The Sun.
London, England, 1841-04-08 00:00:00

DEPARTURES.

Lord and Lady Frances Egerton, from Belgrave-square, for
Worsley Hall, Lincolnshire ; Lord Skelmersdale, and Hon.
Miss Wilbraham, from Portland-place, for Latham House,
Lancashire ; Mr. W. Wyndham, M P., for his seat in Hanta ;
the Marquis and Marchioness of Themond, from Peigrave-
square, for Taplow House; Sir G. Talbot, Bart., from Ali-
cart's Hotel, Brook-street, for Warwickshire; the Rev. John
and Airs. Peel, from ditto, for Wsresby flail, near Stourport ;
Major Wildman, from ditto, on a visit to the Earl of Stamford
and Warrington, at Enville Hall, Cheshire ; Sir Richard and
Lady Bulkeley Phillips, from Portland-place, for Leamington ;
Mr. and Mrs. Williams, from Portland-place, for the Bridge
• House, Berkshire ; Mr: Edward Stanley, M. P., for Cal-
der Abbey, Cumberland ; the Dowager Countess of
Sandwich, for Paris; Count and Countess Zichy, from the
Marquis of Hertford's:, Dorchester House, for Italy ; the
Countess of Westmorland, from Bond-.treet, on a tour; Air.
H. Price, M.P., for Herefordshire ; Viscount and Viscountess
Sydney, from Cleveland-square; for Frognall Lodge, Kent ;
Lord and Lady Stanley and family, from at. James's-square,
for Knowsley Park, near Prescott, on a visit to the Earl of
Derby; Lady Mulcaster, from Hamilton-place, for Chelten-
ham ; the Earl of Devon, from Bryanston-square, for Devon ;
Sir R. Gordon, Bart., from Bo:A-street, for Warwickshire.
CHANGES.
The Dowager Lady Castlemaine, at Bromley, Kent, from
the family seat in the county Athlone ; Earl Compton, at Lin-
coln, from Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire ; the Earl of Dar-
lington, in Shropshire, from Leamington Spa; Sir Rufanc
Donkin, on a tour of inspection in Wales, from Coventry ; Sir
J. Walsh, Bart., M.P., and Lady Jane Walsh, at their seat it,
Radnorshire, from Warfietd Park, near Bracknell ; Lord and
lady Courteney, at Newcastle, county Limerick, from a visit to
Viscount Ebrington, at Dublin Castle ; Lord Monson, at his
seat in Surrey, from Brighton.

The Countess of Kerry accompanies the Earl of
Shelburne, AL•P. to the Continent. The Earl and her Lady-
ship embarked at Dover for Calais on Sunday en route to
Paris, which capital they were to leave to-day for Lyons, and
:rpm thence to Milan. We understand his Lordship, in com-
pany wish his amiable sister-its-law, will make a tour of seve-
ral weeks in Italy.
The Honourable Horace Pitt, and Colonel My-
rick, have left for Suffolk.
Lord John Russell vvll sojourn, during the
taster recess, at the Duke of Bedford's beautiful cottage at
Endsleigh, near Tavistock.
The Marquis of Downshire, after dining with
the Duke of Wellington on Saturday evening, left for East-
hampsttad Park, Berks, where the Noble Marquis and Mar-
chioness, and Lady Charlotte Hill, intend residing during the
holidays. The Earl of Hillsborough, M.P., and Countess of
Hillsborough are visiting at the above seat.
The Duke of Wellington lett Apsley House
yesterday for Strathfieldsaye, Hants,- where his Grace will
receive a select party during the holidays. His Grace returns
to town on Monday next.
A Cabinet ordtit appears in the Prussian ,State
Gazette, announcing that judici,l con liericc.
with he only removed in virtue of a ju(l;Ainen:, and no
longer by a mere Ministerial order.

LITER A T RE.

