The Sun.
London, England, 1832-03-01 00:00:00

DEPARTURES.

Colonel George Napier, from Batt's Hotel, Dover street, for
Barton, Suffolk ; Henry Blake, Esq., from ditto, for Bristol ;
W. Alexander, Esq., from Dover street, for Bath ; Lieutenant
M. Denham, R.N., Mrs. Denham, and family, from Payne's
Bath Hotel, Arlington-street, for Clifton ; Captain and Mrs.
Moody, from Arlington-street, for Bath ; Mr. and Mrs. C. R.
Tynte, from Grosvenor-street, from their seat at Richmond ;
Right Hon. W. Sturges Bourne, M.P., from South Audley_
street, for St. Alban's; General Crosby, from the Burlington
Hotel, for Sussex ; Rev. T. Gamier, from ditto, for Winches-
ter ; Dr. French and Mr. King, from ditto, for Cambridge ;
W. Abbott, Esq., from Raggett's Hotel, Dover-street, for his
seat, Wan-iford-park, Hants ; Sir J. Gerard, Bart., for his seat
in Staffordshire ; Bishop of Clogher and family, for Ireland ;
Hon. W. Leicester, on a tour ; J. Jamainson, Esq., from Mor.
ley's Hotel, Cockspur-street for Dublin ; Capt. E. L. Astrange,
from Raggett's Hotel, Dover-street, for Portsmouth ; Captain
Moore, for Brighton ; Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield, from Regent.
street, for Bath ; Captain C. Fraser, R. N., for Ashling-house.

THE OPERA.—The evident intention of the
author of this clever novel was to shoot " folly as it flies"
in the liAher regions of society; to satirize its foibles and
its vices ; and this has been accomplished with great tact
and ability. The writer's skill in sketching character is
easy and brilliant, without being overcharged with orna-
ment. It is a very prevalent fault with certain novelists
to make their characters go through the etiquette of high
life in the most awkward and constrained manner; but in
the works of the present author, they move with all the
ease, freedom, and hauteur of genuine exquisite!. Their
attitudes are aristocratic; their features are aristocratic;
aristocracy can be traced in their fingers and the palms
of their hands, and al their actions are characteristic of
true unadulterated blood.

at the opening of the battles of Zama and Waterloo.
The parallel holds as curiously at the dose as
" HANNIBAL," says Live again, " cum panda equitibus
inter tumultum elapsus, Adrumetuin p rfugit, omnia et in
prcelio et ante aciem priu•quam excederet pugna, expertus,
et confessione etiann SCIPIONIS, oluniumque peritorutn mi-
litia, illam laudem adeptus, singulari arte aciem eo die
instruxisse." The same testimony is borne to NAPOLEON.
The following opinion was expressed, with rare modesty,
by the Duke of WELLINGTON, a day or two after the
battle, in a letter to his mother, Lady MORNINGTON
BONAPA aTE did his duty—he fought the battle with
infinite skill, perseverance, and bravery; and this I do not
say from any personal motive of claiming merit to myself
—for the victory is to be ascribed to the superior physical
force and invincible constancy of Briti h soldiers." NA-
POLEON'S plan and dispositions for separating WELLING-
TcN and BLUCHER, so as to engage them in detail
with his inferior force, were, in the judgment of mili-
tary men--" oinnium peritorum
conceived, and his off its during the emergencies
of action to repair disaster or rectify mistake, master-
traits of military instinct and science. Some absurd
fictions respecting his express ens and personal demea-
nour during the battle, imposed upon English tourists by
a Flemish peasant, who took upon himself the lucrative
functions of cicerone at Waterloo, have been rep ated and
on his death-
ralhleids,iminpteolsltignerteist
reiterated in print, and with general credit in England.
They were the common jest of Brussels at the time; and
pardon of God and Peasant, asked
bed. Why, then, was he conquered ? Because the the shrewd, or, as hemwanasfoc
de—
sign alone wholly belongs to the chief, whilst he is de-
pendent for its execution upon countless hazards and others'
cl-operation.—Dr. Lardner'a Cabinet Library. Life
and Reign of George IV. VoLIII.

MAGAZINE DAY.

