The Sun.
London, England, 1846-01-02 00:00:00

i'AIT.

There are several articles in the present number of
rather more than ordinary interest, among which are
" A Visit to Mr. O'Connell at l)errynane, by Wil-
liam Howitt ;" a sketch of Shelley, by De Quincey,
in " .Notes on Gilfillan's Gallery of Literary Por-
traits ;" and " Carlisle's Oliver Cromwell's Letters."
The political article, though now little better than an
old almanac, contains some abuse of the Whigs,
which we hope is not deserved, and a rather violent
attack on Lord Palmerston, R hich we consider totally
unmerited. " Palmerston," says Tait, " insisted on
being Minister of Foreign Affairs—nothing less, no-
thing else would satisfy him—of course it was more
important in his Lordahip's eyes that he should rule
the external relations of the state than that the corn-
laws should be repealed." The fact is, Lord Palmer-
ston justly declined any other appointment because
he could not accept it without a stigma on his
policy, but he was willing to remain out of the
Cabinet, and at the same time lend the Government
every assistance in his power. Two consolations,
however, make amends for the failure of the Liberals
—" The Whigs are pledged to free trade—the Tories
are broken up." In an article entitled " How is
Parliament to get through its Railway Business ?"
we find the following judicious remarks :
" The public is entitled to the best line that existing
lights can devise. It is not by diminishing the number
of lines upon which Parliament is to adjudicate that the
railway business of the session is to be brought within
manageable compass, but by the judges adopting a clear
and precise view of the end to be attained, keeping this
view constantly before them, and regulating all their
proceedings with the one exclusive aim to find it out.
The cardinal principle most conducive to the attainment
of this end, is to aim at giving the public the greatest
amount of railway accommodation, with the least possible
expenditure of money and labour. One great means of
eschewing extra expenditure of either, is to promote.
wherever it is possible the construction of direct trunk
lines. In the infancy of the railway system, it was
common for a railway to meander through a district,
going out of its way to catch the large towns. This was
natural enough when men were sceptical as to whether a
railway under any circumstance could be made to pay.
Thus it came that the railway from London to Man-
chester and Liverpool was made to go round by Bir-
mingham. But the trade of Liverpool and Manchester
will not submit to be made merely auxiliary to that of
Birmingham ; and .we have already the Trent Valley
line by which Birmingham is placed on a branch of a
more direct trunk line, as in a few years we shall have
the direct Manchester an extension of the direct system.
Now had a direct line been constructed to the north, at
first, with branches to accommodate Birmingham and
other great marts, a much shorter total mileage of rail
way would have required to be constructed ; in other
words more miles of railway have been made than are
actually required. But a still greater and more useless
outlay would have been saved. Every inconvenient
circuitous line allowed to be constructed, becomes a
vested interest, incurs gi eat expen:e itself to prevent the
construction of a better,
improved l i eto incurthe
e
m railwaya nudc h forces the promoters of the
unnecessaryn to
Committees promote
o
The firstduty of h
to the utmost of their power the comnnitte,z
marts and harbours, by direct lines, with branches for
district accommodation.
" Having adopted this principle as their guide, the
‘gconfto)rromiseoftimpreocaensds:_exleart:
tCioOno:mbyittaedes mightting materiallyel
th
To investigate the capability of the district to support a
p f4il tn
railway. The affirmative here would be maintained by
all the schemes; the negative oily by general opponents
to any railway, if such there were. All the schemes
might combine to prove this part of their case, and by
taking this step first and apart, much time would be
saved. 2J, To investigate in succession the bona fide
character of each company. Each company of a group
might be called in succession to prove its list of share-
holders and their means. It would be open to each of
their rivals or any of their competitors to lead counter-
proof. As soon as the affirmative or negative was es-
tablished to the satisfaction of the Committee, the in-
quiry should be closed! any company tailing to prove its
competency ought to be put out of court. 3d, Each of
the remaining companies should then be called in suc-
cession to state and prove the advantages of its line.
Any counter evidence should next be received. And
when the case of one was closed, the next should be
taken up without pronouncing any deliverance. 4th,
When they bad been all gone through, the Committee
ought to decide which one or more lines ought to be
constructed, with what modifications of the original
plan. By keeping promoters, counsel, and witnesses to
the point, proceedings might thus be much expedited."

