The Sun.
London, England, 1847-01-25 00:00:00

- •
plays a perfect familiarity with the literature of the
land of Carmoens, and a capability of appreciating
the excellencies and blemishes of its different writers..
The criticism is interspersed with several happy and
appropriate quotations ; from the quaint malapert
ditty of Cassandra :

"Dicen quo 'license yo;
No quiero rnarido, no:"
To a delicious carol of spring, most characteristic of
the sunny Peninsula. We give the graceful imitation
of this latter song, paraphrased from the original by
the reviewer:—
" I'll away to the garden,
For winter is over ;
The Rose is awake
To the song of her lover !
I will go and discover
The passionate Nightingale singing above her.
"From the boughs green and golden
That slope to the river,
A Nymph gathers lemons
To give to her lover :
I will go and discover
The shy little Nightingale singing above her.
" Near the vineyard, where often
I have spied out a rover,
Sits a damsel who sings
To be heard by her lover :
I will go and discover
The bold little Nightingale singing above her."
In the article headed " State of Ireland," the
reader will discover merely a recapitulation of the
account already published in all the newspapers,
besides a variety of suggestions as to the restoration
of that afflicted island to agricultural and commer-
cial prosperity. The suggestions are about as
feasible as the nine hundred and ninety-nine
already made by the vagrant charlatans
of political economy, scattered through the
country. If the Government attends merely to
the numberless and conflicting, schemes advanced as
to the social redemption of the Irish it will be in im-
minent peril of sharing the fate of the old gentleman
in the fable -"who had a boy and a donkey. The
Parliament and the Ministry must look more to the
dictates of their own sagacity and Wisdom. Other-
wise the emerald isle will continuelor an indefinite
period the victim of an erroneous legislation and of a
mistaken system of agriculture. In the paper re-
lating to " Agriculture in France," there are
Iso many statistical fallacies and extravagant
' propositions that a merely cursory denial of their
accuracy would be inefficient and—in point of fact—
pert. The merits, or rather the demerits, of the
article must be discussed in a more detailed form than
our space at present will permit, in order to dojus-
tice to the plausibility of the writer, and the ennobling
truths of free trade. " Faraday "is the subject of a
well-deserved panegyric in a disquisition commemo-
ration ofhis recent discoveries in relation to light and
electricity—discoveries which promise to prove the keys
to a new knowledge. As a suitable beginning to the
Quarterlyßeview for 1847,we find a shrewd and co mpre.
hensive biography of the memorable Marquis of Mon-
trose—that heroic chieftain who is emphatically de-
signated " The Great Marquis" by his Caledonian
countrymen. To our thinking, however, the most
valuable and laudable paper in the whole number is
the one descriptive of the Ragged Schools—of their
original institution—of their progressive establish-
ment—.of their meritorious character, and of the ne-
cessity which existed for some educational effort of
the kind. The article is admirably written,
written with point, and sometimes eloquence; writ-
ten with the intellect ready to perceive the more
crying wants of the indigent, above all written with
a deep and zealous feeling of unaffected benevolence.
As a testimony that these philanthropic establish.
ments have not been prematurely called into exist-
ence, here is a calculation enough to appal the least
credulous, and to render the spirit of philanthropy
contagious, if only from a dread of the consequences
likely to arise from so enormous an evil, if not
checked in its extension.
In the year 1845 there were taken into custody by the
metropolitan police 14,887 persons of both sexes under
20 years of age. Of these were summarily disposed of
by the magistrates—
. 38 males, 15 females, under 10 years of age;
1,187 „ 123 „ at 10 and under 15 ;
3,519 „ 1,191 ~ at 15 and under 20.
There were committed for trial :-
12 males, 4 females, under 10 years of age;
370 „ 44 „ at 10 and under 15.
1,839 „ 257 „ at 15 and under 20.
Here is a list of agenda ample enough to keep bath
magistrates and police from growing pursy and fat but
it is not a full statement of the annual mischief ; much
escapes the vigilance of the law ; much falls somewhat
within the limits of crime ; much, however pernicious,
cannot be ranked with offences against the Queen's peace.
Now let us just look at the offences of some among those
whom the magistrates disposed of without delay—
Assaults - - 1 under 10 years of age;.
58 at 10 and under 15
714 15 and under 20.

ilisdemeanours :
With intent to steal - 3 under 10 years of ago;
62 at 10 and under 15
128 15 and under 20.
Unlawful posses-
lion of goods, S 22 under 10

446 at 10 and under 15
.591 15 and under 20.
2 under 10
142 at 10 and under 15
~ 500 15 and under 20.
Disorderly characters 111 10 and under 15
~ 505 15 and under 20.
Drunkenness and
473 15 acid under 20.
drunken persons .
Reputed thieves - -

