The Sun.
London, England, 1865-04-13 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

I Odd Neighbours. By the Author of " Lord Lynn's
Wife." Three Vols. Richard Bentley.
Odd Neighbours, it may be, but assuredly very
Pleasant Companions, are collected together in this
work. The author, taking for granted that in these
days of expedition the reader has been to Egypt,
compares his motley company to the arrivals of the
outward bound at Alexandria. Travellers of both
sexes, of all ages and countries and conditions,
are there continually to be encountered in most un-
usual combinations, and so it is with the stories
collected in his pages. " Some," he enumerates,
" are from Poland, some from Italy, not a few
have crossed the Atlantic from American shores,
others are from Russia, from France, from Den-
mark, or from countries beyond the seas." From
diverse and distant lands they congregated to-
gether—Odd Neighbours—in the pages of " All
the Year Round." Assuredly no series of papers in
that popular periodical have been more worthy of
re-publication in a separate form. The tales are all
excellent, some of them very excellent indeed.
They differ essentially from the ordinary run of
magazine articles. There is a freshness and a vigour
in the style, and a glow of colouring in the vivid de-
scription of foreign scenes, that renders the work
I peculiarly attractive ; but, beyond that, almost
every tale has some particular and enthralling inte-
rest, that perforce enchains the reader's attention
until the story is concluded. As an example of
which, let us take, almost at random, the following
passage from an account of "A Cheap Passage
Home," in which the amazed passenger becomes
unexpectedly acquainted with the daring and das-
tardly intention of the captain and some of the crew
to destroy the ship and passengers and themselves
escape with the plunder :

