The Sun.
London, England, 1846-12-08 00:00:00

THE SUN, LON,3ON,

spectacle. The: wife of Sawney Bean was not a I
more diabolical being. And yet, after the catastrophe'
of the tale, when she is confined in a mad-house as
an incurable maniac, Sir Edward Bulwer asserts that
he has seen Lucretia in that horrible captivity, " a ,
grisly, squalid, ferocious mockery of a human being ;
more appalling and more fallen, than Dante ever
fabled in his Spectres, than Swift ever scoffed in his
Ya-hoos !" He declares, moreover, that his novel is
compiled from the biographies of two criminals of
recent times. One of these criminals, GabrielVarney
(a character having rather an affinity for the Richard
Varley of Scott, than for the Gabriel Vardon of
Dickens), is as astute and almost as plausible
a villain as the notorious Quaker-murderer
Tawell. The other criminal, the chief one
indeed, Lucretia Clavering, is nothing less
than a Madame Laffarge on wholesale. The destruc-
tion of life to her is a pastime ; cruelty is her only
source of pleasure;; she wanders about the staircases
at midnight clothed in black, creeping into chambers,
infusing poison into the medicinal draughts of the
sleepers, and rendering the young, the innocent, the
beautiful equally her victims. She marries Dalibard,
and Dalibard is assassinated at her instigation. She
marries Braddell, and Braddell is poisoned by her
hands. She calculates with a hideous glee upon the
death of her uncle. She murders her son and her
Deice. Her crimes are the most systematic, the most
incessant, the most unsparing. Beyond all this, she
kills, and beggars, and satisfies her thirst for blood,
for money, and for revenge with the secresy of coward-
ice; but then, as the writer observes, "treachery and
murder hatch their brood amidst the folds of a hypo-
crite's cowardice." Here is the picture of Lucretia,
painted with infinite art.
" Lucretia Clavering was tall—tall beyond what is
admitted to be tall in woman; but in her height there
was nothing either awkward or masculine—a figure
more perfect never served for model to a sculptor. The
dress at that day, unbecoming as we now deem it, was
not to her—at least, on the whole—disadvantageous.
The short waist gave greater sweep to her majestic
length of limb, while the classic thinness of the drapery
betrayed the exact proportion and the exquisite contour.
The arms then were worn bare almost to the shoulder,
and Lucretia's arms were not more faultless in shape
than dazzling in their snowy colour—the stately neck,
the falling shoulders, the firm, slight, yet rounded bust
—all would have charmed equally the artist and the sen-
sualist. Fortunately, the sole defect of her form was not
apparent at a distance: that defect was in the hand; it
had not the usual faults of female youthfulness—the
superfluity of flesh, the too rosy healthfulness of colour;
on the contrary, it was small and thin, but it was, never-
theless, more the hand of a man than a woman; the
shape had a man's nervous distinctness, the veins swelled
like sinews, the joints of the fingers were marked and
prominent. In that hand, it almost seemed as if the
iron force of the character betrayed itself. But as we
have said, this slight defect which few, if seen, would
hypercritically notice, could not of course be perceptible
as she moved slowly up the room; and Vernon's eye,
glancing over the noble figure rested upon the face.
Was it handsome?—was it repelling? Strange that in
feature it had pretensions to the highest order of beauty,
and yet, even that experienced connoisseur in female
charms was almost puzzled what sentence to pronounce.
The hair, as was the fashion of the day, clustered in
profuse curls over the forehead, but could not conceal a
slight line or wrinkle between the brows; and this line,
rare in women at any age, rare even in men at her's, gave
an expressionat once of thought and sternness to the whole
face. The eyebrows themselves were straight, and not
strongly marked,—a shade or two perhaps too light, a
fault still more apparent in the lashes; the eyes were
large, full, and, though bright, astonishngly calm and
deep, at least in ordinary moments; yet withal, they
wanted the charm of that steadfast and open look, which
goes at once to the heart, and invites its trust; their ex-
pression was rather vague and abstracted. She usually
looked aslant while she spoke, and this, which with
some appears but shyness, in one so self-collected, had
an air of falsehood. But when, at times, if earnest, and
bent rather on examining those she addressed than
on guarding herself from penetration, she fixed those
et es upon you with sudden and direct scrutiny, the gaze
impressed you powerfully, and haunted you with a
strange spell. The eye itself was of a peculiar and dis-
pleasing colour—not blue, nor grey, nor black, nor hazel,
but rather of that cat-like green, which is drowsy in the
light, and vivid in the shade. The profile was purely
Greek, and so seen, Lucretia's beauty seemed incontes-
table; but in front face, and still more when inclined be-
tween the two, all the features took a sharpness, that,
however regular, had something chilling and severe; the
mouth was small, but the lips were thin and pale, and
had an expression of effort and contraction, which ad.ied
to the distrust which her -idelong glance was calculated
to inspire. The teeth were dazzlingly white, but sharp
and thin, and the eye-teeth were.much loeger than the
rest. The complexion was pale, but without much deli-
cacy; the paleness seemed not natural to it, but rather
that hue which study and late vigils give to men; so
that she wanted the freshness and the bloom of youth,and
looked older than she was—an effect confirmed by an
