The Sun.
London, England, 1840-08-01 00:00:00

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air/ I

EVENING if4,I)ITIOM

Glaring fixed, or in fiatilaa,
From jewels in arches,
Cap, turban, a nd tiara
'Tis a tossir g sea '
Of ectasy,
At the Fair of Almuchara

FR A SER'S MA GA 272 V E.
! There is a curious artii7.lty in this Number, which
will be sure to find numerous readers, entitled
_ " Going to see a Man Hanged." The man, of
course, is Courvoisier ; and there a forcible
sketch of the way in whi,:h his last nigh t was spent;
and of the feelings of the writer—which do him in-
finite credit—when he sat . the murderer I airly stand-
ing under the beam, with Jack Ketch's official
fingers fumbling about his neck. 'Tv ras an ern-
ab
ta rca sosui nrrgomi s
ioeirn e ta
veieurgt a i tei
perplexity of manner. The incidental rci lections
st
17,eornadbei
er
xiYh'iblint!d''‘4-erdyo cio
scattered throughout this article have muc
h point
and emphasis. As an instance, take the fob
eaking
The writer, we should premise, has been sp
'owing.of the mob who thronged all the avenuts to the
Old Bailey :
" I declare that I have never been in a great IA indon
crowd without thinking of what they call the two g 'teat'
parties in England with wonder. For which of the two
great leaders do these people care, I pray you? V$ hen
ht,
Lord Stanley withdrew his Irish Bill the other nitho
were they in transports of joy, like worthy persons
read the Globe and the Chronicle ?or when he bt.a- t t he
Ministers, were they wild with delight, like hottest ge
tlemen who read the Post and the Times? Ask. yomcft r
ragged fellow, who has evidently frequented .febating.
clubs, and speaks with good sense and shrewd go%)(1 nature.
He cares no more for Lord John than he dies for Sir
Robert; and, with due respect be it said, would niirld4
very little if both of them were ushered out by Mr._
Ketch, and took their places under yonder black !Naga. p
What are the two great parties to him, and those Mr
him ? Sheer wind, hollow humhug, absurd claptrap!: a
silly mummery of dividing and debating, which does not
in the least, however it may turn, affect his condition.
It has been so ever since the happy days when Whigs and.
Tories begun ; and a pretty pastime no doubt it is for
both. August parties, great balances or British freedom;
are not the tiro sides quite as active, and eager, and laud„
as at their very birth, and ready t 9 fight for place as
stoutly a 3 ever they fought heroic ? But lo lin the mean
time, whilst you are jangling and brawling over the ac..
counts, Populus, whose estate you have administered
while he was an infant and cattle not take care of him-
self_Populus has been growing and growing, till he is
every bit as wise as his guardians. Talk to our ragged
friend. He is not so polished, perhaps, as a member of
the Oxford arid Cambridge Club; he has not been to
Eton ; and never read Horace in his life : but 'he can,
think just as soundly as the best of yoill the can speak quite*
as strongly in his own rough way ; he has been reading
all sorts of books of late yearS,' and gathered together no.
little information. He is as gorid a Mail as the common:
run of us; and there -are ten. million more men in the
country as good as he—ten million, for whom we, in our
infinite superiority, arc acting as guardians, and to whom,
in our bounty, we give—exaetly nothing."
The criticism on " Ranke's History of the
Popes" is chiefly noticeable for the display of a
hatred and dread of Popery worthy of a Protestant
.Bishop. There is much that is ludicrous in this
horror, for who does not know that the power of
the Vatican—regarded as an influential authority-
in Europe—is already with the years beyond
the florid ? Never again can Rome—Rome,
that wonder-working sovereign, twice the mis-
tress of the world ; once, under the Empe-
rors, by force of arms, and once under
the Popes, by force of superstition—never again
can this majestic power hold mankind in thrall.
Her energies are exhausted—lhe spells with which
she worked her miracles have lost their moral in-
fluence—she isi a mere phantom—the wreck of
what she once, .was. How absurd, then, to take
fright at 'the idea of her regaining her former as. 'hull put Protestant England on its
guard against such a flagrant impossibility
" Epistle's- to the Literati" consist of two Let-
ters ; one on the subject of swearing, and one
on the new project of the London Library. We
are glad to see that Oliver Yorke appreciates this
scheme as it deserves ; for it is calculated, if well
conducted, to be of inestimable benefit to the read-
ing community. In '' Blue-Friar Pleasantries" we
find some graphic accounts of our most popular places
of entertainment in London. But why, in speakingof
the chained eagle at the Zoological Gardens, does
the writer expatiate on his dignity, and the noble
expression of his eyes ? To our thinking, he is
the most abject, unhappy-looking creature in ex- orrr-,-4
istence, far too much ashamed of his lot to be stern
or dignified—and no wonder, deprived as be is of
the rough freedom of rock and mountain, tied for •
life to a bit of stick rising about half a yard from '
the ground, and condemned a hundred times a day
to be quizzed and Stared at by unsophisticated
Cockneys, who, in his own hearing, express their
astonishment and disgust that he is no. bigger lizars
a goose ! " A Shabby Genteel Story is plc n!,
reading enough, and to "French Secret Societies and
Clubs," we have nothing to object, except that thol
theme is well nigh exhausted.

