The Sun.
London, England, 1841-04-08 00:00:00

LITERAT U it E.

HISTORY OF D UEL LIN G.--2 VoLs.
_Bentley, London, 1841.

Doctor Millingen—has here furnished us with
a slight, sketchy history of duelling, which is
calculated to be of great moral benefit to the
community, by showing the absurdity of a prac-
tise against which the nest and wisest men have
iu vain raised their voices. Though the Doctor's
history is perfectly serious, yet it reads like the
most cutting irony, so exquisitely ridiculous are
the majority of the quarrels which it gravely re-
lates. The author adduces numerous instances
of fools who, fought duels, and lost their lives in
consequence—no great loss, by the way,--Ibr
reasons whiph they themselves were scarcely
able to explain; and of cowardly desperadoes
who thought it a fine act of courage and gentility
to kill their man, and sought every opportunity
of achieving such a disgraceful notoriety. Com-
mencing his work with the origin of duelling,
which he considers contemporaneous with the
rise of chivalry, Doctor Millingen pursues it
down to the present day, closing with a circum-
stantial account of the affair of honour that took
place a few months since between Capt. Tuckett
and the Earl of Cardigan, a most appropriate close
to a history whose details are a fine satirical com-
ment on th,?,fbllies and vices of human nature. The
old French aristocracy, of course, figure con-
spicuously in the Doctor's volumes; from 'the
period of the reign of Francis \the First, who
sanctioned the monomachia by his own example,
down to that of Louis the Sixteenth, who made
every effort to suppress it, the Nobles of France
were stanch advocates for the duel, fighting on
the most trivial and ridiculous occasions, like the
hot-headed Irishman, mentioned by Sir Jonah
Barrington, who demanded satisfaction of a pa-
cific old citizen, whom he met one night in the
pit of Drury-lane Theatre, for venturing to dis-
pute his assertion that Othello was written by his
friend Captain O'Flannaghan! But it was during
the Regency of the profligate Duke of Orleans
that the duelling system was carried to its greatest
height. At that period duels were not 'unfre-
quently fought in the streets of Paris in the open
day, and one, which our author relates, and
which grew out of a quarrel about an Angola
cat, was so ineffably ridiculous, that when the
Regent was informed of it, he drily observed,
that the parties should have settled the
matter in dispute with claws instead of
swords. Among the most celebrated affairs
of honour that took place in the eighteenth cen-
tury, was one between the Duke of Bourbon and
the Count d'Artois, afterwards Charles the
Tenth, which originated in an insult offered by
the latter to the former's wife. After a world of
diplomatic negotiation between their seconds,
the parties met in the Bois de Boulogne, when
both having had their quantum suff of fighting,
the Duke b:owed to his adversary, and thanked
him for the honour he had done him in accepting
his challenge, adding, ".I feel penetrated with
gratitude at your kindness;" whereupon—adds
our author—" the Count 'opened his -arms, and
the Duke flew into his embrace !" How tho-
roughly French is-all this frioekieirtiment! We
subjoin two other anecdotes of duelling, which
will give the reader some little insight into the
character of Doctor Millingen's volumes :
St. Evremont was another celebrated duellist of this period:
he had discover ed a particular thrust, which was honoured
with his name, and called la botte de St. Evremont. This
brave was witty and capricious, and would accept or refuse a
challenge according to the fancy of the moment. St. Foix
WU his rival in this puisuit of an honourable name. Some of
his diAi were remarkable. One day, at the Cafe Procope, at
dinner time, he saw a gentleman seated at a bavaroise, and he
exclaimed—" That is a confounded bad dinner for a gentle-
man 1" The stranger, thus insulted, insisted upon satisfac-
tion ; which was granted, when St. Foix was wounded. Not-
withstanding this injury, he coolly said to his antagonist—" If
you had killed me, Sir, I still should have persisted in main-
taining that a bavaroise is a confounded bad dinner."
Another time he asked a gentleman, whose aroma was not
of the most pleasant nature—" Why the devil he smelt so con-
foundedly?' The offended party sent him a challenge, which
St. Foix refused in the following terms :—" Were you to kill
me, you would not smell the less ; and were I to kill you, you
would smell a great deal more !" One day, meeting a lawyer,
whose countenance did not please him, he walked up to him,
and whispered in his car—" Sir, I have some business with
you." 'I he attorney, not understanding the drift of his speech,
quietly named an hour when he would Lind him in his office.
The meeting was (4 course most amusing ; the expression cf
St. Foix being—" That he wanted to have an affaire with
him," a term which is equally applicable to a duel and a
legal transaction.

FOREIGN Q UAR 7'ERL Y REVIEW.—No. 63.
Black and Armstrong, London, 1841.

