The Sun.
London, England, 1856-12-16 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDA Y EVENING, DECEMBER 16 1856

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Business
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Commission.

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IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

HOUSE OF LORD s--(This Day.)
Pariiament was this day again prorogued by Royal

The Lord Chancellor and the other noble peers men.
tioned in the Commission having entered the house and
Liken their seats on the woolsack,
The Royal Commission was read at length by the
Clerk at the table.

At the conclusion of the reading of the document, the
Usher of the Black Rod was directed to summon the
Commons to the bar of their lordships' house.
After a short absence, the Commons, represented by
their Clerk, appeared, and the Lord Chancellor then
directed the Royal Commission to be again read. This
having been done,

The Lord Chancellor, in the usual form, declared the
Parliament to be further prorogued until the 3d of
February, to be then and there holden for the conside•
ration of divers urgent public affairs.

ELECTION OF RECORDER.—(This Day.

COURT OF COMMON COUNCIL.

A Special Court of Aldermen was held this afternoon,
at the Guildhall, for the election of a gentleman to fill
the office of Recorder for the City of London, !n the
room of the Hon. A. S. Wortley, her Majesty's present
Solicitor• General. The Lord Mayor in the chair. The
attendance of aldermen was very large indeed, 22 out of
26, the whole number of aldermen being present.
The letter containing the resignation of Mr. Wortley
having been read and accepted,

Alderman Sir P. LAURIE moved the thanks of the
Court of Aldermen to Mr. Wortley, for the manner in
which he had discharged the duties of his office, and
their regret at Ibming his valuable services.
Alderman CsALLis seconded the motion, which, after
a slight and irregular discussion how it should be pre-
sented to Mr. Wortley, was agreed to unanimously.

CRIMINAL COURT—(This Day.)

OLD COURT.

(Before E. Gurney, Esq., Common Sergeant.)

THE FRAUDS ON THE GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY,

William Sneil pleaded guilty to a charge of stealing

an order far the payment of 5001., and also with em-
bezzling and stealing two others, value 441. 11e. 3d., the
Property of his employers, the directors of the Great
Northern Railway Company.
Mr. Huddlestone and Mr. Sleigh appeared for the
prosecution ; Mr. Flower for the prisoner.

Mr. Flower addressed the Court on the part of the
prisoner, in mitigation of punishment. The prisoner, he
said, bad all along confessed his fault, and ho had acted
throughout by himself, and without any confederates.
The whole, or greater part of the prisoner's defalcations,
which did not exceed 1,0001., had arisen from specula-
tions in the City. The prisoner now, as ou a former
occasion, expressed his sorrow and regret at what he
had done. The learned gentleman then alluded to the
prisoner's connection with the railway, which com-
menced on the death of his father, who was killed by
an accident on this line in 1851. The prisoner had not
lived extravagantly, and be (the learned counsel) hoped
the court would deal leniently with him.
Mr. Huddlestone said the Great Northern Railway
Directors had thought it their duty as the representa•
tives of a large body of shareholders to bring this matter
forward. They could not consistently with their duties
recommend the prisoner to mercy, but if the Court felt
it could act mercifully towards him they would not in-
terpose to endeavour to prevent it.
The Common Sergeant said he would take time to
consider what sentence he should pass on the prisoner,
and he was accordingly put back for that purpose.
Sentense deferred.

THOMAS HOOD THE YOUNGER.

