The Sun. — 1849-01-02 (London, England)

XVI. and Marie Antoinette are sad, terrible, and lamentable things, they are to him personally no more than the execution of any other men and woman who perished on the scaffold. We are surprised, nevertheless, to find the author of "Miranda," after pronouncing a just condemnation on the execution of a " woman who was only dangerous in Paris as a flag of conspiracy," declaring that he considers the man who sent Marie Antoinette to the scaffold on the same level with Charlotte Corday, who assassinated a man who had never injured her. Without wishing to exculpate even " the angel of assassination," as Lamartine has styled Charlotte, from the odium which invariably attaches to the shedder of blood, we cannot but think that between the execution of Marie and the assas ination of Marat there exists at least the essential difference which distinguishes the dastardly cowardice of strength crushing helplessness from the heroism of weakness attacking strength. The executioners of Antoinette only gratified their own evil passions. The murderess of Marat voluntarily forfeited her life. An interesting article on the "Literary and Scientific Society of Edinburgh" presents us with some tolerably accurate, but by no means flattering portraits of the literati of Edinburgh in the present day. This article would be more attractive were it in some instances less severe. Very few will concur with the assertion that the merit of the publications of the brothers Chambers is " mediocrity." Mediocrity would never have obtained for those publications the popularity which they so deservedly enjoy. In this opinion w e are borne out by another writer in Tait, who, in reviewing " The Haunted Man," marvels at the cause of the exceeding popularity of Dickens's " Christmas Books." " Great popularity of this kind," he says, " cannot be attained without some foundation. The kindly disposition evinced in the tales would not suffice to sell them faster than the press could throw them off. Shoals of new books will not sell only because the author is a goodnatured man. Mere novelty of style would not accomplish that desirable object. It has a certain inflaence, but one greatly circumscribed within the range of these works. Their popularity evinces their suitableness for the times." If this be so, we may hail it as an auspicious sign, when we call to mind the truthful remark of this reviewer, who, in closing the " Haunted Man," again bears witness " to the perseverance of its author in making all his opportunities subservient to the enlargement of human happiness, and the reduction, or, if it be possible, the removal of human misery." If themes like these be " suitable to the times," again we say it is an auspicious sien of the times. " The English and Dutch in the Indian Archipelago," another chapter on " Scottish Rivers," an interesting biographical article on Thomas Campbell, halt-a-dozen poems of indifferent merit, and some remarks on Mr. Cobden's budget, form the remaining contents of the January number of Tait. One of the best poems above enumerated is suggested by the following singular circumstance, one well calculated to inspire a poem :—" At the time of the ineeincholy wreck of the steamer Atlantic, when forty souls perished, a piece of the wret k, with the steamer's bell attached to it, became, and continues still, fastened between two rocks. During every swell of the waves the bell tones forth its melancholy note over the spot where the vessel's living cargo was engulphed."