FATAL FIT IN AN OMNIBUS --Wednesday night,
Mr. Bedford held an inquest at the Black Horae,Bedfordbury,
on the body of Thomas Scantlebury, aged forty-one years, a
stud-groom, late in the employ of Mr. Tattersall, of Grosve-
nor-place, Hyde-park. The deceased lodged with his
nephew, at 53, Banner-square, St. Luke's. He left home
about ten o'clock on Monday morning, and at eleven, arriv-
ing at Cheapside, he got into one of the Brompton omnibuses,
telling the conductor to put him down at Charing-cross, and
exhibiting, to ail appearance, perfect health. When the
vehicle reached St. Martin's-lane the conductor got down to
take up another passenger. The deceased at this moment
fell into a fit. He was assisted out and taken to the Charing-
cross Hospital, but died en his way. The deceased had in
his possession at the time 111. in gold and silver, a silver
watch, and other articles of property. Verdict, " Natural
death."
OPPOSITION TO THE PROPOSAL TO RAISE THE
num.—The members and friends of the Birmingham
Peace Association have resolved to hold a public meeting in
the Town-hall here, in th 2 course of a few weeks, to protest
against the determination of Government to organise the
militia, and to petition Parliament to iTitroduce an arbitra-
`lon clause into all our treaties with foreign powers.
The Alarine.Sa'roc;ls3; hasand sent nearly 900 boyswill
iibteo.
sea during the
The ho a Tsept. its bounty are
rally support the instil...o eoCu' fellow predureo,
the most distressed and deso... --etv, hunger, cold,
Such are relieved from all the evils of poi.. --nmero
and nakedness, and trained up to be useful hi the Cu-..

of the country as British seamen.
DOUBLY HAZARDOUS.—In the event of the Chelsea
pensioners being called out, a new company will be started to
=sure their wooden legs against fire.—.Pu!sch.

THE SUN,.._LONI)ON,

LITERATURE.
ARRAII Vl'. of tree EXPLORING EXPEDI•
TION to the ROCKY 1110 UNTAINS in the YE
1842, and to OREGON and NORTH CALIFOR-
NIA in the YEARS 1844-5. By B,evet Captain J.
C. Frernobt,of the Topographical Engineers. With a

Map and Mist, ations; - -
This is a remarkably interesting and well-timed
work. The design of these expeditions was a military
examination of the country between the Mississippi
and the Pacific Ocean on the line of the Great Platte,
the South Pass, and the Columbia, with a view to the
maintenance of American imagined rights over a
remote and interesting region. The military exami-
nation was the first object, but science came in for a
share of the commander's attention ; and sextants,
refracting circles, thermometers, and barometers, as
well as rifles, formed a part of the young officer's
equipment. The result of the combined objects is an
immense collection of geological, botanical, geogra-
phical, and meteorological information, mixed up
with the details which would enable a general to
march an array, or an emigrant to move his family to
Oregon; and from which a statesman might judge
the value of the country, and a farmer choose a resi-
dence in it. These expeditions have been made, the
first in 1842, terminating at the South Pass in the
IRocky Mountains; the other in 1844.5, extending to
the tide- water of the Columbia, and thence south,
by a vast circuit, through the unknown region
of the Alta California ; forced forward, when
cnee involved in them, by mountains and I
by deserts, which carried the expedition far out of its
intended course, and exposed it to perils and suffer-
ings, only to be compensated by discoveries full
of strange and romantic interest, among people and
countries never before described. The journals of the
two expeditionshave been published just in the "nick"
of time, when the Oregon is the great bone of contention
between two great countries. Towards this vast tract the
tide of emigration is now rolling, and the eyes of
Europe and America turning, and for the dominion
of which diplomacy is now weaving its webs, and
war sounding its alarms. To quote from such
a work would be almost impossible, so intimately
is one portion connected with another. It is filled
with adventures, hair-breadth 'stapes, and graphic
descriptions. The personal merits of Captain Fre-
mont in these expeditions have been great, and evince
high talent for command and for enterprise. With
an average of twenty-five men, and no officer to aid
him, he has made ten thousand miles of march,
among tribes of savages, without ever being exposed
to surprise or defeat. Without the aid of scientific
assistance, he has so enriched his report with science,
that it seems to have been the work of professional
savans. His work was lacking to complete
the view (which Lewis and Clarke commenced) of
the great region from the Mississippi to the
Pacific Ocean, and it has come at the exact moment
when it was most wanted, and will be most useful.
Great events are impending, of which Oregon is the
subject. English rights and honour are at stake,
and the civilised world pauses to see, perhaps, the
issue of the third great contest between the old stock
and the young shoot of the Anglo-Saxon race.
As a literary composition it would be unjust to
analyse the report. It is evidently the transcript of
notes made in the fields and is what such notes would
naturally be—a brief and rapid delineation of all that
was seen, and in the order in which it was seen. No
attempt is made at fine writing. In place of that we
have truth and vigour, and the fresh, vivid, and
sudden descriptions which come from a man in the
midst of action, and who has something else to do
besides talking. Still many passages are powerfully
written, and the work betrays nothing in the style to
derogate from the novelty and importance of the
matter. The whole may be read with pleasure as
well as benefit, and we heartily commend and re-
commend it. The volume is illustrated by a map
and some.fine lithographic illustrations; and no one
%vie) wishes to know anything about Oregon (and I
who does not ?) should f4il to read it.

