The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-13 00:00:00

COMMERCIAL.

Our latest dates from England are to the 10th January,
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Busineis continues uninterrupted at all the ports, and
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in consequence of the departure of four vessels-of-war with

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HONG KONG, FE.. 27.—1 n Hong Kong business has
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Exchange is lower. Bank bills do not command more
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AMERICA.

QUEENSTOWN, FRIDAY.

The Liverpool, New York, and Philadelphia
Company's screw steamer, City of Alanchester,
Capt. Cummings, from New York, on the 31st ult.,
has arrived.
Her news has been anticipated.

---
LITERATURE.

Poems before Congress. By Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. One vol. pp. 65. Chapman and

Hall. -
This hastily written and prematurely printed
volume will now, that it is unhappily published,
add nothing to Mrs. Browning's reputation. Far
worse than that, however, it will militate seriously
against the fair fame won by the abundant bean-
ties of our poet's last and most ambitious effort,
" Aurora Leigh." To begin with, the book le
.a
misnomer. Nothing can be said to be before (So
point of time) what is absolutely non-existent.
is it—with these " Poems" (so-called upon the title
page ?) Before—what never was or apparently
will be, namely—" Congress." As a literary pro-
duction—(That we should have had this to say 01
any book from the hand of Mrs. Browning !")—al
a literary production the volume is really unworthy
of notice, it is beneath contempt, it is vile, vulgar,
and worthless. Imagine any songstress with such
an ear for harmony in rhyme as to couple thus--
" vice on" and " suspicion"—" turret" and hur-
ried"—" Modena" and " in a"—" open" ant
" agrope in"—borne in" and" morning"—" summer
and " come here"—" cascine" and "green
and, over and over again, in two lines by them-
selves, as if she were proud of the Cockney resort -
ante ance of the sounds, as a very. rare discovery n
rhyming—(we wince in the mere quotation of it!)---

" Emperor
Evermore !"

Fancy any one talking as Mrs. Browning actually
does here—vide page '24—of the blue sky over head
" swooning with passion," of the mountains around
" heaving mighty hearts," the said mountains at
the same time " sighing a rapture in a shadow'''
and all this to the end that they might—[though
how they could possibly manage to do it we cant
imagine—for there was no earthquake at the time
helping them to any such absurd proceedings]--all
in order that they might
it . . . . . . dilate
And touch the holy stone where Dante sate."

For these and countless other reasons squandered over
65 pages of—we will call it versification—the book
is really worthless, to say the least of it, as a lite-
rary production. Then, viewing it in its politics'
significance, what shall we say to the absurd anti-
climax of the " annexation" following hard upon
the issue from the press of the following rhapsodi-
cal ejaculations :
Shout for Franca and Savoy
Shout for the helper and doer.
Shout for the good sword's ring,
Shout for the thought still truer.
Shout for the spirits at large
Who passed for the dead this spring,
Whose living glory is sure.
Shout for France and Savoy I
Shout for the couacil and charge
Shout for the head of Cavour ;
And shout for the heart of a King
That's great with a nation's joy.
Shout for France and Savoy I
This is from the first of the Eight Poems—the one
entitled," Napoleon 111. in Italy." It is the very
poem in which the authoress shouts (we beg her
pardon ; it is her own word) " shouts " with the
blatant roar of a Cockney Catnach broadsheet,
over and over and over again—
"Emperor
Evermore !"
As at the close.of the following clever little photo'
graphic glimpse of Napoleon lll.'s triumphal oral
into Milan :

Ay, it is He,
Who rides at the King's right hand I
Leave room to his horse and draw to the side,
Nor press too near in the ecstacy
Of a newly delivered impassioned land ;
He is moved, you see,
He who has done it all.
They call it a cold stern face;
But this is Italy
Who rises up to her place I
For this he fought in his youth,
Of this he dreamed in the past ;
The lines of the resolute mouth
Tremble a little at last.
Cry, he has done it all!
" Emperor
Evermore."
Here is Mrs. Browning's explanation of the,
Emperor's reason for the Treaty of Villafranca, thal
lamentable bathos to the sublimity of the Mils
o
Proclamation—justifying anew the Great Ntv,
poleon's witty phrase that there is really but o'
step front the sublime to the ridiculous. gerei
we say, is Mrs. Browning's clue to the hearth,o
that labyrinthine mystery of Villafranca.
writes :

But He stood sad before the sun,
(The peoples felt their fate).
1‘ The world is many,—l am one ;
My great Deed was too great.
God's fruit of justice ripens slow :
Men's souls are narrow •, let them grow.
My brothers, we must wait."
Enough, however—we fling the book aside-41:f
apologise to our readers for tarrying so long of:i,
anything so valueless either politically or pot,„
tally—and we rest satisfied that in the end NI
Browning will, if she cannot do so already, lam e
sincerely as we do ourselves, being amongst wr,
'umber of her sincere admirers, that these unf°l,o
tunate "Poems before Congress" should ever 10.0.1
seen the light of day in the form of a substantl
publication.