The Sun.
London, England, 1854-07-03 00:00:00

LONDON TO THE RICH.

" To be the idol of every circle ; to drivel like a fool,
yet to be pronounced a sage ; to be 'a gentleman,' when
it is manifest you are his antipodes ; to see woman's eye
light up at your approach, and the fat porter at the
great man's gate bustle forward at the hazard of his neck
to usher you into the great man'a presence ; to be the
Sir Oracle' of ton, and the he'ro of a fashionable novel ;
to be painted by Lawrence, and engraved by Fmden ;
and when put to death by a licensed physician, to be
followed to your long home by some dozen agonised ac-
quaintances, while the parson prays his best above your
gilt coffin, and a splendid mausoleum records your
worth to all posterity : this it is to be wealthy and well
connected in London."

It were idle, however, to enter more minutely
into these "Adventures of a Bashful Irishman,"
or to draw upon them more copiously for wise and
witty quotations. The book itself is now within
the reach of every one who lists—of all who love
a genuine laugh, or an hour or two of harmless and
delightful amusement. Either from Book 1., "The
Adventures;" or from Book 11. " The Politician ;"
or from Book 111., " The Village Doctor ;" or from
Book IV., " The Patriot"—this innocent and
agreeable relaxation may be drawn by all who so
please (literally) at pleasure. And after turning
over the last page of the Irishman's Adventures,
the reader may find to his surprise yet more as a
means of after entertainment—a brief and simple
story, in which " The Magic of Love" is very
charmingly illustrated.

The Hero of our Days. From the Russian of Michael
Lermontoff. By Theresa Pulszky. Hodgson.
It cannot but be peculiarly interesting just now
for every intelligent Englishman to peruse this
remarkable novel of the " Hero of our Days"—re-
markable as among the most happily-timed and as
about the most gracefully executed of all Madame
Theresa Pulszky's very charming translations—re-
markable as incomparably the best of the literary
productions of the accomplished and unfortunate
Lermontoff—especially remarkable as an object of
attraction, at the present juncture, in England, as the
Russian romance most successful among the higher
circles of Moscow and St. Petersburg. " Let me
write the Ballads, and you may make the Laws."
" Tell me your companions, and I will describe your
character." They are old sayings, and wise sayings
—sayings that every one remembers. And as Com-
panions are always with regard to individuals, and
as Ballads were formerly in regard to the multitude,
so are Novels nowadays in reference to an entire
population. Indicators of character ! Influences
of mighty and scarcely to be exaggerated importance !
It is in this way that Charles Dickens and Bulwer
Lytton must be viewed by those who judge things
correctly in this country—as important movers of the
spirit of the times, and at the same time as repre-
sentatives through their works of the genius
and the tendencies of their generation. It is
in this way that the same age has been both
appreciably affected and vividly reflected in the
" Ten Thousand a Year" of Mr. Warren and in the
"Vanity Fair" of Mr. Thackeray. Madame Pulszky
has here very justly observed in her Preface—" It
is in literature as well as in art and in politics that
the moral and intellectual life of a nation is ex-
pressed"—adding very gracefully—" From the lite-
rary fruits and flowers we are like wise able to judge
of the tree of national life ; should they even be
withered or rotten, they still remain interesting
and instructive to the analytic research of the phi-
losophic mind." And impressel with this belief
she has ventured to translate " The Hero of our
Days" from the Russian of Lermontoff, convinced,
as she tells us, that " at the present crisis, sketches
of Russian life, drawn by a distinguished Russian
author, cannot to fix the attention of the Eng-
lish public." That they cannot fail to do so we
also rest assured, under the circumstances. Exa-
mining this particular story of "The Hero of our
Days," for this object and with this interest, it is
worthy of remembrance that its author was the off-
spring of an aristocratic Russian family, and be-
longing to the higher classes of society, wrote verses
which were distributed amongst his friends, which
verses, however, for some considerable time were
altogether overlooked by the public of St. Pe-
tersburg. They were so overlooked, indeed, un-
til 1837, when the great Russian poet, Pushkin,
was unhappily killed in a duel by his own brother-
in-law, a Frenchman, Danthes d'Heckeren.
Whereupon Lermontoff, inspired by the supreme
grief excited in his heart by the death of his friend,
wrote an impassioned ode upon the subject—an ode
which at once secured to the young poet his
literary reputation. In effecting this good, how-
ever, the poem written by Lermontoff on the death
of Pushkin brought to the former the penalty of
banishment. Disregarding the fact that Pushkin
had made himself peculiarly obnoxious to the court
by his well-known liberal ideas, Lermontoff ventured
through his ode to appeal directly to the Czar to
avenge the popular poet of the Russians. The
answer vouchsafed to this appeal by his Imperial
Majesty was the sentence of banishment to the
Caucasus pronounced on the unlucky Lermontoff.
There it was—in the Caucasus—that he wrote his
novel of " The Hero of our Days," and there it
was, moreover, strange to tell, that he also, like
his illustrious comrade and compatriot, the poet
Pushkin, perished in a duel, in 1841, when scarcely
thirty ! So much for the author of the popular
Russian romance here given to the English public
in the form of an accurate and timely trans-
lation. Forming the 112th volume of the
well-known " Parlour Library," it is accessible
to all ranks of the community. It will be none
the less welcome to the mass of readers in this
country, seeing that it is to the lingual skill and
to the literary abilities of Theresa Pulszky that they
are indebted for this introduction to the master-
piece of the unhappy, but gifted, Michael.Lerruon-
toff.

