The Sun.
London, England, 1867-07-11 00:00:00

HAY.

SMITHFIELD—Meadow hay, £3 Os to £4 7s Gd; clover,
.£4 Os to ,Co 17s Gd; and straw, £2 to £2 6s per load.
A short supply.

CUMBERLAND--Meadow hay, £3 Os to £4 10s Od ; clover,
£4 Os to £5 17s ad ; and straw, £2 to £2 6s per load.
Trade slow.

WHITECHAPEL—Meadow hay, £3 to £4 7s 6d; clover
£4 Os Od to £5 17s 6d; and strays•, £2 to £2 6s per load
Trade dull.

New hay is quoted at £2 I.os to £3 lOs per load.

LITERATURE.

Miss Braddon's New Novel.

Rupert Godwin. By M. E. Braddon. Three Vols
Ward, Lock, and Tyler.

The authoress of " Lady Audley's Secret," it
would almost seem, has, hid away somewhere, an
inexhaustible store of original romances from her
own hand, written before her name was famous
—romances already completed, and only requiring
a touch, here and there, from her practised pen,
to freshen them up, thereby making each in turn,
appear " a-maist as weel 's the new"—a store into
which she has but to dip for one new success
after another, as Suett dipped into his lucky bag
for wigs, or as Munden, according to Charles
Lamb, used to dip into his lucky bag for
faces. here, in effect, is another of them—
not of Munden's faces, not of Suett's wigs, but of
Miss Braddon's after-date successes, as we might
call them—and with reason. " Rupert Godwin,"
penned by a 'prentice-hand, touched into new life
by a master-hand--although issue .I several years
ago (if we understand rightly, in a serial form, in
one of the illustrated penny weeklies)—virtually
comes now before the general public as an entirely
new work by the now famous author of " Lady
Audley's Secret" and " Aurora Floyd," cum cateris
paribus. And this, too, very strange indeed
to tell, after the story has had its run
elsewhere in two very different directions
in France and in the United States 1 Trans-
lated into French, soon after its original ap-
pearance (we presume anonymously) in the cheap
weekly periodical already alluded to as the medium
for its first publication—the tale so translated into
French was for a long while, in instalments, the de-
light of the readers of the feuilleton of one among
the Paris newspapers. Thence it was translated
back again into English, and into very bad Eng-
lish, too, by the way, through one of those odd
freaks of piracy in literature with which European
authors are sometimes startled almost into bewil-
derment here in the old world by certain
new-world publishers irresponsible victims, we
are left to presume, of a sort of chronic
literary kleptomania. To all intents and purposes,
therefore, " Rupert Godwin" is a new work, here
in England. It comes to us—literally—redivivus.
And, here again, so to speak, upon the very
threshold of the story, we are held spellbound
by a tale-teller as enthralling as the Ancient
Mariner himself—by a romancist who holds us
with her glittering eye at each fresh rencontre,'
and who retains the mastery of our attention until
the tale once begun is told out to the very end.
As in the instance of " Henry Dunbar," we had a
novel, the title of which was the name of a London
Banker—so also in the instance of " Rupert God-
win," we have a romance the title of which is the
name of another London Banker. Here, however,
all comparison between the two fictions ceases.
Whereas, in
" Henry Dunbar," the banker was
the victim —in " Rupert Godwin," the banker
(who is really himself and not another—and the
readers of
"Henry Dunbar" will at once understand
this parenthetic allusion) in " Rupert Godwin," we
say, the Banker who is the hero of the fiction is
not by any means the victim, but, on the contrary,
the victimizer. Until—mais cela va sans dire—the
,conclusion of the book, when, as a matter of course,
justice is duly meted out to the arch-delinquent.
There is one peculiarity, by-the-way, about the con-
struction of the tale here under notice that we cannot
of course but perforce direct attention to, as, to
say the least of it, very remarkable—namely that,
in the construetion of the plot there is noticeable
a marvellous similarity to the scheme of the foun-
dation upon which was built up by Mr. Charles
Meade the elaborate super-structure, entitled by him
" Hard Cash," or, as he first called it yet more em-
phatically,
" Very Hard Cash." A sea captain, in
each story, goes off on a long voyage, leaving a
lump of money (his whole fortune in fact) which
he inadvertently deposits in the hands of a fraudu-
lent banker. In both instances the sea captain also
leaves behind him at home a charming wife, a
still more charming daughter, and an only son.
Alike in " Hard Cash," and in " Rupert God-
win," the victim is carried away at the evil
instance of the villain of a b rnker, and
buried alive in a private madhouse. The
similarity between all these incidents is cer-
tainly, as we have said, remarkable. And—if purely
the result of a coincidence—must as certainly be
allowed, on all hands, to be something really mar-
vellous. In any case, Miss Braddon's old-new book,
entitred "Rupert Godwin " without making any
pretensions whatever to be regarded as a highly
elaborated work of art, like that—as we are almost
tempted to regard it—opus magnum or capo d'opera
of Charles Reade's " Very Hard Casb,"—" Rupert
Godwin," we say, as a tale full of interest, holds us
in rapt attention all through, from the opening of
its very first down to the close of its very last
chapter. A little later on, we shall hope that we
may have occasion to welcome its yet further re-
publication—namely, as another enthralling story
added to the charming one-volumed Library Edition
of Miss Braddon's Romances.

