The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-10-04 00:00:00

FIUDAY, ALIGAZINE DAY. Fraser, of course, comes first, and, in the season of the yellow fear, we are happy to say REGINA looks as fresh as the spring. The following is a slashing article, in which old Cobbctt plays his part : BULWER, WESTNIACOTT, COBBETT, JOHN WOOD OF PRESTON, AND OTHERS. Poor Bulwer has lately published a most unfortunate congeries of trash, called England and the English ; he should have enti tled it Cockneyland and the Cockneys. The book is nothing more nor less than a paltry collection of the various stupidities which were deemed too stupid for the New Monthly Magazine. We have the same nonsensical impertinence about the House of Commons—the same extolling of the mean people who compose the liberal part of that assembly, and their idiotical talk—the same struggling and plunging to unite the hack-literary man, drawing his wages from a bookseller, with the character of the independent gentleman of long descent, deriving his revenue from his acres—the same horrid stuff about the gentility of the unheard-of Bulwers, and "all the rest of it," that infects all Bulwer's works, sacred or profane. In a word, Bulwer is the new "king of the cockneys." Af fectation, impertinence, arrogance, stupidity, ignorance, male volence all these qualifications for the throne-literary of Cockaigne are his in abundant store. He does not wear yellow breeches, we admit; hut he does sport a particoloured neck cloth, bedaubed at the bottom with a gilt chain. He walks into a drawing-room with a high-striding strut, and endeavours to talk sweet nothings to the ladies, who soon shrink from his con tact, warned off partly by the disgusting style of his conversa tion, and altogether by the unsavoury odour of his breath ; which, Lady Morgan declares, would knock down a copul, a word in the Irish language signifying a horse. He fancies himself as handsome a. man as Malvolio ; and everlastingly smiling in cross garters, shews off in the appropriate livery of that immortal flunkey, as his representative in " the reformed house." The man is generally acknowledged to be a blockhead past redemption; and we shall take another opportunity of dissect ing his book ; in the meanwhile it is our duty to remark, that one passage it contains has had the good fortune of awaking the ire of Westmacott. Bulwer—himself the shabbiest of mankind —had the insolence to " show up" Westmacott, under the name of Sneak, and to attribute to him various mean things, similar to those which Bulwer himself was and is in the habit of perpetrating. Into this controversy we shall not enter, for the very good reason that Westmacott has taken proceedings against poor Bentley, the hapless publisher of this rubbish (al ready sufficiently punished by the want of sale of his good-fur nothing speculation) ; and intends, we understand, to call Bul wer as a witness in the case. There he will stand in court to be sifted; and as we take it for granted Westmacott will secure a proper counsel, we are certain that there will be some fun. We shall review the "testimony of Balwee" at no small length, when the time comes. - . . In the mean while, during the dependence of this suit, our friend of the Age has taken the cudgels in his own hands, and demolished the great Shabbaroon in splendid style. The first paragraph of the pamphlet before us is excellent. " a work published with your name, you hare done your self the honour of attacking me. This you had a Rerfeet right to do —no man entertains more profound contempt for you than I ; and no man will more constantly give expression to that feeling. It has been , my ambition through life to deserve the hostility of such arrogant coxcombs as yourself, and I am delighted to find your name enrolled among my public enemies." . This is very well ; what follows is better. Bulger had been so rash as to talk of beating Westmacott. In spite of the juvenility of the name, we do not think the New Monthly has a chance against the Age. We back the veteran, at any odds. At all events, if Bulger meant anything beyond a cowardly ro domontade, he is bound to try his luck after the following retort from Bernard Blackmantle, appearing unmuffled, and without the gloves:— _ But, sir, when you talk of personal castigation, you afford me an opportunity (which not even my scorn for your drivelling character can induce me to pass over) of publicly meeting the threat of a blus tering bully. Yet, no—the class of bullies (and, according to your own bout, you have mixed with all classes) are, at all events, pos sessed of the semblance and pretence of manhood, and would have just cause of complaint if mentioned in conjunction with a sneaking and cowardly puppy. You, sir, must in this, as in all instances, stand alone. You belong to no class. The aristocracy justly despise a scribbling fop, the smallest of the poor small gentry. The literary world, with equal justice, despise the tuft-hunting cad of Henry Col burn. In parliament you are laughed at, and, in society, the object of ridicule. But though thus immeasurably below the bully, I will in pity bestow on you a few words of public notice." These aro "words that burn." Here Bulwer, who had de. Glared his intention of belabouring Westmacott, is by the said Westmacott called a sneaking and cowardly puppy—a scrib bling fop—the smallest of the poor small gentry—a tuft-hunt ing cad of Colburn•—a butt of the House of Commons. Has Buiwer beaten Westmacott? Not he! he thinks better of it. Then succeed some extracts from the Age, in which the non sensical pretences of Beau Gingerbread are duly held up to contempt; and then comes something about ourselves, which we cannot forbear quoting:— " Your address to Lockhart, and likewise to Picken, are well known. An able writer in Frayer's Magazine soon exposed, with crushing hand, the impudent absurdity of the letter. Lockhart has hitherto despised yon too much to make any answer. Base and un grateful you are in your attack on him ; for the main ideas, brutally perverted, of your novels, are stolen from his Adam Blair or Reginald Dalton, or the imitators of these works. By and by, perhaps, Lock hart may notice you in some withering sentence. To whom, then, have you awarded the weed of praise 7 To the worst authors of the sham fashionable school; to old D'lsraeli, and to the pet scribblers, male and female, of the Edinburgh Review." We flatter ourselves we did demolish the letter to Picken with " crushing hand." We may say " adieu, sir," to Bulwer, with great consolation to our own minds. Why Lockhart does not punish him we cannot tell; but we take it for granted that " there's a bra' time coming;" or perhaps the game is too low. From Lockhart down to Bulwer the descent is rather steep. We nevertheless recommend the Quarterly Reviewer to bestow a kick on the expelled New Monthly man, whenever he finds it convenient. It need not be very hard; for a slight inflic tion of such a foot as Lockhart's would be quite sufficient to destroy such a fragile object as that which Bulwer would present for pedal punishment. And here