The Sun.
London, England, 1867-02-15 00:00:00

FRANCE.

BounsE, Feb. 14.—Two o'clock.—Little business
is being transacted, speculators being occupied with
the Emperor's Speech. The tone of the market,
however, is firm, and prices are generally higher.
Threes are 'lie. better, at 69f. 65c., and Credit
Mobilier shares have improved 2f. 50c., the price
being 525 f. Credit Foncier shares have reached
1,535 f., an advance of 10f. Italian Fives, as an
exception, have receded 71c., viz., to 54f. 40c.
Railway shares are firm. he close has taken place
as follows :-
41 per Cents 99 55
Do. and month —
3 per Cents. 69 GO
Do. end month 69 55
Credit Mobilier 520
Do. end month
Credit Foncior
Do. end month 1540
RAIL

Bank Shares 3580
Italian Loan 54 35
Do. end month 54 30
Mexican Loan 2l 50
Do. Bonds 142 50
Spanish Throes
Home Debt
Deferred
'AlrB.

For Account.
Orleans
Northern 1205
Lyons and Mediterranean.......,,, 922 50
Southern —
Western —
Eastern 550
Sardinian —
Austrian
Lombard 405
North of Spain llB 76
Saragossa l3l 25
Ditto to Barcelona —
Roman. 9O

LAW INTELLIGENCE.—This Day.

COURT OF DIVORCE.
(Before the Judge Ordinary and a Common Jury.)
RODGKINSON V. HODGKIXSON AND SOVERIGN.
This was a suit instituted by the husband against the
wife for dissolution of marriage.
From the evidence it appeared that for some time after
the marriage the parties lived happily
together, when an op-
portunity occurred of the husband bettering his position by
accepting a situation to go to Monte Video. It was
arranged that the wife should follow in the event of cir-
cumstances turning out favourable, but in the meantime
she would reside with her relations net Leeds, who kept
a public louse. After the arrival of Mrs. llodgkinson at
the place, the co-respondent by accident became acquainted
with her, and then his visits to the house became very
frequent. He visited the house as often as three times a
day, until at last an intimacy existed between them, that
on coming to the knowledge of the husband led to the
institution of the present suit.
The 'carried Judge, in summing up the evidence, told
the jury the question for them to consider was the amount
of damage sustained by the petitioner by the loss of his
wife. The eo-respondent, it appeared, was a person corn-
ing from CaLada as the agent of a patent, but as he
had made his appearance in the Bankruptcy Court
he was not in a very flourishing stlto as far as
money matters were concerned. However that was nut
for them to decide; they would have to estimate the peti-
tioner's loss and give him ample compensation. The cir-
cumstances of the respondent were not to be taken into
consideration, because sometirms after a verdict a person
might become possessed of property, and then be in a
position to pay. It was also not to be taken into their
consideration, because where a person could not pay
with his purse he would have to do it by personal punish-
ment. The wife, it appeared, was in possession of pro-
perty of her own, which brought her iu 16s. a week, and
this also must he taken into consideration, because the
husband naturally participated in that income, and there-
fore, to a certain extent, ho was a loser on that point also.
The jury, after a short deliberation, found the adultery
proved, and gave a verdict for the petitioner with o£soo
damages against the co-respondent.
The Judge Ordinary also gave the costs of tho suit
Against the ev-respondent.

'EBRUARY 15, 1867.

LITERATURE.

