The Sun.
London, England, 1854-05-08 00:00:00

SETTLING A LONG BILL.

The Young Voyageurs. By Captain Mayne Reid.
Bogue.
A. charming sequel to the " Boy Hunters" brings
us into communion once more with our old young
favourites—Basil, Lucien, Francois ! Heartily
welcome are they—the stripling Nimrods of North
America : welcome for their author and for them-
selves. Adventurous as they were found to be
throughout the whole of their well-remembered
search after the White Buffalo, in the present
narrative of their fortunes they will prove on exa-
mination to have been yet more so. It will be
borne in recollection by the reader of the former
story that among all the mazes of its incidents the
writer contrived to scatter many delightful illus-
trations of the fauna and flora of the temperate
zone of the great double-continent of the Western
Hemisphere. "In doing this, however," as the
Preface here reminds us, "many animals, and par-
ticularly that interesting class known as the fur-
bearing animals, could not be introduced without
bringing the mountain to Mahomet." It is the
author's own acknowledgment. Recognising the
importance of the omission, he determined at once
to obviate the difficulty by the exceedingly simple,
and very natural, and most obvious device of taking
Mahomet to the mountain. Mahomet, for the
nonce, being represented by the three sons of the
old Colonel of Louisiana. Alas ! that we should
have to say formerly of Louisiana, for the brave
veteran has gone quietly to his fathers in the
interim, and Hugot, too, the faithful ex-chasseur,
faithful oven in death, has followed his beloved
master to the grave, attending even across the
boundaries of the tomb the gentle emigre on his
last removal—this time, however, a removal the
reverse of expatriation. But Marengo, the blood-
hound with the cross of a mastiff, still survives, and
his trio of youthful owners, Basil, Lucien, Fran-
cois, are still together. And so together they start
on a new and more daring expedition. Upon
this they are compelled, nevertheless, to en ter only
after having parted with the poor mule Jeannette.
Attended merely by the dog Marengo they set out
upon their journey—a journey, as we are told at
t
the outset, long, toilsome, and perilous. Th
Colonel being dead, Hugot being dead, and
Jeannette being sold, the Boy Hunters have never-
theless one other besides their black-muzzled com-
panion : Norman—a cousin—the only son of that
far-off uncle of theirs, in quest of whom they are
going, when the book opens, to travel
i orderliro.ugh
all
the wild regions of the Red River, having n
to get thither, first of all to traverse the summer
prairies of the South, and to pass. the mighty
forests of the Mississippi. A superintendent or
" factor" of the Hudson's Bay Company, this re-
motely situated uncle of the Boy Hunters [a Scotch-
man who had married the Colonel's sister, Corsica
having thereby yielded for once a good wife to a
wandering Highlander] lived, as they knew, at his
appointed post hard. by the shores of the Arctic
Sea—a spot to attaat which they would have to
make a canoe voyage across the American Conti-
nent ! A cruise of many thousands of miles in
length, equivalent in length, indeed, to a trip across
the Atlantic; the lakes andriversof that wonderful
the highway of their country
region being, in fact,

