The Sun.
London, England, 1870-08-02 00:00:00

again—

" rolling dun
O'er furious Frank and fiery Hun,"

along the northern frontiers of la belle France, the more
adventurous of our holiday-seekers this autumn might
readily do worse than take this touching, and, in the
whole tone of it, we might add, this really noble volume, as
their guide book through many of the most picturesque
and beautiful regions of the Landes and the western slopes
of the Pyrenees.

A Little Book About Great
:Britain By Azamat-Batuk.
One vol., pp. 228. Bradbury and Evans.

Among the various reprints of articles already published
separately in the Pall Mall Gazette and afterwards col-
lected together in separate volumes, with or without
acknowledgment as to the, authorship, about the best, cer-
tainly one of the most amusing, is our good friend in the
fez—he of the bullet head and the waxed moustache—
Azamat-Batuk. Trollope has gone before him with the
Sporting. Greenwood, earlier still, with his astounding
experiences as an Amateur Casual, with a dip into the
weak mutton broth 'and all. But—commend us
to Azamat-Batuk. Among all the contributors
he is certainly the most amusing. Like the
paper his argument has been written for, meaning that is
the material on which it is printed, it is excellently well
toned. Of course the idea of the whole thing is borrowed
from Oliver Goldsmith. Here in Azamat Batuk is an-
other of the Wise Men come from the East He is an-
other Citizen of the World; only, in place of being a
Chinese he is a Turk. Lien Chi Altangi was the name
given to him in the eighteenth century by Goldsmith.
Azamat Batuk is he hight now in the nineteenth by the
Pall Mall Gazette. The notion of the thing is convenient
—namely, that of a wondering and innocent-minded
foreigner (call him Chinese or Turk at your pleasure) on
his travels here in England, observant of all our various
ways and means, manners, customs, costumes, institutions,
and constitution. The seeming stand-point of the writer,
enables him to be cynical without any appearance of ill-
nature. His affectation of wonderment at all he witnesses
has about it such a varnish of sincerity that we find ourselves
partially ceasing to wonder at his impertinence. The
make-believe is admirably sustained throughout. We
forget that it is a fellow countryman poking fun at us
under a very thin disguise. His stabs are no more formid-
able, however, than the dig of a fat finger-point in between
the small ribs just precisely at that curious part of our
anatomy where the risible muscles and the diaphragm act
upon one another the most directly and sympathetically.
We thank Azamat-Batuk for many a digestive chuckle over
our own social and political absurdities, not forgetting
others of an aesthetic character, including among them a
kind happily defined by Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, as
architectooralooral. Altogether the " Little " red, green,
and golden " Book " all " About Great Britain," penned
by Azamat-Batuk, is capital.

1/4 Fun. Volume the Eleventh. Edited by Tom Hood.
Friend Fun has already entered—is there such a word?
—his doxenth volume. For here is the eleventh, like its
ten radiant, riant predecessors in full panoply, that is to
say, bound as hitherto, gorgeously, in gold and crimson.
The eleventh volume, let it be understood, of the new
series, for we count the original series as nothing, as cer-
tainly unworthy of preservation. Not so Fun, as it has
ever been since the cap and bells were donned, with
such a sprightly grace, by Tom Hood the younger. Under
his direction it sustains its reputation for frolic, humour,
and exhilirating extravagance. The political cartoons are
many of them admirable. The social caricatures are
those in which the artist's pencil, (or is it the engraver's
boxwood-cutter ? ) seems to us to fail occasionally. One of
the most exhausting labours of any, we should imagine,
must be the unfailing and unflagging direction, week after
week, of a professed comic periodical. That,labour has
not only been undertaken, but has been successfully
achieved during the last five or six years by Tom Hood
the younger. And, in pugilistic phrase, after going
through so many rounds with Time in the annual ring of
the Zodiac, lo ! and behold, still to the last "he comes up
smiling !"

A correspondent writes: " I understand that
strong hopes of the settlement of the controversy between
Lord Spencer and the copyholders of Wimbledon are now
entertained. The compromise talked of is the payment
to his lordship of such an amount annually of value to
him of his rights in the common.

The Marquis of Westminster has caused a com-
munication to be made to the Workman's Club and In-
stitute for Pimlico, offering a contribution of £l,OOO and'
a site for the erection of a Workman's Club and Institute
in Pimlico. A further sum of about £1,500 will be re-
quired for the establishment of an institution which it is
intended shall be a model one of its class. •

The report of the registrar of friendly societies in
England, for the year ending 31st December, 1869, has
been issued. It is not nearly the size of similar
documents in former years, and contains none of the inte-
resting facts which Mr. Tidd Pratt used to collect. It is
merely a statement of the nmnber of societies dissolved, &c. ,
during the year.

D UNV LLE and Co., Belfast, are the largest holders
of whisky in the world. Their Old Irish Whisky is r ommended
by the medical profession in preference to French brand• . Sup.
plied in casks and cases for home use or exportation. Quotations
on application to Messrs DUNVILLE & Co., Royal Irish Dis-
tilleries, Belfust ; or at thei London Offices, 4, Beaufort Buildings
Strand. W.O.