_~_

The Essays of Elia. By Charles Lamb. A New
Edition. With a Dedication and Preface
Hitherto Unpublished. One volume. Pp. 436.
Moxon and Co.
The exquisitest edition of au exquisite book is this,
the cheapest yet published, of our dear delightful
Elia. In itself—in these 436 pages—what a world
of wit, and grace, and humour, of quaint conceits,
of overflowing tenderness, of charming newborn
thoughts, of whimsical old-world recollections !
There is hardly any book iu the language that
we know more thoroughly by heart than Elia—
having known it thus, too, by heart for more years
than we care to number up. And yet, knowing it
thus by heart though we do, there is hardly any book
that can be named iu (so-called) profane literature
that we can at any time take up more eagerly for
re-perusal—to dip into once more hap-hazard,
wherever the leaves may chance to open—than this
one from the hand of our Peerless Essayist.
Yes, we hesitate not for a single instant
so to designate Charles Lamb—our Peerless
Essayist. Not—one of the best of them, but—
the Best. And this, moreover, bearing perfectly
well in mind, how rich beyond all other litera-
tures is the literature of England in Essayists.
Remembering vividly and gratefully, as we ought,
the labours of love in that department adorning
our bookshelves, from such master-hands among
others as Addison, Steele, Johnson, Hunt, Hazlitt,
Lytton, and Macaulay. Who that knows Elia, and
who that has once quaffed from the flavorous and
sparkling current of these delectable effusions of
his genius, has resisted the inevitable inclination
thereupon acquired to drink from them to their
very heart's content, and by consequence to know
their writer intimately in all the turns, and chinks,
and angles, and crevices of his most quaint and most
original idiosyncracy. Who that knows Elia at
all, who especially that knows Elia as we do and
have done for years past—as just now acknow-
ledged by heart (enshrineing him in it)--will deem it
any derogation whatever to even the most gifted
among the brother Essayists of Charles Lamb—our
according thus the pas to ELIA, when hinting, in
regard to them all, at anything like a definable
order of precedence ? Without any disparagement
whatever, without any suspicion of depreciation of
all the rare distinguishing excellencies discernable
in such books as the Spectator, the Rambler, the
indicator, and Caxtoniana, we set apart, as a some-
thing perfectly sal genesis, as a thing unique, as a
lusus literarum, as a stillrarer pearl of price than them
all, as a peculiarly exceptional phenomenon iu
literature, the Elia of Charles Lamb. The mere
manner of it—what a charm it has ! The
very diction ho employs—what a flavour, what an
aroma there is about it ! It is antiquity talking
to us afresh, reborn, rcjuvenescent—and yet for all
that, still, to the last, ingrained, ineradicably
antiquity ! Not "bald antiquity," as one might say,
but antiquity flowingly hirsute as it were—with a
bloom upon it the while, and yet venerable withal.
Employed by any other writer than Lamb, the
obsolete words used by him habitually, the fantastic
turns of expression, the discarded or forgotten idioms,
would have degenerated by necessity into a mass
of affectation. Here, however, in Elia, there is not
one particle of affectation anywhere discoverable.
Writing thus, he was thus—it might be said, and
said with perfect truth—to the manner born. Could
he, we will even go so far as to say, have dropped

upon any rate occasion the distinctive style in
which he spoke as well as wrote habitually—then,
not otherwise, there would, if you will, have been
risk of his degenerating into affectation. No—the
manner with him was not assumed, as a raiment,

•
so to speak, with which he clothed his thoughts —it
was no mere mask, or husk, or superficies--•it was,
as we have said, ingrained, it was as the very substance
of him, it was part and parcel of himself, a some-
thing inherent, integral, ineradicable. It is no
more reasonably to be taken exception to in his
instance, than it would be reasonable to charge a
man with guilt, or affectation, or responsibility, be-
cause of the natural colour of his hair, the contour of
his features, or the shade of his complexion. In order
to recognise how literally true all this is, which we
are here insisting upon, in regard to the utter ab-
sence of anything at all verging even towards the
merest tendency to a liking for affectation of any kind
at all, either in style or diction, hi Charles Lamb's
mode of putting his thoughts into written lan-
guage—it is only necessary to examine any-
thing and everything his pen is known to
have ever put upon paper—even at his most careless
moments—the merest scrap of a note, let us say,
jotted down with careless ease upon the spur of the
moment in scribbling to a friend ! Examining which
—his correspondence that is—not Elia, but his

familiar Letters to his intimates—Charles Lamb is
still Charles Lamb throughout : in other words, he
is still Elia—and, when most careless, he is often,

