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

FRASER.

Fraser opens the new year with a paper, poetical
and political, on the " Past, the Present, and the
Coming." With regard to the coming,llle expresses
a hope that there will be more church and more edu-
cation, provided always that such education shall
have " for its foundation religion," by which the
writer means what Jeremy Bentham was wont to
call " Church-of Englandism." "We want," says he,
"no Godless theories of making boys scholars."
Never, surely, did nickname do greater service, than
this same nickname of " Godless education." Utterly
defeated in argument, the opponents of a national sys-
tem of education were about to surrender at discre-

tion, when Sir Robert Inglis, inspired for the nonce
by the genius of a Taper or a Tadpole, bethought him
of raising the cry of " Godless education." Straight-
way the cry was taken up by all those who,
hating the light because their deeds are evil,
are yet afraid to avow openly their desire to keep
the people in darkness. "A gigantic scheme of Godless
education" was a famous cry—a cry in which Lord
George Gordon would have revelled—a cry in obe-
dience to which an ignorant mob would have again
hunted dOwn a Priestly—a cry in which every bigot
of every sect and of every denomination would join
—a cry which even a quarter of a century since
would have availed, but a cry which now avails no-
thing, as those who have attempted to raise it will
find to their cost, because we have now no mob,
but a people—a people " who know their rights,
and, knowing, dare maintain"—a people not to be
bamboozled by a cry a people who per-
fectly understand that there can be no such
thing as "a Godless system of education," who know
that "a Godless system of education" is a contradic-
tion in terms, inasmuch as any education must, by de-
veloping the intellectual faculties, teach its recipient
to believe in, to venerate, and to love that Deity from
whom he derives all his powers—a people who are
perfectly aware that it does not follow, because edu-
cation is exclusively under the superintendence of
ecclesiastics, that recipients of it should be there-
fore " Gorily," as witness the state of religion and
morality in our two Universities. The cry of " God-
less education" will not do ; the people yearn for
education, secular education, without the interfer-
ence of the clergy, and whatsoever the people yearn
for that they will obtain. But while controversies
rage on the subject of education, there is one subject
in which all men of all parties are agreed, and that
is on the necessity of improving the physical condi-
tion of the people. In the sentiments expressed in
the following passage we fully concur :
" Many proverbs have less truth than the common
one, that cleanliness is next to godliness. We regard
all well-conducted efforts for improving the dwellings of
the poor as favourable to the advancement of religion
and education—of the Church and the school. Paley
said that the planting of a rose-tree was an item of
human happiness. In towns and great cities, where it is
impossible for the mechanic to enjoy the privileges of
the cottager, and sit under his own tree, or listen to the
hum of his own bees, public walks and parks—we believe
Arboretum is the word—form a serviceable substitute.
By what means soever it be accomplished, the love of
rural things ought to be cherished and deepened. It is
the only tradition of paradise that lives in the memory
of the vulgar."

If we cannot agree on the various schemes pro-
posed for the education of the people, at least we are
all agreed as to the necessity of improving their phy-
sical condition, and therefore we hope to see some
measures for securing " cleanliness " passed during
the next session of Parliament. The next article is
entitled " Scenes in the Wilds of Mexico," and the
hero of the present sketch is " Cayetano, the contra-
bandista," a melo-dramatic hero, who would make the
fortune of any minor theatre. At the present time
when the public attention is alive to every thing con-
nected with Mexico, the following sketch of the
Mexican manners will be found not uninteresting :

" The sea-coast of Mexico has at all times been in-
fested with smugglers. This mode of obtaining a live-
lihood is not there, as in Europe, monopoliEed by a few
audacious adventurers. According to the more or less
Impoverished state of the finances, every government
officer is more or less busy in indemnifying himself at
the expense of the state, because the state does not pay
him. The soldiers loudly demand their pay, the civilians
join the soldiers. The state, as may be supposed, turns
a deaf ear, and each then endeavours to find a resource.
The administrator of the customs gives full power to the
searchers (vistas), the searchers to the, custom-house
officers, these to the porters of the administration, and
the latter are assisted by all who can lift a weight, ma-
nage a boat, or, in case of necessity, use a dag-
ger. Then, according to the humour of the
president of the republic, or the severity of the laws
promulgated, smuggling goes on either in the open day,
or under cover of the night, in the seaports or on the
isolated coasts; but, whether far or near, every one lends
a helping hand. It may easily be conceived, therefore,
that in the dull season of the pearl and tortoiseshell
fishery, the divers and harpooners, who follow those
trades form valuable auxiliaries to the smugglers. As a
natural consequence of the poverty of the treasury,
whilst the government officers smuggle, soldiers—even
officers--join the highway robbers. Robbery is not the
sole profession of these highwaymen (salteador de
cornino). They are fathers of families, often protected
by the alcade of their village, and blessed by their
priest—men who disdain to set forth unless their spies
have announced some rich prey. After having piteously
massacred a traveller who attempted to resist, or treated
with exquisite urbanity one who quietly allowed himself
to be despoiled, they regain their village, not forgetting,
in the division of the booty, the innkeeper who sent
them mysterious advice, the alcade who signed their
permission to carry arms, and the priest who gave them
absolution. Such is the singular toleration of opinion,
that robbers and smugglers do not in Mexico live apart
from society, or form a distinct caste possessing its own
peculiar customs and regulations."

