The Sun.
London, England, 1848-04-13 00:00:00

COURT CIRCULAR.

The Viscountess Jocelyn, La:ly in Waiting to her
ll.josty, arrived at Osborne on Tu, sday.
ller Royal Highness tie Princess llelena was taken
an airing in the pleasure grounds of Osborne on Tuesday.
There was no addition to the royal dinner party at
Osborne on Tuesday evening,

Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent, attended by
Lady Augusta Bruce and Baroness de Spetb, left her
residence, Clarence House, St. James's, at half-„past
twelve o'clock yesterday, for Frogmore House, Windsur.
His Royal Highness the Prince of Prussia visited their
Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
yesterday, at Cambridge House.
Mr. Scotland had an interview with Earl Grey yester-
day, at the Colonial-office.
The Ecclesiastical Commissioners for England had a
committee meeting yesterday, at their office in White-
hall-place.

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.
NEWMARKET CRAVEN MEETING.
WEDNESDAY.
Handicap Sweepstakes of 20 sovs. each, and only 5 ft if
decla, ed; for three yrs ols, &c. Cambridge Course.
(7 Subs., 2 of whom paid 5 sovs. each to the owner of
the second horse.)
tit) I
LBDoaurrkdoencolitt'i BdAeelidaeisfoFistiana,
t
•• ..•
IAIa Armin,
iyn• ; 4 s 3, 3;5' srst '4 7st6
b 7
Mr. Rolt's The Cur, aged, 9st ••• s tllb
I b P "
4
Mr. Shelley's Bayonet, 3 yrs, 6st • ••• ." 5
Betting-7 to 4 agst Fistiana, and sto 2 each agst
The Cur and Armin.
The Cur took the lead at starting, and made running
at a good pace to the turn of the lands, where he was
passed by Fistiana,
Mantilla, and Armin, the former
leading; half-way between the Duke's Stand and home
Fistiana and Armin joined issue, and ran a head-anti-
the mare ran home a clever winner by
head race to the cords, where the horse gave way, and
a length, Mantilla
a bad third. Run in 2 min. 8 secs. (This race came
off immediately after a heavy storm of hail and rain.)
Sweepstakes of 100 sovs. each, h ft; for three yrs old
colts, Bst 71b each, &c. D.M. (9 Subs.)
Colonel Anson's Backbiter • (F. Butler) 1
Lord Exeter's Swordplayer •... "• '••
Colonel Peel's Sesostris (allowed 31b)... ••• -
Lord Glasgow's Clerk of the Council .. ••• 4
Even on Sesostris, and sto 4 agst Backbiter. Back-
biter made all the running, and won cleverly by half a
length, Sesostris a bad third. Run in 1 min. 42 secs.
Match, 150 sovs ,50 ft. A•F•
Duke of Bedford's Saddle, 4 yrs, Ist 81b (F. Butler) 1
Sir J. Hawley's Cecilia, 5 yrs, 7st tilb ••• ••• 2
9 to 4 on Saddle, who waited into the cords, and won
very easily by half a length. Run in 2 mins. 22 secs.
The Column Stakes of 50 soya. each, h ft; for three yrs
old, colts, 9st 71b; and fillies, Bst 41b. R.M. (26 Subs.)
Mr. Adams's Ellerslie, Bst 41b ... (Wakefield) 1
Colonel Anson's Corsican, Bst 71b 2
Duke of Richmond's Hornpipe, Sot 41b ... 3
The following also started, but were not placed:—
Lord Exeter's Swordplayer, Bst 71b 0
Lord W. Powlett's Jest, Bst 41b 0
Colonel Peel's Jenny Lind, Bst 41b 0
Colonel Peel's Teetotum, Set 41b 0
Betting—Even on Corsican, b to 1 agst Ellershe, 5 to
1 agst Jest, and 6to 1 agst Teetotum. This race admits
of very little in the shape of description, Ellerslis having
made all the running, and winning very easily by a
length, Hornpipe a good third, and Swordplayer fourth,
Run in 1 min. 47 secs.
Match, 200, h ft. A.F.
Lord Glasgow's Conspiracy, Bst 71b, agst Mr. Grt-
vine's Geraldine, 7st 121 b—off by consent.
Subscription Plate of 50!. T.Y.C.
Lord Exeter's Bishop of Rosnford's Cob (Bartholomew) 1
Lord Stanley's Bowstring, 4 yrs ... ..• ... 2
Mr. Barnes's Sotterley, 3 yrs ... ••• ••• 3
Mr. St. Aubyn's Julie, 5 yrs ••• ••• ... 4
5 to 1 on the Cob, and 7 to 4 on Bowstring. A splendid
race between the first two was won on the post by a neck.
Run in 1 min. 12 secs.
Sweepstakes of 50 sovs. each; for three yrs old. T.Y.C.
Mr. G. H. Moore's Wilmot, Bst 31b ... (Butler) 1
Sir G. Hawley's Lovelace, Bst 31b ••• . 2
7t04 on Lovelace. Won by half a length. Run in
1 min. 20 secs.

