The Sun. — 1856-11-01 (London, England)

PRAYER GRANTED.  --" Why, Dick, what's the matter ?' I never saw such deep despair, such wordless hopelessness, such a foretaste of doom, in any human face before. He shook, his teeth chattered, and I saw the heavy dews of night had penetrated his very bones. A fatal illness seemed stealing over him.  " Matter !' he answered with a sob, stretching forth his arms, and turning his sad sunken eyes to, the sky ; "I'm wearied.to death. I'm sick, sick to death, and I wish to God that I was dead, and all was ended ! ' "Now, Dick was neither a skulker nor a grumbler. Indeed I rarely have known a blither, cheerier fellow. But the deadly illness, and much privation—besides that, he had a wife and child at home—had brokesa poor Dick's spirits fairly down, and he spoke with all the sincerity of a man that had left off hoping. " Come, cheer up !' I began but did not finish.' " Before the words were out of my mouth he lay a horrible spectacle several feet away from me. Bang smash ! and a ball struck him full on the forehead, pashing the skull into a hideous pulp, and rolling over and over my poor comrade, found the rest hoe sought for. I certai❑ly thought it an awful manner in which his prayer was granted." Awful indeed, but furnishing a moral oven more applicable to our rulers than private individuals. Death to him would appear a release from intolerable suffering. " Reminiscences of the War inthe East, by a Military Chaplain" are continued and " A Few more words offered on the Euphra tes Railway ;" beside which there aro a. number of professional articles. The " Retirement of Sir Charles Yorke," and the expected advent of Col. Forster as his successor, are to the Editor's taste, as his remarks on " The Fleet at Naples " are to ours.  Frazer.—A. lengthened dullness, long drawn out, is this seasonably-dreary November number of Frazer—" Regina," as the old " Town and Country Magazine" before us loves to call herself—Aegincr, this while, at least, of all the magazines born out of the month of Fogs and Suicides ! For " Poetry," we have palmed off upon us a preposterous little prosy quip in rhyme called " ln Richmond Park"—eight lines in all very newly comparing fern, oak, ivy and holly to Youth, and Manhood, and Age, decorated with Love and Endurance. While a little further on, "The Brothers " are odabrated by N.N.S.—in stanzas that would be irredeemably inane, were they not occasionally galvanised by a passing conceit into the contortions of the spasmodic. Fancy a " monthly," the conspicuous attractions of which are papers as alluring in subject as—" Glasgow down the Water, as the " Memoirs of Frederick Perthes," as the second. and (fortunately) concluding part of the "Journal of a Tour in the Crimea," as " Communication with the Far East," as " Mansfield's Paraguay," and as " Sketches on the North Coast" by a Natural—no, by a Naturalist ! The lapidary at least may discover something of interest for him in the second chapter upon " Ancient Gems "—a paper relating especially to lapis lazuli, to agates, to the onyx, the sardonyx, the malachite, and the cornelian. "Meg of Elibank " is the name of the " light article " in the number—pleasant reading enough in its way, were it not occasionally incoherent. The criticism of the month is the one relating to "Jami, the Persian Poet." And the " political article " of Frazer for November is a rather tedious reply to the inquiry—" What are the United States Coming To ?" The real and actual reply to which interrogatory will be given through the ballot-box by the aggregated voters of those same States upon Tuesday next, the 4th of this present momentous month of November. The portion of this concluding contribution to " Regina," referring to the thirteen English Colonies, out of which came forth the grand and powerful democracy at present known by the collective title of the United States—the New England Colonies, Georgia, the two Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania—might have proved sufficiently interest• ing in its way, but that the manner of its composition is, in truth, so insufferably dull and commonplace.