The Sun.
London, England, 1862-06-02 00:00:00

CANTERBURY HALL.

There is a place in London which is a creation amongst
art exhibition, I allude to the Canterbury Music Hall in
Lambeth-marsh. It has been worthily patted on the back
by several admiring journalists, and one has called it the
" Royal Academy over the Water." It was built in 1851,
as the leader of a new school of music halls, designed to
supplant the old tavern concert rooms and the publichouse
" harmonic meetings," The music performed included
many popular songs, both comic and sentimental, some of
them being those classical lyrics which the world will never
let die ; but the chief feature of the evening was a selection
from an opera, rendered by a very efficient company of
singers, with a chorus and instrumental accompaniments.
Under this head some of the best works of the best masters
were given night after night, and so energetic were the
conductors in getting opera scores from France, Germany,
and Italy, that the quiet, orderly men and women, who
formed the chief visitors of the Canterbury Hall, heard
many works of foreign musical composers long before they
were brought out at the Italian Opera Houses. After some
few years of successful management in this way the pro-
prietors added a side-hall to their building, and this they
fitted up as a gallery of modern pictures. Well lighted,
well supplied with works by many of the leading Royal
Academicians, and with a printed catalogue of the paintings,
this gallery was a great and refining attraction to the visi-
tors. The exhibition, for its s'ze, was as good as any
average May display at the Royal Academy, with the addi-
tional advantage of being open at a time when working
men could go and see it. The admission charge to the hall,
concert, and picture gallery was 6d. Such was the Can-
terbury Hall, Lambeth ; and such, I am happy to say, it is
now, with its glory and success undiminished. The edtl
cational influence of such a place can hardly 1.315 overrated,
although it is created by mere trading enterprise, acting
in
an obscure corner of London,—Once a Week.

LITERATUBE.

Owen: a Waif. By the author of "No Church"
and " High Church." Hurst and Blackett.
In choosing a vagabond London boy, ragged and
homeless, for his hero, and showing his gradual
rise, social and moral, the author has displayed a
wholesome disregard of convention, and he has
worked out his theme earnestly and thoughtfully.
It is certainly a strange thing to reflect that in this,
the largest and wealthiest city in the world,
eighteen hundred years after the establishment of
Christianity, human beings should roam the streets
as utterly dead to the healthiest and most beautiful
aspects of life as the most ignorant and degraded
among those far-off heathen tribes, whom well-
meaning but misguided people, blind to the evil at
their doors, yearly spend such large sums to convert.
It is to direct attention to this class that the novel
before us has been written. There is a vividness
about the descriptions of the lower strata of society
which shows that the author has not trusted to
imagination merely, but has studied from life.
And if the close is somewhat melodramatic, the
feeling the work displays pleads forcibly in extenu-
ation. Owen, " the waif," deserted by his drunken
and depraved mother at the age of nine, an age by
the way at which he had pretty well learnt (after a
fashion) to take care of himself, falls in at a county
cattle fair with a cost ermonger named Tarby Chick-
ney, whose wife, pitying his destitute condition, and
wishing to rescue him from the seemingly inevitable
hulks, persuades her husband to let him help in their
business; and ere he had long been thus engaged,
another good Samaritan named Dell teaches him to
read. He thus acquires a taste for knowledge, de-
termines to rise, and pursues his education at a flee
evening school. Now, it happens that Mr. Tarby,
in his " hours of ease," is given to imbibing beer and
assaulting the police, and having, one unlucky
evening,hit the head of one of these functionaries
somewhat too hard, its owner dies, and Tarby is
transported. Behold Owen now, at the age ( f 12,
left in threefold charge—of the business, of Mrs.
Chickney, and of the Chickney offspring, an infant
called Mary. Bat Mrs. Chickney dies too, of grief
and consumption; Owen sells the business, puts
Mary to nurse in the country, and enters the iron
foundry of a Mr. Cherbury, in which his friend Dell
is foreman. Here, thanks to his learning, he is
promoted to be clerk, but a mistake occurs in the
books, fifty pounds are supposed to be missing, he is
suspected of dishonesty, and is bluntly asked by his
master if he had not formerly been a thief. Now,
Owen, unfortunately, in his early days, being hun-
gry and ignorant, had set at naught the distinction
between meum and tuum, but having reformed, he
was by no means pleased at being thus reminded at
his past indiscretions ; so, having rectified the mis-
take, for which the master was himself responsible,
he abruptly leaves the foundry and goes to Austra•
lia. There, after a few years, he makes money
enough to enable him on his return to join
John Dell, who had started a foundry of his
own; and Mary Chickney, who has grown
up a handsome and accomplished young
lady, and has been adopted by Mrs. Cherbury, the
mother of the ironfounder, cherishing a tender feel-
ing for him, he reciprocates it, and the tale ends
with their marriage. It contains some interesting
episodes, such as the reappearance of 0 wen's mother,
the unsuccessful attempt on the part of her son to
reclaim her, and her subsequent repentant death;
and it shows very considerable power of charac-
terisation. The author has striven to give a real
rather than a fanciful picture of life, and he has
' succeeded in producing one of the most vigorous
novels it has of late been our fortune to meet.

