The Sun. — 1845-02-04 (London, England)

UNITED SERVICE MAGAZINE. The contents of this periodical are by no means of interest only to the two services—the army and navy—the general reader may always derive instruction and er.tertainment from its pages. Sketches of travel, records of adventure, scenes of strange countries, in strange times, all so different from every-day experience, and the reality of almost all we encounter, give this Magazinean interest surpassing that of imaginary fiction. The first paper of the present Number is an important one, on the " Spirit of Military Institutions," by Marshal Marmont ; there are many suggestions in it well worth the consideration of military authorities; the remarks on weapons and clothing seem founded on good sense, and to be practical also. The rest of the contents do not require to be detailed.  RRITISH MAGAZINE, This Number contains a spirited article on " Modern Hagiology, or the Lives of the Saints," and exposes .the ambition of_the extreme Oxford party in very just  "Nobody but a chess-player can appreciate the strong tie of brotherhood which links its amateurs. When men spend much time together, they become accustomed to each other, like horses used to run in the same coach. For a fellow chess-player, a man will do that which he would refuse his father and mother. The habit of breathing the same air and looking at the same chessboard creates a friendship to which that of Damon and Pythias was mere How d'ye do?' This it was upon which I reckoned. Schmidt and I had played thousands of chess games together, and barely exchanged three words. Ile no more suspected me of being a banker's clerk than of being the King of the Sandwich Islands. We had mostly singled out each other as antagonists, because pretty nearly matched; and Schmidt loved me the more, as I knew, because it was not every man who would play with him. " Schmidt was the slowest chess player I have ever seen. He has been known to sit three-quarters of an hour over a move, his head covered by his hands, and then to be discovered fast asleep! In everything he was the same. Correct as the sun; but a slow sort of person, for all that. Schmidt was the kind of man who, meeting you in a pouring rain, says, What a wet day this is!' A wholesale dealer in prosy truisms, anti nothing brighter; and yet covered all over with a portly assumption of consequence, which famously dusted the eyes of the vulgar. I had ever been a judge of physiognomy, and knew my man. How many Schmidts there are in the world! Excuse my thus moralising at the dinnertable, if only for its novelty." We have read the review of " Anti-Coningsby, or the New Generation Grown Old," and fully agree with the writer in reprobating the custom of making personal attacks on living public characters. However clever these sallies may be, if the habit be encouraged, it may lead to a taste for scandal and personalties in fictitious writing highly to be deprecated. It would have been better if the writer of this review had confined himself strictly to his subject, instead of wandering into other matters, and digressing upon things not immediately connected with it. But upon the whole it exhibits a careful consideration of the matter in hand, and is written in a dispassionate and careful manner. We subjoin the following extract, as expressing an opinion of the author of " AntiConingsby," in which we heartily concur : " The writer of Anti-Coningsby' has only had two objects in view : first and foremost, to glorify herself (we are satisfied the book is the production of a woman); and, secondly, to heap abuse and ridicule upon everybody against whom she has conceived a dislike. In carrying out the latter object, she displays a boldness and recklessness quite as great as that which prevails throughout Coningsby.' She occasionally, too, shows great cleverness and power in depicting the ludicrous. But there is a superabundance of coarseness and vulgarity ; an utter insensibility to all gentle and proper feeling ; and a magnitude and intensity of spitefulness that makes the book, upon the whole, loathsome. No doubt, in composing Coningsby,' Mr. D'lsraeli was actuated by some motive beyond the mere desire of giving vent to his personal spleen ; but the author of Anti-Coningsby' wrote for no oter motive except this' combined, as we have observed, with the desire to puff herself ; and this has been done in a very coarse and clumsy manner, and is far more likely to produce disgust than admiration in the mind of a stranger. A clever shrew, a witty virago, is, in our opinion, the most odious thing in nature. We heartily wish Sir Peter Laurie would take these Furies under his care, and put them down,' together with suicide, Puseyism, and woodpavement, against the which nuisances all the powers of his vigorous mind are at present directed. As an appropriate punishment for these viragos, we would suggest to the worthy Alderman that they should be put under the same ban with the real, old, original Furies who ran that tremendous burst after the slayer of Cly' temnestra