The Sun.
London, England, 1841-11-01 00:00:00

need know. We shan't murder you, I dare say, unless
you wish it."
"But, what are you going to do with me?" I urged,
greatly disturbed at this speech, which implied that
murder was one of the branches of the worthies' pro-
fession.
" He. Will be chattering, you see," said Bill.
"Never mind," replied Watson, "it does him good,
and us. no harm. It's natural he should feel a little curio-
sity. Should'nt you, Bill?"
" Why yes," said Bill. " Nature, you knoW, as a man
May say, is what we all feel."
"Do we?" returned Watson.
and don't know much about that."
" Gentlemen," said I, " lam sure you are in an error.
I am certain you have taken the wrong person."
"Catch us doing that," replied Watson ; " though, I
dare say if we had taken anyone else instead of you, you'd
have thought him the right one. No—no."
" A Tale of the High North Road" is a curious
account of the sayingS and doings of two highly
educated London artists, who passed themselves
off on the landlord of a country hotel, for Lord
Brougham and his valet, travelling post-haste to
Scotland. Of course, they were detected, but
not before they had mistaken the landlord's best
silver plate fbr their own, and decamped with it
in the hurry of the moment. The " Moated
Grange" is a readable story, but it would have
been improved by curtailment. " Merrie Eng-
land iu the Olden Time " is a singular melange,
the product of an intellect of a restless, frag-
mentary character, made up of dainty odds and
ends, like a second day's feast. Mr. Daniel is
" every thing by turns,-and- nothing long." He
is constantly starting ideas, but never runs them
down. He suggests, but does not work out.
Before he- is well on with one subject, he is off,
like lightning, to another. One moment we find
him wandering, without care for' his pockets,
in the thick of Bartlemy Fair ; the
next, he is deep hi biography; but soon tiring of
this vein, he flies for relief to a quaint, familiar
ballad, in which, provided it be short,,he emi-
nently excels. Reading his " Merrie England"
is something like witnessing a pantomime. The
changes are -so sudden and unexpected, the lights
and shades so broad, the bustle so incessant, and
the effect of the whole so grotesque, that the
mind is in a continued whirl throughout. Yet we
like Mr. Daniel, despite the hop-step-and-jump
turn Of his intellect. He is evidently a kindly-
natured man,- welt in-funned—say, rather, full
of odd scraps of information, , and with much of
that simplicity. of character—at lehst we judge
so by his writingswhich: is usually the com-
panion of genius. Ohl Fuller would have under-
stood him; Sterne would have been proud to
have his opinion of Uncle Toby ; and Elia would
have recognised in him another self. The
"Bread and Cheese Club" is of average merit.
The following is the best thing in it :—" There
is neither infancy nor youth in a pun ; no pro-
gression in its ephemeral lite ; it is born full-
grown, and dies of old awe in a second."
The Spanish story, "La Diligenca," is too
long, and its interest does not warrant
its length. The ." Gathering of the Dead"
is a wild flight of fancy—a sort of poetic
night Mate; wherein imagination and absurdity
are combined in nearly equal portions, The
" Haunted Manor House of Paddington " is a
local legend, told with uncommon earnestness.
The working-out is particularly good, the inci-
dents all acting together, all growing naturally
out of the subject, and telling by their unity and
completeness. " Guy Fawkes" is now brought
to a close, and We are not sorry for it. It is a
work of tact rather than genius, to which it
bears the same resemblance that burnished cop-
per bears to gold. • Though constantly in motion,
its characters have no life. They are mere
painted puppets set in action by the showman's
strings. The descriptive portions of. the tale are
the best, for Mr. Ainsworth has a quick and true
eye for the picturesque; and when pourtray-ing a
scene that has struck his fancy—such,for instance
as Chat Moss—never overshoots, or falls short of,
his mark. " Love's Banqpet" is an arch little
poem, and we subjoin it accordingly :-
0! think of the minutes-o!*think of the nights
I've spent on my pillow awake—
What fevers endured, what dreams, and what frights—
All these have I borne for your sake!
0! remember your vows, your oath on your knee,
The kiss when you•said we must part,
But promised, whatever your distance from me,
• I still should be close to your heart.
How oft have you said, "I but live in your eyer,
A banquet for Jove is your 100k—
Your charms are a feast—other food I despise!"
And now you have married your cook!

