The Sun.
London, England, 1850-04-12 00:00:00

APRIL 12, 1850.

by any one ; it would seriously embarrass the com-
pany, and if it were successful it would deprive of
their all for a considerable time, many widows and
others who depended entirely on their dividends for
support. Ile was thankful, however, to tell them
that they mitht rely on their line being opened in
August.—(Cheers.)
_ _

After some further discussion, and examination of
the candidates as to their qualification for the office of
auditors, the question was put from the chair, and the
three following gentlemen were declared to be
elected :—Mr. C. Child, Mr. J. Morgan, and Mr. T.
Browne.

Mr. J. WILSON then made an unsuccessful attempt
to induce the proprietors to litsen to his advocacy of
Mr. Gordon Thompson, who has recently been de-
prived of his seat in the direction. Mr. Wilson de-
clared that all the acts of the directors, in which Mr.
Thompson was not invited to take part, would be ille-
gal and void.
The CHAIRMAN replied that the directors had acted
in the matter under the best advice.

The proceedings then terminated with a vote of
thanks and three rounds of cheers for Mr. Macgregor.
YORK, NEWCASTLE, AND BERWICK RAILWAY.—
Yesterday the committee on this company's Bill, con-
sistin of the Hon. R. Clive, chairman ; Hon. J. For-
tescue, Hon. E. Littieton, Mr. Moody, and Mr.
Evelyn, met for the first time, to consider this com-
pany's proposed Bill for making arrangements as to
payment for the purchase of the Great North of
England Railway. Mr. Talbot, Q.C., opened the
case for the promoters of the measure, the object
being to spread the payments to be made by the
York, Newcastle, and Berwick, for the purchase of
the Great North of England Railway, over a longer
period of time. For this purchase it appears that the
former company had created 159,000 shares of 251.
each, upon which the sum of 81. per share only has
been called, and in order to relieve the company from
calling up the remaining 17/. per share before the Ist
July next, and satisfactorily and effectually to carry
out the purchase, it is proposed that three tenth parts
shall be paid in 1853, four tenths in 1855, and in three
tenths,in 1856. The petitions of shareholders in the
York, Newcastle, and Berwick Company, praying to
be heard against the Bill, were dismissed by the
committee on the ground of their not having been
presented in due time, and of the Leeds and Thirsk
Railway Company, on the ground that they had no
locus standi.

RUGBY, WARWICK, AND WORCESTER RAILWAY.—
Yesterday, in the settlement of this company's affairs
before the Master in Chancery, Richards, two impor-
tant decisions were come to, in dealing with the cases
of a large number of transferrees of shares, who had
received back 15s. per share out of the 21. 2s. deposit,
for which the original shareholders had paid and
signed the deed. His Honour the Master held that
all parties in the position of bankers and stockbrokers,
who had received back dividends from a railway com-
pany winding up its own affairs, simply in the capa-
city of agents, and not having any beneficial interest
in the shares, were not to be held liable as contribu-
tories under the Act, but that their respective princ7,
pals, whether in the capacity of original allottees, or
as transferers, were to be ; also, that a person being
either a mortgagee or a depositee, or having a benefi-
cial interest in a share himself; although not an
original allottee, was a contributor under the Act.
It was contended that, as the instruments trans-
ferring the shares were not stamped, it was not a
valid conveyance, and that the party or parties were
not liable; but the Master overruled the objection.
Mr. Daniel appeared for Mr. Wryght, the official
manager; and Mr. Valiance, solicitor to the estate,
and Mr. James, Mr. Roxburghe, and Mr. Foulkes
for other parties. The official manager reports the
assets at about 3,0001., in the hands of the Account-
ant-General; and the liabilities at between 5,0001.
and 6,000/. The Northamptonshire Banking Com-
pany claim 3,300/. ; the secretary, Mr. Weller,
1,0001. ; and the solicitor 5001. The chairman of the
company was Sir H. G. Ward, now Lord High
Commissioner of the lonian Islands. About 20,000
shares were allotted, awl 40,0001. received from
shareholders as deposit; 5,600 shares were bought
up by the directors at a premium in the market, and
9,000 shares were reserved in their own hands, it is
said, for landowners. The 40,000/. was spent in
" preliminaries," leaving a balance in hand of 2/.
LONDONDERRY AND ENNISKILLEN RAILWAY.—
The necessary notice has been given to the Railway
Commissioners, and should the inspector to be ap-
pointed by them as expected, arrive during the pre-
sent week, the line will be opened to the public both
for passengers and goods by the time originally
named in the contract, the 20th of this present month.
Londonderry Journal.

