The Sun.
London, England, 1847-11-01 00:00:00

MAGAZINE DAY.
BLACKWOOD.
By an agreeable sympathy in name, the first article
for November (" The Navigation of the Antipodes") is
suggested by the narrative of the surveying voyage
of J. B. Jukes, the naturalist of the expedition, in
Torres Straits, New Guinea, and other islands of the
Eastern Archipelago, in:her. Majesty's ship Fly, under
the command of Captain Francis Blackwood. This
expedition, one of the most remarkable andinterest-
ing of late years, has already elicited the disquisition
of one of the quarterly reviewers, and now receives a
favourable consideration in the pages of nlaga. The
induction to the article is a rapid and succinct, but
clever reminiscence, of the different efforts made by
English and foreign travellers, navigators and others,
as to the peculiarities and resources of the eastern
continent and archipelago, as well as into theinte-
riors of Africa and Australia. The thirst for dis-
coveries of more recent date is regarded by Black-
wood as having been first evinced by James
Bruce, a disappointed lawyer, some time Consul at
Algiers, and ultimately the pilgrim to the source of
the Bahr-el•Azrek (a branch of the Nile) through the
unexplored regions of Abyssinia. Then comes the
daring, but unsuccessful, exploration of the source of
the Niger by Mungo Park—in Ifios the victim of hi▪ s
own enterprise. Mungo Park is followed by Den-
ham, Clapperton and Oudney, and in 1830, Richard
Lander, their more fortunate successor, "sailed down
the Niger from Baossa, and reached the Atlantic by
the river Nun, one of its branches"—having thus ac-
quired for himself the glory of having realised thei▪ r
aspirations. Meanwhile the northern and eastern
countries of the Mediterranean had been penetrated,
and described by the German Burckhardt, by Hamil-
ton, Leigh, Belzoni, Salt, Lane, and Wilkinson. Si▪ r
George Staunton, who in 1792 had accompanied
the embassy of Lord Macartney to Pekin,
had in his writings divulged some of
the hitherto unimagined facts revealed by
an inspection of the southern outskirts of the Chinese
dominions. Macleod and Basil Hall subsequently
extended the knowledge of those remote territories
by depicting the appearance of the clusters of mag-
nificent islands situated along the coast of Corea.
On the cessation of war consequent upon the down-
fal of the Emperor Napoleon, expeditions to the
North Pole were successively fitted out by the Ad-
miralty under Parry, Ross, Back, and Franklin.
Having glanced at these memorable and laudable
proceedings, the writer in Blackwood refers to the
charter granted by the, Legislature on the 20th of
last May for establishing a steam communication
between this country and Sydney, along a distance of
12,730 miles, and in a period of 64 days. He then
enters into an examination of the voyage made by
the Government vessels the Fly and the Bramble.
Those vessels, it will be remembered, under
the command of Captain Blackwood, sailed
from Falmouth, April 11, 1842 ; touched at Tene-
rife, at the Cape, reached Van Diemen's Land in
August, and Australia shortly afterwards ; started on
the 19th December from Port Stephens to commence
their survey, first of the Capricorn Group, then of the
northern part of the great barrier reef up to the
Isilnet,tie and surveyed following year raised a
I.,eyea. Torres Straits,
Murray
el
auer
or
na yo
nl siltaani
nd
es
s;
returning to Europe after Ti absence of three years,
and anchoring at Spithead ir, the June of 1845. The
historian of this voyage is its naturalist, Mr. Jukes,
and the reviewer of Mr. Julies is the writer of the
first article in the November number of Backwood
. for 1847. The paper a beautiful elucidation or
commemorative illustration of the book. "American
Copyright" is a pleasant continuation of the corre-
spondence by the author of the letter in the number
for October, entitled "Naga in America." Those'
who coincide with the views entertained upon this
subject by Mr. Sergeant Talfourd will read the com-
munication with interest. The second instalment of
" Evenings at Sea" is a story. called " Henry Mey-
nell," and is narrated by armlitary officer, who had
afterwards become a settler in South America. "Was
Rubens a Colourist ?" is one of the boldest instances
of artistic scepticism we can call to recollection. It
has not, however, the preposterous and almost silly
rashness of the " Historic Fallacies" not long
since adventured upon in the Oxford and
Catnbridge Review. "The _American Library "is a
peep into the story-books of the United States, and
while commenting upon the effusions of Margaret
Fuller and Nathaniel Hawthorne, will startle the
reader with some extraordinary quotations from the
fictions of Edgar A. Poe. Mr. Poe to our thinking
seems to be perpetually tottering on the frontier line
dividing the regions of the sublime and the ridiculous.
His writings are almost both, and yet neither.
" Units, Tens, Hundreds, Thousands," is a capital
anecdote about a love-match and a "bit of blood ;"
Units being a black horse, Tens a bay mare, Hun•
dreds a bay horse, and Thousands a gray—the whole
the property of one Frederick Felworth. " Research
and Adventure in Australia," a comment on the re-
cent publication of the journal of Dr. Ludwig
Leichhardt, is intelligent and graphic as a piece of
criticism, It contains some beautiful stanzas by a
Mr. Lynd, of Sydney ; and there are immediately
afterwards a passionate ballad, called "Magus Muir,"
by W. E. A., and "A November Morning's Reverie,"
CV Delta. The latter is a seasonable fragment of
blank verse ; the former is a powerful specimen of
versification on the tragical death of James Sharp,
Archbishop of St. Andrew's and Primate of Scotland.
" Valedictory Visits at Rome," and a consideration of
" Highland Destitution," terminate a valuable and
entertaining number of the Patriarch of the Ma-
gazines.

