The Sun.
London, England, 1847-03-01 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY MORNING, MARCH 1, 1847.

MAGAZINE-DAY.
FRASER.

The opening article of Fraser will be read with
great interest, It is a carefully digested resume of
all the various systems of National Education at pre-
sent in operation in the different countries of
Europe, and it contains more really useful informa-
tion on the subject than is to be found in all the pon-
derous octavos and lengthy letters with which the
public has of late been bored on the subject. This
article is followed by a romantic Mexican tale, " Mate-
siete, the Hunter ;" and then we have a paper on the
" Condition of Authors in England, Germany, and
•sranee," from which it appears that pencraft in Eng-
land is more amply remunerated than in other
countries, always excepting those brethren of the
quill who devote themselves to the concoction of
dramas, for whom France is a very El Doralo, and
which fact fully accounts for the monopoly of
dramatic manufacture which France at present
enjoys. Lord John Manners is the literary legis-
lator who sits for his portrait this month. The
article is elaborately written ; the author treats his
subject evidently con amore, but he rates far too
highly the talents and the influence of this interest-
ing, but, certes, not altogether disinterested enthu-
siast—if enthusiast he be. The political article for
the month treats of Lord George Bentinck's desti-
tute shareholders' relief Bill, under the title of
" The Great and Comprehensive Measure." The
writer evidently began his article with the
intention of going " the whole hog " in
praise of the proposition of "the stable mind,"
but as he went on, his common sense revolted at the
stupendous folly (and if not folly the something
worse) of the proposition of his hero, and he ends by
confessing that he " cannot much lament the issue."
He, however, throughout argues as if that proposition
were to advance money to the Government to con-
struct national railroads, instead of being what at
really was—a proposition to advance money to share-
holders to rig the market with public money, over
the expenditure of which the Government was to
have no control. The question as to the propriety or
impropriety of the Government undertaking the con-
struction of railroads in Ireland as great national
works for the national benefit, was not brought be-
fore the House by Lord G. Bentinck. It was
brought before the House some years since,
by Lord Morpeth, at a time when it would
have been advantageously carried into effect, because
the private enterprise had not entered the field. At
that time the proposition was rejected by Lord G.
Bentinck and his party, out of the mere spirit of fac-
tion, and it ill beconnee them now to complain, unless
they first cry peccavi. In the following observations
on the measures to be adopted for the social regene-
ration of Ireland, we entirely concur, and we trust
that landlords of Ireland, when they read the senti-
ments of this, the organ of the Tory party (they al-
ready know the opinions of every other party in the
empire) will, instead of indulging in vain complaints
or vexations, because fruitless, opposition to the Go-
vernment measures, set their shoulders to the wheel,
and aid and assist those who are doing their best to
regenerate their couutry. The writer says—
" The tenures by which land, is held, in property and
in occupancy, in Ireland, exhibit such a mass of confu-
sion and complexity as cannot be paralleled any where
else throughout the world. This must be remedied.
The right of sale, in whole or in part, must be conceded
to every Irish proprietor ; and leases for nine hundred
and ninety-nine years, and such like, converted into pro-
perty. Nor is there any just cause why Ireland should
not in every other respect be assimilated to England. If
English rights and immunities be conferred upon her, it,
is but fair that she should pay English taxes. Hereto-
fore her extreme poverty, and the backward state of her
population, have afforded excuses for a tardiness in le-
gislation which could not stand a moment's impartial
consideration. But the moment you nut her in a fair
way of getting rid of these evils, you have a perfect
right to deal with her, in other respects, as you deal with
the rest of the Queen's dominions. Probably the inter-
mediate result will be, a prodigious changing of hands
in the landed property of the kingdom. If we be rightly
informed, there are few estates in Ireland which are not
mortgaged to half their money value ; there are many
which, if sold to-morrow, would leave no residue, or next
to none, to the nominal proprietors. Most of the
former, all the latter, will, of course, pass into new
hands, and many a family of historical note disappear.
But though we may lament this as a shock to private
feeling, on public grounds we are constrained to add,
that it is " a consummation devoutly to be wished."
Of all the incubi on the improvement of a people, a poor
but ancient gentry is the heaviest. The peasant looks
up to the descendent of a long line of proprietors, under
whom ho and his fathers have worked for ages, with a
degree of reverence which he cannot feel for a new man;
and the poverty of the chief, as it keeps the serf poor
likewise, so it effectually hinders both the one and the
other from rising in the scale of humanity. Indeed, we
will go further. Though we are no advocates for the
French system, and the minute subdivision of landed
property which it occasions, we confess that very large
estates do not appear to us to be desirab'e in a country
circumstanced as is Ireland. Very large estates, embrac-
ing whole counties, or half counties, cannot be rightly
attended to by their owners, even if they be resident ;
and as in Ireland almost all such belting to absentees,
they operate as a hotbed for the growth of agents,—a
race not very popular or useful anywhere, and least of
all in the Eitu,r,hl Isle. We believe, therefore, that the
facilities ta,id d to Irish proprietors for disposing of
their land, will accomplish good in this respect.amotvg
others, that it will l'irgely increase the numbers of the-
resident gentry; being
copied and that the manners of the rich .eing
copied in the farm house and in the cottage, Ireland,
under a better sy stem of social management, may vet
become the most flourishing section of the United
Kingdom."
And that it will so become if these measures are ho-
nestly carried out, there can be no doubt. Then,
and not till then, will be the time to consider the pro-
priety of giving Government assistance to railroads.
file remaining articles of this numbea are all good ;
the best, perhaps, being a paper be Sam Slick, enti-
tled " llow many Fins has a Cod ?"

