The Sun.
London, England, 1850-02-07 00:00:00

MAGAZINES, Scc. (CONTINUED.)

-----
ST. JAMES'S MAGAZINE. Edited by
J. Bernard Burke, Esq.
The present is an excellent number of the St.
James's. The article entitled " Pairy,Land" is most
gracefully written. The " Garland of Bishopbrick
Blossoms," and the " Popular Rhymes, &c., of the
Manx People," contain much interesting legendary
lore; and the " Ihraldic Register" is, cor.tinued.
We commend the following passage from " Rambles
i❑ Cornwall" to the attention of those who have the
care of providing for our national defences. The
Scilly lilands in the hands of an enemy would be to
them, as regards the British at,d St. George's Chan-
nels, what Gibraltar is to us as regards the Medi-
terranean :

The importance of the Scilly Isles to a maritime
people like the English was seen and appreciated so early
as the thno of Athelstan, who, when he had subdued
Cornwr..ll, undertook the conque.t c f these rocks so ut-
terly valuecss in every other respect. In truth they de-
serve a much more elaborate and effective defence than
the Government has thought proper to bestow upon
them, for steam has done much to cqulize matters,
and with all our maritime superiority it certainly would
n
scarcely even difficult, for a foreign
power e impossible,
ofany
magnitude to make itself master of them."

THE BRITISH POLITICAL, COMMER-
_ CIAL, ECCLESIASTICAL, AND HISTO-
RICAL GAZETTEER; Travelling Road
Book and County Atlas.
This usefal and instructive work progresses steadily
and satisfactorily, in giving to the public the most
minute and extensive information, upon all subjects
within the province of a gazetteer. The present
number, which concludes the first volume, contains
two well-executed and well-defined maps cf the
counties of Cumberland and Durham, and is embel-
lished with an accurate and beautiful engraving of
the Liverpool Custom-house.

LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. Edited by
Thomas Carlyle. No. I.—The Present Time.
Acknowledging the genius of this great thinker,
we yet do aver that the perusal of this, the first of
his Latter day Pamphlets, is like the having
,had a
nightmare. The tone assumed at the very outset is
provocative of despondency. As the reader advances
he feels that not only the age but that the book is one
of "endless calamity, disruption, dislocation, confu-
sion worse confounded." As he closes the produc-
tion he arrives at the conviction that its pages, as well
as the days upon which they comment, if not breath-
ing "of endless hope, too, then they are those of
utter despair." The voice of Mr. Carlyle is raised in
the awful wail of prophecy, and sinks in the dismal
cadence of lamentation. It has throughout the
monotony and resonance, the sadness and the agony
expressed in the mingled groans and shrieks of the
pibroch. had it continued through more than those
65 pages we will not wager but that it might, in
many instances, produce an effect like that said
to result from the Highland bagpipe, " singingy the
nose," according to Shskspere. Fright having oc-
casionally the same result it might, in truth, have so
happened, seeing that the whole of this Latter day
Pamphlet is calculated, to excite sentiments of
blended horror and dismay. " Not long ago," says
the prophetic pamphleteer, by way of inductior,
" Not long ago the world saw, with thoughtless joy,
which might have been very thoughtful joy, a real
Miracle not heretofore considered possible or conceivable
in the e.-orld, a reforming Pope. A simple pious crea-
tare, a good country priest, invested unexpectedly with
the tiara, talits up the New Testament, declares that this
hence firth shall be his rule of governing."
This occurrence Mr. Carlyle appears to look upon
as the origin of those wars and insurrections which
have turned continental Europe topsy-turvy, reveal-
ing to the profaning gaze of the multitude the official
holy of holies," and leading, in fact, to a convulsion such
as is here designated the universal bankruptcy of im-
posture. While condemning in terms neither fseble
nor measured the " stump oratory" which is said to
have governed the world through the first four or five
months of the revolutionary movement, our author
takes occasion to sneer at M. de Larnartine—at
de Len]artine, who, while Mr. Carlyle was cosily
smoking his pipe of tobacco at home, was imperilling
his life to vindicate humanity and to save civilization !
We certainly have a profound admiration for this
comfortable school of back-parlour criticism.
But on, on, on, goes Mr. Carlyle, not on
the back of Pegasus, for Pegasus is winged, and so is
not the style of our, pamphleteer—on, on, on he
goes, floundering about in the " slough of despond,"
—capable of seeing, and showing that all has been
overturned and dislocated, that society has been razed
to its very foundations' and so forth, but wholly
and totally incapable of pointing out the method or
the materials for its reconstruction. It is because
the book is, for these reasons, a barren work, that we
are deprived of any inclination whatever to enter
further upon its scrutiny. It is as if a jagged gleam
of lightning flickered over the ruins of a world
plunged back into pritnecval chaos and darkness.
Any such bugbear of the imagination we recoil from
as deserving only forgetfulness, as being empowered
to effect no beneficent purpose. Therefore it is that
we rise from the consideration of the pamphlet with
the same satisfaction that we would rise from a couch
where we had been tortured by the nightmare.

THE ECONOMY OF THE BRITISH
EMPIRE.

Under this title a statistical publication is making
its appearance in periodical instalments, in which the
author, or we should more properly say the editor or
compiler, T. C. Banfield, E,q.) is about to produce a
condensed tabular survey, with appropriate:descriptions,
of the territories, population, resources, and govern-
ment of the British empire and its dependencies.
From its national importance the work cannot fail to
attract a very large amount of attention and patronage.