absence of roundness in the cheek, not noticeable in the
profile, but rendering the front face somewhat harsh as
well as sharp. In a word, the face and figure were not
in harmony; the figure prevented you from pronouncing
her to be masculine—the face took from the figure the
charm of feminacy. It was the head of the young
Augustus upon the form of Agrippina. One touch more,
' and we close a description, which already perhaps the
reader may consider frivolously minute. If you had
placed before the mouth and lower part of the face a mask
or bandage, the whole character of the upper face would
have changed at once; the eye lost its glittering false-
ness, the brow its sinister contraction; you would at
once have pronounced the face not only beautiful, but
sweet and womanly. Take that bandage suddenly away,
and the change would have startled you, and startled
you the more, because you could detect no sufficient de-
fect or disproportion in the lower part of the counte-
nance to explain it. It was as if the mouth was the key
to the whole: the key nothing without the text, the text
uncomprehended without the key."
It is absolutely impossible to conceive the abhor-
rence excited by the villanies of this monster without
reading the novel from the title-page to the printer's
name. To afford some feeble conception of
the astonishing vigour with which her demo-
niacal nature is delineated by Sir Edward Bulwer,
we transcribe a single sentence, which condenses, as
it were, a world of infamy, of despair, and of woe.
"If," says he, " amidst the punishments with which
the sombre imagination of poets has diversified the
Realm of the tortured Shadows it had depicted some
soul condemned to look evermore down into an
abyss—all change to its gaze forbidden—chasm upon
chasm, yawning deeper and deeper, darker and
darker, endless and infinite—so that, eternally gazing,
the soul became, as it were, a part of the abyss,
such an image would symbol forth the state
of Lucretia's mind." One gleam of redemption,
however, was left her, one means of re-
clamation to humanity—the love of William
Main waring. This solitary gleam is extin-
guished, this single means is debarred her, and then—
" lone again in the universe rose the eternal I." Not
even the potent influence of ancestry could redeem
her from the sins of degradation ; and the author
beautifully says that our fathers " are made by death
our household gods," and that " pride of family is the
guardian angel of its heirs." Besides her own innate
tendency to evil, Lucretia is fostered into an infidel
and a murderer by Olivier Dalibard, to whom
" good or evil ss ere but subordinate genii, at
the command of mind ; they were the slaves
of the lamp." This Dalibard--quite a emsar
Borgia at heart—is most powerfully conceived. He
reminds us of Arbaces in the " Last Days of Pom-
peii," but is, if possible, more of the fiend and less
of the voluptuary. Gabriel Varney, again, has a cer-
tain resemblence to Lumley Ferrers in " Maltravers"
and "Alice," a seeker of bodily enjoyment at all
hazard. The difference existing between these three
wretched and depraved mortals is given in a few
words where the romancist is speaking of their pur-
suit of wealth through bloodshed. " To Gabriel's
sensual vision," he says, " the image presented itself
in the shape of unlimited pleasure and prodigal
riot ; to Lucretia it wore the solemn majesty of
power ; to Dalibard it was but the Eureka of a cal-
culation—the palpable reward of wile, and scheme,
and dexterous combinations." Among the other and
gentler characters of the book the most original, and,
indeed, the most admirable, is Beck, the crossing-
sweeper. After telling us that "all education was
unknown to Beck, so was all love," and that the
poor sweeper's character was "as austere as Charles
the Twelfth's," the writer exclaims—" Through the
heavy clod which man's care had not moulded, nor books
enlightened, nor the priest's solemn lore informed, still
natural rays from the great parent source of Deity
struggled, fitful and dim.' In Beck as here delineated
poetry has been extracted from the ragged outcast
guarding with his broom " an isthmus of the kennel."
Sir Miles St. John is the very prototype of what an
old English gentleman should be—generous, benevo-
lent, kindly, hearty, refined, and thoroughly domestic.
Charles Vernon (with his " adorable impertinence")
is a noble character, and this would scarcely be antici-
pated from the first description of him, to the effect
that " his whole dress and air was not what could
properly be called foppish—it was rather what at that
time was called rakish." Walter Ardworth com-
pletely divulges his disposition where he chuckles
over a verdant landscape ; " in this green banquet of
nature," he exclaims, " no man sits below the salt-
cellar : the birds are an older family than the St.
John's, but they don't throw their pedigree in our
teeth." ,Tohn Ardworth, on the contrary, is given to
no such bucolic reflections ; he is a splendid model of
what may he gained by toil and patience. Although
his narrator remarks that Ardworth "did
not flirt with the muses, and that on the
granite of his mind few flowers could
spring," still he was endowed with reverie and
sympathy, " the two wings of that spirit which we
call genius." His whole life is modelled upon a doe-
! trine which he himself utters :—" What men want is,
not talent, it is purpose ; in other words, not the
power to achieve, but the will to labour." And by
this doctrine he is sustained in publishing his first
toireninma. editing a daily newspaper, or in entering
r utraent as a representative. Percival St. John
and
.Aite,_miedahaxtactuteerinsirwaEri dnwgaar.rdeß, perhaps, the
stheevemr oimstaegairedt
diabolical crimes by which they are en-

