The Sun.
London, England, 1834-08-01 00:00:00

MAGAZINE DAY.

BLACKW OOD'S MAGAZINE, No. CCXXV.
BLACKWOOD, Edinburgh ; CADELL, London.
Blackwood is remarkably heavy this month. There is
nothing light or airy about him—no set-off against his now
nearly exploded political opinions, of which he always gives
a surfeit. The Noctes are not equal to what they have
been ; though still the best article in Maga. There is much
noble-mindedness in the allusion to Leigh Hunt's London
Journal, something which we do not fully comprehend in
Old Christopher's criticisms on Goethe and his critics, and
an abundance of food for philosophical reflection in what
the " Shepherd" calls a " Treatise on the fawze theory of
the ruling passion, a' divided intil separate heeds, and ar-
gufied back and forrit." Mrs. Siddons is little more than
a verbatim copy of the first volume of Campbell's life of the
celebrated tragedian. The CeEsars are concluded, and we
are glad of it. Indeed, how good soever papers may
be, we do not approve of piecemeal publications
in a magazine, unless. when the subject is so loose
as to hang together like pearls in a necklace, of which each
forms a little perfect whole in itself. The cruize of the
Midge, especially the Episode of the Stick Leg, is full of
stirring life and the unpruned merriment of the quarter-
deck, with some capital touches of nature, and scraps of
right feeling. The Results of the Triumphs of the Barri-
cades, a review of M. Sarran's work on the late revo-
lution in France, will be read with much interest
even by those who dissent toto ctelo from the writer, in
the inferences he has drawn from that great event. The
Fall of Earl Grey is a violent, but not a ribaldrous, attack
on the policy, foreign and domestic, pursued by the present
Reforming Administration, from the late Premier's accept-
ance of office till his resignation. Such treatises are per-
fectly harmless. England would not give her Reform Bill,
imperfect as may be its working, for at least a tithe of the
amount of her national debt ; and as for the lament about
curtailing the influence and power of the Peers, why if that
were an evil, which we know it not to be, better that four
hundred Peers should be shorn of the plumes of feudal irre-
sponsibility than that twenty-four millions of free-born British
subjects should be robbed of rights, in defence of which
England had poured out the best brood of her own children.

FRAZER'S MAGAZINE, No. L VI.
FRASER : London.

Regina Queens it most royally this month. We have not
seen a livelier number than the one before us. It is full
of sterling wit, cutting satire, and sarcasm, such as a person
of weak nerves would rather breathe the atmosphere of an
apartment in an Egyptian Pyramid than be the object of.
But why so severe on the Ettrick Shepherd ? Hogg is an
honest harmless fellow—a little vain, and sometimes insuf-
ferably egotistical ; but undoubtedly possessing genius of a
high order, and with a heart, too, of such sterling stuff that
we can hardly forgive those who could wantonly wound it.
There surely must have been some mistake here ; for Fraser
is too generous to intend the strict application to the
" Shepherd's" character, of the strictures on him contained
in the Review of his Domestic Manners of Sir Walter
Scott. Were it otherwise we would use stronger language
with respect to such treatment even of a Tory—especially
such a Tory as the author of the Queen's Wake.
Prince Pungent is as biting as ever. The Schoolmistress,
by Galt, is, as its author describes it, " a sad and simple
tale." Alas ! for such a tale how many heroines might not
be found ! Sartor Resartus has betaken himself to dandy-
dressing this month, and truly he has a most exquisite taste.
Tom Moore is not so great a man as we take him to be if
he do not laugh heartily over the history of his own rogueries
in the Front Papers. They are exquisitely humourous,
and the cleverest of the kind we have met with. At the
hazard of being charged with pedantry in these utilitarian
times, we give the following version of Moore's beautiful
melody, " Lesbia hath a beaming eye," for which, did he
never write another line, Father Prout is deserving of im-

mortality :
Lesbia semper hint et inde Oculis et raptis erres
Oculoriun tela movit • Contemplando ambulantem !
Captat omnes, sed deinde Veste Nora tam decori
Quis ametur nemo novit. Semper indui memento,
Palpebrarum, Nora cara, Semper purse sic nature
Lux tuarum non est foris, Ibis tecta vestimento.
Flamma micat ibi rara,

