The Sun.
London, England, 1849-12-14 00:00:00

THE SUN,

which has been exquisitely engraved by \Villinore; the
delicate tracery of the architectural embellishments,
and the softness v. ith which the whole ruin is suffused,

are worthy of high commendation. The gigantic
sphynx, the stately pyramids, the panorama of
Alexandria, the solemn valley of the tombs of the
kings, a revolting spectacle of a slave-boat, a
lively scene at the ferry of old Cairo, the
magnificent tomb of Sultan Kaitbay, a glimpse of
"a street in Cairo," with camels and veiled women
pissing along, and houses decorated with multiform
architectural embellishments, and the graceful
papyrus overhanging from the roof—one of the most
beautiful pictures in the book—these and many other
similar sketches, besides the descriptive maps, render
the views witnessed in the Nile boat beautiful reali-
ties. The style of the dceriptive narratii eis pleas-
ing and interesting, it glides along smoothly and
flowingly, as the river of which it tells, and (to carry
out the simile) leaves behind it fruitful memories and
pleasant scenes. If our readers will take our advice,
they will in the intc-rvali of vvexrisome business or
monotonous pleasure recruit their intellectual strength,
and refresh their imaginative faculties by a mental j
voyage in the inviing "Nile Boat."

LITERATURE.

LIVES OF THE PRINCESSES OF ENG

LAN D. By Mrs. Ererett Green. Vols. I and 11.
This work is a worthy coiepanion to Miss
Strickland's admirable "Queens of England," and in
say ing so much we are pronouncing no mean com-
mendation. In one respect the subject-matter of these
volumes is more interesting, because it is more diver-
sified, than that of the " Queens of England." That
celebrated work, although its heroines were, for the
most part, foreign Princesses, related almost entirely
to the history of this country. The Princesses of
England, on the contrary, are themselves English,
but their lives are nearly all connected with foreign
nations. Their biographies, consequently, afford us a
glimpse of the manners and customs of the chief Euro-
pean kingdoms, a circumstance which not only gives
to the work the charm of variety, but which is likely
to render it peculiarly useful to the general
reader, as it links together by association
the contemporaneous history of various nations.
Thus, for instance, of the three daughters of King
Henry 11., Matilda, the eldest, became the wife of
Henry the Lion, the great Duke of Saxony; her
sister Eleanora espoused Alphonso of. Spain, and their
histories snake vs acquainted with the simultaneous
vicissitudes of two very dissimilar Courts and coun•
tries ; while the life of Joanna, the youngest sister
of the Duchess of Saxony, and the Queen of Spain,
is throughout a fragment of romance. Married to
the King of Sicily, after his death imprisoned by the
usurper Tancred, liberated by her brother Richard
Cceur de Lion, and accompanying him and his Queen
in the crusade to the Holy Land, and ultimately re-
married to the famous Raimond of Toulouse, Joanna
is continually a heroine of romance. The readers of
Madame Cottin's enthralling tabs " Mathilds"—one of
the most interesting romances ever penned—will find
in the history of Joanno while in the Holy Land the
origin of that celebrated story—Joanna (not Ma-
thilde), the sister of King Richard, having been be-
loved by Melech Ade'us (the Malak Adel of the
French tale), the chivalrous brother of the chivalrous
Saladin. From this enumeration it will be seen of
what very various characters are the biographies
contained in this work. Dissimilar in their lives,
and divided in their deaths, as the occupants of Mrs.
Hemans's " Graves of a Household"—

" Parted thus, they rest who played
Beneath the same green true,
Whose voices mingisd as they prayed
Around one moth Er's knee "

are the daughters of royal houses, but the dissimilarity
adds to the history of their various careers. Cecilia,
the eldest child of William the Conqueror, lived and
died the peaceful Abbess of the convent of the Holy
Trinity, while Adele, the youngest of the Conqueror's
five or six daughters, the wife of the Count of Blois,
and the mother of the English King Stephen, dis-
played, both as Queen-Consort and as Regent,!a mar-
vellous excellence in all the requirements of a good go-
vernor, and moreover she was said to equal her warlike
father in courage, and, says Baldric or Anjou, would
have borne arms herself "did not custom forbid her
tender limbs to be weighed down with armour." The
history of Matilda, daughter of Henry I. of England,
widow of Henry V. of Germany, and mother of
Henry 11., the first Plantagenet King, the acknow-
ledged Queen of England, and the unsuccessful rival
of Stephen of Blois (son of the Adela above-
me ntioned), is naturally full of interest and adventure.
At one time we find the Empress Queen, the daughter
and mother of sovereigns, escaping from danger in a
coffin, and at another faasing undiscovered over the
snow-covered "county in a robe: of similar whiteness.
After perusing the 'histories of queens and duchesses,
we pause with a mournful interest over the brief
record of Katharine, the third daughter of King
Uenry lll.—a child so beautiful that its mother, then
Regent, shortly after its birth mentioned it in a State
Mandate as " a certain beautiful daughter who is
recently born." This little princess, Beloved by
her parents with a most tender affection, was born
deaf and dumb; and, notwithstanding all the efforts
of kingly power and paternal love, sbe only lived
three years and a half. The King and Queen were
inconsolable for her loss. This short history is here
related with an exquisite pathos. The two volumes
now before us contain the histories of the Prin-
cesses of England from the time of William
the Conquerer to that of Edward I. The
lives of the remaining Princesses will of course form
the subjects of future volumes. Judging from the
specimen already issued, we can entertain no doubt as
to the entire success of the work. The summary we
have given will give some idea of the interesting
matter with which it is filled, and the style is fully
equal to the subject. The various histories are related
with an earnest simplicity and copious explicitness.
The reader is informed without being wearied, and
alternately enlivened by some spirited description or
touched by some pathetic or tender episode. We
cordially commend Mrs. Everett Green's production
to general attention; it is (necessarily) as useful as
history and fully as entertaining as romance.