BOHN'S SHILLING SERIES.

REPRESENTATIVE MIEN. By Ralph Waldo
Emerson.
LIFE OF MAHOMET. By Washington Irving.
GENUINE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. By Benja-
min Franklin.

Conspicuous, to our thinking, in the midst of the
present multiplicity of cheap publications, is the
series of shilling volumes recently commenced by
Mr. Henry Bohn, whose " Standard Library " has
already acquired for him considerable distinction for
his enterprise. Why we regard this periodical issue
of work, not restricted from cheapness by the force
of copyright, as being superior to most of its nume-
rous competitors, is because of two or three very
matter-of-fact particulars, which, notwithstanding
their merely business-like character, are not beneath
the notice of criticism, at any rate not beneath the
notice of criticism in an age of economy and compe-
tition. Therefore it is that we do not shrink from
explicitly specifying the excellence of the paper and
the general beauty and clearness of the typography,
as being among the prominent causes of the popularity
of Mr. Bohn's latest sr eaulation—the materials for
the production of a cheap but handsome volume
being judiciously applied only in the case of works
whose indisputable ability goes far to prove the skill
exercised in selection. To say anything further in
demonstration of this than to particularise the repub-
licatioe of the authentic autobiography of Benjamin
Franklin, whom we may be allowed to designate the
Philospher of Method and the Genius of Mediocrity,
would be superfluous if we wished to restrict our-
selves within the limits of a niggardly and parsi-
monious applause but the influence likely to be
exercised indirectly over the intellects of the miscel-
laneous population by the patronage accorded to any
such wholesome and beneficent enterprises in the
way of disseminating valuable literature, appears to
be a matter of so much importance, and a movement
en avant so entirely deserving of encouragement, that
we must perforce extend our allusions, in a few addi-
tional words, to the ether reprints from the American
originals with which Mr. Bohn has here preceded
Franklin's sententious Autobiography. The lucid and
in many respects masterly narrative in which Wash-
ington Irving (one of the purest and noblest prose
writers in the English language) has recounted the
surprising career of Mahomet the Great Imposter,
has already acquired a recognition so world wide and
decisive as to remove the necessity of any critical
demonstration. With regard to the " Representative
Men " of Emerson, we might speak in terms precisely
similar, but that we have a secret conviction that the
admirers of this eccentric genius are only now begin-
ning in this our England to grow in intensity and to
multiply in numbers. If once the accridity of his
hatreds can be overlooked, and the angularity of his
style be permitted, it will prove impossible not to recog-
nise through the haze of the one the gentlest sym-
pathies,
and through the ruggedness of the other the
most profound and venerable earnestness. Besides
this, in the thick of his oddities, oddities of rhetoric
that sprout up in all parts, in every nook and cranny
of his meditations, we come every now and then to a
phrase so felicitous; or a thought so beautiful, that we
would cull them as eagerly as we would some lovely
and fragrant blossom growing at intervals in the thick
of a jungle of weeds and brambles. It is thus, when
he calls Plato (p. 43) " the Euclid of Holiness," or
when he says of the style of that great philosopher
(p. 27) "his patrician polish, his intrinsic elegance,
edged by an irony so subtle that it stings and para-
lyses, adorn the soundest health and strength of
frame; his daring imagination gives him the more
solid grasp of facts ; as the birds of highest flight
have the strongest alar bones." Again it is a noble
fancy of his, when speaking of Swedenborg, he says
(p. 70) " melodious poets shall be hoarse as street-
ballads, when once the penetrating key-note of nature
and spirit is sounded—the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-
beat which makes the time to which the sun rolls, and
the globule of blood, and the sap of trees." How
powerful, moreover, is that ejaculation of his in re-
ference to the moral and spiritual ambition of man,
where he says (p. 91) that Providence " has shown
the heaven and earth to every child, and filled him
with a desire for the whole ; a desire raging, infinite ;
a hunger, as of space to be filled with planets ; a cry
of famine, as of devils far souls." And in like manner
it is with a kindred intenseness of expression that he
exclaims of the writings of Montaigne (p. 83), " I
know not anywhere the book that seems less written :
it is the language of conversation transferred to a
book ; cut these words and they would bleed ; they
are vascular and alive." No one who has once
listened to Emerson reading one of his lectures—his
tall, thin figure swaying with the methodical mono-
tony of mechanism—his head stooping—his keen and
earnest features listening in every muscle for the
perception of his more odd and recondite thoughts
by the audience—his collar worn a la Byron without
a suspicion of dandyism—his voice drawling and ac-
centuated with a certain twang of Yankeeism (as where
he talks of the " dray-ma" and so forth)
can fail to here that strange enthusiast-voice ringing
again upon the tympanum of their memory through
every sentence of his works subsequently perused.
The recollected tune to which the writing is thus set
by the remembrance, is a wonderful help towards its
better apprehension and appreciation. Such as these
three books now particularised—by Emerson, Irving,
and Franklin—is the cheap and estimable series on
the publication of which Mr. Bohn has now, happily
fur the masses, adventured.

