The Sun.
London, England, 1845-08-02 00:00:00

MAGAZINES—(CONTINUED.)
• COLB URN' S NEW MONTHLY.
`Mr. Harrison Ainsworth has secured the services of tt
powerful staff of contributors to the New Monthly.
Among them are Captain Marryatt, who gives the first of
'a aeries of extracts from the log of a privateer's-man a
hundred years ago, and Mr. G. P. R. James, who has,
in the present number, commenced a new novel, entitled
" Beauchamp," from which we give the following exqui-
site passage, which it would require the pencil of a
Gainsborough to adequately illustrate :
"Nevertheless, we know that every now and then, in May.
comes in a warm and summer-like day, bright, and soft, and
beautiful, full of a tempered sunshine, appearing after the cold
days of winter, like joy succeeding sorrow, and entendered by
the memories f the past, such was the sort of day upon which
the traveller we have spoken of rode on upon his way through
a very fair and smiling country. The season had been some-
what early in its expansion ; the weather had been unusually
mild in March ; frequent and heavy showers had succeeded in
April, and pouring through the veins of the earth the bountiful
libation of the sky, had warmed the bosom of our common
mother to a rich and lovely glow. The trees were all out in
leaf, but yet not sufficiently unclosed to have lost the rich
variety of Inn., displayed by the early buds. The colouring
would have been almost that of autumn, so bright and manifold
were the tints upon the wood, had it not been for a certain
t,nderness of aspect which spoke of youth and not decay. There
was the oak in its red and brown, here and there mingled with
the verdant hue of summer, but beside it waved the beech, with
its long arms robed in the gentlest and the softest green, the
ash pointed its taper fingers in the direction where the wind
was going, and the larch lifted up its graceful spire, fringed
with its grass like filaments, while its beautiful cones, full of
their coral studs, afforded ornaments, that Queens might be
proud to wear. The fields were spangled with a thousand
flowers, and every bank and hedge was jewelled with vegetable
stars; not only the pale violet, and the yellow primrose, but
the purple columbine and the white hawthorn, even the odo-
rous-breathed cowslip, the wild geranium. and a long list be-
side, were all spreading their beauty in the evening air, and
glittering with the drops of a shower not long passed by.
Overhead, too, the sky was full of radiance, warm yet soft,
deep in the azure. yet tinted with the evening light, as if the
sunbeams were the threads of a crimson woof woven in with
the blue warp of the sky."
Leigh Hunt, too, has joined the corps of the New
Monthly, and has this month given us a quaint version of
old Chaucer's delightful tale of " Death and the Ruffians."
Mr. Ainsworth himselfcorttinues his "Revelations of Lon-
don," and Mr. Francis Ainsworth continues his interest-
ing series of papers on the rivers and cities of Babylonia.
The " Roberises on their Travels" are as amusing as
ever, and the gentleman on half-pay gives a most laughter-
inc,eing ace.ount of the adventures which befel him in
consegnence of his advertising for a wife. We have a
kindky notice of poor Barham (Thomas Ingoldsby),
from the pen of his intimate friend Mr. Hughes, and
Pudley Costello gives us two spirit-stirring chapters of
a tale, entitled the Fortune of France or the Hotel de
Cluney, a scene of which is laid in Paris at the com-
mencement of the reign of Francis I. Peter Priggins
gives us a most amusing and Theodore-Hook-like
sketch of society, entitled the Fox in the Well. Peter,
however, must look to Isis laurels ; the author of Jacob
Omnium, the Merchant Prince, is fast treading on his
heels. This is a good number of the New Monthly
and contains greater variety than many of its prede-
cossers. We could wish, however, that some of the
long works were brought to a conclusion, and that the
space devoted to them were occupied by light maga-
zine tales , complete in themselves, such as were wont in
days of yore to gladden the hearts of the readers of the
New Monthly. We like not the system of conti-
nuations.