The Sun.
London, England, 1856-02-28 00:00:00

MARKET NEW —C2liis Day.)

CORN EXU ki A NGE.
.GENERAL AV El-;...1.t4k. eii,CEs. OF tiRITISII CORN
tror the week enderi Feb. 28,1856, made up trom the Returns of the
Inspector, in the differenteities and Town, in Englantland 144 i,
per Imperial Quarter.
WHEAT. Bmo.ky. i eATs. RTC. I 11-34 Ne. P,Ae.
69, 21 1 33, 8.! 231 6d 4•H.4 4d 41' 71 39, 6d
THE SIX WEEKS' AvERAOS.
4rBR4T. RABLVT. I OATS. i RICE I BRANB. PEAT.
73, 11l 37A 6d ; 218 11,1 513 4d 43. Ind 42, 5d
QIUNTITIES OF illt.tlN SOLD LAST WEEK.
Whom._ 9.).3 5, Ft, ev. 7:;,223 ; chits, 14 9;4; Rye, 65 ;
5,147; Peas, 1.3% quarters.

MEAT MARKETS.
NEWOATE AND LEADENHALL.—The trade ruled steady,
as follows ;—Beef, from 3s 01 to 48 4,1 ; Mutton, 3s 2kl to
4s 4 I ; Veal, 4s 6d to 5s 4d; Pork, 3s 2d to 4s 10d per 81bs,
by the carcase.
SOUTHALL, Feb. 27.—We had a steady demand for
stock to-day, and prices bail an upward tendency. Beef,
trod, 3s 4,1 to 4s 8d ; Atutton. 3s 4(1 to 4s 10,1; Veal, 4s 10,1
to 5s ; Pork, 3s 61 to s 8.1 ner Ms, to sink the offal.
ROMFORD, Feb. 27.—T0-day's market was firm, at very
full prices. Beef, from 3s id to 4s 10,1 ; Muttao, :is 4d to
5s 0 I ; Veal, is 4d to 5s fiil ; Pcrk, 3s 4d to 4s 81 per Sibs.
Quarter-old Store Pigs, 22s to 28s each.

HAY MARKETS.

SMITHFIELD.—Meadow bay, 4/ Os to 5/ 10a; clover do.,
4/ 10s to i.;/ 10s; and straw, 1/ 4s to It 9s per load.
Trade dull.

CUMBERLAND.—Meadow hay, 41 4s to 51125; clover do.,
41 10a to 6 68 ; and straw, 1/ 4s to 11 98 per load.
A moderate supply, and a fair'dernand.
WHITECHAPEL --Meadow hay, 41 Os to 51 10s; clover
do., 41 58 to 61 158; and straw, 11 4s to 11 8s per load.
Trade rather heavy.