Sed sinceri lux amoris. Lesbia mentis prmfert lumen,
Nora Creina sit Regina, Quod coruscat perlibenter ;
Vultu, gressu tam modest° ! Sed quis optet hoc acumen,
Hwe, puellas inter bellas, Quando acupuncta dentur ?
Jure omnium dux esto! Norte sinu cum recliner
Dormio luxuriose
Lesbia vestes auro graves Nil corrugat hoc pulvinar
Fert, et gemmis,i uxtanormam ; Nisi crispm ruga roue.
Gratire sed, eheu ! suaves Nora blanda, lux amanda,

Cinctam reliquere formam.
Norm tunicam preferres,
Flante Zephyro volantem ;

Expers usque tenebrarum,
To cor mulccs per tot dulces
Dotes, fons illecebrarum !

Sir Morgan O'Doherty is still a fine lively old fellow.
Fraser as usual, winds up with a long tirade against the
Whigs, which, as it is a habit now, " bred in the bone,"—
" disease incurable," the public will forgive him for, in con-
sideration of the excellences with which it stands insepara-
ble. We had almost forgotten the Gallery of Portraits.
The present number contains an arm-chair-full of Thomas
Hill, author of the Mirror of Fashion, looking at you as he
rests after a perusal of the Morning Chronicle.

DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE.—No. XX.
Curry and Co., Dublin ; Simpkin and Marshall,London.

Ireland is the only country in Europe in which religious
rancour and party hate convert every blessing which boun-
teous Heaven has bestowed on her soil, clime, and locality,
—every good gift with which God has endowed the minds
and bodies of her people—into curses which creep through
and wither the very marrow in her bones ; presenting her
to the world a frightful example of how successfully a com-
bination of hatred, pride, bigotry, and ignorance, may
mar the best and brightest enjoyments which the Eternal
has permitted to his creatures. We have in this country
political partizanship in abundance, and creeds creating
animosities which every good man deplores, and every wise
jean endeavours to prevent ; but in hatred of a dark and
deadly hue—in zeal kindled at the faggot, and lighting to
extermination, we bear no comparison with unhappy Ireland.
There the evils, which with us perish in the bud, luxuriate
in full-grown
from;— ;—ripening in the sun of party power,
coast to coast.
and casting their seeds at the bidding of every wind of
Heaven,
otwonbemsattruer,ivtny
Moro the appearance of the periodical now before us,

cabinet—a man the most high-minded, honourable, digni-
fied, and upright, that ever steered the British vessel
through the stormy waves of a fierce, furious, and headlong
opposition, we leave the country to express its own opinion
—our's of such calumnies are already known.
Scenes from the Life of Edward Lascelles, Gent.,
Chap. V., is a clever sketch. We hope the writer will con-
tinue it in the same bold, masterly, headlong spirit. We
read it with great spirit, and should recommend to the
government to re-enslave the West Indians, were negroes
in the habit of indulging their fancies in the composition of
such lively sonnets as that with which poor " blackie" enter-
tained his comrades on the way to the " Stai." Hardi-
man's Irish minstrelsy, No. 11., is full of poetic feeling,
and discloses much acquaintance with the Irish heart and
character. Our only objection to it, is the subject which
the writer has chosen to embellish with the effusions of his
fine mind. The following observations are not made for
the first time, but they are still so new that we shall be for-
given submitting them to the public :
Desire,rehrdeee dreadspair, prodtmheptheros of song.rribler Whoever
eality ef actualfirfasmt famine—
these the:e are
the Song of Sorrow had felt them all ; but desire was his para-
mount inspirer, and the concluding stanzas rise into such a fervid
frenzy of undisguised desire, that we shrink from exhibiting them
in their literal English. Yet there is nothing impure, nothing
licentious in their languishing but savage sincerity. This is the
one great characteristic of all the amatory poetry of the country ;
and in its association with the despondency of conscious degrada-
tion, and the recklessness of desperate content, is partly to be found
the origin of that wild, mournful, incondite, yet no uncouth, senti-
ment which distinguishes the national songs of Ireland from those
of perhaps any other nation in the world. We say that in this is
" partly' to be found in the source of that peculiarity which marks
Irish sentiments ; for we believe that the great proportion of the cha-
racteristics of a people are inherent, not fictitious ; and that there
are as essential differences between the geniuses as between the
physical appearances of nations. We believe that no dissipating
continuance of defeat, danger, famine, or misgovernment, could
ever, without the absolute infusion of Milesian blood, Hibernicize
the English peasant ; and that no stultifying operation of mere
security, plenty, or laborious regularity could ever, without actual
physical transubstantiation, reduce the native Irishman to the stolid
standard of the sober Saxon.
* 4 * * * *