compassed their hearts are animated with a solemn
and affecting holiness. " Lucretia," is adorned, in-
deed, with several charming contrasts of this descrip-
tion. For example, the first indication of depravity
in the heroine is preceded by this beautiful and fan-
tastic fancy :—" The lights were out, all save the
lights of heaven, and they came bright and still
through the casements. Moonbeam and Starbeam,
they seemed now to have the old house to themselves.
In came the rays, brighter, and longer, and bolder '
—like fairies that march, rank upon rank, into their
kingdom of solitude. Down the oak stairs, from the
casements, blazoned with heraldry, moved the rays,
creepingly, fearfully. Ori the armour in the
hall clustered the rays boldly and brightly,
till the steel shone out like a mirror. In the
library, long and low, they just entered, stepped short
—it was no place for their play. In the drawing-
room, now deserted, they were more curious and ad-
venturous. Through the large window, still open,
they came in freely and archly, as if to spy what had
caused such disorder, the stiff chairs out of place,
the smooth floor despoiled of its carpet—that flower
dropped on the ground—that scarf forgotten on the
table—the rays lingered, upon them all. Up and
down, through the house, from the base to the roof,
roved the children of the air." They are followed by
the imagination of the writer to the chamber of Lu-
cretia—" Moon and starbeam, ye love what lovers
read by the lamp in the loneliness ;" to the chamber
' of Varney—" Moon and starbeam, ye love the slum-
bers of the child ;" to the chamber of Dalibard—
" Moon and starbeam, ye love the midnight solitude of
the scholar." In a very different scene, namely, in
that incident where Tom Varney, the penniless artist,
is elated on being invested with " the novel grandeur
of the man sponged upon," Sir Edward has, unwit-
tingly, been guilty of a plagiarism. The exhibition
of cruelty, in trying to put out the eyes of a
canary with a red-hot tobacco-pipe, is plagiarised
fromone of Hogarth's powerful, but terrible paintings
of the " Four Stages of Cruelty." As an expression
of the author's yearning for the advancement and
improvement of his fellow-men " Lucretia" must be
regarded as successful. It is a lesson to society, but
a very fearful one. It is fraught with evidences of
how the man can be degraded to the fiend, but it also
shows how he may he elevated to the angel. It is
commemorative of the gloom of sin, but it is likewise
inculcative of the effulgence of virtue. For that great
people, which he has expressively termed " the
shadow of an everlasting audience," Sir Edward Bul-
wer Lytton has written " Lucretia"—if read rightly,
it will not have been written in vain.

