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

NOVEMBER 11, 1847.

Thy throbbing temples need repose—
E'en penury bath eyes to close;
Suffice it now 'tis mine to wake—
All labour's sweetened for thy sake.
And thus with prayers he sendeth her to test,
To write of cheer with trouble at his breast,
While the goose-quill striveth and straineth away
Over the paper
Beneath the taper,
Through the hours that man calls night•--and genius day.
" Alack, the taper's getting low—
The fire hath slumbered long ago—
What's to be done? not half the task
Fulfilled, these craving dear ones ask;
The thoughts, too, burn so bright and high,
They flash like lightning from the sky;
That now the taper should refuse its spark!
It flickers—the pen flies—it drops—and all is dark.
" A moment hath the penman paused in doubt—
At length, as with a groan he turns about,
lie starts with joy, for a long fine ray
Through the shutters shoot the light of day;
He flies to the window, opens it wide,
And shrinks from the morning's great flood-tide
That bursts on his blood-shot eyes, o'erwrought
From the deep carouse of desperate thought.
He steals to the table, and once again
Opens the orgies of breast and brain,
While the goose-quill fluently fleetuth away
Over the paper,
Without the taper,
Through the hours when night sleeps in the lap of day."
Painfully true as this is, we are not sure that we do
not prefer the exquisite pathos and simplicity of " The
Poplin Weaver." Alas ! how many of our own
countrymen may be subjected to the like privations
by an obstinate adherence to the unwise and impolitic
monetary laws under which our manufactures have
been checked, and our operatives deprived of employ-
ment. We would fain ask our lawgivers is the fol-
lowing picture one that they would wish to see
realised in what was once merry England ?

" I'm loth to awake ye, Art, my dear!
But the steps of a stranger are drawing near—
Up the ricketty stair they come,
Making, I think, for our wretched room—
Rise, Art, rise! the last shilling's spent—
Art, it's the sheriff—the rent—the rent!
" See, daylight has lit on the window-sill—
Art! is it you to be slumbering still?
Ye knew that at last we must quit, or pay,
Though ye didn't expect the distress today!
Rise, Art, rise! the last shilling's spent—
Art, it's the sheriff—the rent—the rent!
" At the door!—oh, a month, to make up what's due
The landlord he knows, Art, your word is true—
If he saw how we strive, he'd put off the sale—
'Twas the will of God that the trade should fail!
Rise, Art, rise! the last shilling's spent—
Art, it's the sheriff—the rent—the rent!
" In days gone by, it was Ireland's pride
To be decked in the web that our looms supplied—
Those were the times, Art, that ye took me home,
And told me that love would make business come.
Rise, Art, rise! tho last shilling's spent—
Art, its the sheriff—the rent—the rent!
" It's hunger, Art, that has made ye weak—
What can I think of, your fast to break?
Here, Art, here is my wedding-ring—
The lodgers will lend on the blessed thing!
Rise, Art, rise! the last shilling's spent—
Art, it's the sheriff—the rent—the rent!
" God forgive me! my heart is torn
To drag ye from bed this bitter morn;
The bed that they're coming to seize and sell—
Where I've nursed and prayed by ye, sick and well!
Rise, Art, rise! the last shilling's spent!
Art, it's the sheriff—the rent—the rent!
" How silent he sleeps! not a stir, or breath;
Poor famishing husband, you're worked to death!
At the shuttle before and after the sun—
And a morsel of meal when the day is done!
Rise, Art, rise! the last shilling's spent—
Art, it's the sheriff—the rent—the rent!
" Dead my God! it is over at last—
' The wearisome struggle is past—is past!
The heavens be praised! 'tisn't you need fear—
'Tis your widow that's desolate, husband dear!
Rise, Art, rise! to the happy skies,
Where the tears are wiped from the poor man's eyes!"
We have little space to notice the remaining articles
in the number, although they well merit attention.
The title of " A Week in the Hebrides—Gleanings
in the Queen's 'Wake," explains the subject. " The
Bachelor of the Albany " also will be read with much
interest. "Poor and Pauper " states the means
adopted by Mr. John Hamilton, of St. Ernan's, Do-
negal, for unpauperizing the population on his own
estates—an example which, if generally followed by
other proprietors of the soil in that country, would
speedily be attended with the most beneficial results
to all classes. "University Reform," the last paper
of the number, is an able and elaborate defence of
the Alma Mater against the charges put forward by
Mr. Heron, in " The Constitutional History of the
University." There are some sentiments put forward
highly creditable to the writer, and which we would
gladly see participated in by the authorities of Oxford
and Cambridge. He says, "Mixed Education is now
very generally approved of. It lessens acerbity of
feeling, removes prejudices, unites men in after life
in pursuit of useful objects in which they agree, and
leads them mutually to forbear on subjects on which
they differ. In Trinity College it has been found
eminently successful; Roman Catholics and Pro-
testants now live there on the best and most cordial
terms of friendship, and are treated with perfect im-
partiality by the heads and senior members of the
College." And again—" In short, the system we
advocate in Trinity College is to admit Roman Catho•
lies freely to all rewards for learning, and all places
for teaching, which are not parts of the body cor-
porate, or governing body of the University, and not
directly for the teaching of religion." These state-
ments, coming from such a quarter, should silence the
cavillers who object to the admission of Dissenters to
the English Universities, and who have ventured to
state "that mixed education has been found to work
badly, and was very mischievous in fostering religious
animosities in Trinity College, Dublin."