wa let him go. He came into our magazine world with an impertinent swagger, as if he was of different clay from the rest of us. He insulted the very patriarchs of our tribe in his first essays, with a sort of reckless impudence which called for immediate punishment. It c ould not be expected that we, the old long-trained veterans of magazinery, were to he fluttered like doves in a dovecot by the first intruder among us, even though he had written some smart magazine papers, bound up in,a volume called Pelham; and accordingly he was taught the difference. We have set the gentleman in his true light before the public, and he has skulked away from our corps with a damaged character and a battered countenance. His farewell to the readers of the New Monthly is one of the most comic specimens of lugubrious buffoonery ever exhibited on any stage, and only equalled by his namesake Liston's appearance while walking to his own funeral in the Illustrious Stranger. Bulwer himself, no doubt, imagined it to be something as touch ing and stupendous of interest as the farewell of Buonaparte to his Guard at Fontainebleau. In one respect it somewhat re sembled that celebrated leavetaking, because both Bulwer and Buonaparte had most materially thinned and scattered the con gregations which they addressed. So now, as he has left us, we leave" him. Henceforward he may be the prey of Westmacott, if that Great Captain of the Age thinks such garbage worthy preying upon. Bulwer may depend upon our word, when we assure him, that if he does not take some notice of the pamphlet which we have been just reviewing, he may abandon to the day of his death any pre tensions to the character of a gentleman. Adieu, sir 1 2. As we have above exhibited one pair of periodical writers in single combat--if that can be called combat where all the heavy blows are on one side—we think it may not be an inappropriate wind-up to give a passing notice of another contest, in some degreo of the same kind. Cobbett has been exposing. one of the fifty mean Whig jobs which characterise this mean ministry of ours, and the ministerial papers have had orders to abuse him in consoquence.— Among those engaged in this work, we are sorry to see the once independent Morning Chronicle, which has now degrmled its free condition to the servile posture of a Treasury hack. It defended the appointment of John Wood, the patriot of Pres ton, and his associate., to highly paid places on a quack com mission, for the duties of which (if any thing honest were in tended) they were wholly unqualified, and attacked Cobbett for his exposure of the job. The sage of Oldham is not a man to be knocked about with impunity; and in his Register of 21st September he thus returns the compliment:— " Desrna.vrx TAX-P.ATBR9.—It was naturally to be'expected, that the pulling out of rearing Rushton by the hair of the head, and of sly and creeping Parkes by the heels, and the hustling of John Wocd about, as we do a detected shop-lifter ; it was natural to expect that these vermin, thus exposed as they were in the last Register, would become furious and extremely tonguey. That which I expected has taken place. John Wood, snug in his sixteen hundred a year, eats his fat mess, and keeps quiet, like a yard-hog, when he comes at night for the swill : you may half beat his brains oat ; but to squeak, he must cease to eat ; and, as my Lord Althorp knows as well as any man in England, the devil can't make him do that, while there is a drop at the bottom of the trough. How often these greedy tax-eaters must remind my lord of those hogs, of which he has long been so famous a breeder, and a pair of which, such as he once gave to John Price, I wish he would give me, not of his two-legged ones, for God's sake ! Not of his roaring Rushtons, his Parkeses ; bat of those honest, and much more intelligent foustlegged creatures, being of a reddish brown ground with yellow stripes. How often, when beset by the swinish multitude of tax-eaters at the Treasury, he must look back with a sigh towards the more moderate herd that he has left in Northarnp tonshire I " It n•as natural to expect that these vermin would come forth with most bitter reproaches. They were lying, 149 they thought, out of tight, and forgotten : quiet as a sow in beans,' is an old saying. You cannot see her the beans are - so high ; the food is just upon a le vel with her mouth ; it is at once nutritive and moist (just like taxes she munches, and stuffs, and sleeps ; the beans afford her fond, drink. and shelter, and, taking good care not to grunt, there she bides very often till pigging-time. Thus happily situated ten days ago were Wood (emphatically called John), roaring 'Rushton, and Joseph Parkes. If you drag out the sow, my Lord Althorp knows what a de vil of a noise she will make : you would think that murder was com mitting in every part of the village at one and the same time. When I was at Havre de Grace, rather more than forty years ago, I saw the people in the grand Place, running towards a spot whence issued fe male screams of ' on neassassine . 1 on ye assassine I' Believing that somebody was assassinating a woman, I ran amongst the rest; but to my agreeable surprise I soon found that it was a woman that kept a certain sort of house, receiving discipline at the hands of a sort of beadle, who had her hands fast to a whipping-post, and was applying a cat very efficiently to her naked shoulders. Something in this sort of way roaring Rushton and Parkes have been crying out against me, since I pulled them out in my last Register. As the means of putting forth their cries, they have resorted to Dr. Black, who, by a long se ries of tackings-about and of dullness, has, at last, brought the poor old Chronicle to that point at which the doctors usually say, ' You may let her have what she likes.' I most solemnly declare that I believe it to be more than two months since I so much as saw a Morning Chronicle, until the 14th of this month, when a neighbour in Fleet street, who generally sees it on its way somewhere else, saw the arti cle which has called forth these remarks : and, seeing that thero was something about me, he, the next day, got the paper second-hand, and made me a present of it ; and thus, once more, I had a sight of dismal old ChroNicle. The hare sight of her so impressed upon my mind the idea of her approaching dissolution, that I instinctively run my hand into my waistcoat pocket, to search for a couple of old Liver pool's heavy pennies to lay upon her eyelids." BLACK WOOD. Our old friend has this month presented us with a double number ; full, in both its parts, of interesting and important matter. We should have no difficulty in fur nishing from these numbers much that is deserving of at tention—none in filling more than our columns will al low with that which, to every class of readers, would be both amusing and instructive—but we have a difficulty in making such a selection as space and time permit. However, to the charge; and passing ovlr " Morning Monologues, by an Early Riser"—an essay of some merit, the first of a promised series;—" The False Medium," not quite so much to our taste;—and two productions of the late WILLIAM GODWIN, Jun.