DOLMAN'S.
In accordance with a custom which 1;43 become
somewhat prevalent with monthly publication.
Dolmanis reduced in price by half of its
charge. Otherwise there is scarcely any
perceptible alteration in the periodical. Saving
that its amount of pages is slightly diminished,
the magazine is characterized by all its previous excel-
lence. Under the conduct of its new editor, the articles
are, as heretofore, selected with care and discrimination.
Without lapsing into a merely ecclesiastical organ, Dol-
man still continues the indisputable mouthpiece of the Ro-
man Catholics of England ; it combines agreeable com-
positions for the general reader, and contributions
essentially of a nature peculiar to the religion. From
a paper entitled "Future prospects of Ireland," we would,
had our space permitted, have made copious extra2ts,
seeing that the suggestions contained therein are sensible
and new. The editor continues his serial upon the Penal
L. aws, a subject which has latterly acquired a peculiar
interest, from the gradual passage of Mr. Watson's Bill,
for their abolition, through the Lower House of Par-
liament. His eloquent predecessor, Mr. Miles Gerald
Kenn, pursues his interesting paper upon
"Holy Week
at Oscott," it is written with a loving tenderness of pur-
pose, and a calmness of contemplation that occasionally
merges in philosophic profundity. The contribution
throughout is large from its thoughtfulness ; stud the
miscellaneous contents are arranged with an attention
compatible with the excellence of the preceding portions.

Inobler arena for the display of his peculiar abilities was
there than London ? London, the most venerable city
in the British islands, the most gigantic and extraordi-
nary of civilized times, the contemporary of Coesar and
Boadicea, the central point round which from age to age
the tragic drama of our national fortunes has revolved
and fluctuated. Whether we contemplate London, in regard
to our sovereigns, as the spot in which our Edwards and
Henrys, and Richards, have dwelt, as the scene of
Charles's decapitation, of Lady Jane Grey's imprison-
ent and execution, of Crommwell's summary vengeance
upon the Long Parliament, of James's flight, of
William's entrance, or of the fourth George's de-
baucheries; whether we consider it in relation to
the poets it has harboured, from old Chaucer to blind
Milton, and so on to lame Byron, or in reference to the
statesmen and philosophers who have been numbered
amongst its denizens, from Sir Thomas More to Lord
Bacon, and from Verulam downwards; or, in allusion to
its military reminiscences in the age of Marlborough and
Prince Eugene, or its artistic reminiscences in the ages
of Hogarth and Flaxman; or its literary reminiscences
in the ages of Farquhar and Johnson, we must always
look upon it as invested with a charm in praise of which
the most extravagant panegyric could scarcely be
counted as hyperbolical. Under all aspects London is
fraught with interest, even in i's rookeries as connected

with-Turpin and Howard, and its prisons as associated
with Sheppard and Mrs. Fry. And even in those dege-
nerate regions investigation would prove by no means
uninstructive. From the western boundaries of Houns-
low, to the eastern limits of Bow, from Highgate and
Hampstead in the north, to Dulwich and Peckham in

