The Sun.
London, England, 1826-11-14 00:00:00

TUESDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 14, 1826.

(Concluded from our passer of tht 7th inst.)
The penalty upon Clergymen, who fail to comply
with the provisions of this Act, is severe. If any
Clergyman shall knowingly and wilfully solemnize
matrimony in any other place than a church or chapel,
where banns may he lawfully published ; or at any
other time than between the hours of eight and twelve
in the forenoon, unless by special licence ; or without
due publication of banns, unless lirente of marriage be
first obtained from a person of competent authority ;
every such person shall, upon conviction, be deemed
guilty of Felony, and be transported for the space of
fourteen years. Moreover, if any person, falsely pre-
tending to be in -Holy Orders, shall solemnize ma-
trimony according to the rues of the church of Eng-
land, he is, upon conviction, to be adjudged guilty of
felony, and liable to the penalty of transportation for
the same term. The prosecution must be contmenced
within three years after the offence is committed.
Provision is, also, made to secure the property of
minors, in the case of a marriage obtained by a false
oath or fraud. If marriage be solemnized by a licence
procured by wilful false swearing, as to any matter to
which such party is hereinbefore required personally to
swear or if a valid marriage shall be procured by
banns, between persons under twenty-one years, not
'tieing a widower or widow ; such person knowing that
such party had a parent or guardian then living, and
that such marriage was had without the consent of
such parent or guardian, and that banns had not been
duly published ; then, in every such case, an informa-
tion may be filed in the Court of Chancery or Court of
Exchequer, through such parent or guardian, who can
sue for a forfeiture of all estate, right, title, and interest
in any property, which bath or shall accrue to the party
so offending by force of such marriage ; and such pro-
perty shall, under the direction of the Court, be secured
for the benefit of the innocent party, or for the issue
of the said marriage. The parent or guardian must,
within three months after his or her knowing of such
marriage, make oath before a Master in Chancery or
Baron of the Exchequer, that such marriage has been
solemnized without his or her consent, or of any other
parent or guardian of the minor married, to the know-
ledge and belief of the relator so making oath.
It is also further enacted, that all previous agree-
ments, settlements, and deeds, executed by the par-
ties to any such marriage, obtained fraudulently, or
without legal consent, if found contrary to, or incon-
sistent with, the provisions of security as shall be made
under the direction of the court as aforesaid, shall be
absolutely-void, and have no force or effect. It is
further provided, that any original information, to oh,
tain a declaration of such forfeiture as 'aforesaid, must
be filed by the Attorney or Solicitor-General within
one year after the solemnization of the marriage, by
which such forfeiture shall have been incurred, and
must be prosecuted with due diligence ; and daily ac-
cessary party to such information abscond, or be or
contiatie out of England; the court can order such
person to appear within a limited time,tm*if ip4tife
person does not appear, the court can proceed to make
such decree or order as would have been made, if such
person had appeared to, and answered such information.
In order to establish the validity of ably marriage,
'whether by banns or by licence, it is not necessary to
give any proof of the actual residence of the parties in
the respective parishes wherein the banns are publish-
ed : nor any proof that the usual place of abode of one
of the parties, for fifteen days, as aforesaid, was in the
parish where the marriage was solemnized.
It is also provided, that in no case whatever shall
any suit he had in any Ecclesiastical Court, in order
to compel a celebration of any marriage in the face of
the church ; though such a law or custom formerly
existed.

Every marriage must be registered in the parish
register-book, in the presence of two subscribing wit-
nesses. Any person convicted of wilfUlly making a
false entry in the register-book, or of altering, forging,
or counterfeiting any entry ; or of altering, forging, or
counterfeiting any licence of marriage ; or even to
utter, and publish as true, a false, altered, counterfeited
register or copy thereof; or any forged, false, altered
licence of marriage ; or shall destroy, or cause to he
destroyed any register-book, or part of such register-
book, with the intent to avoid. any marriage, or to
subject any person to the penalties of this Act ; every
person so offending, shall, upon conviction, be deem-
ed guilty of felony, and shall suffer the punishment of
transportation for life.
No part of ihis Marriage Act extends to the Mar-
riages of the Royal Family ; nor to Jews or Quakers,
where both parties profess the religion of the Quakers
or of the Jews. Moreover, this act extends only to
that part of the United Kingdom called England.

LItEkATURE.

