The Sun.
London, England, 1851-05-13 00:00:00

MAY

13, 1851.

St. John.

LITER ATURE.

mmrtur SE DL EY ; or, THE TARES AY _D •
THE WHEAT. A Tate (f Real Life. By
Lady Bulwer Lytton 3 Tols. Shoberl.
L Buiwer Lttun, in a iively Freoch
tion, pr,,sents these volumes to the Countess Hen-
riette D'Angeville, in which dedication her Ladyship's
remsrks on her own countrywomen are anything hut
complimentary, e. g.:—" Et ce n'est point etonnant, )
vu que l'idolatrie du veau d'or suit notre culto na-
tional, quelques belles et bonnes exceptions pies, la
femellt. Britsnnique (animal sans (Tour et sans tote,
inedite par Buffon) est vraiment une nullite odieuse
et voila pnurquoi le commerce social est une chose
incomprise chez nous ; car tandis que la France a
produit tent de femmes celebres et de grandeS dames,
l'Angleterre ne fait gatte que mettre bas (et a kans)
des femel'es, des femmelettes, et des fine ladies. La
prem;a-e ne sait rien, la seconde ne fait rien, et
la troisieme ne dit rien." The plot of "Miriam
Sedley" is slight, and possessed of little or no roman-
tic interest, it may rather be regarded as the connect-
ing link of a series of lively sketches and observations,
for the most part brilliant, occasionally truthful and
beautiful, but more often sarcastic and even tent soft
pea spiteful ; as, for example, the above quoted re-
marks from the dedication. Among the most truth-
ful and sensible advice bestowed by Lady Bulwer
upon her fair readers are some excellent recommen-
dations to good housekeeping and the care of
invalids. Her remarks on the requisites for
a good attendant in a sick chamber are full
of practical utility, and her enumeration of
the excellences of good cookery and plain work
versus crochet and Berlin wool, would satisfy M.
Soyer or Mrs. Ellis. " I've no toleration," says
Miriam, "for a woman who cannot do every sort of
plain work, both neatly and expeditiously; for there
is something unfeminine in this sort of incapacity,
and an unwomanly woman is always detestable.
Most of us take naturally to Berlin work and em-
broidery; they are a part of our organization, like
hysterics and fainting-fits; but what can be a greater
incarnation of discomfort and disgust than one of
your dawdling, desultory women, who neither do nor
knowtow to do. 'anything about a house, but accu-
mulate disbider and privations for themselves and
every one about them." Good practical teach-
ing such as this is seldom put before the
novel reader, and such observations contrast
somewhat strangely with the flippant sarcasm and
not very gentle severity to be met with in other
chapters of " Miriam Sedley." Although "variety"
is proverbially " charming," it should be, neverthe-
less, characterised by a certain amount of congruity;
a quality in which Lady Bulwer's very " various
bservations are strangely deficient. For example,
we are at one moment charmed with some beautiful
passage like the following :—" But, in either instance,
whether our lot be evasion or execution, it teaches
that one great truth, that on God alone we must de- •
pend, and that there is no appeal from man but to
Him; and then, come what may, we shall still be-
lieve that whatever is, is right, however wrong the
means may appear that are employed to achieve it,
for everything leads one to suppose that that
strange and complicated tissue, called human
destinies, must be the tapestry of heaven,
which, like every other, is always worked on
the wrong side, showing us nothing but the cross-
grained snreds and nottings here, and which there
alone we shall behold as a beautiful and finished
whole. Laying doWn my load for the present,"
adds Miriam, " I knelt down and prayed. Oh
blessed boon of God to mortals, prayer is the electric
telegraph of heaven : it asks for mercy and the in-
stantaneous answer from above is peace." And then,
shortly afterwards, we are grieved to find a hand
that can pen graceful compliments as well as Chris-
tian truths condescending to set forth thoughts so un-
courteous and uncharitable as those contained
in a foot-note complimenting Thackeray—" the
only English novelist deserving that name." The
concluding sentences of this note will convey an idea
of the good taste and refinement of the whole passage :
" It is much to be regretted, for his own sake that Mr.
Thackeray should be splashed by the literary mud of
his present entourage; but as he appears to have the
feelings of a gentleman, and neither blows a black-
smith'a bellows of self-praise, charged with hyper-
borean German plagiarisms, or writes vulgar carica-.
ture (!) of waiters eating up schoolboys' dinners, at
inns, or all sorts of fine sentiments against cruelty and
injustice, the better to toady and herd with all that
is most loathsome in moral depravity, it is to be
hoped he will soon emancipate himself." If
we filled twenty columns with a criticism
of " Miriam Sedley " we could hardly give
our readers a more just idea of its peculiarities,
both of style and sentiment, than the above brief
specimens; may suffice to convey. Recognizing the
talent manifested in this production,we feel assured
that Lady Bulwer Lytton might bestow upon us far
more interesting and valuable works if she would
condescend to give her readers credit for good taste
and kindly feeling, and if she would, moreover, re-
member that in order to be " brilliant" and "sar-
castic" it is not absolutely necessary to be un-
charitable or warn..