TBE L ITE MAEQUIS OF LONDONDERRY. —The nobility
and gentry of the county of Durham, out of regard to
the memory of the late gallant Marquis of Londonderry,
propose erecting a handsome monument to his memory.
The Duke of Cleveland is to preside over a preliminary
meeting at the end of the ensuing week.
We are sorry to read the death of Colonel J. F. S..
Clarke, in command of the South Wales district, and
lately Assistant Quartermaster-General of the Hone Guard,. He died at Newlands, on Saturday. Colonel
Clarke was born in 1802, entered the service in 1818,
and attained the rank of Colonel in 1851.
Iiti,VIMTIBISMaNT.:I SIGHT AND LISAKING..— SPECTACLES,
POWERFUL TELESCOPES, OPERA, RACE AND PERSPECTIVE GLASSES.
S, and B. Solemous, opticians, 39, ADA:made-
street, Piccadilly. Observe opposite the York Hotel.
13y her Majesty's Ro3 al Letters Patent for valuable and
extraordinary improvements in the most powerful and
brilliant Telescopes, Camp, Racecourse, Opera, and Per-
spective Glasses, to know the distances of objects viewed
through them—of great importance to the army, navy,
and others. These telescopes possess such extraordinary
powers that some three and a-half inches, with an extra eye.
piece, a ill show distinctly Jupiter's moons, Saturn's ring,
and the double stars ; with the same tetes3ope can be
seen a person's countenance three miles and a half distant
and an object from 16 io 20 miles. They aro of larger sad at.
sizes, with increasing powers accoangly ; while their vary-
ing from 4 to 6 inches enable us to discover more than the
above, and the Georgian, with his 6 satellites, &c.—The Royal
Exhibition, 185.1.—Valuable, newly-invented, very small,
powerful waistcoat-pocket glass,the size of a walnut, by which
a person can be seen and known la miles distant ; they answer
every purpose on tho race-course, and at the opera houses,
country scenery, and ships are clearly seen at 8 to 10 miles.
They are invaluable for shooting, deer-stalking, yachting, to
sportsmen, gentlemen, gamekeepers, and tourists. Opera,
race-course, camp, andi perspective glasses, with wonderful
p.,wer. Newly-constructed Spectacle Lenses of the gis,at-
eat transparent power. The valuable advantage derived
from this invention is, that vision becoming impaired is
preserved and strengthened, and very aged persons are
enabled to employ their sight at the most minute occu-
pation can see with these lenses of a much less magnify-
ing power—and they do not require the frequent change;
to the dangerous effects of further powerful assistance.
Deafaess—New Discovery.—The Organic Vibrator, an ex-
traordinary powerful, small, newly-invented instrument for
deafness, entirely different from all others, to surpass any-
thing of the kind that has been, or probably ever :tan be,
produced. Being of the same colour as the skin, is not per-
ceptible ; it enables deaf persons to hear distinctly at church
and at public assemblies; the unpleasant sensation of singing
noises in the ears is entirely removed; and it affords all the
assistance that possibly could be desirod.-39, Arteluarie-
street, ricatillyt Olnervo—eppeeite the Ink Motels
_ _

ITERATUIIE.

THOMAS MOORE.

Alcmoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thor 7s
Moore. Edited by the Right lion. Lord John
RuAsel!, M.P. Vols. I. to VI. Longman and
Company. _

"Spirat adhuc awn- !"

ft is the motto stamped upon the title-page of
every volume by au affectionate and faithful

friendship. And the tender words of Horace aro
echoed here, indeed, most truthfully and appro-
priately. It is a fragment of verse flung upon the
grave of a popular favourite, like a shining wreath
of immortettes. Every body almost—(for we have
not forgotten one painful little episode consequent
upon the issue of an earlier portion of these
"'Memoirs" through the press)—thinks of • him
in the same spirit—romemb:rs him with the
one prevailing sentiment of admiration—recalls
him to mind not as Mr. Moore, but as
Tom Moore, as Anacreon Moore, as the poet of
Lalla Rookh, as the Irish Melodist. Occa-
sionally, of course, we cannot but revert
to his other characteristics, we cannot but think of
him sometimes as the historian of Ireland, as the
humorist of the "Fudge Family," as the scholarly
adventurer within the labyrinths of religious contro-
versy, as the biographer of S heridan, and Byron, and
Fitzgerald. Now and then he returns to our recol-
lection as the facetious Pasquin of those delightful
" sooterkins of wit," the once famous Odes upon
" Cask, Corn, and Catholics"—or againas the classic
fabulist of the mysteries of "The Epicurean "—or
yet again as the sparkling fribble of the " Two-
penny Post Bag" and the " Blue Stocking." it
in peculiarly, however, and almost exclusively as
the wit and as the song writer that Moore lives in
our own and in the general remembrance. We
have 'heard him spoken of by one of the most
gifted men of our own time, as the most brilliant
cetnpanion in the whole range of his recollection.
We all know what thefastidious Byron called him—
' " the beloved of all circles, the idol of his own !" We
,remember too how even the cynical Rogersexclaimed
in a letter to him (August 5, 1820), " What alucky
fellow you are ! surely you must have been barn
with a rose in your lips, and a nightingale singing
on the top of your bed !" We remember still more
delightedly the glorious asseveration of Sydney
Smith—" By the beard of the prelate of Canter-
bury, by the cassock of the prelate of York, by the
breakfasts of Rogers, , by Luttrell's love of side
dishes, I swear that I had rather hear you sing
than any other person I ever heard in my life,
:vale or female. Fur what is your singing
but beautiful poetry floating in fine music,
and guide I by exquisite feeling ?" It is as
the songster, as the ballad-writer and the ballad-
singer, as the animated talker, the conversational
wit, the humorist, the melodist, the perfect mas-
ter at once of repartee and anecdote, that Toni
Moore lives at this tnetnent, and will long continuo
to live, in the national memory. As 3 companion,
we think of him individually, precisely as Sir Wal-
ter wrote of him in his "Diary" (Nov. 22, 182),
viz., as " a little man, a very little man," who
"always enjoys the ?not peter rire." Caespicuoue
upon his busts and portraits, are there not,
don't we all remember there are, those two
bright organs of wit shining upon his fore-
head like little moons of Merriment ? Looking at
his face at the age of forty, as it has been preserved
to us by the pencil of Phillips, cannot we recognise
in the alert carriage of the head, in the clustering
hair, and the sparkliug eyes, even in the nez re-
trousee, and in the very cock of the ear, in the
dimple on the chin, and the piquant lines about
the mouth—plain face though it is, altogether ac-
cording to Scott's judicious estimate of its general
character—cannot we recognise in it just a glimpse
of what we mightfancy Dau Cupid might have grown
to be when mtat xe., a mixture of the quaint and
the comely, the gay and the pensive ? At nineteen
(1798) he may have been shy in society, as he him-
self asserted at the time (I. 71.), but that shyness
must surely have faded eut very soon after the
bashful ago of nineteen. For if, as he remarked
in one of his letters to L idy Donegal, he was
"little, like Horace," and "loved dozing in the
morning, like Montaigne," he had all Horace's zest
for human intercourse, and gave ample reason for
his mornings' doze by. his midnight carouse far
into the small hours, at ball, and rout, and theatre,
and masquerade. This same gay gregarious life
he began early and terminated late ; entering upon
his long round of pleasures in the dear old Dublin
tunes, the times of Emmet -and his compatriots,
with—