EDINBURGH REVIEW•IO.BB.
This is an admirable Number', iShether we look to
it for purposes of amusement or instruction. It is,
besides, remarkable, as, indeed, most of the latter
series have been, for the liberal and temperate tone of
its politics, which have, it seems, laid aside the ex-
ulting and intolerant spirit of innovation that charac-
terized and defaced their earlier days, for calmer and
more dispassionate speculation. " The flaming pa-
triot," says Junius, when alluding to Hattie Tooke,
" who so lately scorched us in the East, now sinks
calmly in the West, and is hardly felt as he descends."
So may we say,of the Edinburgh Review, a change,
however, in its character, which is, perhaps, as at-
tributable to the decline of party virulence, as to the
natural effect of experience.. Among the leading articles
in the present Number is a masterly one .by Mr.
Jeffrey, refuting the doctrines of Phrenology, and
proving, most triumphantly, that moral and physical
consequences are no more deducible from any an-
terior or posterior bumps on the caput or occiput,
than the fact of the moon's being inhabited, is
deducible from thr rotundity of a Dutch cheese !
----If, indeed, it were so,—if the energies of
the human mind, whether in literature, love, politics,
war, or religion, were solely occasioned by correspond-
ing humps on the skull, how great a poet, sentimen-
talist, statesman, warrior, and devotee, must an Irish-
man appear after a row (that hot-bed on which bumps
on the head are raised as naturally as mushrooms on a
dung-hill) at Donnybrook fair. But Mr. Jeffrey has,
in a disquisition half playful, half serious, proved the
utter falsity of such philosophy ; and we gladly re-
fer our readers to it, in preference to wearying them
by any weak arguments of our own. The next article
entitled " On the Corn Trade," comes out at a happy
juncture, when the public mind is, from circumstances,
directed to the subject ; it is full of matter, and pro-
ceeds, not as might have been expected from a pre-
vious acquaintance with the Review, on diverting but so-
phistical theory, but on sound arguments derived
from practice; which practice, its nature, and its origin,
are laid ostensibly before us. The " Narrative of the
Surrender of Buonaparte" is characterised by a calm,
enlarged spirit of inquiry, with one strong sentence in
it, with the justice of which we cordially agree. It is
hardly, indeed, possible to manufacture a dull article
from such interesting materials ; he must be a super-
lative genius that can do so, and accordingly the
review before us, is amusing and instructive in the
extreme. " The Parliamentary History and Review'
contains an able analysis of the proceedings of the two
houses of Parliament during the Sessions of 1825,
1826, together with a few critical remarks on the chief
measures of the Sessions. These remarks, though to
suit the politics of the Review, they be damnatory of
Tory measures, yet concede much to the present able
Administration of the country ; and even when they
condemn, ti0..69 in ,tl. atyla pore akip ,to vointrandation
thinia invective. . All Aisle extorted from them by
the spirit of the age, which knows . neither ji_arty nor
faction ; a Tory, in fact,,
differs little from a Alqiig, ex-
cept that the one is in, the other out of place, and
.
accordingly during the last Session the Whigs were
the staunchest supporters of Government. We re-
commend this article, to the particular notice of
our readers, convinced that they will find in it per-
petually recurring indications of a liberal, gentlemanly,
and expansive intellect. The " Letters on the Church"
may be read with equal advantage ; and, on the whole,
we venture to recommend the present number of the
Edinburgh Review as the most unexceptionable, in
spirit and opinion, of any that has for years been
published.

LITERARY SOUVENIR, Fon 1827.