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

There is evidently much pains taken both with
the literary and mechanical departments of this
Magazine, though we could wish to see the
former diversified with a greater variety of style
and thought. There is too much uniformity
even of excellence ; too much of the Penseroso
character in the present number. The first article
" On the State of Rural Population," is ably
argued ; the causes of the existing degeneracy
of our peasantry are traced, with a firm and skilful
hand, to the great changes that took place in the
mind and habits of the farmer, during the artificial
stimulus afforded to agriculture by the late war,
which had the effect of breaking up the old in-
timate connexion that previously existed between
the farmer and his dependants, by raising one
above, and sinking the others below, their level.
The writer's observations on this point deserve
attention :
" And now we come to the inevitable results of these
changes upon the working class. From such residences,
the servants of the farm were almost necessarily excluded ;
a man with such wealth, power, and pretensions, would
submit with reluctance to the personal supervision which
must be bestowed upon such inmates. It followed almost
as a matter of course that the hind wko must find himself
a habitation, would be desirous to find himself a helpmate.
Population thus perhaps, in the country, received its first
artificial impulse. The former course of events, by which
the long-tried, industrious, and frugal man, rose through
the several gradations of service, accumulating a little
more and more with each remove, was domiciliated with
the dairy-woman, by whose society and similarity of
habits he was attracted and attached, and whom he at last
married, was totally reversed. The young out-door la-
bourer was tempted, if not compelled to marry in his own
defence. Cottages multiplied, and the social was super-
sided by the separate system of domestic habitation. In
the mean time the rise in the price of corn had, as we
hive shown, generated an universal desire of appropriating
every spot that would bear an ear of wheat or barley.
The inclosure of commons, though a national good, and
even in some respects a corrective of morals, for the most
lawless were always found to harbour near such wild do-
mains, was in some important points an evil to the indus-
trious labourer. The addition to their income which the
careful couple derived from the common, half the mainte-
nance of a cow, a pig, and a small number of geese, ducks,
and fowls, as the case might be, was at once cut off. But
they were compensated in wages? By no means. The
rise in wages never even kept pace with the rise of the
price of fool and necessaries, both of which were enhanced
by the taxation which was the fruit of the war. On the
contrary, the augmentation, indispensable to the very ex-
istence of the labourer, introduced the system of paying a
portion of wages from the parish rates. Thus it was that
the evil of the law of settlement came to be felt, and with
its pressure grew that desire of evasion, which has been
the source of such eternal, such expensive litigation be-
tween parishes, of such inequality and injustice to the
rate-payers, of such oppressive tyranny towards the la-
bourer, of so much perjury, animosity, demoralization, and
vengeance. The depravation has at length been com-
pleted by the misery and recklessness attendant upon the
abject poverty, which is the consequence of extreme com-
petition, of the commercial and moral opponency, so to
speak, which reigns between the three classes of depend-
ants on the soil, and also between them all and the Church,
instigated in no small degree by the circulation of those
cheap and inciting publications to which no proper anti-
dote has yet been exhibited in a judicious and effectual
system of useful and moral education."
Conversations with an Ambitious Student in
11l Health," are exquisitely written, in a vein of
the truest and tenderest pathos. A little more
vigour, however, and a little less of that effemi-
nate sensibility of which we see so much in
Rousseau, would have made them perfect. Even
as it is, they are delightful productions, the ema-
nations of a refined judgment and fertile fancy.
We are glad to learn that they are to be re-
published. They will not derogate from the
reputation of the author of " Eugene Aram."
" Italian Humorous Poetry" is a lively, enter-
taining paper. The" Coffin-maker" a well-written
tale, but of too outré a character. The senti-
ment is not healthy ; it has no touch of nature
about it. " The Law of Arrest" is a pointed
tale, exemplifying an arrant absurdity in our
common law. It seems modelled, "as with a
ff
isdshi
shorter
tr
ee
romantic,c
tales.
so t‘hhe
isgohnfl asyg-sl:io found
of
uungdi n
lit
no
fiction,
e G of
re Voltaire's
t Urn''
studded
with gems of sterling poetry. These four lines,
particularly the two last, strike us as eminently
beautiful. They are fragments of a poem ad-
dressed to an Arcadian child sleeping :

" Sleep on, sleep on, the silver flowers
A pillow to thy head may be ;
Whilst Evening, with her band of hours,
Sits by thee silently."

" The Monthly Commentary" is good, if only
for its containing the Rev. Robert Hall's graphic
description of the atrocious scenery about Cam-
bridge. " It is dreary to the eye ; it is naked,
without foliage, without trees, except that here
and there a stunted willow astonishes the tra-
veller, as though nature were putting up signals
of distress." We have long since forgotten—
if we ever read them—Mr. Hall's Sermons,
but we shall never forget this description.
Shakspeare himself could not have done it better.
It is not like life, it is life itself, and brings
once again distinctly before us the long, wan,
hypochondriacal face of nature as she exhibits
herself in that flat, filthy desert—which presumes
to call itself the country—stretching away from
the Gogmagogs towards Fenstanton.