often, at his very bast. To see this, ono need only
turn to Mr. Fitzgerald's pleasant little volume
about " Lamb, and his Books and his Friends,"
in which there is given at length (would only that
it might have been ever so much longer, for fun
like that is just simply priceless) Charles
Lamb's gossipping helter-skelter, rattling mis-

sive to one' of these his intimates, a letter brimmed
full of side-shaking, irresistible, frolicsome drollery !
And yet all through it, in the manner of it, in the
diction, in the old world idioms, as quaint,
odd, whimsical, antiquated, flavorous of Elia, as
anything among the very choicest among these
inimitable and incomparable Essays. Among
even, we have said, the choicest of them all—and
what choice ones there are among the number!
Beginning with Elia's Recollections of the cloistral
solitudes of the " South Sea House," and of his
schoolboy experiences obtained five-and-thirty years
(one Whole generation) before the penning of the
essay about the haunts, and purlieus, and pre-
cincts of " Christ's Hospital !" Among his brother
clerks at the South Sea House—Evans chirp-
ing and expanding over his muffin—Plumer
rattling, rattle-headed, and obstreperous—Henry
Man, terse, fresh, epigrammatic—John Tipp, the
accountant, so formal in his life that his actions
seemed ruled with a ruler—Thomas Tame, conde-
scending in the aristocratic bend of his figure by
reason of the remembrance of his high lineage,

a remembrance sweetening and ennobling his
poverty, in spite of his being endowed merely

with a❑ intellect of the shallowest order, so that " a
sucking babe might have posed him," his mind,
as Lamb characteristically puts it (in his bookish
way), being "in its original state of white paper."
Among Lamb's brother blue coat boys, again, who
does not remember the ghoulish gag-eater who
turns out to be (instead of either ghoul or gag-
eater) a young human stork nurturing his parents
by stealth, getting obloquy first of all for doing so,

and silver medal afterwards? Who, again, that
has once read about them—in that delightful Essay
about " Christ's Hospital"—can have lost all re-
collection of the Rev. Matthew Field, the easy-
going Lower Master, or of the Rev. James Boyer,
the grim and inexorable Upper Master, of whom when

he was dying, one of his quondam pupils, in still

tender remembrance of his switching birch, ejacu-
lated—" May all his faults be forgiven, and may
he be wafted to bliss by little cherub boys, all
head and wings, with no bottoms to reproach his
sublunary infirmities !" Conspicuous among the
wearers of the yellow tunic, and the yellow stock-
ings, and the blue gaberdine, and the red leather
belt—Le Grice, and Leigh Hunt, and " the in-

spired charity-boy" —Logician, Metaphysician,
Bard—Samuel Taylor Coleridge! Advancing, how-
ever, beyond the mere threshold, or outer courtyard,
or inner vestibule of this Fairy Palace for Medita-
tion, built up by Elia in his one-and-fifty immortal
Essays, supplemented by his sixteen expositions of
what he serio-comically declares to be to many
" Popular Fallacies"—and penetrating deeper and
deeper into the tortuous labyrinth, and yet, with
all the windings of which (tortuous though the
labyrinth be) we are and have been for years upon

years so perfectly familiar—what delectable friends

of old do we not come upon? Among them
Ho-ti, the Chinese swine-herd, and 80-bo, his
lubberly boy—licking their fingers, burnt by the

crackling of the first pig that (so happily for all after

gourmets) wasroaated to death accidentally ! Mrs.

