The Sun.
London, England, 1856-07-17 00:00:00

DRAY HORSES.

Class I—Best stalliou, foaled previously to the Ist of
January, 1554, 201., W. 1341cer and Son, Stapleford, Cam-
bridgeshire. 2 —Best stallion, foaled in the year 1851,
151., C. Tomm, Scrooby House, Notts.

SHEEP.
LEIC EST HRS.

Class I—Best shearing ram, 251., T. L. Po.wlett,Beeston,
Beds ; second best ditto, 151., ditto. 2—Best ram of any
other age, 2 1., ditto; second best ditto, 15/ , R. W. Cress-
Raverstone, Leicestershire. 3—Best pen of five
shearing ewes of the same flock, 201., J. G. Watkins, near
Droitwieh, Worcestershire; second best ditto, 101., G.
Turner, Barton, near Exeter.
SOUTHDOWN OR OTHER SHORT-WOOLLED SHEEP.
Class I—Best shearing ram, 251., K, Orenman, Wester-
ham, Norfolk ; second best ditto, 151., Jonas Webb. 2
Be-t. ram of any other age, 'Si., Henry Lugar, near Bury
St. Edmund's; second best ditto, 151., Lord Walsingham.
3—Best pen of five shearing ewes of the same flock, 201.,
ditto ; second best ditto, 10/., ditto.
LONG-WOOLLED SHEEP.
(Not qualified to compete as Leioesters.)
Class 1— Best shearling ram, 251., James Walker, North-
leach, Gloucestersbire ; second best ditto, 15/ , J. B.
Brown, Hampden, Gloucestershire. 2—Best ram of any
other age, 251.. W. Lane, near Northleach, Gloucester-
shire; second best ditto, 15/., Garre, jun., Bibury,
Glcueestershire. 3 —Best pen of five shearling ewes of the
same flock, 20/ , W. Lane, Northleach ; second best ditto,
101., ditto.

THOMAS MOORE.

Memoirs of Thomas Moore. Edited by the Right
Hon. Lord John Russell. S vols. Longman
and Co.

(FIFTH NOTICE )
Spirat adhuc amor at the commencement—Finis
coronat opus at the conclusion —it is accomplished !
Moore's Memoirs are at length completed : at last
Lord John Russell has found himself enabled to
consummate the final tribute of a faithful friend-
ship—a friendship so intrinsically real and earnest
that it has discovered for itself the means of being
thus posthumously perpetuated. A friendship
knitting together during their lifetime the sympa-
thies of a Whig Duke's son and of the son of a Dub-
lin grocer—coupling together, after their separa-
tion by death, the names of the poet Moore and the
patrician Russell—the once Prime Minister of Eng-
land, assuming in regard to the Irish melodist the
delicateand responsible office of his biographer. In
discharging the duties of that office Lord John after
all, we cannot but think, has acquitted himself very
judiciously. Notwithstanding tne sneers of some
and the snarls of others, he has contrived to con-
duct the Memoirs gradually to their conclusion in
a spirit of mingled reserve and candour, manly can-
dour and adroit reserve, preserving from first to last
as editor of the papers committed to his charge for
the purposes of collation and selection, an amiable
and, it must be added, sometimes a most
magnanimous equanimity. Sometimes—namely,
when a writer of fiercer passions, or of more atra-
bilious temperament might have been roused to
retort—stung into indignation by the brutal taunts
or coarse scurrility of a mind in itself naturally
spiteful, but rendered by the lapse of time and
the consequent growth of suspicion more than
usually malevolent, at the very period when
other men are endeavouring to cultivate at
least the appearances of amenity, or the affec-
tation of dignified indifference. Serenely unin-
fluenced by mockery or by misrepresentation,
the editor of these eight volumes giving us the
memoirs, journal, and correspondence of Thomas
Moore, has brought them in due course of time to
a state of completion, and, in doing so, has added
to our national store of literature a voluminous
contribution, replete in almost every page with the
ripe materials, not the raw materials, but the ripe
materials, of interest and entertainment. Already
in our previous notices of the attractive work
under review, we have spoken of it in general
terms, as a production distinguished, among
other qualities, by two very prominent and
acceptable characteristics, those of memoirs abound-
ing in delightful anecdote and agreeable reminis-
cences. The latter of these two conspicuous cha-
racteristics we have already illustrated by detailed
allusion to the numerous and motley crowd of
celebrities introduced to our acquaintance, so to
speak, in kit-kat or full-length, in profile or three-
quarters, in life-size or in miniature, now in a ran-
dom sketch, now in a mere silhouette by the
piquant Diary of the observant melodist-humorist !
Even the anecdotal liveliness of the pro-
duction, we have taken occasion, here and
there, as opportunity tempted us, to in-
dicate incidentally by a casual bon mot or some
witticism parenthetically introduced. It will be
our object now, however, to afford our readers
evidence, somewhat more minute and explicit, of
the charm appertaining to Moore's memoirs as a
repository of anecdote.
A rather pleasant enterprise—we take it—seeing
that the " good things," iu this way, with which
the Diary in particular is stored, :happen to be, for
the most part, very good things indeed, and very
plentiful to boot. Apropos des bottes by the way,
the specimens we shall have to give will require
to be introduced—iu other words " tumbled in "
neck and heels, like a swarm of merry andrews,
leaping the garter on the saw - dust of an
amphitheatre—these specimens of fun and frolic,
quip and crank, drolleries the direct antithesis of
what the Dunciad has stigmatised as—
" All that on Folly Frenzy could beget
Fruits of dull heat and sooterkins of wit."
It is observable throughout that Moore had a natu-
ral relish for the ridiculous. He had a ready laugh
for anything at all partaking of the facetious :
whether he heard of an absurd fellow meet-
ing a friend running through the rain with
an umbrella over him, and calling out to him as
he passed, " Where are you running to in such a
hurry like a mad mushroom,?" or listened to the
good old story of the Irishman in the Marshalsea
having heard his companion brushing his teeth the
last thing at night, and then, upon waking, at the
same work in the morning : " Ugh, a weary
night you must have had of it, Mr. Fitz-
gerald !" Among the multifarious anecdotes re-
lated by Moore, there are no lack, by the way,
of those setting forth the drollery of his fellow-
countrymen in a light of peculiar ridiculousness.
As for example that recounted of a visitor asking
a servant—" Is your master at home ?"—" No
sir, he's out." " Your mistress?''—" No, sir, she
is out." " Well, I'll just go iu and take an air of
the fire till they come." "Faith, sir, that's out tool" Or
that of the man asked by a friend to come and dine
with him off boiled beef and potatoes : and who
replied " That I will," says he, " and it's rather
odd it should be exactly the same dinner I had at
home for myself, barring the beef !" Or, again, that
story of Luttrell's about the Irish lady who had
been travelling with her family, and on being asked
whether they had been at Aix, answered, " Oh,
yes ! indeed ; very much at our ase everywhere !"
Or best of all, perhaps, as indicative of the pre-
posterous slips of the tongue peculiar, not to John
Bull, but to Pat Bull ! that related by Moore as
having occurred actually within his own experience
when suddenly coming one morning (with an uncle
of his) upon the dead body of a poor wretch lying
upon the highroad between Dublin and Sandy-
mount. "He had been shot," says Moore, " just
under the eye, and there was no other mark than
the small hole through which the bullet had en-
tered. Au old woman who was looking down at
the body at the same time with us, said, 'lt was
the blessing of God it didn't hit his eye " Not a
few among the anecdotes and witticisms related by
the Irish melodist come back to us, of course, as
very old friends, known, years ago, familiarly.
Some of them, indeed, regular " Old Joes" very
much fumbled, and towzled, and dogseared, and
threadbare. Scarcely any one, for example, re-
quires to be reminded of the uncleanly whist player
to whom it was said, " I say if dirt was
trumps, what hands you' would have !"—the same
individual, one might conjecture, of whom it was
remarked (epitaph-ically) by Kenny, that he "died
of a cold caught by washing his face." Almost
everyone, again, has an intimate personal acquaint-
mice with the sham problem, discoverable, we
should fancy, somewhere or other in the pages of
Miller—" Given the tonnage of a ship and the
course she is upon ; required the name of the cap-
tain !" While the same, doubtless, might be said
with equal truth of that capital old story of the
man brimming over with ill-temper, coming out of
a room whero he had lost all his money at play,
and seeing a person (a perfect stranger to him)
tying his shoe at the top of the stairs ; "D—n you
(says he), ou're always tying your shoe!" and kicked
him down stairs. Not less familiar too are some of the
theatrical legends here revived for our amuse-
ment. As, for instance, that of the actor saying
by mistake—