The World : How to Square it. By Harry Hie.
over. T. C. Newby.
Well—it has been done at last ! The mystery
has been solved. Not the contrivance of a certain
means for the discovery of the longitude. Not
perpetual motion. Not the Greek kalends. Not
the universal language. Not the elixir vike. Not
the aurum potabile. Neither do we mean the
fabulous kingdom of Prester John—any more than
we allude to the imaginarycity of El Dcrado, which,
for that matter, might be regarded as having been
found at last, either in Melbourne or in San Fran-
cisco its all-sufficing representatives. No, we refer
to none of these things as mysteries which have
been explained. Our reference is plainly and
simply to the elucidation of what might have
seemed to the superficial the elucidation of a yet
greater difficulty, the solution of a yet more bewil-
dering problem, that, namely, of—the Quadrature
of the Circle. It has been done at last, we repeat.
The problem has been solved, the mystery has been
explained. The wizard is Harry Hieover. Here
we have it before us, reduced to a compass almost
small enough to go into a shell, as the saying is.
Certainly small enough to be packed away as
toothsome kernel of a moderately sized cocoa-nut
shell, or as the sufficiently explosive entrails
of a literary bombshell—with the name of the
author neatly labelled on the 'title-page, " blazing
away" like the fuzee ! THE WORLD—that is the
circle (ample enough, in all conscience) selected for
illustration—and how to square it! There we have
the fact frankly and at once announced—the fact
of this marvellous and long-expected achievement.
Surely Harry Hieover must be the long-talked-of
Coming Man—Come at last. Hitherto we have been
impressed by the wntings of our author with the
belief that he knows a great deal about Horses.
His latest effusion, the book before us, published
by Mr. Newby, conducts us irresistibly to the con-
clusion—that, after all, he knows nearly as much
about Man. As full as an egg is of meat, this little
volume is of his experiences. Quite as much as the
Justice of Jacques in " As You Like it," it is—
. " Full of wise saws and modern instances."
Altogether, the work appears to have been dictated
by sound common sense, flavoured with an agree-
able tincture of the humorous. Harry Hicover
undertakes, through its pages, to set all sorts and
classes of readers right—if they will only listen
to him—with their neighbours and with themselves.
He has a word for every one—for the rich as westll
as for the poor, for the busy man struggling ag
ain
indigence, and for the indolent man blessed or
cursed, as the case may be, with a competence. He
administers each little bolus of counsel, moreover,
agreeably and not repulsively—less like a pill than
like a sweetmeat. He does not force you into lis-
telling to him by talking,
on with the vociferoUs perti-
nacity of a bore. But, instead of this, he decoys you
by the button-hole. He
gossips rather than lectures.
He trolls you off an anecdote, andwhile your heart
is opened in laughing at it he drops in a little of
the oil of his homely wisdom—a balm for social
bruises, an anodyne for all the hurts acquired in
the rubs and buffetings of the World. " The
World"--and How to Square it ! How ? Harry
you. Turn over his gay colloquial
Hieover tells
pages briefou learn, not so much by dry argument
as by and practical illustration. Listen to
his little scraps of advice—hints, some of them, full
of sly fun. Here is a bon bouche : " Never offer
an arm chair to an elderly lady !" And he has no
malice either, even when his remarks might seem
to savour most of the malicious : ex. gr., after
strongly urging elderly gentlemen not to dance
polkas and waltzes with young ladies of eighteen,
he adds :
"Let not your anger rise, my hearts of oak, at what
I say of you ; you are not alluded to by youth, but by
one fast following in your wake, and who, if he went
for a weight for we plate,' would not have to carry
a feather ; so pray take. it in good part, for what I say
of you bears on my hapless self so far as pretensions
go, though perhaps not as to performance, for I don't
polk.' My old friend, Sir John Stevenson, of Irish
melody renown, used to say latterly, My legs are very
good legs, but they won't walk ;' so, I make no doubt,
are mine, admirable legs—they do as well on horseback
as ever, really will walk, and occasionally make an at-
tempt at a run ; but I have a faint younger ones
would do better in a dance ; but this is no rule for
others to go by—that is, if they can go."
His anecdotes are never secondhand. His illus-
trations are not given to us simply upon hearsay.
If he is talking of anything that may seem to re-
quire such an elucidatory accompaniment he always
has some pat reminiscence just apt to the matter
under consideration : " Walking through the streets
the other day," &c., or " calling upon a friend last
night," &c., or "an acquaintance of mine some

" An acquaintance showed me a most portentious-
looking bill that had been sent into him. Gad I' said
I, it's a precious long one." "It is,' said my acquaint-
ance, but he'll find the time a precious deal longer
before he gets it.' He went abroad a day or two after-
wards."