" Let us no longer imagine that humour is the characteristic of
the Irish. Their sentiment is pathetic. Desire is the essence of
that pathos—desire either for the possession of love unenjoyed, or
for the continuance of love being enjoyed, or for the restoration of
enjoyed love lost. We know no Irish song-addressed to the judg-
ment : if an Irish song fail to go to the heart at once, it fails out-
right. Even in the most whimsical there is some touch of senti-
ment, some appeal to the pathetic principle."

As to the conjectures about Burns being of Irish descen

we care nothing about them ; they are just about as much
worth as if we were to maintain the writer to be a Tartar, be-
cause Cain,Abel, and Seth were born on the confines of Eden.

Decline and Fall of Poetic Genius, is elegant, but unjust
towards the present age. Surely a person who can write
such beautiful poetry in prose is the last who ought to pre-
fer a charge of a want of poetic feeling and taste against
this world of ours, cold and dull as it is. Adventures in
South America, No. IV., is equal to what preceded it on
this subject ; but would it not be better if magazine writers
were wholly to drop continued narratives ? Consolation, is
is not well sustained. We expected something better from

he opening. Here it is :
" There lived some time gone by in modern France—
Whose sunny clime the human bosom warms ;
The land of love and bravery and romance—
A youthful dame of most transcendant charms,
Who, on a fatal day had the mischance
To have her husband wrested from her arms
By the rude hand of death ! a blooming youth,
Whose looks were love, his soul's best treasure, truth !
" Who can describe her grief; it passed all thought !
Handsome, and young, and wedded scarce ten days ;
A handsome husband, too, who only sought
To love, and please, and humour all her ways ;
Who just the day before he died, had bought
A phaeton for her, drawn by two smart bays.
O married wives! imagine if you can,
Her grief at having lost so dear a man.
44 Oft would she sit, and o'er his portrait dream
For hours together heaving heavy sighs ;
Then she would start, and wring her hands and scream,
Rending the very heavens with her cries,
Till she sank down exhausted, and did seem
As dead; saving that from her half-closed eyes,
The tears welled copiously, you could not trace
One sign of life on her pale marble face.
" And sometimes by the full moon's silver light,
She'd wander on the banks of the Garonne ;
Where he and she, on many a summer's night,
Had fondly wandered, hand in hand alone,
Ere their loves met this rude and sudden blight.
And sometimes she would stand and gaze upon
Her phaeton, or her husband's favourite horse;
But this invariably made her worse."

THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY, No. XCIL

EDITED BY W. J. FOX.
Fox; London.

