The Sun.
London, England, 1840-05-01 00:00:00

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

There is too much of imitation in Mr. Hook's
present chapters of " Fathers and Sons." Colonel
Bruff, with his eternal " That'll do—that'll do,"
which is repeated usque ad nauseam, is a copy
from a nondescript character in Colman's farce of
" Ways and Means," who is constantly repeating
the same phrase ; and the incident of Mrs. Smylar,
the Colonel's housekeeper, who is caught behind
the window-curtain, is neither more nor less than
a plagiarism from the famous screen-scene in the
" School for Scandal." If Mr. Hook must
imitate, he should at least have the discre-
tion to imitate those authors who are the least
known to the " pensive public." In " Some
Account of the Turkish Pretender," there are some
curious details respecting a Turk named Nadir Bey,
whom the writer, Miss Romer, encountered on her
voyage to Constantinople, and who related to her
the following anecdote of Shapdji, a rich Jew, who
was put to death by order of the late Sultan Mah-
moud, for no other reason than that his Highness
was anxious to possess himself of the Israelite's
exchequer :
He was the richest individual in the Jewish quarter
of Constantinople, and accounted one of the wealthiest
men in the empire. One evening as Sultan Mahmoud
was taking the air in his State barge upon the 13ospho-
rus, a caique passed by, containing besides the rowers,
only one man, who, to screen himself from the wind, had
thrown a shawl over his head ; probably that muffling
prevented his seeing the Sultan, for he passed by with-
out making any obeisance. " Who is that man ?" in.
quired Mahmoud sternly, of one of the attendants who
sat at his feet. " In Stamboul," replied the officer,
" there are two men, mighty in the possession of count-
less riches ; the great Sultan Mahmoud is the first—
after him comes Shapdji, the Jew—he is the man !" and
he pointed to the humble caique lessening into distance.
Early on the following morning Shapdji was awakened
by loud knocking at the entrance of his dwelling ; with
an instinctive dread of some misfortune menacing him,
he commanded his servants not to open to the intruders ;
but upon hearing a voice from without proclaim that a
messenger from the Sultan desired to speak with him, he
hasten& d to unbar the door himself, and had no sooner
thrown it open than he fell a strangled corpse across
the threshold. His immense wealth was seized upon
in the name of the Sultan, and peculation was attri-
buted to him in order to give a colouring of justice to
the horrible catastrophe which had cut him off from the
living—but his riches were his only crime, and the Su!-
tan devoted them to building the splendid new palace
of "the stone cradle," upon the European side of the
Bosphorus, which surpassed in elegence and magnificence
all the other imperial residences that line those enchant-
ing shores. The judgment of Heaven has, however,
fallen upon the stately pile whose foundations had been
laid in the innocent blood of Shapdji, and within the
last year it has been completely destroyed by fire.
" The " Gamesters" is an impressive story from
the practised pen of the Countess of 'Blessington.
The denouement is spiritedly brought about.
" Nimrod in France is a continuation of Mr. A p-
perley's Illustrations of French Character. He is
partial to our lively and mercurial neighbours, we
see ; and not without reason. Alluding to the
punishment of death, he says—" I had rather be
twice guillotined than once hanged, and 1 speak
on something approaching to expeticuce. I have
been within four yards of a man when hanged, and
was convinced that, although the executioner com-

mitted no error, his sufferings must have been
dreadful. He had large buttons on his coat, and
the convulsive distortions of his body caused them
to jingle together in a manner horrible to the eye
and the ear. Admitting that example is the end
of capital punishment, that presented by the guillo-
tine must be by far the most powerful." Of Mrs.
Trollope's " Widow Married" we need here say
nothing, as we have already noticed the work in
its collected form of three volumes. "On the
Uses and Abuses of Truth" is a light agreeable
essay ; and the same may be said of the '' Ad-
vantages of Being Too Late."

FRA SE R' S MAGAZLVE.
The first article in the Number before us, on the
" Primitive Tradition of Heathen Nations," may
please zealous antiquarians—Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck
would have been delighted with it—but will assuredly
be perused with impatience by the generality of read-
ers. Our objection to it, notwithstanding the in-
genuity of some of its speculations, is, that it has
no definite commencement, and arrives at no defi-
nite conclusion. The " Castle of Dullness "is a
sprightly poem in the lambic metre, whose rhymes
not unfrequently are quite Hudibrastic in their
skill and drollery. We subjoin a portion of the
firs! canto, which will remind the reader of Butler's
more pointed and :ententious manner :
Philosophers, who have got at her,
Sly nature is but mind and matter;
Though some declare the last unreal,
And beef and pudding but ideal—
Mere shadows which our fancies cheat,
As beggars feast on steams of meat.
Would you their sophistry confute,
And end at once the vain dispute,
Knock but their heads against a post,
They'll find it real, and to their cost.
Wranglers of metaphysic wit
Resemble sawyers in a pit :
With quick return from each is sent
The bright and cutting instrument ;
And as the knottier grows their stuff,
Tha job gets tougher and more tough ;
Whilst their old saws rub off their rust,
And fill our cars with noise and dust.
But, be this question as it may,
Matter we own has had its day ;
And all men's thoughts are now inclined •
To expedite the march of mind.
In days of yore, the use of a head
Was only to get buffeted ;
Skulls were not valued for their quickncv,
But, e conirario, for their thickness ;
And those which bore the hardest knock
We held to be the best of blocks.
By bumps and blows did honour come,
Unless they fell upon the bum ;
Whist folks perversely took ;alarm
At those which did the smallest harm :
For where is man more safely beat
Than on his honourable seat ?