— " Who is Born ?" and " Who is Dead ?"—to which we may be tempted back, as possessing some point ;—pass ing over these, we are arrested by the name of EDMUND BURKE. Of this extraordinary man we have ever thought—as many others have thought besides,—that, whatever the errors of the earlier years of his political life, he redeemed them all by those after bursts of elo quence—those determined efforts of a determined spirit to stem the torrent of revolution which then threatened to burst in upon us; a determination to which he sacri ficed all his ancient political alliances, much of his pri vate friendship. It is impossible in the times in which we live not to call to mind, with feelings of regret and alarm, the forewarnings which this great. genius gave us, and which would seem to be lost not only upon the generation which has arisen since that period, but to have failed in making a due impression upon the rem nant of those of contemporaneous age. If there has been any period since the days of the French Revolution at the close of the last century, when such warnings should press upon our minds, the present is that time; and with this opinion we will call upon—not the bi ographer, but the essayist on the character of Burke, to furnish us anew with weapons wherewithal to fight the demon revolution ; who, if not present in such a plain and demonstrable character as at the period to which we now allude, is scarcely less dangerous from his de signs, and the insidious way in which they are advanced. The article from which we extract sets out with a forcible illustration of the objects and effects of atheistical or anti--religious doctrines, as exhibited forty years ago in France. Let him speak for himself:— EDMUND BURKE. It had been the old maxim of the pretended philosophers of the Continent, that religion was useless or injurious as a fea ture of civil polity; that establishments for religion were among the worn-out expedients of a system divided between the priest and the king, hypocrisy and oppression, the tyranny of super stition and the tyranny of the sword. The charge was extended from the tranquillity of nations to their times of disturbance. Religion was libelled for the work of the passions. She was pronounced to be the cause of more extravagant ambitions, more profound perfidies, more sanguinary violences, and more incurable subversions of empire, than all other causes combined. She crag tho great tragic figure in the drama of human suffer ing; the great mover of those fiercer convulsions and confla grations, which, bursting up from the depths of society, like the lava, or the earthquake, from caverns beyond the reach of man, utterly perplex all human resistance, as they bailie all human precaution. It was pronounced to be doubly fatal, by its sub stituting an illegitimate and imaginary conscience for a sense of duty ; and while it retained the feeble through fear, and sti mulated the enthusiastic by hope, employing the theories of a future world to overthrow the realities of the present, thus de priving reason of its influence, and law of its authority ; and, by the erection of a fantastic tribunal in the heart, turning the re gicide and the rebel into the martyr. This declamation had been a thousand times refuted ; but it was too congenial to the profligate liberalism of the Continent to be abandoned. At length a proof was to be given that Atheism could outstrip at a single stride all the pretended hor rors that had ever been let loose by religion; that men who had exiled the priest, and broken down the altar, might be more ruthless and sanguinary than the fiercest persecutor; and that the wiliest perversion of belief—the most flagitious dex terity of imposture, under the abused name of religion, could be thrown into eclipse, by the remorseless craft and prodigal atro city of a rebellion, whose first proclamation sounded in the astonished ears of Europe, THAT THERE WAS NO GOD I This is succeeded by a short, but pithy view of the state of Europe previously to the breaking out of the French revolution, terminating in a finely drawn and just character of Mr. PITT:— But a preparatory period was still to be passed. The life of nations is like the life of man. The true philosopher can scarcely fail to discover when nations begin to assume a shape —when they develope their successive energies, and when they have reached the point of decline. The last ten years of the eighteenth century were evidently marked for a great European crisis. The state of manners, knowledge, and teelings on the Continent, was evidently ripening for some consummate trial. But it was in England that the most marked evidence of some great preparatory agency was given. The partial failures of Britain in the American war, so loftily compensated by her havoc of the French and Spanish navies on the ocean, were among the clearest lessons of where the true strength of the country lay. And the national enthusiasm was vigorously turned to that arm, on which was so soon to be staked the na tional safety in the greatest of all naval wars. But the finances of England required reinstatement after the vast exhaustion of a six years' contest, carried on at the distance of three thousand miles. An interval, amply adequate to this purpose, now came. From 1782 to 1789, was a time of the most serene, joyous, and productive peace ever known in Europe. All the active inter courses, the graceful employments, the brilliant luxuries, the opulent commerce—,of nations, were in unexampled life. The prevalence of perpetual peace; the unassailable amity of all the thrones of Europe; the establishment of codes of national law, which should preclude all jealousies for all time to come, were among the dreams of the hour, hut they were the dreams of vivid health ; passing fantasies, but the splendid conceptions of mind; at ease,a.ucl exulting is the glow of the prospect around them. Yet this animated day was but a respite. The sentence which bad long gone forth against the guilt of Europe, must be executed ; and the exultation of those days of memorable and almost extravagant enjoyment, was to be followed by the deep est suffering of nations since the fall of the Roman empire. England was . prepared against the change, by her internal vigour, the activity of her laws, and the purity of her religion. But the great instrument by which the power of the empire was to be put in motion, was the minister. Pitt was born to stand at the head of a great nation in its most perilous time. Bold, pure, high-principled, equally disdaining submission to the multitude and subserviency to the throne, he sustained both, and he controlled both ; by the noblest displays of senatorial ability he protected the crown against the aggressions of party in the legislature ; by the most vigilant decision, he coerced this violence of faction in the streets. And, for his reward, he saw party rapidly sink into a depth of popular scorn, which extin guished it as an antagonist of administration ; and the old bit ternesses of the