Or, take another instance, where our author re-
counts with charming gravity the repetition of the
famous

HINT TO AN IRISHMAN.

"One well known to most men about town, and, in-
deed, in most other places, had, as his regular custom,
some little time since, exceeded his income by a goodly
number of hundreds ; consequently, somebody, or, in
sooth, many bodies, constantly suffered by it. He is.
in figurative language, frequently getting into the fire,
but as adroitly gets out of it. He is, in this way, a
veritable phosnix. I need hardly say it is about as dif-
ficult to get an interview with him as with a prime
minister, when either know anything is wanted of them.
However, a sturdy creditor did, by some ruse, get into
the house, and into the presence of him he sought. He
was politely offered a chair—for the person alluded to
is one of the most gentlemanly men in London. Sturdy,
however, refused the offer in no courteous terms. "He
was determined to be heard ;" and, after pretty con-
siderable and lengthened abuse, he told his customer
he was a rascal, and he would expose him all over
London.' Our hero had never moved a muscle of his
face during all the volley fired at him ; but on the last
observation, he quietly rose and said, My good fellow,
you can tell London nothing about me that it does not
know. I dare say you are quite correct as to my being
a rascal ; but I have a particular dislike to being called
so.' He then, as cooly as he spoke, knocked his
visitor down. He rose ; the drawing-room door was
politely opened for him ; he took the hint at once, and
it was well for him he did. This was certainly one way
of squaring an upleasant visit.' "
Squaring it, indeed, with the world, and—literally
—with a vengeance. Reminding one, in fact, of
the exemplary manner in which little aul Dombey
is described by his creator Mr. Dickens as having
behaved towards the world immediately after his
entrance into it. According to a notable sentence
on the first page of the memorable fiction, we are
given to understand—" Son" [of whom we have
learnt before that a few minutes after birth he is
' carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in
front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitu-
tion were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was
essential to toast him brown while he was very
new']—" Son, with his little fists curled up and
clenched, seemed, in his feeble way, to be squaring
at existence for having come upon him so unex-
pectedly." It is not thus, however, that Harry
Hieover would have us " square it" with " the
world," whether it comes upon us expectedly or
unexpectedly. Shortly before bringing his argu-
ment to a conclusion he gives us, as one of the pre-
cious axioms to carry about with us like an amulet
or a talisman, the holy words—

" Live in charity with all men."

Howbeit, one of these epigrammatic recommenda-
tions appears at page 277 in the oddest manner
imaginable, coming forth, as it does, from this par-
ticular volume : " Never give advice." And this
advice never to give advice—to add to the joke—
is italicised. ! But then—Harry Hieover is a wag :
with all his wisdom he cannot be rid of his wag-
gery. Possibly to which circumstance we may
attribute the fact that in his most serious moments
he is never tiresome. It is certainly with him in
the shadow as an Author, as in all probability it is
with him in the substance as a Companion. You
are never bored by the grave look, because you are
sure all the while the man's heart is sunned by
his inextinguishable good humour. And so one
closes the little book thankful for its blending of
gay seriousness and sober merriment.