Battle, again--" old Sarah Battle (now with God),

who next to her devotions loved a game of whist"
—Mrs. Battle with her celebrated wish, " a
clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of
the game !" And—among others of Charles
Lamb's especial favourites—the Quakers and
the Quakeresses : the Quakeress a lily—the
Quaker, whose very raiments seem incapable
of receiving a soil—cleanliness in them
being something more than its contrary !
And—cheek by jowl (oddly enough) with that band
of Shining Ones—the Chimney Sweepers, especially
the little ones with their early notes like the " peep,
peep" of the young sparrows—not grown sweepers,
mind you—but tender novices blooming through
their first nigritude—those young Africans of our
Own growth, those almost clergy imps, dim specks,
poor blots, innocent blacknesses. Then, too, be-
sides all these—who can ever forget " The Chapter on
Ears," beginning, "I have no ear—Mistake me not,
reader, nor imagine that I am, by nature, destitute
of those exterior twin appendages, hanging orna-
ments, and (architecturally speaking) handsome
volutes to the human capital." Who that has once
luxuriated in the reading of them, bears not still
cherished in delightful recollection, the reverie on
"Dream Children"—the dissertation on " G race be-
fore Meat" —the complaint in regard to " The
Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis " the
reminiscences of " Some Old Actors" the
definition of " Imperfect Sympathies"—the celebra-
tion, one while of " Valentine's Day," another of
" All-Fool's Day"—the whimsically contrasted deli-
niation of " The Two Races of Men" (the Borrowers
and the Lenders)—the comparison of " The Old
and the New Schoolmaster "—Elia's sketch now of
his " Poor Relations," now of his " Distant Cor-
respondents "—his dream of " The Child Angel "
—his exquisite limning of " Barbara S"—his gossip
about " Old China," about " The Margate Hoy,"
about " Books and Reading," about " The tombs

in the Abbey," down at Westminster ! What pen-
cillings, too, are those—and with what subtle touches
in them—here of " The Superannuated Man "—here
of " The Convalescent !" What dramatic tid-
bits, too, are—" My First Play"—and " Stage
Illusion"—and " Ellistoniana !" Could anything
be better, either, as Essays, than those setting forth
the " Sanity of True Genius," and " The Genteel
Style in Writing ?" Saunter with Elia, again,
among the " Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,"
or travel with him down to " Mackery End in Hert-

fordshire"—and learn bow well his antique prattle
befits alike the old city haunts and the green coun-
tryside. Whoever comes to the perusal of these "Es-
says of Elia," by the way, for the first time, or, in
other words, distinctly asa novice, would do well, as it
seems to us, to open the charming volume as nearly as
possible in the middle of it, at page 230, and
there, reading merely three pages of the little
book—pp. 130-132—obtain their first taste
for the Elian humour front that one brief
essay "On the Acting of Munden."
warrant them it will give them a relish for Elia for
life 1 Ex. gr.--The suggestion of a Munden Gal-
lery (to rival Hogarth) the declaration that
Munden has no face that you can properly
pin down and call his—the comment upon his
inexhaustible battery of looks, his unaccountable
warfare with your gravity, his suddenly sprouting
out an entirely new set of features like Hydra—his
being not one, but legion—not so much a comedian
as a company— the grave assertion that if his name
could be multiplied, like his countenance, it might
fill a playbill—the statement that he alone literally
makes faces, dipping for faces as Suett did for wigs
—the defiant inquiry as to whether any man can
wonder like him 1 can see ghosts like him ? can
fight with his own shadow! can, like him, throw a
preternatural interest over the commonest daily-life
objects ?—a table or joint-stool, in his conception,
rising into a dignity equivalent to Cassiopeia's chair,
being invested with constellatory importance,
so that you could not speak of it with
more deference if it was mounted into the firma-

meat ! Munden's gusto, according to Elia, anti-
quating and ennobling what it touches ! His pots
and ladles being as grand and primal as the seething
pots and hooks seen in old prophetic vision. " A
tub of butter contemplated by him," exclaims Lamb
at last, " amounts to a Platonic idea ! He
understands a leg of mutton in its quiddity.
_ _

He stands wondering amidst the common-
place materials of life, like priianoval man,
with the sun and stars about him." After
which—enough, and more than enough, has
surely here been said by us in the way of any
commentary upon this Peerless Edition of our
Peerless Elia—of all editions of Elia that we have
ever chanced to see, the completest, the coin-
pactest, the most beautifully got up, both inter-
nally and externally, in the binding of it, that is, and
in the printing—an edition worthy of setting forth
anew for the delight of the world of his admirers,
those choice and exquisite Essays of Charles Lamb,
which are not only his own masterpiece, but among
the masterpieces of English literature.