popular heart as rapidly changing into the generous and glowing pride in the triumphs of their country, which snakes the great redeeming quality of Englishmen. Here we are introduced to tne character of B . Intim, which we shall pass over, to mark the approach of those events which worked the great and patriotic change in his character—othat stamped his future fame as the friend of his country—the enemy of revolution:— Twenty years before the Tuilleries was stormed, and the King sent to the block, the English statesman was as incapa ble as the French monarch, of that the element of political ruin was in the streets. But, in 1780, a lesson was given to our country, which opened all eyes and kept them open. A harmless petition on a constitutional subject, pre sented through the legitimate channels, to the legitimate source of redrew; a Protestant petition against a violation of the national law, brought to the doors of Parliament by a body of orderly remonstrants, suddenly gave birth to the most rapid, furious, and devastating outrage, ever known in England. The principles of law and peace, and even of religion, were instantaneously blackened into public havoc; the cloud no bigger than a man's hand grew before the eye into a tornado, that threatened to hurry before it church, monarchy, and con stitution. Its violence was at last checked; but not till the lesson was completely given; till the national mind was fully awakened to the horrors of rabble fury; till the government was put in possession of the whole secret of popular violence, on any subject which might hereafter rouse the populace : and, as if the lesson was to be pregnant with important uses in every point of view, the hitherto failing respect of the empire for the libelled character of one of th e best Kings that ever sat upon the throne, was, in the course of this hazardous period, cleared from all its clouds, by the evidence of personal manliness, sense, and feeling, exhibited by his Majesty, and even the character of royalty itself was illustrated by the public proof of the ger vices which might be rendered by a Monarch in the general perplexity and suspended strength of all inferior authority. Even the location of this extraordinary event seemed to be a part of the same preservative design. It this whirlwind of popular frenzy had come ten or twenty years before, its recol lection must have partially faded away; or at least, it could not have been in the personal experience of the generation by whom the furies of jacobinism were to be controlled. If it had risen ten years later, it would have come in the very tumult of jacobinism, and would have made a parallel revolution in Eng land. But it was placed in the exact point of usefulness; not too t'ar back for personal remembrance, nor too far forward for national preservation. If this theory be fanciful, at least, nothing could be more unequivocally protective than the prac tical results. From that time forth, the eye of government was fixed with wise vigilance upon the first movements of popular disaffection; the symptoms of disturbance, which in other times might have been regarded but as ripples on the surface of the popular expanse, were now justly watched, as formidable indi cations of tempests, that might heave it through all its depths. The universal alarm of England at the now well-known Inuard of letting loose the power of the multitude, strengthened the hands of government to the fullest extent of providing for the public security; rapidly enfeebled the influence of Opposition, until it broke up its ranks, and bringing over the noblest and ablest of its members, forced the remainder into a virtual exile from Parliament, and placed England in a state of direct hos tility with jacobinism, an avowed, resolute, and principled war with all the furies and follies of republicanism, that pointed her out as the unfailing refuge of religion and law, the final barrier of nations against popular license, and the natural, and, thank God, the invincible defender of the last hopes of national inde pendence, against the last malice of Atheistic and popular pas sion, embodied in the form of the most grasping and r-morse less despotism. Another of those preparations was the rapid ascendancy, we might almost say, the supremacy, of Pitt. The sun of Chatham must have been a powerful authority in any age of the legisla ture; but no man is equal to all things, and even his pre-emi nent ability must have been heavily iiapeded, if it had been exposed at once to the activity of an opposition, still retaining public favour, and the embarrassments of a war against the new and startling fierceness of French republicanism. With Fox in possession of the . public heart, and jacobinism wielding energies that seemed to invest it with a title to universal con quest, no ministry could have stood; it is altogether idle to con ceive that even the genius of Pitt could have done more than yield with honour. If he had been summoned to face a French war, at the earlier period, while he was struggling with the India Bill, or the Regency Question of 1788, no strength of man could have sustained "hint under such a complication of difficulties. The perpetual assault in Parliament, and the flood of civil trouble, popular discontent, French circumvention, and European terror, must have broken him down at the first out pouring of the war. But, for some years before, every public event strongly tended to disembarrass the minister of the en cumbrance of opposition. A series of measures, conceived in the rishness of angry ambition, and urged with the recklessness of political despair, continued to break down the vigour of party ; until their conduct of the Regency Question seemed even to render Fox's fidelity to the name of Whig doubtful, to show him supporting principles directly adverse to the creed of his old authorities, and, finally, gave his great rival all the ad vantage of taking the popular side, and carrying his measures through the legislature with a bold and defying disregard of the wrath of opposition. The Regency Question virtually extin guished the whole parliamentary foice of opposition, and strip ped it of all its old popularity in the nation, and deeply alien ated the hearts of its most steady and principled adherents. Some extracts from his correspondence are next given, and partigularly with M. MENONVILLE, a member of the national assembly, illustrative of his views of the then state of affairs of France:— It is clear, from those striking developments of his mind, within so unripe a period as two months after the first blow of the Revolution, and while it still wore its honours in their new est gloss, that Burke had already found the key to the whole mystery. While others saw the Revolutionary shape only as suming the attributes of pomp and festivity, as if to do addi tional honours to the Monarch, his foresight saw the long train of conspiracy that lurked under the ostentation of loyalty.