The Sun.
London, England, 1832-09-01 00:00:00

THE COLON 1 OF ALGIERS.

The following statistical details respecting the C,llony
of Algiers are from the Nouvellisti:— •
the number of Europeans who had inscribed themselves
upon the official lists on the 31st Jule, amounted to l,lll
r 0 this number must be added those in civil employment,
the wives of soldiers, and the passengers arrived in Go-
vernment vessels
Discharged soldiers and other persons remaining at :11-
giers under military jurisdiction 520

MAGAZINE DAY.

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

There is an air of courtly elegance and deli-
cate fastidiousness about this Magazine, which
always impresses us with a notion that its con-
tributors write with white kid gloves on. To
be sure it advocates the popular cause, but then
it is with a patronizing air, with an excess of
sweet condescension. It surveys the people,
not from a level of equality, but from the pro-
digious elevation of its own rank and intellect.
It scorns to shake hands with the multitude, ex-
cept through the safe and distant medium of
a pair of tongs. This is a fault, but as it
has every appearance of being unintentional,
we dismiss it with this bland rebuke. Certainly
its writers are not without a good excuse for their
refined fastidiousness, for many of them are gen-
tlemen of very superior intellectual acquirements,
well educated, and of an enviable order of scho-
larship. " The Future Objects of the People"
is a clever political paper, but rather too con-
descending and unmeasured in the style of its
adulation. " The Home of Love" is a little
poetic gem, polished to excess of brilliancy by
the cunning and graceful skill of Mrs, Hemans.
" The Spirit of the Greek Dramatists" is finely
felt ; it is, however, too sparkling and redundant
in its imagery. A critic (of so much discernment
as the writer before us) should not talk prettily
of lEschylus. His language should be severe,
simple, full of stern thought. Surely the phrase
" marble stillness of Greek poetry," however
plausibly and gracefully it may sound, does
not—cannot apply to the scenes where electra
stands by the bed-side of the frenzied Orestes ;
where Medea shrinks from, while she yet resolves
on, the slaughter of her children ► Still less can
it apply to that transcendent discription in So-
phocles, where CEd ipus hears the awful voice of the
the Deity summoning him to his destiny. There
is no passage in Shakspeare comparable to this—
no, not within a hundred degrees of it (whatever
even his warmest enthusiast may urge in favour of
our myriad-minded dramatist); and " marble still-
ness" is the very last phrase we should dream
of applying to it. Again, there is no " marble
stillness" in Sappho's well known Ode ; none
in Simonides' touching lament of Danae (per-
fect in its pure and gentle pathos) ; none in the
fresh, homely, animated pastorals of Theocritus.
The phrase is an awkward one, hut we suspect
it oozed out inadvertently. In every other respect
the essay is a very superior one. " Conversa-
tions with Lord Byron," realize the old adage,
Mush cry and little wool." The portrait is'a
manifest failure. It is a full-length of a tall,
thin, middle-aged gentleman, with a face as sour
as a crab apple. Lord Byron, about the time
it must have been taken, was short, full in the
face, and " more fat than bard beseems." The
" Monthly Commentary" is pretty much the
same as usual. " Married for Money," a lively
readable tale. We have no space for extracts.