WORE VERSE AND PROSE. Vol. H. By
the Corn-law Rhymer.

In noticing the appearance of the preceding volume
of the work here brought to a conclusion, we
commented upon that sudden demise of its author,
which had unexpectedly rendered it posthumous.
Since then we have only found reason to lament
more and more earnestly the departure of one whose
genius was at once robust and sensitive, exquisitely
alive to the beautiful, enamoured of justice to the
extent almost of delirium, and at the recognition of
wrong overflowing with wrath and indignation. It
is, consequently, with the utmost avidity that we turn
to these final scraps of his composition in verse and
prose, the gleanings of his fruitful intellect; devour-
ing also with a curiosity and pleasure, which we are
satisfied will prove very general, a critique on the
poetical writings of Ebenezer Elliott, penned for the
Quarterly Review by the late Robert Southey, and
rejected by the editor of the Quarterly after Southey
had corrected the proof-sheets of the article. Three
Lectures on Poetry, appended to the present volume,
and delivered on divers occasions by the departed
poet, will be read with interest by all those
interested in that the loftiest of all the
departments of literature. Nor will the perusal of
these lectures be unattended by gratification, many
of the least dogmatical passages being replete with
critical excellence. From the popular hymns written
by the Corn-law Rhymer not long before his de-
cease we yesterday extracted one of peculiar ex-
cellence into our columns, which we trust had its
due weight upon the consciences (if they have any)
of the Sabbatarians. From the miscellanies and
lyrics from " Life according to Law," an unpublished
opera, we could find several verses worthy of
extract as appropriate specimens of Ebenezer Elliott
in his happiest style, but, unfortunately, the collection
in this the second and concluding volume are so few,
that we would not further diminish their attractiveness
by stinting their number yet more. " The Poor
Man's Day" will be found exquisitely beautiful, and
" Sunderland's Glory" unconscionably grotesque.
Other metrical pieces in the volume, such, for ex-
ample, as the loyal and patriotic " ale on the
Marriage of Victoria the First," are, like the veriest
triflt,s from the same hand, unusually meritorious.
The work, we trust, may have a circulation befitting
the literary legacy of the Corn-law Rhymer.