The Sun.
London, England, 1847-07-01 00:00:00

MAGAZINE DA Y.
BLACK WOOD.
After a deservedly favourable review of the " Ills-
tory of the Conquest of Peru," by the most eminent
of American historians, William H. Prescott, Black-
wood rejoices his readers with a sprightly description
of " Crossing the Desert," suggested by the recent
peregrinations or wanderings of " a young English
gentleman of family and fortune named Sydney."
These two contributions are followed by a glimpse—
a brief, but earnest glimpse—at the career and cha-
racter of Jean Paul Frederick Richter. Like the
writer of this biographic notice, we are disposed to
congratulate the public upon the late appearance of
the memoir of this extraordinary man, this man of
whom it is justly remarked—" A perfect Titan as an
author, in the common relations of social and domes-
tic life he is a god." As but few are acquainted in
this our England with the estimation, and admiration,
and even veneration which is due to Richter, we can-
not do better than give a few of the prefatory remarks
contained in the Edinburgh Magazine. After ob-
serving that in reading the work already alluded to
we are plunging at once with bold, fearless swoop
into the very centre of the Fatherland, into the midst
of the untrodden fir forests of the Fichtelgebirge,
where many great hearts billow out sublime thoughts
—hearts that never saw that which is most kindred
to them in nature—the sea," the contributor con-
tinues thus—

" A German in imagination—Oh, Heaven ! ho liter-
ally strikes you blind with skyrockets and sunbeams
(almost as madly at times as our own Shelley), and cir
curanaviga,tes your brain with a dance of nebulous
Brocken phantoms, till you seriously doubt whether you
are not a phantom yourself ; a German for kindliness
and simplicity and true-heartedness—a man having his
heart always in his hand, and his arms ready to be
thrown round everybody's neck ; greeting every man
with a blessing, and cursing only the devil, and—like
Robert Burns—scarcely him heartily : a German for
devoutness of heart, and purity of unadulterated evan-
gelic feeling, without the least notion, at the same time,
of what in Scotland we call orthodoxy, much less of
what in England they call Church ; a rare Christian ;
a man whom you cannot read and relish thoroughly
unless you are a Christian yourself, any more than you
can the gospel of John. For Richter also is a preacher
in his own way—a smiling, sporting, nay a jesting
preacher at times, but with a deep background of earnest-
ness ; his jests being the jests not of rude men, but of
innocent children ; his earnestness the earnestness not
of a sour presbyterian theologian, but of a strong-sighted
seraph that looks the sun in the face, and becomes in
tensely bright. A German further is Richter, and better
than a German, in the profoundness of his philosophy
and the subtlety of his speculation : a speculation pro-
found, but not dark; a subtlety nice without being fini-
cal, and delicate without being meagre. A German
further, and specially, is this man, in his vast and various
erudition, and in that quality without which learning
was never achieved, hard laboriousness and indefatigable
perseverance. It is incredible what books he read : not
merely literary books, but also and principally scientific
books ; natural history especially in all its branches,
from the star to the star-fish ; quarto upon quarto of
piously-gathered extracts were the well-quarried mate-
rials out of which his most light and fantastic, as well as
his most solid and architectural fabrics were raised : a
merit of the highest order in our estimation : an offence
and a scandal to many; for nothing offends cenceited
and shallow readers so much as to find in an imaginative
work allusions to grave scientific facts, of which their
butterfly-spirits are incapable. Then, over and above all
this, Richter possesses a virtue which only a few Ger-
mans possess : he is a man of infinite humour; humour,
too, of the best kind; sportive, sunny, and genial, rather
than cutting and sarcastic ; broad without being gross,
refined without being affected. Then his faults, also—
and their name is legion—how German are they ! His
want of taste, his mingled homeliness and sublimity, his
unpruned luxuriance, his sentimental wantonness ! But
let these pass ; he who notices them seriously is not fit
to read Richter. It requires a certain delicate tact of
finger to pluck the rose on this rich bush without being
pricked by the thorn ; John Bull especially, with his
stone and lime church, his statutable religion and his
direct railroad understanding, is very apt to be exas-
perated by the capricious jerking electric points of such
a genuine German genius as Richter. On the pediment
of this strange temple we would place in large letters
the cry of the Cumasan Sibyl iu Virgil—

" Procul, 0 procul este, profani !"
Let no mere mathematician, no mere Benthamite, no
more mechanist, no mere botanist,' no mere man of
taste, and trim man of measured syllables, enter here.
Procul, 0 procul este, profani! It is enchanted ground.
We have no quarrel with you; we quarrel with nobody;
only keep your own ground, in God's name, and don't
quarrel with us and our German friend Paul."

Then is transcribed the touching narrative of Jean
Paul Richter's death. Listen !

" Noon had by this time arrived. Richter, thinking
it was night. said—' It was time to go to rest!' and wished
to retire. He was wheeled into his sleepinc, apartment,
and all was arranged as if for repose • a small table near
his bed, with a glass of water, and his two watches, a
common one and a repeater. His wife now brought him
a wreath of flowers that a lady had sent him, for every
one wished to add some charm to his last days. As he
touched them carefully, for he could neither see nor
aDlell them, he seemed to rejoice in the images of the
flowers in his mind, for he said repeatedly to Caroline—
`My beautiful flowers, my lovely flowers!'
" Although his friends sat around the bed, as he
imagined it was night, they conversed no longer ; he
arranged his arms as if preparing for repose, which
was to be to him the repose of death, and soon sank
iato a tranquil sleep.