— He saw in the weak concessions, and fatal facility with which the unfortunate King suffered himself to be led into the very place of ruin, the destiny of the " gracious Duncan" sealed; the Government, the laws, and the Crown, on the point of being thrown at the feet of a bloody, perfidious, and regicidal usurpation. He saw, further still, the fate of that usurpation ; and, even at the time when its designs were still cloaked under the most specious covering of patriotism, when all was shew and confidence, lofty protestation and extravagant credulity, he could mark the coming , of the retributive hour, when the man of blood should feel his treachery recoiling upon him self, and successive factions do the work of justice upon each other, until France, sunk in the lowest humiliation, should, like the she-fiend of Shakspeare, groan over the memory of her temptations and her successes, and find, that to wash out that one foul spot of royal murder, all remorse was in vain. But, in tracing this outline of the vigorous and virtuous career of Burke, we are not to forget that he had other quali fications than those of the Senate, and that, largely as politics occupied his life, he had a reserve for the more graceful pur poses of society. No man better knew the value of a general taste for all the forms of acquirement that embellish - life, or their use in the enjoyment of private intercourse, and even in the illustration of the more refractory and uninalleable mate rials of which public Janie is made. An acknowledged and copious source of the superiority of Burke's eloquence was to be found in his extensive knowledge of the graceful arts. Giv ing. him vividness of imagery, rich allusions, and brilliant variety of topic, it threw an unrivalled charm over his style. The French Revolution had now begun its course, and the eyes of England in astonishment, and of the Continent in terror, were attracted to its progress. In the commencement all had been professed purity ; the snow on the summit of the Alps was not purer in the estimate of the thousands and tens of thousands who stood gazing at its first slide. But its primitive position was soon left behind. Then came the mass, gathering, rushing, and thundering, till all resistance gave way, and it rolled down, sweeping strength and weakness before it, ruining all that it reached, and covering the ruins with a new weight of ruin, which seemed to defy the labours of man. Burke's convictions of this tremendous evil grew by the hour, and in speeches, pamphlets, and letters, he deprecated the insane admiration of Jacobinism. We may well be astonished that such admiration ever existed. Where could be the wisdom of furious overthrow? the security of extinguishing all the habitual defences of society against the violence of popular passion ? or the propriety of laying open the national property to the rapine of the populace? What was to be expected from the future cultivation of the po litical soil, when the first act was to-break up the sluices and let loose the waters of pestilence and sterility over it for years ? What was to be the answer of heaven to the offerings of France, from altars where the popular voice was mingled with dying agonies, and where parricides and Atheists were the mi nisters of the worship? But this was a time for the trial of po litical professions. the boasted friends of universal freedom in England took upon themselves the clientship of the bloodiest tyranny ever known. The grossness and rage of the rabble found eager advocates among men proverbial for the haughtiness of their aristocracy; and even the horrid defiances and blas phemous cries of exasperation against Christianity, England, and all that belonged to the name of England, found defenders among men whose watchword was patriotism, whose whole vigi lance was ostentatiously employed in exploring every vestige of fancied oppression in their own country, and whose eloquence was lavished in eternal praises of the immaculate superiority of the British Constitution. To this accurate view of the progress of revolutinary proceedings succeeds the comparison, which, we fear, holds too true, between the earlier of those proceedings and what has recently passed under our observation nearer home, with which we must close our extracts : The spirit of French Jacobinism, and of all Jacobinism, is combined envy and love of rapine. The French populace and their leaders cared nothing for the insulted dignity of religion, for the corruption of the law, for the abst rac ti on o f th e p u blic revenues, or for the levities of kings and courtiers. But they hated the rank which they saw above them, whether virtuous or vicious ,• and thus longed to grasp at the property in the hands of their superiors, whether earned by honour or disho nour. Not one in a million of those who tore down the banners and escutcheons of the French noblesse, burned their mansions and drank their blood, knew or cared whether they were more or less profligate than the clowns around them. Burt they were their superiors ; they inherited a place in society which set them over the heads of the clowns, and the clowns were deter mined to have the grinning triumph of tearing them down. Are the rabble, and the leaders of the rabble. among ourselves at this hour, impelled, or capable of beinn- impelled, - by loftier motives? Their outcries against the abuses of government, against places and pensions, hereditary rank and the existence of an established church, are outcries on subjects of which they know no mote than they do of the Copernican system. Whe ther for good or evil, those things are totally above their means of judgin g . But the cobblers and tinkers who legislate by pull ing down, know perfectly that in destroying those institutions they would level a class superior to themselves; they would have the gratification of tearing down those to whom they could never hope to rise; and in their plunder seizing on pro perty which they could never hope to earn. The popular lan guage of the rabble leaders is full evidence of the gross selfish- i ness of their motives. Their name of scorn for the Pe'er- I age is the proud aristocracy, as if the pride of any class of society could be a political crime; their true offence is, that their rank galls the sense of inferiority. The name of scorn for the clergy is the " fat Prelacy and the lazy incumbents ;" as if either fat or laziness were crimes that could affect the political welfare of the rabble purifiers of the state. But while they are conceived in the gross apprehensions of the crowd, to be the proofs of property, they assume the shape of crimes of sufficient magnitude to embitter every angry and .covetous heart against the possessors of that property. Ihe clamour against the Bri tish prelacy is one of the most undisguised evidences of popular selfishness. Their merits or demerits as servants of religion are totally out of the question ,• their fitness for sacrifice is, that they are presumed to be rich. It never enters into the conside ration of those arbiters of the streets, that British episcopacy is among those institutions which may be said to belong to the people, that its highest offices are not merely open to the sons of the humblest, but that they are chiefly