the south, taking in the whole circumference from those
suburbs, there is scarcely a single point which dues not
prove attractive as the home or the haunt of some re-
markable individual. Mr. Smith, indeed, was so con
scions of the fruitfulness of his subject that he has
doubtless restrained his inclinations, and has restricted
his antiquarian rambles to a continuous line beginning
with Hyde Park-corner, and ending with the Tower.
In his pilgrimage, therefore, he comes successively
upon Charing-cross, Waterloo-bridge, Temple-bar,
Blackfriars, Cheapside, and London-bridge, branchinc,
off occasionally as circumstances required, or as thee
opportunity so permitted, into the smaller thoroughfares
leading into Piccadilly, Trafalgar-square, the Strand,
Fleet-street, Ludgate-hill, St. Paul's Churchyard,
Cheapside, the Poultry, King William-street, and
so on by " the silent highway " to the Tower
of London. Only once does he diverge con-
siderably from the main artery of the capital, namely in
his chapter on Westminster Abbey, Westminster Hall,
and the Houses of Parliament. As may be readily con-
jectured, the main portion of the two volumes is corn
posed of recollections naore or less modern, the more
antiquated parts of the city having been either consumed
by the great fire of 1666, or obliterated by the encroach-
ments of time, or the innovations and improvements
effected by the ingenuity of man. Some conception
may be formed of the difficulties which present them-
selves to the antiquarian is his researches through the
metropolis, when we remember that the birthplace of
Chaucer is a spot altogether undiscoverable, and that
the famous " boar's head" in Eastcheap, immortalized
by Shak,pere, as the resort of Prince Hal and Sir John
Falstaff, stood on the very spot now occupied by the
statue of William the Fourth in King William-street.
From the restriction, therefore, of the present work,
imply to the line running from Piccadilly parallel with
the Thames, it is manifest that Mr. Smith's work can
,nly be regarded as one of a series in a delineation of
London. Those who bear in recollection the glorious
papers published some years since in Blachwooars Ma-
gazine, by John Fisher Murray, and entitled the
" World of London," will know how much may be
written upon the capital of Great Britain without ex-
hausting the subject. And that impression will only
be confirmed by the perusal of those two volumes.
The deficiencies of the work as an antiqua-
rian ramble in the streets of London are
too apparent to require enumeration, but they are
such deficiencies as it would be impossible to cast in
depreciation either at the writer, Mr. J. T. Smith, or
the editor, Dr. Charles Mackay. Both those gentlemen
have performed their labour of love with industry and
talent. As far as the work is concerned individually it
is complete ; it is only as an antiquarian account of
London in the abstract that it is so marvellously incom-
plete and unsatisfactory. One word alone upon the
title-page redeems the production from a charge of in-
sincerity, namely, the word which designates it as a
" Ramble." A desultory ramble enough it certainly is,
but a pleasact one withal, and from the beginning to the
end the author chatters away with a voluble and delight-
ful fund of information. It would be almost as super-
fluous, if not as preposterous, as the presentation of a
brick as the sample of a house by scholasticos in the
" Witticisms of Hierocles," to quote a mere fragment
from the chapters herein contained about the streets of
London. We shall leave the literary fabric of Mr.
Smith unflawed by the abstraction of a solitary
brick, dismissing it from our consideration with senti-
ments of gratitude for the pleasure which its perusal
has afforded us. The author of " Nollekens and his
Times," has here presented his countrymen with a legacy
appropriate to both donor an donee.

THE SCIENTIFIC PHENOMENA OF DO-
MESTIC LIFE, familiarly explained by C. F.
Gower. Second Edition.

