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
Western
ern ....
East
Sardinian 397 50 .. 397 50
Ali strian
Lombard , 482 50 .. 483 75

AMERICA.

SOUTHAMPTON, FRIDAY.

The Hamburg and American Company's steam-
ship Teutonia, Captain Taube, from New York on
the Ist inst., has arrived off CONVOS.
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 tons of
cotton, hops. &c., for Hamburg.
()n 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.

LITERATURE.

BULWER'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 Arbaces 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—
Apaacides, 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 Cassins, that so it came to pass—
that awful catastrophe swallowing up, as in the jaws
of hell, the twin cities of Pompeii andHerculaueum !
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
n the first rank of his admitted masterpieces.

The Male Flirt, A Novel. By Mrs. Gordon
Smythies.
Felix Featherstone, clerk in the Foreign-office,
is the beloved of damsels of high an low degree.
Blanche Bullion, the heirrss ; Eved leen Lovaine,
the beauty; Clara Cribb, the humble housemaid;
Cora Constantia, then ashing and def ant—all are
or have been dying love of o--.e who only seeks
to win hearts and east tl-em as'de as worthless.
General Report—" the only English General I ever
knew," says Mrs. Lovaine, " who Is a ez t 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 Smythiee.

---
Flowers, Grasses, and Shrubs. A popular book on
Botany. By Mary Pixie. James Blackwood.
Truly, says the author of this little volume, "
a
love of flowers is natural to all," and very zealously
she has aspircd 1 o gratify that love by the garland
of varied lines she here 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 I
For the bright, gentle,
From out their odorousholy thoughts, that breathe
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
postponement of the trial till the January sessions.
for a
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.
It is reported in Paris that argn
China, e reinforcements
and some
will be sent to the French expeditilon i
that 30,000 men will be
exaggerated rumours affirm
despatched.
THE SPREAD OF FASITION.--Ail extract from a
beautiful and fashionable young lady's letter :—" I must
tell you, dear, that I have got sack a capital crinoline. I
wish I could send you the pattern. It is a perfect love—
the most angelic thing I ever saw—so light, and graceful,
and easy, and so comfortable that one feels as though one
was swimming through the air with it. Of course, it is
thoroughly French. I got mine at Boulogne in the Grandeich
Rue. It is beautifully made, and with an extracase, wh
unbuttons down the front, and allows the steels to slip out,
as easily as you would pull a pair of scissors out of their
leather sheath. There is no stitching to the steels, I need
not tell you. This is a very great convenience, as it enables
a lady to send her crinoline to the wash with the same ease
both sides, &e. (And so the letter runs on for 20
on
as ordinary petticoats. The body is deeply gored all the way
more, but we think we have printed quite enough to
warn the oeutlemen to prepare for a, very severe, winter)."
dinwe s a