The Sun.
London, England, 1834-09-10 00:00:00

THE CORTES.

ESTATE OF THE PROCURADORES.-SITTING OF THE 29TH

OF AUGUST.

After some preliminary business of little importance, the
following petition, praying for the erection of a monument
in commemoration of the 24th of July, the anniversary of
the opening of the Cortes, was presented :
" Senora,—The 24th of July will be celebrated in history.
Its memory is engraven on the hearts of Spaniards, and should
be also committed to marble, to record its glory to future
generations.
" Maria Christina de Bourbon, Regent of the throne of her
daughter Isabella 11., came to open that sanctuary of the laws
which fanaticism and violence had closed, and in the midst of
the Proceres and Procuradores of the kingdom a national
alliance was formed, a perpetual bulwark against tyranny and
ignorance. This day is the more glorious, inasmuch as the
Queen Regent of Spain then traversed her metropolis, afflicted
with a desolating plague, amidst the dead and the dying.
" This Queen-like act, joined to that national event which
is due to her munificence, has induced the undersigned Procu-
radores, in Cortes assembled, to present to the President of
the Estate, conformably to the standing orders, a petition, by
which we express our wishes to the Government of her Ma-
jesty, that they may determine upon a national inscription,
which may be placed in the most suitable, honourable, and im-
posing situation, as a monument to record to the Spanish
people the auspicious 24th of July, 1834, and the assembling
of the Legislature in the face of dangers and death.
" DIEGO GONZALEZ ALONSO.
PABLO SANTA FE.
RUFINO GARCIA CARRASCO.
" FRANCISCO CRESPO DE TEJADA.
.1 FRANCISCO VILLALA.
MATA BELMONTE.
JOAQUIM CACERES.
" JOSE SOMOSA.
" MANUEL MORENO RESEJO.
" VICENTE CANO MANUEL.
" ANTONIO MARTI.

" CAYETANO GARCIA DE LA AIAZA."
The President appointed the following Tuesday for the
discussion of this petition.
The order of the day for the discussion of the petition
praying for the adoption of a general sanatory law, which
should serve as an uniform guide in cases of epidemic, was
then put, and a long debate on the subject of the cholera
morbus ensued, which elicited little of interest beside the
exposition by the Minister of the Interior of the mea-
sures adopted by the Government to prevent the spread of
disease.

The petition was ultimately agreed to.
No further business was transacted at this sitting.

HOME DEPARTMENT.

" I have submitted to her Majesty the Queen Regent the
representation your Excellency made me in your despatch
the day before yesterday on the bad effects caused
that morning by the circulation of the paper hawked
about by th blind men, and entitled " The flight of
the Pretender and entrance into Spain of thirty thousand
French ;" notwithstanding that in the afternoon of the
same day few persons were ignorant of the fact that
this false report was due to the invention of the said
blind men. Her Majesty has in consequence been pleased to
determine that your Excellency should direct the vigilance of
the police not only towards the above-mentioned paper, but
also towards all others which the blind men hawk in this
capital, some of which being as prejudicial to the public
tranquillity by the alarm and errors they create, as the
others are to morality by the obscenity and the extravagant
ideas they engender ; and in either view the supineness
and tolerance of the police authorities is equally reprehen-
sible. Her Majesty, desirous that this scandal should be
put an end to, prohibits from henceforward the publication
of such papers, whether printed or in manuscript, unless
duly authorized by all the formalities of the law, directs
that the blind men or persons who hawk such publications
be arrested and instantly expelled the metropolis as vaga-
bonds, and transferred to the places of their birth, under
the especial superintendence of their respective Magi-
strates, and that the printers or persons facilitating the
multiplication of the copies of such publications be sub-
jected forthwith to the penalties imposed on offenders
by the laws of the press, the judgment being published
in the 2liadrid Gazette and the Administrative Annals.
Her Majesty also directs the police to draw up without de-
lay a list or census of all the mendicants in the capital, dis-