History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires, from
MLVII. to MCCCCLII. By George Finlay,

of the
Blackwood.
vgeirvyell
A masterly
learnednt
drilliacon
and
inmclaunsyionresispechtesre
history penned by Mr. Finlay in regard to
the imperial Byzantine and Greek Governments.
The ample promise of the first volume has
here, in the second, been to the full com-
pleted. Now that the work is at length substan-
tially before the world, we may be permitted to
Proffer to its laborious author our earnest and un-
affected congratulations.
His researches could
scarcely have been more happily repaid than by the
appropriately interesting conjuncture of circum-
stances under which the second volume appears,
the concluding volume containing as their fruits
the crowning chapters of Mr. Finlay's historical
masterpiece. Under no
other
combination of events
could the record here given by our annalist of the
decline and fall of the Byzantine governments and
of the Greek emp •
ires of Niccea and Constantinople
have come f orthinvested with a more peculiar in-
terest,
we might even say with a more singular
fascination. It is at a juncture in the world's his-
tory when the continued existence of the Turkish
empire, having its centre at what to the ancients
was Byzantium and to the moderns is Constanti-
nople, is the question at issue in a great war be-
tween Russia on the 'one hand, and England and
France on the other, the latter as the champions at
once of Turkey, of Christendom, and of Civilisation
—it is at this momentous epoch in the progress of
events in Europe that our scholar has been enabled, in
reward for his past industry, to add to the treasury
of the world of letters the completion of his lumi-
nous annals of the imperial governments of Byzan-
tium, Niccea, and Constantinople. In the previous
instalment of his history of these empires (empires at
once Asiatic and European)Mr. Finlay had recounted
the occurrences ranging between 716 and 1057.
In his prezent volume, volume the second, the
volume, as we have-already observed, which brings
the whole of his remarkable =Aortal:in tea con-

- - - -
elusion, he comprises the incidents which marked.
the growth and decay of those oriental em-
pires between 1057 and 1453--from the reigns
of Isaac (I.) Comnenus and the tenth Constantine
down to the permanent establishment (four hun-
dred years ago) of the Ottoman rule at Constanti-
nßoopolke .
the Volumes econtained
Volume
comprises
F ir st
within an d
condl
its ample chapters and prolific pages Book the
Third and Book the Fourth. Book Three, recount-
ing the narrative of the decline and f/1 of the
Byzantine Government ; and Book Four, the rise
and duration of the Greek empires of Nieves and
Constantinople. Here we listen to that tale of
blood and glory, that magnificent and sanguinary
history which has been often told before, but
never with more enthralling eloquence or more
satisfactory exactitude than by Mr. Finlay—.
the record of the dynasty of Comnenus and
the annals of the fall of Imperial Byzantium.
Here again the reader follows with breathless
interest the courso of the narrative which tells him
now of the empire of Niccea, and now of the Greek
empire of Constantinople under the dynasty of
Paleologos. As the work draws towards its con-
clusion, the lucidity of the narrative becomes only
the more obviously commendable. The account
furnished by our author of the formation- of the
Ottoman power is among the most reliable which
has yet fallen under our observation. It will be
read at this notable juncture with peculiar eager-
ness, and we doubt not also with complete satis-,
faction. Besides a variety cf important " addition*
and corrections" to Volume I.—Volume 11. con-
tains a most ample and a very laboriously compiled
" Index"—a circumstance of no small importance,
and an advantage of no mean value in a historical
work like the present, a work of classic authority,
a masterpiece of minute research, a history worthy
of more than one perusal and of very frequent con-
sultation.

The Americans at Rome. Edited by the author of

" Sam Slick." 3 vole.

We have become of late so well acquainted with
American city life and manners from the medium
of works of fiction or even the descriptions of tra-
vellers, that the real characteristic life of the back-
woods has been eornparativly forgotten. It is ob-
served in the preface, that "-travellers, on account
of the facility, safety, and comfort of transit, con-
fine themselves to the great public thoroughfares,
whereby they add but little to the stock of tinfor•
mation they previously possessed. The peculiarities
of the people, their modes of thinking, living, and
acting are principally to be sought for in the rural
districts, where unrestrained freedom of action, and
the incidents and requirements of a forest life, en-
courage and give room for the development of cha-
racter in its fullest extent." The present volumes
are devoted to descriptive narratives of " Byeways,
Backwoods, and Prairies," with all their wild ro•
mance and fierce excitement. It is like another
world, from the quiet details of domestic scenes to
the midnight murders, the burning prairies, the
struggles with wild beasts, and the vengeance of
the terrible " Lynchers." The peculiarities of a
backwoodsman are generally those of the whole
class. They are bold, hardy, generous, and hospit-
able, but at the same time violent and vindictive,
improvident and reckless. The life is one of wild
daring and hairbreadth escapes. With neither law
nor justice, their vengeance is sharp and sure. A
thief knows his doom is instant death if discovered,
and the certainty of narrow chances which they
run from so many various causes, the knowledge that
they may be in imminent danger from revenge or
from being unwelcome witnesses, besides the
myriad accidents of travelling and trading
in such an uncultivated land, gives them a
kind of recklessness of death, and indifference
to danger, which is very peculiar. There are
many sketches of the equally characteristic traits
of humour and mischief making scattered among
more serious exploits, that are very ludicrous.
The work certainly presents its reader with
striking novelty, and those who are wearied of
the order and indolence of civilised life May find
excitement and interest in the annals of the life of
the wild backwoods. The following is a description
of an escape from a burning prairie