The Sun.
London, England, 1840-02-06 00:00:00

EVE N 7.10-G r)ITION

EV G• 8 WORKS 4 s.

herlderwick, Glasgow, 1840.

NORWAY, AND THE NORWEGLINS,
Bentley, London, 1840.
Mr. Latham has here given us a very- li'rebr
account of the manners and institutions of file Nor'
wegians, of whom he speaks in far more frAvourablle
terms than Mr. Bremner, whose work on the subject we lately noticed in The Sun. "They wish tube
known," he tells us, "as something b tter ths°
ester
love peasants and hospitable monntairkr2ers. Theio
love to be known for their institutions, rather O%
their mountains f
for things social, rat) ter than
to
thinqs geolog'xal." Mr. Latham then
proceeds •
observe that the Norwegisula—ara pre-eminentlYo
rising people ; and furnishes us with such deli respecting their social habits, and the working °
their constitution, which is the most democratic i°
Europe, as convinces us that he does not over-estic;
mate them. His account of Christiana is full and
circumstantial ; and as he appears to have made
some stay there, and to have noted
'diligently whet,
ever was worth observing, we ins line to place tun'
pi
elicit reliance on his sketches of the capital, whtc
are decided favourable to it. Tte Press, it seeUi.
is well conducted in Norway, especially at Cu))s;
tiana, where there are r.ot less than eleveo
daily and weekly journals, and Heaven knows boa
many Reviews and Magazinesl
In the seeuit
volume, we have an analytical account of the N°i,
wegiP..» Constitution, which we are glad to hest
works well for the country at Tiarge,notriithstandin!
its ultra-democratical tendency. sie hi
aking ,ilO
dentally of the diet of the Norwegians, who it,
much on fish, Mr. Latham tells the following std'
gular anecdote of the mackerel : Strange sty'
ries are told of the voracity of this
fish. Swin'in
'have been attacked by a shoal. of them. °;
poor fellow on the eve of marriage, was ciev°_,..otire
by them as he was bathing. Re raised his a"; above water, and the fish we•te seen hanging
them, as if strung there. T.his was being shay
n
eaten by instalments." Lathatn's voluul's
are penned in a lively, pointed' style—here g°d
there, perhaps, a little too aff ectedly—epirtr;
merle--..but we think he has IN :en somewhat t
niggavily in his descriptions t3f the magoifieest
forest and mountain scenery of 2.qorway.

THE SPORTIAGREVIEFO, THE SPOR-ilfla
MAGAZINE. AND TILE NEW SPOR 7 1 t
MA GA. ZINE.
The first of these periodicals gives full part-Ir.:O ofn- v
all the great fox-hunts for the month, states ?boare'
nard went to one place, then doubleback to aOO/bet,
then crossed, a meadow or
or a dee a river or a e 3rubber9t
p ditch, and finally yielded up 7
usifo
spirit to his gallant pursuers. The secor d lengthened history of Lord The
1 °undo
eg
gives ~
country, with the names of all big deg, —the nal°ol.
also of their sires and dams, and the miser Igo height '
the hounds, being from tvienty to twenty-tk.e
re:
inches. According to this ac,,,eupt Lord Sep
grave is idolized. around Chel tenbete, mid
very hounds are controlled by, affection, The°
im se 'Wildness or riot among them, flowing: all 'out abolished, and in gratitude they are the belt
behaved and most orderly dogs in Christi mdom.
writer very properly praises the no-noggin system, .21n
calls upon other masters of hout.ds to go an ,d do likewlies
The New Sporting Magazine gives an Account of tbs.'
death of " Mingo," the American race'norse, and Pre-
faces the obituary in the following " The most lamentable accident it 'nag been our duty
to record is the death of Mingo, killed by the fain"
of a tree." This number has two 'or:autiful prints of Wri:i
g pathetic strait]
piti deer, and fox-hounds, pe'inted by Hewitt
Cooper.