---~ ~: ~

'iing nim-
TA IT' S MA GA Z LAW
osnti'llues'here
,as
self,'
1:
elttPitlekftricsrnishes some
The English
:Oct
ipenliiguener,is
rEoaret es rs:,-: •
Mr. De Quincsiep.iyile‘iiiiio,r,
1
ipl:iiia,sliudaw,l,ot.ad,k,i
eet,,,iil.llsticerimet
doubtless, greatly edify
Wilson's early
the Professor's virtuous and venerable friend,
Christopher North, President of the " Noctes"
Temperance Society's
Kin. In his <<George the Third wa hot youth, when
seems, not less remarkable for his pugilistic,
a," Mr. W'ilson was, itouch,
ti) au
-
his poetical, powers ; and was as dexterous a -hand
at single-stick, as if he had graduate,,) at Donny
brook. At Oxford lie took th.e shine out of ,a
shoemaker not less than. tltree times, which--
his ,
as biographer quaintly assures us—" is
creditable to botl", sides ;" and we have all read an
anecdote of his hunting a bull at midnight half
through Cumberland—a chase which, for months
after\vards, the bull took so deeply to heart, that
he never met the Professor, in the course of his
Lake rambles, but he " sweated with rage," like
Commodore Trunnion at the sight of an attorney.
We subjoin Mr. De Quincey's sketch of the early
career of this fine-hearted man and accomplished
author :
It whs at Mr. Wordsworth's house that I first became
acquainted with Professor (then Mr.) Wilson, of Elleray.
I have elsewhere described the impression which he mada
upon me at my first acquaintance ; and it is sieliciently .
known, from other accounts of Mr. Wilson (as for exam-
ple, that written by Mr. Lockhart in " Peter's Letters"),
that he divided his time and the utmost sincerity of his love
between literature and the stormiest pleasures of real life.
Cock-fighting, wrestling, pugilistic contests, boat-racing,
horse-racing, all enjoyed Mr. Wilson's patronage; all were
occasionally honoured by his personal participation. I
mention this in no unfriendly spirit toward Professor Wil-
son ; on the contrary, these propensities grew out of his
ardent temperament and his constitutional endowments—
his strength, speed, and agility; and being confined to the
period of youth—for lam speaking of a period removed by
five-and-twenty years--can do him no dishonour amongst
the candid and the judicious. "Non lusisse pullet, i3edi
1V;71 incidere luduni." The truth was, that Professor Witr
son had in him, at that period of life, something of the o
English chivalric feeling which our old ballad poetry agrees
in ascribing to Robin Hood. Several men of genius have
expressed to me, at different times, the delight they bad in
the traditional character of Robin Hood : he has no reserro,
blance to the old heroes of continental rorfiance in one im-
portant feature; they arc uniformly victorious; and drie
gives even A tone of monotony to the continental poops
fur, let theM involve their hero in what datigers they -linty,
the reader stilt feels them to be as illusow as those w,bler
menace au enchanter_an Astolpho, for instance, wirl, by
one blast of his horn, can dissipate an army of Qpponersts.
But Robin is frequently beaten: he never declines a Lila lenge ; sometimes he courts one ; and oecassionatiy be
learns a lesson from some proud tinker or
missterful*eg-
gar, the moral of which teaches him that there are better
men in the world than himself. What follows? Ili the,
brave man
angry with his stout-hearte antaonist betapse
lie is no less brave arid a little stronger than himself? Not at all : he insists on making him a present, al giving him a `le euner a la
.fourchetle, and (in cage he it disposed .4)
take service in the forest) finally adopts him into his band
of archers. Much the same spirit governed, io his earlier
years, Professor Wilson.
The " Rod and the Gli" is a very agreeable
notice of an amusing sporting work lately published.
It is accompanied by wood-cut sketches, first, of a
salmon-trout, who looks exceedingly silk and per-
plexed, having been just hauled ashore with a hpok
j of
in his cesophagus4-a calamity which justifies an
excess of piscine embarrassment ; and secondly,
flatlet Ina—to
resemblance—though rather too ~
client. " Violet
a lank, hungry, crafty pike, who bears a. strong
an atto:ney prowling for a
known to the readers of Tait. It is entertain-
ing Hamilton" is the continuation of a story well
The " Green Lane" is a sort of prose pastoral, but
enough, but is continued at too long Interwas.
of rather too extatic a character. The 'writer,
speaking of the sweet smell of "new-mown h.ay,,,
falls into raptures with Shakspeare's allusion to it
in Richard the Mirth Unfortunately, the allusion
is not Shakspeare's, but Cibber's. " Chronicles
of the Place Vendome" is a well-told Parisian
anecdote.
_., -.0. ' .

MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
If this periodical were more devoted to practical,
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