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

aster is sufficiently indicated by it 3 title. In " Noctes
Nectarz,,,,," a dialogue between two thirsty souls,
Cantab and a whiskey-drinker, we detect here and
there the jovial, off-hand manner of rather Prons.
The "Gaol Chaplain" is somewhat dull and prosy this
month, 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 or your pockets
and flatten your nose against the middle of the window.
No one heedlessly passes the print-shops ; a look at
them costs nothing, and there is always sour thing to
please. The wealthy and great go inside the shops, pay
for prints, and possess them ; the vulgar and penniless
stay outside, criticise the engravinje, and enjoy theth ;
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 MAton. There they are—magnates of the
chase, in hunting panoply, their dogs, horses, and the
whole materiel of the chase. Next the eharacatures
while away ten minutes not without much risible emo-
tion ; the inimitable H. B. puts forli all his pewers of
humorous ridicule to amuse us wayfarers of the street-s;
Brougham the Proteus of poThicians, ;s pulled into ludi-
crous postures by a string in the heeds of the Duke of
Wellington ; Palmerston, as Cupid, Mows bubbles, that,
as he blows them, break into empty air ; Peel, as :Plue-
ton, drives his triumphant chariot, oblivious of the melt-
ing influence of the sun of public opieion. Our rulers
are, by the pencil of this witty artist, made ridiculous,
and we laugh cootentedly, in the coleidence of our own
security. At Ceck-pur street, the Haymarket, Bond •
street, and Pall-na 11, we have eisplayed before us the
classical engravings of the day. Hele, Turn, r's extra-
ordinary and incomprehensible experiments in colour,
resolve themselves into subiect, awl become legible un-
der the hand of the translator. The exquisite dogs of
Landseer, Kith 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 yrs, bound
through the sustaining ether; Wellington, in dresses he-
roic and academc, 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 adaring sp.Ttators ; Peel's
bland, immoveable, and gentlemanlike features are not
wanting. We see in 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 froth 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 some 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 Cockspue7-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, but popular pictorial histories
of England, the Continent, and, in a word, the world."