The Sun.
London, England, 1846-01-09 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

MURRAY'S HOME and COLONIAL LIBRARY.
Ms. AX V., XX VM., XXIX.
norrow's Gipsies in Spain—Pay is I. and it.
The Fall of tLe Jesuits.
Welcome in its present, or in any shape, is Mr.
George Borrow's account of the Gipsies in Spain''
it carries with it such a freshness, such an animation,
and such an air of truthfulness and nature, as to
arrest our attention and engage our sympathies.
Hence it is, that although it now appears before us
simply as a r. print, we turn to it again with all the
undiminished appetite of novelty, ready to wander
once more in its wanderings, to conjecture once more
with its conjectures, to laugh with its laughter, to
meditate with its meditations. By its own unassisted
merits this publication has acquired no inconsiderable
popularity, and the secret of its success is merely
attributable to two facts—first, the extreme novelty
of the undertaking; and, secondly, that whatever is
narrated flows from the minute and personal ob-
servations of one intimately conversant with his sub-
ject. Not only are we introduced to the moral
economy and social peculiarities of the Gitanos on
the peninsula, but in the preliminary chapter par-
ticular sections are allotted to the Zigani of Russia,
the sL, me tribe in Hungary, the Roumuuni of Wal-
lachia,
and the Gipsies who infest all quarters of the
British dominions—all of these people coming under
the generic denomination of Rommany, a name
which they apply to themselves and their language.
In the very outset Mr. Borrow confesses to more
than a partiality for this strange and errant race, and
his adventures place these assurances beyond a doubt,
while they stamp the author as a kind of civilised
Bamfylde Moore Carew. Still, besides the fascina-
tion of this singular affection, which breathes the
spirit of old story-books, and reminds us forcibly of
the introduction to Bulwer's " Disowned," we
possess a guarantee in this very circumstance to the
accuracy and copiousness of the writer's information.
And as every one must place reliance upon the de-
scriptions and assertions of Mr. Catlin with respect to
the Red Indians of North America, in consequence of
his long sojournment and association with them, so
must every credence be awarded to the delineations
given by Mr. Borrow of the various Gipsy hordes in
Spain. It were useless to particularise the plan and
features of a work already so familiar to the English
reader ; nevertheless, we may possibly be allowed,
without any accusation of detail, to make a cursory
reference to the fragments of Zincali poetry ap-
pended to the Second Part. These fragments have a
peculiar interest, seeing that they body forth the
rugged, but fiery, characteristics of a very ancient
people ; and though they raise no pretensions to
rythmecal elegance, they have a nerve and energy of
a remarkable kind. " The Pestilence," far example,
though brief almost to meagreness, contains many
fine thoughts and forcible expressions. The opening,
"I'm resolved now to tell,
In the speech of gipsy -land,
All the horror that befel
In this city huge and grand,"
breaks in upon the imagination with a sternness of
import most appropriate to the theme; and when
it remarks how God, "in the midst of summertide,
his right hand on high did rear," the picture, though
miniature in size, has a gloom akin to that of Mar-
tin ; and this is admirably summed up in the con-
clusion—

" All a sickly aspect wear:
Say what heart such sights could brook—
Wail and woe whet e'er you look—
Wail and woe and ghastly care."
Altogether, " Borrow's Gipsies in Spain" bears about
it such a newness of tone and material, that it forms
an acceptable,addition to literature, and Mr. Murray
could not well have selected a better book for reprint
in his serial. An accurate translation of the "Fall
of the Jesuits," by Count Alexis de Saint-Preist—(a
happy name, by the way, for such a volume)—forms
the twenty-fifth part of the " Home and Colonial
Library." Time after time have the nations of
Europe been startled by a formal suppression of that
wonderful body of wonderful men, the disciples of
Ignatius Loyola, and time after time have they risen
uninjured from the opposition of popes and princes,
to extend the influence of their wily and astute prin.
ciples, and assert their claims to power and perpetua-
tion. The epoch of this temporary downfal, which
is chosen in the present narrative, is perhaps the most
important in their history, namely, in the latter part
of the last century. A period more eventful in every
respect, and one of more historical importance, could
not have been selected, and the narrator specifies each
occurrence which led to the great catastrophe of the
Jesuits with precision and clearness, even to the mo-
ment when Pius VII. issued his bull, Solicitudo om-
niurn ecclesiarum, in the August of 1814, reinstating
the society in all their former privileges, and re-
establishing them throughout the length and breadth
of Christendom. As a description of the most re-
markable juncture in the status of the most remark-
able association on the face of the earth, this book is
both valuable and interesting.