NARROW ESCAPE OF THE KING

OF SWEDEN.

STOCKHOLM, Nov. 27.—Yesterday at noon an ill-
dressed young man appeared at the Palace, and with
violent gesticulation, required Colonel Peyron, his
Majesty's Chamberlain on duty, to procure him audience
of the King. The Chamberlain declining to do so, he
threatened the Colonel with a pistol, which he drew
from his pocket, and soon afterwards aimed a secomd
pistol at Count Horn, Governor of the Palace, who had
hastened with some men from the guard-house to arrest
him. The pistol was discharged, happily without in
juring any one. From the examination of the prisoner,
which immediately took place in the police-office, it
appears that his name is Platen, and that he was quarter.
master in the regiment of Dalecarlia ; that he has been
for a year in the lunatic asylum of Danviken, from
which he was discharged as cured on the 20th of May,
1845, when he was sent back to his relations, and had
only been two days in Stockholm.
The two pistols were fully loaded with iron shot of
different sizes. The reports of the physicians who have
examined him state that he is completely insane ; and he
will, therefore, be sent again to the hospital at Danviken.
There is reason to believe tha t the intentions of this unfor-
tunate man were not so criminal as they at first appear.
In consequence of the danger which threatened the King
yesterday, the audience at the theatre called for the
national hymn, which was sung amidst the loudest ap-
plause. Th© Post och Inrikes Tidninger gave what has
been found the most authentic of the reports in circula-
tion. The so-called Colonel Van Platen, when he
required the captain of the guard to introduce him to
Colonel Peyron, was extremely dirty and ill-dressed,
that when he announced his desire to hare an audience
of the King, the latter gave him an evasive answer, and
desired him to leave the palace, and to come another
day. He then repeated his refusal; upon which the man
declined to state any particulars of what he desired of
the King, and immediately drew out a pistol, and held
it to the breast cf the Chamberlain, exclaiming, " An-
nounce me, or I will fire !" The Chamberlain turned aside
the muzzle, and got possession of the pistol, sent to the
guard• house and to the police-office, all which the assassin
observed, but remained still, with his hand in his pocket.
About an hour afterwards Count Von Horn, the Gover-
nor of the Palace, came from the guard-house, and
ordered his men to arrest Platen, who stood behind a
screen, and drew out a second pistol, and fired at the
Count, whose cheek and temples were grazed by the
shot, so that his hair was singed, and the bullet entered
the wall.

Platen was seized without much resistance, and taken
to the police-office, where during his examination he
spoke very boldly, threatened the officers, the French
Ministers, &e. On examination he was fuund to have a
large knife, a watch with a metal case, some printed
phicards in bad Swedish, which were to prove that his
proper name was the Duke of Bourbon ; a bundle of
papers, but not a penny in money. On being questioned,
he stated that it was his intention to demand the punish-
ment of those who in the year 1844 had placed him in
the lunatic asylum at Dauviken. Being asked why he
went armed, he said that a Duke of Bourbon never went
unarmed. In less than an hour he seemed to have for-
gotten everything that had passed in the forenoon. The
physicians declared him to be insane in the highest de-
gree. Yesterday afternoon he was again conveyed to
the lunatic asylum. He is a young man, between twenty-
three and twenty-six years of age, and has suffered
mental aberration for many years, but without showing
any violence.
According to the Afton Bled, his name is A. G. G.
Von Platen, born 1822, son of Captain C. A. Von Platen,
and has served as quartermaster in the regiment of
Delecarlia.

