The Sun.
London, England, 1850-01-23 00:00:00

S U N,

PAROCHIAL WATER SUPPLY ASSOCIATION.
meeting of the members of this association was held lass
evening, in the vestry-room of St. Paul's Church,
Covent-garden, to receive the report of the committee
appointed at St. Martin's on the 7th instant, and for the
transaction of general business. The chair was taken
by Mr. Moseley. The report stated that about fiftton
parishes of the metropolis had already given in their
adhesion to the principles of the association, and eight
of the vestries had voted different sums for payment of
expenses, &e., umounting in all to about 160/. The
present claims, on the:: association are 631. J. Wyld,
Esq., M.P. far Bodmin, offered to advance a sum of
5001. to enable the committee to discharge all preliminary
expense?, which was to bo repaid when the funds of the
association should be in a sufficiently prosperous con-
dition, and ou the terms that no member should be per-
sonally liable for the repayment of the amount. The
committee recommend• d that Mr. Wyld's offer should
be accepted with thanks, and that that gentleman should
be appointed treasurer pro tem., until application should
be made to J. Masterman,Ehq , M.P., and Baron Roths-
child to become joint treasurers of the association. The
report concluded with recommending an active canvass
of those parishes which have not yet joined the move-
ment. It was stated that the principles which the
association seeks to establish are, that the water supply
of the mctropolie should fir t be in the hands of joint-
stock compeuies, and that it should not be subject to
the principle of centralisation by Government, as in the
case of sewers, but should be under the control of the
ratepayers of the different parishes. The report, after
some discussion on Mr. Wyld's proposal, VMS received
and adopted. Mr. Browne was appointed the secretary
un'a short term of engagement, Mr. Sidney Smith, to
whom the office had been offered, having declined to
accept it. It seas referred to the committee to procure
offices in the City far the transa Con of the business of
the association. The met ting then separated.
BRIGHTON CHAIN PIER.—The annual meeting of
the directors of the Brighton Chain Pier Company was
held in London last week, at which a letter from Mr. J.
Hume, M.P. (who generally presides on the occasion),
was read, stating his inability to attend, when Rear-
Admiral Sir Charles Malcolm, at the request of the
meeting, took the chair. The minutes of the last meet-
ing having been r ad and confirmed, the secretary laid
before the meeting a general statement of accounts,
showing the income and expenditure cf the past year,
which was passed, and the usual div;dend of 3 per cent.
declared. It will be highly satisfactory to the resident
inhabitants of the town and the public at large to know
that this noble structure, which is so great an attraction
to Brighton, is in perfect condition, and that it is in•
tnded in the ensuing season to give every accommoda-
tion to first-class fast packets, by.reducing the pier dues
to merely nominal charges, so that one packet at least
may proceed daily from the pier to Dieppe and other
ports.
THE BLASPHEMER'S DEATH.—There is something
so terribly startling in the following facts, and so fear-
fully exemplifying the grievous sin and extreme peril of
blaspheming the name of the Eternal, that had we not
made minute and careful inquiry, even among the very
haunts of those living where the occurrence took place,
we should have believed the whole to have been an ex-
aggerated rumour of some ordinary and every -day ca-
sualty, rather than the awfully true narrative of a
dreadful judgment. On the morning of Sunday last, a
married woman, fesiding in the Friars' Fields, named
Sarah Morgan, was observed with her infant in her
arms, near her awn house, disputing with a woman
Elisabeth Volan. A quarrel of a very violent charac-
ter, so far as words went, shortly afterwards ensued,
and in reply to an observation made by the woman,
Sarah Morgan exclaimed that she hoped that God Al-
mighty would strike her blind, deaf, dumb, and stiff, if
she did not revenge herself upon her in a particular
manner. Almost directly she staggered, let her child
fell from her arms to the ground, and would herself
apparently have fallen but that her neighbours immedi-
ately assisted her into the house. Dr. Stack was
promptly in attendance, who, we need scarcely remark,
continued to render her every assistance which medical
skill and humanity could suggest. From the moment
that she was thus mysteriously stricken to the hour of
her death, at half-past one o'clock on Wednesday morn-
ing, the only words she uttered, and just after she was
borne in, were, " Lord, have mercy on my poor soul—
have mercy on my children!" and then her voice failed
her, and she became dumb; her sense of hearing was
destroyed; her eyes became glassy and sightless; and
in about sixty hours from the moment in which she was
struck down, death pieced his icy hand upon h er, and
she became a corpse. This fearful event has produced
a pail ful sensation even among the abandoned ma-
.iires of the locality in which it occurred.—Monmouth

rature.