111AGAZINES.—{CONTINUED.)
JERROLD'S SHILLING MAGAZINE,
We have but one chapter of the " History of St.
Giles and St. James" in this number, in which is
described the robbery of Tangle's room by Tom
Blast and Jingo, while the worthy attorney is snoring
from the fumes f the rector's port wine. The thieves
get clear off with the booty—that heavy box of gold
brought down for the purpose of purchasing the suf-
frages of the free and independent electors of Liquor-
ish ; and Tangle, on being awakened by Folder at a
somewhat later hour on the following morning,
discovers his loss and alarms the house.
Let all those who fancy themselves possessed of
genius, because their friends tell them so, and who
imagine that they have but to write, and print, and
publish, to secure to themselves fame and fortune, let
all aspirants after literary eminence study the paper
entitled " Men of Letters and their Abettors." It may
save them many a pang. We are glad to see William
Howitt among the contributors to this magazine. He
this month commences a series of sketches of English
scenes and characters, and judging from the opening
one they will be in every way worthy of him and of the
magazine. The: admirable series of papers, :entitled
the " Englishman in Prussia," is here concluded,
and "Juniper Hedgehog," communicates, in his own
quaint style, his opinions on the sayings and doings of
the month. In the following recommendation to the
" First Lord of the Admiralty" we cordially concur:—
" You've several new frigates at the present moment
on the stocks. They must all, when they're launched,
be christened. Well, why not call one of the best and
trimmest of the lot, Sidney Betnard? You can't think
that she'd sail the slower, or answer her helm less
readily, for bearing such a name ? You can't think that
the jack tars aboard of her, nay that the sailors of the
whole fleet, would think the worse of the craft, because
called after the sailor's friend—the noble, courageous
man who died in the sailor's service. Well, my Lord,
what do you say ? Do you think the proposal a bold
one—do you fear that the nobs of the navy would look
glum at it ? Let us talk the matter over.
" In the first place, my Lord, run your eye down the
Admiralty List. Well, saving your presence, wouldn't
you think that sometimes Satan, in a waggish humour,
named her Majesty's ships, and not Christian men ?
Here we have Griffins, and Rattlesnakes, and Vipers,
and. Furies, and Harpies, and all sorts of terrible and
filthy things, all complimented and honoured by the
Lords of the Admiralty, as if they were their own dearest
pets, and they wanted to show the world how much they
thought of 'em. Now, for once, let their Lordships show
they can have another sort of favourite. At the present
moment they may intend to call one of their new frigates
the Flea, or the Spider, or the Cockroach, or the Pole-
cat, or the Water. rat. Let them pause awhile ; let
them think again, and, renouncing the foolish notion,
determine to name her the Sidney Bernard. It is a
name that must glorify her timbers ; and who knows—
even her Gracious Majesty, delighted with their Lord-
ships' choice—might, herself, condescend to christen her.
'Twould be a pretty compliment from a British Queen to
Britannia !

" Consider, my Lord, what a very nice thing it would
be to have a Sidney Bernard afloat! How pleasantly
the fleet would look upon her ! How, at certain times,
in every sea of the world, she would carry with her the
recollection of the gallent surgeon—how she would help
to keep up the spirits of the young and struggling, who,
wherever her pennant was seen, would see the: gratitude
of England to humble, but heroic men ! It is worth
while, depend upon it, my Lord, to keep up this spirit ;
so have nothing to do with the Flea—cast aside the
Cockroach—renounce the Polecat, and stick to nothing
but the Sidney Bernard."

Sidney Bernard, was one of the noblest-minded of
Britain's sons—his bravery was of a higher order far
than that mere physical courage which confronts
death " amidst the tumult of the strife" upon the
battle-field,
" For fame is there, to say who bleeds,
And honour's eye on daring deeds ;"
but he grappled with death in the pest-ship—he led
the forlorn hope against the plague—he fell gloriously,
and a grateful nation has a sacred duty to perform to
his memory. Has he left no wife, no children, no
mother, no sisters, no brothers, behind him ? If he
have he has left them as a legacy to his country, and
let us provide for them, not as his merits deserve, for
that is impossible but as a great nation should provide
u he has left to our
for its adopted children. Name a frigate after him—
citarise
_weitll ; thoseipsrovwideellfortoo;b
whomt there is a duty
which we owe to ourselves, and we shall
be dishonoured if we do not consecrate to
his memory a niche in our national temple.
A. monument, a national monument, must be erected,
not to his honour—for nothing that we can do can
add to the vast meed of honour which he hath for
himself acquired—but to our gratitude ; and let the
genius of our artists, and the " cunning workman-
ship" of our artificers, exhaust themselves in the de-
signing and the erecting of that monument, still
must they fail in doing justice to the noble subject
which they have in hand. But, above all, let not
that monument, like too many of our national
monuments, be disgraced by the miserable, mean,
pitiful, niggardly, insulting inscription " Erected at