held by those sons ; that prelacy, in fact, throws open one of the widest gates in our whole public system to the advance of the lower classes into the foremost ranks of subjects. No; the craver for plunder, or the rancorous hater of dignities, looks only to the present moment. He would shut up the gate were it ten times as wide, provided he could trample a bishop into the acknowledgment that he was no better than the ruffian who trode him under foot; or could grasp, with his sanguinary clutch, the opulence which en abled a man, probably of the nighest learning and virtue, to eat his bread without the labour of his hands. The cry against the French clergy was not their impurity or impiety, for indi vidually they were popular; and whether popular or not, the loadauds of Paris and 'Versailles cared nothing for their virtues or vices. It was their church income, and on the strength of it they massacred as many of them as they could seize, and ba nished the remainder. In the war of the peasants against the nobility, it was not the gay man of fashion, or the severe feu dalist, that they held as the enemy; their enemy was the pos ' sessor of the neighbouring chateau, the master of so many chariots and horses, the proprietor of so many services of plate. The rental was the treason, and the plunder of all that he was worth, the formal execution of national justice. No man in France thought that he would be the wiser, purer, or freer for the murder of the King; but thousands and mil -1 lions rejoiced in that most remorseless act of blood, as the triumph of their vanity: it made every beggar and bandit in France as great as his King, for the time; and the stimulant was enough with the legislators of the streets, to urge them to the murder of every branch of the royal family in their grasp. Such was the lesson of rabble supremacy in Fiance, and such would be the example in England, if, in the vengeance of Hea ven, we should ever suffer the mob to dictate to our Parliament, or domineer over the educated classes of the empire. 'With the mob all change is rapine in prospect; and all patriotism con sists in the art of pulling d o wn. Let England beware, for she will have her trial yet; the ground is shaking under her feet, and nothing but the vigilance and vigour which saved her before, can-save her again. SUPPLEMENT LIVERPOOL STANDARD. THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY. Our friend Curry stands as high as his neighbours this month, and has done, what has never been done before, brought out an Irish Magazine which has succeeded. We wish him joy, for he well merits the public patron age. The following is full of interest : THE CONDEMNED SOLDIER. EY TUE ALI'IIOR OF "TALES OF WATERLOO." If the present times be chargeable with increase of crime, it will be admitted that there is a striking change in the grade and character of the criminals—a certain order of things has made state offences infrequent. Enactments against treason are now a dead letter in the statute book. The headsman's axe rusts in the armoury of the town. " Noble Lords," and " Gentlemen of ancient decent" seldom appear at the bar of justice—and rarer still does capital punishment fall upon any, removed by birth and fortune from the lowlier classes of the community. . That this change is attributable to any reformation in the principles of the upper ranks, would be a very questionable in ference. In our days the high-born and the wealthy have small inducement to violate the salutary restrictions of the law. However the moral code may be infringed, the criminal one is respected. In breaches of privilege and honour, aristocratic delinquency is chiefly comprised, and loss of character and caste the severest penalty incurred by the offenders. There arc, however, within our own recollection some melan choly exceptions to be found. Men of superior rank have occasionally presented themselves as criminals—and as the well-being of society demands, the impartial hand of justice visited the offence with unmitigated severity. Of the few unhappy cases, one will be remembered with lively regret. For no crime were there more apologists—for no punishment more general sympathy—and while his sentence was accordant to the letter of the law, the sternest ethic lamented that justice required a victim like Major Alexander Campbell. This unfortunate gentleman was the descendant of an ancient family in the Highlands. Having entered the ar m y at an early age, he served abroad under Sir Ralph Abercrombie, and in Lgypt had particularly distinguished himself. Ile was trans ferred to the 21st Fusileers from a Highland corps, and his promotion to a brevet majority, it was said, had given offence to the senior captain of the regiment. Certain it is, that be tween these officers no cordiality existed—little pains were taken to conceal a mutual dislike—frequent and angry alterca tions took place, and the temper of Campbell, constitutionally warm, was often irritated by the cool contradictory spirit of his unfortunate victim. The 21st Regiment was quartered in Newry when the half yearly inspection occurred. As senior officer, Major Camp bell commanded on that occasion. After dinner, in the course of conversation, Captain Boyd asserted that Campbell had given au order incorrectly on parade. A hot and teasing argument resulted—unfortunately that evening the mess tabie had been deserted for the Theatre, where the officers had patronized a play, and the disputants were left together at a moment when the presence of a judicious friend might have easily averted the catastrophe. Heated with wine, and exaspe rated by what he conceived a professional insult, Campbell left the table, hastened to his apartments, loaded his pistols, returned, sent for Captain Boyd, brought him to an inner mess-room, closed the door, and, without the presence of a friend or witness, de manded instant satisfaction. Shots were promptly interchanged, and in the first lire Boyd fell, mortally wounded. The dying man was removed to his barrack-room, and Campbell hastened from the scene of blood. The storm of passion had subsided, and the bosom of the wretched homicide was tortured with unavailing remorse. In a state of mental phrenzy he rushed to the chamber where his victim lay, supported by his distracted wife, and surrounded by his infant family. Throwing himself upon his knees, he supplicated pardon, and urged Boyd to admit "that every thing was fair." The dying man, whose sufferings were intense, to the repeated intreaties of his oppo nent, replied " Yes—it was fair—hut, Campbell, you are a bad man—you hurried me," and shortly afterwards expired in his wife's arms. When the melancholy event was communicated, at the solici tation of his friends Campbell left the town. No attempt was made to arrest him, and he might have remained in partial re tirement had he pleased. But his high spirit could not brook concealment; and, contrary to the entreaties of his family, and the opinion of his professional advisers, he determined to risk a trial, and in due time surrendered himself, as the summer assizes were approaching. From the