Wilful ;image

2 under 10
38 15
If 140 at 15 and under 20.
Vagrants - - - - 22 under 10

242 at 10 and under 15
548 15 and under 20.
The opening passages of this excellent contribution
are so painfully yet truthfully descriptive of the
necessity which there is for a moral drainage and
ventilation, as well as for a physical one, that we shall
copy them entire, commending them heartily to the
perusal of all who have not been fortunate enough to
devour the whole argument of the reviewer:—
" Every one who walks the streets of the metropolis must
daily observe several members of the tribe—bold, and pert,
and dirty as London sparrows, but pale, feeble, and sadly in-
ferior to them in plumpness of outline. Their business, or
pretended business, seems to vary with the locality. At the
west-end they deal in lucifer-matches, audaciously beg, or tell
a touching tale of woe. Pais on to the central parts of the
town—to Holborn or the Strand, and the regions adjacent to
them—and von will there find the numbers very greatly in-
creased; a few are pursuing the avocations above-mentioned
of their more Corinthian fellows; many are spanning the
gutters with their legs, and dabbling with earnestness in the
latest accumulation of nastiness; while others, in squalid
and half-naked groups, squat at the entrances of the narrow,
fatted courts and alleys that lie concealed behind the deceps
tive frontages of our larger thoroughfares. Whitechapel
and Spitaltields teem with them like an ant's-nest; but it is
in Lambeth and in Westminster that we find the most fla-
grant traces of their swarming activity. There the foul and
dismal passages are thronged with children of both sexes, and
of every age from three to thirteen. Thouga wan and hag-
gard, they are singularly vivacious, and engaged in every
sort of occupation but that which would be beneficial to them-
selves and creditable to the neighbourhood. The'rappearance
is wild; the matted hair, the disgusting filth that renders
necessary a closer inspection, before the flesh can be discerned
between the rags which hang about it; and the barbarian
freedom from all superintendence and restraint, fill the mind
of a novice in these things with perplexity and dismay. Visit
these regions in the summer, and you are overwhelmed by
the exhalations; visit them in the winter, and you are
shocked by the spectacle of hundreds shivering in apparel
that would be scanty in the tropics ; many are all but naked ;
those that are clothed are grotesque; the trousers, where
they have them, seldom pass the knee; the tailed coats very
frequently trail beiow the heels. In this guise they run
about the streets, and line the banks of the river at low
water, seeking coals, sticks, corks, for nothing comes amiss
as treasure- trove ; screams of delight burst occasionally from
the crowds, and leave the passer-by, if he be in a contemplative
mood, to wonder and to rejoice diet moral and physical de
gradations have not yet broken every spring of their youthful
energies.
" Eccentric doubts flit through our minds; and we are
tempted to ask whether these nondescripts ever had a parent,
or whether there be parents to be found in the district.
They look not like the inhabitants o' the earth, and yet are
on 't.' A feeling of curiosity arises, and the next step is to
investigate their natural history, their haunts, their habits,
their idiosvncracy, their points of resemblance to the rest et
mankind, and the part they sustain in the great purpose of
creation. The stranger dives into the recesses from which
they seem to issue—and there he sees, before and behind, on
the right hand and on the left, every form and character of evil
that can offend the sense and deaden the morals. Let those
who desire a minute description of thee') horrid retreats, in
which thousands of our country-people cower by day and by
night, consult the admirable reports of the Sanitary Com-
missioners, and the Health of Towns' Association, which
have told us as much as language can convey. But language
is powerless to exhibit the truth: personal experience alone
can give the reality; and then many a weary and pestilential
search, and many a sick headache, will prove to the disgusted
inquirer that a large proportion of those who dwell in the
capital of the British empire are crammed e introrengioofnstheof
filth and darkness, the ancient but not solitary reign
newts and toads.
" Here are the receptacles of the species we 'a investigate ;
here they are spawned, and here they perish!Can their
state be a matter of wonder? We have penetrated alleys
terminating in a cul-de-sac, long a
tobacco-
pipe, where air and sunshine were
narrow like a
never known. On one
side rose walls several feet in height, blackened with damp
and slime; on the other side stood the dwellings!, still more
revoltieg, while the breadth of the wet and bestrewed passage
would by no means allow us the full expansion of Our arms.
We Lave waited at the entrance of another of similar cha-
racter and dimensions, but forbidden, by the force and pun-
gency of the odours, to examine its recesses. The novelty
of a visit from persons clad like gentlemen gave the hope
that we were officials; and several women, haggard, rough,
and exasperated, surrounded us at once, imploring us to order
the removal of the filth which had poisoned their tenements,
and to grant them a supply of water, from which they had
been debarred during many days. Pass to another district ;
you may think it less confined—but there you will see flow-
ing before each hovel, and within a few feet of it, a broad,
black, uncovered drain, exhaling at every paint the most
unwholesome vapours. If there be not a drain, there is a
stagnant pool ; touch either with your stick ; and the me-
phitic mass will yield up its poisonous gas like the corusca-
tions of soda-water.
"The children sit along these depositories of death, or
roam through the retired courts in which the abomination
has
z. me-
lancholy silence, seldom broken but by an irritated scold or a
pugnacious drunkard. The pale discoloured faces of the in-
` habitants, their shrivelled forms, their abandoned exterior