The • famous Russian Admiral Chichagoff,
who, it may be remembered, defended the
passage of the Beresina against Napoleon, on
his disastrous retreat from Moscow in 181'2,
is, it seems, still living in a cottage at Brighton,
in a state of comparative poverty and retire-
ment, notwithstanding the ukase of Nicholas,
issued ten years ago, ordering all Russians re-
siding abroad to return home, on pain of losing
their property. This fact, with which we
.are
now for the first time acquainted, is alluded to
in a notice of a manuscript entitled "Memoirs of
Admiral Chichagoff, Russian Minister of State,"
which appears in the present Number of this pe-
riodical. The notice is chiefly interesting from
the numerous extracts which the Reviewer makes
from the Admiral's work, who must be a man
considerably advanced in years, for, we are told,
that he "lived under two tyrannical govern-
ments, those of Peter and Paul, and under two
despoticones, those of Catherine and Alexander."
Of Catherine he speaks in terms of the warmest
admiration, observing that "she was the first
aristocrat who conceived the idea of a progres-
Sive government, by spontaneously making con-
cessions to the people at the expense of abgolute
power," and that " she desired to teach them to
value the benefits of a social existence,' guaran-
teed by institutions." History tells quite a dif-
ferent story of this powerful Empress, who com-
menced her blood-stained and tyrannical career
by the murder of her husband, and concluded
it by the subjugation and partition of Poland,
whose liberal political code, drawn up by order
of Stanislaus, and which extorted the approba-
tion of every liberal spirit in Europe, was a con-
stant thorn in her side.. As for Catherine's de-
sire to " give the benefits of a social existence"
to Russia, this assertion is refuted by the fact
that by her own open, unbridled licentiousness—
unsurpassed even by Messalina—she destroyed all
healthy social feeling, and rendered St. Peters-
burgh the most notoriously corrupt and profligate
capital in Europe. In fact, she was as inex-
orable a despot and as abandoned a woman as
any that modern times have known, and the very
last act of her life was to imprison all those of
her more enlightened subjects whom she sus-
pected of being favourable to the principles of
the French Revolution. "Engraving, Ancient •
and Modern," is a curious history of the rise and
progress of this art, in the course of which the.
Reviewer does every justice to the British school
of engraving, adding " that we have only to
enter the house of Hodgson and Graves, Colnaghi,
or any other large establishment, to be imme-
diately struck with the immense number of beau-
tiful subjects from the hands of English masters."
in the criticism headed " Rousseau's Nouvelle
Heloise, and the Modern Extravagant Literature
of France," the moral and intellectual worth of
Rousseau's writings is assessed at far too high a
rate. What maudlin nonsense is this !—" His
eloquent commendation of good morals and of
domestic virtue in an age of philosophical profli-
gacy ; his secret partiality for religious sentiments
when boastful impiety was rife ; his deep reve-
rence foi the Gospel and its Divine Author at the
time when the most blasphemous aspersions of
Christianity teemed around him—whilst they
show the depth of Rousseau's intellectual capa-
city, have in themselves something pathetic and
sublime." And yet this " eloquent commender
of good morals" clothed vice in its most seduc-
tive colours in his Nouvelle Heloise; this advo-
cate of " domestic virtues" openly defended the
propriety of sending his natural children to
the Foundling Hospital of Paris; this reverencer
" of the Gospel and its Divine Author" was a
mere sentimental Deist ! Rousseau has had,
and still has, many imitators among his
countrymen, and much of the meretricious
trash that now deluges the French capi-
tal, and wears the mask of philosophy,
may he traced to the influence of his writings.
This literary nuisance, however, will soon abate,
for it is at variance with every dictate of good
sense and healthy feeling. " Tezcuco" is a rapid
sketch of the conquest of Mexico by Cortes—an
intrepid adventurer, but debased by the most re-
volting. crimes. The article is cleverly writen,
and will entertain those of our readers who may
not happen to be familiar with the daring charac-
ter of Cortes's military exploits. In his critical
notice of the " Italian Drama," the Reviewer
thus happily describes Alfieri's plays :—" His
tragedies are only a group of four or five statues,
his characters are figures of marble, incorruptible,
everlasting, but not flesh, nothing like flesh, hav-
ing nothing of its freshness and hue. He de-
scribes no scene. The statues stand by them-
selves, isolated on their pedestals, on a vacant,
ideal stage, without back-ground, without con-
trast of landscape or scenery, all wrapped in
their heroic mantles, all moving, breathing sta-
tues, perhaps; but still nothing but statues." Of

the remaining articles in the Number, the best is
one entitled " Romanisrn and Catholicism."

PICTORIAL SHAKSPEARRPART 31.
. C. Knight, London, 1841.

