The Sun.
London, England, 1846-02-21 00:00:00

THE YEAR BOOK OF FACTS. 1846.

In an age so remarkable and prolific in discoveries
and invention, there existed a necessity for some annual
digest of those discoveries and those inventions which
had passed successfully through the ordeal of the closest
examination. This little volume is the very precise
thing requisite; and its editor, tutored
.in the rather
difficult office he had to fill by some year:: experience,
has compiled the " Book of Facts" for 1846 with more
than usual sagacity. Formerly the curious amen
readers were feasted with the idle marvels of black
magic, and chiromancy, and diablerie, and astrology,
and demonology, and the like superstitious phantasies ;
now, however, they are treated in a manner singularly,
different. Prodigies in natural philosophy and the in-
scrutable mysteries of science are unfolded to them in a
guise the most startling, and yet the most seductive ;
and in this way the wonders of mere fact are infinitely
more astonishing than the vagaries of fancy. Philosophy
has thus vanquished witchcraft; science has outwondered

superstitiGn; and, without any arrogant:boasting, we may
indeed regard the deed# accomplished in out own gener!t-
tien as a great and almost iUofitrqvertible argument
.I‘n
favour of the ultimate perfectability thankind: —this
of course always premising, that there be no vast gnd un-
foreseen recoil, either moral or rAtural. A portrait of
Sir John F. W. Herschel! is the frontispiece, and a
sketch of Mount iietvls forms an appropriate vignette—
that gigantic volcano having been in a state of eruption
during September and October last. There is not one
single page in the " Year Book of Facts" but what con-
reys seine kind of useful or singular information to the
mind; in addition to which the style in which it is em-
bodied is at once popular and concise. Per se the volume
is of much value; in connexion with the more vo-
luminous works of a scientific character, published
during the past twelve months, the present will prove
most admirable as a text-book.

COUNT JULIAN; a Romance of Spanish History

By W. Gilmore Simms.
The author of this fiction has been already introduced
to the novel readers of Great Britain, through reprints
of some of his most successful productions. Among
those, " The Yernassee," " The Kinsmen," ice., identified
him as not the least gifted of Arucriaa.n novelists, while
they tended much to extend his popularity, In the pre-
sent work, " Count Julian," the spirited proprietct pi the
Novel Newspaper, brings an original, that is to say, a
hitherto unpublished romance, from the pen of Mr.
Simms, into his clever serial, of which it forms Part
LXXXI. As to giving a summary of the plot, or even
a mention of the catastrophe—we consider such a course
as the most ungrateful one a reviewer can adopt,
destroying as it does the main allurement of the work
under consideration—namely, its interest. We shall
therefore content ourselves with saying that " Count
Julian" is a somewhat fascinating, but also a somewhat
cumbrous story. A few actual occurrences form its
skeleton—imagination does the rest ; and this fact is
throughout too perceptible. The incdents are visionary
—singularly visionary. Some of the characters are too
repulsive— tinctured with a Sue-like villainy that de-
stroys their probability : of this cast is the Archbishop
Oppaa, the like of whom never existed except in a
morbid fancy like that of Mr. Simms. We may par-.
ticularize the description of the battle-scene as the most
powerfully wrought in the volume. The dust, and the
blood, and the yells, and the steam of the conflict envelope
the reader during its perusal. There are glimpses, too
—dainty ones and delicate—of the greenwood, with its
surging tree-tops and sits solemn army of grey trunks
and trailing boughs. Nor is there a lack of love-
passages, of trysts, and troth and plighted hearts ; the
belle passionne in the bands of Mr. Simms resembling in
some measure the golden key :of the Calendar in the
Arabian story—leading on to many episodes of other
and darker passions—revenge, and hatred, and envy,
and scorn, and malice. The text upon which the entire
fiction is fabricated is the " glorious fault," ambition.
As another illustration of that so-called crime, " Count
Julian" has an almost perplexing interest.