The Sun.
London, England, 1848-10-03 00:00:00

Assembly with vain promises? have I deceived them
by my arguments upon the consequences of a struggle
into the rashness of giving their consent on the in-
stant to the dissolution of the Ateliers Nationaux
Judge for yourselves l Towards the end of May the
Committee of Labour interrogated M. Gamier Pages
and myself as to the plan of the Government in re-
gard to the dissolution of the agglomeration of autho-
rised idleness which already began to evidence the
fermentation of the spirit of fiction. I explained the
best means to the Committee. I detailed those means
above all things in the redemption of the railways, a
measure, the principle of which had been decreed by
the Provisional Government, and the action of which
would be that, in reviving that great mechanism of
industry under the hand of the State itself, it would
impart to all the other secondary interests many mil-
lion springs of impulsion.

" Since the 24th of February," I said to the
Committee, " my only thought has been to discover
some pacific solution to the extreme difficulties of our
situation, to find out the causes of those difficulties,
and to avoid all kinds of shocks and all effusion of
blood, in the hope of preserving to the Republic its
beautiful character of gentleness, and to the people a
certain serenity of temperament. I knew better than
most persons the urgency, the turbulence, and the
anxiety which the Ateliers Nationaux caused to press
heavily during many weeks upon Paris and upon
France—a load of intimidation and inquietude which
no industrial society could sustain for a very long
period. But by the redemption of:the railways, by a
large display of armed force in Paris, and by the
graduated dispersion of the workmen throughout the
departments, together with work assured to them and
prepared for them in perspective, I still hoped to
traverse this last crisis without resorting to the lunar
caustic of the Government (sans porter le feu dans
la plaie)."
" But," observed the President, "if the.Natinnal
Assembly does not coincide with you as to the re-
demption of the railways, how will you then contrive
to carry out your plans for a pacific disbandment ?"
" Oh ! then I can only see the inevitable alterna-
tive of a battle," I replied without a moment's hesita-
tion, " and it is precisely this extremity that I should
wish to avoid at all hazards and at all sacrifices."
The battle has since taken place. Ought we, after
this, to regard Paris and society as_ having been be-
trayed ?

I open again the authentic proces•verbaux of the
Government, and I read :-
12th May.—M. De Lamartine proposed that the
Ateliers Nationaux should be scrutinized, and that a
certain portion of the persons employed in those
establishments should be distributed throughout France
and Algeria; and that the workmen should be paid
one-third in money, and the two other thirds in
drafts upon the confiscated property.—(Adopted.)

It was decided, moreover, that the lists of inscrip-
ion to the Ateliers should be closed.

And that all the able-bodied men between eighteen
and twenty-five years of age, without families in
Paris, should be allowed a choice between enrolment
and disbandment.

May 16.—The Government dissolved the moun-
taineers, besides authorising and purifying the Re-
publican Guard. I myself assisted personally at the
Hotel of the Prefecture of Police, on the occasion of
the dismissal of the old National Guard, who were
there assembled together to the number of twenty
thousand men. The National Guard there saluted
me with their farewell acclamations. At this sitting
was also read the law against unnecessary assem-

blages.
On the 30th of May, the Government decided that
the garrison of Paris should be composed— _ _

Ist. Of twenty thousand men of the troops of the

2d. Of five thousand men of the Garde Mobile.
3d. Of two thousand six hundred of the National
Guard.

4th. Of two thousand and fifty of the Guardians
of Paris.

sth. Of five thousand men of the troops of the
line in the suburbs and in the garrisons, who could
within a few hours concentrate themselves in Paris.

In all fifty-four thousand six hundred and fifty

bayonets.
An order of commission was also passed autho-
rising the Minister of War, in the event of any
serious danger, to take the supreme command of the
troops of all arms, infantry, cavalry, artillery, the
Garde Mebile, and the resident guard of Paris.
During the following days a series of military
orders were issued for the purpose of covering the
Assembly and repressing all nocturnal assemblages-
Eight hundred conspirators were arrested in a single
night.
31st May.—An order was dispatched to the
Minister of War, instructing him to send in every
day to the Executive Commission his reports upon the
state of the army.

THE MAGAZINES.
BLACK WOOD.

