The Sun.
London, England, 1853-08-23 00:00:00

SPAIN.

The Madrid Gazette of the 17th contains a circu-
lar addressed by the Minister of Public Works to
the directors-general of his department, in which
he announces that the provisional concession of the
railway from Barcelona to Tarragona is to be con-
sidered valid ; that that of the line from Martorell
to Valls y Reus requires some documents to be pro-
duced and some formalities to be accomplished be-
fore it can receive the royal sanction ; that of the
line from Xeres to Matagorda is declared valid, but
that the Cortes are to decide (as also with respect
to the other lines), whether materiel imported from
abroad is to be exempt from duty; that the conces-
sion of the line from Mataro to Areno de Mor shall
be put in conformity with the laws in vigour; and,
that the provisional concession of the lines from
Barcelona and Mataro, and from Barcelona to
GTanollers are declared valid. The royal resolu-
tion relative to the Northern Railway is said to
have afforded the greatest satisfaction in the pro-
vinces through which the line is to pass.
The French Minister, the Marquis of Turgot,
gave a grand dinner on the 15th, in honour of the
fete of the Emperor Napoleon. It was attended
by 32 personages of distinction—eighteen of whom
were Spaniards—and the remainder belonged to
the Corps Diplomatique. The only Spanish Minis-
ter present was General Lersundi, President of the
Council, the others being in attendance on the
Queen at La Granja. A letter states that the Mi-
nister of Interior has directed the prosecution com-
menced against the Novedades, the Epoca, the
Clamor Public°, and the Nacion, to be abandoned,
but against the Voice of the People, a socialist
journal, which had attacked military discipline, is
to be proceeded with.

The Madrid journals give a long account of a
visit, recently made by the Bishop of Urgel to
the Republic of Andorre, which is in his dio-
cese, and of which, though a Republic, he is
the sovereign prince. The Prelate was accom-
panied by a military detachment, and by a great
number of persons on horseback. The firing of
musketry took place as he proceeded. He was re-
ceived at the limits of the valley by all the autho-
rities, and a number of persons armed with mus-
kets and pistols, placed on an eminence, fired a
salute. When silence was restored, the Chief Ma-
gistrate addressed him, and said that, though they
recognised him as their Sovereign Prince, it was
necessary that, before entering, he should take an
oath to respect their privileges and defend their
neutrality. This the Bishop did, whereupon the
Syndic and all the magistrates kissed the episcopal
Prince
ring. Enthusiastic cries of " Long live the
of Andorre !" were then raised. More discharges
formal as chanted
of musketry took place, and a Te Deum
w
in the church. The Prelate then took
pos-
session of the territory, and
banquet followed, andn d a deed notifying that
act was drawn up. A grand
some pieces of money were paid to him as tribute,
but, after receiving them, he gave them to
tthe
poor.
The Three [per Cents. w e2rei ;
done
the
Debt at
of h
4l; thet
the
New Three per Cents. at 3
first class at 10 7-16 ; and that of the second at
5 5-16.

EXTRAORDINARY INCREASE OF RAILWAY TRAFFIC
THROUGH THE GRAND NAVAL REVIEW AT PORTSMOUTH.
—The receipts for the week of the South Western
Company amounted to 25,1121., being 6,0001. more
than that company had ever before realised in one
week. The receipts corresponding for 1852, were
13,8221., and in 1851, 18,1351. The South Coast
shows also a considerable increase ; the receipts for
the week being 18,384/., the corresponding week in
1852 having been 12,8121.

LIT ERATU.RE.

