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

" The hearts that turned this wAy %aenarsicic;il a fine
array,-
• Forsake me now as though I ceased.to be ;
I win no painter's gaze, I hear no minstrel's lays,
The very nest falls from the leafless tree.
" But the kind and merry tr.in will Ixr sure to come
again,
With love and smiles as ready as of yore,
I Must only wait to wear my robe so rich and fair,
And they will throng as they have thronged bvfore.
"Oh, ye who dwell in pride with parasites beside,
Only lose your summer green laves, and ye'il see
That the courtly friends will .thange into things all cold
and strange,
And forget ye as they do the winter tree."

HOOD'S IfIAGAZIAE.
Mr. Hood takes the field in strong 6irse this
month, with prose and verse of the best, serious
and humorous, matter-of-fact and fanciful,. and
plenty of all. IE4 prospectus prepan d us fur
amusement, and what is a very remarkable cir-
cumstance—for prospectuses ats. notorious liars
—it promised us nothing which the Magazine,
of which it was the avant couries, has not realised.
We were told to expect poetry that should be
something better than a mere tagging together
of rhymes, and lo ! we have it in the " Banta( d
House !" We were told to expect drollery,
which should possess humour of idea as well as
of expression, and, lo! it rises befioe us in the
shape-of Mr. Burrage, the tee-totaller, and his
drunken helpmate ! flencetbrth let not pro-
spectuses be totally discredited, but let it he
charitably conceded to them, that it is just pos-
sible that they may once in a way speak the
truth, if only by. accident ! And now "to busi•
ness," as they say on the Stock Exchange. The-
", Haunted House" is a rhymed romance by the
editor, of a stern and ghastly character, ,and
abounding in descriptive touches as vigorous and
circumstantial as any to be met with in the
" Peter Grimes" of Crabhe, or the " Mooted
Grange" of Tennyson. The story, such as' it. is,
is vaguely hinted in outline, which—very judi-
ciously, we think—is left to be filled up by the
reader's imagination. If we have a fault to find
with this impressive poem, it is, that it is rather
too much overlaid with description, and that
the same images are more than once repeated,
Varied only in point of expression. We give a
few of. the most graphic passages :
" The keyhole lodg'd the earwig and her broOd,
The emmets of the steps had old possession,'
And march'd in search of their diurnal food
• In undisturb'd procession.
"As undisturbed as the prehensile-cell
Of moth or maggot, or the spider's tissue, '
For never foot upon that threshold fell, •
To enter or to issue.
" O'er all there hung ,the shadow of a fear •
,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted.
" Howbeit, the door I pushed—or so Idream'il—
Which slowly, slowly gaped,—the hinges creaking
With such a rusty eloquence, it seem
• That Time himself was speaking. •
"But Time was dumb within that Mansion old,
Or left his tale to the heraldic banners
• That hung from the corroded walls, and told
Of former men and manners.
"Those tatter'd- flags, that with the open'd door,
Seem'd the old wave of battle to remember,
While fallen fragments danced upon the floor -;
Like dead leaves in December.
" The startled bats flew out—bird after bird—
The screech-owl overhead began to flutter,
And seem'd to mock the cry that she had heard
Some dying victim utter!
" A shriek that echoed from the jointed roof,
And up the stair, and further still and further,
Till in some ringing chamber far aim f
It ceased its tale of murther!
.‘ Meanwhile the rusty armour rattled round,.
The banner shudder'd, and the ragged streamer;
All things the horrid tenor of -the sound
Acknowledg'd with a tremor.
" The antlers, where the helmet hung :Ind belt,
Stirr'd as the tempest stirs the forest branches,
Or as the stag had trembled when he felt
The blood-hound at his haunches.
" The .window jingled in its crumbled frame,
.And through its many gaps of destitution.'
Dolorous moans and hollow sighings came,
Like those of dissolution.
" The wood-louse dropp'd, and rolled into a ball,
Touch'd by some impulse occult or mechanic;
And nameless beetles ran along the wall.
In universal panic. •
" The subtle spider, that from overhead
Hung like a spy on human guilt and error,
Suddenly turned, and up its slender thread
Ran- with a nimble terror.
" The very stains and fractures on the wall •
Assuming features. solemn and terrific,
Hinted some Tragedy of that old Hall, •
Lock'd up in hieroglyphic."
The lines which we have marked in italics are
full of apt significance; and, in particular, the
investing of the banner with conscious lire by
applying to its flutter in the wind the epithet
"shuddered," breathes the true imaginative
spirit. Mr. Hood must give us more poems of
this sort, for it is a nobler intellectual triumph to
stir the heart than to tickle the midriff. lo the
" Reminiscences of Bayonne" an affecting anec-
dote is related of •a young and ardent Spanish
girl who became insane front having Met with
the very common-place catastrophe of a cross in
love. Greatly to our satisfaction and somewhat
,to our surprise, she does not—as is the case with
most heroines in sentimental magazine tales—
go mad to the sound of soft music, with dishe-
velled tresses hanging loosely on her white mus-
lin gown. " A Tale of Temper" is rather eccen•
trio than humorous, and is thrown in. we
presume, by way of make-weight. " Great
Torn of Oxtbrd" is the narrative of a drunken
collegian who fell—or dreamed he fill -into the
ball of a bell, and while thus incarcerated,
held an edifying conference with the tintionalm-
lary Spirit. Parts of the story are well enough ;
but, as a whole, it should either have been more
humorous, or more bold and decided in its wild
extravagance. At present, it halts tamely and
timidly between the two extremes. " Mrs.
Burrage, a Temperance Romance," is told in the
quaint, desultory, arch, and roundabout mariner
of" Tristram Shandy." The humour, hoWever, is
the author's own, and it is turned to excellent
account. " Albums" is very so-so twaddle.
Luckily, it is short. " A Christmas Carol in
Prose,"_is a generous notice—from the i•Editor's
pen, we suspect—ot Mr. Dickens's latest produc-
tion, which we reviewed a. day or two since
in The Sun. "An Irish Rebellion" is -a capital
quiz, written in the imperfect and perplexing
English of a maul-servant, of the fOrmidable ac-
counts with which the papers have ;so long
teethed, of the rapid progress of the Repeal
agitation. In closing our notice of this new
periodical, we must not omit to Melilloo the
admirable engraving which is prefixed by way
of illustration, to the " Haunted House." We
know not when we have seen a work of art
more carefully finished, even to its minutest
deWls.

