The Sun.
London, England, 1844-04-01 00:00:00

MAGAZINE DAY.

n .4 WOOD'S MAGAZINE.
-The recent Irish discussions in the House of Com-
mons form, as might be expected, a prominent subject
of consideration in the present Number of this Ma-
gazine. The article, like most articles of a similar
nature in Blackwood, is full of fallacious statements,
and is plenteously endowed with impudtnce—to a
degree- indeed that renders it positively amusing.
Thus, the writer gravely assures us that the last
Government had just the same power to redress the
wrongs of Ireland, as is possessed by the present ;
though it is notorious that the Whigs could seldom se-
cure a
majority of even nine on Irish questions, while
the Tories boast of one just ten times as numerous!
Again, with equal gravity, he states that " the bias
of the 'gentry and of the aspiring of all ranks is
towards Protestantism," contemptuously regardless
of the- well-known fact that the proportion of Ca-
tholics to Protestants in the sistef-country is at this
moment far greater than it has 'been for the last
hundred years! On the subject of the recent State
trials in Dublin this reckless Tory par-
tisan is not merely enthusiastic, but breaks out
into such bursts of rhapsodical frenzy as would justify
the application of a strait-waistcoat. He describes
the prosecution as "the mightiest of spectacles which
human grandeur can unfold !" and adds, " the trial
was made, and with .what perfection of success the
reader knows, for let us remind him that the perfec-
t2.°ll, We speak of lay as much in the manner of the
trial as in its result—in the sanctities of abstinence, in
ac
,Ilev holy forbearance to use any one of the many decent
flo
iltitie,a in the reverence for the sublime equities.
The holy forbearance" of the Crown was
cethretain.li exhibited in a most unequivocal fashion, by
striking off of the ten Catholic jurors ; and, as for
"the sanctities of abstinence," who does not remember
the sanctim •
e• sanctimonious "abstinence" which the Attorney-
General when, in his official capacity as chief
icator and guardian of the law, he sent a chal-
nge to Mr. Fitzgibbon ! ' But the article is scarcely
worth the labour of refutation; for, from first to last,
it is replete with misstatements and contradictions,
which are put forth with a free-and-easy indifference,
savouring of the most intrepid effrontery. Horace
once spoke of the first navigator as being a man
"cased in triple brass ;" had the poet lived in these
days, ',he would have found in the writer of this arti-
cle on " Ireland," an individual possessed of quite as
much brass as the earliest mariner. The "Pirates of
Segna" is a wild melo-dramatic tale, whose scene is
laid in Venice, in the earlier part of the seventeenth
century. The Slave Trade" is a painful document,
drawn up from materials furnished by nn English
clergyman, who was himself on board a cruizer that
Captured a Brazilian slave-ship, where not less than four
hundred and seventy negroes, men, women, andchildren,
'were found chained together like dogs, in a cabin
only thirty-seven feet long, and three feet and a half
high. And this occurred under the vertical sun of the
tropics ! In " Moslem Histories of Spain" we find
.some curious particulars respecting the Arabs of
',Cordova, one of whose most eminent rhetoricians
possessed, it seems, an "ocean of language." What
a treasure this man would have been to the Tories in
the House of Commons, who so often find it neces-
sary to follow the example of their Chief and talk
'against time 1 The " British Fleet" is a biographical
'memoir of the late Earl St. Vincent, who, though
`usually just in his conduct towards the officers under
.his command, was not always so, for he once refused
.an appointment to a "favourite" Captain, because he
had been guilty of the crime of matrimony, he him-
self having perpetrated the same act not two months
before. ! The biographer's description of the
famous battle off Cape St. Vincent is very
•aPerited and graphic, and will remind the
-reader of some of Southey's sketches of
'naval actions in his " Life of Nelson." The " Me-
moirs of a Statesman" fall off in interest this month.
We have far too much of the prison of St. Lazare,
and the hero's adventures therein. " Two Nights in
Southern Mexico" impress us with a very vivid notion
of the pleasures of travelling in that paradisaical re-
gion: The writer describes himself as forming one
=of a party who journied a hundred miles from Mexico
through a country rarely "trodden but by native
feet, and in the course of this agreeable expedition,
•he was half suffocated by fogs, bitten to within an
Inch of his life by musquitoes, cuffed and clawed and
pinched by a drove of gigantic apes, frightened out
of his wits by a thunder storm, hurled headlong from
a cliff which gave way beneath him, and all but
drowned in a mountain torrent which took charge of
this descending person! Pleasant variety this for two
nights' travelling ! We subjoin the author's account
of the attacks made on him by the mosquitoes and
apes during his bivouac in a low valley :
"It was somewhere about midnight when I was
awakened by an indescribable sensation of oppression
from the surrounding atmosphere. The air seemed to
be no longer air, but some poisonous exhalation that had
• suddenly arisen and enveloped us. From the rear of the
:ravine In which we lay, billows of dark mephitic mist
• were rolling forward, surrounding us with their baleful
influence. It was the vomito prieto, the fever itself em-
biedin the shape of a fog. At the same moment, and
while I was gasping for breath, a sort of cloud seemed to
settle upon me, and a thousand stings,
needles, were run into my hands, face,neekr_ikeintoredev-heroyt
part of my limbs and body that
stre wteahsednot triply guarded
by clothing. I instinctively
and closed them; clutching by the
whose droning,actifoonrthhumndy
. singing.
