The Sun.
London, England, 1847-04-01 00:00:00

. the mind with peculiar ideas of the grand and the
majestic. Give us the comprehensive judgment that
can recognise the intrinsic greatness of an object, with-
out carping at the minor details ! After inveighing
against Carlylisms and Anti-Dryasdustisms, "Ebony"
pursues " The Lays and Legends of the Thames,"
with some humour, and very considerable sprinklings
of slang. " Vampyrism "is the subject next exa-
mined among the various truths contained in Popular
Superstitions; it is a decided improvement uponß the
preceding article about the " Divining Rod. The
" New Sentimental Journey " promises to be as
diversified, if not as touching in its sentimen-
tality, as the famous one of Laurence Sterne.
The contribution immediately afterwards is a
sketch of the renowned regiment, " The Fighting
Eighty-eighth." It is the best article in the
whole number, written with delightful esprit, and
recalling to the memory many of the most interesting
passages in those Peninsular campaigns whose records
have been so well penned by the historian Napier. In
a review of the Hon. George Pellew's " Life of Lord
Sidmouth," a brilliant outline is given of the career
and times of that nobleman, from the period of his
disrelish for politics, when William Pitt rallied his
depreciation of his powers for statesmanship by re-
peating the lines of Waller :
" The lark that shuns on lofty boughs to build
Her humble nest, lies silent in the field;
But should the promise of a brighter day,
Aurora smiling, bid her rise and play;
Quickly she'll show 'twas not for want of voice,
Or power to climb, she made so low a choice:
Singing she mounts, her airy notes are stretch'd
Towards heaven, as if from heaven alone her notes
she fetch'd."
The progress of henry Addington up to his elevation
to the peerage is detailed with some impartiality., In
the course of the paper we are glad to observe the
following vindication of, perhaps, the grandest phi-
lippic ever uttered by man—Sheridan 's speech on
Warren Hastings and the Begum Question :
"It has been the habit of late critics to decry the
merits of
,this famous oration, and even to charge it
with being frivolous, outrageous, and bombastic, an im-
mense accumulation of calumny and clap-trap, which the
craft of Sheridan would not submit to the public ordeal,
and which he has therefore left to its chance of a fan-
tastic and visionary fame. But this we find it impossible
to believe. That in a speech of five hours and a half,
there may have been—nay, there must have been,
passages of extravagance, and even errors of taste, is
perfectly probable ; but they must have been overcome
by countless passages of lustre and beauty,—by power-
ful conceptions and brilliant examples of language ; at
once resistless and refined,—by living descriptions, and
thoughts of daring and dazzling energy, sufficient to
have made it one of the most memorable triumphs of
senatorial eloquence in the world. how, on any other
supposition, is it possible to account for the effects which
we know it to have produced ?
" Addington's letter, alluding to this subject, says,
• The papers will convey but a faint idea of a speech,
which I heard Fox declare to be the most wonderful
effort of the human mind that perhaps had ever been
made. Mr. Pitt, and indeed the whole llouse, spoke of
it in terms of admiration and astonishment, scarcely in-
ferior to those of Mr. Fox.'
" The papers, indeed, convey a worse than inadequate
idea of this wonderful oration, for they give merely a
few fragments, in which they have contrived either to
select their examples with the most curious infelicity, or
to blunder them into bombast. But nothing can be more
childish than to suppose, that Pitt would have given his
praise to tawdry metaphor, that Burke would have done
honour to feeble truisms, that Fox should have been un-
able to distinguish between logic and looseness of reason-
ing, or that the whole assembly, who had been in the
habit of hearing those pre-eminent orators, should have
been tricked by theatric dexterity or charlatan rhetoric
into homage. The oration must have been a most mag-
nificent performance, and we have only to deplore the
loss of a great work of genius."
Upon American oratory, and American orators (a
fitting bathos by the way, from the sublime of Sheri-
dan), there is some capital sarcasm in a paper en-
titled " How they Manage Matters in the Model
Republic." " Hone Catullianre," and a delightfully
absurd cockcrow upon the presumed downfal of the
Free-trade principle, terminate the number for All-
Fool's Day very appropriately.