The Sun. — 1863-01-27 (London, England)

FAIRSTAR AND DARKSTAR.—I remember how mightily I was enchanted and honoured when my my ,Lady 'Fairstar did me the unfathomable honour of asking me to dine at her splendid mansion in a glorified region of Belgravia ? It seemed to me, then a poor struggling barrister, on a mythical yearly allowance, that I was on the htgh road to fortune at once ; and that I had only to follow my Lady Fairstar's cavalcade to be landed safe in the very heart of the gardens of Aidann without delay. I went, I made no manner of doubt that I went to fascinate and to subdue, and that I should make such deep dints on the heart of our delightful hostess as not even the incessant rubbing of high life would be able to efface. And certainly my lady was gracious to me. But I found, in the end, that all I had made by the white elephant of her countenance, was a portentous bill at my tailor's, another portentous bill at my bookmaker's, an unnecessary supply of embroidered shirt-fronts, and French cambric handkerchiefs, and my laundress left unpaid owing to the transfer of her funds to the pockets of the cabmen. That was what I found, when I took the two columns and added up the cost and the gain of my Lady Fairstar's Russian dinners, with scented ringlets laughingly shaken, and bewildering smiles prodigally bestowed. It was a whit, elephant ; nothing but a white elephan : and I ran away from it. Those grand visits are terrible matters generally. You are asked to a country house. You are acknowledged to be a crack shot and a first-rate rider, you tell a story capitally, and pocket every ball on the board ; but at what a cost do you thus administer to the white elephant of your pride ? At the cost of a year's income compressed into the six weeks of your stay. Butlers and footmen and pages and grooms and gillies and coachmen and the odd men about the place, and the odd women too—all to fee, all to pay—and the little wife left at home to fight with an unruly butcher who hasundisciplined notions of trade, and to tell taradiddles to the landlord, who finds himself under the necessity of "looking you up.; That is your white elephant when you get Lord Darkstar: invitation to his country-house in the hunting season. Diekenss " All the Year Round," just published. A man threw himself on Saturday from. the top tol the of one of the towers of Notre Dame. In his fall he dashed against the point of the niche surmounting one of the arched buttresses. The shock was two.so viol legs g that 8 fellthe body, to the round, body, which struck thecrosswirokoennin The angular mason •work, was literally r while the trunk remained on the buttress. The mutilated remains were gathered up and taken to the Morgue to be identified. It was ascertained that he had been a house porter in the Rue Faubourg du Temple —but the cause of tho self-murder is not yet known.  It is rumoured in matey quarters that the Parliamentary campaign will not commence i❑ earnest until after the marriage of the Prince of Wales, whose "dotation" will be almost the first subject presented to the consideration of tha houses. The debate on the address is likely enough to be stormy ; but politicians will scarcely press on a change wh'ch would embarrass all the arrangements of the Court, and interrupt a time of festivity looked forward to by the whole nation.—Spectator,