The Sun.
London, England, 1861-10-03 00:00:00

terest, interspersed with stories, sketches, tnd
poetry above the average. " London's Iron Belt"
discusses the proposed concentration of railwa7s ;
and while speaking strongly in favour of ;he
plan, suggests that great precautions sboald
be taken to secure the safe working of so
complicated a system. The paper gives an ac-
count of the difficulties with which the origina-
tors of the plan have had to contend, and tie
gradual progress they have made and are making
towards completion. " Clays and their uses," ty
no less an authority than Professor Ansted, is
well worth reading. For lighter subjects we
have agreeable papers on " Pearls and Pearl
Divers," and on the " Hanover-square Rooms,"
while the social philosopher will be attracted by
" A Plea for Hymen," in answer to an articla
recently published condemning the social effects
of early marriages. " Leaves from a great volume'
show us some of the wonders which our careless
eyes pass over in the leaves of plants. The depart-
ment of fiction is well supplied. We have the
continuation of Mrs. Hall's story of "Can wrong
be right," which is very eventful. Mildred returns
to England to find her husband already married to
his first love. It is impossible for the reader to
sympathise in the general admiration of Sir Oswald,
who appears to be equally wanting in head and
heart. Besides this instalment there is the first
part of a Scottish story by the author of "Margaret
Maitland," full of thrilling interest. There are
graceful verses by Thomas Hood, and Mrs. Cros-
land. We must not omit to mention two charming
little stories for the young of the " household, by
Mrs. Broderip, and the author of " Mary Powell."

Macmillan's Magazine.
The continuation of Mr. Kingsley's tale of Raven-
shoe is as interesting as ever; new characters are
introduced, and a catastrophy of some sort is immi-
nent. Lieutenant Hornby discovers Charles's real
name and his acquaintance with the villain of the
story, Lord Welter, and a sort of explanation between
them takes place. Charles is elected a member of
a club composed of coachmen and head-grooms
shortly after taking up his quarters in the mews
where Lieutenant Hornby's horses were kept, and
he there learns something about Lord Welter which,
to a certain extent,opens his eyes. As we have already
intimated, it was Lord Welter who seduced Ellen,
whom Charles believes to be his sister, and when
he finds that she is still in the keeping of Lord
Welter Charles will take summary vengeance.
Charles makes friends with a little shoeblack who
is to figure prominently hereafter. The character
of the little outcast and his affection for his sister
are beautifully described.
" Why do you come so far then?" asked Charles.
The boy told him why he plodded so wearily, day after
day, over here in the West-end. It was for family reasons,
into which I must not go too closely. Somebody, it ap-
peared, still came home, now and then, just once in a way
to see her mother, and to visit the den where she was bred ;
and there was still left one who would wait for her week
after week—still one pair of childish feet, bare and dirty,
that would patter back beside her—still one childish voice
that would prattle with her on the way to her hideous home
and call her sister.
"Have you any brothers ?"
Five altogther. Jim was gone for a sojer, it appeared;
and Nipper was sent over the water. Harry was on the
cross—

" On the cross ?" said Charles.
" Ah I" the boy said, "He goes out cly-faking and such.
He's a prig, and a smart one, too. - He's fly, is Harry."
But what is cly-faking ?" said Charles.
" Why a prigging of wipes, and sneeze-boxes, and ridi-
cules, and such."
Charles was not so ignorant of slang phrase as not to
understand what his little friend meant now. He said,—
" But you are not a thief, are you ?"
The boy looked up at him frankly and honestly, and
said,—
" Lord bless you, no I I shouldn't make no hand of that.
I ain't brave enough for that !"
He gave the boy twopence, and gave orders that one
penny was to be spent in a ball. And then Ihe sauntered
listlessly away—every day more listless, and not three
weeks gene yet
His mind returned to this child very often. He found
himself thinking more about the little rogue than he could
explain. The strange babble of the child, prattling so
innocently, and, as he thought, so prettily, about vice, and
crime, and misery; about one brother transported, one a
thief—and you see he could love kis sister even too the very
end of it at all Strange babble indeed from a child's lips
He thought of it again and again, and then, dressing
himself plainly, he went up to Grosvenor-square, where
Mary would be walking with Lord Hainault's children.
He wanted to hear them talk.

For the second time Charles sees Mary and this
time, from what he overhears, he begins to find out
that her love for him is more than sisterly affection.
He returned home moralising after this manner :
He was thinking now, in his way, about these children—
about Gus and Flora on the one hand, and the little shoe-
black on the other. Both so innocent and pretty, and yet
so different ! He had taken himself from the one world
and thrown himself into the other. There were two worlds
and two standards—gentlemen and non-gentlemen. The
" lower orders" did not seem to be so particular about the
character of their immediate relations as the upper. That
was well, for he belonged to the former now, and had a
sister. If one of Lord Charles Herries's children had gone
wrong, Gus and Flora would never have talked of him or
her to a stranger. He must learn the secret of this armour
which made the poor so invulnerable. He must go and
talk to the little shoeblack.