moment the unfortunate duellist entered the prison gates, his mild and gentlemanly demeanour won the commi seration of all within. The governor, confident in the honour of his prisoner, subjected him to no restraint—he occupied the apartments of the keeper — went over the buildin g as h e pl ease d —received his friends—held unrestricted communication with all that sought him—and, in fact, was a captive but in name. I shall never forget the 13th of August, 1808. I arrived in Armagh the evening of the major's trial, and whe n I en t ere d the court-house, the jury had retired to consider the verdict they should pronounce. The trial had been tedious—twilight had fallen, and the hall of justice was rendered gloomier, if pos sible, from the_partial glare of a few candles, placed upon the bench where Judge Mayne was seated. A breathless anxiety pervaded the assembly, and the ominous silence that reigned through the court was unbrohen by a single whisper. I f e lt a n unusual dread, a sinking of the heart, a difficulty of respiration, as I timidly looked round the melancholy crowd. My eyes rested on the judge—he was a thin, bilious-looking being, and his cold and marble features had caught an unearthly expres sion, from the shading produced by an accidental disposition of the candles. I shuddered as I gazed upon him, for the fate of a fellow-creature hung upon the first words that should issue from the lips of that stern and inflexible old man. Front the judge eyes turned to th e cr i m i na l, an d w h a t a su bj ec t t h e contrast to the artist's pencil !—ln the front of the bar, habited in deep mourning, his arms folded across his breast, the homicide was awaiting the word that would seal his destiny —his noble and commanding figure thrown into an attitude of calm determination, was graceful and dignified; and, while on every countenance beside, a sickening anxiety was visible, not the twinkle of an eyelash, or motion of the lip, betrayed on the prisoner's face the appearance of discomposure or alarm. Just then a slight noise was heard—a door was softly and slowly opened—one by one the jury reluctantly returned to their box —the customary question was asked by the clerk of the crown, and—Guilty, was-faintly answered, accompanied with a recom mendation to mercy. An agonizing pause succeeded—the court was silent as the ;rave—the prisoner bowed respectfully to the jury —then, plant ing his foot firmly on the floor, he drew himself up to his full height, and prepared to listen to his doom. Slowly Judge Mayne assumed the fatal cap, and, all unmoved, he pronounced, and Campbell heard his sentence. While the short address that sealed the prisoner's fate was being delivered, the silence of the court was broken by smother ed sobs—but when the sounds ceased, and "Lord have mercy on your soul" issued from the ashy lips of that grace old man, a groan of horror burst from the auditory, and the Highland sol diers who thronged the court ejaculated a wild " Amen," while their flashing eves betrayed how powerfully the fate of their un happy countrviiian had affected them. Nor did the result of his trial disturb the keeper's confidence in the hon our o f th e c ondemned so ldi er . O n h is re t urn t o th e jail, au assurance that lie would not escape was required and given—and to the last, Campbell continued to enjoy all the comfort and liberty the prison could afford. Meantime, strong exertions were made to save him—petitions from the jury, the grand panel of the county, and the inhabitants of Armagh Were forwarded to the Lord Lieutenant. But the judge declined to recommend the convict, and consequently, the Irish Government refused to interfere. A respite, however, was sent down, to allow the case of the unfortunate gentlemen to be submitted to the King. The mental agony of Campbell's attached wife was for a time severe beyond endurance, but by a wonderful exertion she re covered sufficient fortitude to enable her to set out in person for London to throw herself at the Queen's feet, and implore her commiseration. To cross the channel before steam had been introduced was frequently tedious and uncertain, and when the lady reached the nearest point of embarkation, her journey was interrupted; a gale of unusual violence was raging, and every packet storm-stayed at the other side. She stood upon the pier in a state of exquisite wretchedness. The days of that being whom sh e l ove d best on earth w ere num b ere d, a nd to reach the seat of mercy was forbidden'. The storm was at its height—a mountainous sea broke into the harbour, while a crowd anxiously watched the progress of a fishing boat, which under close-reefed canvass was struggling to beat up to the anchorage. The success of the little bark was for a time uncertain. The spray flew in sheets over the mast head, and frequently shut the vessel from the view of those on shore. But seamanship pre vailed —the pier was weathered—and amid the cheers of their companions, and the caresses of their wives the hardy crew dis embarked. At that moment the sorrow 'of the lady attracted the notice of the crowd, and it was whispered that she was wife to the unhappy convict, whose fate even in that remote spot had ex cited unusual sympathy. An aged fishermen stood near her, and Mrs. Campbell enquired "if the weather was likely to mo derate ?" The mariner looked at the sky attentively, and shook his head. "Oh God ! he will be lost," she murmured— " Could I but cross that angry sea, he might yet be saved !" Her words were overhead by the crew of the fishing boat, who were securing its moorings. A momentary consultation took place, and with one consent they offered to carry her across or perish. "It is madness," said the old man, "no boat can live in yonder broken sea." But the courage of the hardy fishermen was unshaken. The lady was placed on board; the skirt of the sawn-sail set; and after a passage as remarkable for its short ness as its danger, they reached the Scottish shores in safety. To the honour of these noble fellows be it recorded, that they refused to accept one shilling from the mourner, and followed her carriage with their eyes, invoking blessings on her journey. Th e commiseration of all classes was painfully increased, by the length of time that elapsed between the trial and death of Major Campbell. In prison he received from his friends the most constant and delicate attention ; and one lady, the wife of Captain seldom left him. She read to him, prepared his meals, cheered Ins spirits when he drooped, and performed those gentle offices of kindness, which are so peculiarly the province of wo ma n. When intelligence arrived that mercy could not be extended, and the law must take its course, she boldly planned an escape from prison, but Campbell recoiled from a proposition that would compromise his honour with the keeper. "What," he exclaimed, when assured that otherwise his case was hopeless —" Shall I break faith with him who trusted in it? I know rev late, and am prepared to meet it manfully ; but 'lever shall I deceive the person who confided in my honour." Two evenings before he