The Sun.
London, England, 1869-04-08 00:00:00

PORTUGAL.

LISBON, Apil 7.
The British squadron have left the Tagus on a
five days' cruise.

AUSTRIA.

VIENNA, April 8.
The Neu• Free Press says :—" it is asserted on
reliable authority that King Victor Emmanuel ex-
pressed to General Moering, the Austrian Envoy
Extraordinary, his desire to pay a visit to the
perial Court. Rumour adds that the Emperor
Francis Joseph would probably return this visit
during the coming summer.

BOMBAY MAIL.

MESSINA, April 8.

The Peninsular and Oriental Company's steam-
ship Nyanza passed through the Straits of Messina
at 2.30 this morning en route for Marseilles.
MALTA, April 8.

The Pera leaves at 8 a.m. to-day for Southamp-
ton, where she may be expected about the 17th

instant.

The Tanjore, from Southampton 27 tilt., reached
Malta on the 4th instant at 4 p.m., and left at six
the following evening for Alexandria.

TIIE WEST COAST OF AFRICA,

LIVERPOOL, April 8

The British and African Steam Navigation Com-
pany's steamer Bonny arrived here this morning
with ship letter mails from the West African Coast.
Her dates are—Old Calabar, March 1 ; Fernando
Po, 2d ; Bonny, 9th ; Benin, 11th ; Lagos, 13th ;
Accra, 15th ; Cape Coast Castle, 16th ; Cape Pal-
mas, 18th ; Sierra Leone, 23d; Teneriffe, 30th ; and
Madeira, April 1. The news from the different
Ports on the West Coast is unimportant. The
health of the rivers was tolerably good, and trade
continued steady.

A Magnificent Gift Book.

The Nobility of Life: its Graces and Virtues.
Selected and Edited by L. Valentine. Prose, and
Verse, and Pictures. Warne and Co.
As appropriate to Easter (or, for that matter
indeed, to any time of the year that might be
named) as to Christmas, this really superb gift-book
commends itself as heartily to our consideration,
now, among the spring flowers, as four or five
months ago among the holly branches and the mis-
tletoe. It is, inside and outside, " a thing of
beauty ;" and, therefore,—according to the most
famous first line of a first poem, that we know
of in all literature—it is " a joy for ever." We,
consequently, scruple not, now, to call as particular
attention to this volume, as though it had but just
. ,eu4euwer rightly, mime_
diately before the close of last year, being (as it
was) one of the most conspicuous among the poeti-
cal and pictorial precursors of the great holiday
season known in the old days as Yuletide.
No matter how the time may run on in the
future, the book before us, so long as its
leaves and covers can hold together, must be
fresh and new—as new as the moon in its firs t
quarter—as fresh as the breath of the morning. It
purports, by means of four-and-twenty—not black-
birds baked in a pie, but—original
pictures printed
in colours, aided by elaborate borders, headings,
and vignettes, to celebrate, as its title intimates,
"The Nobility of Life: its Graces and its Virtues."
And it lurports to do this, yet further, by making
those graces and virtues as they have been portrayed
(we are quoting the words of the Title-page), " In
Prose and Verse by the Best Writers." Though, it
must be said, we are rather taken aback, here, in this
mention of Prose and Verse, to find precedence
thus accorded to Prose ! However that may be,
i
there is the book in its ntegrity—Prose, Poetry,
and Pictures—a dainty dish to set before all
true lovers of both Art and Literature.
The principal Pictures, it should be said at
once, are all colour-printed— some of them
exquisitely, colour-printed—either by Edmund
Evans or by Kronheim and Company. The artists
are draughtsmen of varied excellence. The majo-
rity of theta contribute two illustrations, out of
the twenty-four adorning this singularly ornate
volume. J. D. Watson thus supplies a couple—.
namely, Religion, as typified in the visiting the
fatherless and the widows in their affliction—and
Justice, as illustrated by the memorable historical
incident of Prince Henry before Judge Gascoigne.
IL Le Jeune has two—one of them pourtraying
Faith, in the person of the Centurion coming to
Chriat--the other Childhood, in a flowery dingle.
J. Mahoney has another pair of these pictures to
himself —the first shadowing forth Love in
Childhood, Manhood, and Old Age, as charm-
ingly sung in one of his prettiest love ditties
by Charles Mackay—the second (in an un-
coloured beading) revealing to us Patriotism
in the person of Arnold Von Winkelreid. Two
among the coloured pictures in the volume contri _
buted by another illustrator, E. H. Wehnert,
appear to us, in some respects, among them all, the
most successful. One symbolises Genius in the
person of Shakspere lying ;
asleep in his youth on
the banks of the river Avon—the other, Age, con-
soled by the shadowy apparitions of many tender
remembrances. They are essentially companion
pictures—delineative, the one, of the Dreams of
Youth ; the other, of the Dreams of Age. Over the
slumbering form of the boy Shakspere there are
seen the visionary shapes of the future creatures
of his imagination—.llaralet in the Graveyard,
Othello and Desdernona Macbeth and the Witches,
King Lear and Edgar, Titania, Shylock, and
Richard 111., according to the hint conveyed
to the artist's mind by the passage selected from
" D reamland." Around the musing figure of the
Old Man—illustrative of one of the very loveliest
of all the minor Poems of Longfellow--we see the
dimly-indicated " forms of the departed," who
have " entered at the chamber-door--" the
beloved, the true-hearted," who, thero,
to visit him once more." The picture is
exquisite. It is one to be looked at through
tears. Beyond any comparison, it is, to our fancy,
the gem of the book. If only for the sake of that
one illustration, as a most delicate tribute to the
genius of the American poet, the volume ought
surely to be placed in his hands on his return, now
almost immediately, to England. As a gift-book or
as a table-book, no volume that we have seen for a
long while past is in any way comparable to the
"Nobility of Life."

" came

Mrs. Jeremiah Ladd, the oldest person in Con-
necticut, died on Wednesday, March 10, in East Lynne,
aged 103 years and 9 months.