AINSWORTH'S MAGAZINE.
Mr. Ainsworth opens his new talc of "The
Court of Queen Anne" with much animation
and directness of purpose, bringing us at mice,
and without ceremony, into the company of some
of his leading personages. In pourtraying the
Duke of Marlborough, however, we will just
whisper in his ear that the less he, insists on that
great General's " " the better, for
he had not an atom of it in his character. Am-
bition was hiS idol, and to this he unhesitatingly
sacrificed consistency —principle—honour-o.a-
-titude—every quality, in short, that
.Constitutes
the real greatness of humanity. lie was beset
too, in his autumn and his old age,. by that
paltriest and most humiliating of passions, ava-
rice; how then could such a man be magnani-
mousl Passing this slight defect in the pre-
liminary sketch of the Duke's character, we
may observe that Mr. Ainsworth has becu sin-
gularly fortunate in his choice of subject; and
his dextrous introduction of the wily adven-
turer, Guiscard, will give him an opportunity
in due course of exhibiting his admirable de-
scriptive powers to advantage, in: that im-
pressive and dramatic scene where the baffled
spy attempted the assassination of Harley
at the Council-table —an incident which
.Swift has told • so feelingly —an unusual
thing with him—in his "Journal to Stella."
The dialogue between Marlborough and his wife,
where Mrs. Mashamn is the theme of their (14.
course and the object of their suspicion, is In the
author's most natural and forcible manner, being
a correct index to character—the greatest recom-
mendation that dialogue can possess. Ckfirleil
011ier's " Adventure of'a Benighted:Travellcr,"
though slight and barren In point of incident, is
told so pleasantly that it is impos,ibie to read it
without interest. "Daphne of Antioch" dr.-
scribes with infinite minute tress or detail that
enchanting, voluptuous.spot, of which Milton has
spoken in all the sternness of biz; Puritanism,
and which Gibbon—for this sort of theme waS
greatly to his liking —htis oketpheti with such
unction in his nnrivltlled history.
,Mr. Francis
Ainsworth, we perceive, is at variance with both
these great authorities, and insist 00.1 h snore
ingepuity Orin ftirPe; !hitt diP of Pdpline
has been sbamefulty calumniated by the *ataista