No mirror held up to the Hierarchy this month ! This
is strange, and stranger still that the declaimers and peti-
tioners against the Bill, for admitting Dissenters to the Uni-
versity honours, have only the little finger of a note held up
threateningly against them. But for all that, this is an ex-
cellent number ; light, varied and agreeable. A London
Sunday is a sketch of rare merit. Beneath that Starry
Arch, a song, by Harriet Martineau, contains some good
lines, but there is a want of connexion—of relationship in
the imagery and objects brought, or rather huddled to-
gether, of which we do not approve. Campbell's Life of
Mrs. Siddons is an able paper—the most marked by thought
and reflection of any of the reviews of that work which have
yet fallen under our observation.
" But it is for other reasons that they are, both men and women,
generally disesteemed; and those reasons mainly are, that the former
are often known to be improvident, and the latter are sometimes
supposed to be unchaste. Improvidence is only pardonable under
privilege of Parliament, and finds no shelter beyond the folds of
that mantle which hides so much better than even all-covering
charity. And as to the other offence, it is the loss of woman's
virtue; she has but that, and surely ought to keep it, as it exone-
rates from the practice of all the rest, and alone constitutes the gulf
between good and bad in her sex. She may be full of envy, ha-
tred, malice, and all uncharitableness;' as ignorant as an ass, as
obstinate as a mule, as blind as a beete, as poisonous as an asp,
and as savage as a hyaena, and yet be a virtuous woman. She may,
from sheer vanity, excite affection which she means to disappoint ;
she may marry without a spark of love, and procure clothes, board,
lodging and money, by the legal barter of her person ; she may
vend the heartless form, if it wear well enough, again and again,
and renew the disgusting bargain, and perform its conditions to the
end of her days, and yet be a virtuous woman. She may, by her
wasteful expenditure, scatter to the winds the hard earnings of her
husband.; she may withhold all sympathy from the honourable but
not profitable exertions in which he needs it, and ever influence
towards sycophancy and selfishness ; she may abandon her children
to hirelings, or only teach them lessons better unlearnt, training
them to leave and make the world worse than they found it, and
yet be a virtuous woman. For none of these things does she lose
caste. She still retains her virtue."

We have only time for a passing observation on the Memo-
randa of Experiments on Education, and House Building
and Housekeeping. They are worthy of being read atten-
tively, and whoever does so read them will meet with much
useful information which he may have forgotten, and more
which he may never have heard of before. The Lines to a
Glow-worm are really beautiful—full of poetry ;we regret
that we cannot give them, nor an extract from A London
Sunday, which we cannot get out of our head, it so pleased
us. With less utilitarianism, and more fancy, this periodi-
cal would become agreat favourite with the public.

NEW MONTHL Y,—MONTHL Y.
There is something quite startling to our notions of
propriety in the behaviour of the two Monthly Magazines,
considering their relative positions. The Old Monthly
has indeeedropt the " old," an epithet by which few people
are anxious to be distinguished, but for all that it is indis-
putably the senior, and ought, therefore, in the nature of

we had hoped that the regeneration of Ireland would be
assisted by such publications ; and therefore it was not
with a common interest that we watched its progress. We
expected that its conductors—men evidently possessed of
great abilities--would bend all their energies to heal the
wounds under which the public mind is and has been long
suffering. We hoped to see sectarianism give way to
charity, and a mutual forgetfulness of wrong. We antici-
pated something approaching to liberal sentiments from per-
sons assuming the representation of the only university in
Ireland. But in all these things have we been doomed to
bitter disappointment. The very first article in the num-
ber now on the table before us, The Irish Church Com-
mission and the Coronation Oath, is a seditious attack on
the King's government, addressed to a people in a state of
such excitement from similar publications, that it is found
necessary to suspend the constitution among them, in order
to preserve life and property in the kingdom. And yet the
writer of this tissue of untruths, whose every principle is an
error, is not ashamed to remind as many of his readers as
have sworn to the truth of the thirty-nine articles, that
Popery is DAMNABLE!—that Papists ought to be EXTER-
MINATED !—that the King is perjured by recommending a
reform in the Irish Church Establishment !—and that a
proper distribution of the revenues of the hierarchy and
beneficed dignitaries among the working clergy, and for the
maintenance of schools, as approved of by the venerable Dr.
Whateley, the Archbishop of Dublin, would be followed by
the all but immediate extinction of Protestantism in Ire-
land ! Of the personal abuse of the head of the late