TILE NEW Tllllo.‘ : a i(ontance of London. Part I.
Perhaps two poets are not more diametrically op-
posed, both in materials and composition, than are
Crabbe and Byron ; the one as copious in imagina-
tion as in languege, the other formal, didactic, and
precise. Nevertheless, the present poem combines
the characteristics of these two writers, and that
without, in the slightest degree, injuring its symme-
try. Many of its descriptive passages smack of that
genuineness and truth which rendered " The Bo-
rough" so popular, while the analogy traceable in these
two productions may be discerned more clearly in that
extravagant affection for antithesis which was so
humorously signalised in the "Rejected Addresses."
Take as an instance of this, the lines
It was not mirth, for mirth she was too still.
It was not nit, wit leaves the heart more chill ;
But that continuous sweetness, which with ease
Pleases all round it, from the wish to please."
The resemblance, on the other hand, which it bears
to the style of Byron is, if possible, more con-
spicuous than the preceding; the forcefulness of its
expressions, the energy of its allusions, its alternate
sarcasm and sentiment, recallini to our memory at
every page " Childe Harold' and the " Age
of Bronze." Surely the author must have re-
tained a reflex of the spirit which actuated the
satirist of " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,'
when he penned the subjoined allusions to St. James's-
street :
" Along that space the blood-hound crowd array'd
Howl'd round the shrine where last the Stuart pray'd;
See to that space the self-same blood -hounds run
To lick the feet of Stuart's viler son!
There, through the dusk-red towers—amidst his ring
Of Vans and Mynheers—rode the Dutchman king;
And there did England's Goneril ihr ill to hear
The shouts that ti iumphPd o'er her crownless Lear?
There, where the gaslight streams on Crockford's door,
Bluff Henry chuckled at the jests of More.
There, where you gaze upon the last H. 8.,
Swift paused ai.d muttered, shall I have that See ?' "
In particularising, however, these specimens of his
powers as an imitator, we by no means wish to deny
the writer any pretensions to originality ; on the
contrary, we shall presently have occasion to point, in
an especial manner to his originality in analyzing
some of our most remarkable political characters.
As far as this first portion of a poem will permit us
to form an opinion, the story which it embodies has
in itself much that is dramatic, and much also that
is likely to produce a humanising and generous
effect upon the minds of its readers. The main
purpose of the romance, as its title indicates, is to
pourtray a being sated with riches and its con-
sequent indolence, and a being at the same time
whose affections are hardened into misanthropy
by a lack of sympathy and kindliness in
his fellow-man. Morvale, a half-caste, (who
is the hero), an offspring of unmarried love
between an English chief and an Indian maiden, de-
rives his first knowledge of existence among those
eastern regions where " the couched strangler"
listens for his victim, and " the fell serpent, with
his deathful eye," sports among the underwood. Here,
after having depicted the lawless and self-willed
freedom which the young alien acquired during the
hours of his abandonment, the author hurries him
into the midst of civilisation, removing him from the
jungle into the drawing-rooms of London, trans-
forming him from an indigent outcast to the master
of opulence and grandeur. These alternations afford
opportunities for very striking contrasts, and of these
opportunities the author has availed himself with con-
siderable tact. Many agreeable contrasts result
from
these circumstances, the future ninon being
first represented as a child delighting in rambles
" under the shade of melancholy boughs," or, as it is
nobly expressed, "rocking his passions on soft waves
of song;" or pourtrayed as the owner of a desolate,
jhoey "
sceneb y thine
but sumptuous, mansion in the metropolis, whose
so saloonsund
of weres
some
moen
sfiotnaftibl fitfully ‘ftejsatri rv'ald into T
which Morvale extends a sheltering hand to the
orphan Lucy is pencilled with an exceeding sweet-
ness, and the sudden outburst of sunlight over the
grey streets at the very instant the young girl dis-
covers a protector, is one of those touches of true
poetry that stir the heart's blood with their pic-
turesque beauty. But the most remarkable and
artistic scene is that with which the first part of the
" New Timon " is concluded, namely, where Mor
vale's half-sister Calantha is seated at her window,
overlooking the spot " where Villiers flaunted and
where Sedley sung"—an occasion which the author
seizes to introduce some very clever profile likenesses
of the most conspicuous statesmen of the present day.
These personages are supposed to be passing by on
their way to the Parliament Houses, and as each ap-
pears he receives an appropriate cluster of adjectives.
Sir Robert Peel, the Great Riddlemeree of all sects
and factions and parties, takes precedence, as it were
be right, of his competitors, jogging over the road.
way upon that very sedate-looking cob which is so
well known to every lounger in Parliament-street.
The gist of our author's opinions upon the Premier
maybe summed up in his ejaculation, " And still the
cautious trot the cautious mind betrays." The por-
trait of the Duke of Wellington, which comes imme-
diately afterwards, is quite a daguerreotype of the
man as far as regards his appearance, but as a
delineation of his mental character it is extremely
mistaken and faulty, with the exception of the few
couplets which we have selected below :
" Next with loose rein and careless canter view
Our man of men, the Prince of Waterloo;
O'er the firm brow the bat as firmly prest
The firm shape rigid in the buttoned vest;
Within-- the iron which the fire has proved,
And the close Sparta of a mind unmoved!
Not his the wealth to some large natures lent,
Divine!) lavish, even where mispent,
That liberal sunshine of exuberant soul,
Thought, sense, affection, warming up the whole.
Hush'd at command his veriest passions halt,
Prill'd is each virtue, disciplined each fault.
'Ms o)'ene'er wrong: if circumscribed the sight,
nroaptet and it ne'er is right,
-^" no of habit still,
" —4 drill!"

