The Sun.
London, England, 1851-04-19 00:00:00

EVENING, APRIL l9, 1851.

5.07-1; iiamborah, 37 to 37i; Bremen, 791- to 793;
Anuterdum, 414 to 42.
Freights remain iThchange.d. About 1,000 bees cot-
ton were engaged at 3-16 to 7-32:1. ; 1,000 bblF. flour,
12d,; 1,000 bb!:. turpentine, 15,1; 700 bbls, resin, 9d.;
and dead weight at 12s. 6d. to 15s. To Cuba two vessels
were engaged at 21. 53. and 21. 7s. 6d. for Europe. To
California there is a moderate amount of business doing
at 40c. to 60c..

Cotton—The unexpected advance, by the Baltic, of
id. to id., instead of a decline of about that line, has not
stimulated our market as much as was anticipated, from
the great desire evinced by holders to make sales at a
small improvement on previous rates. The transactioru
were reported at 4,000 bales, at lc. advance, say on the
basis of 1 lie. to 111 c. for middling Upland.
Feathers—Within a day or two 5,000 lbs. live geese
changed hands at 40c. cash.
Fish—ln dry cod there was rather more doing, and
the market was very firm. A cargo of 1,100 quintals,
just arrived, was taken from first hands at 3 dolls. 12c.
Of mackerel 300 bbls. sold at 10 dolls. 12c. to 9 dolls.
12c. for 1 and 2. Nothing new in herrings.
Freights—There was more cotton offering for Liver-
pool; about 1,000 bales were engaged at 3-16 d. to 7-32 d.,
with some small lots at /I There was no change in
rates to London or Havre. To California the clipper
Eureka had completed cargo, at about 70c., while ordi-
nary sailers were obtaining 40c. to 50:. There was
rather more offering.
Fruit—Since our last there have been sales of 1,000
boxes Malaga raisins, at 8 dolls to 8 dolls. 12c.; 200
ditto halves, at 1 doll.

Breadstuirs-Flour-There was a firmer feeling in the
market for the low and medium grades of State and
Western, and with a better Eastern and local inquiry;
7,500 bbls. domestic changed hands at 4 dolls. 25c. to 4
dolls. 31c. for No. 2 super. ; 4 dolls. 50c. to 4 dolls. 62c.
for ord. to choice State ; 4 dolls, 56c. to 4 dolls.
75c. for Indiana and Michigan ; 4 dolls. 68c.
to 4 dolls. 87c. for New Orleans, and 4 dolls.
94c. to 5 dolls, for pure Genesee. Other brand
sold to a fair extent at unchanged rates. Canadian
was inactive, and nominal, at dolls. 4 62c., in bond. For
Southern flour the market was more buoyant, and prices
have advanced. Transactions add up 4,500 barrels,
mostly for shipment, at 4 dolls. 68c. to 4 dolls. 81c. for
common; and 5 dolls. to 5 dolls. 56c. for fancy. Of rye
flour the sales reached 100 bbls., at 3 dolls. 37c. to 3 dolls.
50c. Meal sold to a limited extent at former quota-
tions. Wheat was held with more firmness, while the
demand was fair. The sales, however, were confined to
a parcel of ordinary Canadian in bond, at 96c. Rye
was scarce and quiet at 75c. Barley was in request,
with sales of 1,500 bushels, at 7 dolls. 6c. to 1 dolls.
12ic., a decline. Oats have not varied. Cora has been
pretty active, without marked alteration in value, Some
18,000 bushels yellow, New Jersey and Southern,
changed hands at 68c. to 68ic.
Coffee had a drooping tendency, with sales of 500 bags
Rio at 101 c.; 150 ditto Java, at 121 c.; and 200 ditto St.
Domingo, at 91c. to 9ic. cash.
Wool-The stocks have materially decreased, and
there is now a good supply in the market. Prices gene-
rally are a shade lower; below we submit a revised list
of current prices. Sales during the week wore made of
200 bales Smyrna and other Meditterranean unwashed
at 13c. to 16c.; 100 bales Smyrna washed at 24c. to 26c.,
six months, and 50,0001b5. fleece, of low and medium
qualities, at 45c. to 46c. cash. American Saxony, fleece,
per lb., 500. to 550.; American, full blood Merino, 44c.
to 48c.; American, and t Merino, 39c. to 43c.; Ameri-
can, native and f Merino, 35c. to 33c.; superfine, pulled.
country, 40c. to 43c.; No. 1, pulled, country, 36c. to 38c.;
superfine, pulled, city, 3Sc. to 39c.; No. 1, pulled, city
36c. to 37c.; Peruvian, washed, 26c. to 35c.; Valparaiso,
unwashed, 11c. to 13c.; South American, washed, 18c.
to 20c.; South American, unwashed, 10c. to 12c.; South
American Cordova, washed, 24c. to 25c.; South Ameri-
can Cordova, unwashed, 12c. to 13c.; East India, washed,
28.!. to 30e.; African, unwashed, 10c. to 18c.; African,
washed, 27c. to 35c.; Smyrna, unwashed, 14c. to 17c.;
Smyrna, washed, 25e. to 28c.; Mexican, unwashed,
16c. to 17c.