BISTORY OF Lit/ EL LING. —2 VOLS.
Bentley, London, 1641.
Doctor Millingen has here furnished us with
a slight, sketchy history of duelling, which is
calculated to be of great moral benefit to the
community, by showing the absurdity of a prac-
tise against which the best and wisest men have
in vain raised their voices. Though the Doctor's
history is perfectly serious, yet it reads like the
most cutting irony, so exquisitely• ridiculous are
the majority of the quarrels which it gravely re-
lates. The author adduces numerous instances
of fools who fought duels, and lost their lives- in
consequence—no great loss, by the way—for
reasons which they themselves were scarcely
able to explain; and of cowardly desperadoes
who thought it a fine act of courage and gentility
to kill their man, and sought every opportunity
of achieving such a disgraceful notoriety. Com-
mencing his work with the origin of duelling,
which he considers contemporaneous with the
rise of chivalry, Doctor Millingen pursues it
down to the present day, closing with a circum-
stantial account of the affair of honour that took
place a few months since between Capt. Tuckett
and the Earl of Cardigan, a most appropriate close
to a history whose details are a fine satirical com-
ment on the follies and vices of human nature. The
old French aristocracy, of course, figure con-
spicuously in the Doctor's volumes; from the
period of the reign of Francis the First, who
sanctioned the monomac/sia by his own example,
down to that of Louis the Sixteenth, who made
every effort to suppress it, the Nobles of France
were stanch advocates for the duel, fighting on
the most trivial and ridiculous occasions, like the
hot-headed Irishman, mentioned by Sir Jonah
Barrington, Who demanded satisfaction of a pa-
cific old citizen, whom he met one night in the
pit of Drury-lane Theatre, for venturing to dis-
pute his assertion that Othello was written by his
friend Captain O'Flannaghan! But it was durin:,
the Regency of the profligate Duke of Orleans
that the duelling system was carried to its greatest
height. At that period duds were not unfre-
quently fought in the streets of Paris in the open
day, and one, which our author relates, and
which grew out of a quarrel about an 'Angola
cat, was so ineffably ridiculous, that when the
Regent was informed of it, he drily observed,
that the parties should have settled the
matter in dispute with claws instead of
swords. Among the most celebrated affairs
of honour that took place in the eighteenth cen-
tury, was one between the Duke of Bourbon and
the Count d'Artois, afterwards Charles the
Tenth, which originated in an insult offered by
the latter to the former's wife. After a world of
diplomatic negotiation between their seconds,
the parties met in the Bois de. Boulogne, when
both having had their quantum miff. of fighting,
the Duke biwed to his adversary, and thanked
him for the honour he had done him in accepting
his challenge, adding, " I feel penetrated with
gratitude at your kindness ;" whereupon—adds
our author—" the Count opened his arms, and
the Duke flew into his embrace !" How tho-
roughly French is all this mock sentiment ! We
subjoin two other anecdotes of duelling, which
will give the reader some little insight into the
character of Doctor Millingen's volumes :
St. Evremont was another celebrated duellist of this period :
he had discovered a particular thrust, which was honoured
with his name, and called /a botte de St. Evremont. This
brave was witty and capricious, and would accept or refuse a
challenge according to the fancy of the moment. St. Foix
was his rival in this pursuit of an honourable name. Some of
his duels were remarkable. One day, at the Cafe Procope, at
dinner time, he saw a gentleman seated at a bavaroise, and he
exclaimed—" That is a confounded bad dinner for a gentle-
man I" The stranger, thus insulted, insisted upon satisfac-
tion; which was granted, wh.'n St. Foix was wounded. Not-
withstanding this injury, he coolly said to his antagonist_" If
you had killed me, Sir, I still should have persisted in main-
taining that a bavaroise is a confounded bad dinner."
Another time he asked a gentleman, whose aroma was not
of the most pleasant nature—" Why the devil he smelt so con-
foundedly ?" The offended party sent him a challenge, which
St. Foix refused in the following terms :—" Were you to kill
me, you would not smell the less; and were I to kill you, you
would smell a great deal more 1" One day, meeting a lawyer,
whose countenance did not please him, he walked up to him,
and whispered in his ear—" Sir, I have some business with
you." 'I he attorney, not understanding the drift of his speech,
quietly named an hour when he would find him in his office.
The meeting was it course most amusing ; the expression of
St. Foix being—" That he wanted to have an affaire with
him," 3 term which is equally applicable to a duel and a
legal transaction.

FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW—No. 53.
Black and Armstrong, London, 1841.
The famous Russian Admiral Chichagoff,
who, it may be remembered, defended the
passage. of the Beresina against Napoleon, on
nis disastrous retreat from Moscow in 1812,
is, it seems, still living in a cottage at Brighton,
in a state of comparative poverty and retire-
ment, notwithstanding the ukase -of Nicholas,
issued ten years ago, ordering all Russians re-
siding abroad to return home, on pain of losing
their property. This fact, with which we are
now for the first time acquainted, is alluded to
in a notice of a manuscript entitled " Meihoirs of
Admiral Chichagoft; Russian Minister of State,"
which appears in the present Number of this pe-
riodical. Tile notice is chiefly interesting from
the numerous extractswhich the Reviewer makes
from the Admiral's work, who must be a man
considerably advanced in years, for, we are told,
chat lie " lived under two tyrannical govern-
ments, those of Peter and Paul,,and under. two
despotic ones, those of Catherine and Alexandt r."
Of Catherine he speaks in terms of the warmest
admiration, observing that "she was the first
aristocrat who conceived the idea of a progres-
sive government, by spontaneously making con-
cessions to the people at the expense of absolute
power," and that " she desired to teach them to
value the benefits of a social existence, guaran-
teed by institutions." History tells qui. e a dif-
ferent story of this powerful Empress, who coin-.
ineneed her blood-stained and tyrannical career
by the murder of her husband, ai-id concluded
it by the subjugation and partition of Poland,
whose liberal political code, drawn up by order
of Stanislaus, and which extorted the approba-
tion of every liberal spirit in Europe, was a con-
stant thorn in her side. As for Catherine's de-
Are to "give the benefits of a social existence"
,o Russia, this assertion is refuted by the fact
that by her own open, unbridled licentiousness—
ansurpa.ssed even by Messaliiia—she destroyed all
.iealtiiy social feeling, and rendered St. Peters-
burgh the most notoriously corrupt and profligate
capital in Europe. In fact, she was as inex-
orable a despot and as abandoned a woman as
any that modern times have known, and the very
.ast act of her life was to ioiprison all those of
ner more enlightened subjects whom she sus-
pected of being favourable to the principles of
the French Revolution. " Engraving, Ancient
and Modern," is a curious history of the rise and
progress of this art, in the course of which the
Reviewer does every justice to the British school
of engraving, adding " that we have only to
enter the house of Hodgson and Graves, Colt-well,
or any other large establishment, to be hnme-
diately struck with the immense numberof beau-
tiful subjects from the hands of English masters."
u the criticism headed " Rousseau's Nouvelle.
cletoise, and the Modern Extravagant Literature
of France," the moral and intellectual worth of.
Rousseau's writings is assessed at far too high a
fate. What maudlin nonsense is
_this !,--" His
eloquent 'commendation of good morals and of
domestic virtue in an age of philosophical profli-
gacy ; his secret partiality for religious sentiments
"hen boastful impiety was rife ; his deep reve-
rence for the Gospel and its Divine Author at the
time when the most blasphemous aspersions. of
Christianity teemed around him—whilst they
show the depth of Rousseau's intellectual capa-
city, have in themselveS something pathetic and
sublime." And yet this " eloquent commender
of good morals" clothed vice in its most seduc-
tive colours in his Nouvelle lieloise ; this advo-
cate of " domestic virtues" openly defended the
propriety of his sending his natural children to
the Foundling Hospital of Paris; this reverencer
" of the Gospel and its Divine Author" was a
mere sentimental Deist ! Rousseau has had,
and still has, many . imitators- among his
countrymen, and much of the meretricious
trash that now deluges the French capi-
tal, and wears the mask of philosophy,
may he traced to the influence of his writings.
This literary nuisance, however, will soon abate,
for it is at variance with every dictate of good
sense and healthy feeling. " Tezcuco" is a rapid
sketch of the conquest of Mexico by Cortes—au
intrepid adventurer, but debased by the most re-
volting crimes. The. article is cleverly writen,
and will entertain those of our readers who may
not happen to be familiar with the daring charac-
ter of Cortes's military exploits. iii his criticat
notice of the " Italian Drama," the Reviewer
thus happily describes Alneri's plays :—" its
tragedies are only a group of four or five statues,
his characters are figures of marble, incorruptible,
everlasting, but not flesh, nothing like flesh, hav-
ing nothing of its freshness and hue. de-
scribes' no scene. The statues stand by them—

selves, isolated on their pedestals, on ti
ideal stage, without back-ground, without con_
trast of lanthcape or scenery, all wrapped in
their heroic mantles, all moving, breathing sta-
tues, perhaps; but still nothing but statues." or
the remaining articles in the ti umber, the best is
one entitled •' Romanism and Catholicism."

PICTORIAL SHAKSPEARE —PART 31.
G. Knight, London, 1841.
This Part colitaiiis the ,:lay of Macbeth
—the, noblest motion-Tut of Shaksileare's agic
poweA. It is embellished with numerous appro-
priate wood-cuts, and with a steel engraving, re-