"Toe feast of treason and the flew of punch;" (4, 247)—
and ending them in the still dearer old
.London
eights—the Nig litsof BelgravianEetertainment just
betore the subject of these, recollections retired to
die iu the pretty rural quietude of his little rose-
covered cottage at Sloperton. Well , the
blithe days aro over now for him, there
is an end come to the merry moods of Yoriek,
" Where be your gibes now ? your gam-
bols ? your wings ? your flashes of merriment, that
were wont to set the table on a roar i" Where ?
They are for the most part here ! They are in the
"Fudge Family" already mentioned, they are in
the Irish Melodies, they are in the "Twopenny
Post Bag," they aro in the " Cash, Corn, and
Catholics"—above all, in reference to the converia -
Lionel fun and sparkle of Moore, they are Were in
chess pleasant volumes of his " Memoirs,
Journal, and Correspondence." Volumes edited, as
all the world knows, by his personal friend and
literary executor, Lord John Russell. Exeep-
lions, we are aware, have been taken in certain
quarters to the manner in which Lord John he
acquitted himself of the responsibilities of his
editorship of Moore's " Memoirs." Nevertheless,
with these exceptions we cannot by any means
coincide ; regretting though we do sincerely the
oversight which led to the earnest but courtly ex-
pistulation of the late lamented Lord L iudonderry
in reference to allusions in one volume erroneously
made to himself when Sir Charles Stewart and to
his distinguished brother when Viscount -Castle-
reagh. Lamenting, moreover, though we (JO,
very earnestly, the mistaken retention upon
the poet's Diary of certain pettish and petty
sneers which, thus retained, become gallingly per-
isetuated into the posthumous' and provoked
from the friend thus sneered at, as it were,
from the buried coffin, a virulent and atra-
bilious and even (we must out with it) a
brutal blow and kick aimed at the crumbling bones
of the dead man—aimed at them through a malevo-
lent article—through the pages of the Quarterly.
Regarding these two blunders as unquestionably
most reprehensible, and deploring them as sources of
grievous pain, iu one instance to a gallant old sol-
dier, and in another to a sour old critic, and ulti-
mately by moans of the ferocious vengeance pro-
voked from the latter to a sweet-tempered and
most gentle lady, the widow of the departed poet,
whose memory was thus heinously and cruelly out-
raged—apart from all this we cannot for the life of
us see where it is that Lord John has failed so egre-
giously in the responsible and delicate task of editor-
:hip. Little else was surely wan ted than an occasional
foot-note scattered here and there as sparingly as
possible by way of explanation. Memoirs—Jour: al
--Correspondence, otherwise, speaking for them-
selves. Lord John has appreciated this perfectly
well and has acted accordingly ; but besides the
casual notes in question he has given the reader of
those volumes a preface of twenty-seven pages to
vol. i., and a preface of fourteen pages to vol.. vi.,
written in pure and idiomatic English, and in a
style sparkling and epigrammatic. Examples from
which we may here take occasion to give in refer-
ence to one or two of Thomas Moore's more re-
markable contemporaries, men whose silhouettes
have thus been delicately defined, to the very life,
in vivid black and white, with a glib and tren-
chant ease at once commanding our admiration.
It is something, we conceive, to secure as editor of
one's Memoirs, Diary, and Correspondence one who
has during six years of his life wielded the destinies
of this mighty empire as Prime Minister of Eng-
land, and who, after ell the hackneyed labours of
a long Parliamentary and administrative career,
has the faculty of turning sentences which, in the
nervous strength of their diction, in their brilliant
and polished animation, in their hurnorons fresh-
ness, and rhetorical finish, are not unworthy of the
disciple of Somers, of the political descendant of
Chatham' of the dispassionate appreciator of the
genius of Burke, of the personal friend and minis-
terial colleague of Macaulay. High praise, but
praise to our mind such as Lord John, especially in
the second preface here referred to, appears to us
to have eminently well deserved. Let us give au
instance, so that our words may not have to sus-
tain unsupported the imputation of conveying
eulogiums so entirely and unjustifiably exagge-
rated. Here is Lord John's sketch of—

