The Sun.
London, England, 1856-05-30 00:00:00

Sr.LuaLsß.

" Tie was of a chuckle-headed high-shouldered make,
with a general appearance of being, not so much a young
man as a swel!ed boy. He had given so few signs of
reason, that a byeword went among his companions
tLat his brain had been frozen up in a mighty frost
which prevailed at St. John's, New Brunswick, at
the period of his birth there, and had never thawed
from that hour. Another byeword represented him as
having in his infancy, through the negligence of a
nurse, fallen out of a high window on his bead, which
had been heard by responsible witnesses to crack. It
is probab!e that both of these representations were of
ex post facto origin ; the young gentleman (whose ex-
pressive name was Sparkler) being monomaniacal in of-
fering marriage to all manner of undesirable young ladies,
remarking of every successive young lady to whom
he tendered a matrimonial proposal that she was 'a
(loosed fine gal—well educated too—with no biggodd
non sense about her."

Here, too, no less figuratively described than The
Dress and The Bosom, arO—

MR. MERDLN'S GU Q's.

" Everybody knows how like the street, the two
dinner-rows of people who take their stand by the street
will be. The expressionless uniform twenty houses, all
to be knocked at and rung at in the same form, all ap-
proachable by the same dull steps, all fended of by the
same pattern of railing, all with the same impracticable
fire-escapee, the same inconvenient fixtures in their
heads, and everything without exception to be taken at
a high valuation—who has not dined with these 'I The
house so dreaiily out of repair, the occasional bow.
window, the stuccoed house, the newly-fronted house,
the corner house with nothing but angular rooms, the
house with the blinds always down, the house with the
imtchmeat always up, the house where the collector has
called for one quarter of an Idea, and found nobody at
home--who has not dined with these l The house that
nobody will take, and is to be had a bargain—who does
not know her ? The showy house that was taken for
life by the disappointed gentleman, and which doesn't
suit him at all—who is unacquainted with that haunted
habitation ?"

As a contrast to all which fashionable nothings,
what a description that is of the poor Clariouet
Player, Frederick Dorrit, drawn in his poor den
the orchestra, where, although " mugged at" by
the low comedian in his richest way fifty times for
a wager, he shows no trace of consciousness 1
Poor Uncle Frederick, about whom, the stage
carpenters had a joke to the effect that
he was dead without his being aware of it"—and.
who is supposed by the. frequenters of the pit " to,
pass his whole life, niht and day and Sunday and
all, in the orchestra 1" Something should be said
before closing our notice of this last number of
Little Dorrit about Little Dorrit's lover, John.
Chivery, who is discovered pining among the damp
linen.hung out to dry in the backyard, as though
it (the linen) "was groves.!" And about the cir-
cumstantial account of his ill-starred wooings.given
one afternoon to ArthuiClennam by Mrs. Chivery,
John's mother, whose peculiar power
of construo-
tion in her sentences—together with its circum-
santiality and repetition have upon her bearer's
mind we are told "an effect in the nature of an
affidavit !" The sixth number closes and with it
the twenty-second chapter, leaving Arthur puzzled
as to whether Little Dorrit really is after all in
love, and if so—with whom ? " Thereby hangs a
tale "—or rather upon it depends the interest of
the whole story of Little Dorrit.

PALMER IN STAFFORD GAOL.—Since his arrival at
Stafford the culprit has been taciturn, but his manner
does not indicate any appearance of his being dejected.
The day fixed for his execution is Saturday, the 14th
of June.