" How sharper than a serpent's thanks it is,
To have a toothless child ! "
Or that one of old Parker, who used always to
say " coison'd pup" instead of " poison'd cup "
a ludicrous lapsus linguce here mentioned by Moore
with a laughable addition (new to us), to the effect
that one night when old Parker spoke it right,
the audience said " No, no ! " and called for the
other reading ! Something of the same kind, is
the absurd blunder related elsewhere by our
Diarist—about John Kemble performing one night
at some country theatre one of his favourite parts,
and being interrupted from time to time by the
squalling of a child in one of the gaileries—until
at length, angered by this rival performance,
Kemble walked with solemn step to the front of
the stare, and, addressing the audience in his most
tragic tone, said "Ladies and gentlemen, unless
the play is stopped the child cannot possibly go on !"
A French theo.tric,tl anecdote told to Moore by an
actual ear-witness of it, no other than Lord John
Russell himself, is, to our thinking, in its way, ab-
solutely delicious. Seated next a man at the
Theatre Francais, who was very much discontented
at the way in which the play (" Cinna") was acted,
Lord John heard him, on the following line being
spoken, Ou laissez-moi regner, ou laissez-moi perir,
mutter, "Ou laissez-moi siffier, on laissez-moi
sortir ! " Several delightful stories, by the by, are
told here about that Priaceof French wits, Charles
Maurice Talleyrand—one whose sayings would
have tickled the risible muscles of Voltaire, and
have been dear to the memory and the note-book
of the Chevalier Boufflers I Hear that story of
someioody who squinted asking him Comment vont
les affaires, and his answering COMM vows VOI jeZ
Listen to him one day when Bubus Smith hap-
pened somehow in conversation to speak of the
beauty of his mother, saying C'etolt done votre pore
qui &Roil pas biers ! Hearken to that laughter-
moving reminiscence of his correspondence—the
story about the lady who wrote to him (Talley-
rand), informing him in high-flown terms of
her grief on the death of her husband, and
expecting an eloquent letter of condolence in
return;
his answer only being Betas ma-
dame. Votre affection 6, &c., Talleyrand ! In less
than a year another letter from the same lady in-
formed him of her being married again; to which he
returned an answer in the same laconic style—Oh,
01, Madame ! Votre affections, dc., Talleyrand. A