The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-20 00:00:00

DON, MONDAY EVENING, AUGUST 20, 186 G.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

ITALY.

FLORENCE, Aug. 20.

A Royal decree has been issued appointing Prince
Humbert Honorary President of the Italian Com-
mission of the Paris Exhibition.

Baron de Malaret, the French Minister, is also
among the members of the Commission.

FRANCE.

PARIS, August 20.

The Emperor paid a visit yesterday to the Em-
press of Mexico at the Grand Hotel. He was
cheered by the crowd on his return to Saint Cloud.
His Majesty afterwards walked on foot in the Bois
de Boulogne.

PARIS, Aug. 18.—Two o'clock.--Although busi-
ness continues to be very dull, some few demands
have had the effect not only of sustaining the slight
advance of yesterday, but even of increasing it.
French Threes were done at 69f., or 22 c. higher ;
Italian Fives at 52f. 60c., or a rise of 10c. Credit
Mobilier were unchanged at 646 f. 25c. ; Credit
Foncier at 1,302 f. 50c., or an improvement of 2f.
50c. Comptoir d'Escompte were likewise unaltered
at 872 f. 50c. The Railway Market remains very
inactive.

Three o'clock.—The market has closed as fol-

lows :--

41 per Cents 9B 10

Do. end month

Bank Shares 3550
Italian Loan 52 CO
Do. end month 52 65
Mexican Loan 2B 50
Do. Bonds 172 50
Spanish Threes
Home Debt —

3 per Cents. 69 10
Do. end month 69 10
Credit Mobilier
Do. end month 642 50
Credit Foncier 1297 50
Do. end month 1302 50

Deferred •

BAIL'

For Account.
Orleans
Northern 1135
Lyons and Mediterranean B7l 25

Southern 530
Western
Eastern
Sardinian ,
Austrian

532 50

352 50

Lombard 386 25
North of Spain —

Saragossa -
Ditto to Barcelona
Roman

125 -

THE AUSTRIAN FLEET.

(From the Military Correspondent of the Times.)
TRIESTE, Aug. 13.

Admiral Tegethoff has opened the eyes of the
Austrian nation to the fact that they have a fleet,
and no despicable fleet either, though they have been
governed by the War Department since their sailor
Archduke left them, to become an Emperor. The
Archduke Max, as the officers and sailors of the
navy still affectionately call him, is deeply regretted,
and is spoken of in the warmest terms. He seems
to have made the Austrian sea service, and his
energy and influence at Vienna are much missed.
The dockyards and arsenal at Pola are all the crea-
tions of his energetic administration, and it will be
long before the Austrian navy finds so distinguished
a friend. But the gods help those who help them-
selves, and it will not be the fault of the navy if it
sinks again into obscurity. The officers say that if
they appear in uniform in the streets of Vienna they
are stared at, and people ask them what nation they
belong to. Will Austria become a seafaring and
commercial people now that she has resigned her
influence in Germany? Sanguine believers in her
future destiny say " Yes ;" but where is her coast
line—where are her ports, and, above all, where is
the money to keep up both an army and a fleet?
!The interest in naval matters reached its highest
point to-day, when the Archduke Albrecht visited
Trieste and inspected the ships. Accompanied only
by a portion of the staff, his Imperial Highness left
Goitz by train at half-past 7 a.m, and on arrival at
Trieste at a quarter-past 9 was met by the Go-
vernor of the town with his officials, and by the
been lowering, with occasional rain, but cleared
as the train proceeded, and the sun shone out
as the train rolled down the steep incline that
leads to Trieste. At the station carriages
were waiting to convey the Archduke and his suite
to the pier in front of the Hotel de Ville, where Ad-
miral Tegethoff awaited the coming of the Imperiai
Commander-in-Chief. After the first greetings, the
whole party went on board the Greif, which, built
originally as a yacht for the Emperor, was admir-
ably fitted for the part which she had to perform.
A few minutes' steaming brought the fleet in view,
lying in two lines—ironclads and frigates in front,
the gunboats in the second line. The Greif glided
along with a quiet, even motion down the front of
the first line, and the military visitors were equally
astonished and delighted at the novel sight of a real
fleet floating quietly on an actual sea, and with the
sound of a naval salute. It had been reported the
day before that the Kaiser would not be present, as
her repairs were still in course of execution,--nay,
the Italian sympathisers in Trieste had been ready
to assert that the tale of her loss was confirmed, foi
why else did she not appear the first day when tht.
fleet came up from Pola? But, among the black
uncouth looking objects which, with railway marches
and short campaigns, are fast destroying the pomp
and circumstance of war, appeared at last a far
more graceful object, a two-decker with her white
barred sides broken with black spots—in fact, the
Kaiser herself ; not, however, without loss of some
of her beauty, —the tall tapering masts were no
longer there, and her general appearance was more
warlike than suited for parade purposes.
The whole array of big ships being passed, the
-Greif, led by the El'zabeth (the faithful repeater of
Tegethoff's signals during the battle), came slowly
round and passed along the line of gunboats, four
of whom had the impudence to attack the Affonda-
tore on the famous 20th, and to follow her when
she retreated like sparrows after a hawk. When the
inspection was finished boats were brought along-
side, and the Archdukes Albrecht, Leopold,
and Heinrich, who were present, descended the
side to be ferried over the strip of water that lay be-
tween them and the Kaiser. All the suite followed
their Imperial Highnesses, but the steps were steep,
the boats bobbed about alarmingly, and the legs of
some of the Generals were stiff with age and honour-
able to in their country's service, and there can
be no question that faces that had remained un-
moved during the storming cif Custozza or the dis-
aster of Koniggratz paled a little at this new and ter-
rible enterprise.

