The Sun.
London, England, 1848-12-25 00:00:00

At per stone by the Carouse.

e. d. to s. d, s. d. to I. d.
Beefainferior.... • 2 6 210 Mutton, inferior 3 2 3 4
- middling .. 3 0 3 2 --- middling.. 3 6 310
- primelarge 3 2 3 4 - prime •• 4 0 4 4
- prime small 3 6 3 8 Pork, large.... ••. • 3 6 4 4
Vea1.......... - small . . 4 6 4$

WOOL.
A very moderate quantity of wool was imported into
London last week, it having amounted to only 171 bales
from Portland Bay; 30 do. from Odessa; 271 do. from
Alcxandretto; and 134 do. from llamburgh. Very little
inclination is manifested by the merchants to get into
stock; yet the demand for the best qualities of wool
must be considered steady, at full prices. The supplies
in warehouse aro by no means large for the time of Tear.

INCONSISTENCY.—It is singular sometimes how men
will encourage their neighbour in what they would dis-
approve of in themselves. Not long since nearly all the
diamond merchants in London were Quakers, who would
not have worn jewels themselves, nor allowed them to
decorate any of their families or friends; and it is no-
torious that doctors, who disapprove of luxurious eating,
generally give to their friends and patients the most
splendid entertainments.

“l•
A SQUARE YEAR.—Next year will be the square
of 43. We have not had a square year since 1764. and
another will not occur until 1936. If everything should
be squared up next year, what a glorious time we shall
hare.—Burrites Christian Citizen.

LITERATURE.
THACKERAYS CHRISTMAS BOOK.

DR. BIRCH AND HIS YOUNG FRIENDS. By

BRIGGS IN LUCE.
" Enter the Knife Boy.—Hamper for Briggses! 'L.
" Master Brown.—Hurray, Toni Briggs I 1711,,knd
you my knife !"

DUVAL THE PIRATE.
(Jones Minimus passes laden with tarts.)
" Duval.—Hullo! you small boy with the tarts! Come
here, Sir.
" Jones Minimus.—Please, Duval, they ain't mine:"
" Duval.-0 you abominable young story-teller.
[He confi the goodie"
In a different strain Mr. l'itmarshscates
writes of Chain
pionthe Lion thus:—

" When, I say I reflect as I go up and sat him a sum,
that he could whop me in two minutes, double up Prince
and the other assistant, and pitch the doctor out of Win-
dow, I can't but think how great, how generous, irpw
magnanimous a creature this is, that sits quite quiet'ftnd
good-natured, and works his equation, and ponders
through his Greek play. He might take the school-
room pillars and pull the house down if he liked.l-,He
might close the door, and demolish every one of ua,,like
Antar, the lover of Ibla; but he lets us live. He never
thrashes anybody without a cause, when woe betidelhe
tyrant or the sneak!"
Thereupon he propounds the following sentinrient:
" I think that to be strong and able to whop .every-
body would be the greatest of all gifts I" We'4Ould
extract many of the capital passages, such for example
as the " Tragedy" enacted by Master Backhottieand
Master Lurcher, or as the preposterously absurd
scene performed in the dormitories by IVraster .ffew-
lett (in bed) and Master Nightingale (in his Alin);
but we desist from a solicitude not to participate in
any manner in the piratical character of Dural, the
Corsair of Rodwell Regis. The book is •ailiood,
jocose, merry, well -natured extravagance—al, book
fit for the joyous season when the children are Ibst in
the fun of snap•dragon and blindman's buff, mut when
the stripling lures his partner in the country-dance
under the pendant snare of the mistletoe. •

ORACLES FROM TIM BRITISH POETS.
By James Smith.
Taking a suggestion from the American " Oracles"
of Poetry, Mr. Smith has here produced a chill:sling
little volume for the drawing-room table—consisting
of quotations from the bards of England. A question
is propounded, and in answer to this question come
a series of sentences from one or other of Our fa-
vourite poets. For example :—" What is your :cha-
racter ?" Dryden replies—

" Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, '
You're everything by starts (?) and nothing long."
Again ; "What is the personal appearance of your
ladye-lave ?"—Keats responds with his elegant Or-
traiture of youthful beauty, when
" behind each ample curl
•
Peeps the richness of a pearl.
Downward, too, flows many a tress
With a glossy waviness,
Full and round like globes that rise 4
From the censer to the skies."
Or Ford quaintly tells us of the variety visibii is
her countenance—
" For colour, lips; for sweet perfumes, her breath";
For jewels, eyes; for threads of purest gold,
Hair; for 'delicious choice of flowers, cheeks."
Or Ben Jonson exclaims in rapture that her

—" soft lip
Would tempt you to eternity of kissing."
" What is the'personal appearance of your lover ?"
Fluellen, or Sir Hugh Evans (we forget which)
answers us from Shakspere—" His face is all bu-
buckles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames of fire;
and his lips plow at his nose, and it is like a coaloffire,
sometimes blue, and sometimes red." Fancy a young
lady coming suddenly upon such a delineation at a
" round party !" Or, fancy her, in answer to the
query " What is the character of your lover ?" haring
to say with Pope—

" A bookful blockhead, ignorantly read.
With loads of learned lumber in his head I"
"Of what musical sounds are you fond ?"—Keats
replies—

