The Sun.
London, England, 1838-03-19 00:00:00

COURT CIRCULAR.

Her Majesty and her august Mother attended Divine Ser-
vice yesterday morning at the New Palace. The Rev. Dr.
Short, Deputy Clerk of the Closet in Waiting, officiated, and
the Bishop of London preached the Sermon.
The Duchess of Glocester visited her Majesty yesterday.
Viscount Melbourne had an audience of the Queen.
The Royal dinner party on Saturday included the Marquis
of Ileadfort, the Earl of. Uxbridge, Hon. Mrs. and Miss Ca-
vendish, and the Hon. C. Murray.
The band of the Coldstream Regiment of Foot Guards were
in attendance at the Palace, and performed favourite selec-
tions the whole of the evening.
Her Majesty the Queen Dowager attended Divine Service,
yesterday morning, at the Chapel Royal, St. James's. The
readers were the Rev. Messrs. Haden and Barham ' • the Sub-
dean officiated at the altar ; and the Bishop of Chichester
preached the sermon from the 14th Romans, and the l'ith verse.
Her Majesty was attended by Lady Clinton, Miss Hudson,
wad Earl Howe.
The Duchess Dowager of Richmond, Marquis of Salisbury,
Earl of Bandon, and Lords Stuart de Rothesay and Eliot,
Were amongst the Nobility present.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince George and
the Princess Augusta of Cambridge, attended by Miss Kerr,
Baron Knesbeck, and Colonel Cornwall, went to Kew yester-
day morning, and attended the re-opening for Divine Service
of Kew Church.
The Princess Augusta attended Divine Service yesterday
morning in St. Philip's Chapel, Regent-street. Her Royal
Highness was attended by Miss Wynyard.
The Duke of Sussex had a dinner party on Saturday at Ken-
sington Palace. His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge
Was present. The Royal Duke had afterwards an evening
party.
The Duchess of Cambridge and Prince George honoured
the Earl and Countess of Albemarle with their company at
dinner on Saturday in Berkeley-square.
The Duchess of Gloucester honoured the Countess Sebas-
tiani with her presence on Thursday evening at the assembly
given by her Excellency.
A Cabinet Council was held on Saturday afternoon at the
Foreign-office. It was attended by all the Ministers except
Viscount Duncannon. The Council sat two hours.
Lord Hill had an interview with Viscount Melbourne on
Saturday.
Despatches from Spain were received yesterday at the Fo-
reign-office.
The Prussian, Belgian, Bavarian, and Spanish Ministers
transacted business on Saturday at the Foreign-office.
Despatches were sent off from the Colonial-office for the
Governors of Malta and Gibraltar on Saturday evening.
Lord John Russell gave a Parliamentary dinner on Satur-
day, at his residence in Wilton-crescent.