conveyed in the easy language -of conversation, and with
the unassuming tone of an equal and a companion. In-
deed his mind seemed to compreheud in distinct but liar-
nrotiona method the whole history of human thought,
from the earliest speculations of the friends of Job to the
latest subtleties of the disciples of Kant. With rare im-
partiality of wind, and a charity of disposition still more
rare, ho gave its full weight to every opinion, and made
the fairest allowance for every error. NOU less copious
and instructive was his knowledge of civil and political
history ; the Conduct of Queen Elizabeth to Queen Mary,
the projects of the Crusaders, the views of the leaders of
party daring the French .Revolution,—all found in him a
searching inquirer and an impartial judge. On lighter
subjects he was equally at home ; epigrams, farces, and
novels were not loss fainidar to him than the treatises of
Grotius or the annals of Thuanus. Possessing a good
share of wit and humour, he took his part in political war-
fare, armed no less with the "tart reply" than with the
"eloquent harangue." I remember sitting by him when
a great lawyer, oisclaiming, from the Treasury Bench,
all participation in tho opinions of the Liberal party,
said, " I could see nothing to tempt inn in the views
of the gentlemen opposite.' `For views read proslicts,'
whispered Mackintosh to use. Thus endowed, conversation
was his favourite employment and his chief seduction. His
style in writing was far from being clear and idiomatic ;
his manner of speaking in Parliament was too elaborate,
perhaps too didactic, and his voice harsh and hoarse; but
in society his gentle bearing and his vigorous tone made
him powerful and pleasing, victorious and delightful."

Better still, hero is tho ox- Premier's delightful pic-
ture of that cleanly and politer Rabellais, the—

REV. SYDNEY SMITH.

