The Sun.
London, England, 1848-03-02 00:00:00

of Barker's perverse fancy for the rascalliest wind that
blows. Boreas is a ruffian and a bully, but the north-
east is a rascal. ./Eolus has not such a vicious, ill-con-
ditioned blast in his puffy bags. It withers like an evil
eye ; it blights like a parent's curse ; unkinder than in-
gratitude; more biting than forgotten benefits. It comes
with sickness on its wings, and rejoices only the doctor
and the sexton. When Charon hoists a sail, it is the
north-east that swells it; purveys for Famine and caters
for Pestilence. From the savage realms of the Czar it
comes with desolating sweep, laden with moans from Si-
berian mines, and sounding like echoes of the knout; but
not a fragrant breath brings it from all the rosaries of
Persia, so destitute is it of grace and charity. While it
reigns, no fire heats, no raiment comforts, no wails pro-
tect,—cold without bracing, scorching without warmth.
It deflowers the earth, and it wans the sky. The ghast-
liest of hues overspreads the face of things, and collapsing
Nature seems expiring of cholera."

AN ENGLISH bILECHANT.

" Mr. Spread was one of the freshest and handsomest

men of fifty its England. His complexion was florid, his
nose aquiline, his chin double, nay, triple; a perpetual
pleasantry seemed to be playing about his mouth, and he
had that kind of an eye that seems to be always looking
out for somebody to do a service to, or something to say
a gay or good-natured thing of. In person, he was of
considerable volume, but the protuberance was not a
parte ante, as in the aldermanic and episcopal con-
formations; he carried his head erect, and at the same
time somewhat advanced, so that his figure had a slight
resemblance to a crescent, with the convexity behind, and
this perhaps was the reason that he began to carry a cane
long before his limbs were conscious of any diminution
of their vigour and elasticity. •The manners of Mr.
Spread were a little formal, slightly Grandisonian and
Sir Rog,erish. For a moment you thought him pompous,
hut directly he smiled or talked, the amenity of his eye,
or the hilarity of his voice, entirely removed the impres-
sion. He dressed well, with a tendency to the fashions
gone by, rather than to the modes of the day. For
instance, he always appeared in a white cravat, and
never wore a frock-coat, or carried his watch in his
waistcoat pocket. To these few personal details we
have only to add that he was short-sighted, and wore a
ponderous double eye-glass, resolvable into a pair of
spectacles, and pendant from his neck by a gold chain of
corresponding massiveness.
" Mr. Spread was the model of a man of business;
activity without bustle, dispatch without hurry, form
without punctilio, order without rigidness, dexterity
without craft, vigilance without suspicion. Business
inundated without overwhelming him, and care neither
corroded his mind, nor sat on his brow. It was wonder-
' tul with what perfect serenity and ease he managed the
multiplicity of affairs, private and public, in which he
either was involved of necessity, or spontaneously
engaged himself. lie felt as every man ought to feel,
that he had duties outside his counting-house, and
obligations to society, as well as to his wife and children.
lie never shrank from any of the responsibilities of life;
he was a magistrate, a juror, an elector, and at one time
had, at a great personal inconvenience, even consented to
go into Parliament, because the constituency of a large
manufacturing town insisted upon having him to repre-
sent them, and his refusal to gratify their wishes would
have endangered the success of the liberal interest.
Then, if a relation or an old school-fellow desired to
name him his executor, or was anxious that, after his
decease, Mr. Spread should be the legal guardian, as
well as the hereditary friend of his children, to refuse to
act in either capacity would have been utterly foreign to
his character. Nor was this all; he was (perhaps Mrs.
Spread had helped to make him so), a lover of literature
and art, for ever ready to aid with his purse, and, what
was to him still more valuable, his time, in the establish-
ment or direction of any society or institution calculated
to advance science, or diffuse exalted tastes and sterling
information through the country. Of giving his coun-
tenance to benevolent undertakings, he was more chary;
he hated the false philanthropy that creates distress
with one hand, while it relieves it with the other; he
objected to paying Paul out of the robbery of Peter;
held that there was no more difficult problem than to
help the poor without sowing the seeds of pauperism;
but of all things what he most deprecated in disposing
of the funds at our command for charitable uses, was
their investment in sentimental speculations or romantic
schemes, to make bad Christians of gipsies or Jews,
confer the blessings of episcopacy upon the South Sea
islanders, or discover the lost tribes of Israel in the tents
or the Calinuck Tartars. He thought that there was
ignorance and irreligion enough at our owa doors, to
employ both our purses and our piety ; and that the
home department in England and Ireland ought to be
tolerably well administered, both in civil and ecclesiastical
affairs, before it could be our duty to interfere either in
the secular or the spiritual concerns of Madagascar or
Otaheite."

