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

MAGAZINE DAY.

Rl,l -_-‘'Ts WOOD'S MAGAZINE.
The r;:cgnt 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 impudence—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 ;
thot gh it is notorious that the Whigs could seldom se-
' the
a majority of even nine on Irish questions, while
e Tories boast of one just ten times as numerous .
Again, with equal gravity, he states that " the bias
to oth gentry and of the aspiring of all ranks is
oware
ds Protestantism," contemptuously regardless
of the well-known fact that the proportion of Ca-
tholics to Protestants its the sister-country is at this
tl
rillnent far greater than it has been for the last
snared years! On the subject of the recent State in Dublin this reckless Tory par-
tisan' is not merely enthusiastic, but breaks out
liStto such bunts of rhapsodical frenzy as would justify
the application of a strait-waistcpat. He describes
_he prosecution as "the mightiest of spectacles which
human grandeur can unfold !" and adds, " the trial
wasi made, and with what perfection of success the
reader knows, for let us remind him that the perfec-
tiro'', a
we speak of lay as much in the manner of the
thei hosl in
its
result—in the sanctities of abstinence, in
y forbearance to use any one of the many decerit
advantages in the reverence for the sublime equities
of law The holy forbearance" of the Crown was
certainy The
in a moat uneqpivocal fashion, by
thet_ striking off of the ten Catholic jurors ; and, as for
1_ he sanctities of abstinence," who does not remember
t_h:nsanctimonious "abstinence" which the ti- eral evinced, when, in his official capacity as chief
Attorney-
vindicator and guardian of the law, he sent a chal-
lenge 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,
soavouring of the most intrepid effrontery. Horace
nee spoke of the first navigator as being a man
"cased in triple brass ;" had the poet lived in these
Sys' :he would have found in the writer of this arti-
much an individual possessed of quite as
Vruch brass as the earliest mariner. The " Pirates of
I" is a wild melo-dramatic tale, whose scene is
in Venice, in the earlier part of the seventeenth
Century.A The " Slave Trade" is a painful document,
aurawn up from materials furnished by an English
clergyman, who was himself on board a cruiser that
captured a Brazilian slave-ship, where not less than four
hundred and seventy negroes, men, women, and children,
Were found chained together like dogs, in a cabin
°
'4q thirty-seven feet long, and three feet and a half
slBll- And this occurred under the vertical sun of the
tropics !
.In I " Moslem Histories of Spain" we find
Same 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! 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
acommand, was not always so, for he once refused
and appnintment to a "favourite" Captain, because he
a teen 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
spirited and graphic, and will remind the
reader -of some of Southey's sketches of
naval actions in his " Life of Nelson." The " Me-
raciira 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
Seuthern 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
153," and in the course of this agreeable expedition,
was half suffocated by fogs, bitten to within an
;1 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
~
cliff which gave way beneath him, and all but
Owned in a mountain torrent which took charge of
als descending person ! Pleasant variety this for two
nights' travelling ! We subjoin the author's account
of the attacks made on him by the musquitoes and
apes during his bivouac in a low valley :
awak." It was somewhere about midnight when I was
!rotined by ate indescribable sensation of oppression
ta 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 vomit() prieto, the fever itself em-
bodied in the shape of a fog. At the same moment and
while I was gasping for breath, a sort of cloud seemed to
settle upon
TunaM d a thousand stings, like red-hot
needles, were into my hands, face,
nee, k e
part of my limbs and body that was not tri—pl3i-ngtnuaervdereyd
by clothing. I instinctively as
rorth my hands
and closed them, clutching by th.e action hundreds of
, e roning,
enormous musquitoes, whose d
almost deafened me. The air was literally
singintsfinlloeidsebnow
a
dense ssvatm
tinoseincotsu;s as
the agony caused by
their water
4d
atiltledSeV It WaS 8, perfect plague
of
Et stings was indescribable.