Samuel Johnson •an Essay. By Thomas CarlYle.
Chapman and Hall. rests.
As the seventh instalment of the popular t,
of volumes issuing from the press through the der
blishment of Messrs. Chapman and Hall, 1111
re-
the title of Reading for Travellers, we bar`,, aog
print of this delightful essay, originally aPP—tra.
in 1832 in Fraser's Magazine. Scarcely any
yeller but will welcome the sketch before us, P. of
culled with life-like touches by the eccentric haSy
gen, cter'
Thomas Carlyle. It is a sketch at once so 1
true, and so quaintly and fantastically ell,3ra any
istic. It does more justice to poor Bozzy tnarl.,,tan
other of the numerous critics who have ever wje"re..
on his great biographical masterpiece. It"bars
cates in old phraseology enough " the grating
thunder, or vehement shrew-mouthed squeak!Teea
bywhich the advent of Mr. Croker's edition Ilan, v„ii
heralded in the periodicals. Nevertheless, tn°ls
it deprecates any very high eulogium upon it
edition as altogether uncalled-for by its flier' if
commends in comical terms the work's displajt
not of religion and a devout Christian heart, which
orthodoxy, and a cleanly shovel-hated look, is
[the critic adds], as compared with flat NothiugL„,
something very considerable." Notwithstann'?.
which partial commendation of " Croker s _oi
well's Johnson," we learn from Mr. Carlyle f a vnulty',
f
on in his essay that he regards the edition as 3
and that he does so thuswise—
"lt is, that onr Editor has fatally, and almost
ingly, mistaken the limits of an Editor's functiono;ns,
so, instead of working on the margin with his P of
elucidate as best might be, strikes boldly into the !
the page with his scissors, and there clips at discrell,u_tt
Four books Mr. C. had by him wherefrom to gather Tut
for the fifth, which was Boswell's. What does be d°•uto
now, in the placidest manner,—slit the whole fivetlly
slips and sew these together into a sextum quid, ex° oje
his own convenience giving Boswell the credit C 4
whole ! By what art-Magic, our readers ask, has he unit
them ? By the simplest of all : by brackets. Ne,veron
fore was the full virtue of the bracket made manifes"'i be
begin a sentence under Boswell's guidance, thinkingi:the
carried happily through it by the same ; but no . .
Sent
middle, perhaps after your semicolon, and some conaejles
for'—starts up one of these bracket-ligatures, and 50.
of,
you in from half a page to twenty or thirty Pnges must
Hawkins, Tyers, Murphy Piozzi ; so that often one w;
make the old sad reflection, Where we are we kne
whither we go no man knoweth." ;iv ids
Mr. settled accounts thus summa-,.--,
Mr. Croker, our essayist turns thereupon town in.
Corsican Boswell, James Boswell, Esq., of Aucable
leck. Of this queer, prying, bizarre, incompar
prince among biographers, we then have th„llous
lowing masterly portraiture—being a al3l.lf-
profile of Bozzy in a sort of siouette
fi over,
"In that cocked nose, co partly
ked in,
trieinsrboblisotg.
his weaker fellow-creatures, partly to snuff up the
coming pleasure, and scent it from afar ; in those ca-
ched:, hanging like half-filled wine-skins, still able to that
tain more ; in that coarsely protruded shelf-mouth,4ity,
fat dewlapped chin ; in all this, who sees not sen,s"-that
pretension, boisterous imbecility enough; much „ot
could not have been ornamental in the temper of ny),
man's overfed great man (what the Scotch name flunlatt
though it had been more natural there ? The under'''.
of Boswell's face is of a low, almost brutish character.
of
But Carlyle does justice to him, though he
admit that there is one line of beauty in his ,•A'
nomy." Hear him speak of Mr. Boswell's Li of
Doctor Johnson ! He says—" That loose-00
ing, careless-looking Work of his is as a Pietthje
by one of Nature's own Artists ; the best pess,ate
resemblance of a Reality ; like the very
thereof in a clear mirror." Speaking °1 he
Bozzy's " glaring mixture of the highest arm "
lowest" in his temperament, Mr. Carlyle obseve''
rather grandly—
of
" What, indeed, is man's life generally but a kin-ore
beast-godhead ; the god in us triumphing more :Ind u der
over the beast ; striving more and more to subdue it 11151
his feet ? Did not the Ancients, in their wise, perennl r
• significant way, figure nature itself, their sacred o
ds,
Pan, as a portentous commingling of these two lingdiscoC
as musical, humane, oracular in its upper part, yet en of
below in the cloven hairy feet of a goat? The nnitl3,.,-e-
-melodious, celestial Freewill and Reason with foul .
tionality and Lust ; in which, nevertheless, dwelt al3ll sr
terious unspeakable Fear and half-mad panic Awn;
mortals there well might !"
Admirably and nobly is it said afterwards of Bohr
t. -
well's feeling, in reference to the great wan,
pen has delineated—" his feeling was not Pteii
phancy, which is the lowest, but Reverence, rah
is the highest, of human feelings." A glimpse a:•,st
of the true Hero-Worship for which our essaJ i.
has so wise and exalted an admiration. Be3ilt(l
fully and touchingly is it then observed, in reg 3;,
to the fugitiveness of things and the eternising 1,1-:
fluence in reference to some of them, exercised 1';
this marvellous Johnsoniad
but
"The Mitre Tavern still stands in Fleet-street :
where now is its scot-and-lot paying, beef-and-ale I°_,".;;
cock-hatted, pot-bellied landlord ; its rosy faced assitti
landlady, with all her shining brass-pans,- waxed-ta.l
well-filled. larder-shelves ; her cooks, bootjack?, tj kwa errs -1
boys, and watery-mouthed hangers-on Gs'onaue ! C4ft.
The becking waiter, who, with wreathed smiles, was "-Sao,
to spread for Samuel and Bozzy their supper of th
has long since pocketed his last sixpenc_e ; and vannlie
sixpences and all, like a ghost at
cock-cro enng:
bottleshey
they drank out of are all broken, the chairs ,n kis
sat on all rotted and burnt ; the knives and fobs
they ate with have rusted to the veryart , and become 10",
oxide of iron, and mingled with the indiscriminate
All, all has vanished ; in very deed and
truth
baseless fabric of Prospero's air-vision. Of the Mitre Tavel
nothingbut the bare walls remain there : of London, ;14
England; of the world, nothing but the bare weir
remain ; and these also decaying (were they 01.3-3;
mant), 'only slower. The mysterious river of Exi"e,::,l
rushes on : a new Billow thereof has arrived, but
lashes wildly as ever round the old embankment ors
the former Billow with its loud mad edd i gs; w
is it ?—Where ! Now this Book of Boswell'sy, this /ante;
cisely a revocation of the edict of Destin so that e
shall not utterly, not so soon by severalyeenturies,
dominion over us. A little row of Naphtha-light,
dearly and holy through the dead Night of the ras,e'
they who are gone are still here ; though hidden theY
revealed, though dead they yet speak. There it shin tg
that little miraculously lamplit Pathway ; shedding ;it
feebler and feebler twilight into the 'boundless "e",,
Oblivion,—for all that our Johnson touched has W 00;
illuminated for us on which miraculous little Patbscs'
we can still travel, and see wonders."
Carlyle, later on, admirably calls the biograPil
itself "thus our English Odyssey," the 1j1Y5311
being, of course, no other than the great Saind,
Johnson. And of Johnson he says, quite a$ ,g
,5
mirably, that his was a mind " stamped of Nat,,
noblest metal, though in so ungainly a
What, again, can be better—what gentler, loftie,o
or more touching than those allusions to Johnson
marriage ?
1104
" Johnson's marriage with the good Widow Porter
ntlf
been created with ridicule by many mortals whoa 03"—rey-
had no understanding thereof. That the pur-blind, see„-„jo
faced Wildman, stalking lonely, woe-stricken, ilk° a
Irish Gallowglass with peeled club, whose speech` linrrsd
knew, whose look all men both laughed at and shdue":t
at, should find any brave female heart to acknowleclgetb-ie
first sight and hearing of him, ' This is the most seysl e
man I ever met with ' • and then, with generous coufot;
to take him to itselfl and say, Be thou mine • be t'atl
warmed here and thawed to life !—in all this, the k
widow's love and pity for him, in Johnson's love an Their
titude, there is actually no matter for ridicule. zle
wedded life, as is the common lot, was made up of driz.l ;
and dry weather ; but innocence and worth dwelt
and when death had ended it, a certain sacredness : Huhn,lo
son's deathless affection for his Tetty was always yenell'
and noble."
d fOr
Eulogising the Doctor's sublime disregar—
iron/
Fame, Mr. Carlyle observes, in a vein of
quite his own :
"Most authors speak of their `Fame' as if it 'vereeelya
quite priceless matter ; the grand ultimatum, and he'vcor
Constantine's-Banner they had to follow, and e°n•ll it
under.—Thy ` Fame !' Unhappy mortal, where NYnil sea
and thou both be in some fift years ? Shakspeare dent)
has lasted but two hundred;; Homer (partly by se,,cicircle
three thousand : and does not already an Eternity 'n
ver
and
hly
every Me and every Thee? Cease, then, to sit ie
hatching on that ' Fame' of thine ; and liarl'ini,g;r hot
shrieking with fierce hisses, like brood-goose en '-`-t with
egg, if man shall or dare approach it ! Quarrel n° „st of
me, hate me not, my Brother : make what thou .
4. el 1.,
thy egg, and welcome : God knows, I will not steal