FRA SER.
Fraser opens this month with an admirable article
on the " Sanitary Commission and the Health of the
Metropolis," in which we are happy to see a tardy
justice is rendered to the great merits of Mr. Chad-
wick. The writer thus sums np, in a few words, the
object of the sanitary movement
The object of the sanitary movement may be summed
up in a few words,—a sower in every street of every
town and village ; a drain for every house ; a constant
pure air at any cost ; the application of the refuse of
andto: vnusnitiomtihteed purposesl)of good water to every family ;
' of agriculture ; and, lastly, to
secure these blessings, the removal of every impediment,
physical and moral, and the destruction or reconstruction
of every form of local administration which does not
work well towards these righteous ends."
An admirable object, and one which will be attained
ere long in spite of the interested opposition of local
jobbers and Paving Commissioners and Sewers Boards,
which are aptly enough styled by Fraser " the liep-
tarchy of foul waters." The other political article of
the month is entitled " Thoughts on Jewish Dilabili-
ties," from the pen of the Rev. Professor Maurice, of
King's College, and advocates the removal of those
disabilities. " Sam Slick" continues his glorious
Nova Scotia stories. The subject of the present
paper is a " Pippin," a genuine Yankee horse dealer.
"iltecent Poetry" is a review of the recently published
poems of Mr. Chevenix Trench, Sir Aubrey de Vere,
and the author of " Moile's State Trials ;" and " The
Guerilla," is the commencement of what promises to
be a spirt-stirring tale of the war of independence in
Spain. We have here two chapters only in
which we are introduced to the then celebrated
Guerilla chiefs, the Manco, the Medico, and
the Empecinado. "Hints upon History" contains
some amusing anecdotes of Nelson and of Sir W. and
Lady Hamilton, and this is followed by an elaborate
review of " Tieck's Vittoria Accorombona." We have,
in addition, a short paper on the Education of Officers
in the Army—a gastronomic prolusion of the days of
Napoleon, before the " cheap and nasty" sys'em of
dining had found its way from London to Paris—a
well told narrative of a visit to "the bed of St.
Kevin"—

"By that lake whose gloomy shore
Skylark never warbled o'er,"
in the county of Wicklow—a review of Mr. Burton's
recently published " Biographies of Lord Lovat and
Mr. Duncan Forbes, of Culloden," and several other
articles of merit. On the whole this is an excellent
number of Fraser.

Yb er
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i(nS (Sun-
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e attended with a
cbelonging to Mr.
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extensiveoonbsei
Robert
tersa
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furniture
manufacturingur ur itou nr e ofd eap,
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premises
146, Whitechapel-
r t
road. When first discovered, the flames were raging in
the workshops immediately behind the dwelling, and
owing to the strong hold they had previously obtained,
coupled with the inflammable nature of the stock in
trade, their progress was unusually rapid. The police
at once raised an alarm, and having succeeded in arous-
ing the neighbours, they di-patched a messenger to the
engine stations. The fire, however, burned so fiercely,
that in the space of a few minutes the entire district
became brilliantly illuminated, and a general turn-out
of the engines took place. Notwithstanding the immense
quantity of water that was thrown into the flames the
firemen were unable to get them extinguished until
nearly half-past five o'clock. The damage done is very
considerable, and is thus officially returned to the in-
surance-offices :—" The whole of the back workshops
and their contents destroyed, and the roof burned
off. The upper floors gutted, and the stock in front
shop under the same considerably damaged by fire and
water. The cause of fire unknown. Insured in the
Atlas Fire-office for stock in trade.—The same morning,
at a quarter before six o'clock, a fire, nearly attended
with very disastrous consequences, was discovered burn-
ing upon the premises belonging to M. Julien Marie,
court dressmaker, situate at 114, Piccadilly. The shop
and parlours were burned out, and the valuable stock
in those compartments consumed. The total loss is con-
sirterable, but fortunately the house and its contents were

insured.
ADMIRALTY ESTABLISHMENTS ABROAD.—Their
Lordships are about to make more important alterations
in the Admiralty establishments abroad, The first step
decided upon is au increase of artificers to all the sta-
tions. Volunteers have been called for to proceed to
Jmnica, and the Cape of Gi.?od Hope. At
the I.:tr,r of ;LA_
yard men will be immediately made.—United Service
Gazette.