Merlin.
PURCHASE OF PRIORIPARK.—Many TUlTlourshaving
for come time past been current in Bath with respect t')
the Ronan Catholic College (f Prior-[ vie, the question
is now decided; inasmuch as Alexander Raphael, Leg.,
of Turbiton-place, M P. for S'. Alban's, has purchased
the above property, with all its appurtenances, ,tor
; and has given an extended lease a it to the
same parties at a rental of 31. per cent. per annum. The
property will be reconveyed to them on their payment of
the above sum, together with the rents due thereon.
But in failure of the strict performance of the several
stipulations and covenants expressed in the lease, their
right to the repurchase of the property will be forfeited.

LITERATURE.
LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF
ROBERT SOUTHEY. Vols. I. and H.
Edited by his Son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert
Southey:
Nothing further than an anxious preliminary an-
nouncement can be made of the appearance of the
opening volumes of this singularly attractive biogra-
phy—anxious from that solicitude which must be felt
by every lover of our modern literature, that such a
work should be felicitously brought to a conclusion.
From the examination already made by ourselves of
the commencement of these authentic memorials, we
are sanguine as to the fortunate completion of the en-
terprise, and cordially do we felicitate Mr. Southey,
of Plumbland, on the judicious manner in which he
has entered upon his editorial labours and respoesibi-
lities. The voluminous quantity of the materials
placed at his disposal was, assuredly, suffi-
cient to tax the discretion of the most
practised annotator, and yet a gentleman but little
versed, we presume, in the experiences of literary se-
lection, at least to the extent required in the present
onerous undertaking, has adventured upon his task
with large promise at the outset of its happy termina-
tion. To any one almost the duty of writing the bio-
graphy of one who had sso written the biography of
Nelson might well have seemed a task of enormous, if
not insuperable difficulty. Fortunately, however, the
gifted father of the present editor had left behind him,
among his valuable treasury of manuscripts, papers
capable of forming the initial chapters of such
an enterprise. From those charming papers
we hear in a posthumous whisper from
the lips of Robert Southey himself the par-
ticulars of his ancestry, his parentage,
birth, and early education. lie himself tells us, in
his most agreeable and gossipping mood, all about the
Gannon Southeys, and his father's removal from
London to Bristol, about the Hills and the Brad-
fords, about William Tyler and Parson Collins.
These reminiscences he recounts in language breath-
ing of the gentlest and tenderest affections. In ac-
quainting us with the particulars of his childhood, he,
the scholar, the poet, the critic, the historian, and the
philosopher, becomes.once more a child in imagination.
lie lingers over the particulars of early years with
that fascinating fondness for his theme, which he had
previously displayed the most conspicuously in the
home scenes depicted in the discursive narrative
about the "Doctor." Having prepared the
way for his own revelations by this genial and en-
thralling introduction, the Rev. C. C. Southey begins
in earnest, at page 160 of the first volume, his own
record of Robert Southey's "Life and Currespon dente."
Throughout his very able and sequential memoirs,
the editor interpolates here and there those scholas-
tic and graceful letters which his father lavished
with a prodigal hand among his friends and fa-
miliars—they are the jewels adorning the golden
links of his biography. Some are gay with the hilarity
of a young and ardent disposition ; others breathe the
sadness of a nature less morbid than sensitive, less sad
from a predisposition to gloom than from the sorrow-
ful emotions arising at times out of his intense and
exquisite sensibility. Take as an expression of the
latter trait in his temperament the following eloquent
and beautiful letter, in which he announces the death
of his friend Seward to his friend Bedford—a letter
more tender or more touching we do not remember
ever to have perused:—
" To GRoSVENOR C. BEDFORD, ESQ.
" Bristol, June 15, 1795.
" Bedford—ho is dead ; my dear Edmund Seward!
after six weeks' suffering.
These, Grosvenor, are the losses that gradually
wean us from life. May that man want consolation in
his last hour, who would rob the survivor of the belief,
that ho shall again behold his friend! You know not,
Grosvenor, how I loved poor Edmund: be taught me all
that I have of good. When I went with him into Wor-
cestershire,l was astonished at the general joy his return
occasioned—the very dogs ran out to him. Int hat room
where I have so of en seen him, he now liesi n his coffin!
" h is like a dream, the idea that he is dead—that his
heart is cold—that he, whom but yesterday morning 1
thought and talked of as alive—as the friend I knew
and loved—is dead! When these things come home to
the heart, they palsy it. lam sick at heart; and, if I
feel thus acutely, what must his sisters feel? what his
poor old mother, whose life was wrapped up in Edmund?
I have seen her look at him till the tears ran down her
cheek.
" There is a strange vacancy in my hear,. The sun
shires as usual, but there is a blank in existence to me.
I have lost a friend, and such a one! God bless you,
my dear, dear Grosvenor! Write to me immediately.
I will try, by assiduous employment, to get rid of very
melancholy thoughts. lam continually dwelling on the
days when we were together: there was a time when the
sun never rose that I did not see Seward. It is very
wrong to feel thus; it is unmanly.
"God bless you!
" ROBERT SOUTHEY.
" P.S. I wrote to Edmund on receiving your last: my
letter arrived the hour of his death, four o'clock on
Wednesday last. Perhaps he remembered me at that
hour.
" Grosvenor, I am a child; and all are children who
fix their happiness on such a reptile as man;—this great,
this self-ennobled being called man, the next change of
weather may blast him.
" There is another world where all these things will
be amended.
" God help the man who survives all his friends."
Among the more interesting incidents recounted in
these, the preliminary portions of Dr. Southey's bio-
graphy, are those of his introduction' to the gifted
men who acquired celebrity as his contemporaries—
such men, for example, as Coleridge, Charles Lamb,
Wordsworth, &c. His first acquaintance with
Coleridge appears to have been on the occasion of the
latter's visit to Oxford, after he had enlisted in the
15th Light Dragoons, having previously run away
from Cambridge. One of the earliest indications
afforded by the two friends to each other of the rich-
ness and facility of their poetic genius was, if we re-
member right, the mutual composition of a three act
tragedy, called The Fall of Robespierre. The subject
and its execution were conceived one day in a sportive
conversation at Lovell's, where the compact for its
execution was made—the tragedy being produced
complete as early as the following evening :
S. T. C. writing the first act, and R. S. the
second, and R. L. the third. Altogether the notion
of this drama has since been carried out, as far as its
mere form is concerned, by Robert Browning, in his
Blot on the 'Seutcheon. Out of our solicitude
that every available material should be placed betimes
at the disposal of the editor of these volumes, we
gladly give the benefit of our circulation to the fol
lowing paragraph in his preface, in which it will be
seen that be earnestly solicits the assistance of all
those individuals who happen to have corresponded
with the gifted subject of the biography. Having
enumerated the sources from which he has already
acquired considerable aid in his undertaking, the
reverend editor observes :
While, however, my materials from these sources
have been most extensive, there must still be many in-
dividuals with whom I have not been able to communicate,
who have corresponded with my father upon literary sub-
jects; and, should this meet the eye of any of these
gentlemen, they would confer a great obligation upon me
by permitting me the use of any of his letters to them,
which are likely sometimes to possess an interest dif-
ferent from those addressed to intimate friends and
frequent correspondents."
When completed the " Life and Correspondence" will
extend to six volumes, at the outset of which w e have
engravings from Westall's landscape of Keswick, and
from Opie's portrait of Southey. The work promises
to be an important addition to our miscellaneous lite-