AN AWFUL DISCOVERY.
The conspirators passed by me and went on deck, the
captain with an uncertain step, and features, in whose pain-
ful working might be read the signs of painful suffering,
the Greek, jaunty and smooth of mien, but with a danger-
ous sparkle in his serpent eye, and a paler cheek than
usual. Scarcely was the coast clear before I ran to the
captain's cabin, the door of which still stood ajar, and there,
sure enough, lay the ship's log-book open, with a fresh en-
try written on the page before me. The ink was still wet.
What I read ran as follows :
" Coast of Australia (here followed a latitude and a date).
—On the evening, during the middle watch, the ship Seven
Angels, from Odessa to Liverpool, with corn and oil, was
wholly destroyed by fire, vessel and cargo. Papers, mani-
fest, logs, and invoices saved. Money lost. Officers and
most of the crew escaped to shore in the large boat. Un-
fortunately three perished by the fire and by the upsetting
of a smaller boat, two passengers, Mr. Millington and Miss
Marian Brackley, also John Judkins and Eneas M'Donald,
able seaman, and Roderick Sprowle, ordinary seaman,
shipped at Odessa. Fire the result of accident. Cause
doubtful."
Here ended this precious entry, the death-warrant and
epitaph, at once ; of five human beings, myself included.
No wonder that as I perused the words I felt my forehead
grow moist with a sickly dew and that the letters seemed
to dance before my eyes. In vain did I try to tear myself
away. Some terrible fascination rivetted my feet to the
floor, my eyes on the page on which still glistened the wet
ink of the last dread sentence. How long I stood, thun-
derstruck and half incredulous, I cannot say ; but the
rustle of female attire caught my ear, and I turned my head
with a quick start to find Maria Brackley—one of the
doomed—standing in the middle of the saloon and looking
at me. I had left the door wide open, and was, of course,
plainly visible in the act, apparently, of prying into some
papers of the captain's.
My impulse to tell Miss Brackley all carried the day, and
most fortunate it was that I had not time for reflection.
Commonplace prudence would have led me to keep the
dangerous secret to myself, but this was no ordinary occa-
sion, and, to my great comfort, the young girl showed a
fortitude quite unexpected. She did not faint or weep,
though her cheeks faded to ashy paleness as she read the
dreadful words, and listened to my hasty comments on
them. It was evident, I told her, that the wicked scheme
for making profit by the destruction of the Seven Angels
was deeply laid, and that our deaths, along with such mem-
bers of the crew as were not implicated in the plot, were
deemed necessary to give colour to the plausible tale of the
incendiaries. And now, what was to be done ? We were
warned, but what hope had we ? To tax the villains with
their perfidy would be to seal our own fate.
A yet more interesting and bewildering adventure
is entitled, simply enough, " Sophie's Ribbon," but
a very fatal gift to its possessor—fatal as the hand-
kerchief of Desdemona does this ribbon of Sophie's
prove to be ! Here, in the following passage, the
reader may witness its first bestowal at a ball in
St. Petersburg and the direful results :
A GIFT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
" Mr. Charles, will you do me a favour ?"
It was Sophie who spoke, and her voice quivered in a
manner inexplicable to me, considering how ordinary were
her words. She was in the rich Circassian dress of blue
and silver she had chosen; but she would not have known
me in an ordinary domino of crimson silk but for my face
being exposed through my not having replaced my mask.
She was clinging to the arm of a boyish figure in Louis
the Fourteenth attire; her brother as I guessed.
Mr. Charles, will you do me a favour ? "
It was not very difficult to grant. She merely wanted
me to affix to my domino a certain yellow rosette, a.
shoulder knot of yellow ribbon with two fluttering ends—
that was all. Hurriedly she thanked me for my consent,
and insisted on fixing the knot to my domino with her
own hands, though her slender fingers shook so much that
they could hardly perform the task. It was a whim of
of hors, she said, a trick to " mystify " some one, and 0
it was so kind of me to honour her, and would I please to
wear it till after supper time, and to be masked. Before I
could ask her for a dance, she was gone, lost in the mazes
of the crowd.
" Hist ! come nearer, the game is up !" said a man's voice,
thick and husky with emotion at my ear. I started. A
tall man in a dark domino was at my elbow.
" It is all over," said the stranger in a gutteral French,
spoken with a German accent ; "some one has betrayed
us. Tho troops are under arms, and the soldiers we counted
on are disarmed and confined to barracks. Rest assured
that the Emperor knows all. Gliska—"
" Monsieur, you mistake !" exclaimed I ; and the man
shrunk away. Scarcely had I time to debate in my own
mind the purport of what I had heard when two or three
masked persons came hastily forward, the foremost pointing
me out to the others.
" That is he ; I know him by the ribbon."
There was a pause, and a shuffling and a whispering.
I bethought me of the mystification that Sophia had spoken
of. Were these the friends at whose expense some harm-
less trick was to be played ! I had little time to think, for
ono of the new comers passed his arm familiarly through

mine.

" Come quickly, monsieur, to avoid scandal."
By this time my other arm had been grasped by another
of the group. I made some jocular observation in French,
on the peremptory nature of the summons, fully persuaded
that the whole was masquerade frolic. The intruder spoke
again more sternly.
" You carry it off well, sir. But your enterprises are
unfortunate. You must come with ns, in the Emperor's
name, or I swear to shoot you where you stand. Come
on!"

I was pushed or dragged through a side door down a
passage, and into the hall of the Embassy. It was full of
soldiery and gendarmes. In a moment a cloak was thrown
over my head, my wrists were chained together, and I was
hustled out into the snow and thrust into a sledge. There
was a shout, a twangling, and a clashing, and I felt the
jerk of the start. The sledge was going off at a rapid pace,
in spite of the softness of the snow. Half smothered by the
cloak over my head, I rather lay than sat in the place into
which I had been pushed, while, by the bounding motion
of the kibitka, I knew that the speed of our progress was
great.