THE BANKERS'.
This is indeed an important and stirring period for
the Bankers' Magazine. There are unfortunately no
lack of subjects that come within the sphere of its ope-
rations. " The Triumph of the Banking Principle"
sets forth the proceedings immediately preceding the
virtual repeal of the Bank Charter Act of 1844, to-
gether with the letters that passed between the Go-
vernment and the Bank on the occasion. The follow-
ing sensible observations are made with respect to the
recommendation that eight per cent. should be the
minimum rate of interest charged by the Bank :
" We do not believe that the eight-per-cent. minimum
will be long maintained: it should not be maintained one
moment longer than the exigencies of the times may
seem to warrant it. A usurious rate of interest is so
contrary to the spirit of all our commercial institutions,
and so destructive in its consequences, that it cannot long
be tolerated by the Government with impunity ; and we
are sure that we echo the sentiments of nearly the entire
commercial community when we state, that the recom-
mendation of Government, that the Bank should not
charge less than eight per cent. on its advances at this
crisis, in order to attempt to keep in force an exploded
theory, is a heavy blow and a great discouragement to
our commercial greatness."
There is an excellent memoir, accompanied by a
portrait, of Thomas Bracken, Esq., late the respected
Secretary of the Bank of Bengal. A melancholy
catalogue then ensues of the series of disasters which
have taken place within the last month, and
of the several banks which have been com-
pelled to yield to the pressure of the times,
and to suspend payments, together with lists of
the shareholders in the Royal Bank of Liverpool, and
the Liverpool Banking Company, reprinted from the
last official returns, and lists of the shareholders in
the several other joint-stock banks that have sus-
pended payment. These are succeeded by the balance-
sheets of the great firms which have recently failed.
There is also an excellent article on the state of com-
mercial affairs in Liverpool, showing the dreadful
state to which the trade and commerce of the first
mercantile port in the world has been reduced, from
the baneful operation of our monetary laws.
" Savings' Banks" relates to the general withdrawal
by depositors in all parts of the country, in conse-
quence of the present depressed state of the public
funds, and the loss to the nation thereon, which,
from the 16th of March to the 12th of June last,
amounted to upwards of 100,0001. How much it
has been in the disastrous period subsequent thereto
it is impossible for us to state. The usual paper on
"Banking and Commercial Law" refers this month to
the law relating to bankers' receipts. There is also
a vast quantity of valuable information on various
points, which will render the present number highly
acceptable to all commercial men.

THE OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE REVIEW.

" The Scottish Church and its Assailants," the first
paper in the present number, is principally founded
on the report of the deputation appointed in May,
1846, of ministers and lay members of the Church of
England representing the congregations adhering to
her forms and doctrines in Scotland ; the members of
the deputation are described as schismatics, and dealt
with very severely for the objections which they have
put forward in their report. The controversy is very
fully entered into, and letters from several of the
English bishops, in answer to the circular addressed
frotn one of the congregation of Fochabers, are given
in extenso. " Episcopal and Capitular Revenues "
attacks what it terms the late spoliation," in other
words the allocation of revenues which had been
founded on the proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Com-
mission. " The Churches of London," the tenth
paper under this title, by Ridley, is a lamentation
over the degeneracy of those clergymen who obeyed
the Order in Council, by using the form of prayer,
thereby appointed for the Thanksgiving Sunday—and
a laudation of those who refused to do so, more par-
ticularly of the Rev. Bryan King, the Rector of St.
George's-in-the-East, anti of the incumbents of St.
Paul's, Knightsbridge, and St. Andrew's, 'Wells-

street, Oxford-street. " A Country Curate's Tale,"
is a pleasingly written poem of the Crabbe school.
The number also contains the usual short reviews and
University intelligence.

