The Sun.
London, England, 1858-09-11 00:00:00

'IRACLES.

All France is honoured by another miracle. It
occurred close on the fetes of Cherbourg. A peasant
girl, of the French Pyrenees, was engaged in her
ordinary pursuits, when suddenly a figure appeared
to her in a grotto, whom she had no difficulty in
recognising. The figure was the Virgin Mary.
That was one miracle ; but it was followed %%-
another. The grotto was very pretty before, but it
now became useful. It had previously no water ;
now a spring was bestowed upon the inhabitants
of the Pyrenean parish. Infidels and Protestants
might not believe in the figure whom they had not
seen, but the spring at least was within the grasp
of their degraded intellects. A commission has
been employed to examine the story. The members
are charged particularly to test the water of the
well. If it should have the slightest pretence to
the honour it is to be sold in bottles for the benef
of the district. Perhaps it may be more profitable
to sell the water in another way. A village might
be built there. A shrine might be formed. If the
place have the slighest claim for natural beauty,
that should not be difficult. Devotees would take
the ground consecrated in this peculiar manner.
That mode, moreover, of turning this girl's vision
into permanent profit might have another advan-
tage. It would compel the girls of other towns to
examine grottoes with attention and care. It might
elicit other miracles. There is abundance of space
on the Pyrenees for small villages of pretty houses,
with neat gardens, capable of being used as summer
retreats, not only in the common, but the ecclesiasti-
cal meaning of the word " retreats." Penance on
the Pyrenees would be lightened by the change of
scenery to the inhabitants of Lyons or of Paris.
They-would descend to the cares and labours of the
plains doubly invigorated. They would derive
health of body and of mind by their exercises, their
meditations, and, if necessary, their stripes, but the
latter would be light in these mountains. No doubt
other and envious parishes and villages would es-
tablish rivals. So much the better. Too many
miracles will not occur. Cardinal Wiseman is
now in Ireland. There he proclaims the cold
want of enthusiasm that freezes him in Eng-
land. He sees it in the rigid features of
the solid crowd. Nothing will move them. His
eloquence falLs on adamant or flint, or, at the
"best, granite, like that of the Mourne Mountains ;
-but when he reaches Ireland he is refreshed by
enthusiasm, by smiles, by tears, by fervour and
gratitude and warmth,—by faith, of which, never-
theless, he holds that Martin Luther made a bad
use. He first learnt the English language, he says,
in Ireland; and he is like the old classic gentleman
who gathered new strength and vigour always
when he fell on his mother earth. The Cardinal re-
turns to England from Ireland refreshed--a new
man, with a store of vigour for England to wear out.
It may be all natural and true; but while France
finds, Ireland loses " the holy wells." They were
places of pilgrimage there long ago, and they arc
now forgotten. The peasant passes around them
behind his plough, instead of on his knees. Devotees
do not look there for blessings. They do not go
there in payment of their vows. Ireland retro-
grades, France progresses. In the matter of holy
wells France is in the year 1558 as contrasted with
Ireland. This is a fact which Cardinal Wiseman
should not overlook. To Rostrevor, or a Wicklow
mountain, an event like that of the Pyrenees would
be fortune.— Glasgow Bulletin.