LITERATURE.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF FEB-
RUARY, 1848. 1 Vol., pp. 383. By Percy 13.
St. John.
The author of this attractive volume bas been
doubly fortunate—as a man and as a writer—in wit-
nessing the late remarkable and glorious revolution.
We, residents in England are fortunate likewise in
the circumstance that Mr. Percy St. John was a
sojourner in Paris during the immortal days of Feb-
ruary. He has appreciated so accurately the
position of parties in the French capital ; he ob-
served the emeutes so vigilantly; he sympathised
with the people so thoroughly ; he has de-
scribed recent occurrences with a pencil so vivid,
so rapid, and so inimitably copious (considering
that the book under consideration was completed
within a fortnight after the transference of the Go
vernment from the Tuileries to the Hotel de Ville),
that we may well congratulate ourselves on the coin-
cidence of his presence throughout the disturbances.
Those who may erroneously anticipate from the
title-page a narrative of the entire revolution from
personal observation are sanguine overmuch, and (if
the apparent play upon words is allowable) frivolous
over more. 'They are associating the divine attribute
of übiquity with the body of a mere bookman. No
such description of the progress of events among
the Parisians can be expected until M. Etienne
Arago shall (like M. Alphonse de Lamartine)
given us his confidences in the shape of an autobio-
graphy, or until a semi-romance or demi-history shall
appear from the pen of M. Alexandre Dumas, the hero
of which shall be the Marquis de la Pailleterie. For
the brother of the great astronomer seems more
than any one else to have been in half a dozen
places at once, even according to the explicit reve-
lations of Mr. Percy St. John, and thegifted but
eccentric author of the " Monte, Christo" some time
Under-Secretary to the Due d'Orleans, now the
most worshipful devotee of the Republican' regime
—figured in nearly twenty different quartiers
simultaneously, clothed in the trappings
of the Garde
National, and elevated on the shoulders of the gamin:.
Mr. St. John has judiciously collected his materials
from a variety of authentic sources—from his own
experience as an eye-witness, from the hearsay of
trustworthy informers, from orations, reports,pro-
clamations, and printed sketches. The book
evi-
dences in every sentence the hurry in which it was
composed and the excitement with which it was pro-
jected; yet these very characteristics—characteristics
which at firstsight might seem to beabsolute blemishes
—are among the principal merits of the volume, seeing
that they authenticate in a remarkable manner
the actual hurry and excitement of which they con.
stitute the congenial record. The work is partitioned
into seventeen chapters, and partakes of the confusion
consequent upon the late catastrophe. Chapter L de-
fines " the causes of the recent revolution causes
which date back even to the three days of July,
1830, when the transference of the crown of Charles
X. to the brow of Louis Philippe I.—a miserable
stock jobbing trick from first to last—was the earliest
blunder of the dethroned despot. No one will gain-
say for an instant the accuracy of our author's asser-
tion that—
" The causes of the recent French Revolution may be
variously stated to be:—the Revolution of 1830; the
reaction which has taken place ever since; the personal
government of Louis Philippe; the appointment of the
Due d'Aurnale as Governor of Algiers; the ruling of
France by purchased majorities ; the entrance of cor-
ruption into the administration of affairs ; the Taste
trial; the suicide of the Due de Praslin; the Reform
banquets; the King's Speech; the prohibition of public
meetings."
This accumulation of reasons for an insurrectionary
movement has long been notorious. Chapter 11.
displays the overt progress of the popular opposition
as revealed by the " Reform Banquets" in the vicinity
of the capital, and in the departments ; and thus
preludes the opening of the newly-elected Parliamen
of 1847 :