THE COMIC HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
No. X VII. By Gilbert Abbott A'Beckett.
There is a capital brew of fun in this number out
of the mash of Oliver Cromwell, the brewer of Hun-
tingdon. The author, however, is wrong in saying
that the last known descendant of the Lord Protector
died in 1821 ; there are several of the Protector's
descendants yet living. The description of the cele-
brated " Royal Oak scene" is admirable :—" After the
battle of Worcester, Charles determined to proceed
towards London, and, by the aid of a leathern doublet,
grey breeches, and green jerkin, he made up' very
effectually as a stage countryman. Taking with
him a real countryman, one Richard Penderell, as a
companion, Charles went into a wood, from the edge
of which he saw a troop of horse ; but the rain
poured down in such torrents that the troop retired,
instead of taking shelter in the wood, which was cer-
tainly the wisest course they could have adopted.
The anecdote is, however, so essentially dramatic,
that the soldiers were perfectly in character when
they went quite in the opposite direction to that they
should have taken, like those pursuers on the stage
who usually overlook the person they are in search
of, and who, to every one else, is most conspicuously
visible. Charles's position on this occasion resembled,
in a minor degree, the situation of the fugitive at the
fair, who, poin ing to a painted blind representing a
tree with a hole cut down the centre of it, expressed
his determination to conceal himself in yonder
thicket.' Finding accommodation for his body only
in the tree's imaginary trunk, his legs of course pro-
truded from the shady grove,' when two assassins in
hot pursuit tumbling over the out-hanging heels of
the wretched runaway, exclaimed confidently in the
ears of the audience, By ivins, he as eluded us.'
Such must have been the good fortune of Charles,
and the stupid blindness of the troop when the
former sat on the forest's edge, and the latter never
noted him. This incident being over, another
soon afterwards ensued of an equally melodramatic
character. Charles and Penderell, after travelling
two nights on foot, had put up at the house of one of
Penderell's brothers ; but it was not thought safe to
remain in it, and his Majesty was recommended to an
oak, whose parent stem would afford friendly shelter,
while all the junior branches might be thoroughly
relied upon. The king having supplied himself with
bread, cheese, and beer, which could not have been
table beer, for there was no table to put it on—though
there were plenty of leaves—made the best of the im-
perfect accommodation that the tree afforded him.
He had no sooner settled on his perch, and made
himself a kind of nest in the boughs, than some sol-
diers entered on the 0. P. side, and looked every-
where—except in the right place—for the fugitive
monarch. His legs, as usual, were visible enough,
but the troopers possibly mistook them for a pair of
stockings hanging up to dry, and they were not even
struck by the shoes at the end, that should have
awakened them to the value of the booty. The most
infantine participators in the game of Hide and
Seek, would not have been at fault under circum-
stances of a similar kind ; and there can scarcely
be a doubt, that if any urchin had only raised a
suggestive cry of Hot beans and butter l' Charles
would have been laid by the heels without a scruple
on the part of those who were in search of him.
Leaving his Majesty's legs to dangle in the air, and
allowing credulity to score one for his heels on the
cribbage-board of fancy, we proceed to contemplate
Charles in a more dignified position on the throne of
England."

THE MIRROR.
The Mirror for November opens with three addi-
tional chapters of " Paul Pevensey." The Lover of
Kate returns, and weds her. His name is Laurence
Stanley, and he is high in the service in India.
There is, however, a great drawback to the happi-
ness of Mr. and Mrs. Laurence Stanley—their child,
Paul, is nowhere to be heard of. Stanley, in com-
mon with almost every one else, believes that he has
perished in the explosion ; but Kate, with true wo-
man's faith, believes and hopes, in spite of hope, that
she shall yet see him again. She, however, departs
for Bengal with her husband, without having heard
any tidings of Paul. We have already spoken of
the writer of this work as a philosopher possessed of
a thorough knowledge of character, a poet in the
highest sense of the term ; we have already spoken
of his exquisite descriptions of rural scenery ; we
now present our readers with a gem of an interior,
an interior that Mulready might have painted.
" Our readers will not perhaps object to step, this fine
Sunday morning, into the parsonage of Ulraven, where
the parson was just now at breakfast with his family.
He was an extremely odd sort of a man, that same par-
son; who seemed to love especially three sorts of things
—children, books, and cats. Mrs. Williams, as part ot
himself, went, of course, for nothing. That he loved her
was most certain, but that he never thought of it was
equally certain. He was as unconscious of it as of the
air he breathed, though the one was as necessary to his
life as the other. She sat at one corner of the table,
while he took up his position exactly opposite, with his
youngest son upon his knee, a huge Tom cat upon his
shoulder, and one or two mewling little vagabonds of
minor calibre on his lap. All these bipeds and quadru-
peds he fed from time to time, occasionally taking a
peep into a volume of Tillotson—which he held more
from habit than for use in his left hand. The bigger
children occupied their places round the table, his eldest
daughter, Nancy, sitting close to his side, on the right.
If we glance at the table we shall find that it displayed a
number of comfortable things—solaces, as the pat son
expressed it, for the outer man. Mrs. Williams was a
very nice person, a jewel of a housewife, who loved to
see everything about her as clean and neat as a Dutch-
woman's band-box. The tablecloth was as white as
snow, and Mrs. Williams exerted all her authority to
prevent the unthinking youngsters from spilling the
coffee over it ; and then that coffee I what fragrance it
diffused through the room—how the foaming hot cream
mantled over it, making Master Philip's teeth water, as
the parson's grace, which was rather of the longest, was
saying. We have always thought that it was highly
injurious to the devotional feelings of the family to pour
out the coffee before the grace was said, a sort of secular
whiff ascending from the cup to the nostril, generally
bringing down the thoughts to sublunary concerns,
when they should have been otherwise employed.
Besides, there was fresh butter lying pillowed in a china '
basin, delicate enough to tempt a St. Anthony ; and
racks of dried toast, and fresh white eggs in little egg-
cups with gold rims—all intended to shed over the break-
fast-table an air of epicurean refinement. But the
greatest ornament of all was the row of rosy faces, with
a dash of eagerness in each, peering over the white
table-cloth.

