The Sun.
London, England, 1860-12-14 00:00:00

RAILWAYS.

Cash. Account.
Orleans 1382 50 .. 1383 75
Northern
New ditto 9OO .. 903 75
Lyons and Mediterranean 910 .. 911 25
Geneva 375 .. 372 50
Southern .. ' 520 .. 522 50
Western
Eastern
Sardinian
Austrian
Lombard

AMERICA.

SOUTHAMPTON, FRIDAY.

The Hamburg and American Company's steam-
ship Teutonia, Captain Taube, from New York on
the Ist inst., has arrived off Cowes.
She brings 26 passengers for England and
Havre, and 67 for Hamburg, 85,000 dols. in specie
for France, and a cargo consisting of 1,500 tone of
cotton, hops. &c., for Hamburg.
On the 13th inst., off the Eddystone, she spoke
the British barque St. Jean, bound east, and the
Bremen brig, No. 177, bound west.
The news by the Teutonia has been anticipated.

LIT_ERA TUBE.

BULIVER'S LIBRARY EDITION.

The fourteenth volume of this noblest among all

the numerous editions of the collected fictions of
our great English Novelist completes his gorgeous
classic romance of " The Last Days of Pompeii."
The mere names of these masterpieces of imagina-
tive writing form a scarcely resistible attraction.
" The Last Days of Pompeii !" Who that has
once read that magnificent record of one of
the most tragic and appalling incidents related
in profane history, does not recall vividly to
mind the salient points in the wonderful panorama
there unfolded to view in those all but pictorial
pages ? The wierd eltritch Saga of Vesuvius—the
daring and licentious impostor Arbaees the Egyp-
tian—the handsome patrician, the hero of the tale,
Glaucus lone, his beautiful beloved—Nydia,
the blind girl, the true heroine of the
story, Nydia, • the tender, the graceful,
the bewitching and self-sacrificing Nydia—
Apaecides, the heathen priest—the nameless be-
liever in the new-born creed of the Nazarenes—the
people of those. old classic days in their homes and
haunts, in the streets, in the market-place, in
the temples of their false gods, busy at their
callings, lounging their time away over their
amusements—the Gladiators (among others)
in their " Flash Dens" first of all, and last of
all, upon that dread LAST DAY OF POMPEII in the
cruel Amphitheatre ! It is upon record in the
writings of Dion Cassius, that so it came to pass—
that awful catastrophe swallowing up, as in the jaws
of hell, the twin cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum !
While the people were sitting, tier upon tier, watch-
ing their deadly sports in the public amphitheatre.
It is thus they are revealed to us in this superb ro-
mance under the glamour of the golden atmosphere
of poetry, the truest poetry, thrown around it by
Sir Bulwer Lytton's magnificent imagination. The
effect produced upon the reader's imagination in
turn by that last crowning spectacle of horror,
despair, and desolation is like that, let us say, of
one of the late John Martin's marvellous pictures
written ! There is the same overwhelming sense
of hurry, of terror, of vastness, of a multitude of
people, of a blinding light dying out in uttermost
darkness, of sublimity in short mingled here
in this enthralling romance, in this romance of
romances, with a pathos supreme and exquisite.
An examination again of this great work, viewing it
as a work of art, and as one of the most splendid
productions of Sir Edward Lytton's genius as a
romancist, confirms, nay, if that be possible, more
than confirms—enhances—our original admiration
for it. Viewed apart from all its companions this
one fiction alone is a " material guarantee"
of the permanence of its author's lofty and world-
wide reputation. In our estimate of his now volu-
minous writings, we unhesitatingly place it high
in the first rank of his admitted masterpieces.

The lifale Flirt, A Novel. By Mrs. Gordon
Smythies.
_ . _

Felix Featherstone, clerk in the Foreign-office,
is the beloved of damsels of high and low degree.
Blanche Bullion, the heiress ; Eveleen Lovaine,
the beauty; Clara Cribb, the humble housemaid;
Cora Constantia, the dashing and defiant—all are
or have been dying for love of one who only seeks
to win hearts and cast them aside as worthless.
General Report—" the only English General I ever
knew," says Mrs. Lovaine, " who is a great liar and
coward"—General Report, for once speaking truth,
designates Felix by the odious title of male flirt,
but the love-born damsels are each incredulous in'
her own instance, until the gay deceiver leaves a
card at the door marked P.P.C. in the corner, and
turns his envied attentions in another quarter.
Such is the theme of this little novelette from the
lively pen of Mrs. Gordon Sinythies.

Flowers, Grasses, and &Shrubs. A popular book on
Botany. By Mary Pink. James Blackwood.
Truly, says the author of this little volume, " a
love of flowers is natural to all," and very zealously
she has aspired to gratify that love by the garland
of varied lines she hero presents to her readers.
The various favourites of the flower garden and the
field are gracefully dep'cted, both with pen and
pencil, and quotations from the poets are thickly
scattered up and down the page. The work is
written in a reverent spirit, " looking from Nature
up to Nature's God"—
" Blessed be God for flowers 1
For the bright, gentle, holy thoughts, that breathe
From out their odorous beauty, like a wreath
Of sunshine on life's hours."
Many interesting anecdotes are mingled with the
in formation here conveyed. Altogether the volume
forms a charming gift book for the youthful lover
of botany.

THE LEATHER FRAUDS.—At Guildhall, yester-
day, Alderman Carden committed the whole of the accused
for trial. The Old Bailey sessions commence on Monday,
but Mr. Van Sandau stated an application would be made
for a postponement of the trial till the January sessions.
Mr. Tremenheere, the Commissioner appointed
by Government to inquire into the expediency of adopting
the Factory Act in a modified form in the lace trade, has
arrived in Nottingham, and commenced his investigation.
The inquiry,
which is conducted with closed doors, is ex-
pected to last a fortnight.
THE NEW WINE DUTIES.—The Commissioners
of Customs have issued a minute on the subject of the mode
of assessing the altered duties on wines, and the regulation
to be observed on their importation after the Ist of January
next; which is to the effect that wines may be warehoused,
or entered for exportation, without the rate of duty to
which they are liable being first ascertained ; the duties on
1 those intended for home consumption, or to be removed to
the outports, are to be ascertained by testing the contents
of one cask in eight (should there be so many in the parcel)
by distillation,
bereocfoprdroedofisnptinh.etso;ilißci_
7-al
document
under andseparate
ns degrees
headares,to
as follows :
Class A—
Wines containing le
B—
ovines under 26 degrees ; C— wines nes under 40 degrees; D—
wines under 45 degrees ;—winest containing, 45 per cent.
and upwards of proof spin si will be considered " mixed
spirits," and charged with the duty on such. The Board
ary to impose an
do not deem it necessary . yrestriction as to the
of • rtation for wine in bottles. Such wine will
ports importation
be charged the duty of 2s. 6d. per gallon under class C, un-
less the ,
officershave reason to suspect that the strength
oper cent., in which case •
thereof amounts to 4,,
i four ' it must be
tested. Thirty-two ports .n.England, in Ireland, and
four in Scotland have been approved of for the importation
of wines in casks ; but the operation of testing will be in
the meantime confined to the ports of London, Briiitol
Folkstone, Gloarester, Hull, Liverpool, Newcastle, ply:
mouth, ZoutAampton, lasow, 4eiqi; and Dublin,
.A: •