.Ernannel Swedenborg; his Life and Writings. By
William White. Two Vols. Simpkin, Marshall,
and Co.
The author of this very interesting work, seeing
that the name of Swedenborg has grown familiar
in English literature, with but few definite ideas
attached to it, has set about remedying the evil by
providing for all who may care to inquire into the
subject a full andj comprehensive account of
Emanuel Swedenborg, his history and his writings.
This work, which occupies two large quarto volumes,
has been accomplished in the most complete and
satisfactory manner compatible with the peculiar
nature of the theme. The first volume opens with
au account of the father of Swedenborg, Jesper
Svedberg, Bishop of Upsala, and many readers will
feel a personal interest in this earnest, pious, God-
fearing man, so bold and fearless in the presence
of Princes. When he was chaplain to the royal
regiment Svedberg was a great favourite with King
Charles XI. of Sweden, and he availed himself of
this privilege with a singular conscientiousness.
Shortly before his death the Sovereign observed to
this confidential friend, "1 have ruled Sweden
twenty-three years. When I first became King I
trusted everybody, now I trust nobody." To which
Svedberg replied " That is not right ; to trust
everybody is foolish, for there are many wicked
and silly people." " The world is full of them,"
interposed Charles. " But to trust nobody," con-
tinued Svedberg, " is very bad, for there are many
good, honest, and wise men." " Ah, it is now too
late," said the dying King. Another scene which
forms an interesting contrast to this interview be-
tween Charles XL and Jesper Svedberg records an
interview between their far more celebrated sons,
Emanuel Swedenborg (so called when later ad-
mitted to the council of nobles) and Charles XII.
When Swedenborg had been appointed assessor in
the College of Mines, he, in company with M.
Polhem, the engineer, was presented to the young
King, who, conversing on mathematics and mecha-
nics, asked several questions, in order, as his
hearers supposed, to acquire some easy information.
The learned men soon discovered, however, that the
King was a better mathematician than themselves,
for while they had recourse to figures and symbols,
in order to arrive at results, the King says Sweden-
borg " did not require them, but after a few minutes'
reflection, he told us without any other aid than his
own superior genius iu what way our examples might
be solved, which we always found to agree perfectly
with our calculations." Among Swedenborg's works
notwithstanding his flights of imagination, practical
studies, such as mechanics and chemistry, occupy.a
prominent place. In alluding to his theory of
chemistry, his biographer (who endeavours in every
possible way to render his work attractive), intro-
duces the following happy anecdote :—A school-
master was once asked, " Why are cream and sugar
put into tea ?" and he answered, " To render the
acute angles of the tea more obtuse." This
reply (says the narrator) reveals and illus-
trates Swedenborg's theory of chemistry. His
doctrine was that " the invisible atoms with which
the chemist deals are geometrical forms, and that
chemical phenomena are to be explained by geo-
metrical laws." We do not here propose to con-
sider the works of Swedenborg, all of which are
set forth Itt length, and their contents are briefly
but thoroughly analysed and explained. After the
" Philosophical and Mineralogical Works," which

occupied three folios, and the Economy of the " Ani-
mal Kingdom," and the " Spiritual Diary," and the
" Arcana Clestia," comes what his biographer
describes as Swedeuborg's " most readable book,"
" Heaven, the World of Spirits, and Hell Defined."
The second volume of this elaborate work is fully
occupied with further particulars of Swedenborg's
spiritual revelations and theological compositions.
Carried away by the interest of his subject, by what
Macaulay happily calls the lues Boswelliana, the
biographer attaches more importance to these out-
pourings of his hero than they are likely to meet
with at the hands of the reader. Attacked by apo-
plexy on Christmas-eve, 1771, the Swedish Philo-
sopher (?) expired on the 29th March, 1772, in ob-
scure lodgings iu Coldbath-fields, London, aged 8-1.
On the title-page of the second volume the author
appropriately- quotes from Andrew Fenwick, " He
is not without foible; but is wise exceedingly,
versed in much strange knowledge, and fami-
liar with the intricacies of the human heart ;
you'll live long and go far ere you find such
another." In the truth of this latter assertion,
the reader of this biography will very heartily con-
cur, but a mere glimpse at the amazing extrava-
gances of Swelenborgianism will induce him to re-
gard the isolation of such an example as no cause
for lamentation.

