The Sun. — 1833-10-01 (London, England)

MAGAZINE DAY.  BLACKWOOD'S 211AGAZINE.—P4RT Old Christopher this month is father of twins —a prodigious feat for a gentleman of his years. Each is a lusty bantling, and roars with the lungs of a young Hercules. " Morning Monologues " is a pleasant, sketchy article, whose chief defect is, that it has no fixed aim or purpose. It is anything or nothing, just as the reader pleases. " Who is born ?" contains one or two touching passages. The episode of " Mervyn," though the incidents are hackneyed, is told with considerable feeling. " Edmund Burke " is eloquent and, as usual, indiscriminate in its praise and censure. Facts are no stumbling-blocks in the way of the author. He clears them at a leap with as much indifference as a sportsman clears a five-barred gate. Alluding to the London riots of 1780, he observes, with infinite naivete, that they occurred just at the proper time ; " were placed in the exact point of usefulness." Had they occurred ten years before, then the " recollection would partially have faded away ;" had they occurred ten years later, then they " would have made a parallel revolution in England." What a consolation, in these times of atheism, revolution, and all enormity, to reflect that an English mob is gifted with such a fine sense of discrimination. That they are Utilitarians in their very atrocities, and never kick up a row except "in the exact point of usefulness !" Surely nothing dangerous can ever result from the outbreakings of such a considerate mob ! Further on, Mr. Croly says, recurring to his favourite theme, the French Revolution, that the storming of the Bastile fell, unexpectedly, like a thunder-bolt on Europe. We are surprised at his hazarding an assertion like this. So far from its taking Europe by surprise, not a man of the slightest discernment but was fully prepared for such an event. The storm had been brewing for months : the whole horizon was charged with electricity ; what, then, but the fall of the " bolt" could be looked for ? From the moment the States General were assembled, and Turgot had made his exposee of the state of the national finances—an exposee which all but distracted a people now, for the first time for centuries, conscious of their power, and irresistible in the might of their newly-awakened energies—from that moment the Bastile, which was connected with so many frightful associations of lettres de cachet and other despotic enormities, was doomed to destruction. " Barbadoes'' is a delightful criticism, in which the peculiarities of old Grainger are pointed out in a caustic vein of ridicule. " Montgomery's (not Robert but James) West Indies," too, are noticed en passant, and a few extracts given from that fine, though somewhat too gaudy, poem. One passage strikes us as being worthy to vie in vigour with the most spirited portions of Dryden's " Theodore and Honor'a." The last line is particularly striking : " The Indian, as he turned his head in flight, Beheld his cottage flaming thro' the night; And, 'midst the shrieks of murder on the wind, Heard the mute blood hound's death-step close behind." The word mute " here is full of meaning. The Sketcher " is clever, but too elaborate. The writer has a fine eye for the picturesque, but he is too fond of showing off' his "learned lore" in the Fine Arts. He spoils hii best thoughts by overlaying them with verbiage. " Nights at Mess" furnishes us with a capital specimen of character—and not without some pretensions to originality—in the person of a fat, old, sentimental quarter-master. " America, No. 2," is distinguished by an inveterate hostility to everything transatlantic. It is high time Christopher should outgrow this prejudice.  .P.