GRATUITOUS MARRIAGES ♦T ST. JOHN'S
CLERKENWELL.--Yesterday morning, pursuant to a
notice, some week since issued by the Rev. Hugh
Hughes, the rector of St. John's, Clerkenwell, that mar-
riages would be celebrated by him gratuitously between
parties who were too poor to pay the marriage fees, the
Rev. Gentleman attended to perform the ceremony. In
the district Df St. John's, Clerkenwell, comprising a
population of above 9,000 inhabitants, the majority are
of the lowest class, numbers of whom cohabit together
without the performance of the marriage ceremony, in
extenuation of which they almost invariably plead that
they are too poor to pay the marriage fees. With a
view of remedying this moral evil, the rector published
notice that he 'souk] twice a year, via., on the first Mon-
day in December, and on the first Monday in May,
marry such parties free of charge, and that the clerk
should give notice of such banns without fee. Yesterday
morning only two couples availed themselves of the
benefit thus offered. The rector has further given notice
that the children of the parish will be christened and
registered iwithout fee on Advent Sunday and Whit-
Sunday in each year.
SUICIDE or A FEMALE IN THE PRESENCE OF HER
CHILDREN.--Yesterday, Mr. William Carter held au
inquest at the Cannon, West Moulsey, on the body of
Mary Anne Watford, aged twenty-four, the wife of a
ballast gatherer. On the evening of Friday last, a
person in whose house the deceased lodged was asto-
nished at hearing screams of children proceeding from
the deceased's apartment. The children of the de-
ceased were found on the bed, and screaming moat
violently, and their mother was discovered hanging to
the bedpost. The deceased was cut down, and a mes
seuger was sent to Hampton Court for medical assist
ance, but by the time the surgeon arrived life was found
to be extinct. It was proved that the deceased had been
for some time in a low and desponding state of mind,
arising from ill health. The jury returned a verdict,
" That the deceased destroyed her life whilst of unsound
mind."

SUICIDE IN THE STRAND UNION WORKHOUSE.—
Yesterday information was forwarded to the coroner's
office, of the death of Charles Fisher, aged 38, an inmate
of the Strand Union Workhouse, Cleveland street, St.
Pancras, who committed suicide under the following
circumstances :—The deceased (a baker) had been re-
siding with his brother, of the same business, in I,locr-
street, Seven Dials. In consequence of his exhibition
of mental derangement, it was resolved by his friends
that he should be placed under some restraint, lest he
should lay violent hands on himself. On Thursday week
he was removed to the above institution in a state of in-
sanity, where he was attended by Mr. Jones, the house-
surgeon. That gentleman not considering his case
sufficiently bad for immediate confinement, the deceased
was placed in the accident ward of the infirmary, on the
fourth floor. The unfortunate man continued until nine
the same evening giving vent to all kinds of incoherent
expressions, when he suddenly arose, and proceeded to
an adjoining closet, opened the window, and precipitated
himself therefrom. An alarm was immediately given,
and on being picked up he seemed comparatively unhurt;
but on a medical examination it was proved that he had
received severe internal injuries. He continued to linger
until Saturday evening last, when death put a period to
his sufferings.
THE STOCK OF THE LONDON AND NORTII-WESTERN
COMPANY.—We understand that the directors of the
above company, in consequence of the recent amalgama-
tion of the various companies in their interest, have re-
solved upon valuing the whole of their stock of locomo-
tive power, &c., and for this purpose have appointed Mr.
M'Connell, locomotive engineer of the Bristol and Bir-
mingham Company, in conjunction with two other
gentlemen, to examine and value the engines, tools, &c.
The inspection and valuation of the stock will commence
to-clay, at Crewe, where a town has sprung up, since the
Grand Junction Company commenced the making of the
engines, carriages, &c., used upon their line. A few
months ago we gave' a description of this important ma-
nufactory, its various departments, extensive works, &c.,
and if access can be had to the details of this vast
stock, we shall again revert to the subject. Anything
like a rough estimate of the stock would be little short of
conjecture.
BODY or A CHILD FOUND.—The dead body of a
new-born child, wrapped up in a handkerchief, was dis-
covered yesterday morning, shortly before eight o'clock,
by a boy within the enclosure surrounding the parish
church of St. Marylebone. It was conveyed by a
policeman to the workhow, where it awaits the coro-
ner's inquest.