" A tale of the year 1655 " refets to Mon-
mouth's rebellion in the West of England, when
Colonel Kirke, one of the greatest scoundrels that
ever degraded human nature, made himself noto-
rious by his cruelties. The leading incident of the
story—namely, that of a young girl submitting to
dishonour in order to save her brother's life—has been
often related, and :Is very likely to have occurred,
especially when such a wretch as Kirke was one of
the parties concerned in the outrage. " Secret So-
cieties and Political Clubs" is an entertaining arti-
cle ; but why does the writer, while enumerating the
other societies of Paris, omit all mention of the "Ja-
cobins " and the"Cordeliets "—the most influential
political clubs that ever existed, and which were
the prime originators of most of the great changes
that have convulsed Europe for the last thirty years
and upwards ? The " Church in the Isle of
Man " consists of brief biographical sketches of
several Prelates who have held that see. " A
Trip across the Spanish Frontier " is lively gossip.
" A Full, True, and Particular Account of her Ma-
jesty's Marriage is dreary doggrel. The Christmas
bell-man could turn out better rhymes. " A Chap-
ter on Duelling" is an intelligent essay, sound alike
in argument and principle. '' Brougham's De-
mothenes" is another analytical notice of his Lord-
ships translation of the " Crown," wherein the Re-
viewer, alluding cursorily to the Times critic's remark
on the word 3,svO,,,..scriv, that it means " fruit trees," as-
serts, on the contrary, that it " is applied only to un-
derwood." Now the critic in the Times is right, and
Eraser's Reviewer wrong, as will be seen by these
lines, which we quote from memory—not having
the book at hand to refer to—from Anacreon's
Ode to the Dove :

" Y.2OIELY
a7sr.loY 71."
Here vr: 0" IV evidently means " fruit trees," from
which the dove is to peck " something wild"—
that is to say, fruit ; and in no sense whatever can
it apply to undurwood, because it is on the branches
of tall trees, and not among the jungles, that this
bird is generally found to perch. As regards the
word ;;;":;?,,,y, this less applies to forest trees in their
natural state of growth, than to these same trees
when cut down and forming timber. " Log" is the
nearest translation we can give of it. There is
much reading shown in the review in Fraser ;
but after all, the time devoted to this pedantic sort
of reading is sadly wasted. Better to be a hound
historian than the acutest " word catcher" that ever
detected a false quantity, or regulated the metre of a
Greek chorus.

MONTHLY CHRONICLE.
" Church and State in Prussia" indulges in
some wholesome and pertinent strictures on the
K►ng of Prussia's late attempt to establish a strict
uniformity of belief among his subjects. Assuredly
his Majesty is no Solomo►►, albeit a crowned-head.
lie had much better confine himself to regulating
the buttons of his soldiers ; for herein, as Napoleon
archly observed, he showed decided genius—in
fact, all the taste of the most artistical tailor. But
to insist on men's thinking all the same way—
holding the same doctrines—clinging to the same
minute points of belief ! Who, but a thick-skulled
bigot, could ever have dreamed of such an absur-
dity ? By the way, taking of bigotry, we cannot
resist the temptation of quoting these spirited re-
marks :

" Bigotry, with a bard, iron, inflexible gaze ; Fana-
ticism, with a fierce, red, self-consuming glare ; ugly
Phorcys' daughters, with one eye between them, and
that eye looking eternally one way, and one tooth, preg-
nant with the poison of sanctified malignity ;—these two
monsters you shall often find, by an art of transmutation
well known to the devil, in the shape of amiable young
men, reading Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, at Oxford ;
marvellously wise in the wisdom of antiquity ; curiously
trained up, by a cunningly devised system of intellectual
mechanics, to quote the Bible in support of all
; boasting much of a learning called classical ;
deeply read in folioed Fathers ; and in the vast volume
of Earth's history (as a miser's fears turn always on
gold), seeing only the long genealogy of their own
madness."

" Some Recollections of Childhood" allude to those
ghastly ideas and fancies which are so apt to haunt
the mind of youth. A volume of ingenious specu-
lation might be written on this theme—how it is
that children who have been carefully debarred by
their parents from hearing or reading ghost stories,
shall yet start up in the dark, convulsed with horror
at some spectral shape that stands visibly before
them. " The War with China" gives an impartial
summary of the causes that led to our quarrel with
the authorities of Canton. We recommend the ar-
ticle to Sir James Graham's perusal. If we mis-
take not, he will be much edified by it. The
" Convict System of Van Diemen's Land" is a
useful paper, and would be still more so, were it
less prosy. But the author writes as if with a pen
steeped in laudanum. In " Hints on Dramatic
Versification" we find some highly laudatory com-
ments on " Marlowe's mighty line." There is
certainly much fire and energy in his " Faustus"
and " Edward the Second ;" but as for his rhymed
poem on " Hero and Leander''—to which, we
presume, the writer chiefly alludes—it is, with the
exception of one passage descriptive of a sudden
sun-rise, most unmitigated fustian and twaddle__
stuffed with cold allegorical conceits, and about as
melodious in versification, as is the grating of a
hand-saw against a marlin-spike. "Ode to Clara
Novella" is a passable piece of rhyming.

DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MA GA ZINE.
In an essiav on the " Intellectuality of Domestic
Animals," which, though heavy as a whole, con-
tains one or two curious anecdotes, the writer speaks
with becoming respect of the superior intelligence
of pigs. He is perfectly correct in so speaking.
The porcine nature is remarkable for its sagacity
and quick-wittedness ; though we must add, in com-
mon justice, that it is equally remarkable for its
obstinacy and perverseness. Leigh Hunt has an
amusing paper on this subject in his " Indicator,"
and we arc all aware of the extraordinary stubborn-
ness and tenacity of will that characterise the Trish
porker. In the first place, he never will have his