" To face the Legislature, composed of a compact
majority of contented placemen, ministers, and personal
friends of King and Cabinet, there was an old King, who
for eighteen years had succeeded every day in adding
some link to the chain of power, with one son, the future
regent; another married to the heiress presumptive to
the throne of Spain ; another Viceroy of Algeria ;
another with a high position in the navy; a daughter the
wife of a neighbouring King ; in close alliance with the
Monarch of Austria, and ruling in Spain through his
creatures; with an army generalled and officered at his
will ; a capital surrounded by the most extraordinary
fortifications in the world, and commanded by eighteen
detached forts ; a police the most perfect and extensive
known to civilized society, and composed not only of
Constables, but of regiments of horse and foot;----he
seemed to occupy an impregnable position, from which
nothing but the thunder of the Almighty could dislodge
him; a Cabinet, headed by a great orator and historian,
though au impracticable statesman, enjoying the friend
ship and support of its Sovereign, and commanding a
perfectly servile cohort of Deputies in the Chamber.
" The Opposition was in itself weak, but in the errors
of their opponents they were mighty ; for the Cabinet
of the 29th of October stood before the country con-
victed of corruption and servility; of alliance with abso-
lutism ; of opposing the liberal intentions of the Pope;
of conniving with Jesuits to enslave Switzerland; of im-
pelling Ferdinand of Naples to resist the just- demand of
his subjects ; and, worse than all, of having, in their
anxiety to curry favour with the dynasty, given way to
every counter-revolutionary scheme of Louis Philippe. "
In Chapter 111. " the opening of the Chambers "
(the last session of the Parliamant of the French
monarchy) by Louis Philippe, in person, on the
28th December, 1847, is described with graphic
brilliancy. Chapter IV. glances at "the February
sittings of the Chambers," and recounts very mi-
nutely " the preparations for the great Reform Ban-
quet.' Chapter V. begins the diary of the revolution
with " Sunday and Monday, February 20 and 21 ;" ,
Chapter VI., " Tuesday, February 22 ;" Chapter
VII., " The night of the 22d and 29d ;" Chapter
VIII., " The last night of the French Monarchy."
Chapter IX. is an interpolation, detailing a " per-
sonal narrative." Chapter X. depicts " the fall of
Louis Philippe." Chapter XL gives a rather
meagre outline of " the taking of the Tuileries."
Chapter XII. details with a punctilious nicety
" the last sitting of the Chamber of Deputies,"
a scene which Mr. St. John correctly declares to be
" unparalleled in the history of any revolution."
Chapter XIII. is another episode or "personal nar-
rative." Chapter XIV. records " the proclamation
of the Republic." Chapter XV. pourtrays " the
25th of February." Chapter XVI. is devoted to a
biographic epitome of the careers of Louis Philippe
n•ancois-Pierre Guizoi, born 14th October,
1787—0 f Louis Adolphe Thiers, born 16th April,
1797—0 f Louis :Mathieu Mole, born in 1780--of
Qdilon Barrot, born 19th July, 1796—and of Thomas
Robert Bugeaud de la Piconnerie, born in 1786.
Chapter XVII. concludes the volume with eight very
different profiles, namely, those of the Ministers of the
Provisional Government— Alphonse du Prat, after-
wards called Lamartine, born 21st October, 1790;
Dominique Francois Arago, born 26th February,
1786 ; Crimieux, Ledru Rollin, Marie, Marrast,
Flown, Louis Blanc, and Albert. Here are a few
anecdotes of the revolution, culled from the present
volume, in consequence of their novelty and signifi-
cance :