White's Natural History of Selborne. Edited by
the Rev. J. G. Wood. Illustrated. George
Routledge and Co.
There is no interruption to the enterprise of Mr.
Routledge. It is not enough that he is pouring
from the press, month after month, week after
week, almost day after day, a profusion of popular
works of a most miscellaneous charaCter—accessible
to we had almost said the poorest, certainly to
among the poorest of our railway travellers. Not
contented with adding to this a cheap edition
of our English Poets, published periodically—and
a series of fictions, both reprints and originals
—novels and romances, some of them written by
authors as celebrated as Dickens and Bulwer Lyt-
ton. Not satisfied, we say, with all this, the spe-
culative and munificent firm headed by Mr. Rout-
ledge, is continually affording the community, from
time to time, the opportunity of procuring from
the book-stalls at the principal railway stations for
two or three of the smaller coins of the realm one
of those renowned works which have come long
since to be regarded as among the popular classics
of our literature. Conspicuous among this must
be ranked the book mentioned at the head of this
notice, of which the present issue constitutes au
elegant edition, adorned with a profusion of appro-
priate woodcuts by way of scattering among the text
both illustration and embellishment. Everybody
of even moderate education, has heard of " White's
History of Selborne "—that most precious little
manual of the English naturalist. It is scarcely
necessary to remind those that the production is,
in all essential respects, the work of a life, the work
of that calm, contemplative, and observant life of
76 years, passed by the Rev. Gilbert White, in his
native village of Seaborne, in Hampshire. Our
author having been born on the 18th of July,
1720, and havin,, died on the 26th of Juue, 1796,
peaceful village, the fauna and flora
ionf Itvhlakitch he has. so delightfully celebrated in this
collection of Epistles, forty-four addressed to
Thomas Pennant, and sixty-live to the Hon. Dailies
Barrington. We doubt not that this excellent re-
issue of " 'White's History of Selborne," edited, by.
the way, by the Rev. J. G. Wood, with remark-
' able ability, will be accepted as a valuable and.
welcome boon by not a few of the more reflective
readers among our intelligent population.

THE INDIA, CHINA., AND AUSTRALIAN MAIL, was
despatched from the General Post•office on Saturday in
22 omnibuses, and from the Waterloo Station in seven
railway waggons. It contained nearly 600 boxes,
besides bags, and weighed about 25 tons ; 140 of the
boxes were for India, and China, and nearly 460 for
Australia.

CURIOUS CASE OF KNIGHTHOOD.—Sir Samuel Big-
nold, who was knighted by her Majesty at the levee on
Wednesday, met the corporation of Norwich (of which
city ho is mayor) on Friday, and narrated the somewhat
singular circumstances under which he obtained the
honour of knighthood. It appears that he was com-
missioned by the corporation of which he is the head to
convey to her Majesty an address on the subject of the
Eastern war, breathing most loyal views, and expressing
the fullest confidence in the course her Majesty had
adopted. The mayor was introduced by Mr. Peto,
M.P., his card of presentation bearing the words " The
Mayor of Norwich." After receiving the address, her
Majesty inquired the mayor's name. On learning it,
her Majesty commanded him to kneel, and there and
then he rose " Sir Samuel Bienold " thunderstruck, as
he says, with the honour so unexpectedly conferred upon
him. The citizens of Norwich are highly pleased with
the circumstance, which they regard as a graceful it
to their ancient city.
Two PERSONS DROWNED IN THE THAMES.—Yester-
day a gentlemanly-looking man was drowned in the
Thames at Shadwell. The body was got out of the
water, but life was extinct, Being unknown, the de-
ceased was removed to Shadwell dead-house to be owned
and also for an inquest. The body is that of a man
about 35, tall and stout, clad in black Oxonian coat and
i trousers, and black satin waistcoat. The dead body of
another man, about 50, respectably clad in black, was
taken out of the Thames at London-bridge, and re-
moved to the vaults of St. Magnus Church, to be owned
and for an inquest.
HEALTH OF THE BRITISH MILITARY FORGE IN Tut..
KEL—As our readers will doubtless be anxious to learn
how our troops fare in respect of health, &c., we pur-
pose, from time to time, to publish such information as
we may be able to obtain from sources on which implicit
reliance may be placed. April 18.—The sick at Scutari
this day amount to 53, the strength of the garrison being
five regiments, or about 4,200 men ; no fevers ; a large
proportion of the cases local. April 19.—The barrack and
hospital accommodation at Scutari is on a large scale,
and the men, for the present, well lodged and healthy.
April 20.—The battalion (Rifle Brigade)is exceedingly
healthy, what diseases there are being nnimportaut.--■
1 Medical Times and Gazette.