Aitived On board how much there was to ask, and
how little time to gain the information required.
How had the captain managed to get through those
four iron-clads? " He had no idea, except that
he fired broadsides at the neareast, and kept them
off till the Re Portogallo bore down to ram him,
when he knew that there was no escape—that one
or other of them must have the worst of it, and so
he manoeuvred as best he might to secure a meeting
between his bows and the enemy's side," and so,
and so ; it is the old naval tale, one side cool and
confident in their Admiral, who never lost his head,
the other enthusiastic, ill-trained, and having al-
ready begun to question their commander's capacity,
who never gave them advice or orders during the
whole fight.
The Archduke spoke to the men on parade, in-
spected the ship, wondered at the small size of the
guns, and made himself popular among them, as he
deserves to be, for he is as kind in heart as he is
studious in arms, and deservedly esteemed among
the members of his staff and those with whom he is
thrown in contact. Then the Imperial party left.
Kaiser and visited the Max, the Admiral's flag-
ship, and heard how the Re d'ltalia had got among
the wooden frigates and gunboats, putting some of
the latter in the utmost danger after their friendly
iron-clads had divided the Italian line ; how Teget-
hoff came round to their assistance as quickly as
the ships would turn, and crowned the fortunes of
the day by the effects of his terrible charge. The
interest of this novel review appeared to be so great.
that the Imperial guest had to be reminded of the
lapse of time and informed that the idea of visiting
six or seven ships, as originally intended, would
detain them until 9 o'clock at night ; that it was
already noon, and a large party of guests invited to
breakfast at 1 p.m. So the Archduke reluctantly
closed his visit, which he afterwards said had been
one of the most interesting events of his life.

LITERATURE.

Library Edition of Miss Braddon's Novels.
The Trail of the Serpent. One Vol. pp. 456. Sir
Jasper's Tenant. One Vol. pp. 457. Novels
by M. E. Braddon. Ward, Lock, and Tyler.

