The Sun.
London, England, 1849-02-28 00:00:00

King, and told the prisoner to call again, and Übe found
his story corrEct he would give him something more.
Having found out that the prisoner was an impostor, he
employed the p, lice, and under their advice he put some
money in a packet, and sent it to the prisoner by a mes-
senger who came with a letter to him.

James Enablin said he was employed by the prisoner
to tike a letter to Lord Anson', chambers. He returned
with a packet, but the prisoLer, who suspected some-
thing, would not receive it, and pretended to have no
knowledge of witness.
The prisoner was ordered to stand committed for
three mouths, but to be brought up again in a week.

LITERATURE.

TWICE-TOLD TALES. By Nathaniel Haw-

thorne .

A " twice-told tale " is generally considered a
tedious affair, but there is no rule without an ex-
ception. Mr. Hawthorne's tales are worth twice
telling ; they have already many of them appeared in
the Metropolitan Magazine, and are now collected
in one small volume. These tales, or rather tales
and meditations, are of a peculiar character : there
is something quaint and singular in the conception of
nearly all of them, but that very singularity adds to
their effect. The moral of the whole is excellent,
almost every page of the little volume contains some
admirable advice curiously set forth, or some beautiful
thought forcibly expressed. The peculiarity of the
writer's manner has at times a thrilling and
powerful effect. In one of the more reflective
pieces, " The Haunted Mind, " we find the
following reflections upon the peaceful hour of
thoughtfulness enjoyed by one who awakes in
the early morning, long before the hour of rising,
refreshed by his recent sleep. " Yesterday has al-
ready vanished among the shadows of the past; to-
morrow has not yet emerged from the future. You
have found an intermediate space, where the business
of life does not intrude, where the passing moment
lingers and becomes truly the present ; a spot where
Father Time, when he thinks nobody is watching
him, sits down by the way-side to take breath." Yet
the meditations of this wakeful hour are not always
happy ones :
" In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a
dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry
above may cause us to forget their existence, and the
buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But some-
times, and oftentimes at midnight, those dark receptacles
are flung wide open. In au hour like this, when the
mind has a lassive sensibility, but no active strength;
when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness
to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling
them; then pray that your griefs may slumber, and the
brotherhood of remorse not break their chain. It is too
late! A funeral train comes gliding by your bed, in
which Passion and Feeling assume bodily shape, and
things of the mind become dim spectres to the eye.
There is your earliest Sorrow, a pale young mourner,
wearing a sister's likeness to first love, sadly beautiful,
with a hallowed sweetness in her melancholy features,
anel grace in the flow of her sable robe. Next appears
a shade of ruined loveliness, with dust among her
golden hair, and her bright garments all faded and de-
faced, stealing from your glance with drooping head, as
fearful of reproach; she was your fondest Hope, but a
delusive one; so call her Disappointment now. A
sterner form succeeds, with a brow of wrinkles, a look
and gesture of iron authority; there is no name fur him
unless it be Fatality, an emblem of the evil influence
that rules your fortunes; a demon to whom you sub-
jected yourself by some error at the outset of life, and
were bound his slave for ever, by once obeying him.
See! those fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness,
the writhed lip of scorn, the mockery of that living eye,
the pointed finger, touching the sore place in your
heart! Do you remember any act of enormous folly,
at which you would blush even in the remotest cavera
of the earth? Then recognise your Shame."

Among the more amusing of these tales is " Mr.
Higginbotham's catastrophe," which we recently no-
ticed when it appeared in the Metropolitan. This
tale, marked as it is with some of its author's startling
peculiarities, is, of its kind, one of the most curious
compounds of the interesting and the ridiculous that
we have ever met with.

THE GEM OF THE ASTRAL SCIENCES;
or, Mathematics of Celestial Philosophy. By
Thomas Oxley, C.E.
This interesting volumes contains all the mathe-
matical and astronomical information comprised in
Mr. Oxley's well-known " Trf atise on the Celestial
Planispheres," together with much valuable original
matter, and numerous illustrative diagrams. The
talented and learned author abstains in the present
edition from any consideration of the judicial depart-
ment of Astronomical Genethlialogy, and applies
himself exclusively to the treatment of those scientific
calculations which have never been so clearly and
accurately developed by any other writer on the sub-
ject. his method, now for the first time propounded,
of performing these calculations for all places in the
southern hemisphere is eminently beautiful. But it
is needless to enter into a detail of the manifold ex-
cellencies of the work, as no student of Urania can
possibly dispense with its possession.