" Well, I'm no scholar,

/VEIV MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
The late .Mr: Macnish's tale of " Metempsy-
chosis," which was published many years ago in
Blackwood's Magazine, has been closely, indeed,
servilely, imitated by the author of " A Strange
Passage in th e life of Charles Welford"—a story
which appears in the presenti Number •of this
periodical, and which turns on the sudden trans-
formation of the hero into a certain noble Mar-
quis, whose wealth and rank he had long coveted.
In the original narrative the scene of the trans-
formation of one man into . another, by super-
natural influence, was laid in Germany, where
such a wild incident was appropriately enough
located; but the present imitator, with the bad
taste that usually characterises imitations, lays
his scene in a. Square at the West-end of London ;
where, doubtless, many singular metamorphoses
occur in the course of the season—(such, for in-
stance, as the change of a rich man into a beggar
by the conjuring powers of a pack of cards ; of
a Prime Minister into a quack doctor; or of a
club-haunting. husband into a stag, through the
diabolical agency of some handsome young officer
in the Guards, standing six feet two in his shoes,
and measuring three feet across the shoulders)—
but where a transformation, such as the author
of " Charles Welford," adopts. as the ground--
work of his fiction, becomes the sheerest absur-
dity, from the circumstance of its forming no
part of the past or present faith of a worldly,.
incredulous West-end Square? The locale makes
all she difference between sense and nonsense in
works of imagination. Pan frisking in the woods
of Arcadia, is a highly poetical personage; but
when he is made to cut capers in • the
Regent's Park, he becomes not only an ab-
surd, incongruous creation, but a very suspicious
character, worthy of the special notice of
the policemen. ". A Test of Equanimity "is
archly..and whimsically put. " Take a quart
bottle of ink," says the writer, " break it, and
try if you can say it's all .for. the best,' while it's
spoiling your best pantaloons !" This is certainly
a wood test of equanimity, but we subjoin a far
t,
surer one ;—take the Rev. Mr. Dillon's narrative
of the Lord May Or's Voyage to Oxford ; read
through six pages; and try if you can refrain
from flinging this printed prodigy of dullness and
ineptitude into the coal-scuttle. He who can so
command himself, can bear the griefs of, Job
without a murmur. " Phineas Quiddy," con-
tains some smart hits at the sordid money-scrap-
ing propensities of the day. Inthe article headed
" A French Pic-nic," we find several descriptive
touches of more than ordinary vigor. The
" Outlaw "is a pretty ballad of the Haynes-Bayley
school. We quote it, for the amusement of our
younger readers :
They knew him in his Gladness,
In his Summer's brightest day ;
Ere Penury and Sadness
Had dunned its latest ray.
Who can admire the sunbeams
When hid in transient gloom ?
Or who can-love the rose-tree,
When its roses cease to bloom ?
They left him in his Sorrow, •
When his heart was sad and lone ;
When he rose upon the morrow
nut to wish it past and gone !
Oh ! who can love the winter,
When its sky with tempest lowers ?
'Tis the Spring alone finds friends
For its Sunbeams and its Flowers.

Of the concluding chapters of the " Life and
Adventures, of Charles Chesterfield," we need
say nothing, as the work has been already re-
published in three volumes, and passed the
ordeal of criticism. The " Advantages of Be-
longing to a Club" is by the author of Paul Pry.
It is a capital quiz on those mean, restless, fid-
getty busy-bodies, who have a passion for re-
forming every thing and every body but them-
selves. Mr. Poole lays on the lash without
mercy. Lord Cardigan himself could not order
a man to be flogged on Sunday with more seve-
rity. "Graduates and Undergraduates" exhibits
promise ; but it is early yet to form a decided
opinion of a work which has only reached its
second chapter. " Bajazet Gag ; or the Manager
in Search of a Star" is continued by Mr. Jerrold
with his usual dry, grave, caustic humour. The
scene at the police-office where the pompous
Lessee—and who more pompous than such a per-
sonage ?—is charged with stealing the dog of a
rival manager, is admirable. With what infinite
dignity the great man resigns lihnself to circum-
stances ! With what an eye of condescending
pity he regards his prompter, who is also his
partner in affliction ! Adversity tames the
proudest natures ; and the despotic Gag almost
descends to the level of his fellow-sufferer, and
allows him to be his equal ! How many a would-
be Magnifico may derive a useful lesson from
Mr. Jerrold's irony ! As this scene is unfortu-
nately too long to quote, we give, instead, a
sketch of a veteran actor, who has been dis-
missed by the imperious Bajazet, for laying an
undue emphasis on the letter B
:
Old Smoakly—for so was the prophet known to his
brethren—was an actor of forty years' standing, and some
seasons since had been enrolled in the troop of Gag. To