We have two classical articles in the present number
of Fraser. The one a Roman novel, founded on the
story of Curtius, and entitled the " Sacrifices"---the
other "A Word or Two about Mark Antony," which
might pass for a supplement to the Philippics. In a
paper on literary legislators we have the commencement
of an elaborate, and, at the same time, a most just
criticism on Mr. Disraeli, considered as a litterateur,
an orator, and a statesman, and the number winds
up with "A Grumble about the Christmas Books," by
M. A. Tiknarsh, in which the writer, acting
as high priest to Dickens, immolates all the
writers of Christmas books at the altar of his idol,
and closes his paper just in time to save himself from
the fate of poor Mathews' savage, who "cut off his
own head leaving all the spectators in wonder and
darkness."

DOMBEY and SON. No. IV. By Charles Dickens.
In his description of the growth and education of
little Paul Dombey, Mr. Dickens has revived a world
of recollections anent schoolboy days, besides giving
an exquisite delineation of the mind, the habits, and
the affections of childhood. There is no puerility in
the manner of our author when he speaks about
, theio is nn mere sentimentality in his inci-
dents connected with children. He speaks in the
language of truth, and that language is most beauti-
ful. He writes about children from the depths of
his memory and from the fulness of his heart; he
views their little world with the eye of a poet ;
while he is lingering over the portraiture of a child
he is a child again himself. We cannot sym-
pathise with those who rejoice in ridiculing this
peculiarity of one whose imagination has conjured up
such beings as Tiny Tim, and Little Nell, and Paul
Dombey. In some respects Paul is better conceived
and better depicted than the others. His " old, old
face," his thirst to know what it is the sea is "always
saying, always saying," even his quaint/notion con-
nected with Dr. Blimber's clock, namely, that when
its pendulum clicked it repeated the monotonous
words of the pedagogue, "how, is, my, lit, tle, friend,
how, is, my, lit, tle, friend," are all most natural. The
drollest touches imaginable are scattered plentifully
through these pages, as usual. Mrs. Pipchin,
horrible Mrs. Pipchin, notwithstanding " the
toughness of her constitution, "is expected to
go off suddenly, like a powder-mill." Then
Mr. Dombey is described as having beheld
" Master Bitherstone in his collar of state," and as
having made " Miss Pankey cry by patting her on
the head, in which region she was uncommonly tender
on account of a habit Mrs. Pipchin had of sounding
it with her knuckles like a cask." The quarrel be-
tween the last-mentioned personage and the weak-
eyed young man who opened the door at Dr. Blim-
ber's is a rich piece of absurdity. Here, however, is
an account of the Doctor's establishment at Brighton,
and it is doubly commendable (the account, not the
establishment) as a protest against a grievous abuse
of a very popular system of education, viz., the
" forcing system :"
" Whenever a young gentleman was taken in hand by
Doctor Blimber, ho might consider himself sure of a
pretty tight squeeze. The doctor only undertook the
charge of ten young gentlemen, but he had, always

ready, a supply of learning for a hundred, on the lowest
estimate; and it was at once the business and delight of
his life to gorge the unhappy ten with it.
" In fact, Doctor Blimber's establishment was a grea
hot-house, in which there was a forcing apparatus in-
cessantly at work. All the boys blew before their time!
Mental green peas were produced at Christmas, and
intellectual asparagus all the year round. Mathematical
gooseberries (very sour ones too) were common at un-
timely seasons, and from mere sprouts of bushes, under
Doctor Blimber's cultivation. Every description of
Greek and Latin vegetable was got off the driest twigs
of boys, under the frostiest circumstances. Nature was
of no consequence at all. No matter what a young gen-
tleman was intended to bear, Doctor Blimber made him
bear to pattern, somehow or other.

