The Sun. — 1863-01-28 (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 white 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 girlies 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's invitation to his country-house in the hunting season.— Dickenss " All the Year Round," just published.  A communication from Zurich states that considerable sensation has been produced in that place, by the arrest of the cashier of the Bank, a man about 60 years of age, who has always enjoyed the unlimited confidence of his employers. A complaint had been made that m a sum paid by that establishment some rouleaux supposed to contain gold were filled with pieces of lead cut to the same size. The cashier was arrested, and on a rigid investigation taking place, a deficit of 183,000 f. was discovered. The prisoner, soon after his detection, endeavoured to commit suicide, but did not eneee?d, and is now getting better from the wounds which he inflicted on himself. No ono knows what be can have dine with such a large sum." THE PLANET MARS in very many particulars in its resemblance to our earth is very striking. It would appear from various drawings taken when different portions of the planet were presented to us, that at times parts of these features were blotted out by clouds, while at others they were observed in the greatest detail, apparently through a cloudless atmosphere ; the dark parts, which are presumed--and as far as evidence can go in such matters proved—to be seas, having on these occasions appeared nearly black, as if a perfect tranquillity of surface had reduced the irregular reflection of light to a minimum. Noteworthy and bearing on this is the fact that the spot observed to be the blackest, both in 1860 and last year, is landlocked, or nearly so, supposing it to be a sea, while the brighter portions of the so-called seas are nearly always farthest from the sheltering influences of the land. As seen inverted by the telescope, there is a sea very like the Baltic in shape; but the most remarkable feature, perhaps, is a long sinuous arm of the sea, extending far inland, sometimes resemtling a vast "pothook" laid on its back from east to west as if a channel as wide as that between Liverpool and Dublin existed in Equatorial , Afric I, and ran inland for a thousand miles or so. .1 he blue colour of the darker portions has. on many occasions been st rikingly apparent, the red tinge. having been more rarely noticed. From these observations it would appear that, if lite exist in Mars, it exists at all events under some of the conditions with which we are acquainted.—The Reader. A report is current that a despatch from Constantinople has been received at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris, announcing the decision arrived at by the Conference of Ambassadors assembled to settle the affair of the arms Beet into Servia. The opinion of the Conference is said to be that there was no kind of infraction of the convention of the 19th August, and that consequently there was no need for the Porte to send a commission into the Principalities. The Conference was simply about to draw up some observations which it proposed to address to Prince Comet.