales, in consequence, progressed slowly.
Nevertheless, a fair clearance of the supply was effected at
an improvement in value from this day sc'nnight of ls. per
quarter.

There was a moderate supply of foreign wheat on the
stands. Holders and importers, both of American and
continental produce, were very firm in their demands, and
although the market was by no means active, prices, as
regards good and fine qualities, were is. per quarter higher
than on Monday last.
About an average supply of oats was on the stands.
There was a good demand for all descriptions, and an
improvement of ls. per quarter took place in prices, as
compared with Monday last.

Floating cargoes of grain were in fair average request,
and the quotations had an upward tendency.
The supply of English barley on sale was small, of
foreign moderate. The trade was firm, and good and find
qualities sold readily at ls. advance.
Only a moderato business was transacted in malt at late
rates.