• PLAINNESS.
(From Eliza Cook's Journal.)
Plainness is a sort of half-way stage between
beauty on the one hand and ugliness upon the o:her.
That some critical persons may perhaps say does not
amount to a definition, and they are right, but then
we should reply that it is not our business to define
but to describe and paint, and so to make more clear
than can he accomplished by the aid of a definition.
For in truth these definitions are not often very
manageable or understandable things, and besides
being very ditlicult to construct they are not half so
graphic as a description, which is a picture done in
words, showing us what a thing is to our senses.
Did our readers ever try their hands at a defini-
tion ? If not, we would advise them to make the
attempt, and if they succeed they will perceive at
once how hard, cold, dry, and unsatisfactory a thing
it is; how undescriptive and how ineffectual fur
conveying a mental image. In oroer to define,
it is absolutely necessary that thereshoul.l be a
standard and a measure, and that positive qualities
and unvarying quantities, should he the bases,
but if we were to endeavour to apply such a rule to
beauty for example, we should be completely at sea.
There is no cast of features in which beauty neces-
sarily resides, nor any proportion of face or person
which necessarily insures the possession of that quality
which we call beauty. A man or woman may be
either handsome or ugly, with a Jewish face a Roman
profile, or Grecian contour, with an Eastern sallow-
ness of complexion, or an Italian sunniness of skin, or
with red and white Saxon cheeks. The beauty may
be either tall or short, voluptuously full or gracefully
thin of figure, a Juno, a Minerva, a Venus, or a
sylph. In fact, beauty has as many qualities as there
are minds to contemplate it, and while there is an
absence of any universally authorative canon, there
are thousands of individual standards of opinion, and
while this makes it impossible to give a catholic de-
finition which all may receive, it enables us to appeal
to each man's instinctive feeling of that which is to
him the most beautiful.
But though there is a variety of thought and opi-
nion, there is also some sort of agreement. For ex-
ample, what one calls beautiful, another seldom calls
plain or !ugly. They may not recognise in what ap-
pears perfection to others the highest
i point of attrac-
tiveness to them,Jaut they feel that t is far from re-
pulsive, that it is anything but ugly. The portly
sturdy farmer, for.example, might look upon one of
Rubens's fresh-coloured wide-spread dames as the re-
alization of his highest dreams of loveliness, while the
courtly connoisseur actuated by a more delicate taste,.
would call such a specimen of womankind a "fine
woman," and turn for a higher embodiment of beauty
to a Venus by Corregio or Titian, or a Madonna
from the brush of Raphael—forms which the aforesaid
farmer would perhaps be content to designate as
" pretty." Though one might dissent from the other's
opinion of beauty he would not call its visible expres-
sion ugly. That is the amount of agreement which
links together all men's perceptions and sensations,
and blends the Protestantism of individuality into the
Catholicism of universality.
This sort of agreement, too, goes to indicate that
there are some common qualities entering into every
idea of beauty which prevents any one's loveliness
from being any other persona's repulsiveness ; but
what they are we have not found out; and poets,
fiction writers, painters, and sculptors, seem from
the diversity of their descriptions and representations
to be equally in the dark. There is, indeed, one
statue to which all bow down as the visible realiza-
tion of the highest beauty of the female form, the
Venus de Medici, but unfortunately that does not
mend the matter, for if the philosophy of the brain is
to be trusted, such a form and such an expression
could not be blended together in life, for the head is
so small that it could only belong to an idiot, and if
the sculptor, Pygmalion-like, had fallen in love with
the inanimate production of his chisel, and animated
it with the Promethean fire of life, the expression of
mind would have vanished from its countenance, and
the beauty of the face have faded into the listless look
of repulsive imbecility.
We will not therefore attempt to define beauty or
ugliness, nor try to make them comprehensible, ex -
cept by referring them to the attractiveness or repul-
siveness which they exercise over every one ; nor will
we attempt to mend our definition of plainness which
is the mid point between everybody's idea of beauty
and ugliness—that which neither repulses violently
nor attracts powerfully.
Beauty is a good, no doubt, because we all invo-
luntarily admire and love it, and ugliness is also cer-
tainly an evil because we all involuntarily dislike it.
In these respects we not only cannot command our
feelings, but we have not the opportunity of doing
so, because they act before we have time for thought.
If a man were placed between two strangers whom
he had never seen before and wished for conversation,
he would be prompted to turn from the least agree-
able looking to the most attractive, as naturally as he
would leave the thistle to feast upon the bright
colours and the fragrance of the rose ; but while the
flowers never deceive him—while they, instinct with
the truth of nature, al ways are what they seem to be,
he would often find that among men and women ap-
pearances are very deceptive, and that behind the
beautiful mask might be concealed a disagreeable
spirit or an empty head, and that the coarse, ill-
formed visage was the title-page of a benevolent
heart, and a capacious and well-stored mind—that
the good of the one had been a source of evil, the evil
of the other had been a fountain of good—that when
the pleasant rill had dried up, the solid rock had
opened and gushed forth in crystal waters—that the
beauty, trusting to mere appearance, had let the
spirit run to waste, and its power wither away,
while the less favoured child of nature had sought
another staff to lean upon, and unblessed by beauty
of form had illuminated his mind, and made that
radiant.