Augustine Caxton recounts the history of his first
love—Lady Elinor Compton—to his wife and the
Anachronism. The story is touching from the sim-
plicity of the narrator. It is the clue to the mys-
teries of the plot—the main spring of the machinery
of the fiction—the very bone and marrow of the
story. It is a beautiful revelation of the different
characters already introduced—the gallant and
haughty Roland ; the generous old Earl of Rsins-
forth ; the ambitious Lady Elinor; the active and
enterprising Trevanion ; and Austin himself, the
noble old philosopher. It is quite in keeping with
the disposition of the latter when he exclaims that he
should have been " crushed" had Lady Elinor, while
he was wooing her, become an heiress by the death
of her brother Lord Pendarvis. Mr. Tibbets in vain
dangles the puddings of emolument (2,0001.) before
the eyes of the author of the " History of Human
Errors." The great book can find no publisher—like
many other great books which have been written only
to be destroyed. Besides his project of the " Literary
Times" Uncle Jack has another scheme in his head,
to wit the " Grand Anti-Publisher Confederate
Author's Society." The notion is an exquisite
absurdity—especially, as Pisistratus observes, as
any one would as lief submit a work to a pub-
lisher as to a select committee of authors.
Part VII., however, of " The Caxtons," is principally
delightful for its development of the novel and fasci-
nating character of Sir Sedley Beaudesert. The de-
lineation of his temperament is as delicate as that of
Will Honeycomb of immortal memory ; and the grace
of his home is depicted as voluptuously as that of
Pelham. Beyond all these tidbits, nevertheless, com-
mend us to the twenty-eighth chapter—the chapter
of the cr-cr-crrrr l—the earwig, the very large
motherly earwig, the earwig far gone in that way in
which—cr-cr-er !—the hornet, the Labidoura, the
Forficulida auriculana—crawl, crawl, crawling over
the nape of the author's neck while he is writing, re •
minding him, in a breath, of Mrs. Primmins, and her
horrid nursery story,:of Mr. Payne Knight and his
" Inquiry into Symbolical Languages," of the Zebub
of Baal and antenna with thirty joints ! Laurence
Sterne might have written it in one of his broken
chapters on Shandeau philosophy. Robert Southey
might have written it in the scholarly fun of his
Doctor. Charles Lamb might have written it and
revelled over the writing of it, in his fantastic, odd,
capital Essays. The close, too, of the instalment of
" The Caxtons " for October is perfectly and
charmingly Shandean. If Sterne exercises any
occult influence over the literature of his coun-
try, he is certainly the inspiration of this con-
tributor. After a sober criticism upon Mr. Mill's "Pi in -
ciples of Political Economy"—there is the continua-
tion of the late Lieutenant Ruxton's jovial chapters,
entitled, "Life in the Far West." " A Legend from
Antwerp," purporting to be a translation from a tale
in the Flemish, tells us in rapid and earnest words of
the career of the " Doomster's Firstborn." We
rather suspect that Lina, beautiful as her devotion is
for the scn of the headsmen, must come under the
category of strong-minded women, when we find that
devotion carrying her to the foot of the scaffold to
see her lover enact the part of an executioner. " A
Word about Novels," being a dialogue contained in a
letter addressed to Eusebius by Aquilius is worth
reading, if only for its sensible argument in favour of
novels and romances. The Curate reasons most
logically against all those prudes and Puritans who
scout fictions as " Satan's books," fraught with
everything pernicious. From the dialogue, moreover,
the memory is "jogged" pleasantly enough in regard
to the whole catalogue of novels and novel-writers,
from the gorgeous and magical phantasmagoria of
the "One Thousand and One Nights," to the sickly
and puling crudities of the " Hymns in Prose," from
the " Pilgrim's Progress" to " Modern Philosophers ;"
from " Coslebs".to " Clarissa ;" from " Pamela" to
" Joseph Andrews ;" from the " Vicar of Wake-
field" to the " Vicar of Wrexhill ;" from " Tom
Jones" to " Waverley ;" from the " Canterbury
Tales" to Miss Edgeworth ; from " Don Quixote"
to " Pickwick ;" from "Dombey and Son" to " Gil
Blas ;" from " Tristram Shandy" to " Sir Roger de
Coverley ;" from " Mount Sorrel" to the " Juif Er-
rant ;" from " Ten Thousand a Year" to " Emilia
Wyndham ;" from the " Diary of a Physician" to
the " Doctor ;" from " Daphne and Chloe" to the
"Mysteries of Udolpho," &c., &c., &c., &c., &c., down
to two of the most remarkable of recent fictions,
" Jane Eyre" and " Madame de Malquet." Coin-
ciding, as we do right heartily, with the contributor
in his eulogistic estimate of Mr. Warren, we differ
from him not the less heartily in his depreciatory
estimate of Mr. Dickens. The former is as much
above the philsophic Godwin in genius as a novelist,
as the latter is to our thinking beyond Fielding, both
in humour and pathos. And we say this with all
reverence both for the intellects of Godwin and of
Fielding—with a full appreciation of the extraordi-
nary powers betrayed in " Caleb Williams" and the
" History of a Foundling." Granted that the close
of " Dombey and Son " is in many respects faulty,
but we are, in spite of all this, bold to say that in no
one of the immortal fictions of Fielding can be found
anything comparable to the life- scenes and the death-
scene of little Paul Dombey. As to Dickens being
wanting in Simpletonianism—is there no simple-
tonianisn2_ &Us sisresp.w.. plaearyble, in Tim
Linklnwater, in Tom Pinch, in Mr. Pickwick, in
Captain Cuttle, in Mrs. Mayley, in Abel Garland,
and in glorious old John Willet ? Is there none ?
To our mind there are simpletonians among the
creations of Dickens comparable to those enumerated
by the reviewer,—to Uncle Toby and Parson
Adams, to Gil Blas and Sancho Panza, to Dr. Prim-
rose,
to Moses, to Sir Roger de Coverley, and to their
companions. Howbeit the literary gossip of the
paper is agreeable and wholesome. The concluding
contribution a critical analysis of " Byron
Address to the Ocean "—those magnificent
stanzas which are familiar as household
thoughts to every one who can appreciate the
noble poem of " Childe Harold "—the concluding
contribution, we say, upon this Address deserves our
severest reprehension. And why ? Because the
writer labours hard, through fifteen mortal pages, to
prove that the, stanzas in question are little better
than fustian and hyperbole, sometimes sinking into
a maudlin affectation, and sometimes rising into a
preposterous rant. We remember reading once an
elaborate essay proving—yes, proving—by all the
laws of grammar, poetry, and rhetoric, Gray's
" Elegy 17. a Country Churchyard" to be sheer non-
sense. 11 e read this essay, and we acknowledge that
the arguments were cogent enough and forcible
enough—so cogent and so forcible, indeed, that we
would not readily have undertaken their refutation, seeing that it would have required more time and exer-
tion on our part than we would have deemed the subject
to be worthy of. And yet we loved Gray's " Elegy "
not a
h_ whit the less—the more, in truth, if that be
possible with us after, the Present criticism.
And if oar !so,
TAte:9l- tbe iinet. be; enhanced,. we
need not say 'valet are our thoughts of the critic !
Of the article upon the " Continental Revolutions,"
we may speak elsewhere. Blackwood seems to ripen
in merit with the advancing autumn—its outpourings
this month are, on the average, as generous as the
nut-brown ale of October.