As a popular novelist, Miss Braddon is in a
manner entitled to have her works issued in a
Library Edition—for, already, she has, within these
last few years, with her own hand, written a small
library of fiction. As originally issued in the re-
gular and orthodox form as three volumed
romances, her nine tales would number up even
now no less than twenty-seven volumes. Com-
pacted, each of them, within the compass of a single i
book, they make even then a goodly row of nine
handsome octavos. Lying before us, oddly enough,
side by side, there have now come forth together her
first and her last, or---not to be ambiguous in our
way of mentioning them—let us say the earliest and
the latest of her effusions as an imaginative writer.
On one hand we have " Sir Jasper's Tennant," and
on the other " The Trail of the Serpent." The
former already reviewed at some length in
these columns upon the occasion of its first ap-
pearance—while, in many particulars, evidenc-
ing a considerable advance or development of the
novelist's abilities as an artistic dreamer of dreamers,
can hardly, we are still of opinior, be accorded a very
high place among her productions. With one only
exception, in point of fact, it is to our thinking in-
ferior in interest to them all—the single exception
here referred to being the narrative entitled " John
Marchmont's Legacy." Conspicuously holding its
place of supremacy among all Miss Braddon's
Novels to the last, " Aurora Floyd" is, to our mind,
immediately followed in excellence by " Lady
Audley's Secret" 'and by " Eleanor's Victory."
Afterwards come in due sequence " Only a Clod,"
and " Henry Dunbar," and " The Doctor's Wife."
Then—" Sir Jasper's Tenant." After that—
" John Marchmont's Legacy." And last, in one
sense, though first in another—" The Trail of the
Serpent." It seems hardly fair, if only by reason of
the inference that might thereupon be drawn by
Miss Braddon's depreciators from any such seem-
ingly apropos phrase, to say, in regard to her whole
series of fictions, that—even ranking them according
to the mere rule of priority or seniority—" The
Trail of the Serpent" is over them all ! As an ima-'
ginative production it is simply, we take it, to
be regarded, as a gathering together of some
of Miss Braddon's literary wild oats. It is
in no respect whatever, according to our view
of it, to be placed within the same category even
with the least remarkable of our author's other
romances. Written, if we remember rightly, for
the pages of the illustrated penny " London Jour-
nal," it is, from first to last, intensely sensational
in its character. Its sensationalism, in effect, is
throughout—unmitigated. Of this the authoress is
not only herself perfectly conscious, but frankly
permits the acknowledgment of the fact to appear
in her Publishers' Announcement. The excuse there
advanced is that of innocence or ignorance or how-
ever we may like to term it—an excuse put forth
apparently with a view to the mitigation in
some measure, at least, of the severity of the re-
prehensive terms otherwise all but certain
to IS elicited from some among the more captious
tr cantankerous of Miss Braddon's critics—to
whom the mere phrase Sensationalism is as the
gleam of a bit of scarlet flourished on the arm
of a toreador in the eyes of an infuriated bull at
A bull fight. "As the word sensation' was not
perverted to its present use until after the Trail
of the Serpent' had run its unpretentious course—
thus saith the Publishers' Announcement—" Miss
Braddon may reasonably demand forgiveness on
the ground of having offended unconsciously against
the canons of modern literary criticism." Waiving
that question of Sensationalism, however, altogether
—Sensationalism pure and simple, appearing to us,
to date back long before either Miss Braddon or
Wilkie Collins had put in their appearance as
novelists, before Harrison Ainsworth's " Jack
c• cc my4,+o,;„ nF
Udolpho," before Charles Maturin's " Melmoth the
Wanderer," back even to that more than precursor
merely, to that very archetype of all the Sen-
sational Romances that have since then been
written, to that famous novel of " Caleb Wil-
liams," by the father of the authoress of " Fran-
kenstein"—waiving the whole question, we say,
is to Miss Braddon's larger or lesser share in re-
gard to whatever culpability there may be in the
way of popularising what is absurdly called Sensa-
tionalism, we would say here, in regard to this
earliest of all her fictions, the story entitled by her
The Trail of the Serpent," that the chief interest
3f it is to be found, to our thinking, in an examina-
tion of it by the light cast back upon it by several
of her subsequent performances. So regarding it,
it is really and truly like scrutinising a failure by
the light of several successes—an egregious failure
by the light of several very notable successes. For,
we will even say as a literary production making
the merest superficial pretence to be regarded in
Any point of view as a work of art, it might almost
be declared to be artless to the very extravagance of
Artlessness. Miss Braddon in this, however, if she
sins against all the rules of probability, at the very
outset of her career, sins thus in truth after all less
flagrantly than does her immediate contemporary,
Mr. Wilkie Collins, at this advanced stage in his
career, in his latest and most elaborated performance,
meaning his recently completed story of " Arma-
dale." Whereas (at once to make plain our
meaning) Miss Braddon hesitates not to de-
scribe her dumb detective, Mr. Peters, as upon,
one occasion soliloquising by actually talking to
himself on his fingers, an incident so utterly im-
probable with any deaf person, even though it were
one naturally predisposed to be the greatest blab
imaginable, but improbable to the very last degree,
one might surely conjecture, in the instance of a
reticent dumb detective—whereas, we say, Miss
Braddon goes that length of improbability: in her
earliest fiction, Mr. Wilkie Collins in the latest and
most elaborate of all his romances, his story of
" Armadale," goes so much further in his outra-
geous violation of all probability, that he shrinks
not from describing a wily Lamia of a red-haired
wicked beauty like Miss Gwilt, as coolly sitting
down, time after time, in the most purposeless way
conceivable, to jot down in her Diary all her dead-
liest and most evil atrocities of thought, word, and
deed—solely for the purpose, of course, of enabling
them all to be read afterwards (those " trivial, fond
records") by the readers of " Annadale !" Faulty
though " The Trail of the Serpent" is, valueless
though it is as a work of art, it has a wild
extravagance of interest at times of its own,
yet even then an interest in no degree what-
ever satisfactory. Insomuch that we are
seriously disposed, after all, to doubt the dis-
cretion of the book's republication in its present
, form. It will not merely fail to add anything
whatever to Miss Braddon's reputation, but it is cal-
culated seriously to militate against it--for inasmuch
as it affords her rather numerous vilifiers or vitu-
perators a tolerably colourable excuse, for once in a
way, for insisting upon the reasonableness of their
systematic depreciation of her imaginative produc-
ductions. From Jabez North, otherwise Raymond
de Marollos (a workhouse pauper child turned into
a Parisian Exquisite)—from Kuppins, who is only
another and a very inferior specimen of the Tilly-
slowboy genus of female hobbledehoys—from the
squalor of Blind Peter, which is no more than a
shadowy reflection of Tom-all-alone's—from Slop-
Merton and Mr. Augustus Darley, and Mr. Joseph
Peters (already mentioned) and the Cherokees and
all the rest of them—it is nothing less than re-
freshing to turn back for a while to indulge our-
selves with a merely passing glance of retrospec-
tion at the scenes and people depicted by the same
artist hand—only, how far more artistically in every
touch of it, in " Sir Jasper's Tenant"—at Sir Jasper
Dennison himself, let us say, and at his daughter
Marcia—at George Pauncefort and Henry Adolphus
Dobbs—at Scardale Abbey and Scarsdale Her-
mitage !

