The Sun.
London, England, 1870-03-05 00:00:00

readers of SylVanus Urban, that May instalment of
" The Order of the King" will be an Order of De-
liverance ! Never did a great genius perpetrate a
more monstrous absurdity. The Month is interest-
ing, as containing a foretaste of Dr. Newman's
last and profoundest work, namely, his " Essay
towards the formation of a Grammar of Assent."
A minor story, complete in itself, is contributed by
Miss Braddon to the Belgravia for March ; appa-
rently for no better reason than to authenticate the
announcement (very welcome to all her friends)
that she is sufficiently recovered to commence, in
the next number of her periodical, a new serial tale
--the eighteenth or nineteenth, by the way, which
her rapid pen has already produced. The Court
Circular, mentioned in my last in connection with
the Sonderburg-Glucksburg rumour, has recently,
I find, passed into the hands of a new proprietary.
Among the curiosities of literature, recently pub-
lished, I would particularize a little book lately
issued from the press by Mes:rs. Sampson Low ;
a translation it is (and the work has been exqui-
sitely got up by the Anglo-American publishers
from whom it emanates), descriptive of " The
Bottom of the Sea," and of the many wonders there
lyilig perdu. Shakspere hit the notion off exactly
(as he has done most thing's, for that matter, by
the intuition of his orbicular genius), where he
speaks of the riches of the great deep, " with
sunken wreck and sunless treasury." Query, by
the way, " sunless" or " sumless ?" - Let me submit
the alternative (as a new nut to crack) to . the com-
mentators. The passage referred to might not
inaptly ha% e been selected as a motto for the title-
page of this curious little book, De Profundis. •
Several of the wonderfully illustrated works of
George Cruikshank have,during the last few months,
been re-issued from the press, after having been
long out of print. One only of them I have seen,
but it is one of the best, " Cruikshank's Omnibus,'
a world of grotesque humour and of exquisite etch-
ings from the hand that has wielded the most mar-
vellous etching-needle that ever scratched varnish
off copper-plate. The " Table Book," " Life in
London," " The Fairy Library," and " Lord Bate-
man," are also announced as having been recently
re-published. They certainly deserve the welcome
always due to the works of a really great artist, and
one, in this instance, whose genius is marked by a
splendid originality.
On Saturday I attendel the private view, at 16S,
New Bond-street, of a small, but very choice selec-
tion of pictures by living Italian artists; a collec-
tion numbering cnly thirty-eight paintings altoge-
ther. Several of them, however, are very remark-
able. The place of honour is awarded to No. 27, a
powerful, but rather melodramatic rendering, by S.
Martini, of an incident in Byron's " Prisoner of
Chillon." What charmed me especially in the ex-
hibition were two drawings by L. Fischetti (16 and
34), the " House of the Faun at Pompeii," as it
is at present, and the same restored. Three irroa-ths
ago I was standing in that house of the Faun at
Pompeii, and can, therefore, vouch for the wonderful
accuracy of the delineation. " Bad News" (11) is
certainly undiscoverable in the face of the lady
who is supposed to have just received it. The
"Evening" light in 15 is admirable, as also is the
effect of colour in (7) the " Little Pompeian
Gladiator." German, French, and Flemish exhibi-
tions have long been popularized in London, where
it is a satisfaction at last to see open to view a col-
lection, no matter how small to begin with, of pic-
tures by Italian contemporaries.

Sir William Jones's translation of the Indian
drama by Calidas, " Sacontala, or the Fatal Ring,',
which, you may remember, I announced to you as
almost immediately forthcoming, reaches me (just
as I am closing this) from the new publishing-
house opened at 21, Northumberland- street, Strand,
by Captain Charlton Tucker. A little poem, called
" Northward to Babylon," accompanies it. There
also just now comes to me, from another quarter, a
queer little " manuscript musical magazine," called
The Semiquaver.

LITERATURE.

Plumptre's Lectures on Elccut on.

A decade has elapsed since Mr. Charles John
Plumptre's reputation t,s an elocutionist was firmly
established. Fully te❑ years rgo he was lecturing
upon the elements cf elocution before the members
of the University of Oxford, uc.dec the sanction of
the Vice-Chancellor. Prior to that, before he was a
Professor of Elocution, when he was known simply in
his professioial capacity as a barrister of Gray's
Inn, he had, acquired for himself considerable dis-
tinction in the metropolis as one of the most ac-
complished Read'ers, whether of Prose or Verse, iu
an age when Reading has risen almost to the
dignity of a Fine Art. Since then—that is
to say, since the completion of Mr. Plumptre's
comparatively brief but brilliant career as an
elocutionary lecturer at Oxford—he has to the fullest
possible extent fulfilled and justified the very high
expectation raised in his regard when, following the
bent of his inclinations, or, as we may say, yielding
to the instinct of his genius, he deliberately resolved
upon leaving the bar and betaking himself perma-
nently to the edncation of, so far as he might find
the opportunity for so doing, the aspirants to dis-
tinction, whether as forensic or as pulpit orators,
who might submit themselves to his guidance, as—
what he certainly is—a Master-Elocutionist. Com-
pleting his career at Oxford, Mr. Plumptre has
now for several years fulfilled with signal ability
the duties devolving upon him as the Lecturer cn
Public Reading and Speaking at King's College,
London, in the Evening Classes Department.
Happily he has afforded us, one and all, the oppor-
tunity for judging of him, not merely by hearsay—
of estimating him not simply by the range or
scope of his reputation. Ile has now given to the
outer public the means of weighing in the
balance, his various capabilities as an instruc-
tor in Elocution. He has, in the shape of a
goodly volume of 200 pages octavo, presented to
every one who lists a series of fourteen of these
famous King's College Lectures of his on Elocution
—fourteen subdivisions of a most instructive and
comprehensive theme—the substance of the intro-
ductory Course of Lectures and Practical In-
struction he has now for some time past
been annually deliveri❑g. The book is Dedicated,
by Permission, to the Prince of Wales. It
is followed by two very remarkable appendices—
one of them singularly instructive, the other very
curiously interesting. So far as any merely printed
book on Elocution could accomplish its object, this
o❑e by Mr. Plumptre is entitled to our highest com-
mendation. The eye, the face, the voice, the
gesture are, of course, all wanting, but the argu-
ment throughout is so lucid in itself, while the
illustrations of that argument are so animated and
so singularly felicitous, that reading the work at-
tentively, page by page and lecture by lecture, is
the'next best thing to seeing and hearing the gifted
Professor himself, when, with his lips and looks of
rarest eloquence, he is in himself, in his own per-
son, exemplifying the manifold and ever-varying
charms of the all-conquering art of the Rhetorician
and Elocutionist.

JUNIOR CARLTON CLUB.