mock was slung some ten gEIS. _Rowley, whose ham-
.tongue ; I heard'him kick' Y from mine, soon gave
beanodhswerng, with a vigour
ogndanedneprlguyngtihnagt,
would
dtehramvge
ludicrous under any other circumstances
matters were just then too serious for a laugh. At that
moment a scream—but a of such terror and an-
guish as I never heard beseforereanlorsince—a scream as of
ww(i)tnl2.:n in
their hour of agony and extreme peril, sounded
and es a few paces of us. I sprang out of my hammock,
did so two white and graceful female figures
whatdarted or rather flew by me, shrieking—and oh lin
heart-readin tones—for ' Socorro ! Socotro 1 Por
Dios! Help t hens s
Close upon the heels of the
fugitives, bo-undingP a!nd leaping along with enormous
strides and springs, came three or four dark objects,
which resembled nothing earthly. The human form
.'n y certainly possessed ; but so hideous and horrible,
*0 un _ ,
natural andspectre-like was their aspect, that their
encounter in that gloomy ravine, and in the
almost
shaken Ishrkness that surrounded us, might well have
e strongest nerves. We stood for a second,
Reeds
these'sYtr and myself, paralysed with astonishment at
_ens,
6 appearances ; but another piercing scream
restored to us our presence of mind. One of the women
had
teither tripped or fallen from fatigue, and she lay a
whi haaPt
Clutche ground. 'I he drapery of the other
was in the of one of the spectres, or devils, or
whatever rush were, when Rowley, with a cry of horror
star with d frward, and struck a furious blow at the mon-
without k •
his inuchetto. At the same time, and almost
he how, I found myself engaged with
I.:ll4oet.lier of the creatures. But the contest was no equal
:rain did we stab and strike with our raachettoes ;
our
brist4ltL 4441 .',.n3 were covered and defended with a hard
Pointed, 1'4%
Breach our knives, although keen and
v", had difficulty in penetrating ; and on the
other hand we difficulty ourselves clutched in long sinewy
arms, termit .
nails were as astng in hands and fingers, of which the
ottheie hrrinbaiterpciand strong as an eagle's talons. I
creature seized rne, ardsdsrtarwikinegitnnteotmowyasrhdsoublidmer,spraesssthede
me as in the hugvisage owas bear i while his hideous half-man
his long, keen white trZning and
snarling
at me, and
within tax inches of
myetfacwe tre snapping and gnashing
BENTL R t,''s7'''''''ssess.s.
In the present ha MISCELLANY.
don L'f " e itPters
of
his
"
a4tjel e, mr. murra Physiology of Lon-
a Auctions, takes while discoursing on the
ct
justice to the immortal the
rnost original genius opportunity of doing
a George Robins, by far the
tionahly should sof the day, and who unques-
Wlr. Hemet, have c'ecoPied a foremost place in
laag been familiar S.pirit of the Age." We have
descriptive, great master of the with
the advertisements of this
. we, and have been lost in
astonishment
°f invention
th.nevdesnptFridid imagery and wonderful
You cannjot siayis the jell- characterisebtphuratotvGerebo,rg`el
Purse
ofto a a sow's e.are,'"l them.
Scott atiction make
of
this _ ear,
a Waltera silk
proof of the utter fallacy
he image. By a single flourish of his •
ma le pen
can manufacture aal g
•
vent a horse-pond into ace out of a pig-stye
Islands and bord d.a translucent lake dotted with
ere with fragrant shrubs and flowers ;
and conjure
of
ant.
_.„p a noble mansion fit "for the residence
dotellr in a spot, where to the dull, unirnagina-
_ye of matterf-fact nothi •
'amble-4 Ilg is visible lint a
s.own cottage •th an imperfectly developed
wash-ilk: else attached to .tvfol* mantic it! Then, mark the necro-
powers of his language 1 Withwhat exquisite
grace and freedom purling streams winding riverst
flow ill SMALL CAPITALS througlthtmitiN
and stately palaces rise in all the dia vgnietrtiosfemitaenlics:
_Ol h nothing wanting to render them absofute perfec-
ts n, but the smallest possible outlay of mone I I
aboundl :markable fact that " hard • and soft 'water"
in all the "premises"which tnisai d t • George is corn•
one o dispose
estate ars of; the rents, too, of the
el,_
a. e invariably paid with punctuality ; the
4__",n to is peculiarly " favourable to longevity;'
MI MOO/flight fans there withsoftness
a and a beauty
such as are.witnessed
b,. w in no other part of Christendom.
.ete _ would not wish to alarm the modesty of this
I'll d bein _—
'4l--but g men of genius are always shy and bash-
the. Itoh. we would humbly venture to suggest to
lish h. ms that he owes it to his own farhe to repub-
order 141 advertisements in one or more volumes, in
1 _at remote posterity may know of what bril-
Was'ant flightof . • .
s imagination the nineteenth century
capable
pa„, • The "Fortunes of the Scattergood
tssuil3r" improve as they proceed, because the author
• do '1214 More to his own resources, and less to an imita-
tio"._ Of Dickens. The scene of the first representa-
the" °f Mr . Glenalvon Fogg's melodrame at a minor
4 Matre is adroit!
y and humourously touched off.
Iss'scditatio , ns at a Kitchen Window by a Hungry
°e '
is
a tilnart, good-humoured poem, whose cha-