The Sun.
London, England, 1842-01-01 00:00:00

THE DUBLIN MAGAZINE.

This Magazine opens the New Year with great
spirit. The "Curse of Kishoge " is one of the
happiest imitations of the unrivalled Ingoldsby
Legends that we have met with. The hero, a
" Kerry boy," fond of love and whiskey, rides
a race at Midnight with the Spectre Chieftain of
the Lakes of Killarney, O'Donoghue, from whom
he wins a steed; is subsequently charged with
horse-stealing, condemned to be hanged, and
only escapes the rope by the not uncommon
miracle of his constant attachment to the bottle.
For as his biographer writes :-
- he that could lope
With a parson or pope,
Faith it frightened the whiskey to see his mouth ope ;
By the powers of delf
Fathew Mathew himself
Among all, his apostles ne'er met such a swiper ;
Let him bring the worst rascal
That e'er used a cask ill,
And Pat would have drunk him as drunk as a piper.
Oh ! 'twould gladden.the heart of the veriest grumbler.
To see how he swallowed down tumbler on tumbler !
Of " Frigid= sine"
Or brandy or wine, he
Would quaff as a fish does of sea-water briny.
" Nuts and Nutcrackers" is a very clever pa-
per, ,of which, though not partial to continua-
tions, we are glad that we have not seen the last
in this number. it will afford us a couple of
amusing extracts, of which the " Polish Count"
shall be the first :

You cannot open a newspaper without meeting some
narrative of what, in the phrase of the day, is denomi-
nated an attempted imposition. Count Skryznyzk, with
black moustachoes and a beard to match, who, after being
the lion of Lord Dudley Stuart's parties, and the de-
light of a certain set of people in the west end, who,
when they give a tea party, call it a soiree, and deem it
necessary to have either a Hindoo, or a Hottentot, a Pole
or a piano-player, to interest their guests, was lately
brought up before Sir Peter Laurie, charged by 964
with obtaining money under false pretences, and sen-
tenced to three months' imprisonment and hard labour
at the treadmill.

The charge looks a grave one, good reader, and per-
haps already some notion is trotting through your head
about forgery or embezzlement ; you think' of widows
rendered desolate, or orphans defrauded; you lament
over the bard-earned pittance of persevering industry
lost to its possessor ; and, in, your heart, you acknow-
ledge that there may have been some cause for the par-
tition of Poland, and that the Emperor of the Russias,
like another monarch, may not be half so black as he is
painted. But spare your honest indignation; our.un-
pronouncable friend did none of these. No; the head
and front of his offending was simply exciting the sym-
pathies. of a feeling world for his own deep wrongs; for
the fate of his father, beheaded in the Grand Place at
Warsaw; for his four brothers, doomed never to see the
sun in the dark mines of 'robolsk ; for his beautiful
sister, reared in the lap of luxury and wealth, wandering
houseless and an outcast around the palaces of St. Peters-
burgh, wearying heaven itself with cries for mercy on
her banished brethren; and last of all, for himself, he,
who at the battle of Pultawa led heaven knows how many
and how terrific charges of cavalry,—whose breast was a
galaxy of orders only outnumbered by his wounds, that
he should be an exile, without friends, and without
home!—ln a word, by a beautiful and highly• wrought
narrative, that drew tears from the lady and ten shillings
from the gentleman of the house, he became, amenable to
our law as a swindler and an impostor, simply because
his narrative was a fiction.