A :Tourney Due North. By George A. Sala.
Bentley.
This is a very agreeable volume, containing notes
of the autl or's residence in Russia during the sum-
mer of 1856. It is written in a fresh and animated
manner, which imparts a delightful novelty to a
subject that has occupied the pens of a good many
travellers, and wearied a large number of readers
and critics since the famous Turkish question. A
bona fide description of the interior of Russia, by
an Englishman, is still something of a novelty, and
has decidedly the advantage over Turkey, Cir-
cassia, the Crimean battle-fields, and similar
localities. The author starts in the true spirit of
an enthusiastic traveller, and tells us how a trip to
the grim land of the Czar and Count Orloff's
police, was one of his childish visions. He thus
amusingly relates his early dreams 011 the
subject :
" When I was a little lad, the maps were my story-books.
The big marble-paper covered atlas, only to be thumbed on
high days and holidays, had greater charms for me than
even Fox's Martyrs or the Seven Champions. With this
atlas and a paunchy volume with a piecrust cover (was it
Brothes' or Maunder's Gazetteer ?) what romances I wove !
what poems I imagined I what castles in the air I built !
what household words I made of foreism. cities 1 what subtle
knowledge I had of the three .A;a' bias—Arabia Petra,
Arabia Deserta, and Arabia Felix! How I longed for the
time when I should be big enough to go to Spain (shall I
ever be big enough to make that journey, I wonder ?)—what
doughty projects I formed against the day when I should
be enabled to travel on an elephant in Bengal, and a rein-
deer in La land, and a mule in the Pyrenees, and an
4 ostrich in bylia, and a crocodile in Nubia, like Mr.
Waterton ! ut my special story-book was that vast patch
on the map of Europe marked Russia. In Europe, quotha I
Did not Russia stretch far, far into Asia, and farther still
into America ? I never was satiated with this part of the
atlas. There was perpetual winter in Russia, of course.
The only means of travelling was on a sledge across the
snowy Steppes. Packs of wolves invariably followed in
pursuit howling fearfully for prey. The traveller was
always provided with a stock of live babies, whom he loved
dearer than life itself, but whom he threw out, nevertheless,
to the wolves one by one, at half-mile distance or so. Then
he threw out his lovely and attached wife (at her own
earnest request, I need not say), and then the wolves, intent
on a third course, leaped into the sledge, and made an end
of him. It used to puzzle me considerably as to how the
horses escaped being eaten in the commencement, for the
sledge always kept going at a tremendous rate ; and I was
always in a state of ludicrous uncertainty as to the steppes
—what they were made of,—wood or stone; -or turf;
whether children ever sat on them with babies in their
arms (but the wolves would never have allowed that,
surely) ; and how many steps went to a flight. There was
attraction enough to me, goodness knows, in the rest of the
atlas; in boot-shaped Italy; in Africa, huge and yellow as a
pumpkin, and like that esculent, little excavated ; in the
Red Sea (why did they always colour it pea-green in the
map ?) ; but the vasty Russia with its appurtenances was
my great storehouse of romance. The Baltic was a con-
tinual wonder to me. How could ships ever get into it
when there were the Great and Little Belts, and the
Kraken, and the Maslstrorn, and the icebergs, and the polar
bears to stop the way. Russia (on the map) was one vast
and delightful resisn of mysteries, and adventures, and
perilous expeditions; a glorious wonder-land of czars who
lived in wooden houses disguised as shipwrights; of Cossacks
continually careering on long-maned ponies, and with
lances like Maypoles; of grisly bears, sweet-smelling leather,
ducks, wolves, palaces of ice, forests, steppes, frozen lakes,
caftans, long beards, Kremlin, and Ivan the Terribles.
Never mind the knout ; never mind the perpetual winter ;
never mind the passage of the Beresina—l put Russia
down in my juvenile itinerary as a place to be visited, cad°
qui coke, as soon as I was twenty-one. I remember, when
I was about half that age, travelling on the top of an
omnibus from Mile-end to the Bank with a philosophic
individual in a red plaid cloak. He told me he had lived
ten years in Russia (Rooshia, he pronounced it), and gave
me to understand confidentially that the czar ruled his
subjects with a rod of iron. I grieved when he departed,
though his conversation was but common-place. I followed
him half-way up Cornhill, gazing at the red plaid skirts of
his cloak flapping in the breeze, and revering him as one
who had had vast and wonderful experiences—as a Sindbad
the Sailor, multiplied by Marco Polo. Oh, for my twenty-
first birthday, and my aunt's legacy,and hey for Russia 1"
At length, when fairly started for his expedition,
various vexatious delays hindered his progress.
His despair at his long detention at Stettin, wait-
ing for thc.ice in the Gulf of Finland to take pity
upon northern travellers, is pithetically described ;
his passport difficnities, recalling the exploits of
Jack and the Giants, are sufficient to deter any
rash or impetuous persons from putting themselves
in the way of such trials of temper. At length he
joined himself with the rest of his fellow-passengers
undergoing the inspection of the Custom-house at
St. Petersburg. After narrating the old story of
Schinderhannes, the Robber of the Rhine, and the
caravan of Jews, he proceeds to describe the system
adopted by these delightful officials :
" I have related this little apologue to illustrate the charac-
teristic, but unpleasant, proceedings of the Russian custom-
house officers, when we had given up our keys, in one of the
white-washed cellars on the basement of a building
on the Ingliskaia Naberejenaia, or English Quay, and
when those officials proceeded to the examination of our
luggage. Either they had read Mr. Leitch Ritchie's Life
of Schinderhannes, or they had an intuitive perception of
the modus agendi of the robbers of the Rhine, or they had
some masonic sympathy with the Parisian police agents ;
for such a turning up of boxes and turning out of their
contents, and mixture of their severalities, pell-mell,
higgledy-piggledy, helter-skelter, jerry-cum-tumble, butter
upon bacon, topsy-turvy, muck, mess, and muddle, I
never saw in my hfe. There was a vfllanous douanier, who
held a bandbox under one arm, and seemed desirous of
emulating the popular hattrick of Herr Dobler ; for he
kept up a continual cascade of gloves, collars, eau-de-
Cologne bottles, combs, hair-brushes, guide-books, pin-