HESPEROS ; or Travels in the West. By Mrs
Boustoun, author of "Texas and the Gulf of Mexico.'
2 Vols.
In noticing books of travels, we have repeatedly
observed how much the interest of such works de-
pends on the manner of the writer. An agreeable
cieerone gives a new charm to pleasant places, and
invests even dull ones with some attraction. Such
is Mrs. Houstoun's happy faculty. She reminds
us repeatedly of the lady-writer who truth-
fully boasted that " she gossipped whenever
she pleased and pleased whenever she gas-
sipped." It was the purpose of Allis new
h anas
-
dprer in the West to describe, not what
already been so frequently described, the laws,
institutions, and fixed establishments of America, but
to lay before English eyes a sketch of the rapidly
changing appearance of the men and manners of
America. She has done this in a most delightful
way. From the moment when, in the midst of a
Liverpool mist, she lost sight of her native country,
and soon after found herself more than once echoing
the Irishman's wish, that " if Britannia did rule the
waves she'd just be so kind as to rule 'em straight,
anyhow," until her return to the same misty English
atmosphere, Mrs. Houstoun's wanderings in the
West have furnished the theme for two most
interesting volumes, abounding in anecdote
and enlivened by a charming sprightliness of manner,
now and then subdued by some passing meditation.
One of these passages of transient sadness is occa-
sioned by a meeting, on board the Halifax steamer,
with a beautiful girl returning from Europe, where
she had been receiving her education. " The fair
creature entered the saloon alone," writes Mrs.
Houstoun, "and alone she remained, for lovely as she
was, no one addressed her; but on the contrary, she
appeared to be purposely
sent. Even the commonest avoid
a ed
ets
ofone
y civilityeve were
in
eer dh
y this fair be inlgt ww ibe
sbeet asked
apart bi
yn
herthe ellanSienintieagt
the way I have described, and why she was like a
tabooed creature, or rather a Periab,from which men
and women seemed to shrink as from an unholy thing.
It was this. Within the veins of this fair and delicate
girl ran a few drops of that dark blood, which is sup- '
posed by many—l fear, indeed, by most in America
—to place the individual cursed by so hideous an
accident without the pale of social existence. It mat-
tered not that this poor girl was fair in form and
gentle and kind in nature—her mother was a