Captain Clutterbuck,'s Champagne. Blackwood
- -

and Sons.

The tale thus whimsically named lately appeared
in Blackwood's Magazine, and is styled in the title
page "A West Indian Reminiscence." In fact, the
scene is laid in Jamaica; and although the " Cham-
pagne" is the pivot round which the story revolves,
the owner of that beverage of infinitessimal im-
portance. The hero is a certain Lieutenant Brune,
brave, accomplished, and generous the heroine is
Miss Violet Arabin, beautiful, amiable, and rich;
and as they return from England in the same ship,
they very naturally fall in love. But a wealthy
planter and storekeeper named Melhado, vulgar,
cowardly, and mean, stops the way—Violet's hand
is .promised him by her mercenary parents, and
Brune is treated to cold shoulder. In this dilemma
(we think we have met with something like it in
novels before), the lovers put their trust in strata-
gem, and it is agreed that while Melhado and
Arabin pere are imbibing Captain Clutterbuck's
champagne Brune shall steal away Miss Violet and
the fateful ceremony shall be performed. The pro-
gramme is successfully carried out. 'the lovers are
united, the parents are reconciled, Melhado turns
out meaner than was expected, and Violet and Brune
live happy and prosper marvellously ever after. The
tale is spirited and amusing, and the author is evi-
dently familiar with the scene and manners he
describes.

I;blesoleornilf7

The opening article in this number, on " The New
Exhibition," admits the ugliness of the building, '
but at the same time gives Captain Fowke credit
for having constructed it " solidly convenient and
serviceable, not to be surpassed for light, space,
and means of internal access." This, considering
the short time allowed for its erection, is as much
as could be expected. It is something at least for
a building to fulfil the purpose intended, and we
wish we could say as much for a few others in the
metropolis. The journal of Mrs. Petherick, who
is " accompanying her husband in his arduous
attempt to penetrate to the sources of the Nile," is
pleasantly written and interesting. " Caxtoniana"
also is good. The writer thus speaks of
RHYTHM IN FROM
In metaphysical works, the writers most conspicuous for
harmony of style are those in whom the meaning is most
clear from misconception. Thus Hume, the subtlest of all
our metaphr-icians is the one wh6se theories have been the
least obscure to his commentators or disciples; for his
theories themselves led him to consult, in " every combi-
nation of syllables or letters," that euphony which, by
pleasing the ear (or, through sympathy, the eye that "runs
over the book"), allures the attention of the mind, and,
while it increases the lucidity of the author by-the delibera-
tion with which he selects his expressions, quickens the in-
telligence of the reader by the charm that lightens the
fatigue of its tension; whereas the meaning of Locke is
often made needlessly difficult by the ruggedness of his
style, and many of the erroneous deductions which his fol-
lowers have drawn from his system may be traced to the
want of that verbal precision which a duo culture of euphony
seldom fails to bestow.
Much has been said, with justice, against the peculiar
modes of euphony elaborated by Johnson and Gibbon ; too
pompous and grandiose; too remote for our homely verna-
cular : granted. But that does not prove the care for
euphony to be a fault ; it only proves that the modes of
euphony favoured by those illustrious writers were too per-
ceptibly artificial to be purely artistic. Yet no critic can
say that Johnson and Gibbon are obscure ; their meaning
is much plainer than that of many a writer who pre-
fers a colloquial diction. Not only in spite of the fault, but
because of the fault, we impute to their styles, Johnson and
Gibbon are—Johnson and Gibbon. And if you re-formed
their rhythm to simpler mortulations, accordant to your
own critical canons, they would no more be Johnson and
Gibbon, than Pope and Gray would be Pope and Gray if
you reconstructed the " Essay on Man,' on the theories of
Wordsworth ; or, by the ruthless excision of redundant
epithets, sought, with Goldsmith, to improve the dirge of
the " Elegy" into the jig of a ballad.
It is not, then, that rhythm should be cultivated only for
the sake of embellishment, but also for the sake of perspi-
cuity ; the culture of rhythm in prose defeats its own oh
ject, and results in obscurity, if it seek to conceal poverty of
thought by verbal decorations. Its uses, on the contrary,
are designed for severe thinkers, though its charm may be
insensibly felt the most ordinary reader,—its uses are based
on the common-sense principle, that the more the mind is
compelled to linger on the thought, the more the thought
itself is likely to emerge, clear and distinct, in the words
which it ultimately selects : so metals, opaque in the mass,
are made translucent by the process of solution.

Although " Six Weeks in a Tower" is suggestive
of durance vile, it means in this case not so much
imprisonment as that and transportation combined.
China is the scene of the writer's suffering. The
following deseribes his place of abode :