THE LAW MAGAZINE and QUARTERLY
REVIEW of JURISPRUDENCE.
The previous high character of this periodical, and
its undoubted position as one of the first of the legal
publications of this country, is creditably and fully
sustained in the number for this month. The articles
are written with vigour and perspicuity, and the
selection of the subjects discussed is peculiarly happy,
most of them being topics at present occupying a
considerable share of public attention. The number
opens with a well-written article on the Reform of
Poor-law Litigation ;
,and among other papers of in-
terest, contains one on. West India Judicial Reform,
in which that subject is discussed in k judicious and
temperate manner. The views of the writer are
sound and comprehensive, and the plan which
he proposes for the reform of the present
corrupt and. inadequate judicial establishment
in those colonies, seems well calculated to re-
medy the evils complained of. We trust that
this subject will meet with that consideration, at the
Colonial-office, which its importance so fully merits.
An excellent article on that intolerable nuisance—
the Palace Court, of Jacob Omnium notoriety —in
which we hare a history of the origin, rise, and pro.
gress of that " venerable ' hinstitute," concludes the
number, which is not only a valuable one to the legal
world, but highly interesting to the public generally,
from the number and variety of the articles, as well as
the terse and perspicuous style in which they are
written.

SCHOOL BOOKS.
NOTES ON HERODOTUS, Original and Se-
lected from the Best Commentators. By Dawson
W. Turner, M.A.
For students of Herodotus this work will be a great
acquisition. It is a compilation from the notes of the
best commentators, Baeher, Schweighceiiser, Heeren,
Wesseling, and others. The notes selected are, says
Mr. Turner, those most likely to be really useful to
students in the universities, and to the higher classes
in schools. They are for the most part particular
descriptions of the places, persons, and things referred
to by the historian, with occasional elucidations of
difficulties in the Greek text. These notes are so
numerous as to fill a quarto volume of four or five
hundred pages.

XENOPHON'S ANABASTS: Books I. and 11.,
with a Copious Vocabulary, for the Use of Schools.
By J. Fergusson, M.D., Rector of the West end

Academy, Aberdeen.
An invaluable book for scholars and schoolmasters
in general. The editor has desired, he tells us, to
offer a Greek book for beginners, consisting of a con-
tinuous narrative, 'with a copious vocabulary, and a
translation of the more difficult phrases. The
vocabulary and translations are excellent in their way;
but, to our thinking, the best recommendation of this
volume is its excellent typography. Free from any
of those contractions so appalling to beginners, the
beautiful characters of the Greek alphabet appear
here to full advantage, and so far from being per-
plexing to the learner appear almost as plain as
English.

L'ECHO DE PARIS. By M. Lepage. Fifteenth

Edition.

A work which has reached its fifteenth edition
hardly requires commendation. The admirable
vocabulary of M. Lepage has been fully telited, and
its merits generally recognised. These conversations
are not arbitrary phrases, but dialogues of every-
day occurrence—the echo of the nurseries and
drawing-rooms of Paris. They are so arranged as
to form little stories, and are, therefore, likely to
please while they instruct the juvenile learner.

READY GUIDE' TO FRENCH COMPO-
SITION. By M. Lepage.
These exercises are arranged on an unusual plan,
which, besides teaching the writer French, is likely
to do him a yet greater service by promoting the use
of his thinking powers. For example, instead of
teaching a rule by rote, and then showing the child the
example, the example is shown first, and the child finds
the rule from it for himself. Thus, instead of saying the
article le is used before masculine nouns, and la be-
fore feminine nouns singular, and les before plural of
both genders, a number of phrases are read, such as
le pere, la mere, les enfans, &c., and then the child, on
being questioned, learns from these examples, by his