" This was all very pleasant and ingenious, but the
system of forcing was attended with its usual disadvan-
tages. There was not the right ta, to about the prema-
ture productions, and they didn't keep well. Moreover,
one young gentleman, with a swollen nose and an
excessively large head (the oldest of the ten who had
" gone through" every thing), suddenly left off blowing
one day, and remained in the establishment a mere stalk.
And people did say that the doctor had rather overdone
it with young Toots, and that when he began to have
whiskers he left off having brains.
" There young Toots was, at any rate; possessed of
the gruffest of voices and the shrillest of minds; stick-
ing ornamental pins into his shirt, and keeping a ring in
his Waistcoat pocket to put en his little finger b} stealth,
when the pupils went out walking; constantly falling in
love by sight with nurserymaids, who had no idea of his
existence; and looking at the gas-lighted world over the
little iron bars in the left hand corner window of the front
three pairs of stairs, after bed-time, like a greatly over-
grown cherub who had sat up aloft much too long.
" The doctor was a portly gentleman in a suit of
black, with strings at his knees, and stockings below
them. He had a bald head, highly polished; a deep
voice; and a chin so very double, that it was a wonder
how he ever managed to shave into the creases. He had
likewise a pair of little eyes that were always half shut
up, and a mouth that was always half expanded into a
grin, as if he bad, that moment, posed a boy, and were
waiting to convict him from his own lips. Insomuch,
that when the doctor put his right hand into the breast
of his coat, and with his other hand behind him, and a
scarcely perceptible 'wag of the head, made the com-
monest observation to a nervous stranger, it was like a
sentiment from the sphynx, and settled his business.
" The doctor's was a mighty fine house, fronting the
sea. Not a joyful style of house within, but quite the
contrary. bad-coloured curtains, whose proportions
were spare and lean, hid themselves despondingly be-
hind the windows. The tables and chairs were put away
in rows, like figures in a sum; fires were so rarely lighted
in the rooms of ceremony, that they felt like wells, cad a
visitor represented the bucket; the dining-room seemed
the last place in the world where any eating or drinking
was likely to occur; there was no sound through all the
house but the ticking of a great clock in the hall, which
made itself audible in the very garrets ; and sometimes
a dull crying of young:gentlemen at their lessons, like
the murmurings of an assemblage of melancholy pigeons.
" Miss Blimber, too, although a slim and graceful maid,
did no soft violence to the gravity of the house. There
was no light nonsense about Miss Blimber. She kept
her hair short and crisp, and wore:spectacles. She was
dry and sandy with working in the graves of deceased
languages. None of your live languages for Miss
Blimber. They must be dead—stone dead—and then
Miss Blimber dug them up like a Ghoule.
" Mrs. Blimber, her mamma, was not learned herself,
but she pretended to be, and that did quite as well. She
said at evening parties, that if she could have known
Cicero, she thought she could have died contented. It
was the steady joy of her life to see the doctor's young
gentlemen go out walking, unlike all other young gen-
tlemen, in the largest possible shirt collars, and the stiffest
possible cravats. It was so classical, she said.
" As to Mr. Feeder, 8.A., Dr. Blimber's assistant, he
was a kind of human barrel-organ, with a little list of
tunes at which he was continually working, over and
over again, without any variation. He might have been
fitted up with a change of barrels, perhaps, iu early life,
if his destiny had been favourable; but it had not been;
and be had only one, with which, in a monotonous round,
it was his occupation to bewilder the young ideas of Dr.
Blimber's young gentlemen. The young gentlemen were
prematurely full of carking anxieties. They knew no
rest from the pursuit of stoney-hearted verbs, savage
noun-substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and
ghosts of exercises that appeared to them in their dreams.
Linder the forcing system, a young gentleman usually
took leave of his spirits in three weeks. He had all the
cares of the world on his head in three months. He
conceived bitter sentiments against his parents or guar-
dians in four; he was an old ;misanthrope, in five; en-
vied Quintius Curtius that blessed refuge in the earth,
in six; and at the end of the first twelvemonth had ar-
rived at the conclusion, from which he never afterwards
departed, that all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of
the sages, were a mere collection of words and grammar,
and had no other meaning in the world.
" But he went on, blow, blow, blowing, in the doctor's
hothouse, all the time; and the doctor's glory and repu-
tation were great, when he took his wintry growth home
to his relations and friends."