This Part contains the entire play of Macbeth
—the noblest monument of Shakspeare's tragic
powers. It is embellished with numerous appro-
priute wood-cuts, and with a steel engraving, re-
presenting Duncan's horses, , tearing wildlTover
the mountains in a state of frantic excitement; as
described by Rosse in the drama, who adds also
that " they ate each other," like . the Kil-
kenny cats so often alluded to by Mr. O'con--
neil. This miraculous meal, however, is not
I noticed by the artist, whose • delineation
of the maddened steeds in their headlon
career reminds us somewhat of Fuseli's energetic
manner. In the "Supplementary Notice " the
Editor introduces the following interesting anec-
dote, wherein Mrs. Siddons describes the impres-
sions made on her imagination by her first study
of Lady Macbeth :—" It was my custom to study
my characters at night, when all the domestic
cares of the day were over. On the night pre-
ceding that on which I was to appear in this part
for the first time, I shut myself up, as usual,
when all the family were retired, ar.d com-
menced my study of Lady Macbeth. As the
character is very short, I thought I should soon
accomplish it. Being then only twenty years of
age, I believed, as many others do, that little
more was necessary than to get the words into
my head ; for the necessity of discrimination,
and the developernent of character, at that time
of my life, had scarcely entered into my imagi-
nation. But to proceed. I went on with tole-
rable composure, in the silence of the night (a
night I can never forget) till I came to the as-
sassination scene, when the horrors of the scene
rose to a degree ,that made it impossible for
me to get further. I snatched up my -candle,
and hurried out of the room in a paroxysm of
terror. My dress was of silk, and the rustling
of it, as I ascended the stairs to go to bed, seemed
to my panic struck fancy like the movement of a
spectre pursuing me. At last I reached my
chamber, where I found my husband fast asleep.
I clapped my candlestick down upon the table,
without the power of putting it out; and I threw
myself on my bed, without daring to stay even
to take off my clothes." We have here the
secret of the unrivalled power which Mrs. Sid-
dor.., at a later period threw into her representa-
tion of Lady Macbeth. "Si vis me Here, d.olen-
duM est primumipsi tibi," says Horace.

IR.:LAND, ITS SCENERY, CHARACTER,
6-c. Pen, 6.

How and Parsons, London, 1841.

Well may Mrs. Har speak in terms of high
adrniration of the ben ty of the little island of
Innisfallen, in the Lower Lake of Killarney, for
if the sketch of it in the present Part be an accu-
rate one, it must be one of the loveliest spots that
the traveller's eye ever rested on. The ruined
monastery in the foreground, overrun with para-
sitic plants ; the gleaming waters, backed by
green, sunny hills, in the distance; the jutting
capes and promontories, here fringed with 'luxu-
riant copses, and there sloping down to the lake
in flowery lawns ;—all these various objects give a
picturesque and cheerful beauty to the landscape
which may be equalled, but cannot possibly be
surpassed.' Of a 'far different character is the
sketch of the " Black Valley" in the county of
Kerry,. which' is a dark, Tugged
,gien„ overhung,
with frowning' rocks- arid' precipices, and Inter-
sected by a turbulent mountain stream, which
rushes down in cataracts from the' surrounding
heights. It is difficult to conceive a more wild,
gloomy, solitary scene than this, where every ob-
ject wears a chilling and melancholy aspect. As
an engraving, the sketch deserves great praise,
for its distances are finely marked, and there is a
breadth and massiveness in its shadows, which
we do not often meet with in works of art of this
class. By Way of frontispiece, the part contains
a map of the counties of Tipperary and Water-
ford, which is singularly accurate in its localities.
The letter-press portion of the work blends, as
usual, amusement with instruction in a very re-
lishing manner. The descriptions and traits of
the Killarney Lakes are full of spirit, arid enli-
vened. with characteristic anecdotes, and traits of
Irish peasant life, which no one relates with more
piquant humour, and genuine, unforced feeling
than Mrs. Hall. We subjoin her account of a
hoax passed on two American travellers by a
Killarney peasant. The anecdote was told her
by the peasant himself, and she quotes his own
words with infinite unction :
" There, were two young gentlemen here last summer,
mighty dandy chaps they were entirely, and we couldn't make
out what country they belonged to, portending they couldn't
understand us. And sure enough we could return the com-
pliment, for their words war fine drawn, finer than flax,
twenty cuts to the dozen—they bothered the life cut of us
wid questions, and kept putting down every thing they saw
or heard in their bits of note-b.oks. One of 'em was from
Americy, I believe, and his comrade' called him ' Willey.'
Well, they war just the sort—for we're used to 'em, and can
see asy enough whether they have a good heart to the coun-
try or not ; they war just the sort to misrepresent every thing,
not out of badness, but from being strangers
to our ways ; and so we thought we'd give 'em some fine big
lie, to carry home ; and we met that ba,te in the Gap (point-
ing to a long-haired dorility a few yards off), and that's the
original Irish ass, your honors,' said I, the true breed'—well,
that went down in the book wid a sketch. "That's the dis-
cindant, and the only one living in the counthry, your honors,
of the rale one that O'Donoghue was riding the evening the
waters broke in on him. Are you sure of that ?' said one.
It's as true, Sir,' I made answer, as that it's the rale ani-
mal'—well, that went down, too, and then they chatted together,
and said, that's a singular fact l' And so I thot I'd give 'em
another to make it plural, ' There's an ould, ancient woman
in the Gap makes beautiful stockings out of its hair,'
I says, and if your honors would like a pair, just as a cu-
riosity, I think I could get them may be as a favour; and
then no one could misdoubt, when you had them to show.'
Well, they took wonderful to the stockings, and got some ;
fine grey stockings they war, made out of the wool of the Kerry
sheep ; and the ould woman caught the wind of the word 'cute
enough, and was up to the thing at once ;—well, they paid her
for them more than what she axed, and yet her conscience was
not altogether tender about the price ; and oh, just to hear how
they talked to each other, in a foreign tongue that sounded
mighty like bog Latin, and put the stockings by so careful l
Sure the strangers get many a laugh out of poor Paddy, and
it would ill become us not to return the compliment !"