" A trumpet's silver voice:"
Shelley, in a different strain—

"Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass:"
Or, in a loftier tone, he prefers—
" Winged storms, chaunting their thunder•psalm."
Then of flowers I beautiful flowers I flowers that
Robert Montgomery has some where exquisitely called
" Orphans of dead Paradise !" flowers that cry out to
us in the delicious rhythm of Leigh Hunt—
" Oh pray believe that Angels,
From those blue dominions,
Brought us in their white laps down, 'twirl their
golden pinions I"
" What is your favourite flower ?" is the question.•
Keats says, the

" Woodbine
Of velvet leaves and bugle-blooms divine;"
Or at another moment he is enraptured with—
" A bush of may-flowers with the bees about them."
L. E. L. prefers—
" Carnations, laced with many a streak
Of blooming red on their leaflets bright."
Croly, in a similar mood, demands

"The perfumed pink, that studs
The earth with clustering ruby."
Such are the jewels amassed into this Christmas
casket—

" Jewels five words long
That on the stretch'd fore-finger of all time
Sparkle for ever'!"
The book is an elegant source of amusement, and
evinces considerable taste and a large amount of
industry.

THIRD EDITION OF " NOW AND THEN."
The avidity with which this simple and beautiful
narration has been received in England, in America,
and in France, and the rapidity with which it has
passed through two editions, speaks nobly for the
purification of the English, American, and French
multitudes. True it is, unhappily, that the New
York Stabbers, and the New York Gougers, and the
New York Key-hole Spies, still find their readers
beyond the Atlantic—true that Eugene Sue can still
violate the decencies of Parisian life by his wanton
pictures of "voluptuousness"—true that the author
or (may we whisper ?) the authoress of " Mildred
Vernon" has the audacity to clothe the seductions of
sin with the garb of virtue—yet, in spite of all this,
we take the brilliant success of " Now and Then"
as a splendid testimony of the purification of the
public taste in England, in France, and in
America. The brief but manly " Preface"
prefixed to the Third Rditien explains with
exquisite simplicity the origin of the quaint title—
" Now and Then." The explanation is merely a
footnote, and the footnote is nothing more than a
verse from the epistles of St. Paul ; this is the verse :
..;40,11,0

Mr. M. A. 7 itmarsh.
Following in the wake of the immortal " Boz,"
not only in monthly serials, but also in written stories,
Mr. Thackeray, otherwise "Michel Angelo Titmarsh,"
otherwise " Yellowplush," otherwise " Fitzboodle,"
otherwise " Jeames," otherwise the " Fat Contri-
butor," re-appears at this festive season as a writer of
facetious narratives. In their peculiar way, the little
pink glazed books published at Christmas by Mr. M.
A. Titmash are agreeable to us, as affording ample pro-
mise of drollery and amusement. In the serial novels
which have long been popular, pleasant to us in their
several ways have been the green of Dickens, the
crimson of Lever, the yellow of Thackeray, the stone
colour of Jerrold, the cowslip colour of Albert Smith,
and the rest of the parti-coloured fraternity. Among
the winter fictions, beyond all the innumerable
competitors of 1847 have stood pre-eminent
Mr. Thackeray and—Dickens, the originator
both of the Christmas books and of the serial publi-
cations. " Our Street" last year, and Mrs. Perkins's
Ball" the year before, acquired for Thackery, in -
Christmas literature, the position which "Vanity
Fair" and " Pendennis" have acquired, or are SC'
qufring for him in per.elical literature, They placed•
him immeasurably above the mere dead level devoted
to those who can only be designated as imitators.
The notion, the plot, the manner, the embellishment
of the Christmas book of Thackery are altogether
characterised by the originality of his observant and
sarcastic genius. Take the present volume in illus-
tration. Doctor Birch is no mere transfer of Doctor
Blimber, but a gentleman on whose cranium, we
doubt not, the phrenologist would find a rather pro-
minent development of the organ of individuality.
Then, again, his niece, Miss Raby (who appears in
a most interesting tableau in the last engrave-
iug) ; and horrible Miss Zoe Birch (a faint
outline suggested by that terrible master..
piece of a harridan Mrs. Pipchin) ; and Mr.
Prince the tutor; and George Champion the
Cock of the School (a beautiful, brave, noble cha-
racter, of whom 1V,2 shall speak further on) ; and the
pugnacious Boxalls ; and Master Hulker (the type of
a class familiar to every man amongst us) ; and
Lawrence the Prefect; and Backhouse the Pill-
Garlick; and Bullock the Sharper; and Duval the
Pirate ; and the honourable Plantagenet Gamut
Gamut, the idiot aristocrat; and Captain Davison the
old Pupil; and even Mother Ruggles the tart, apple,
and brandy-ball seller— they are all known to us
personally, bodily, actually, by experience, in the
days of our boyhood, We could alter their names to
the names of veritable beings who were our familiars
in childhood. They are not creations—they are
exact copies from originals. They are literary
and pictorial daguerreotypes, and in embody-
leg them upon the pages of his Christmas book=
Mr. Thackeray has taken wit as his iodine. He hask
turned the feather of his goosequill into a paint brush( •
and has taken his colours from the palette of nature.
His keen intellect has penetrated into the heart of,the •
boy as well as into the heart of the man. Of the
truthfulness of some of his subtle touches of nature
take as examples:—