enormous musquitoes, hundreds
sndosf
almost .deafened me.noise now
The air was literally filled by a
• dense swarm of these insects ; and
their repeated and venomous
f stings
the agony caused by
It was a perfect plague was indescribable.
Illock was slung some ot
gypt. Rowley, whose hare-
t.ton,gue ; I heard him 9 yards from mine, soon gave
.
and swearing, with kicking and plunging, spluttering
been .ludicrous s a vigour and energy that would have
under any
matters were just then too other circumstances
• but
moment a s serious for a laugh. At that
cream—but a scream of such terror and an-
guish as I never heard or beforeof
. women in their hour of ae- since—a scream as
bony and extreme peril, sounded
within a few paces of
• and as I did us. I sprang out of my hammock,
so, two white and graceful female figures
• darted or r th
bat h a rather flew by me, shrieking—and ohin
Dios
eart-rending tones—for ' Socorro Socotro For
.c. Help ! help l" Close upon the heels of the
E iives, bounding and leaping along with enormous
strideshi, and springs, came three or four dark objects,
they certainly possessed ; but so hideous and horrible,
sosu unnatural and, spectre-like was their aspect, that their
sad n encounter in that gloomy ravine, and in the
almost darkness that surrounded us, might well have
shaken
the strongest nerves. We stood for a second,
Rowley and myself, paralysed with astonishment at
these strange appearances ; but another piercing scream
restored to us our presence of mind. One of the women
bed either tripped or fallen from fatigue, and she lay a
NNlite, heap, upon the ground. The drapery of the other
was in the clutch of one of the spectres, or devils, or
whatever they were, when Rowley, with a cry of horror
rushed forward, and struck a furious blow at the mon-
• ster with his mucketto. At the same time, and almost
without knowing how, I found myself engaged with
another of the creatures. But the contest was no equal
'2ne. In vain did we stab and strike with our machettoes ;
. our antagonists were covered and defended with a hard
bristly
-We, which our knives, although keen and
Pointed, had great difficulty in penetrating ; and on the
Other hand we found ourselves clutched in long sinewy
-a_ ,wteerminating in hands and fingers, of which the
utellsitheureitlis sharp and strong as an eagle's talons. I
- creaturee •orrible claws strike into my shoulders as the
seized me, and d • pressed
in as in the h
drawing me towards him,
• half
•hug of a bear ; while his hideous half-man
to visage
his ion Was grinning and snarling at me, and
u thin six g, White teeth me,were snapping and gnashing
inches of my face."

BE
Y'."S7C/TLAN Y.
In the present ehapters of his‘?CEdPListsuiorlsoinggy
!lon' Life," Mr. Murray, -whe" on the
of Lon-
• subject of Auctions, takes the opportunity of doing
justice to the immortal George Robins, by far the
most original genius of the day, and who unques-
-. t:Aionably should have occupied a foremost place in
_ M. Horne's " Now Spirit of the Age." We have
long been familiar with the advertisements of this
great master of the descriptive, and have been lost in
' astonishment at the splendid imagery and wonderful
. prodigality of invention that characterise them.
1. ou cannot, says the old roverb " make a silk
Purse out of a sow's ear, p ,
" but George—the alter
of this ads Scott of auctio Walter a proof of the utter fallacy
. ,ge.- By a single flourish of his magic pen
ne can manufacture a palace out of a pig -stye ; con-
vert a horse-pond into a translucent lake dotted with
islands and bordered with fragrant shrubs and flowers ;
and conjure up a noble mansion fit "for the residence
an M.P." in a spot, where to the dull, unimagina-
tive eye of matter-of-fact nothing is visible but a
tumble-down cottage, with an imperfectly developed
wa.sh-house attached' to it ! Then, mark the necro-
mantic powers of his language ! With what exquisite
grace and freedom purling streams and winding rivers
now. in SMALL CAPITALS through his advertisements;
. and stately palaces rise in all the dignity of italics,
with" nothing wanting to render them absolute peace-
• tion, but the smallest possible outlay of money 1 It
is a remarkable fact that " hard and soft water"
, abound in all the. " premises" which George is com-
missioned to dispose of; the rents, too, of the
estate are invariably paid with punctuality ; the
climate is peculiarly " favourable to longevity ;"
' and moonlight falls there with a softness and a beauty
such as are witnessed in no other part of Christendom.
