The Sun.
London, England, 1868-10-22 00:00:00

HER MAJESTY.

BALMORAL CASTLE, Oct. 20.
The Queen, accompanied by Princess Christian,
went out yesterday morning.
In the afternoon her Majesty drove out, accom-
panied by Princess Louise.

The Queen gave a ball in the evening to the ser-
vants and gillies on the estates of Abergeldie and
Balmoral.

LITERATURE.

Run to Earth. By the Author of "Lady Audley'S
Secret." Three Vo's. Ward, Lock, and Tyler.
A thoroughly sensational story— a story in which
incident, crime, and hair-breadth-'stapes make UP
the staple of the narrative—such is Miss Bra,ddon's
newly-published tale in three volumes " Run t°
Earth." Newly published, observe, not newly
conceived. A work not just written, but just re-
written. The authoress seems to have some Mex.
haustible store—we won't call it a lucky-bag, for
its contents really add but little to her reputation.--
from which she can draw at pleasure the raw ma'
terials, so to speak (and really the phrase might be
used in two senses, there is so much of the raw-
head-and-bloody-bones colouring about it alp--
from which she can draw at pleasure we sal
(that is, whenever she so pleases), the raw materials
to be worked up even by.her now thoroughly skilled
and practised hand into another fiction. Sorne of
these revived productions of hers she has only
touched lightly here and there before reissuing then'
and acknowledging them as her own. Such was
the case, we take it, with " Lady Lisle," and, still
more recently, with " The Captain of the Vulture.
Not thus, however, has she dealt with 'this newly
republished and recently rewritten story of her',
now called, for want of a better name, " Run to
Earth." Judging from her Preface, it cannot
but be seen at a glance that Miss Braddon claims
no high consideration for this rechauffe, as a work
of :art. She avowedly offers it to our perusal sim-
ply and solely as a narrative of incident. The one
sole merit she claims for it, is that of its sensation'
alism. And it is significant of the character of
its:sensationalism, as it appears to us that so mall
of the people introduced into the story indulge ill
the luxury of the alias to a degree only observable in
real life among those more notorious offenders against
the law, who are known (intimately) by the 513..
jority of the police force, from A to Z, and who are
being perpetually recognized, thus, as old offenders,
by the police when placed at the bar of justice is
one or other of our police courts. Instance this--
the evil genius of the book, that bungling schemer/
the French Surgeon—who is known to us as Victor
Carrington, alias Mr. Carton, alias M.msiear lo
Viscomte Champfontaine. Instance this again'
that brutal cut-throat—Black Milsom, alias INIr•
Maunders, alias Tommaso. Instance even the
heroine of the tale—Lady Eversleigh, alias Honoriai
alias Anna. Nay, the very stock detective of the
novel—distant cousin, ever so many times removed,
of Yr. Bucket—has his alias too—being known t°
the reader, off and on, now as Mr. Andrews, now ss
Mr. Larkspur. What is more, the sensationalism of
the incidents, here, may be pronounced at once to
be as strongly flavoured as the worst gin and the
rankest tobacco, as blue ruin and mundungus•
Murders we have—how shall we express it with
sufficient emphasis ? Well murders galore • !
Happily (or they might run the risk of becoming
monotonous) they are very varied in their charge'
ter. Sir Oswald Eversleigh, for example, is poisoned
off hand and with inimitable dexterity—the poiao°
being poured into a glass of water by Victor Car"
rington, who, in the dead of the night, during the
baronet's most opportune absence from his room
for a few seconds, slips in through the French win-
dow from his hiding place outside in the shrubbery
Captain Valentine Jernam, on the other hand, i 5
decoyed by Black Milsom to his den of infamy'
there to be got out of the way in the rough-and-
tumble fashion, namely, with the utmost brutality
or, in plainer terms, by being simply butchered.
As for the murder of the Rev. Lionel Dale, that is
