The Sun.
London, England, 1822-02-28 00:00:00

HERALDRY.

We have now got round to a new point—that
although colour may not be placed on colour, not
metal on metal, fur may be placed on fur. By
what peculiar principle this exemption—the very
opposite of analogy—is afforded, let TALTHY.
BUIS explain. But perhaps his (" M.S.") would
clear up the difficulty.

The animal sable seems to have become con-
founded with the pictorial, under very little re-
ference to the actual colour of the " animal whose
skin it represented,"—the Muste/a—which is
as often seen red or white, as black or even
cinerous. It would sound and shew rather oddly,
to describe as sable a fur which is not necessarily
black, and which no ingenuity can blazon with-
out the admixture of some other colour.
In stepping out of the shield into the mantle,
TALTHYBIUS speaks of white as " the other opake
colour." He allows then black to be its com-
panion in opacity; yet, while describing both as
colours, where they are seen only as furs, he
may as fairly permit sable to be a colour in the
shield, as white to be a metal. Definitions,
however, may sometimes 4C be understood too li-
terally."
It is rather too much for even the Herald of
Atreides—since we must be thus helenistical—
to infer that " reputation" alone has induced the
College to class sable among its colours and
gems and planets : or that the Scottish Novelist
was obliged to blazon, by any new rule, a coat-
armour of the twelfth century in a contempora-
neous " romaunt."

A most lame and impotent conclusion I—Has
our argument of ancient arms, with all their chi-
valry from King AGAMEMNON to King Riot Ann,
and all their " pursuivantry" from HOMER to
WALTER SCOTT, settled down into a " scouting
by modern Heralds"?
TALTHYBIUS has descended too—from Cam-
bridge University to " Cambridge House."—
Had I known this sooner, I should have left the
question, as I now leave it, to the Knight-Hos-
pitaller and the Ostler-Baron. Y.Y.

FOR. THE SUN.

MR. EDITOR—Since your generosity has given insertion to
my two former letters, I hope your justice will extend the
same indulgence to this. If typographical errors, so material
as those which hare been admitted into my last letter, have
at all affected my adversary's, perhaps I shall have the plea-
sure of discovering thael have wronged him, and that he is
better acquainted with heraldry than hisifirst communication
showed him to be. In my last letter (besides several lighter
mistakes in punctuation, which I pass over) I find " liber-
tius" for " libentius," the word MS. put in ( ), the word
deny put for disprove (if I rightly recollect), and " soot of
armour" for " coat armour." But the most ludicrous mis-
take is that wherein my residence (Cambridge) is turned into
Cambridge House::: a place with which I never had the ho-
nour of being connected.—l rely on your goodness for an
early insertion of this, and am, Sir, your's,
Cambridge, Feb. 26. TALTHYBIUS.

The Carlisle Patriot says, " that after the
Earl of LONSDALE had undergone the opera-
tion of couching, vision was Lt once restored to
the Noble Earl in both eyes ; and the most san-
guine expectations are entertained that on the
removal of the bandages the restoration will be
found both complete and permanent."