The Sun.
London, England, 1828-05-16 00:00:00

The Archbishop of CANTERBURY, we regret
to learn, has been confined by indisposition for some days
past, to his apartments in the Palace, Lambeth.
COURT OF ALDERMEN.--The LORD
MAYOR held a Court of Aldermen en Tuesday, at Guild-
hall, at which seventeen Aldermen, besides his Lordship,
attended. The statement of the produce of the Orphan's
Fund, for the quarter ending the sth of April last, was
delivered in, and the CHAMBERLAIN directed to take the
proper steps under the provisions of the Act of Parliament
for the discharge of 15,3001., part of the outstanding debt,
The Inquest of Portsoken Ward made a presentment of the
very great nuisance and obstruction in the public ways
there, which is created by the assembling of persons for
the sale of old clothes and other goods within that ward ;
upon which the Court referred it to the Alderman of the
Ward, to give such directions to the City Solicitor as he
should see fit. GEORGE BERNARD, Esq. surrendered his
office of one of the Common Pleaders, and Enw 4,RD BUL-
LOCK Esq. was admitted in his stead.

EASTBOUUNE, MAY 12.—Yesterday morn-
ing two children of Lieutenant HawiaNs, of the Coast
Blockade, stationed here, fell over the cliff, nearly 30 feet
high, but happily escaped without further injury than being
dreadfully lacerated and bruised.
Yesterday evening an inquisition, which ex-
cited considerable interest, was held at the Guy Earl of
Warwick, Belton-street, Long-acre, before THOMAS Stilt-
LING, Esq. coroner, to inquire into the death of a man
named WILLIAM JOHNSON, having the appearance of a
labourer, whose death was reported to have been accelerated
in the eating-house of Mr. WOODROW, High-street, Blooms..
bury. Several witnesses were successively examined, and it
appeared by their evidence that the deceased was a com-
mon beggar ; and on Tuesday last he entered the shop of
Woonitow, in company with another man named
M‘Gaavr, and had some beef, for which they paid before
they ate it, The deceased appeared somewhat intoxicated ;
after he had finished his meal, he got up and attempted to
walk out, but had not stepped two paces before he :fell
backwards and expired. On searching his pockets, some
money and vagrant-passes were found. The witnesses,
on their cross examination, said, that not the slightest
violence was offered to the deceased. The jury returned a
verdict, " That the deceased died by the visitation of God."
MYSTERIOUS OCCURRENCE AT SALT HILL.
—On Wednesday morning, between four and five o'clock,
as the Company's Bath Coach was passing on its road to
London, from Bath, about three hundred yards below Salt
Hill, the coachman was called to by two women, one ap-
parently about fifty, and the other about twenty years of
age. The elder• one, requiested to be taken to Hammer-
smith, but the young woman said she was not going. As
the elder woman was getting upon the coach, a man took
a bundle up from the ground, which was lying by where
the women were standing ; the bundle was wrapped up in
a red cloak; and on the man taking it up, a dead male
child fell from it, most dreadfully mutilated about the head
and one foOt. The child was naked, with the exception of
a sock on one foot, and washed quite clean, and the head
entirely
empty, which likewise appeared to have been
washed, as the brains and all the internal part of the head
said the child had sprung from fromahenr
were missing. The
sut ok
ne
gd
obnreabsetinNgvhigleues
and had fallen under the wheel of a waggon. They had
previously been seen, at three o'clock in the morning,
walking through Slough, in the direction of Bath, from
London. The young woman declared she knew nothing
of the old woman, or the contents of the bundle, but bad
merely waited for an hour with her, until a coach came
by. The women were detained, and are now in the care
of the ostler at Salt Hill, until the affair is properly inves-
tigated. An inquest has been since held on. the body,
when the Jury returned i verdict of " Accidental Death.