accomplished by Carrington—through a cornbina:
tion of brutality and refinement: refinement, that 1s
to say in the method employed for the bringing about
of the catastrophe, and brutality in the actual mod°
of its accomplishment. A thud tells us that the un-
fortunate victim's skull is crushed against the trunk
of a tree, when the wrong horse comes to grief i°
leaping a streamlet in the hunting-field—previously
to having its brains immediately afterwards blosv°
out by that most insatiable of miscreants, Victor
Carrington. There is one comfort —that Victor lih°'
self fails in every one of his elaborate contrivances
—perpetrating crime after crime, it is true, 13°.
with no satisfactory result either to himself or lo:
despicable accomplice, Sir Reginald. And a9°
greater comfort for the reader is that the
villains of the story after failing—all of ther°
—meet their deserts. Carrington encounters 111°
doom in one of the lost artic expeditious. Sit
Reginald Eversleigh sinks into a squalid drunkar°'
and as such closes his ignoble life in a Parisian
garret with the fumes of charcoal. Black Milsonl
gets hideously crushed to death under the wheels
of a ponderous coal-waggon—though not until aft°',
prolonged agonies and a full confession to a PrT
testant clergyman, who we presume was a Ritualisu
Among the good people of the book there are 31°1
less than three capital fellows (each in his own way)
who are all of them Captains. There is CV;
taro George Jernan, brother of the murder°'
Valentine, and husband eventually of Rosanioud.
There is George's father-in-law—otherwise, Itos,ci
mond's " own father," as Doctor Marigold wodi
have it—Captain Duncombe the hearty old salt
water Jack. And then there is that other excellent
old fellow Captain Coppleston, who is alternately
in the most bewildering manner, being wheeled atoll!'
apparently a cripple for life through severe gout, 1.11
a wheel-chair—and directly afterwards bounding 10
and out of postchaises with the agility of a school,
e
boy going home for his holidays, rather than tb
gait of a gouty old gentleman going in search of 5
lost child, who has been spirited away by some nirt,e-
rious midnight kidnapper. Joyce Harker, the oe-
formed, faithful, warmhearted mate, reminds us r -
her too much of Mr. George's attendant Phil Squad
a
in " Bleak House." While Miss Lydia Graham and
her brother. Mr. Gordon Graham, are as odious I/
couple in their way as Mr. and Mrs. Lammle in
" Our Mutual Friend." Douglas Dale is nothinio
more than a " walking gentleman"—his affianced'
who dies, however, without marrying him, wheel°
wilfully (that is as a suicide), wo ara left to conjec-
ture, by name Paulina, Durski, is by nature an ja-
carnate paradox—half angelic, half diabolic-4°c;
minding one of the Horatian piscenz =Her fornos
superne, the context to which is—who can forget
—risunz teneatis, amici? Whatever else maY , 0
said of it, Run to Earth" is readable through°lll
and the interest of it, especially towards the end,
is enchaining.

How we are Governed. New Edition. Fr°l'

Warne and Co.
The popularity of this excellent little handboc4o
of the Constitution and the Government of Gres
Britain, instead of diminishing, appears to increase'
Since the time of its original production less than tea
years ago, by Mr. Albany Fonblanque the younger'
it has run through many elhions. Carefully re
vised some time since by Mr. Ibldsworth, it I°4
now been continued to the present date, and CO3/.
51
derably enlarged by its present editor, Mr. Alexatn,',
Ewald—the plan of the work, as a whole, renv'tr
ing, of course (very wisely) unaltero 1. AlLogether
this one little work, " How we are Geverued,
the Crown, the Senate, and the Bench," is 013 e °,
the most lucid expositions of a large and c0931)1;
hensive and complicated theme that we ever real°
of
ber to have perused. It gives a bird's eye ViC%4V be
the whole scheme of the Government of
mightiest empire upon the globe—an empire 031
prising within its boundary lines one sixth of th
,0
earth's land surface, and one fifth of the world
population.