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

meter is sufficiently indicated by its title. In " Noctes
Nectarw," a dialogue between two thirsty souls, a
Cantab and a whiskey-drinker, we detect here and
there the jovial, off-hand manner of Father Prout.
The " Gaol Chaplain" is somewhat dull and prosy this
month. Mr. Bunn'..s " Legend of the Revolution" is
a very clever humorous poem of the German school.
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 of 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 something to
please. The wealthy and great go inside the shops, pay
fior prints, and possess them ; the vulgar and penniless
stay outside, criticise the engravings, and enjoy them ;
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 Melton. There they are—magnates of the
chase, in hunting panoply, their dogs, horses, and the
whole materiel of the chase. Next the characatures
while away ten minutes, not without much risible emo-
tion ; the inimitable 11. B. puts forth all his powers of
humorous ridicule to amuse us wayfarers of the streets;
Brougham the Proteus of politicians, is pulled into ludi-
croifs postures by a string in the hands of the Duke of
Wellington ; Palmerston, as Cupid, blows bubbles, that,
as he blows them, break into empty air ; Peel, as Phm-
ton, drives his triumphant chariot, oblivious of the melt-
ing influence of the sun of public opinion. Our rulers
are, by the pencil of this witty artist, made ridiculous,
and we laugh contentedly, in the confidence of our own
security. At Cockspur. street, the Haymarket, Bond-
street, and Pall-mall, we have displayed before us the
classical engravings of the day. Here Turner's extra-
ordinary and incomprehensible experiments in colour,
resolve themselves into subject, and become legible un-
der the hand of the translator. The exquisite dogs of
Landseer, with 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 pas, bound
through the sustaining ether; Wellington, in dresses he-
roic and academic, 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 admiring spectators; 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
windowa, as on the Treasury Bench; when they are in
Opposition, they are deposed from 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 Cockspur-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 or the arts, but popular pictorial histories
of England, the Continent, and, in a word, the world."