More frequently, however, both the good of the one
and the evil of the other, as extremes are said to meet
and blend, produce from opposites precisely the same
results. Beauty is, strange as it may sound, as preg-
nant with repulsiveness as ugliness itself. The fine
face with its carnation lips and delicately cut nose
and radiant eyes, has existed in the region of flattery
and adulation till the proud haughty smile, and su-
percilious stare, and cold, indifferent expression be-
come its habitual companions and freeze up the in-
stinctive feelings which would draw us towards it;
while hideousness, pointed at, laughed at, scorned,
sneered at, and despised, has wound round its heart
the dark veil of misanthropic hatred, and knitted its
unattractive brows in a malicious frown which ren •
ders repulsiveness still more repulsive. Bath beauty
and ugliness wither a great deal of nature good, and
perhaps are equally to be dreaded, the one as a dan-
gerous gift, the other as a melancholy affliction ; the
one as the burning sun which scorches up immature
fruits, the other as the cloudy, cold, bleak atmosphere
which forbids the buds and blossoms of the heart to
open into ripeness and beauty.
In the midst then of these extremes of the good and
evil of form—dangerous because they are extremes—
comes the safe mediocrity of plainness, destitute of
the attractiveness of beauty, but without the repul-
siveness of ugliness. It is to perfect loveliness what
the mild summer of the temperate zone is to the
burning heat of the tropics, and it is to hideousness
what the genial, bracing healthfulness of an English
winter is to the frigid cold of the arctic circle. Its
possessor is unassailed by the lofty and yet contempt-
ible vanity which beauty so often fosters, and is free
from the dark shade of misanthropy which the satire
and scorn of the world so often casts around the ugly.
The plain man is like the man who is " passing rich,"
whose wealth does not suffice to give him a false im-
portance, and is yet too great to suffer him to fear the
grinding hardship and the withering degradation of
poverty and want ; he has the happy medium, and we
are disposed to look upon him as one of the favoured
mortals whom nature has framed for calm happiness
and knowledge.
Whether this be the sole cause or not we are not
dogmatic enough nor sufficiently presumptuous to
say, but if we look at the portraits of great and wise
and good men in all ages, we shall find that the vast ma-
jority belong to the class whom we call plain people ;
and when they have bad anything of that quality
which men would consent to call beauty, we shall
find that it has been, as a rule, the beauty of expres-
sion and not the beauty of form—that it has been
owing to the character which the mind imparted to
the face, and not to the hue of the complexion or con-
tour of the features. The English are such a practi-
cal people that they think "an ounce of fact is worth
a ton of theory," and a fact like the one we have just
mentioned is likely to weigh with them far more
strongly than a book full of learned argument,
When, then, they direct their attention to the faces
of such men as Luther, Cromwell, Johnson, and Sir
Walter Scott, they will have a better notion of the
power which plain men exercise than any we can
otherwise give them.
Certain it is, too, that plain people are-generally far
more lovable than either handsome or ugly people. We
need not give exemples of this, because they are all
in everybody's experience ; a few minutes of con-
sideration will convince our readers of its truth. If
any lady or gentleman doubts the fact let him run over
the list of his best and dearest friends, and observe
whether the majority are not plain people. We do
not, of course, write this for lovers, because they catch
the blindness which is one of the attributes
,ofarit their
tutelary tutelary deity. " Love's blind, they s
lovers are not quite blind they arei:layffiCted, or
a sort of
blesed—it is hard to say which—wit
amorous ophthalmia, which makes them
vebrylemshisohret:
sighted indeed. Their love actually makes
associated
into beauties; and perhaps they hove so
the imperfections of the object of their affections with
his or her personal identity, that, to take away the
deformities would be to change a beloved individual
for an indifferent stranger. In a Swiss tale, for ex-
ample, there is a beautiful little episode, which is so
true that we fancy it must have been copied from na-
ture. It tells of a young peasant girl who was be.