tinguishing those whose business is the distribution of
printed publications, which species of employment will in
future only be permitted to be prosecuted by those who
shall obtain a special license from the subdelegate of this
department. The police are further directed to exercise
their vigilance with regard to advertisements, handbills, and
every description of paper affixed on public places, whether
printed or in manuscript, except such as are authorized by
some authority, and to allow the affixing of none in any case
whatever, without the previous sanction of the proper sub-
delegate, expressed by his signature on the paper itself:
" By Royal order, I communicate this to you for your
information, and in order that the necessary measures for
its execution may be taken.
" God preserve, &c.
" Madrid, August 26. " koscoso.
" To the Superintendent-General of Police."

On Monday Admiral Rodd entertained the Lord
Mayor and a party at dinner, to celebrate the anniversary of
thoir Majesties coronation.

A railroad is in contemplation to run from the
town and port of Maldon, along the valley of the Blackwater,
to or near the towns of Witham, Kelvedon, Coggeshall, Bock-
ing, and Braintree, and to communicate with the great railway
about to be made from London to Norwich, with a branch to
Cambridge. It is also proposed to take advantage of this line
of railway to convey gas for lighting the above named towns.
It is calculated that upwards of 500,000 acres of land will be
under the influence of this railway.

LIVERPOOL COTTON MARKET, SEPT. 8.
There has been a pretty general demand for Cotton to-day.
About 4,000 bales have been sold at last week's extreme
prices (1,000 of which have been taken on speculation); viz.,
250 Pernans, 12:kl. to 130. ; 200 Maranhams, 11/d. to 12d. •
100 Paras, 100:; 400 Bahias, 10id. to I Id. ; 300 Surats,
; remainder American, from 71d. to 90., andOrleans,lod.

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY, SEPTELBER 10, 1834.

shadowy and indefinite, sr ipplies more food for the
imagination. There is sc ,mething very touching and
graceful in Van Arte void( ;'s brief allusion to his child-
hood :

These hands are spot' less yet—.
Yes, white as when i a infancy they strayed
Un consious o'er my mother's face, or closed
With that small grasp which mothers love to feel."
Fatalism, as we see ins the cases of Cromwell and
Napoleon, has generally been the creed of men who
from comparative obscurity have raised themselves to
power and sovereignty ; -it flatters their self-love, and
suggests a convenient ap, ology for their crimes ; hence
Mr. Taylor with marke 1 propriety has put this re-
mark into the mouth of. Van Artevelde ;--

" Ambition hath its use -s in the scheme
Of Providence, whose- ;.instrument I am
To work some changes in the world or die."

The dialogue in the frourth act between Van Arte-
velde and Elena, wher t the former is speaking of his
deceased wife, is pens t.d in the purest spirit of poetic

" Sire was one made up
Of feminine affectio trs, and her life
Was one full stream, of love from fount to sea.
Such was her inw ar d being, which to fit
With answerable ;race of outward favour,
Nature bestowed o rporeal beauty bright,
Formed in such r ac,od of passionate conception
As when the Goedlead, from a dream of love
Awaking, with r of tic rapture seized,
Substantiates the -vision, and the form
His dreaming far le: y feigned, creates alive.
These are but w Grids.

ELENA.

My lord, they're full of meaning.
ARTEVELDE.
No, they mean mo thing—that which they would speak
Sinks into silen( e —'tis what none can know
That knew not laer—the silence of the grave—
Whence could I .call her radiant beauty back
It could not con se more savouring of Heaven
Than it went lion ce—the tomb received her charms
In their perfecta( in, with nor trace of time
Nor stain of sin -.upon them ; only death
Had turned the m pale. I would that you had seen her
Alive or dead.

