The Sun.
London, England, 1865-12-01 00:00:00

rebels, had the impudence to fire at the Bulldog.
One shot in return was quite enough to settle her ;
after receiving it she reared on her hind legs, and
went down stern foremost to the bottom in about
15 fathoms. A schooner, armed by Salnave, came
to the rescue of the Valorogue. It is needless to
say that she met with the same fate. The worst,
however, I have yet to tell. The poor Bulldog,
after having fought for upwards of ten hours, and,
after doing ill she could, got on shore on one of the
numerous reefs about Cape Ilaytien. Immediately
the miserable rebels on shore took advantage of her
position, and brought all their batteries to bear.
The captain fought to the last pound of gunpowder ;
that finished, he thought it necessary to set fire to
and abandon his vessel. The Bulldog was a small
gunboat of six guns ; the officers and crew have
gone to Jamaica in the Union screw steamer. All
the English are in high glee at the gallant conduct
of the Bulldog."

LITERATURE.

Illustrated Don Don Quixote.

Adventures of Don Quixote. Translated by Charles
Jarvis. Illustrated by A. B. Houghton. Engraved
by the Brothers Dalziel. One Vol., pp. 710.
Frederick Warne and Company.
A nobler edition of Cervantes' masterpiece was
never published. A handsomer volume no lover of
books could well wish for. It is got up with exqui-
site taste, even to the bevelled binding of crimson
cloth, covered over with gorgeously arabesqued gold
emblazonry. It is a veritable edition de luxe of
a work the world of readers will never tire of—a
work the spontaneous and overflowing humour of
which gladdens the heart, or those mysterious
parts of the heart (unknown to the anatomist)
called in common parlance the cockles of it, like a
draught of good wine, of a wine as good as that
sung of so gustatively by John Keats, in his Ode
to the Nightingale, as—
" A draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth !"
A draught of vintage just such as that, is de-
rivable, by those who list, from the abounding
wit and sarcasm, irony, good-humour, fun,
frolic, and extravagant whimsicality, run-
ning over in laughter, at every turn of
the leaf, in any edition of Don Quixote !
But, in an edition like this, an edition so cheerily
prodigal in its adornments, where the comical
imaginings of the Spanish author are realised in
the drollest pencillings by the sympathetic fancy of
the English artist, the exhilirating influence of the
book becomes fairly irrisistible. Insomuch that—
You open the book to the tune of " Away with
Melancholy !" And—You lay it aside—yourself an
illustration while so doing—of—

" Sport, that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter, holding both his sides !"
The embellishments here lavished upon Spain's,
Europe's, the World's great comic masterpiece,
by the facile pencil of Mr. Houghton, appears
(we ourselves cannot but think) all the more to
advantage, side by side with the much vaunted and
(we cannot but protest, to our mind) extravagantly
over-eulogised illustrations to Don Quixote, pen-
cilled by M. Gustave Dore ! Those pencillings of
Dore's, to our thinking we must acknowledge,
are as wildly preposterous caricatures as they
are confusedly scratchy in effect, and as
they are as ugly, let us say, as if
they had been drawn by the claws of some
odd little imp of mischief ! Not thus is it
with these drawings by Mr. Houghton—they are
never repulsive to the eye, they are never
actually ugly or unsightly, even when they under-
take to portray the obesity of Sancho Panza, or, the
scarecrow-anatomy of the deplorable Rosinante.
The fight with the wine skins, with the windmills,
with the barber on his ass, and so forth, are all
delightfully well selected as themes for illustration,
and are grotesquely carried out, when thus selected,
in a series of the drollest embellishments imagin-
able. Not unfrequently Mr. Houghton—although
working merely with the point of a lead
pencil upon a few square inches of boxwood
—imparts, now to the Don, now to the Don's
Squire in Knight Errantry, an individuality
as distinctly realised as—with all the weapons of his
art and genius—ever came to be realised by him
whom we cannot but always regard as facile princeps
among the illustrators of Cervantes' Don Quixote,
the late rarely gifted and gentle-hearted Charles
Leslie, Royal academician ! It were superfluous
to particularise, among suggestive woodcuts in this
way, where all of them, with scarcely an exception,
are so whimsically superexcellent. The book
appears at the time the most appropriate of all
for the publication of a work so incomparably
exhilirating in its character—namely, at the com-
mencement of December, when the evenings are
getting longer, and the fireside becomes more attrac-
tive, and the home festivities of Christmas are fast
approaching with all their seasonable accompani-
ments ! A merrier table book who could desire ?
A handsomer adornment to the table of library,
boudoir, or drawing-room, what lover of luxury in
books could wish? As a gift book it is the very
pick, and pattern, and paragon. While, unlike the
general run of gift books, it is so far exceptional as
such, that it might literally be described as the
glorification at once by printer, artist, engraver,
publisher, binder, and paper-maker, of one of the
greatest masterpieces of imaginative literature.

Tales and Stories. Selected by Miss Mitford. One

vol. Pp. 357. Frederick Warne and Co.

Seventeen Stories, selected by Mary Russell Mit-
ford—beloved in how many English homes as the
authoress of " Our Village"—are here collected
together into one charming volume, embellished by
a series of the loveliest little coloured illustrations.
Certainly, the children nowadays, are in clover as
compared with the children of previous generations
—with books like those issued from the press for
the delight of their eyes and the entertainment of
their imaginations. A sweeter, prettier, little gift-
book for a young slip of a maiden just entering upon
her teens, parent or guardian, aunt or godmother,
need nowhere look for. It is graceful and delightful
to glance at, and it is a book, too, that is worthy
of preservation.

Songs, Sacred and Devotional. Selected by J. E.
Carpenter. One Vol. pp. 392. ;Frederick

Warne and Co.

A gilt-edged gift-book of sacred and de-
votional poetry, drawn from a very wide
range of English literature, though it might
have been drawn from one yet wider with
advantage to itself. The compiler of the work is
beholden almost equally to living and to
departed authors—and his selections have been
made in almost every instance with admirable
discretion. Himself a song-writer of consider-
able merit, Mr. Carpenter has the gift of a poet's
appreciation of what really constitutes poetic excel-
lence. And hence the choice he has here made is of
a kind such as must have gratified the departed
authors, from whose works he has culled so discri-
minatingly, could they but have had any voice at all
in the matter ! While, from the authors, still living,
to whose works the volume under notice is so
largely indebted, the editor of the collection is safe
to receive the meed of an unanimous approbation.

Warne's Picture Spelling Book.

Here is a new aid to early education ! The
nature of the book as an educational aid of some
novelty is plainly enough indicated in the very title of
it. Contrast it with that miserable purblind hornbook
that must have been a source of perpetual anguish
alike to the poor old village dame and her brood of
scholars—and the excellence of the notion of the
well-printed and profusely illustrated book under
notice must become instantly and vividly apparent.

During the last few days there has not been much
animation exhibited in the markets for foreign and
colonial produce. Sugars have been in very limited
request, at barely late rates. Coffee, however, has
brought full values ; while rather higher prices have
been obtained for cocoa, currants, and raisens.
Tallow has been in moderate request for both pre-
sent and forward delivery at steady quotations.