The Sun.
London, England, 1867-09-05 00:00:00

had been illused. Knew a man named John Thorn
ley, a brickmaker, who had 40,000 bricks destroyed
in July, 1864. Could not say why the bricks were
destroyed. Another man named Simpson, who was
not an employer of union men, also had his bricks
destroyed. A man named Bailey bad 50,000 bricks
destroyed. The acceptance of the terms offered by
Messrs. Meadows to the strike hands was sanctioned
by a general meeting of the union. Witness would
swear he was not present when Mr. Bailey's brick-
making plant was injured. Had heard that some
of Mr. Bailey's barrows were cut, but did not know
who did it.

The inquiry was proceeding when our parcel was
despl tchcd.

MODERN NOVELS•

There can be no doubt that a singular change has
passed upon our light literature. It is not that its
power has failed or its popularity diminished—much
the reverse ; it is because a new impulse has been
given and a new current set in the flood of contempo-
rary story-telling. We will not ask whence or front
whom the influence is derived. It has been brought
into being by society, and it naturally reacts upon
society. The change perhaps began at the time
when Jane Eyre made what advanced critics call
her "protest" against the conventionalities in which
the world clothes itself. We have bad many ti pro-
tests" since that time, but it is to be doubted how
far they have been to our advantage. The point
to which we have now arrived is certainly very
far from satisfactory. The English mind is
still so far borne that we do not discuss
the seventh commandment with all that effu-
sion and fullness of detail which is common on the
other side of the channel, though even in that re-
spect progress is daily being made ; but there are
points in which we altogether outdo our French
neighbours. To a French girl fresh from her con-
vent the novels of her own language are rigorously
tabooed ; whereas we are all aware that they arc
the favourite reading of her contemporary in this
country, and are not unfrequently even the produc-
tion, with all their unseemly references and exhibi-
tions of forbidden knowledge, of young women)
moved either bygthe wild foolhardiness of inexpe-
rience or by ignorance of everything that is natural
and becoming to their condition. It is painful to in-
quire where it is that all these stories of bigamy
and seduction, those soi-disant revelations of things
that lie below the surface of life, come from. Sue 11
tales might flow here and there from one morbid
imagination, and present themselves to us as moral
phenomena, without casting any stigma upou
society in general ; but this is not how they appear'
They have taken, as it would seem, permanent
possession of all the lower strata of light literature.
Above there still remains, it is true, a purer atmos-
phere, for which we may be thankful; but all our,
minor novelists, almost without exception, are 01
the school called sensational. Writers who have no
genius and little talent make up for it by displaying
their acquaintance with the accessories and sur-
roundings of vice, with the means of seduction, and
with what they set forth as the secret tendencies 0.1
the heart—tendencies which, according to this
interpretation, all point one way.—Blacktcoods
Magazine for September.