LITERATURE•

MEMOIRS OF GRIMALDI. 2 Vols.
Bentley, London, 1838.
Boz has here dished up for us just the sort of piquant,
dainty volumes that we were prepared to expect from him ;
and introduced them by a lively and pointed preface, wherein
he alludes to his childhood's recollections of pantomine and
its wonders, in a very delightful, gossipping vein. Those
who are fond of laughable characteristic anecdotes of the
green-room ;of singular adventures, which, in one or two
instances, have quite the air of romance ; and of personal
sketches of the most remarkable public men •f the day,
Royalty itself included—those who are fond of this sort of
light reading, may lay their account to deriving a world of
amusement from these Memoirs of Grimaldi, which are as
full of odd adventures and startling vicissitudes of fortune,
now of a serious, now of a highly comic character, as if they
were all action—instead of being what they are, all truth—
from beginning to end. The subject of them, Joe Grimaldi,
who, by the bye, was one of the best clowns that ever
grinned through a horse-collar, or pocketted a " sassenger,"
on the boards of a British theatre, seems to have been a
man of extreme simplicity and goodness of heart—quite a
child in all worldly matters—though he had a quick con-
ception of the peculiarities of character, as is evident by
the style of his numerous personal anecdotes, and of his
occasional reflections on them. We remember him very
wellin the days of our undoubting boyhood, and have enjoyed
a heartier laugh over his uncommon faculties of appropria-
tion as clown, than we can ever expect to enjoy again, even
were Liston again to be what he was ten years since. Yet
this inimitable clown, whose life seemed to be but one
brood grin, was, it seems, for no inconsiderable portion of
his professional career, a prey to disease and anxieties of
all sorts, and often convulsed his audience with laughter
when his own heart was ready to burst with grief. He died,
ere he bad yet pacsed the autumn of life, worn down by the
effects of continuous illness, and, still more, by the frantic
conduct of his only son, to whom he was warmly attached,
and who, in return, by his scandalous excesses, broke his
father's heart. This is a painful chapter in these otherwise
merry volumes, which do great credit to Grimaldi, and
place his character before us in a very amiable light. As a
specimen of their manner, we select an extract taken at
random from the second volume :
In the July of this year, a very extraordinary circumstance occurred
at Sadism Wells, which was the great topic of conversation in the neigh-
bourhood for some time afterwards. It happened thus :—Captain
George Harris of the Royal Navy (who was related to the Mr. Harris of
Covent Garden, and with whom Grimaldi was slightly acquainted,) had
recently returned to England after a long voyage. The crew being paid
off, many of the men followed their commander up to London, and pro-
ceeded to enjoy themselves after the usual fashion of sailors. Sadler's
Wells was at that time a famous place of resort with the blue-jackets :
the gallery being sometimes almost solely occupied by seamen and their
female companions. A large body of Captain Harris's men resorted
hither one night, and amongst them a man who was deaf and dumb, and
had been so for many years. This man was placed by his shipmates in
the front row of the gallery. Grimaldi was in great force that night,
and, although the audience were in one roar of laughter, nobody appeared
to enjoy his fun and humour more than this poor fellow. His compa-
nions, good naturedly, took a good deal of notice of him, and one of them,
talked very well with his fingers, inquired hew he liked the enter-
tainments ; to which the deaf-and-dumb man replied, through the same
medium, and with various gestures of great delight, that he had never
seen anything half so comical before.
As the scene progressed, Grimaldi's tricks and jokes became still more
irresistible; and at length, after a violent peal of laughter and applause
which quite shook the theatre, and in which the dumb man joined most
heartily, he suddenly turned to his mate who sat next him, and cried
out with much glee, " What a d—d funny fellow:"
" Why, Jack," shouted the other man, starting back with great sur-
prise, " can you speak ?"
" Speak I" returned the other; " ay, that I can, and hear too."
Upon this, the whole party of course gave three vehement cheers, and
at the conclusion of the piece adjourned in a great procession to the
" Sir Hugh Middleton," hard by, with the recovered man elevated on
the shoulders of half a dozen friends in the centre. A crowd of people
quickly assembled round the door, and great excitement and curiosity
were occasioned as the intelligence ran from mouth to mouth, that a
deaf.and.dumb man had come to speak and hear, all owing to the clever.
ness of Joey Grimaldi.

