The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-01 00:00:00

BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY.

Mr. Albert Smith here commences a new work of
fiction with the ominous title of the " Marchioness 01
Brinvilliers." The subject will require a great des'
of dextrous and delicate management to render it
palatable to the reader, for the Marchioness, together
with her paramour, St. Croix—the two most noto-
riotis poisoners of the day—was a heroine in whose
fortunes it is scarcely possible for any one to take the
slightest interest. The story opens in a promising
manner, but we must see more of it before we can
venture to pronounce a decided opinion. The " Close
of the Old Year" is a poem, whose greatest recom-
mendation is that it does not fall below absolute
mediocrity. The " Fete of Peterhoff" is an ani-
mated description, by Mrs. Romer, of one of the
Emperor Nicholas's birthday festivals. We could
have spared, however, the fair writer's exagge-
rated account of the " unrivalled beauty" of the
Czar. The " Boys of Kilkenny " is a lively,
boisterous sketch of certain national oddities,
by a writer who signs himself " An Irish Whiskey-
drinker." The " Gaol Chaplain " continues his per-
sonkl recollections this month, and his stories—whose
only fault is that they are of somewhat too gloomy a
character—exhibit no falling off in point of interest.
" Confessions of De Loude Chiselham ' is a lively tale
from the practised pen of the author of " Richard
Savage." In the " Literary Retrospect of the De-
parted Great " occur the following reminiscences of
the late Charles Mills—one of the profoundest his-
torians of the day, and who—had he lived—would
have realised the predictions of Scott and Southey,
and taken a foremost rank among the authors of his
age... We knew him long and intimately ; and as we
lift'our eyes up from the desk at which we write this
to his bust, which faces us, it seems but yesterday
since we heard him, in his usual buoyant manner,
relate the progress he had made in his last and most
popular work on "Chivalry," which reached its third
edition but a few days before his death, by consump-
tion, at Southampton. The writer is mistaken in
some of his details respecting Charles Mills, who did
not winter at Pisa, but at Nice, and who was not
"thirty-six years old " when he died, but thirty-nine
"Coeval with my acquaintance with him,• and be-
tween the period of boyhood and of college, was my
mole matured friendship with Charles Mills. Charles
Mills ! I think I hear those of my grandchildren who
may, at some future time, pick up this retrospect,
among old bills, or old letters, ask, Who was Charles
Mills ? ' I answer, 'Many a worse man, many a
writer with one third of his knowledge, has lived, and
does live, whilst he is chiefly to be found in a dusty
back-room (that is, his remains), at Messrs. Longmans',
Paternoster-row.'
"He was one of that race, my child, or children, who
may scan what this hand now writes (having 'done,
thank Heaven ! for the present wits these p apers from
Lincoln's Inn)—of a race quite gone by--clean expunged
from society—a laborious gentleman writer. A man of
independent circumstances, not rich, who ch, )se, from
the love of letters, and the desire of fame, to dedicate
hiMself to the fabrication of long historical we Irks, the
very subjects of which would drive our presont :authors
to despair. History of Mohammedanism—lfiN.kory of
the-Crusades, History of Chivalry—admirable, neglected
works, written in a too ambitious style, with the ghost
of Gibbon always in the writer's view, presiding ovor his
library table, but excellent, nevertheless—and, my
daughters, or grand-daughters, or great grartd-daugh-
ters, they were pure I The subjects were delicately'
handled ; for their writer had an infinite seagA3 of what
was seemly, and was a Christian writer.
" was, indeed, sort ofknight-errwat ill his no- i