Widen I.— a.
Seen through the teies,_
States seem a camp, and all the woriu-

As to the eulogium w • hich followF, it is as empty it
is mawkish ; and it requires much more logical and
argumentative powers than are possessed by the
author of the " New Timon," or even by Colonel
Mitchell himself, to prove that the " iron image" of
Wellington would indeed look gallantly beside
"Marlborough's tomb, or lost Napoleon's throne !"
For a picture of any one but O'Connell none could
mistake the following forcible lines:—
" But who, scarce less by every gazer eyed,
Walks yonder, swinging with a stalwart stride?
With that vast bulk of chest and limb assign'd
So oft to men who subjugate their kind;
So sturdy Cromwell push'd broad-shoulder'd on;
So burly Luther breasted Babylon;
So brawny Cleon bawlel his Agora down;
And large-limb'd Mabmoud clutch'd a Prophet's
crown!
Ay, mark him well! the scl-,emer's subtle eye
The stage•mime's plastic lip your search defy.
The blood all fervour, and the brain all guile—
The patriot's bluntness, and the bondsman's wile."
After having thus mentioned that great embodiment
of Irish turbulence, and glanced for a moment on the
errant (not knight-errant) Lord Stanley, whom he
styles the " Rupert of Debete," our author sketches
Lord John Russell in these peculiar terms :
" Next cool, and all unconscious of reproach,
Comes the calm
Johnny, who upset the coach.'
Bow formed to lead, if not too prcud to please—
His fame would fire you, but his manners freeze.
Like r dislike he does not care a jot;
He wants your vote but your affection not;
Yet human hearts need sun, as well as oats—
So cold a climate plays the deuce with votes.
And while bis doctrines ripen day by day,
llis frost-nipp'd party pines itself away;—
Bat see our statesman when the steam is on,
And languid Johnny glows to glorious John!
When Hampden's thought, by Falkland's muses drest,
Lights the pile cheek, and swells the generous breast;
When the pent heat expands the quickmaing soul—
And foremost in the race the wheels of genius roll!"
Mixed with some shrewdness, a dash of erroneous
sarcasm, and an occasional indication of drollery,
these outlines of our contemporary rulers are not
altogether unworthy of the men themselves, while
the introduction of them tends considerably to render
the other portions of the romance doubly piquant
and zestful. That the " New Timon" is the produc-
tion of no inexperienced pen, that the imagination of
its author is modulated to a classical composure, that
he is no obscure observer of the social or political ad-
vancement of this age, is evidenced in every para-
graph. Whoever he may be, he need not disown his
offspring through fear of its demerits.