cushions, and lace cuffs, till I turned to look for the accom-
plice who was supplying him with fresh bandboxes. Now,
the custom-house officers of every nation I have yet tra-
velled through, have a different manner of examining your
luggage. Your crusty, phlegmatic Englishman turns over
each article separately but carefully. Your stupid Belgian
rummages your trunk, as if he were trying to catch a
lizard ; your courteous Frenchman either lightly and
gracefully turns up your fine linen, as though he were
making a lobster salad, or—much more frequently—if you
tell him you have nothing to declare, and are polite to him,
just peeps into one corner of your portmanteau, and says,
C'est asset ! Your sententious German ponders deeply
over your trunk, pokes his fat fore-finger into the bosom of
your dress-shirts, and motions you to shut it again. But
none of these peculiarities had the Russians. They had a
way of their own. They twisted, they tousted, they turned
over, they held writing-cases open, bottom upwards, and
shook out the manuscript contents, like snow-flakes. They
held up coats and shirts, and examined them like pawn-
brokers. They fingered ladies': dresses like Jew clothesmen.
They punched hats, and looked into their linings; passed
Cashmere shawls from one to the other for inspection ;
opened letters, and tried to read their contents (upside
down), drew silk stockings over their arms ; held boots by
the toes, and shook them ; opened bottles, and closed them
again with the wrong corks; left the impress of their dirty
hands upon clean linen, and virgin writing-papers ; crammed
ladies' under-garments into gentlemen's carpet-bags, forced
a boot-jack into the little French actress's reticule, dropped
things under foot, trod on them, tore them, and laughed,
spilt eau-de-Cologne, greased silk with pomatum, forced
hinges, sprained locks, ruined springs, broke cigars, rumpled
muslin, and raised a cloud of puff-powder and dentrifice.
And all this was done, perhaps not wantonly, perhaps only
in ignorant savagery; but, with such a reckless want of the
commonest care; with such a hideous vicarme of shooting,
screaming, trampling, and plunging, that the only light I
could view the scene in—besides the Schinderhannes one—
was in the improbable event of Mr. and Mrs. Keeley travel-
ling through the country of the Patagonians. falling into a
gigantic ambuscade, and having their theatrical wardrobe
overhauled by those overgrown savages."
The following portrait of a Russian noble is not
uninteresting :
" The Russian is a gentleman whose two years' term of
travel has expired, and who, not being able to obtain an
extension of his leave of absence, and not very desirous of
having his estates sequestered, which would be the penalty
of disobedience, is returning, distressingly against his own
inclination, to Russia, is an individual who looks young
enough to be two or three and twenty, and old enough to be
two or three and forty. How are you to tell in a gentle-
man whose hair, without a speck of isrey, is always fault-
lessly brushed, oiled, p'erfumed, andt arranged ; whose
moustache is lustrous, firm, and black ; whose teeth are
sound and white ; whose face is perfectly smooth, and clear,
and clean shaven •; who is always perfectly easy, graceful,
and self-possessed ? The Russian Teaks English and French
—the first language as you and ,my dear Bob, speak it;
the second as our friend, Monsieur Adolphe, from Paris,
would speak his native tongue ; by which I mean that the
Russian speaks English like an Englishman, mad Frenchlikc
a Frenchman, without hesitation, accent, or foreign idiom.
Ile is versed in the literature of both countries, and talks of
Sam Weller and Jerome Paturot with equal facility. I am,
perhaps, not so well qualified to judge of his proficiency in
Italian ; but he seems to speak that tongue with at least the
same degree of fluency as he converses in German, of which,
according to Captain Steffens, he is a master. lie laughs
when I talk about the special' and astounding 'gift th t
countrymen seem to possess for the acquisition oof languages.
' Gift, my dear fellow,' he says, 'it is nothing the kind.
I certainly picked up Italian m six months, during a resi-
dence in the country ; but I could speak
.French, English,
and Germanlong before I couldspeak Russian. ANines metres
gentilhonames Russes, we have -
we
En
have Germanglish profnurses ; we have
have
French or Swiss governesses;
at college. As children and as adults we often pass days
and weeks without hearing a word
.of Russian; and the
language with which we have the slightest acquaintance is
our own.' The Russian and I soon grow to be great
(travelling) friends. He talks, and seems to be well-in-
formed, on everybody and everything, and slieaks about
g"erinnents and dynasties in precisely the same tone of
easy persiflage in which he discusses the Italian opera and
the ballet. He tells Inc a great deal about the Greek
church; but it is easy to see that matters ecclesiastical
don't trouble' noes autres gentilhommes _Messes' much. He
has been in the army, like the vast majority of his order,
and is learned in horses, dogs, and general sportsmanship ;
a branch of knowledge that clashes strangely with his gras-
sailleing Parisian accent. He proposes ecarte in an interval
of chat ; but finding that I am but a poor cardplayer, he
shows me a few tricks on the cards sufficient to set a mo-
derately ambitious wizard up in business on the spot, and
contentedly relinquishes the pack for the pianoforte, on
which he executes such brilliant voluntaries, that I can see
the hard-favoured visage of Miss Wapps gazing down at us
through the saloon skylight in discontented admiration
—that decisive lady marvelling doubtless how such an
accomplished Russian can condescend to waste his time and
talents on such a trumpery mortal as I am. He shows me
an album bound in green velvet, and with his cipher, and
coronet embroidered in rubies thereupon, and filled with
drawings of his own execution. He rolls paper cigarettes
with the dexterity of a Castilian caballero ; and he has the
most varied and exact statistical knowledge on all sorts of
topics, political, social, agricultural, and literary, of any
man I ever met with. And this is, believe me, as ordinary
and everyday-to-be-found specimens of the Russian gentle-
men as the unlettered, unlicked, uncouth, untravelled John
Smith one meets at a Boulogne boarding-house is of an
English esquire. My friend, the Russian, has his little
peculiarities ; without being in the slightest degree grave or
sententious that facile mouth of his is never curved into a
genuine smile ; those dark-grey eyes of his never look you
bl the ittCe i big 000424 Royer tired 91' clzialcipz champagne,