ELENA.
I wish I had, my lord ;
I should have loved to look upon her much ;
For I can gaze or I beauty all day long,
And think the all. .day-long is but too short.
ARTEVELDE.
She was so fair t hat in the angelic choir
She will not need put on another shape
Than that she bore on earth. Well, well,—she's gone,
And I have tam, x 1 my sorrow. Pain and grief
Are transitory tl tirigs no less than joy,
And though they leave us not the men we were,
Yet they do leave: us. You behold me here
A man bereaved, with something of a blight
Upon the early b'lo ssoms of his life
And its first verdure, having not the less
A living root, and: drawing from the earth
Its vital juices, fr ()In the air its powers :
And surely as ma n's health and strength are whole
His appetites regnrininate, his heart
He-opens, and his, ,objects and desires
Shoot up renewed."
The following ohs ervations have a sagacity about
them worthy almost of Shakspeare :
" Success will couch the blind,
The wise by speculation know to trade,
And give their wits long credit and they thrive ;
A scrambling wit mttst lice front hand to mouth
On issues and ere)its. Prosperity
Is warranty of wisdom with the world;
Failure is foolishness."
There is much appropriate buoyancy of sentiment
in this dialogue, which takes place between two of the
French leaders, who, flushed with victory, are in hot
pursuit of the troops of Van Artevelde

SANXERE.
" Halt ye a space, my lords, ye cannot pass,
The bridge has broken down beneath the weight
Of them that fly.

DUKE OF BURGUNDY.
A ➢ath should bear up us,
We are so light of he trt, so light of heel !
It was the leaden spirit of defeat
That broke the bridge. Shoot me a plank across,
And see if /shall strain it."

Few we suspect will deny the sound philosophy of
these observations, which though we have met with
them, or something like them, before, prove that Mr,
Taylor is a subtle thinker who pierces below the sur-
face of things.

" He was one
Of many thousand such that die betimes,
Whose story is a fragment, known to few.
Then comes the man who has the luck to live,
And he's a prodigy. Compute the chances,
And deem there's ne'er a one in dangerous times
Who wins the race of glory, but than him
A thousand men more gloriously endowed
Have fallen upon the course • a thousand others
Have had their fortunes foundered by a chance,
Whilst lighter barks pushed past them; to whom add
A smaller tally, of the singular few,
Who, gifted with predominating powers,
Bear yet a temperate will and keep the peace.
The world knows nothing of its greatest men."

We are mistaken if the last line in this noble
passage, which adapts itself to so many tastes, and is
so adroitly calculated to soothe wounded vanity, and
almost reconcile ambition to disappointment, do not
come often before the world in the shape of quotation.
How exquisitely is the serene beauty of woman
depicted in this passage !-
4‘ Philosophy might look her in the face,
And, like a hermit stooping to the well
That yields him soft refreshment, might therein
See but his own serenity reflected
With a more heavenly tenderness of love !"
Mark too the shrewd insight into the inmost heart of
woman, which the subjoined reflections develope,
when her affection for the lover is mixed up with re-
verence for the statesman, and a sort of meek distrust
of her power over him whose every thought she would
fain have wholly hers !
" When he is absent, I am full of thought,
And fruitful in expression inwardly,
And fresh, and free, and cordial is the flow
Of my ideal and unheard' discourse,
Calling him in my heart endearing names
Familiarly fearless. But alas !
No sooner IS he present, than my thoughts
Are breathless and bewitched, and stunted so
In force and freedom, that I ask myself
Whether I think at all, or feel, or live,
So senseless am I !"
A sprightly female temperament is thus gracefully
described,—
" The laughing fount
Of gay imaginations 91,7, bright,
fantasies.
And sparkling

But by •far the truest and most pathetic burst of
nature in the whole drama is where Elena is repre-
sented weeping over the dead body of Van Artevelde.
The scene is the field of battle.

VAN ItYK.
" Bring her away. Hark ! hark !
PAGE.

She will not stir.
Either she does not hear me when I 'peak,
Or will not seem to hear.