TIM :LIFE OF COLUMBUS. By Horace

The author of this admirable little work has com-
pressed into a very small compass a succinct narrative
of the life and adventures of the great discoverer of
America, and has defended, and successfully defended,
the character of his hero against the accusations
which the envy of contemporaries had brought against
him, and which the apathy of posterity had, in too
many instances, left uninvestigated, and, consquently,
unrefuted. We know no work so admirably suited
as a prizT-book for schools as the " Life of Colum
bus" by Horace St. John.

LONDON AND ITS VICINITY. Edited and
Published by John Weale.
A compact and comprehensive guided-book to the
metropolis has in this volume been produced at a
reasonable price, and at a time singularly opportune.
Besides containing an admirable map, the work is
embellished with 205 illustrations. It elucidates the
natural as well as the physical characteristics of
its
architecture. with an account of its antiquity and
architecture. The portions of the letter-press relat-
ing to its arts, trades, manufactur,s and organization
will no doubt be peculiarly acceptable to the majority
of foreigners, while the more intelligent among them
will, of course, regard with no small amount of in-
terest the sketch given of its social, literary and
scientific institutions. Sight-seers, again, will turn
with no slight curiosity to the numerous galleries of
fins arts in the capital and its vicinity ; and these in-
quiries will be rewarded, moreover, by a large fund of
valuable and interesting information.

MAGAZINES, Sce.—( CON TINUED.)

COLBURN'S UNITED SERVICE.

The present number of Colburn opens with the
introductory paper of what promises to be a valuable
series "The History of the British Conquests in
India," by Horace St. John. The object of the
writer is to prove how utterly unfounded are the
charges of unprincipled aggression which have been
brought against the East India Company. The
paper is well written, and displays great research,
the writer quoting his authority for every statement
made and every assertion advanced, and we must
confess that, as far as he has gone, he has completely i
made out his case. Another most valuable article o
this number is the paper of the designs of Austria,
in which the writer proves that the &mutes in
Tuscany and other parts of Italy were the work of
Austrian emissaries, in order to give the grasping
red Emperor an excuse for the military occupation of
the Duchy, and that the recent Papal aggression in
our own country was also an Austrian manoeuvre, as
a proof of which It may be mentioned that Cardinal
Wiseman dated his letter to Lord John Russell from
Vienna, and that almost the only persons in this
country who have ventured to eulogise the monster
Haynau have been Cardinal Wiseman and Mr. John
O'Connell. The author of " Singleton Fontenoy"
brings to a close his amusing account of " Pipp's
Naval Career," and Captain 1311ew continues his
Narrative of the Campaign in Arracan." The
o' her articles in this number are all above the usual
average.

THE CO.IIIC HISTORY OF RomE. By
the Author of the Comic History of England.
illustrated by John Leech. Part 1.
Right glad are we to meet Messrs. A'Beckett and
Leech once again in the field. A right merrie his-
tory doth this of Rome promise to be, and veracious
and impartial—a matter to which it would have been
better that historians of greater pretensions, the
wordy Alison for Example, should have attended. The
illustrations are glorious. The illustration on the
cover is alone worth all the money charged for the
part.

SCHOOL SERIES. Edited by
,the Rev. g../1,..7.1
Gleig, M.A. Third Book of liistory.--Joir" '
India.
This is an excellent number of the valuable school
s-ries publishing by Messrs. Longman. We have
here in the small compass of 1•6 puges a resume of
the history of the provinces confitituting British
India from the earliest ages, down to the conclusion of
the second Punjaub war under the Governor-General..
ship of the Marquis of Dalhousie.