" Deep silence pervaded the apartment. Caroline sat
af; the head of the bed, with her eyes immovably fixed
on the face of her beloved husband. Otto had retired,
and tb,r) nephew sat with Plato's Phaedon in his band,
open at the death of Socrates. At that moment a tall
and beautiful form entered the chamber ; and, at the
foot of the bed, with his hands raised to heaven, and
deeply moved, he repeated aloud the prayer of his
Alosaic faith. It was Emanuel, and next to Otto, the
most beloved of Richter's friends.
" About six o'clock the physician entered. Richter
yet appeared to sleep ; his features became every
moment holier, his brow more heavenly, but it was cold
as marble to the touch ; and as the tears of his wife fell
upon it he remained immovable. At length his respira-
tion became less regular, but his features always calmer,
snore heavenly. A slight convulsion passed over the
race ; the physician cried out That is death !' and all
ins quiet. The spirit had departed!
" All sank, praying, upon their knees. This moment,
that raised them above the earth with the departing
sphit, admitted of no tears !
6.: 6 Thus Richter went from earth, great and holy as
a poet,. greater and holier as a man!",
Alas ! .for the deathbed even as beautiful as this, the
quenching a the life of the loved and loving !

DOMBEY AND SON, No. X. By C. Dickens.
Lucretia Tox discloses her secret aspirations to the
hand of Dombey, to the sister of the said Dombey,
when visited by Mrs. Chick in Princess's-place. The
description of bliss Tox's sitting room and of the
general aspect of Princess's-place (by which sketch
this amusing interview is prtfaced), is one of those
odd pieces of minute drawing for which Boz is un-
rivalled. The breakfast of the fair Lucretia, saith
her faithful biographer, was composed of her cus-
tomary viands; " to wit, one French roll rasped,
one egg new laid (or warranted to be), and
one little pot of tea, wherein was infused one little
silver scoop-full of that herb on behalf of Miss Tox,
and one little scoop-full on behalf of the tea-pot—a
flight of fancy in which good housekeepers delight."
Clothing her hands in a pair of antique gloves like
dead leaves, Lucretia proceeded to arrange her nick-
nacks as appeared to be her daily wont, among other
things attending to the comforts of her bird—" a very
high-shouldered canary, stricken in years, and much
:rumpled, but a piercing singer, as Princess's-place well
kikuw." Not a few will recognise this likeness, the like-
ness Unhappily rather of a species than of an individual.
But Balm Tox hath a paramount duty above all
others in her domestic economy, namely, of snipping
here and there among her plants with a pair of scis-
sors " for some botanical reason that was very power-
ful with Miss Tox." This particular morning, how-
ever, she was slow in coming to the plants.
" The weather was warm, the wind southerly ; and
there was a sigh of the summer time in Princess's-place,
that turned Miss Tox's thoughts upon the country. The
pot-boy at; cached to the Princess's Arms had come out
with a can a;_ld trickled water, in a flowing pattern, all
over Princess's-place, and it gave the weedy ground a
fresh scent— quite a growing scent, Miss Tox said.
There was a tiny blink of sun peeping in from
the great street round the corner, and the smoky
sparrows hopped over it and back again, bright-
ening as they passed : or bathed in it like a
stream, and became glorified sparrows, unconnected with
chimneys. Legends in praise of Ginger Beer, with pie
tonal representations of thirsty customers submerged in
the effervescence, or stunned by the flying corks, were
conspicuous in the window of the Princess's Arms. They
were making late hay, somewhere out of town ; and
though the fragrance had a long way to come, and many
counter fragrances to contend with among the dwellings
of the poor (may God reward the worthy gentlemen
who stickle for the Plague as part and parcel of the
wisdom of our ancestors, and do their little best to
keep those dwellings miserable), yet it was wafted
faintly into Princess's-place, whispering of Nature and
her wholesome air, as such things will, even unto priso-
ners and captives, and those who are desolate and op-
pressed, in very spite of aldermen and knights to boot ;
at whose sage nod—and how they nod !—the rolling
world stands still !
" Miss Tox sat down upon the window seat, and
thought of her good papa deceased—Mr. Tox, of the
Customs Department of the public service ; and of her
childhood, passed at a seaport, among a considerable
quantity of cold tar, and some rusticity. She fell into a
softened remembrance of meadows, in old time, gleam-
ing with buttercups, like so many inverted firmaments of
golden stars ; and how she bad made chains of dande-
lion-stalks for youthful vowers of eternal constancy,
dressed chiefly in nankeen ; and how soon those fetters
had withered and broken.
" Sitting in the window-seat, and looking out upon
the sparrows and the blink of sun, Miss Tox thought
likewise of her good mamma deceased—sister to the
owner of the powdered head and pigtail—of her virtues
and her rheumatism. And when a man with bulgy legs,
and a rough voice, and a heavy basket on his head
that crushed his hat into a mere black muffin, came cry-
ing flowers. down Princes's-place, making his timid little
XOOO 9g dusteg shudder in the vibration of every yell he