BENTLEY.
Again we have three articles on the events in
Paris, and the last (entitled Parisian Silhouettes)
evidently from the pen of son-se " waiting gentlewo-
man." We have already had de trop of Parisian re-
miniscences in all the magazines. Our old friend the
Flaneur, leaving Paris to the amateur writers, has
wisely shifted his quarters to Frankfort, and has
given us some delightful sketches of the members of
the German Parliament. Take the following por-
trait of Von Gagers, the President, as an example :
" That tall commanding figure in the President's tri-
bune is the President himself, Von Gagers. He is the
true type of the revolutionary Moderate of the day.
Long one of the most firm,. conscientious, and energetic
deputies upon the opposite side, in the Darmstadt
Chamber, he retired with disgust from public life when
he found that he could not carry out his theories of con-
titutional liberty,
and, like another Cincinnatus, lived
until, when the
apart ' in the farm,' and ' at the plough,'
stormy wind of revolution began to blow, and threatened
to sweep down every bulwark of the little state, he was
suddenly called upon by his Prince to take the helm,
and direct the vessel through the angry waves in that
track which he had as yet so vainly attempted to follow.
the National As-
One of the chosen representatives in
the new
sembly, he has since thrown up place and power, and
refused a post of weight Cabinet of the
in order to direct the movements
new German Empire,
of that new vessel in which the destinies of all Germany
are embarked, the General Assembly. He is in truth
the ' man of the day ;' and, perhaps, he is, among all
the numerous deputies, the only one capable of directing
the tempest of Parliamentary violence and dominating
the storm. He has energy, presence of mind, good sense,
and the commanding manner, that does so much towards
imposing and directing. lie is tall and stout ; his face
is intelligent and dignified without being handsome ;
his brows, more especially, are strongly marked, and are
s
full of the essence of calm, elf-conscious energy. There
is a dignified boldness in his appearance, manner, atti-
tude, voice, language, all. Again, he is the ' man of the
day ;' and, perhaps, as the President of the National
Assembly, he may be said, alone, to have grasped the
convulsed materials of which it was composed, and
moulded them with powerful hand from the first chaotic
state into a whole, which bears a more dignified, impres-
sive, and practical form.'
George Hodder and Leech ,f,urnish a drollery enti
tied the " Golden Fleece, and William Henry
Maxwell, under the title of " Queen's Bench
Sketches," gives us some powerful, but most
sombre, portraits of the inmates of that
wretched abode of misfortune and vice. They
are as true to the stern realities of life as the charac-
ters that Crabbe was wont to draw, and this paper
furnishes arguments irresistible in favour of a
reform of our whole system of imprisonment
for debt. It is rotten from the foundation,
and while it ruins the honest man, affords impunity