STANDARD NO VELS.—Ne. 83.
Bentley, London, 1841.

A republication, in one compact, closely
printed volume, of Miss Ferrier's popular novel
of " Marriage," which was first brought into no-
tice by Sir Walter Scott's generous praise of it,
in the Introduction to the Third Serious of
" Tales of My Landlord." The story, if not very
artfully conducted in point of plot, abounds in
characters nicely discriminated, and developed
with a caust:e humour truly Scottish. The vo-
lume is illustrated with a whimsical full length
portrait of old Lady Maclaughlan, one of Miss
Ferrier's must consistently maintained characters.

THE COWHERD.
_Knight and Co.
This little publication, which is addressed
rather to the master than the servant, contains
some valuable information on the breeds of cattle,
their diseases and general management. The
history of the breeds from the middle horns to
the doddies is given with the peculiar qualities
.pf each, and some curious details on " breeding.
in and in." The injurious effects of this practice
is not confined to the brute creation, as will be
seen from the following extract. "Some indi-
vidual gains an ascendancy in a town and gets
richer than those about him, and his family to
keep the wealth among them intermarry from
cousins downwards. All is well for a generation
or two, and the Hobson& or the ' Jobsons,' as it
may be, are the leading men. But a genera-
tion or two more and the state of things is sadly
altered. Mental deficiency always, and gene-
rally scrofula, idiocy, and barrenness break out,
and after a time the once leading people va-
nish from the town. It is curious to examine
the records of such a place, and .riaark the period
during which certain names have predominated,
and how they have all one after another become
extinct." In treating of the diseases of cattle
the writer states that the murrain which was so
prevalent lately was in former times as great a
scourge to cattle as pestilence was to the human
race. In the 18th century it thinned the cattle
in every part of Europe, and in 1747 there died
not fewer than 70,000 in the three counties of
Leicester, Nottingham, and Chester.

Charles Barry Baldwin, Esq., M.P. for Totnes,
left town this morning for Tours, from whence he will return
to his duties in Pailiament after the recess.

LACE Tit ADE —A new era seems to have
suddenly arisen in the lace trale, which promises most
beneficial results to this district, namely, the making of
plat nets, in imitation of foreign grounds, which are orna-
mented by the application of the jacquard apparatus, in
exact imitation of the Valenciennes laces. The prices at
which there are sold are extremely high, and yet, in de_
fiance of all former slop propensities, they are in great de.
mand. The te:t patterns r f there plat nets we have seen
are produce l from the pusher machine, not as the exact
figure is good, but the net and. the linen ornament are
the best 11114:ail' of Ilia Valenciennes laces. The in-
ver.tar is said to be. a young man scarcely 22 years of age;
be only wants a few instructions from an able drawing
master to perfect Lim. It may be necessary to state,
that by a patent granted to Mr. Wiliam Crofts (gene_
rail: termed Bzgley's) the method is claimed of making
all i.ets which have double the number of warp threads
to those of bobbin threats ; and that a similar pa-
tent has been obtained by Mr. Samuel Draper, claiming
the method of making plain nets by having two guide
6u:tads to one needle. A patent has been obtained by
3,11. Whit, ly, Lr the long.said-to-bc-impossibility cf tra.
vat Lig the tirt:re threads on the warp tree frame ; it is a
nic,3t c,mplicated method. having no warp boani but t.a-
-' ye ses the cartiages in two tiers, back and front, from set-
vage to selvage, to make the act,—Nottingham Journal.