When depicting the timidity and lowliness of Grace,
the author says, " She looked like a poor girl found
guilty of the crime of poverty and sentenced to shirt-
making for life, a seven years' term, at most, of neces-
sity and needlework." In another chapter he observes,
that " to combine the lot of poverty with the state of
enjoyment, is as difficult a problem as to square the
circle or ascertain the longitude at sea." In a de-
scription (a capital description by the way) of the
sitting-room at the Spreads there occurs this sen-
tence :—" You sometimes desired to have the Riot
Act read to disperse a little monster meeting of stools,
and now and then wished a devotion chair at the
deuce." Christmas, again, he mentions as a season
when " the ivy and miseltoe have superseded the
birch." Of Mrs. harry Farquhar he says, " she had
a pert, expert, and malapert tongue, that could libel
or scold one in a leash of languages." Several of the
conceits and incidents in the volume verge beyond the
limits of extravagance, but altogether the " Bachelor
of the Albany" is a genuine book, a bank redolent of
the humour, the domesticity, and the sarcastic suavity
of England.

THE PEASANT AND HIS LANDLORD.
Translated from the Swedish, by Mary Howitt. 3 Vols.
If we are not mistaken it is to Mary Howitt that
we were indebted for our first introduction to the
literature of the North. It was she who, by her
admirable translations of the admirable works of
Frederika Bremer and Christian Andersen, first

made English readers acquainted with the attractive
nature of northern fictions, and the high merit of
Danish and Swedish novelists. The names and
writings of Miss Bremer and Christian Andersen are
now familiar to us as those of our native authors, and
the ',domestic narratives and fanciful imaginings of
Sweden and Denmark are almost as well known in
England as are the brilliant romans of Paris, or the
mysterious legends of Germany. And this is ,a fact
in which we heartily rejoice, not only becouse we hail
with pleasure every event which facilitates inter-
national intercourse ; but also because the light lite-
rature of the North, judging from the specimens we
have met with, seem to be generally pervaded by a
healthy and lofty spirit, and forms a strong and fa-
vourable contrast to some of the recent fictions of
other nations. The translation of " The Peasant and
his Landlord" introduces to us an authoress as
yet unknown in this country— the Baroness
Knorring, who Mrs. Howitt assures us is quali-
fied to take a place beside Miss Bremer
and Andersen. After reading the " Peasant and
his Landlord," there are few who will dissent from
this assertion. Of a place beside the authors of
" Home " and " The Improvisatore," Baroness
Knorring is most assuredly right worthy—her place
would perhaps be between them, for in some respects
she resembles both the one and the other, while,in very
many she surpasses both. Miss Bremer chiefly excells
in the vraisentblance of her portraiture. Her "interiors"
have all an air of reality and her various characters a
strongly marked individuality. This is effected not
only by a truthfulness of conception in the first
instance, but by a minute attention to details in the
filling up, like the thousand touches a careful artist
may bestow upon an apparently finished picture,
invisible in themselves, but most visible in their
effect. Andersen, on the contrary, though he has
given us some accurate sketches of Danish life, is
generally remarkable for the playful vagaries of his
fancy, and the poetic flights of an imagination which
can invest the meanest object with a beautiful ideality.
Madame Knorring, in a certain degree, combines
both these attractive characteristics ; her domestic
scenes and incidents are invested with as complete an
air of actuality as any of those detailed to us in
the " Home," while her pages abound with as much
true poetry as may be met with in the " Poet's
Bazaar." The theme of this tale, "The Peasant
and his Landlord," is a somewhat novel one. It is
essentially a tale of peasant life, its heroes and
heroines are all of the lower orders ; but it is a tale
very different from ordinary peasant histories, and
its humble dramatis persona are depicted in a manner
very different from that in which such classes are usually
described. Madame Knorring tells us in her introduc-
tion that she has passed nearly all her life amid rural
scenes, and has consequently had a constant oppor-
tunity of marking the various peculiarities of peasant
life and peasant character. And these peculiarities
she affirms are very striking ones, she finds fault,
and very justly, with the generality of authors who,
in speaking of the poorer classes dilate chiefly upon
their poverty, and seem to bring them forward merely
for the sake of contrasting their condition with that
of their richer brethren. Madame Knorring, how-
ever, regards them as a class per se, interesting ill
themselves without regard to their relation to others.
The author of the "Princess" has solved the
difficult questions regarding the superior rights
of men and women, by declaring that
" woman is not U
of The
man, but diverrse,"
and in like manner, the authoress
Peasant and his Landlord," without entering into
political dissertations on the rights of man, seems to
look on the two great divisions of rich and poor not
as upper and lower orders, but as different ranks,
equally important and worthy of interest in their
different ways. Taking a group of peasants for her
heroes, and, their passions and sufferings for her theme,
she pourtrays to us as lofty sentiments, as tender and
pure affections, as noble self-sacrifice, and as un-
affected devotion, as if her characters had been taken
from among the educated and refined,or her plot selected
from the records of ancient chivalry ; and in so doing
she has not been led away by a warm imagination,
she has consulted the observations of experience.
She assures us that among the unlettered and igno-
rant peasantry by whom she is constantly sur-
rounded she has remarked the existence of many