He thought that was the reason why he went to look
after the little rogue next day; but that was not the real
reason. The reason was, that ho had found a friend in a
lower grade than himself, who would admire him and look
up to him. The first friend of that sort he had made since
his fall I What that friend accidentally saved him from,
we shall seo.

The Derby-day at length arrived. On the course
he comes across Adelaide, now Lady Welter. She
has succeeded in persuading her seducer to marry
her, and the Epsom meeting is her first appearance
in public. Charles is shocked to see the change
that one short month has made in the girl he once
idolised.

Her back was towards him, of course ; yet he guessed
she was beautiful. " She is a fast woman, Go I help her 1"
said he ; and he determined to go and look at her.
He sauntered past the carriage, and turned to look at
her. It was Adelaide.

As faultlessly beautiful as ever, but ah—how changed.
The winning petulance, so charming in other days, was
gone from that face for ever. Hard, stern, proud, defiant,
she sat there upright, alone. Fallen from the society of all
women of her own rank, she knew—who better ?—that not
one of those men chattering around her would have borne to
see her in the company of his sister, viscountess though
she wore, countess and mother of earls as she would be.
They laughed, and lounged, and joked before her ; and she
tolerated them, and cast her gibes hither and thither among
them, bitterly and contemptuously. It vas her first ap-
pearance in the world. She had been married three days.
Not a woman would speak to her : Lord Welter had
coarsely told her so that morning; and bitterness and
hatred were in her hesrl- Tt Nya.,Fnr tl,;. ~a I. —4-.
honour and good fame. She had got her title, flung to her
as a dog by Welter ; but her social power, for which she
had sold herself, was lower, far lower, than when she was
poor Adelaide Summers.
It is right that it should be so, as a rule ; in her case it
was doubly right.
a, Presently Lord Welter came swinging in among them ;
ho looked terribly savage and wild, and Charles thought he
had been drinking. Knowing what he was in this mood,
and knowing also the mood Adelaide was in, he dreaded
some scene.
." But they cannot quarrel so soon," he
thought.
" How d'ye do ?" said Welter to the knot of men round
his wife's carriage. " Lady Welter, have your people got
any champagne, or anything of that sort ?"
" I suppose so; you had better ask them."
She had not forgotten what he said to her that morning
so brutally. She saw he was madly angry, and would have
liked to make him commit himself before these men. She
had fawns, and wheedled, and flattered for a month; but
now she was Lady Welter, and he should feel it !
Welter looked still more savage, but said nothing. A
man brought him some wine ; and, as he gave it to him,
Adelaide said, as quietly as though she were telling him
that there were some dust on his coat,—
" You had better not take too much of it; you seem to
have had enough already. Sir Robert Ferrers here is very
taciturn in his cups, I am told • but you make such a ter-
rible to-do when you are drunk."
They should feel her tongue, these fellows I They might
come and dangle about her carriage-door, and joke to one
another, and look on her beauty as if she were a doll ; but
they should feel her tongue I Charles's heart sank within
him as he heard her. Only a month gone, and she
desperate I _ _ _

Lord Ascot's horse Haphazatd wins the Derby con-
trary to orders, his owner •Juliving betted against
him, as has likewise Lord Atlter, who at the re-
sult of the race prepares to Wave the country. We
may look forward to some curious revelations next
month. " A Zulu Foray "is an account of a Kaffir
plundering expedition some sixty years ago. " The
Victories of Love," by Coventry Patmore, is written
in this author's usual style. Its poetical beauties
will doubtless be pleasing to those who admire
the author's productions. The second part of
" Good and Evil" is as clear, clever, and intel-
ligible as the first, but we confess that
its point and object are beyond our apprehension.
and we fear that of most of the readers of .Macmil-
lan's lilagaine. A letter from an eminent lawyer
in New York on the American question is one of
the best treatises on the subject we have yet met
with. The writer takes an impartial view of both
sides of the question, and enters at considerable
length on the question of slavery:—
Aside from the bad ambition of the leading Southern
politicians, the real cause of revolt is the manifest weaken-
ing of the power of the slaveholders to subordinate the legis-
lation and administration of the country to the promotion
of slavery, and the growing power and coming prepon-
derance of the North, and its supposed purpose to use that
power, so far as it constitutionally may, to restrict slavery
within its present enormous territorial limits, and save
from its blighting influences the territories now free.
During the revolution, and while the Government was
forming, there was a common belief throughout the land,
north and south, that slavery is wrong. The intellect of
the nation was aroused and enlightened, and its conscience
touched. All agreed that slavery ought in some way to be
brought to an end. With the invention of the cotton-gin
came the means of turning slave labour to greatly increased
profit ; the love of gain and of power stifled the sentiments
of justice ; and the purpose was formed to maintain slavery
at all hazards. But it could not be maintained by excuses.
It was especially hard to admit slaveholding to be wrong,
yet insist on its extension; so a new doctrine was started,
of which Mr. Calhoun was the great advocate—that it was
the right and duty of the white man, that it was just and
kind to the black man, to hold the negro in bondage. This
gave to the slaveholder a weapon in place of a shield, and
he was able consistently to become aggressive. The dogma
of the righteousness at slimy lies at the .basis of the Ate