VIE FIRST DREAM OF A REPUBLIC.
" One, a warm enthusiastic Republican, said, Mon-
sieur, give me a round sum of money and a dozen reso-
lute men, and I will revolutionize Paris in one night.'
I asked how. The saeristains of Paris, like the priests,
are all Carlists. I would gu round to them, and hold-
ing out hopes, that atter a revolution Henry V. would
stand a good chance if he had the friends he was as-
serted to have. I would beg or buy admission into
every church in Paris. In each I would place one de-
termined man, who to-night, at midnight, should sound
the tocsin, when all would be over; the rising would be
general; every one would rush to arms, and before dawn
Paris would be ours. Bonjour, monsieur,' and the
journeyman painter, who had been speaking, walked
away, leaving me convinced of the deep-rooted hatred
of monarchy which had put such notions into the
people's minds."

4, 4 Hay° yo.t no printed copies?' exclaimed many.
6, "fhey are ill exhausted,' said another, they were
printed in the night. We did nut expect such a de-
mand.'

“ Will the. Reforms appear to-morrow ?'
”' I know not. I believe the writers will be too
much engaged.'
" I believe them, for from the lead of a journal with
scarce enough abennes to keep it alive, they have, by a
bold stroke, attained to the lead of a nation. Fer-
dinand Flocon is one of the Provisional Government."
Two of the subordinate actors in the Revolution of
February must not be overlooked, namely, the work-
man (TuEopoßa SDI, a carpet maker) who
by a burst of rude eloquence preserved
the works of art in the Chambre des Deputes from
destruction, when the people were firing ballets
into the great painting of "Louis Philippe
swearing obedience to the Charter"—and the English
compositor (GEORGE GOOD, formerly a working
printer on an eatablishtnent in London), who was shot
through the breast while cheering the combatants on
to the assault upon the Palais Royale. Two engrav-
ings are prefixed to the volume—one a wretched
caricature of the noble countenance of Lamartine, the
other a beautiful sketch of the sinister visage of Guizot.