believe it to be addle."
The close of that, we take it, is absolutely de;
licious—so, for the most part, too, is the entir
essay—the intaglio to the cameo of Macaulay

Turkey and Christendom. An Essay. Longln

and Company.
As the forty-seventh part of the Traveller s
brary, published by Messrs. Longman and C°f
pany, we find a timely reprint within the last e.„
days of a contribution taken (with additions) Wu;
the Edinburgh. It could not possibly have ecatt„
before the 4glish public once again more opP%
timely. From its agreeable and sometimes epeee
eloquent narrative the reader may glean abinadaei
of valuable information. It depicts with raupjati
lucidity of style and perspicacity of arrangt-v,"
the relations in regard to each other in which The
long been placed—Turkey and Christendoni•
Jer-
reviewer begins with the downfall and dis Tell the
ment of the old Byzantine empire, and brings e-
story of events gradually down to a period joiner
diately contemporary to ourselves. The revi:riewde-
traces the rise of Ottoman power and its rapi—,:no
velopment—and in defining the source of its (2107 as
and decay, takes occasion, of course, top
inevitable its ulterior dissolution. Nev' toll-
the writer acknowledges himself baffled in the from
jectures as to whether Turkey may disappear eats,
the map of the world by diplomatic arrangeol
by the force of conquest, by gradual absorptio9?,°::
by abrupt dismemberment. As throwing con tern
rable light upon the obscurer phases of this Easte.o7o
question, the essay here reprinted must preN3st
doubt not to many intelligent readers, in the ILL--
sense of the phrase, acceptable.

THE LIFE GC-ABM—The Life Guards are to baps :
pistol served out to them, and the cuirass taken t w'
as at present the carbine is useless, the men n
Hess
•
able to put the butt-end with any
er
degree of tian
against the polished cuirass. Moreov, the cuirass ss
hampers the freedom of the arms that a sword arm
I
almost useless.