" Mrs. Williams looked perfectly happy, as she glanced
over the group, and concluded with looking at hfr bus-
band, who was just then maturing in his mind, not his
sermon for the day, but a series of questions, which
when, in Homeric phrase, the rage of hanger should
have been a little appeased, he meant to put to Nancy.
But we are going a little too fast. We ought by all
means to cast a look out of the parlour window, and
describe the prospect which presented itself there. We
wish for Mr. Williams's sake we could dwell upon a
fine lawn, with indications of a coach-house, and stable
peeping from behind a screen of trees.
" But our imagination must not fly beyond the reality.
Mr. Williams's parlour window looked into an orchard,
where a few golden apples, the remnant of the year's
fruit, still hung upon the trees. The leaves around might
almost be said to be of all colours, and as they rustled
and twinkled in the October sun, look down upon a
number of their brethren lying in tranquil decay upon
the grass. There is a sort of melancholy in autumnal
sunshine, reminding us of the mellow splendours of in-
tellect which light up our passage to the tomb. It has
nothing in it of the bright fervour of morning—nothing
of the golden hue or warmth of summer. It is placid,
gentle, relaxing; as if meant to make us let go our hold
on this world, and pass away without start or struggle
into that undiscovered country from whose bourne no
traveller returns. And yet I love the sunshine of
autumn, which indicates that the work of the year is
over, and that all things are approaching their rest."
Mr. Percy St. John concludes his interesting story
of "Cecilia Armand," the object of which is, he says,
to call attention to the false notions which have
hitherto prevailed on the subject of the French Revo-
lution, more especially as regards the characters of
St. Just and Robespierre, who are described by Mr.
St. John as almost the only virtuous men of the
revolution. We do not agree with him in his estimate
of the character of Robespierre; we consider Kobe s-
pierre to have been a cold-blooded, selfish hypocrite,
who was preserved from any flagrant personal outrages
of decorum by the coldness of his constitution—a
the
traitor, constantly intriguing with the partisans of
old regime, who,
to
the
drivey words
lib
e rotf Camille
madin
Desmoulins, "en
order to disgust the world with her." He was the
Clea th
endeavoured quote
man of the reaction, and he would have succeeded in
his schemes had he not been as inferior to Danton in
courage as he was to Camille Desmoulins in honesty
and ability. In one point, however, we entirely agree
with Mr. Percy St. John, the history of the French
oßevolution
g authorsha
pa
bb
lee o
f doingwritten, andjustice
twiceek h ofe
task but
of writing it, and that is Mr. J. A. St.
John, the
father of the author of " Cecilia Armand."

---
THE NAUTICAL GAZETTEER; a Di
Maritime Geography. Parts
I. and II ctionary of.
The design of this work, which is publ
the especial sanction of the Lords of
thished under
Admiralty,
is to furnish the naval service with a
book of
fer-
ence, &c•, "applicable to the localities of the sea,
em-
bracing general accounts of the coasts of the conti-
nents and islands of the world, with the roadsteads,
harbours, navigable rivers, oLls, , ,
channels, currents, &c., togethersh with thebars townsrocks and
cities approachable by shipping, also latitudes, longi-
tudes, soundings, anchorages, and compass variations,
with general sailing directions to and from principal
roads ; the whole arranged alphabetically,t in rand
g
divisions of the oceanic surface—namely, h
Atlantic, the South Atlantic thi: Indiane
Arctic Ocean,
and
tbe
North Pacific, the South Pacific, anda
publication has the
4utarOtic Sea." The; want of such