JANE LOMAX; OR, A MOTHER'S CRIME.
By the Author of " Brombletye House." In 3 Vols.
London, Colburn, 1838.
The incidents comprised in this novel are neither nume-
rous nor complicated. Mr. and Mrs. Lomax, the former
a poor clerk in a lawyer's office, attract the notice of Died-
rich Hoffmann, a German, and confirmed eccentric old
bachelor, who has amassed a large fortune as a sugar-baker
at Bristol, and who, in a fit of very usual generosity, allows
them, with two children, to occupy apartments in his house
in the capacity of house-keepers. A mortal illness seizes
him, when he produces a will in favour of a nephew whom
he had previously disinherited for marrying a poor actress.
At the suggestion of his wife, Lomax is tempted to forge a
will, bequeathing the dying sugar-baker's property to him-
self, and this document being substituted for the original
instrument, is executed by Hoffman, who affects the greatest
mystery about the disposal of his property, and will not
uffer the will to be looked at by any of the witnesses. In
he commission of this crime, Mrs. Lomax—who by the
~v
layis a Lady Macbeth in masquerade—is instigated
Isolely by an excessive maternal love for her son Benjamin,
'a mere youth, but of a constitution so delicate that she
fears he will never be able to encounter the drudgery of
the counting-house. When her joy is at its height her son
dies of consumption ; she herself commits suicide ; her
husband becomes a drunkard, and dies in despair in a fit of
delirium tremens ; the daughter languishes through life a
moping old maid ; and—with the usual regard to novelists'
conceptions of the ultimate decrees of a retributive Pro-
vidence—the sugar-baker's nephew recovers the property
left him by his uncle. It will be seen that the moral
which this story works out is as old as the hills ; and as for
the characters, some of them are so exaggerated as to ap-
proach the limits of caricature. Here and there may be
met with passages of great beauty, but the impression made
upon our mind by a perusal of the whole is neither very
striking nor very pleasing. All the characters talk too
much to no purpose, and appear too often without any
conceivable object, save to weary and perplex the reader.
But it will not fail to obtain admirers in the drawing-room,
and will be sure to create a sensation at all the fashionable
watering-places. The love episodes are unexceptionable
for tenderness and disinterestedness on the part of the young
ladies, who are all heroines of the first order, and think no
more of sacrificing love to the entreaties of friendship, or
the dictates of (linty, than they would of presenting a child
with a trinket, or a waiting-woman with a pair of gloves.
The only naughty woman introduced in the tale is Mrs.
Lomax, and even she is respectable for her decision of
character, which she perpetually displays, like most clever
women, to the annoyance of her chicken-hearted husband.
The ladies have, therefore, every reason to be satisfied with
Mr. Smith's gallantry.

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN,
EARL OF ST. VINCENT, G. C. 8., ADMIRAL
OF THE FLEET,
By EDWARD PELHAM BRENTON, Captain, R.N.
In 2 Vols. London, henry Colburn, 1838.
We have learned with surprise and pleasure that it was
long the intention of Lord Brougham to write the life of the
heroic subject of this interesting memoir. Highly, how-
ever, as we estimate the Noble and Learned Lord's abilities,
we do not regrot that he left this just tribute, to the
memory of a gallant officer, to be performed by one of our
most deservedly popular naval historians. In addition to
Captain Brenton's naval sympathies, and accurate
knowledge of the profession, he had the advantage
of enjoying for many years the friendship, and even the
confidence of the veteran Commander—of having h:
during his Lordship's life-time, free access to his papers—
and of hearing from his Lordship's lips, explanations of
some of the most complicated events is his naval and
ministerial career. Besides, the Earl St. Vincent's
character was not one which required for its due de-
velopement the employment of those great powers
of subtle analysis for which Lord Brougham is so pre-
eminent. The Earl of St. Vincent was as brave
an officer as ever unsheathed a sword in the service of his
country ; but he was also an indifferent politician, and had
no pretension to a knowledge of the leading principles of
exalted Statesmanship. He was an enemy to the educa-
tion of the poor—hated vaccination, because it prevented
the death of a surplus population, and so set at nought
the decrees of Providence !—and could never dis-
cover anything wrong in military and naval impressment.
With the feelings of such a man,
however generous in
other respects, Lord Brougham could have few sym-
pathies ; and while the history of slavery remains to be
written—a work which Lord Brougham is better capable
of writing than any man in England—we trust his Lordship
will not devote an instant to pursuits less congenial to his
taste, and less likely to rivet the connection between the
names of Brougham and Wilberforce.
Captain 13renton has performed the part of bio-
grapher of his illustrious friend with judgment and
fidelity. One-third of the volumes at least is com-