This is a most interesting and instructive little work ;
its object is admirable and it is admirably carried out.
In his introductory observations, the author remarks
that, in the present intellectual age, while it is customary
to teach children every art, every science, and every ac-
complishment that the mind of man can suggest, we
too often forget to teach them that which would turn all
these to good effect : we forget to teach them to think,
to reason, to observe. It is fir this purpose that thi,
litde book has been written ; it is to illustrate the great
book of nature." In all books of instruction, the wan-
ner of teaching is almost of' as much importance as is the
matt,r that is taught. The ars celare artem is here most
necessary ; it is desirable to give inf 'rmation without
see.ning to teach. Children, at d indeed persons of all
ages are generally and often d..ligh.ed to learn
but they cannot bear being taught. Hence there are
doubtless many who will experience much pleasure, an:
derive much profit, from the perusal of Mr. Gower's
little volume, who would turn coldly and carelessly away ,
from the very same information, if conveyed in a m ire
preti': ding manner. But perhaps the most valuable
quality of this work is, its so ably fulfilling its author's
intention of inducing people to think. In ordinary edu-
cation,
far more is thought of learning. by rote than by
reason ; it seems generally to be forgotten, that the
great object of education should be to cultivate the mind
rather than store the memory. It is not the absolute
knowledge of certain facts that is desirable, but the
improvement that the acquisition of such knowledge
should occasion in the intellectual powers. To under-
stand one thing, however simple it may be, is infinitely
more advantageous than to possess superficial informa-
tion regarding a hundred. The best system of educa-
tion is undoubtedly that which secures both objects, of •
fording information in such a manner as to make it tend
to develop the reasoning faculties. Such is the system
pursued by Mr. Gower. Taking as the subjects of his
investigation the common occurrences of daily life he
enables us to understand what is going on around us,
and by showing what wonders are contained in things
apparently the most simple, he induces a habit of thought
and inquiry. Thus beginning with the bed room, he
tells us how the frost is formed on the window ; why
the marble feels so much colder than the carpet, &c.;
and so on through the succeeding chapters of the " Break -
fast Parlour," where the tea-kettle gives rise to an inte-
resting account of the discovery of steam ; the " Morn-
ing Walk ;" the "Study ;" the " Summer's Evening ;"
Naviption—Latitude—Longitude ;" and the " Sea-
shore.' In each of these chapters the explanation of
any little incident or object imperceptibly leads the way
to some more important information ; thus we learn
what effect the moon produces upon the tides ; about
atmospheric pressure ; the barometer and the atmos-
pheric railway, &c., sc, In visiting the kitchen we are
instructed in the mysteries of bread-making ; in the walk
in the fields some useful information is given about
evaporation—practically useful indeed. We are told,
that evaporation produces cold, and for this reason re-
maining in wet clothes is dangerous ; the evaporation
that takes place, during the time they are drying, carries
away so large a portion of heat from the body, as almost
certainly to induce cold, and all the thousand diseases
which follow in its train. When a person is obliged to
remain in wet clothes, the best method to adopt is, to
prevent evaporation, by covering them with a makintosh
or any other garment that will keep the moisture
in." The perusal of this little volume, besides
affording useful knowledge on subjects of
which many, even educated persons are ignorant,
must necessarily have a beneficial effect upon
the mind and hearts of its readers; upon their minds by
habituating them to look around with a spirit of in-
quiry, and by enabling them not only to learn, but to
understand, how certain effects produce certain causes ;
and it can hardly fail to have a beneficial influence upon
the heart, for it is hardly possible to contemplate the
wonders, and admire the beauties of creation, without
increased sentiments of veneration and love to the great
First Cause whose power and whose goodness has pro-
duced them. Such sentiments have evidently influenced
the writer, and, let us hope, will influence the readers of
liese " Scientific Phenomena." As a brief' epitome of

the wonders Whichsurroand us, we transcribe the
author's concluding observations, and dismiss the little
volume with a tnost cordial recommendation. _

" To the—observing mind an hour never passes with-
out food for reflection. The rich, though often unculti-
vated soil of human intellect, will be constantly furnish-
ing us with subjects for contemplatign. The air in
which we breathe, the earth on which we tread, the
broad expanse of ocean, and the starry vault of heaven
above us, are all replete with wonders. The vegetable
kingdom alone would afford subjects for a lifetime. The
flowers that draw their nourishment from the soil, the
air, and the dew, are all furnished with functions suited
to their different natures ; some turn their delicate heads
to the cheering rays of the sun, and seem to drink deep
from that fountain of light and heat, and close their
petals the moment he parts from their view ; whilst
others hide themselves in the shade, and shun the ap-
proach of day: to each Nature has appointed its proper
place, and proper powers for keeping in the station
allotted to it. In the brute creation we may observe
the same order. To the domestic animal she has given
strength and docility; to the beast of prey, the eye
capable of pit rcing the darkness, and agility to seize on
its destined victim; to the bird of passage she has given
strength of wing, and a wonderful instinct to direct its
Hight. Again, if we descend into the depths of ocean,
fresh wonders meet our view—from the mighty whale,
the monarch of the deep, down to the diminutive min-
now, each as perfect as the other, though on so different
a scale. Then, turning to the insect world, we see the
laborious ant heaping up her store for winter consump-
tion; the bee, building her hexagonal cells with a regu-
larity equal to that of the nicest architect ; the spider,
weaving her delicate thread to catch her prey ; the
low-worm, ' with its
modicum of light,' sparkling in the
dewy grabs ; each with its separate sphere of usefulness,

each separate insect affording a fresh theme for inquiry;
and, were it possible to exhaust all these, one glance at
Lthe microscope would again overwhelm us in t ndless ob-
jects of research. The secrets hidden in a single arop
of water, which the microscope has revealed, are almost
beyond our conception, discovering to us myriads of
beings filling every atom of creation, and forming a
world of which we scarcely know the existence. But
even all these sink into nothing when compared with the
wonders of the starry firmament, where thousands and
thousands of suns, each the centre of a system of worlds,
peopled perhaps with beings destined for immortality,
are nightly presented to our view. The extent, the
magnitude, the harmony of Nature, fill us with awe and
admiration, and we are lost in the contemplation of the
attributes of that Being whose Almighty arm supports,
controls, directs, and governs all."