The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-01 00:00:00

and bowing plumes—were all calculated to impress him
who beheld them with a belief that ghostly influence was
at work ; and had he yielded to his fear and rushed from
the place, he would have given another phantom-story
to the already existing veritable stock. But, though only
sixteen years of age, the youthful Baronet was one of
those few persons whose presence of mind rarely deserts
them. Summoning his faculties, and coolly investigating
what he saw, he ascertained that the pale spectre was a
reflection in a pier-glass (till then unperceived) of him.
self in his night-gear, which, as he moved, would of course
seem to be moving towards him ; the wailing noise was
produced by wind through partially-opened windows,
near which the corpse lay ; this wind, increasing in
strength during a gusty night, had forced open the fold-
ing-doors that had been only imperfectly and hastily se-
cured (perhaps in trepidation) when a bed was prepared
for the youth ; and the strong breeze had also given a
waving motion to the black plumes placed on his father's
coffin. Having fully ascertained these points, the young
mourner retired to his inner apartment, deliberately
bolted the folding-doors, offered up a prayer to his Maker,
and was again blessed by sleep."

FRASER'S MAGAZINE.

In a temperately written article on the " General
Policy of the Government," wherein Fraser seems to
be doubtful whether he ought to praise or blame Mi-
nisters for the conduct they pursued during the last
session of Parliament, he insists on the expediency of
the Premier's putting a final stop to the conciliation-
system, as regards Ireland. " Let him only appear
to waver," says our monthly Contemporary, "let him
take but one step further in the way of conciliation,
towards those whom no concessions will mollify, nor any
reasoning convince, and there is an end to his Govern-
ment at once, perhaps to the monarchy." On the con-
trary,there is an end to Sir R. Peel's Government if he
does not attempt to conciliate Ireland, for recent ex-
perience must have convinced him, as it has con-
vinced many other Conservatives, that a coercive
system of policy will never be productive of
any other result than that of increasing the exas-
peration, already quite bitter enough, in the sister
country, and placing additional power in the hands
of the repeal agitators. Fraser next proceeds to eu-
logise the honesty of Government, and instances Lord
Lyndhurst and Sir James Graham as patrons of
spotless integrity. The selection is 'an unfortunate
one, and, to our thinking, wears an aspect of the most
refined irony. " Courses of English Reading"
contains some pleasant literary criticism and gos-
sip. The Reviewer, however, in accordance with
the taste of the day—a taste more remark-
able for its eccentricity than its soundness—is
over-rigid in his strictures on " Johnson's Lives of
the Poets," which is a work replete with mascu-
line sense and judgment, though it may be, perhaps,
deficient in that quick and impassioned sensi-
bility which is so conspicuous a feature in the
poetical criticisms of Hazlitt, Coleridge, and
Wilson. Speaking incidentally of Drvden's trans-
lation of Virgil, the Reviewer tells us that
"it is remarkable for its occasional splendour,
but it is not happily accomplished !" This is a just
observation ; the version has passages of exceeding
excellence, but, as a whole, is anything but Virgilian
in its tone. The sixth book of the " ./Eneid "
is nobly rendered ; in places, indeed, the
translator equals, if he do not surpass, his
original; but we miss the touching pathos of the
fourth book, to which Dryden knew not how to give
effect, for he had nothing of the pathetic in his na-
ture. In reference to Pope's " Eloisa to Abelard,"
the Reviewer maintains that it is an immoral
and impious poem. This is sheer cant. The
poem is neither one nor the other, but is
unexceptional in both respects. Even John-
son, the most fastidious of moralists, says of it :
" ' The Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard' is one of the
most happy productions of human wit; the subject
is so judiciously chosen that it would be diffi-
cult to find another which so many circumstances
concur to recommend. The heart naturally loves
truth. The adventures and misfortunes of this
illustrious pair are known from undisputed history.
Their fate does not leave the mind in hopeless
dejection, for they both found quiet and
consolation in retirement and piety. The story thus
skilfully adapted has been diligently improved by
Pope." The " State Murder" is a striking tale, trans-
lated—or rather adapted—from the French of George
Sand. " Classics of the Table" is an amusing article
on the subject of after-dinner wines. In " Roadside
Sketches" the writer explains the causes—which are
anything but flattering to our national vanity—why
the English are so generally unpopular on the
Continent. En voici

" How they hate us, these foreigners, in Belgium as
much as in France ! What lies they tell of us, how
gladly they would see us humiliated I Honest folks at
home over their port wine say, Ay, ay (and very good
reason they have too), national vanity, Sir, wounded—we
have beaten them so often.' My dear Sir, there is not a
greater error in the world than this. They hate you
because you are stupid, hard to please, and intolerably
insolent and air-giving. I walked with an Englishman
yesterday, who asked the way to a street, of which he
pronounced the name very badly to a little Flemish boy;
the Flemish boy did not answer, and there was my Eng-
lishman quite in a rage, shrieking in the child's ear as if
he must answer. He seemed to think that it was the
duty of ' the snob,' as he called him, to obey the gentle-
man. This is why we are hated—for pride. In our free
country a tradesman, a lacquey, or a waiter, will submit
to almost any given insult from a gentleman—in these
benighted lands one man is as good as another ; and pray
God it may soon be so with us ! Of all European people,
which is the nation that has the most haughtiness, the
strongest prejudices, the greatest reserve, the greatest
dulness ? I say an Englishman of the genteel classes.
An honest groom jokes and hob-nobs, and makes his way
with the kitchen-maids, for there is good social nature
in the man ; his master dare not unbend. Look at him,
how he scowls at you on entering an inn-room ; think
how you scowl yourself to meet his scowl. To-day, as
we were walking and staring about the place, a worthy
old gentleman in a carriage, seeing a pair of strangers,
took off his hat and bowed very gravely with his old
powdered head out of the window. lam sorry to say
that our first impulse was to burst out laughing—it
seemed so supremely ridiculous that a stranger should
notice and welcome another.
" As for the notion that foreigners hate us because we
have beaten them so often, my dear Sir, this is the
greatest error in the world : well-educated Frenchmen
do not believe that we have beaten them. A man was once
ready to call me out in Paris because I said that we had
beaten the French in Spain ; and here, before me, is a
French paper, with a London correspondent discoursing
about Louis Buonaparte and his jackass expedition to
Boulogne. He was received at Eglintoun, it is true,'
says the correspondent, but what do you think was the
reason ? Because the English nobility were anxious
to revenge upon his person (with some coups de lance) the
checks which the grande homme his uncle had inflicted on us

in Spain.'
" This opinion is so general among the French, that
they would laugh at you with scornful incredulity if you
ventured to assert any other. Foy's history of the
Spanish War does not, unluckily, go far enough. I have
read a French history which hardly mentions the war in
Spain, and calls the battle of Salamanca a French victory.
You know how, the other day, and in the teeth of all
evidence, the French swore to their victory of Toulouse
—and so it is with the rest ; and you may set it down
as pretty certain, Ist. That only a few people know the
real state of things in France, as to the matter in dispute
between us ; 2d. That those who do keep the truth to
themselves, and so it is as if it had never been. These
Belgians have caught up, and quite naturally, the French
tone. We are perfide Albion with them still. Here is
the Ghent paper, which declares that it is beyond a doubt
that Louis Napoleon was sent by the English and Lord
Palmerston ; and though it states in another part of the
journal (from English authority) that the Prince had
never seen Lord Palmerston, yet the lie will remain up-
permost--the people and the editor win believe it to the
end of time."