"If it is difficult to convey any notion of the conver-
sation of Sir James Mackintosh, it is hardly possible
to describe that of Sydney Smith. There are two
kinds of colloquial wit which equally contribute
to fame, though not equally to agreeable conversa-
tion. The one is like a rocket in a dark air which shoots
at once into the sky, and is the more surprising from the
previous silence and gloom ; the other is like that kind of
nrework which blazes and bursts out in every direction,
exploding at one moment, and shining brightly at an-
other, eccentric iu its course, and changing its shape and
colour to *may forms and many hues. Or, as a dinner is
set out with two kinds of champagne, so these two kinds of
wit, the still and the sparkling, are to be found in good
company. Sheridan and Talleyrand were among the best
examples of the first. Hare (as I have heard) and Sydney
Smith were brillinut instances of the second. Hare I knew
only by tradition; but with Sydney Smitn I long lived
intimately. His great delight was to produce a suceession
of ludicrous images : 'these' followed each other with a
rapidity that scarcely left time to laugh ; he himself laugh-
ing louder and with mire enjoyment than any one. This
electric contact of mirth came and went with the occasion ;
it cannot be repeated or reproduced. Anything would give
occasion to it. For instance, having seen iu the news-
papers that Sir Aneas Mackintosh was come to town, he
drew such a ludicrous caricature of Sir fEaeas and Lady
Dido, for the amusement of their namesake, that Sir James
Mackintosh rolled ou the floor in fits of laughter, and Syd-
ney Smith, striding across him, exclaimed • Ruat Justi-
tia His powers of fun were a‘;the same time united
with the strongest and must practical common souse. So
that while he laughed away seriousness at one minute,
he destroyed in the next some rooted prejudice which had
braved for a thousand years the battle of reason, and the
breeze of ridicule. The letters of Peter Plymley bear the
greatest likeness to his conversation ; the description (,f
M. Isaac Hawkins Brown ilauci+4 at the court of Naples
in a volcano coat with lava buttons, and the comparison of
Mr. Calming to a large blue bottle fly with its parasites,
must resemble the pictures he raised up iu social conversa-
tion. It may be averre l fur certain, that in this style
he has never been equalled, and I do not suppose he will
ever be surpassed."

Admirable ! It-is Sydney to a hair, to a t,—not
a miniature profile of the humorist so much as an
actual callutype of the man, with every comic
wrinkle at the corners of his blithe eyes and every
subtlest dUnple at the angles of his kindly mouth !
It is Sydney Smith as he lives to us iu his omit
deliciously wise, absurd, most shrewd, and most
preposterous Peter Piymley—as he looks out anew,
posthumously, upon the world he gladdened so
often in his lifetime, through the pages of Lady
Holland's recent biography of hitu—as he here
laughs, again and again, through the pleasantprattle
and agreeable .gossip of. Moore's "Diary," laughs
through it here aua there, not loudly or boister-
ously, but contagiously and- inextinguishably !
Does he not ? .Ecoutez ! Hear him (through page
75 of v01..v.) as he runs over with "comicality and
fancy" at R.igers's breakfast-table on the 27th of
May, 1826, keeping them all in roars of laugh-
ter 1 Hear hint discoursing of the stories
about drain-drinkers catching fire [before the
father of Captain Marryat's "Jacob Faithful,"
and the rag-selling Krook of Mr. Dickens's "Bleak
House" had been dreamt of as " going off" by
spontaneous combustion] hear Sydney Smith
talking upon this theme, and (according to his
wont) " pursuing the idea in every posi:i We shape 1"
" The inconvenience of a man coming too near the
candle when he was speaking, ' Sir, your observa-
tion has caught fire I' Then imagined a parson
breaking into a Llaze in the :pulpit ; the engines
called to put him out ; no water to be had, the
man at the waterworks being au Unitarian or an
Atheist." And so forth. No Wonder they "roared
with laughter !" No wonder the hearers of Syd-
ney left him often w-iththeir sides aching ! Fancy
hearing him talk of •sou 43 ifirie on- the very same
occasion, as a man who " has no command over
his understanding—it is always getting' between
his legs and tripping him up !" Fancy his saying
a day or two afterwards (May 30th), when it ;vas
remarked of a dinner party at Agar Ellis's, how
well and good huinouredly the host had mixed his
guests all up togetti,T---" That's the great use of
a good conversational cook, who says to his com-
pany, ' I'll make a good pudding of you;' it's no
matter what you came i ;to the bowl, you must
come out a pudding. Dear me,' says one of the
ingredients, wasn't I just now an egg ?' but he
feels the batter sticking to him," &o. 6:;0. ! Why
Heraclitus himself must have griped under the iu
fluenceofsuch a conversationalist, and Detnocritus
have rolled himself into convulsions on the carpet d
la Mackintosh ! It is the twofold charm of Moore's
Diary that it displays continually the most exqui-
site sense imaginable of a joke, however subtle or
however extravagant it may be, and while doing
this perpetuates for after-times the little fleeting
whims and oddities of the men-of-mark encouu-
tered by the Diarist,. whims and oddities often
conveying to the observer's mind the liveliest ap•
predation of apparently the most trivial, hut in
reality the must siguiticant, of -the suliject's odd
and whimsical characteristics.