Routledge's Shilling Guide to London—is a very
marvel of cheapness, compactness, and lucidity. it
acquaints the stranger with all he can reasonably
desire to know in regard to this vast metropolio. A
metropolis so vast that it covers an area thirty

miles in circumference—extending into four
counties, namely, into Middlesex, Essex, Kent,
and Surrey containing within it 10,500
streets, squares, and terraces, spread over a space
of ground representing some 78,000 acres or close
upon 121 square miles, comprehending within it
more than 370,000 houses, and peopled by upwards of
3,000,000 inhabitants ! Counting merely the num-
ber of those who are born every week in London, there
arc added to the population week after week about
as many infants, male and female, as the years
already numbered in the Christian era-1866
1800 at any rate and upwards. Seeing, however,
that there are more than 1,200 persons who die every
week in London, when the balance comes to be sti tick
between births and deaths the weekly increase of the
population of London by births alone is found
to be between 500 and 600, or even then not far
short of 100 a day ! Another token of the prodi-
gious scale upon which matters affecting the organi-
sation of the world of London must be computed,
may here be mentioned incidentally, as
a fact, illustrating, at one and the same time,
the wealth and poverty, the misery and benevolence
of our London population—namely, that most
lamentable yet most consolatory fact that, for the
relief of pauperism amongst us, there are collected
and distributed every week upwards of £30,000
sterling ! A metropolis like this deserves to have
a Guide Book, as handy, as cheap, as comprehen-
sible and as comprehensive as this Pocket Guide
just published by the Messrs. Routledge.