Boswell's Life of Johnson. One vol., pp. 526.
New edition. Geo. Routledge and Sons.
This enticing volume is at once the cheapest and
the compactest, while, at the same time, it
is also about the most beautiful edition
that has ever been published here in Eng-
land of that greatest of all biographies—Boswell's
" Life of Johnson." It is the latest addition to,
while it is also one of the noblest integral portions
of, that happily fast extending series of three-and-
sixpenny volumes, now becoming known far and
wide (among all those who not only " run
and read," but actually race and read along
our railways at the rate of forty or fifty miles
an hour) as Routledge's Standard Library.
Among those standard books have already been in-
cluded Le Sage's " Gil Blas" and Cervantes' " Don
Quixote," " The Arabian Night's Entertainments "
and Disraeli's " Curiosities of Literature," " The
Blackfriars Shakspere," Cruden's " Concordance
to the Old and New Testament," and Charles
Mackay's " Thousand and One Gems of Eng-
lish Poetry." Boswell's " Johnson" takes its
place by right in the same category. As
one of the world's masterpieces, it is welcome to us
in a volume so easily carried, so exquisitely printed,
so strongly and serviceably " got up " in all the
essentials of paper, binding, and typography—a vol-
ume adorned with a sprinkling of graceful wood-
cut illustrations, and, last but not least, furnished
at its close with an index sufficiently comprehensive
to be really of use for purposes of reference.

Words from the Poets. Selected by C. M.
Vaughan. One Vol. pp. 316. Macmillan

and Co.

Another of those delightful little Shilling Editions
recently issued from the press at uncertain intervals,
by tie Messrs. Macmillan of London and Cambridge,
little green limp volumes in 18mo., already includ-
ing among their number such wonderful shilling's-
worth as Barnard's "Arithmetic" and " Golden
Deeds," recounted by the author of the " Heir of
Redcliffe." Here among these thrice welcome
Words from the Poets," we have lyrics from a
throng of poets of all ages, from young William
Allingham to old William Wordsworth. Words
they are, for the most part, that are hardly so much
written for us by authors as talked or sung to us
by dearly cherished friends.

Mrs. Brown's Visit to the Paris E.chibition. By

Arthur Sketchley. Routiedge.

An itpropos bundle of whimsicalities, this is—an I
altogether a capital piece of pleasantry by one of the
raciest of our Entertainers, " as the sayin' is"—to
quote Mrs. Brown herself—who, as all the world
knows, is the creation of Arthur Sketchley.

Uncle Tom's Cabin. New Edition. Routledge.
" Uncle Tom's Cabin"—for sixpence ! When
that is said, all is said that need be, in regard to
this new edition of Mrs. Beecher Stowe's Negro
Novel—for those five words in the preceding sen-
tence are of themselves a very flourish of trumpets.

MISSING Johanna Emilie, which
sailed from tatavia for the United Kingdom on the 18th
of November, and the Violet, which slii ped from St.
Anchors during a heavy gale on the 11th of January, have
not siuce been heard of.

HER MAJESTY, &c.

WINDSOR CASTLE, July 10.

The Queen, accompanied by their Royal High-
nesses Princess Louis of Hesse and Princess Louise,
drove out yesterday afternoon.

THE CM:T.—Her Majesty the Queen and Royal
Family are expected to leave Windsor Castle on Saturday
afternoon, after lunching with the Sultan. Her Majesty
will travel in a special train provided by the South Western
Railway Company, which will proceed via Basingstoke
and Bishopstoke to Gosport. The arrangements for the
journey will be under the control of Mr. J. Grierson, of the
Great Western, and of Mr. W. Godson, of the South West-
ern lines.