MAGAZINES, -e.-(CONTINUED

DOMBEY AND SON. By Charles Dickens.
Sorrowfully do we close the double number (XIX.
and XX.) of "Dombey and Son" just published. Our
regret is not an affectation. We are neither writing
the balderdash of compliment nor the hyper-
boles of panegyric. An old friend has left
us—the voice of a dear favourite is silent—
" Dombey and Son" is completed. Heartily do we
regret this, for this true English story-book, which
has appeared from month to month, with its chequered
incidents, its exquisite and touching pathos, its fre-
quent, spontaneous, and fantastic merriment,
its occasional grotesqueness, its pervading loyalty
to the natural, the true, and the beautiful, its
home-touches, its gleams of satire, its erotic
benevolence, its unforced philosophy, and, above all
its many, strange, original, life-like, and admirable
characters—the true English story, we say, in which
all this has been lavished with the abundance of a
fruitful but untutored genius, has imparted so much
zest to every successive interval in the course of
its publication, has scattered, as it were, such
sweet flowers upon the dusty path of life, while Time
has been rolling us all onward to Eternity, that we
should be ungrateful were we not to lament its ter-
mination. We do regret it—thoroughly. That Mr.
Dickens can sympathise in this feeling we know from
his books. Their closing sentences are generally
dictated in a mood of sadness and lamentation.
As he himself has happily expressed it in
one of his brief but suggestive introductions, the
author, like a dejected host, is fain to loiter upon the
threshold even when he has dismissed his guests, and
hade the last of them farewell. In "Dombey and
laSucornienu,'a'
ifnotrane:mple, we are loath to imagine that our
with the different creations in the vo-
has terminated.
_Captain Cuttle, either
instrument,"
simply.a
tEhadet' a iradst ease,"
rn tn as Cuttle,
Mariner, who lives at
not exactly the man
Majorwholsae friendshipusn"the gentleman
hwaseimthe"
t can
n his
b e
resignedhoo k , is
Sir, BagstockJos, J again, " rough
without a sigh.
J..lBagstock,
hjaießve9rabbreviatioonsee'mt i.ffht please
janned tßou.,gho,rolwd
to call himself by in his delightful spiri
is one of those abominable beings one regardesgwolitshm;
sort of contemptuous affection such we ourselves
well remember to have experienced towards Daniel
Quilp. Mr. Toodle, the stoker, " all cindery and
swarth ;" Polly Toodle, otherwise Mrs. Richards, his
better-half, in her way a kind of middle-aged
Mrs. Nubble' ; and even that precocious imp the
Biler, or the Grinder, the first-born of their large
family of Toodles—are all such truthful specimens
of our labouring classes as not to be abandoned wil-
lingly or forgotten very speedily. Then, more-
over, there is Towlinson, whose ambition is
to set up in the green-grocery line, and whose parti-
cular antipathy are foreigners. There is the Majors
Oriental helot " the Native," described in the last
number (page 57'9), as " living in a rainy season of
boot-jacks and brushes." There is Mr. Morfin, whose
performances on the violincello gave his deaf land-
lady only a " sensation of something rumbling in her
bones." There is that grim and awful harridan, Mrs.
Pipchin, with her partiality for sweetbreads and re-
lays of buttered toast, hot and hot. There is Dr.
Blimber with his learned legs, like a clerical piano
forte ; and Mrs. Blimber with her blue-stocking love
for Cicero and Tuscialum; and Cornelia Blimber, a
very ghoul among dead languages ; and Mr. Feeder,
8.A., with his Herodotus and other stops—quite a
barrel organ of erudition ! Then again, there is Carker,
the manager—" deceased person with white teeth :" and
Perch, the messenger, an oracle not on a tripod, but
on a bracket; and Cousin Feenix, with his friend
Shakspere—" man who was'nt for an age, but for all
time." There is Mrs. Macstinger, of Brig-place, the
lady who cooled her temper by inverting her young-
est born, Alexander Macstinger, so as to bring hint
within the range of a sharp battery of slaps. There
is the oracular Bunsby, and Mrs. Miff, with her
mortified bonnet; and Susan Nipper, and good Mrs.
Brown, and Lucretia Tox, anti Mr. Chick, and Mrs.
Chick, and Mrs. Skewton, and Cleopatra's page,
commonly, called Withers the Wan ; and Walter
Gay, and Sol Gills, the instrument maker ; and
there is Sir Barnet Skettles, and the weak-eyed
young man at Dr. Blimber's, and Master
Bitherstone, and poor Berry, and Diogenes,
and Mr. Toots and the Game Chicken, and
Alice, and Edith, and Mr. Dombey, and Flo-