AL,

„.„.
ioNG VOYAGE.--The scheouer Superb,v'w; f
tain Anderson, sailed from London for Leith on the ntl2;
January, and arrived at Leith last Fri day morning, ha bad
been nearly three Weeks on her pusage. The vessel
had,,
reached as far as S' Abb's Head on the 19th, having had c 7,,,
and moderate w!ather. On the forenoon of that day, 60140
countered a hysrricane from the east by south, whi ch drove bithi,
into the North Sea, 180 miles from the British mast. 1,71 the
state they remained, driven at the mercy of the wind, t'11p..,..
22d, when the gale moderated, and the mast er, with c w:d
reefed sails, was able to bear up to windward. He had retrso
about 130 miles of this course, when a second gale
boat; I
same quarter encountered him, and obliged him, again to s I
to the fury of the elements. The vessel drift ed about 700:1,,.4,,
out of her course on this occasion, and it wa.s not till the fore,
neon of Tuesday last that they were able, hive the mast-he,l3t. •
to descry the promontory of St. Abb's—Editizburgh Cour°
„igi Ji
LAUGHABLE ALARM.--014 Tilresday se'll--,= a
as a man and boy were working in the Willi:im Maitland 111.111'
the boy, in going toward the shaft was p,revtly horrified an II;
ing something, as he termed it, ”in the slyape of a devil" •
he cried out to the man, his comrade „ who, on running to hi'
aid, was not a little alarmed to find (hat, according to his Own
words, the boy had " told the truth. " Of course both of then,
very quickly made their exit tow ar.
comrades a most doleful story, w}_len five courageous men we,n
down to reconnoitre, and after '4, very diligent search rhey,dule"
covered, not his Satanic Ala,:o.st-, ds the top, and told their
s but a very large fox! "e
man who first saw it slid li had a tail like a fox, but his eyes
were three times as lArge. It is supposed that Renard must
have fallen in the .::tiaft, 4 fathoms deep, about a week ago, a;
a man in the tri;be at the time heard soniething fall, but did n°
know till ne,sr what it was. —Fabnouth Packet

reader ot. in which he lives.
His two pontic2.l ai to be the Duke of
Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, on whom he rings
the change:, from page to page, throughout a bulky
duodecimo, until at length his incessant panegyrics
begin to be quite wearisome to the reader.

In a late Number of the Edinburgh Review
there appeared a criticism on Dr. Channing's
' works, the object of which was to prove that he was
a very indifferent writer, who endeavoured to excite
attention by adopting, a showy, tinsel, ad captan-
du»i styL?—that is to say, by looking solely to his
manner, and leaving his matter to shift for itself.
We pointed out the injustice of this criticism at the
time of its publication ; and now that we have re-
perused the Doctor's best essays—those, we means
on " Milton" and " Napoleon," we are still more
firmly convinced of its unmerited harshness; so far
from being, what is called, " a fine writer," Doctor
Charming is just the reverse ; for his sentences,---
highly polished and figurative as we admit them to
be--are invariably pregnant with meaning. He
never substitutes sound for sense, or sacrifices good
taste to effect; but is eloquent and figurative,
for the same reason that Burke was—though his
fancy is of a far inferior order and of a more limited
range—because he cannot help it, such being not
of the leading features of his intellect. Now, a
fine writer" is one who, like the author of the
far-famed " Meditations among the Tombs," en-
deavours to conceal an utter sterility of thoughts
beneath a heap of glittering but tangled images;
who puts the most obvious and familiar common'
place upon stilts, in the vain hope to give it deo'
tion and importance in the eye of his reader; who
mistakes exaggeration for strength ; and launches a
truism with all the fury of a thunderbolt. Such
was the once celebrated Harvey—such was Darwin
—such was Orator Phillips in his earlier days'
but such is not Dr. Channing. He is ornate, co-
pious, and fond of having recourse to imagery— "
granted ; but he never goes out of his way is
quest of ornament ; never uses it, but when it serves
strictly to iltustrate, and gracefully to set oil' his
theme. His eloquence is always raised upon the
broad basis of reason ; bears a just proportion Is
the thought, and is never permitted to encumber or
overlay it. Perhaps a little more terse and nervans
vigour might not be amiss in Doctor Charming
style ; but a writer cannot possess every exedlence;
and it is plain to see in every page that the Dozer
is a man of calm and settled habits of reflection'
and by no means remarkable for the fervour or en'
thusiasm of his intellectual temperament. We sus'
pect, from certain subtle turns of thought hi hi
essay on " Self Culture" that the " Religio Medici
of Sir Thomas Browne is something of a favourite
with him.