Nina Balutka: Jhe Story of a Maiden of Prague.

Two Vols. Blackwood and Sons.
Those who have not already perused this story is
the pages of Blackwood's Magazine will be in-
terested in the brief history of " Nina Balatka,"
and even those already familiar with the tale
will be glad to welcome it in its present
portable and attractive form—two little volumes
of large type and dainty appearance, with the per-
sons of the story enumerated in a preliminary page,
as is customary with a drama, and the secret of
Nina's history revealed in the first lines of the first
volume. " Nina Balatka was a maiden of Prague,
born of Christian parents, and herself a Christian
—but she loved a Jew; and this is her story." The
Christian maidens who turn over these pages will
very naturally wonder at Nina's taste, or want of
taste, for Anton Trendellsohn is not only a
Jew, but a singularly repulsive Jew, selfish
and suspicious, suspicious even of his beloved.
Love being proverbially blind, these matters may
be easy of explanation ; but what still more amazes
the Christian reader is Nina's singular indifference
as to the slight obstacle of her lover's faith, and the
absence of any attempt on her part to effect his
coiversion. We could sympathise with the Jewish
Rebecca who loved the Christian Ivanhoe, but we
cannot say that we appreciate the tenderness of the
Christian Nina fur the Jewish Anton Trendellsohn.
Be that as it may, the story is interesting and well
written (for did it not appear in Blackwood's Maga-
zine?), and its appearance in its present form is ele-
gant and attractive.

MoxoN's STANDARD PENNY READINGS surpasses,
not only in the general getting of it up—in the
typography espe2ially, which is large and beauti-
ful—but in the choiceness of the selection made, the
best among its predecessors. And we can say this,
in no way inviduously__that is, without implying
the slightest depreciation of the efforts made in a
similar direction by other publishing houses. Some
of these efforts we have ourselves commended as
they deserved to be commended. But the best

among them must now give the wall to these
Standard Penny Readings from Dover-street,
Piccadilly. They consist of twenty of the
choicest morceaux, from writers as gifted and
as varied as Robert Browning, Tom Hood,
Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, Alfred
Tennyson, Praed, Shelley, Coleridge, and
Wordsworth. Such famous " pieces"—prose and
verse—being among the number, as " How they
brought the good news from Ghent to Aix," all
through which Mr. Browning carries us away with
him on his Pegasus at the stride of full gallop—as
the eirie, eltritch, murderous, midnight ballad of
" Mary, the Maid of the Inn"—as Coleridge's in-
comparable celebration of " Love" in the wooing
and the winning of Genevieve—as the Laureate's
"Lady Clare," and his predecessor's " Phantom of
Delight." For fun and frolic—as irresistible pro-
vocations to laughter—commend us to the pick here
made from Hood's Own—as " Our Village (By a
Villager)"—as "Mary's Ghost," as " Misappre-
hension," or as " More llulla-Balloo." If Read-
ings like these won't do, we don't know what
will.

IIIN)1,°'
„fratrt
Magr
•

HER MAJESTY, &c•

OSBORNE, Feb. 14.
Her Majesty walked and drove this morning,
accompanied by Princess Christian.

Princess Louise and Princess Beatrice also went
out.

Viscount Halifax and General the Hon. Alex-
ander and Mrs. Gordon bad the honour of dining
with the Queen and royal family yesterday.
Lord Halifax left to-day for London.