This graceful little annual comes before us with a

the attractions that wit, fancyi and feeling can throw
around it. Scarce a page is• devoid of interest, to
heighten which, the aid of our first engravers has been
called in, and the result is a volume that surpasses all
its predecessors. Mr. A. Watts, indeed, is eminently
qualified to superintend such a duodecimo of elegan-
cies as the present Souvenir. Enriched with sensibility,
if not profound, yet amiable and tender, his mind
of an autumnal cast,---if we may use such an expression
—sheds its own mild guardian light over an annual,
intended as a keep-sake to youth and beauty, and
which should consequently be replete with sentiment.
Among his prose contributors is Washington
Irving, who puts forth his claims to attention
in a little sketch, entitled the " Contented man,"—
(" Discontented," it should be, for that is the moral
of the tale.) The story is evidently taken from life,
but the ingenious reasonings of the old man, about his
having only to fancy himself Lord of Versailles, Saint
Cloud, &c., to be so, are borrowed, unacknowledged,
from honest Isaac Walton's reflections, on seeing a
fine Park near Tottenham meadows. H. K. White
(who does not recall with that name the recollection of
his wild" unfinished drama ?") contributes a posthu-
mous poem, entitled, " To the Wind at Midnight,"
which is full of a certain solemn, strange melody, as if
the night breeze itself had come sweeping across his
heart train the grave, while he penned the stanzas.
They are exceedingly beautiful ; not unlike what
Mitford, as usual,
if, instead of paint-
iSnalg,vahteorhalldosstauwdioeudhpl
oheatvrey.7riAttieiisrs,
gives us a pleasant sketch from her picturesque little
Berkshire village, of Three-MilesCross ; but why
in the infinity of her local sketches, does she not
present us with the portrait of that fine old
English yeoman, the Miller of Swallowfield ; she
knows whom we mean, and knows also that he
is worth a thousand poachers—and more exe-
crable still—country Romeo% To the poetical
himself has contribu
department furnished by our living writers, Mr. Watts
ted two mellow chastened poems,
characterized by a felicitous diction, rich naturally, yet
kept down h ,eannot help y—ssethinking so--too
great a severity of judgment.
,As much fine feeling
is destroyed,---or frittered away till it has lost its fresh°.
nese----hy over-fastidiousness, as by over-carelessness.
But verbuin Sap. We give Mr. Watts's lines on a
Grey Hair, first from the quaint novelty of the title,
secondly) from a firma coniiction that none but a mind,

cast iri a poetical mould, could have extracted se
merit from such a subject,
THE GREY HAig:
Come, let me pluck that silver hair
Which 'mid thy clustering curls I see :
The withering type of Time or Care
Hath nothingi sure, to do with thee!
Years have not yet impaired tlai grace
That charmed me once, that chains me now;
And Envy's self, love, cannot trace
One wrinkle on thy placid brow ! •
Thy feature( have not lost the bloom
That brighten'd them when first we met,
No:--rays of softest light illume
Thy unambitious beauty yet 1
And if the passing clouds of Care
Have cast their shadows o'er thy face,
They have but left, triumphant, there
A holier charm—more witching grace.
And if thy voice bath sunk a tone,
And sounds more sadly than of yore,
It bath a sweetness, all its own,
Alethinks I never mark'd before!
Thus, young and fair, and happy too—.
If bliss indeed may here be won—
In spite of all that Care can do ;
In spite of all that Time bath done;
Is yon white hair a boon of love,
To thee in mildest mercy given ?
A sign, a token from above,
To lead thy thoughts from earth to heaven ?
To speak to thee of life's decay ;
Of beauty hastening to the tomb ;
Of hopes that cannot fade away; •
Of joys that never lose their bloom ?

Or springs the line of timeless snow
With those dark glossy locks entwined,
'Mid Youth's and Beauty's morning glow,
To emblem thy maturer mind ?—.

It does—it does : then let it stay ;
Even Wisdom's self were welcome now;
Who'd wish her soberer tints away;
When thus they beam from Beauty's brow ?

Our limits warn us to a conclusion ; suffice it to
say, that Miss L. E. L., who, we think, has now
been abundantly bepraised, contributes the usual mo-
dicum on love, together with an aspiring Phaetontic
attempt to reach the sublimity of Byron, in stanzas
professing to delineate his character. But the Childea
mind is not to be fathomed by a pretty young
poetess with fine eyes, although that poetess be even
our English Sappho. By the bye, talking of Byron,
brings us at once to the subject of his portrait in the
present volume ; if this be indeed a resemblance, what
becomes of " the mind, the music breathing from his
face," which his idolizers all declare were so indica-
tive of it. We see nothing breathing from it but a
good-natured sociality---heightened perhaps by a dash
of small sarcasm. In fact, it is a genuine English
face, just such a one as settles on a lively fat gentle-
man of thirty, who was a chubby boy when breeched.
Whether this be the character of Byron's physiognomy
we cannot tell (having never seen snore than his Lord-
ship's coat-tail, when he was stepping into his carriage
near Piecadilly, in ihe year of grace IMO,' if it be, it'
is the index ofst jolly, dimpled- little gentleman, with
a roguish eye, one who could pen small., stanzas to
Stella, and be the Adonis of country maids. The
rest of the engravings, with the exception of this, (we '
quarrel only with the expression of the face, not the
execution,) are inimitable.