In the name of all justice, in the name of truth, of
honesty, and fair dealing, I ask you is this right ? or if
the treadmill be the fit reward for such powers as his,
what shall we say, what shall we do, with all the popular
writers of the day? How many of Bulwer's stories are
facts? What truth is there in James? Is that beautiful
creation of Dickens, "Poor Nell," a real or a fictitious
character? And is the offence, after all, merely in the
manner, and not the matter, of the transgression ? Is it
that, instead of coming before the world printed, puffed,
and hot-pressed by the gentlemen of the Row, he ven-
tured to edite himself, and, instead of the trade, make his
tongue the medium of publication? And yet, if speech
be the crime, what say you to Macready, and with what
punishment are you prepared to visit him who made
your heart-strings vibrate to the sorrows of Virginius,
or thrills your very blood with the malignant vengeance
of Iago? Is what is permissible in Covent Garden ori-
minal in the City? or, stronger still, is there a punish-
ment at one place and praise at the other? Or is it the
costume, the foot-lights, the orange peel, and the saw-
dust,—are they the terms of the immunity ? Alas, and
alas! I believe they are.
Next to this, the relative fates of Willis, the
American author of " Pencillings by the Way,"/
and the Boy Jones, claim our especial notice.
Never was good honest John Bull's predilection
for strangers more happily- -hit off than in the
,5010004.31.4.4.tract,wr,,-
Of all the lions that capfloo,and.thewhigisical
surdity of a second-rate set in fashion 'ever courted and
entertained, never had any one less pretensions to the
civility he received than the author of " Pencillings by
the Way"—poor in thought, still poorer in expression,
without a spark of wit, without a gleam of imagination
—a fourth-rate looking man, and a fifth-rate talker, he
continued to receive the homage we were wont to be-
stow upon a Scott, and even charity extended to a
Dickens. His writings the very slip-slop of " corn-
merage," the tittle-tattle of a Sunday paper, dressed up
in the cant of Kentucky; the very titles, the contempti-
ble affectation of unredeemed twaddle, Pencillings by
the way ! Letters from under a bridge. Good Lack—
how the latter name is suggestive of eaves-dropping and
listening; and how involuntarily we call to mind those
chance expressions of his partners in the dance, or his
companions at the table, faithfully recorded for the edi-
fication of the free-born Americans who, while they
ridicule our institutions, endeavour to pantomime our
manners.

Fpast a number of persons have driven
a thriving manyiyin years
gtradein a singular branch of commerce, no
less than buying up cast Court-dresses and second-hand
uniforms for exportation to the colonies. The negroes,
it is said, are far prouder of figuring in the tattered and
tarnished fragments of former greatness, than of wear-
ing the less gaudy, but more useful garb, befiting their
condition. So it would seem our transatlantic friends
prefer importing through their agents, for that purpose,
the abandoned finery of Courtly gossip, to the more use-
ful but less pretentious apparel Of common-place infor-
mation. Mr, 'Willis was invaluable for this nurrae ; he
told his friends every thing that he heard, and he
heard every thing that he could; and, like moray, be
enjoyed a duplicate of blessings—for v 4 jl 4 vlis de-
lightedwasdined by ours.
'Y
He sea
titnerbeydhhisiloluvntvcou4trkliyi,raewin
ear:vs O'Connor did
all h might ; and yet, in the
fry*s; kraiic-,d, Ole ci, lie.
hie. read his OWn poetry, and
Wmeirst terie wfthhiso,lealiroivnalwstarts up equally desirous 9,f-court
secrets, and fifty times as entrpr4knAi -in their search;
he risks his liberty, BETINI 121 m the pursuit, and
what i hi‘ 10.10 A AgO4 y tell you his name, and
Yolt,te allivered—l mean the boy Jones ; not under a
bridge, but under a sofa ; not in Almacks, obtaining it
at second-hand, but in Buckingham Palsce—in the very
apartment of the Queen---the adventurous youth has
dared to illittPlkte iiialself, No lady, however, sends her
album tg him for same memento of his genius. His tem-
ple is not defrauded of its curls to grace a locket or a

medallion; and his reward, instead of a supper at Lady
Blessington's, is a voyage to Swan River. For my part,
I prefer the boy Jones: I like his singleness of purpose:
I admire his steady perseverance; still, however, he had
the misfortune to be born in England—his father lived
near Wapping, and he was ineligible for a lion.
To what other reason than his English growth can
be attributed the different treatment he has experienced
at the hands of the world. The similarity between
the two characters is most striking. Willis had a
craving appetite for Court gossip, and the tittle-tattle of
a palace ; so had the boy Jones. Willis established him-
self as a listener in society; so did the boy Jones. Willis
obtruded himself into places, and among people where
he had no possible pretension to be seen; so did the boy
Jones. Willis wrote letters from under a bridge: the
boy Jones eat mutton chops under a sofa.
The portly figure of Sir William Rowan Ha-
milton, President of the Royal Irish Academy,
adorns the portrait gallery of the " University
Magazine" for this month. The " Vice Legate's
Ball," the " Chapters on ei hostcraft," and " Gas-
par the Pirate," are all very clever. There is an
excellent Review of " Tyler's History of Scot-
land," fast becoming one of the few standard
histories originally written in the English lan-
guage. Altogether the Number is a very good one.