Presently the woollen wrapper that muffled my head was
removed, and I could see the true state of the case.
The sledge was travelling a snow covered road, marked
out by the painted posts at frequent intervals. To right
and left lay hillocky mounds of snow covering the peat
morass through which the causeway passed. Overhead
was a wrack of hurrying lead coloured cloud, with the pale
winter snow peeping out sufficiently to show the horsemen
of the escort, a party of dragoons of the guards, who rode
to right and left of the sledge, their burnished helmets and
long white cloaks looming ghostly through the dim light.
Besides myself, there were two persons in the Kibitka, the
driver and a sturdy figure in the uniform of a sergeant.
The latter held a pistol in his gloved right hand ; an
excess of precaution, for I was bound and helpless.
I closed my eyes for a minute or two, and calmed my
nerves for a strong effort. Then I looked again. Yes ;
nothing had changed. Snowy road, lashing whip, bound-
Pg herpes, painted posts to mark the mn the mantled

I horsemen riding on either flank, the threatening attitude
of the armed men at my side—all were real. And all these
objects had but one significance—one which my soul
shrank from. The guards, the haste, the chains, the deso-
late wastes through which we were speedily borne, re-
minded me of many a dismal tale of exile in the gloomy
deserts of Northern Asia. Either I was actually on my
way to Siberia or I was mad.
The unfortunate Englishman has been arrested
instead of a suspected Pole, who, under cover of
the mistake, lea ves the country accompanied by the
fair and treacherous Sophie !
" For Life and Death" gives a spirited account
of aB ull Fight, in which,under peculiar circumstances,
an inexperienced but daring and dexterous English-
man takes the part of Matador. The struggle with the
second Bull, the Black Portuguese Bull, is very
vividly described. The first tale in the first volume,
" A New York Speculation," gives a very amusing
account of how an unsuspecting Britisher who has
gone to America to make his fortune is (to his ex-
ceeding surprise and delight) taken in hand by an
enterprising member of the enterprising firm of
Petter, Larch, and Jarman, and commissioned to
make large purchases on their behalf from the
honest, hard-working farmers of the West. At first
all goes on well. A judicious friend puts the Eng-
lishman in the way of doing business with the
farmers. He tells him they like plain speaking and
fair dealing off hand, without any haggling and
palavering " like the Down-Easters, who think they
are robbed, if their tongues don't ache after a bargain
is effected!" When the sale is completed, the money
paid, and the goods transmitted to his principals, the
purchaser is overwhelmed with the information that
he has paid for his bargains with forged notes, and
has been made the victim of a clever " speculation."
The specimens we have given are sufficient to
indicate the interesting and exciting character of
these stories. Those we have mentioned are taken
haphazard. We might go through the three volumes
and enumerate many other equally attractive tales,
such as " The Little Dinner with the Captain," in
which the unsuspecting guest at the captain's table is
nolens volens "pressed" into the captain's service; but
we have said enough to assure the reader looking out
for an agreeable book that he cannot do better than
make acquaintance with these " Odd Neighbours,"
from whom he may learn much, and from whom he
will assuredly derive abundant and most interesting
entertainment.

Geology as a Branch of General Education. An
Address. By David Page, F.G.S. Pp. 40.
Wm. Blackwood and Sons.

The learned author of " The Text-Book of
Geology," both introductory and advanced, has,
here, in this very striking Address, perfectly made
out his thesis that Geology ought only in reason to
be comprised within the compass of the regular
scholastic curriculum. Viewing the actual facts of
the case in regard to the particular subject of his
argument—it is really, when one comes to think of it,
as though the student of nature were asked to in-
clude among his other inquiries in the acquisition
of knowledge some investigation into the very ground
under his feet, into the very stand-point from which
in this life he is permitted to survey the surrounding
universe. Put in that way, it hardly admits of dis-
cussion. The reason of it, the force. of the reason
of it, is as that of a self-evident proposition. Yet
so persuasively is this proposition maintained
in the course of Mr. Page's argument that
we are not in any way disposed to insist upon it
as in itself at all superfluous. It assumes to be
merely the throwing out of a judicious suggestion,
and yet in the mere process of throwing out this
suggestion, it is hardly less than an introductory
lecture to the acquisition of the noble science it
recommends.