We would not wish to alarm the modesty of this
• gifted being—men of genius are always shy and bash-
ful—but we would humbly venture to suggest to
the Robins that he owes it to his own fame to repub-
, lish his advertisements in one or more volumes, in
• order that remote posterity may know of what bril-
liant flights of imagination the nineteenth century
. Was capable. The "Fortunes of the Scattergood
Family' improve as they proceed, because the author
trusts more to his own resources, and less to an imita-
tion of Dickens. The scene of the first representa-
tion of. Mr. Glenalvon Fogg's melodrame at a minor
theatre is adroitly and humourously touched off.
`lleditations at a Kitchen Window by a Hungry
latsit4'' is it mart; awl-humoured Fern, whose oh--

racier is sufficiently indicated by its title. In " Noctes
Neetarm," a dialogue between two thirsty souls, a
Cantab and a whiskey-drinker, we detect here and
there the jovial, off-hand manner of Father Front.
The " Gaol Chaplain" is somewhat dull and prosy this
month. Mr. Bunn's " Legend of the Revolution" is
a very clever humorous poem of the German school.
We quote some remarks on print-shops, from the
" Physiology, of London Life" :
"Stop here—let us take a lesson in the fine arts at one
of these gorgeous print-shops—take care of your pockets
and flatten your nose against the middle of the window.
No (Me heedlessly passes the print-shops ; a look at
them costs nothing, and there is always something to
please. The wealthy and great go inside the shops, pay
for prints, and possess them ; the vulgar and penniless
stay outside, criticise the engravings, and enjoy them ;
so trivial, after all, is the difference between the man
who has money and the man who has it not. The
sporting print-shops attract us ; one sees what is going
on it the hunting world, without crossing a horseback or
going to Mellon. There they are—magnates of the
chase, in hunting panoply, their dogs, horses, and the
whole materiel of the chase. Next the characatures
while away ten minutes, not without much risible emo-
tion ; the inimitable H. B. puts forth all his powers of •
humorous ridicule to amuse us wayfarers of the streets;
Brougham the Proteus of politicians, is pulled
.into ludi-
crous postures by a string in the hands of the Duke of
Wellington ; Palmerston, as Cupid, blows bubbles, that,
as he blows them, break into empty air ; Peel, as Phae-
ton; drives his triumphant chariot, oblivious of the melt-
ing influence of the sun of public opinion. Our rulers
are, by the pencil of this witty artist, made ridiculous,
and we laugh contentedly, in the confidence of our'own
security. At Cockspur.street, the Haymarket, Bond-
street, and Pall-mall, we have displayed before us the
classical engravings of the day. Here Turner's extra-
ordinary and incomprehensible experiments in colour,
resolve themselves into subject, and become legible un-
der the hand of the translator. The exquisite dogs of
Landseer, with their human faces, are dispersed upon
the wings of the multiplying press. Raphael and Cor-
reggio live over again in the soft, luscious, lithographic
productions of the German school of engraving ; Fanny
Elssler, Dumilatre, Taglioni, in their chosen pas, bound
through the sustaining ether; Wellington, in dresses he-
roic and academic, as like and as unlike himself as it is
possible for the same man at one and the same time to
be, smiles and scowls upon the admiring spectators; Peel's
bland, immoveable, and gentlemanlike features are not
wanting. We see iu the windows of print-sellers what
a nonentity is fame. Here, in the evanescence of a
transitory popularity, statesmen have their places in the
windows, as on the Treasury Bench; when they are in
Opposition, they are deposed from the post of honour in
the centre of the printseller's window, and stowed away,
no longer marketable, in the unenviable obscurity of the
portfolios in the back-shop. The grave has hardly
closed on the remains of a royal duke, or other illus-
trious personage, than he lives again for the mob of
gazers at the print-shops, and continues offered for sale
until somc other great personage appears, whose linea-
ments become, in life or death, saleable commodities.
Even kings are treated with hardly more ceremony, by
those great potentates of Cockspur-street and •Pall-mall.
His Majesty of Prussia frowns upon us in all the dignity
of his huge moustache, for a week or ten days after he
has quitted our shores, when he is deposed from his
window, and Espartero reigns in his stead. Queen
Christina puts the Regent out of' countenance, and the
window, and Narvaez or Bravo, or whoever is upper-
most for the day compels her Christian Majesty to re-
tire into the back-shop, and waste her sweetness in a
portfolio. The print-shops, properly regarded, are not
mere galleries of the arts, bat popular pictorial histories
of England, the Continent, and, in a word, the world."