recal the living skeletons of the Pontine Dfarshes, and suffi-
ciently attest the presence of a secret agency, hostile to every
physical and moral improvement of the human race.
" The interior of the dwelling is in etrict keeping : the
smaller space of the apartments increasing, of course, the
evils that prevail without—damp, darkness, dirt, and foul
air. Many aro wholly destitute of furniture; many con.
tain nothing except a table and a chair: some few have a
common bed for all ages and both sexes; but a large portion
of the denizens of those regions lie on a heap of rags more
nasty than the floor itself. Happy is the nullity that can
boast of a single room to itself, and in that room a dry
corner.
" But these creatures have pursuits of their own, certain
occupations whereby they obtain a scanty subsistence; for,
though there are, pet haps, many persons who may net ad-
mit the necessity, they themselves have a conviction that they
must live. The children, that survive the noxious influ-
ences and awful neglect, are thrown, as soon as they can
crawl, to scramble in the guttf r, and leave their parents to
amusement or business: as they advance in years they dis-
cover that they must, in general, find their own food or go
without it. The duris urgens in rebus egestas,' stimulates
these independent urchins; and, at an age when the chil-
dren of the wealthy would still be in loading-strings, they,
are off, singly or in parties, to beg, borrow, steal, and exer-
cise all the cunning that want and a love of evil can stir up
in a reckless race. They are driven to these courses, in
many instances, by their parents; in more by their step-
mothgrs ; in most by necessity and general example. Toe
passion for shows and the lowest drama is nearly universal;
• Panem et Circenses'— food and the penny theatres—these
,are their paradise, and their chief temptation to crime.
They receive no education, religious or secular; they are
subjected to no restraint of any sort; never do they hear the
word of advice, or the accent of-kindness ; the notions that exist
in the minds of ordinary persons have no place in theirs ;
having nothing exclusively of their own, they seem to think
such, in fact, the true position of society; and, helping
themselves without scruple to the goods of others, they can
never recognise, when convicted before a magistrate, the
justice of a sentence which punishes them for having done
little more than was indispensable to their existence.
" Well, then, we discover that they are beings like our-
selves; that they have long subsisted within a walk of our
own dwellings; that they have increased, and are increasing
in numbers with the extension of this overgrown metropels ;
and that they recede, if to recede be possible, in physical and
moral condition as the capital itself advances towards the
pinnacle of magnificence and refinement. Will no one roll
away the reproach? We have an Established Church, abun-
dant in able and pious men, and she boasts herself to be the
Church of the people. We have a great body of wealthy
and intelligent Dissenters, who declaim, by day and by night,
on the efficacious virtues of the voluntary principle. We
have a generous aristocracy and plethoric capitalists, and a
Government pledged to social improvements. Who will
come forward ? Why not all ?"
Those are the scenes in which crime and destitution
are germinated—those are the blanks in the lottery
of social life which the ragged schools have been
created to transform, if possible, into prizes. Still
the labour of love and regeneration is only commencing;
it must be long before that labour can be effectual
in the suppression of juvenile depravity and the dis-
persion of juvenile ignorance. The narrow end of
the wedge, however, has been driven in ; let us drive
it home, and the obdurate trunk of that great Upas
of civilised society—ignorance—must be penetrated
and prostrated.

