The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-04 00:00:00

pay more."

There is one other respect in which foreign publishers
have an advantage which Messrs. Leypoldt and Holt seem
to have unaccountably overlooked. This is the sure sale
they can rely upon to the oirculating libraries—a point
elaborated in the last Paris letter of The Publishers' Circular,
where it is shown that this is of itself eßough to secure the
publisher against loss. This consideration—the direct and
very large interest to publishers of such wholesale pur-
chasers—adds another to the many occasions for wonder
that we are still without anything to correspond to the
English Mudie's."

Part I. (new edition) of " Cassell's Popu!ar Edu-
cator" has just been issued. To those earnest and intelli-
gent youths determined on self-education, if deprived of
the advantages of school, this work cannot fail to be use-
ful. It is issued in numbers at 11,1. each, and contains
lessons in the languages most in use, as well as in every
branch of knowledge. It opens with lessons in French, a
language, we believe, to bo quite unattainable unless
taught. The mass of information condensed into the 64
pages now before us is perfectly bewildering. To school
teachers the work must be peculiarly valuable. A lesson
in punctuation not only tersely lays down the rules, but
curiously exemplifies their neglect. A commissioner for
lighting one of the largest commercial cities of Europe, by
misplacing a comma in his advertisement, contracted for
but half the supply. Re represented the lamps "as 4,050 in
number, having two spouts each, composed of not less than
20 threads of cotton." What he meant was that each spout
had 20 threads, and the comma should have been after
spouts, instead of after each." The clerk of a congrega-
tion in Scotland had a paper handed to him, as the custom
is, to read before the minister stood up to pray with or /hr
the congregation, containing the following words un-
pointed :—" A man going to sea his wife desires the

prayers of the congregation." The clerk read it as if a
comma had been put after the word wife, and unfortunately
excited in no small degree the risible faculties of the people
assembled, thus : —" A man going to sea (see) his wife, de-
sires the prayers of the congregation.' "
Mr. Henry Latham's book "Black and White"
is alluded to in the Round Table of the 16th inst. The
book had not reached America, and the writer's remarks
were on the comments contained in the Atheneetim. We
have not read "Black and White," and we are not a little
surprised and amused when the sour krout of the United
States was thus dished up and placed before us:- "'lf you
do not like Terrapin, you will not like America,' said Morton
M'Michael, the pleasant Mayor of Philadelphia, to an
English guest. This sort of saying is becoming common
in the United States. Every English traveller who finds
himself in good company, especially in Richmond, Balti-
more, and Philadelphia, is tested with Terrapin. Ile may
not know what isgoinl;,- on ; what is expected from him; but
his quick sense will tell him that, on a certain dish of soup
being placed before him —a black and most unsightly look-
ing dish—the eyes of his friends and hosts are upon him.
If he pauses at the sight, they wait and watch : if ho re-
coils from the taste, they change colour ; if he scads the
plate away, they despair. lie may as well take his port-
manteau and sail for Europe. If he should smack his lips,
cry Bravo! what is this ?' and cull for a second helping,
his fortune is complete; the company will accept him as a
brother, and from that moment he will be enrolled among
tho choice spirits of the world who are recognised by our
cousins as friends of America. 'Once,' said a great be-
liever in this test, was rather staggered. A man
came to Baltimore with good letters of introduction ; he
was a scholar and a Republican, and his whole heart
seemed to bo alive with love for us and for our institutions.
We set Terrapin before him. He turned up his nose ; he
pushed it away. But events justified him. Ile was no
friend of America; for when our great trouble came upon
us that man was one of the sharpest thorns in our side.
How could he be a friend of America when he could not eat
Terrapin ?' Mr. Henry Latham liked Terrapin ? Accord-
ingly, the spirit in which Mr. Latham has written about
our brethren in America is commendable in a high degree ?"
Oa this surprising statement the knight of the Round Table
remarks:—" To us—although we have heard much of the
dish, have sometimes seen it, and are aware of the im-
portance it assumes in the eyes of such traditional English
tourists as Mr. Paulding waged war upon—this is a revela-
tion. We have lived in Boston, New Haven, New York,
Philadelphia, Mobile, New Orleans, San Francisco, Sacra-
mento; are not unfamiliar with Baltimore and Richmond,
the two other specified cities ; are American,' so far as
one can be by parentage, birth, education, and all other
essentials that suggest themselves - yet to this day we have
never eaten or been offered Terrapin. Still, if Mr. Latham
and the Atheneum reviewer liked it we are very glad they
got it, and only object to having it made our national dish
in the same way that beefsteak, potatoes, frog's legs and
horse, olla podrida, pate de foie Bras, candles, train-oil, are
the dishes associated respectively with Briton, Irishman,
Frenchman, Spaniard Strasburger, Russian, and Lapp.
The misconception seems to us as great as that of the
Blackwood writer about our 'lnroads upon English' in
his parenthetical explanation that persimmons are nuts.
Even against Mr. Trollope we have a similar grievance,
which, however, we may keep until we can speak of his
Lotta Schmidt, and other Stories,' two of which contain
the offences in question."