Pen and Pencil Pictures. By Thomas Hood.
Hurst and Blaekett.
The kindliest welcome is the right of Thomas
Hood the Younger. We accord it to him at once
frankly and heartily. What Mpore sang of, so
sadly and so tenderly, as about the extreme of
human bliss in this fugitive condition of ours—
"A smile and a grasp of the hand
Hastening on
Torn Hood the Son of Tom Hood receives from
us right truly at this our first meeting, for his
dear dead father's sake : however rapidly we may
be " hastening on " through Life together—on,
to where Life's pleasant pathway for us all trends
obliquely down into the Valley of the Dread
Shadow. Could it well, indeed, be otherwise ?
Hardly ! For it were difficult surely to begrudge
one gentle word, one genial greeting, to the young
writer whose chief intellectual heritage we recog-
nise, upon the instant, in this sweet, frank, honest,
noble, generous reputation ! It were difficult, iu
other words, to deny a very natural predilection
for the " jottings down" of. Pen and Pencil by the
stripling heir to the name and fame of Thomas
Hood—the Wit, the Poet, the Humorist, the
gay, the loving, the sweet-tongued, the light-
hearted, the open-handed, the bright-eyed ! Dear
Tom Hood—ever with the " tears in his voice,"
and the "laughter on his lips"— raining down upon
us sweet flowers one while (in his Verse) and at
another (through his Prose) pelting ua with Puns
and Jests—
" Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,
sods and becks, and wreathed smiles"_
as prodigally scattered about as the comfits in a
Roman Carnival ! Welcome, then, to the Son,
for the Father's sake : and welcome, now that we
have scanned his book, and conned its meaning,
none the less cordially—for his own ! Ho tells us
frankly, in his simple Introduction, that the pages
here submitted to the public—pages " written at
spare times"—are nothing more pretentious in
their way than " passing fancies, photographed
by the chemistry of pen-and-ink, as they flitted
by," their aim being no higher, he adds, in
something of his father's vein, " than to
distract attention from the footfalls of Goodman.
Time, when to weary ears he seems to have dropt
from the gallop, cantor, trot, amble, and all the
other faster paces of Rosalind's catalogue, into a
tiresome plodding—or, worse still, appears to
have gone dead-lame." There is not much arro

gance, therefore, evinced in this undertaking as a
maiden-work. It constitutes, indeed—to apply,
in another way, our author's own chosen metaphor
—little else than a showing of the paces of the
Colt Pegasus. Not merely in the walk, trot,
amble, canter, carracole, and gallop, but even, be
it said, through most of the minor but very im-
portant mysteries of the literary manage—mount-
ing, turning, stopping, backing, leaping ! With
even a delicate sense, evidenced here and there, of
what equestrians know well enough as the " sup-
port "and the " appuy," of "gathering " the steed
at will, and by a cunning use of whip, spur, or
rein, mastering the various vices cf the Unbroken,
—stumbling, bolting, shying, rearing, kicking, and
all the other ill-results of a wild and un-
tutored temperament. Honestly be it said
at once, we have not detected our author
(what may be called) " thrown " anywhere,
notwithstanding he has occasionally evidenced
a pluck tempting almost any casualty. Not-
withstanding, in fact, ho sometimes allows a
skittish hobby of his to carry him away any-
how, pell-mell, bolter skelter, when—
" Fleet as the wind he shoots along the plain,
And knows no check nor heeds the curbing rein,"
As for example in "The Musings of an Old
Man "—threatening at first to be simply garru-
lous, but proving in the end only volubly and
charmingly imaginative. Or, again, in his pro-

tracted meditations upon " The Death Watch "
quite a Hood-Conceit as it turns out in the end—
with its "tramp, tramp" as of the Guard coming to
drag the Dreamer before the Great Tribunal—w,ith
its " drop, drop " as of blood drip-dropping from
the wrack upon the dungeon pavement—with its
"click, click'' as of someterrible piece of mechanism
letting slowly down upon the head of the Sleeper
a keen, bright, semi-circular blade of Destruction.
A herrorresolving itself, on the moment of waking,

into no Death Watch at all, but—" while the
works of Edgar Allan Poe lay by my bedside,
there beneath my pillow lurked the originator of
my misery—the huge silver turnip denominated
a watch, lent me by Harespring, the watchmaker,
while he was repairing my owu small still-voiced
Geneva." A Hood, this, we take it—and one
calculated, we shrewdly conjecture (if the pun may
be tolerated as not too glaringly subtle), one cal-
culated to " make both ends meet " by his mode
of gaining a lively-Hood. These " Pen and Pen-
cil Pictures," by the way, be it observed espe-
cially, without any further delay in our so doing,
are as various in their way as ono could
well wish—a collection of verse and prose,
of woodcuts and letterpress, really and
literally, literary-ly and pictorially miscellaneous.
A "