rence, and little Paul Dombey ! Those, and
there are thousands of them, who have, like ourselves,
devoured the work bit by bit—fatniliariting them-
selves by long association with the every characteris-
tic of the ideal personages depicted in the narrative
—and coming at last to regard with a sort of tender-
ness even the green covers of the monthly instalment,
as being connected in some fashion with the joys and
sorrows of the story, and by consequence with their
own tears and laughter, will comprehend our regret
at the dispersion of this imaginary multitude. It is
not the least important or the least remark-
able among the numerous peculiarities of Mr.
Dickens as a novelist, that he sketches a
locality with as much vividness as a painter,
and that he imparts to a fictitious being an
absolute and visible individuality. The actors in his
tales are no mere pasteboard fantoccini, moved by the
threads of an ingenious plot, and coloured into the
semblance of life by the lustre of his imagination—
they are as actual as flesh and blood, as true as
humanity, as filled with the heat of passion
and as fraught with the vitality of sentiment as the
creature modelled by the hand of Prometheus and
warmed into animation by the fire stolen from the
celestial laboratory. If there were nothing worthy of
admiration in " Dombey and Son" beyond the passage
descriptive of the death of Little Paul, it would
from that solitary passage have been worthy of a dis-
tinguished place among the classic books of our
national literature. In that exquisite chapter --- a
chapter stamped with the golden seal of genius—
Mr. Dickens altogether surpassed himself,
he surpassed his plaintive sketch of Tiny
Tim's death in the " Christmas Carol,"
and even that most beautiful, and, as we had
once imagined, inimitable, incident in the " Old
Curiosity Shop "—the death of Little Nell. We
envy not that man who can read for the first time
the account of the death of little Paul Dombey with
a heart unmoved and an eye tearless. We can
have no sympathy with each other—we are separated
in disposition by a wall of brass. . . Like most of
the preceding fictions of Mr. Dickens, "Dombey
and Son" inculcates a great moral inferentially,
and demonstrates the omnipotence of virtue by
the transformation of a temperament. In this
manner " The Christmas Carol" proclaimed
anew those glorious tidings which
were
angels in the sky on the eve of the firstChrsisutnmgasb—y
Gloria in excelsis deo, et in terra. pax hominibus.
Peace, goodwill, brotherly love,
of
e,urtersaltchhlarityn one
k
towards another was the ma
" Martin Chuzzlewit" in a differenat wayma easseerestedeths
policy of gentle feelings for our neighbours. "Dombey
and Son," upon a similar principle, shows the hol-
lowness of egotism and the misery resulting from
the isolation caused by self-sufficiency. Ebenezer
Scrooge is changed before the close of the •
volume from a miser into a philanthropist.
Young Martin abandons his selfishness for gene-
rosity ; and Dombey, the great merchant, emerges
towards the close of the present history from the
armour of his Pride, proving himself to be of a noble-
hearted, generous, gentle, loving nature. For the
enforcement of this beautiful dogma of meekness, for
the eloquent revelations of love which are associated
r
with every fragment in reference to Florence,nd the
for
the bewitching delineation of a child's
exquisite picture of a child's death,
little Paul—" Dombey and Son"
masterpiece of Charles Dickens. There is in it no
_sin
assuredly
'redarlysonthoef
parallel passage, it is true, to that most eloquent and
even
Cathedral,
sublime
be found
dinone tower
of the random
and insulated chapters of
"Master Humphrey's of Saint Paul's
w reveriehich may
pt ‘
inßarnaby
Rudge," where the murderer aragra.phs, inspired
wCliocthks.n"
c is scared by the ringing
•he mansion of Mr. Hare-
h There
rhetoricalare animationne separate
e es
hose
-bellin t
the • populace are casting fresh
fuel before the burning doors of Newgate. "Dombey
and Son"
Hare-
dale, the, o alarm
lar
w m
-here
has no Dick Swiveller, like the cc Old Cu-
riosity Shop;" no Brothers Cheeryble, like " Nicholas
Nickleby ;" no Sarey Gamp or Seth Pecksniff like
" Martin Chuzzlewit." It is inferior •
to " Pick-
wick" in point of sustained . drollery, and to
" Oliver Twist " dramatic passion and,
completeness. In the three particularsepicd
specified, however, " Dombe lres
Y and Son" sun,
passes every one of the preceding compositions of
Mr. Dickens ; and in several of the minor parts it is