RURAL PICKINGS; in-7.4ltrachT:e Points in Country
Life and Scenery. By the Author of " Points and
Pickings of Information about China."
The name of this little volume almost describes its
character, but the subjects of which it treats, and the
benefits to be derived from its perusal are very accu-
rately set forth in the introduction, as will be seen from
the following very beautiful observations :
" As my book will appeal rather to the heart than to
the head, so sentimentality must give place to the healthy
(freshness of natural feeling. I cannot promise pu much
of a treat in the way of sighing over " faded flowers."
and apostrophising " babbling streams ;" but I will do
my best to set your pulse throbbing among the bright
breezy hills and the sweet, secluded, bird-singing, heart-
expanding valleys of rural scenery. I will set before you,
in such language as I may, rustic occupations, the rich
garniture of fields, the goodly I.liage of trees, the beauty
of buds and blossoms, the sparkling of running brooks,
the warbling of the feathery world, the fair forms of
hills and valleys, the bright gleams of sunset, and the
brighter glories of sun-risings. I will take you to scenes
of rural seclusion, of dark and shadowy nooks, of v% ild
boughs hanging over gurgling streams, of woods of
giant trees, and hazel copses rich with clustering nuts ;
of mossy banks sprinkled with primroses ; of old stune
quarries and grey cliffs hung with creepers, ivy, and
lichens ; of thorn bwhes garlanded with wild convolulus
and red and yellow poison-berries; of tangled wildernesses
of gorse, fern, and fox-glove. You shall see nature in
her glory and her gloom ; hear her in the silent elo-
quence of her solitude, and feel her influence in every
hour.

"Many have gone before me in deseribing rural scenery,
and others will follow me in the same alluring enter-
prise ; but nature is a wide field in which all may wan-
der, and each find something to admire. He that roams
in the rich luxuriance of country scenes, with a love of
what is sweet and simple, as well as what is arresting
and sublime ; and is content to express faithfully the
joyous emotions of his mind, the gushing gladness of his
spirit, in natural language, can hardly fail in affording
pleasure.

" The lover of nature has an inexhaustible treasure in the
common things of creation. His enjoyments flow not from
one part of rural influences, but from all. To him the air is
health, the wind is music, the flowers are pearls, the fruits a
banquet, and the burst of glowing sights and harmonious
sounds that appeal at once to his eye, his ear, and his heart,
create in him a jubilee of joy.
' God has not given
This passion to the heart of man in vain,
This love of earth's green face, and air of heaven,
And all the bliss of Nature's rustic reign.'
For it is a source of wealth; not the wealth of the coffer, but
of the heart. It makes man rich in the love of beauty; rich
in the quiet delights of solitude; rich in sweet and kindly
thoughts; thoughts; rich in yearnings and aspirations after purity and
knowledge; and rich in desires for the happiness of all crea-
tures. It breaks up the deep fountain of his affections, bind-
ing him in closer brotherhood to his kind, and awakening in
his soul a warmer, purer, and a holier thanksgiving to God."
lo say that these remarks only do justice to the volume
which they preface, will surely be saying sufficient in its
praise. It is filled with interesting and animated de-
scriptions of the country and country scenes all written
con amore, and interspersed with varied anecdotes,
amusing adventures, occasional poems and fragments of
poems, some original, soma quotations, and many in-
teresting particulars regarding the mode of living in the
country ; among others an extract from a letter, written
by a country clergyman, in which he gives a sort of
a summary of his diurnal pursuits, beginning with
"Rose at three o'clock." The following remarks, ex-
cellent in themselves, will show that the author has
some higher object in view than that of only affording
amusement to his readers
41

is one of the many objects I have in view in these
Rural Pickings, to sprinkle freely my rustic descriptions with
good feeling and kindly suggestions that may be turned to
account. Hills and valleys, woods and waterfalls, fields and
dowers, ponds and brooks, will only be the more beautiful if
we can get from them aught that will dispose us more grate-
fully to enjoy, and more patiently to endure; aught that will
nerve our hearts in danger, knit us more closely to those we
love, and call forth kindly emotions for all around. What if
we could wander for ever amid daisies and daffodils, breathe
nothing but fresh air scented by violets, and hear nothing
but the singing of larks and the murmuring of waterfalls!
dreaming away our lives in listless ease and unenviable use-
lessness! A generous heart and a kindly spirit would shrink
trom such selfish enjoyment ; but when we turn the fair
;.kings of creation to account by improving our own hearts,
and connecting our own good with the good of others, we
Qbtain a healthier, if not a holier, gratification.
" There are very few qualities of more value than that of
perseverance in the different positions and relations of life;
those who possess it have, as it were, in most undertakings.
Success written on their foreheads; while those who possess
it not have but a poor prospect of obtaining their ends. The
cavern of Antiparos is deep, but Perseverance descends to its
lowest recess, The Alps are high, yet Perseverance places its
foot on their cloud-capt heaCtii
['his little voluua,. of " Rural Pickings" is both elegant
tnd excellent, as regards binding, printing, &c. ; the
illu,trations by Absolon are, some i.f them especially,
oeculiarly beautiful. They have all the softness of
Lithography, and the additional attraction of colouring ;
toe of Inc best—" lie-ding the Bihle"—rtpre,ent, a
!map listening to an old mat, reading. and tte curious
mud attentive expression with which of the children
regards him is very well portrayed.