Mr. Fitz Hugh Ludlow is at work upon a novel.
The Rev. S. Irennus Prime is to make a book of
his letters to the Observer.

Mr. Edward R. Sill is about to publish through
Messrs. Leypoldt and Holt the first volume of his collected
poems.

Airs. R. 11. Stoddard is soon to publish a new
novel ontitled " Temple House." Liko her earlier stories,
it is a story of American life, the scene lying in a new Eng-
land village.

Miss Dodge—Gail Hamilton—will soon give us
another little book, entitled "Woman's Wrongs."
John Mitchell is publishing in the columns of his
paper, the New York Irish Citizen, reminiscences of Gen.
Thomas Francis Meagher, being a graphic personal his-
tory from the editor's pen of the Young Ireland move-
ment of 184 F.

General John Piatt is in Union-square, New
York, preparing some volumes of recollectioLS, political
and military, which are to be issued early yvlct year.

THEATRICALS AND A.TIUSEMENTS.

(From the Anolo-imerican Times.)

We cannot tell what al) sensations were of Mad Ho.
Clara Louise Kellogg when she first stood on a Lon-
don stage and faces the thousand curious eyes fixed
upon her, the illarions stranger. A young lady, with a
great reputaticr.to maintain, however confident of her own
powers, musinave shrunk somewhat startled at the trying
ordeal. 'rho restraint caused by this feeling could not fail
to loss,,i the great powers of the artiste, and there can be
little doubt that, as Madlle. Kellogg has grown accus-
t,,ied to the new sceuo of her prformanci, and has
.vgained her ease and self-command, she has become more
enchanting as she returned to her natural self the prima
donna who had charmed the citizens of New York.
Seldom has a stranger at once taken such a place in the
musical world in Europe as that to which Miss Kellogg
has stepped. The metropolitan press is unanimous in its
verdict. Critics may differ in detail. They may hold
opinions which clash as to the rendering of certain cha-
racters, but none differ as to the powers of this young
lady, either as a singer or an actress. Our space does not
admit of our culling the various criticisms, but we intend
occasionally to notice some, as the career of the gifted
American has a deep interest for her countrymen. The
opinion of the Saturday Review is thus given :
"As a singer, Madlle. K—, while a long way on the
road to excellence, has faults to conquer as well as merits
unreservedly to commend. Her voice, a true soprano, is reso-
nant and telling, without being powerful. It has been well
trained, but still, in rare instances, lacksfurther cultivation
especially, for example, in the method of taking the higher
notes of the register-- not so much in passages where they
are reached tep by step, as in those where they have sud-
denly to be attached. She boasts, on the other hand, the
precious quality of being invariably in tune ; and
this is allied to extreme sensibility in cantibile phrases,
her delivery of which, but for an oczasional ten-
dency to drag the time, and thereby to exaggerate
expression, would be absolutely faultless. But for the last
easily remedied defect, we can imagine nothing more
thoroughly exquisite than her manner of singing The
Last Rose of Summer,' whether in Italian, or when in
response to an encore, the genuine heartiness of which is
unmistakeable, she substitutes for the foreign adaptation
a verse in Moore's own language. That her voice is
flexible, no less than telling and sympathetic, is clearly
established by her facile and brilliant delivery of the Air
des Bijoux' in 'Faust'; and of the cavatina at the close of
the first act in La Traviata.' Then her articulation of the
words, her sense of accent, her balance of phrase, alike in
tempo giusto,' and in tempo rubato' in the strict division
of time, and in its measurement at discretion, aro irre-
proachable ; while last, not least, her pronunciation of the
Italian language is so uniformly correct and musical that
she might be almost taken for an Italian-bred. Each of
the three operas in which Mdlle. K— has hitherto per-
formed has earned for her a signal and honourable success,
and the greatest hopes are reasonably entertained of her
approaching performance in ' Linda Chamouni.'" These
expt.ctations have boon fully realised.

