The Sun.
London, England, 1846-07-27 00:00:00

duty of 30 per cent,, ad valorem—alabaster,: German
silver plate, ale, beer, or porter, in casks or bottled, walk-
ing-stieks, chinas earthenware, &c. Fourth,. to pay_ a.
duty of 25 per 'cent., ad v-ilo,eni. Under this tax,
among other articles, are buttons and button moulds
of all kinds, several descriptions of drugs, cables, cord-
age, tarred or otherwise, cotton laces, cotton insertings,
cotton trimming laces, cotton laces and braids,- manu-
factures composed wholly of cotton, not otherwise pro--;
vided fOr ; manufactures of goats' hair or mohair, &c. ;
mafting, Chinese and-other floor matting, and_ matting.
made of flags, jute, or grass ; nianufactures_ofsilk, or. of.
which sill: be-a corniionent material, :not otherwise
provided lbr ;.:.thanufactares of Worsted,
.or.. of
'worsted shall be a component Material; not otherwise'
provided for ; slates, other than roofing slates Woollen
Woollen
and worsted yarn. Fifth, articles to pay adttty of 20'
per cent. Sixth, articles to -pay a duty of 15 per cent.
Seventh, articles to pay a duty of 10 per cent. ad valorem,.
in which are included books, printed magaznes, pamph-
lets, periodicals, and illustrated newspapers, bound or,
unbound ; liempseed, linseed, and rapeseed, &c. ; Ara-
bic, East India, Senagal, &c., gums ; furs ; tallow, soap
stocks and soap stuff. ' • chronometers, watches, and parts
of watches, &c. Eighth, to pay a duty of 5 per cent.
Ninth, articles free or duty.
Sec. 3 further enacts that from and after the Ist of
December, there- shall be levied, collected; and•paid on
all goods, wares, and merchandise imported frOm foreign
countries, and not especially provided fur in this Aet, a
duty.of 20 pet cent. ad ralorenz.
See. 4 provides for the weighing or measuring ofgoods,
when such is not contained in the invoice or entry.
Sec. 5 allows a drawback in the duty on piek:ed fish
of the fisheries of the United States equal to the amount
of duty paid for salt, if said fiAl be cured with foreign
salt.

Sec. 6 fixes the 2d of December fur the commencement
of the Act.

Sec. 7 authorises goods from the America side of the
Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn to remain in the pub-
lic stores (if so desired) for one year, instead of 90 days,
as enacted by the Act of 1842.

Sec. 8 enacts, that in no instance shall the duty be as-
sured upon au amount less than the invoice value.
Owners, consignees, or agents of imports which have
been actually purchased, may, on entry of the same,
make such addition in the entry to the cost or value
given in the invoice as in his opinion may raise the same
to the true market value of such imports in the prin-
cipal markets of the country whence the importation
shall have been made, &c., and add thereto all costs and
charges which, ut.der existing laws, would form part of
the true value at the port where the same may be en-
tered, upon which the duties should be assessed.
See. 9. Value of goods may be appraised, should the
Custom-house authorities deem them entered at too
small an amount ; and in case the United States ap-
praisers shall deem them under value, the collector of
the district to have power to sell the said goods by auc-
tion within twenty days, for an attempt to defraud the
United States Customs.

Sec. 10 relates to appointment of officers under the
Act, who will be required to take an oath of office.
Sec. 11 prohibits all persons connected with the Ame-
rican navy, in any ship of the United States, importing
any article subject to duties specified above, &c.

LITERATURE.
THE WORKS OF WALTER SAVAGE
LANDOR. 2 Vols.