THE SPIRIT OF TILE PLAYS OF SHAKSPEARE,
BEING A SERIES OF 11.1.D9TRATIVE F.NGRAVINCS.
BY F. HOWARD. LONDON, 1828.
Often, in every variety of form and style, as we
have met with " Shakspeare Illustrated," we can-
not recall a single instance in which we have seen
justice done to the wilder and more poetic creations
of his mind, his ghosts, fairies, imps, witches, &c.
We have never seen an Arid, never but once an
Enchanted Island, and never—not even by Fuseli—
a characteristic delineation of the Three Witches.
They have all been either too much "of the earth,
earthy," or else exaggerated beyond all due bounds.
Our artists, with scarcely one exception, have
looked on Shakspeare's supernatural beings, rather
with the eyes of anatomists than poets. Having
ascertained, for instance, that Caliban was crook-
ed and ugly, they seem to think that they
have ascertained enough, arid, forgetting that dis-
tortion is not imagination, have made him simply
an ill-looking dog, with legs like a parenthesis,
and mouth from ear to ear. The ease is the same
with Ariel : a pair of wings attached to decent-sized
shoulders, two legs, each blessed with a most bounti-
ful abundance of calf, a pretty face, and a small patch
of drapery, mak:', ssp, with most artists, the consti-
tuent parts of this delicate and visionary spirit.
They want the poetic medium, or, as Wordsworth
finely phrases it, " the vision and the faculty divine,'
whereby they may be enabled rightly to appreciate
such fine imaginative creations. These defects apply
with peculiar force to Mr. F. Howard. His Caliban,
except in one instance, looks like a gaunt over-
grown charity school-boy, whose deformity of
features is the mere inspiration of the tooth-ache.--
His Ariel, too, wants expression; it has nothing
abstract or poetic about it, and looks as if it
would just as lief lie in a cart-rut as "in
a cowslip's bell." Again in his Illustrations of the
Midsummer Night's Dream, it is astonishing how
little lie has made of Titania, Oberon, and their de-
lightful little fairy subjects. The poetry that Shaks-
peare has flung so lavishly around them is totally
dispelled by Mr. Howard : the Fairy Queen in his
hands is a pretty slim boarding-school girl, Oberon
a young dandy of the modern water, and Puck, the
never to be forgotten Puck, an ugly undersized
chimney sweep. These deficiencies, however, it is
but justice to state, apply solely to our artist's il-
lustrations of the poetry of Shakspeare, wherever he
has to deal with his more natural characters, he is
almost invariably successful. His figures of Prospero
and Miranda, in the Tempest, are eminently
beautiful and characteristic; the one (as he should
be) is solemn, dreamy, philosophical, grand in
form and face ; the other, delicate, sensitive, and
full of a certain sweet earnestness of countenance;
a creature in short made for love and all the gentler
affections. There are few things finer than Illustra-
tion, No. IX. of the Tempest, where Miranda, seated
beside her. father on the sea-shore, is looking up
tenderly in his face, beseeching him to save the crew
of some distant vessel, which is faintly seen rocking
nunderrecumbentce position of of a storm, raised
byo the v
pros‘apetreor,.:nia the
gic The .
the figure, the uplifted arm and half-averted face, are
executed in the truest spirit of grace and beauty.
Sycoi•ax putting Arid into the Pine—in one of the
earlier designs from the same play—forms the sole ex-
ception to what we have just hinted about Mr.
Howard's deficient conception with regard to Shak-
speare's spirits. The witch is here drawn with Consuni-
mate.boldness and a truly fiendish malignity of counte-
nance : the long lank outstretched arm and deter-
ruined attitude have a world of appropriate expression
about them. The Illustrations of Illacbeth are ex-
cellent, wherever the lady is introduced; Macbeth
however himself is, throughout, inexpressive, and
the charger on which he rides (see Nos. 11. and V.)
looks too much like a hard-mouthed dray-horse.—
No. IV., Lady Macbeth goading on her husband to
the commission of murder, is full of character :
the lady's face is stern, tragic and resolved, and re-
minds us of Mrs. Siddons in her best days. We
object, however, in his illustrations of this tragedy,
to Mr. Howard's perpetual introduction of the
witches; they are, throughout, intrusive and super-
fluous. Macbeth's crimes are perfectly intelligible,
and reconcilable to all received notions of human
nature, without supernatural agency; being at every
fresh sin resorted to, by way 'of apology for his
otherwise inconceivable enormities. The usurper's
leading fault was ambition; but ambition wrongly
directed—and in these few words what a world of
iniquity lies hid ! The mere mention of them will
sufficiently account for all that was dreadful and
depraved in Macbeth's heart ; there need no witches
to step in and apologize for his errors. 'the Illus-
trations of As You Like It have a fine pastoral
feeling about them ; they breathe of the woods, and
are full of little sylvan touches of character—can we
speak more highly in their praise ? Our favourite
is No. XIII., where Touchstone and Audrey are
coming up to Sir Oliver Martext to be mar-
ried ; there is considerable comic expression
about it. All's Well that Ends Well is through-
out delineated with spirit and fidelity, espe-
cially in the scene where Helena is represented
pleading to Bertram ; her clasped hands, earliest
face, and impassioned attitude have a very striking
effect. The Illustrations of Hamlet are, from first
to last decided failures ; Mr. Howard has not entered
deeply enough into the spirit of this surprising
drama, adequately to design from its scenes. He
should rememfier that its different characters are
not such as lie on the surface of society; Shakspeare
dtluiegafrotrido them justice, must
themartist
who intoou
would desire
depthsto of his own mind, and
bring to his task a corresponding share of reflection.
Llatulet looks like an attorney, the Ghost like' a fool,
a
At present the designs are vulgar and7i,anpenxi,pigre of inexpressive:
Shrew
the K
hu vre,is
illustratedinglike si
j a blfer superior
rior
style;
it
is
chaste, simple, and expressive, and sufficiently con-
vinces us that Mr. Howard is more likely to succeed
as a delineator of real life than of imagination. He
has considerable spirit and freedom ; apparently a
just conception of character; is remarkably happy in
his groupings (which are for the most part graceful),
and fails only where some of the greatest names in
modern art have failed before him.

A gentleman . respectability in this
neighbourhoodreceived, ie o,eeil.,fsd, greaafetw
days
ago, a commission
from France to purchase and seed, thither a quai:tity of
wool. He accordingly made the purchase, but on apply-
ing to the master of a vessel to export it to France, the
latter at once flatly refused, saying that he durst not take
it, for the last time he had taken wool to France, his ves-
sel was very near being confiscated, the French Govern-
ment having passed a law, prohibiting the importation of
wool, except in vessels of one hundred tons burden.—
Brighton Gazette.

On Wednesday, during g the review, the troops
were directed to stand at ease, and most of them dis-
mounted for a few minutes. One of the horses finding
perhaps thinking he had quite
sufficientpretty
himselfty u
r od disengaged,
exercising, started off out of the ranks at a
dggPaoedlosired the example ; and the first, hear.e aT4I
The next horse (not willing to lose
good company) f
ing the sound of hoofs at his heels, quickened his speed,
till it actually became a very capital race. To stop them
was impossible, as all the gates were open, and away they
came, a distance of about two miles, till they halted in the
Market-place. At first, apprehensions were excited lest
the owners h‘d received some injury; but the facts were
soon ascertained, and occasioned no little merriment,—
Nottingham Mercury,