The Coroner, in summing up, observed that even
if the doses had been large, they had, he did not
doubt, been given with the best intentions. Despe-
rate cases required desperate remedies, and it would
be a monstrous thing—which would soon cure
itself, because dangerous cases would then be aban-
doned—if medical practitioners were to be deemed
gui:ty of manslaughter, when, after they had
exerted their utmost skill, such eases ended fatally.
The room was then cleared, and the jury were
engaged in consulting for a long time. They re-
turned a verdict to the effect that the deceased had
died of St. Vitus's dance, the conflicting nature
of the evidence preventing their coming to any
other conclusion.---Manchester Guardian.

CAPTURE OF A SLAVER.

(From the New York Herald.)

The United States brig Dolphin, Lieut. John N.
Maffit commanding, arrived at Key West on Sun-
day, the 22d inst., from the coast of Cuba. The
Dolphin sailed from Sagua-la-Grande on the morn-
ing of the 21st inst.
At daylight she discovered a sail a-head standing
on the same course as the Dolphin, which gained
on her very rapidly during the day. A t four p.m.
the sail ahead hauled on the wind, as if trying to
get out of the Dolphin's course, which caused her
to be considered a suspicious craft. The Dolphin
tacked and stood off in pursuit, hoisting the English
colours, and fired a blank cartridge, which not
being answered by the other vessel, another was
fired at half-past four p.m., and this also being un-
noticed, at five p.m. she fired a shot across the bows
of the suspected vessel, which had the effect of
producing the American flag at her peak ; but she
still continued on her course, and seemed to be
making her best endeavonrs to escape, when a well-
directed shot from the Dolphin took effect in her
fore rigging, causing her to heave-to and lower her
colours. On sending a boat on board she proved to
be a brig from the African coast, with 318 negroes.
Her crew were instantly confined, and the prize
placed in charge of Lieut. J. M. Bradford and
Second Lieut. Charles C. Carpenter, and 16 men
from the Dolphin, with orders to proceed to
Charleston, S.C. The captain of the slave brig is
on board the Dolphin.
The Dolphin will leave to-morrow morning for
Boston. The brig's name was formerly Putnam ;
gcli9 i'' on her stern; but had been painted vier.