ROYAL AMPHITHEATRE AND CIRCUS, HOLBORN. —The
American Champions, added to the old favourites of the
circus, make up an unmatched company. The former
were organised in the United States, culling the cream
from equestrians and gymnasts, for a grand display
at the Paris Exhibition. During the summer this
wonderful trospe performed in that capital, attract-
ing, as they say, upwards of 850,000 persons, among
whom were all the crowned heads who visited the Frencli,
metropolis. Although we are not inclined to go into
announces itself in language which does not err on the
the ecstacies attributed to the Parisian public and press, wo
cannot deny that the press ware in a measure justified in their
enthusiasm by the performances. Mr. Robert Stickney is a
specimen of mankind who would form an admirable model
for a sculptor. II presents a more beautiful development of
muscle—so light, graceful, symmetrical—as scarcely to be
excelled. Strength as well as activity generally go with
symmetry and beauty of figure, and are seldom allied to
heaviness, but never to clumsiness. The American
gymnasts illustrate this, Kelly, whose feats have never
been matched, being tall and thin. Their performances
aro really marvellous. The leaps from a spring-
board are bounds into the air, where they seem to dis-
port themselves like tumbler pigeons. Each performer
is characteristically marked. One appears to rise and turn
at the greatest height, his head, not his feet, passing
nearest the object he clears. Another shoots off like a
rocket, his flight through the atmosphere being almost as
rapid, nearly all the arena in which stand 12 horses being
cleared at a bound. A third springs into the air, turning
two summersaults ere he again alights. Scarcely less sur-
prising is the performance of the Hanlon Brothers. There
are three of them—the second stands on the shoulders
of the first, and the third on those of the second. The
uppermost springs into the air, the second jumps from
the shoulders of the first, and are lie has reached the
ground he who had been uppermost has alighted i❑ his
place, having turned a summersault ere ho descended to
the perch on the lower's shoulders. Not only do they
pring from the shoulders of the one to those of the other,
but turn summersaults in the air as they go. There is
some horsemanship of as unusual a character. The horse
rushes round the ring freed from every restraint as nature
made him; no curb, no padded saddle, tho equestrian
stands on the well-groomed back of the boast, and what
he does is done on that platform. James Robinson does
not ride his horse. From the arena he springs to its back
as it rushes on, and there disports himself as on a stage.
For a period he is half the time on the animal and the
other half in the air, flying through hoops and turning
summersaults as ho goes. One sees a rushing horse, one
sees what appears a flying man—the two are connected,
but one scarcely knows how. The educated animals
form a most interesting portion of the entertainment, and
John Bull's love of clowns is shown by the roars of laughter
with which their sayings and doings are greeted. One
of these clowns is certainly an admirable specimen of his
craft, and the most perfect horsewoman we have yet seen,
mounted and dressed as if for a display on Rotten-row,
maintained a seat so graceful, a hand $0 light in command-

ing, that both she and the horse made a picture well worth
the pencil of an artist. The house was so crowded that
we were compelled to stand, and the thunders of applause
predicts a success in London for these champion gymnasts
and equestrians as great as that which crowned their
efforts in Paris We cannot allude to this theatre without
a word of praise for the admirable way in which it is
managed. There is no cleaner, better ventilated, and more
neatly appointed house, nor any other whore the visitor
meets with more civility—a contrast to the snobbism of
the servants of the greatest opera in London.