Having been duly installed at the boarding school,
Paul witnesses a ludicrous scene at the dinner table.
So wonderfully depressing is the influence of the
" forcing system " upon the "young gentlemen"
that Master Briggs is heard to declare that he should
certainly " wish himself dead if it wasn't for his
mother, and a blackbird at home." Paul is so im-
measurably puzzled by the crowd of books submitted
to his perusal simultanepusly that it soon becomes an
open question with !lira " whether twenty Romuluses
made a Remus, or hie hen hoc was troy weight, or a
verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or
three times four was Taurus a bull !" We
are delighted to think that Mrs. Pipchin has at
last found her match in Miss Nipper. Miss Nipper,
indeed, is said to have " thrown away the scabbard
the first morning she arose," to have given no quarter,
and to have carried on the war against the ogress so
unrelentingly, that Mrs. Pipchin was at last per-
petually subject to " surprises, harassings, and defi-
ances ; and skirmishing attacks that came bouncing
in upon her from the passage, even in unguarded
moments of chops, and carried desolation to her very
toast!" Here is a faithful picture of a great mercan-
tile establishment in the City ;
" Mr. Dombey's offices were in a court where there
was an old-established stall of choice fruit at the corner ;
where perambulating merchants, of both sexes, offered
for sale at any time between the hours of ten and five,
slippers, pocket-books, spouges, dogs' collars, and Wind-
sor soap ; and sometimes a pointer or an oil painting.
" The pointer always came that way, with a view to
the Stock Exchange, where a sporting taste (originating
generally in beta of new hats) is much in vogue. The
other commodities were addressed to the general public;
but they were never offered by the vendors to Mr.
Dombey. When he appeared, the dealers in those wares
fell off respectfully. The principal slipper and dogs'
collar man —who considered himself a public character,
and whose portrait was screwed on to an artist's door in
Cheapside—threw up his forefinger to the brim of his
hat as Mr. Dombey went by. The ticket-porter, if he
were not absent on a job, always ran offieiously before,
to open Mr. Dombey's office door as wide as possible,
and hold it open, with his hat off, while he entered.
. . .

" The clerks within were not a whit behind-hand in
their demonstrations of respect. A solemn hush pre-
vailed, as Mr. Dombey passed through the outer office.
The wit of the counting-house became in a moment as
mute, as the row of leathern fire-buckets, hanging up
behind him. Such vapid and flat daylight as filtered
through the ground-glass windows and skylights, leav-
ing a black sediment upon the panes, showed the books
and papers, and the figures bending over them, en-
veloped in a studious gloom, and as much abstracted in
appearance, from the world without, as if they were as-
sembled at the bottom of the sea ; while a mouldy little
strong room in the obscure perspective, where a shaded
lamp was always burning, might have represented the
cavern of some ocean monster, looking on.with a red eye
at these mysteries of the deep.
" When Perch, the messenger, whose place was on a
little bracket, like a timepiece, saw Mr. Dombey come
in—or rather when he felt that he was coming, for he
.had usually an instinctive sense of his approach—he hur-
ried into Mr. Dombey's room, stirred the fire, quarried
fresh coals from the bowels of the coal box, hung the
newspaper to air upon the fender, put the chair ready,
and the screen in its place, and was round upon his heel
on the instant of Mr. Dombey's entrance, to take his
great coat and hat, and hang them up. Then Perch
took the newspaper, and gave it a turn or two in his
hands before the fire, and laid it deferentially at Mr.
Dombey's elbow. And so little objection had Perch to
doing deferential in the last degree, that if he might
have laid himself at Mr. il,,mbev's feet, or might have
called him by some such title as used to be bestowed
upon the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, he would have been
all the better pleased.
As this honour would have been an innovation and
an experiment, Perch was fain to content himself by
expressing as well as he could, in his manner, You are
the Light of my Eyes. You are the Breath of my Soul.
You are the Commander of the Faithful, Perch.' With
this imperfect happiness to cheer him, he would shut the
door softly, walk away on tiptoe, and leave his great
chief to be stared at, through a dome-shaped window in
the leads, by ugly chimney pots and backs of houses, and
especially by the bold window of a hair-cutting saloon on
a first floor, where a waxen effigy, bald as a Mussulman
in the morning, and covered, after eleven o'clock in the
day, with luxuriant hair and whikers in the latest Chris-
tian fashion, showed him the wrong side of its head fur
ever."
It is decided that Walter Gay is to be dispatched
to Barbadoes as a junior clerk. The passages relating
to Mr. Carker the junior but really the senior, and
Mr. Carker the manager but really the junior, are
cleverly and touchingly written. Nothing about Miss
Tox, or Major Bagstock, or Captain Cuttle in this
number. We miss them.

CHILD DROPPING.—Last evening, about five
o'clock, a male infant, about four weeks old, was found
abandoned on the step of a door in Bird-street, near
Wapping Church. The infant, who suffered very
severely from the cold, was wrapped in a striped worsted
hood and black stuff cloak. It was conveyed by the
police to Wapping workhouse.
The new drama at the Adelphi of Colonzba, or the
Corsican Sister, increases nightly in attraction, com-
bined with the wonderful performances of Lees and his
pupils, and the delightful serio-burlesque of The Phan-
tom Dancers. By-the-way, the beautiful little pony,
Comi Bachee, which performs so cleverly in the drama
of Colombo, is the pet pony of Master Banjamin
Webster, the lessee's eldest son, and is one of the true
Shetland breed.