VAN RYK.
Leave her to me.
Fly, if thou lov'st thy life, and make for Ghent.
[Exit PAGE.
Madam, arouse yourself ; the French come fast :
Arouse yourself, sweet lady ; fly with me.
I pray you hear : it was his last command
That I should take you hence to Ghent by Olsen.
I cannot go on foot.

ELENA.

VAN AYE.
No, la dy, no,
You shall not need ; horses are close at hand.
Let me but take you hence. I pray you, come.
ELENA.

Take him then too.

VAN RYK.
The enemy is near
In hot pursuit; we cannot take the body.
ELENA.

The body ! Oh !"
Any one who has stood beside the bed of death,
and caught the last sigh, the last conscious look, or, it
may be, the last smile, of some beloved father, mother,
friend wife, or child, will remember the resolute perver-
sitieywith which at that moment he clung to hope, when
hope was at an end—and when the truth first flashed
on his reluctant senses, the stunning shock it gave him
to know and feel that but a few short hours had sufficed
to make all the difference between life and death—
between the being and the thing ;—any one who has
felt this—and alas who has not ?—will at once feel
the intense, the concentrated pathos of the above
passage.
Shakspeare's Lear.
To find its equal, we must go back to

Besides the passages we have quoted, there are a
myriad of minor beauties to be met with in every page of
this drama. Mr. Taylor is a master of poetic imagery.
His epithets have sometimes all the rich, lustrous
effect of painting. They are not general, but particu-
lar ; not culled from a poetic vocabulary, and applicable

to a thousand subjects, but appropriate to the one.
We subjoin a few specimens of this pictorial faculty.
" They but seldom leave
Shy midnight uninvaded."-
" The night is far advanced upon the morrow,
And, but for that conglomerated mass
Of cloud with ragged edges, like a mound,
Or black pine-forest on the mountain's top,
Wherein the light lies ambushed, dawn were near."-
" He had from nature a most mounting heart,
And revelled formerly in joys to him,
As native and as unsolicited
As to the lark her sona."

" Mixing its small beginnings with-the dregs
Of the pale moonshine and a few faint stars,
The cold, uncomfortable day-light dawned,
And the white tents topping a low ground-fog,
Showed like a fleet becalmed."—_—
" Once in my sad and philosophic youth,
Once at this cock-crow of philosophy," &c.

" Delighted was she at the fall
Of evening mild, when shadows tall
Cross-barred the mound and cottage wall,
To linger there alone."-
We regret that in an able, but somewhat strained
and sophistical preface, Mr. Taylor has not thought
it beneath him to sneer at the genius of Byron. He
talks of his " puerile creations"—just as if there were
no thought—no grandeur of conception--no consum-
mate skill of execution, in Sardanapalus—in Cain—
in Anah—in Manfred—and, above all, in Childe
Harold, as he is fully developed in the Fourth Canto!
The Conrads and Laras we give up, though with hesi-
tation, to his censure ; but let not Mr. Taylor speak
irreverently of the matured intellect of Byron, espe-
cially when his own notions of character seem to be
that it should be " ideal"—a theory which, if once ac-
knowledged, must have the effect of damning the pre-
tensions of Burns, Crabbe, and all who, like them,
have made truth the basis of their descriptions. For
ourselves, we must confess we have little taste for
ideal" humanity. It looks like a begging of the ques-
tion—an ingenious trick to evade a difficult task. Give
us, instead, characters with whom we can sympathise
—creatures of the world about us, made up of smiles
and tears, of strengths and weaknesses, with warm
hearts beating in their bosoms. Such is the Jean of
Burns—such the Richard Munday of Crabbe—such
the Sardanapalus of Byron—but such is not the 'Van
Artevelde of Mr. Taylor. Here and there, indeed,
there is a show of vigour, and the right sort of appre-
hension ; still, as a whole, the character is languid and
inoperative, for the reasons we have already stated.