Without enjoying one tittle of their immediate popu-
larity, the writings of Walter Savage Landor will sur-
vive those of many hundreds of his contemporary
authors. Convinced of this fact, and regarding him as
one of our old familiar favourites, it is with an unusual
feeling of satisfaction that we observe the productions
of this extraordinary man collected together in such a
goodly shape, and of such substantial dimensions. The
intellect of Landor is altogether without a parallel; it
is a combination of subtleties and solidities; it is at
once peculiarly imaginative and peculiarly matter-of-
fact. From the circumstance, however, of his never
struggling to propitiate the multitude, either in so
flavouring his compositions as to consort with their
palate, or in modifying his own particular views upon
the
.bias of their opinions, he never has obtained, and
possibly. never will obtain, any remarkable degree of
popularity. Lander has not gone out of his way one
jot to seek the sympathies of others; he has not followed
the common track; he has proceeded along his own
peculiar pathway apparently indifferent to, or careless of,
any enthusiastic approbation. Those who have sympathised
with him have gone expressly out of their ordinary course
for the purpose of doing so. Nevertheless, in despite of
this enormous disadvantage, the writings of Mr. Landor
have gained him many earnest admirers. The. produc-
tions with which his name has become peculiarly asso-
ciated, and which are in truth among the most remark-
able literary performances of this half century, are the
Imaginary Conversations. In these; he has adventured
much; their very conception was an audacity, but they
have proved to an eminent degree successful. They dis-
play in the writer a very extraordinary appreciation of
character, a keen perception, and an astute identifica-
tion of the idiosyncrasies of the most remarkable
personages mentioned in history. And though occa-
sionally the masquerade costume slips off the shoulder,
revealing Lander under the cowl of Ira Fillippo, or the
surcoat of Henry YIII., or the toga of Lucian, or the
d -üblet of Cromwell, the illusion is on the average com
plete, and the simple gentleman of the nineteenth cen-
tury is forgotten in the heroes and heroines of antiquity.
Occasionally, we have said, the deception is overlooked
and the author speaks instead of the character he is en-
deavouring to delineate ; and hence it is, possibly, that
we conceive those Conversations to be the most brilliant
and unflavoured in which Mr. Landor himself takes an
avowed part. Ile is then no lenges cramped by the
consciousness that he is merely " acting" ; the ima-
gination is unfettered by conventionalities; then, indeed,
he will talk—" Ye Gds ! bow be will talk!" ,As these
effusions are already tolerably familiar to most people, from
their periodical appearance in Blackwood's Magazine and
elsewhere, it would be superfluous to particularise all
those excellencies with which they are so unquestionably
and so aoknowledgedly exuberant. If they have one
characteristic more strongly developed than another it is
wit—real, genuine, golden wit. From them we could
cull a superb volume of epigrammatic sentences, witty
sayings, novel and startling truths, clothed in the dain-
tiest d:ction, and perfect jewels of poetical thought and
fanciful illustration. Here is one, taken literally hap-
hazzard : it is a definition of the eloquence of Plato—
ride vol. ii p. 25 —" Certainly there was never so much
eloquence with so little animation. When he has heated
his oven he forgets to put the bread into it ; instead of
which he throws in another bundle of faggots.
Ills words and sentences are often too large
for the place they occupy. If a water-mellon
is not to be placed in an oyster-shell, neither
is a grain of millet in a golden salver. At high festi-
vals a full band may enter : ordinary conversation goes
on better without it " In writing after the fashion he has
herein adopted, Landor reminds us of one of those great
men he makes Michael-Angelo Buonarroti describe as
" coming spontaneously forward, and moving with the
multitude from the front, stilling the voice of the cryer,
and scattering the plumes of the imposter." The in-
tellect of our author retains, however, one grievous and
monstrous blemish—one that obtrudes its obnoxious
presence even in his choicest passages, jarring in
amongst the music of his tongue, and poisoning the
most gorgeous flowers of his tansy. That blemish is
prejudice. There are personages, circumstances, prin.
cip!es, and occurrences which Landor cannot behold
except through a curtain of prejudice ; his view of
them is bturred, and smutched, and clouded by
partiality. He thinks strongly and independently, in
some instances clearly, but in others he won't listen to
anything but the dictates of his blind preconceptions.
Every nook and crevice and inlet of his mind are at
these moments stuffed up against the pleadings of reason
and common sense. In Lord Brougham he altogether
denies the existence of genius, likening him to a bag-
pipe " followed by vile animals in fantastical dresses and,
antic gestures, and surrounded by the clamorous and
disorderly !" In Napoleon he sees only " what you
would ridicule in a gipsy on the road-side," and figura-
tively considers that he "was pushed into a menagerie
of monkeys, and fainted at their grimaces!" What on
earth does Mr. Landor mean by those senseless anti-
thesis, where he says that in Napoleon's latter
years of power "he fought without aim, van.
quished without glory, and , perished • - without.
defeat ?" What on earth is their_
~meaning ?
"He fought without aim ;" •was the preservation of the
greatest empire man ever created nothing to aim for ?
was the annihilation of legitimacy nothing to aim for ?
was the destruction of those foreign armies who were
struggling to force a king on the French people against
their will nothing to aim for ? "He was vanquished
without glory" ; were Lutzen, Bautzen, Champ-Aubert,
Montrnirail, Chatteau-Thierry, Vauchamps, and Ligny
inglorious ? was the triumphal passage from Elba to the
Tuileries inglorious ? was the Champ de Mai, where he
virtually proclaimed himself a republican emperor, in-
glorious ? "He perished without defeat"—that, at least,
is true ; we grant that, but with -a different inference
from that intended. Such are the stolid and wilful pre-
judices of Walter Savage Landor ; but, even
thus tarnished, his Imaginary Conversations wip
live ; they are animated with an abundance of sents-'
ments, sarcasm, drollery, reflectiveness, wisdom, and
(as we have said before) wit. Besides all this
they have the nerve of originality. Amongst
his other compositions, the " Citatimn and Examination
of William Shaisspere" is the most ingenious and the
most 'venturesome. In the characters of Sir Thomas
Lucy and Sir Silas Gough, before whom young Willy
is examined for deer-stealing, we recognise the pre-
figuring of Justice Shallow and Sir Hugh Evans. The
scene is pourtrayed with admirable finesse, and the
shrewd, pert, adroit, and sarcastic retorts of Shakspere
are scarcely unworthy of having really proceeded from
his lips on that occasion. " The Pentameron," again,
is a marvellous performance : it is the communion of such
souls as those of Boccaccio and Petrarch. There is an
idealism and an indistinctness about the tone of their
converse which imparts to the whole an elevation and a
pathos wholly indefinable, but no less manifest to the
reader. In the " Pericles and Aspasia" on the contrary,
there is a blithesomeness and a bloom which is utterly
irresistible ; it is a combination of the beautiful and the
pure, and yet without any diminution of human interest.
It revives to us the days of classic Greece, when Alci-
biades was a boy, when the death of Clytenmestra was
shuddered at in the amphitheatres, when those lascivious
old dieties of Olympus were believed in and worshipped,
and when Cleone bent over her tablets of wax to trace a
letter to Aspasia. As a poet we do not, under correc-
tion, conceive that Walter Savage Landor will stand
upon any very exalted pedestal. Yet are the
Hellenics of exquisite music, and the Gebi of
most choice and beautiful conception. We might also,
if such were our object, collate many delicious frag-
ments of verse from the " Acts and Scenes" which are
grouped together towards the conclusion of the second
volume. But there is no one poem which can be classed
with the masterpieces in our language, and hence we
consider Lander as destined to obtain no very extra-