.s to the Pencil Pictures--if they happen to be
very scant indeed of any evidence of artistic
skill on the part of the young draughtsman—.
Well his " Father did so before him !" Don't
we recollect it—with a chuckle ? Don't we re-
collect with a relish of delight (as of children over
a pocketfull of green gooseberries) those grotesque
limnings sprinkled plentifully like comic blots
on " Annual" after " Annual"—on the pages of
that glorious guffaw-in-print "tip the Rhine,"
and on those (for one hilarious interval) of
Colburn's New Monthly Alsga:ine ? Don't we ?
And, as we do so, realise in the remembrance more
vividly than ever the delight of " Hood's Own '—
the cheering, sunny influence of that broad, rich,
racy " Laughter from Year to Year !" Well,
here too, then, even appreciably in some sore, be
it said, through the flagrantly inartistic outlines
of these Pencil Pictures—here too, more truly
even in one sense than the famous book itself so
called—here, too, in the maiden-work before us is
Hood's Own—his Son—the child over whose
infancy that large, grand, noble Father's Heart
yearned so tenderly and lovingly, and to whom he
sang so sweetly that exquisite Song, one of the
most exquisite of Thomas Hood's many exqui-
site heart-songs—
" Love thy Lothar, little one !
Kiss and clasp her neck again—
Hereafter she may have a son
Will kiss and clasp her neck in vain.
Love thy mother little one !

. . ,
Oh, revere ber raven hair !
Altbo' it be not silver grey ;
Too early Death, led on by Care,
May snatch save one dear lock away.
Oh! revere her raven hair!"

In the memory of that Childhood, who could sit,
what literary Rhadamanthus amongst us could sit
in severe, exacting, and inexorable judgment upon
the Early Youth with its first eager Handfull of
Gatherings by the Wayside ? Yet, be it said too
at the same time, that these same "Pen and Pencil
Pictures" by Thomas Hood the Younger need not
be screened from the critical hand by any such
thought of Deprecation or Propitiation. As a
: 1:
maidon-work—the initial volume of a T 1
author-artist unaided by any literary experiences--
the book is worthy, in its way, and viewed solely
in dt o its own i
sv
intrinsiclay o
of
eortiltrs ,
thankful such as theyan d
sympatheticy
r
are—ise worthy
in t
acceptation. For it is in no way either
puerile or priggish : it is, on the contrary,
in its tone and general treatment manly and un-
affected. As such, it appears to us, as a " first
work," peculiarly entitled to commendation. And
ftrhaineklycomgimveetin,dawtioon a c
ceoar ran e
tsotlyit,coninsidileriebdernajannd
phraseology, " with a heart and a half." It is a
book that comes to hand, moreover, at this gay
Christmas time most seasonably. As seasonably
as the sprig of holly (all scarlet berries and green
bristling leaves) stuck into the smoking sphere
of the rich, ripe, aromatic plum-pudding ! As the
bunch of
mistletoe dangling from the bacon-rack
overhead in the old farm-kitchen ! As the screams
and laughter of blindman's-buff, or as the flickering
purple blue flames of the diabolic game of snap-dra-
gon ! And it will be accepted, hardly the less frankly
or the less gladly, by oldsters and youngsters alike,
at many an English fireside, on many an English
hearth, in many an English household—with

kindly Hopes in one way, not legs than in another
with grateful Recollections. Thomas Hood's "Pen
and Pencil Piettres "—with a " Chansonette,"
and a " Dixit lusipiem:," with " Helen Irving,"
and " Don Roderick," and sonnets, and tales,
and essays, and ballads, with the " Song of
Steam," and the " Cry of the Mothers in Eng-
land," with " Panurgus Pebbles " and " Jamie
Claverslie "—a veritable miscellany by Thomas-
Hood, waifs and strays from his portfolio, sketches
made by him at odd times in black-lead and pen-
and-ink ! Who has not a hand (stretched-out,
wide-open) for the Offering here extended (hope-
fully, no doubt, and confidingly) by the young
Son of a Dear Old Friend of us all ? The spring.
time blossom of his life, blooming suddenly out
—with a fair promise enough—in this wintry
season, hard upon the eve of Christmas