suffered, Mrs. urged him ear nestly to escape. The clock struck twelve, and Campbell hinted that it was tune she should retire. As usual he accompanied her to the gate, and on entering the keeper's r oom th e y f oun d him fast asleep. Campbellplaced his finger on his lip. " Poor fellow," he said in a whisper to his fair companion, " would it not be a pity to disturb him ?" Then taking the keys softly from the table, he unlocked the outer wicket. ." Campbell," said the lady, " this is the crisis of your destiny—this is the moment of escape—horses are in readiness, and"—The convict put his hand upon her mouth—" Hush !" he replied, as he gently forced her out, "would you have me to violate mypro miss ? ' Bidding her 'good night,' he locked the wicket care fully, replaced the keys, and retired to his chamber without awaking the sleeping jailor. The last scene of his life was in perfect keeping with the calm and dignified courage he had evinced during his confine ment. The night before his execution, the chaplain slept in his room, This gentleman's exertions to obtain a remission of punishment had been incessant, and now that hope was at an end, he laboured to prepare the doomed soldier for the trying hour that awaited him. On that melancholy night he never closed his eyes, while Campbell slept as quietly,as if no extra ' ordinary event should happen on the morrow. To the last his courage was unshaken, and while his friends were dissolved in grief, he was manly and unmoved. lie mounted the stone stairs leading to the scaffold with a firm and measured step, and while the rope was being adjusted, the colour never left his cheek, nor did his countenance betray the slightest agitation. One circumstance disturbed his equanimity for a moment.— On entering the press-room' the executioner, frightfully dis guised, presented himself suddenly. Campbell involuntarily shrunk from this loathsome being, but as if annoyed that the wretch should shake his firmness for an instant, he calmly de sired him to proceed, and take care that the arrangements for death were such as should make his transit from tha world as brief as possible. It was a curious incident attendant on this melancholy'erent, that the 421 regiment, with whom he had served in Egypt, then garrisoned the town; and the same men he led to a bayonet charge against the invincibles of Napoleon formed the jail guard to witnesss his .execution. The feelings of the High landers when drawn out to be present at the ignominious end of their lion-hearted comrade, were indescribable. When the sufferer first appeared at the fatal door, a yell of anguish pealed along the ranks, and every bonnet was respectfully removed. Campbell addressed a few words to them in Gaelic. Instantly every face was upturned to heaven ; every lip uttered a prayer for mercy at the judgment seat, and when the board descend ing with thundering violence, announced the moment of disso lution, the fearful groan that burst from the excited soldiery will never be forgotten. After being suspended only till life was extinct, the body was placed in a shell, and a hearse in waiting received it and drove off rapidly. The remains of the ill-starred soldier were con veyed to Scotland. There the clan and relatives of the deceased were waiting to pay the last tribute of their regard. In im mense numbers they escorted the body to the family cemetry, and in the poet's words, " They laid him in his father's grave." THE GREAT FIRE IN CONSTANTINOPLE. (FROIII TIIE CORRESPONDENT OF THE HERALD.) CONSTANTINOPLE, Sept. 4.-1 am sorry to say that my ap prehensions with regard to fires have been verified to an alarm ing extent. One of the most fearful ever known in this so often devoted city occurred here on Friday last. It is not vet ascer tained whether it came from accident or design, but it is re markable that it broke out in the full day in the Government musket-factory, on the Turkish sabbath, the only day on which the workmen were not in their places. Whether wilful or not, Constantinople will long have occasion to remember it. I was in the harbour, or, as it is called, the "Golden Horn," about twelve o'clock, and then there was no appearance of mischief ; but on my return from one of the villages of the Bosphorus in two hours after, I was struck with horror on perceiving an im mense volume of smoke, which rose as if from the heart of the city, and obscured the atmosphere all round. On proceeding to the place I saw that the musket-factory had caught fire, and that the flames were spreading with rapidity in consequence of a strong westerly wind, which blew them directly up the hill side with a velocity which was inconceivable. As no means can be taken to stop the progress of such a calamity prior to the arrival of the Grand Vizier, the two hours which elapsed before that dignitary made his aearance was sufficient to involve one of the fiuest quarters of Constantinople in destruction, and by four o'clock the flames had complete mastery of an immense circuit 'commencing at the water's edge, extending on the right towards the superb mosque of Sultan Mahomed, on the left to the mosque of Sultan Soleyman, and in the rear to the great aque duct, in the direction where the fire of last month had stopped. The houses being all wood, dry as tinder from the summer heat, afforded a ready prey, and it was the most fearful sight I ever witnessed to behold the fire rushing, as if in streams, over hun dreds of roofs, or darting in tongues of flame at every separate building within its reach. - The wind coming from the harbour directly into the city, spread the blaze with the same violence at every side; and I could trace it driving up the hill, or spreading on either wing in so equal a manner, that I suppose that no less than 2,000 houses were consumed—and then the fury of the flames became so great, that all the ordinary attempts to stop them were of no avail. The firemen assembled in large num bers, each four bearing a hand-pump, the streets being too nar row to permit the movement of engines ; but their efforts were thrown away, except in three cases , where some rich proprietor offered a sum equal to £2OO or £3OO to save his mansion. This was effected by their throwing numerous carpets on the houses which they thought proper to save, and by keeping the carpets constantly wet by the action of their pumps; and in so many instances was this plan successful, that now, amid the general desolation of an extensive quarter, are to be seen single man sions which have not been Injured. The alarm occasioned by this calamity was, as you may conceive, general at Constanti nople. It also spread round the whole neighbourhood, and the inhabitants of the surrounding villages could be seen rushing to the side of the Bosphorus, to watch the progress of the destruc tion, each person calculating that his own particular district would be next exposed. The people of Pei a were in the greatest affright, and hundreds assembled in the " Fields of Death," or grave-yards, the only open places, to contemplate a scene from which they were only saved from being parties to by the inter position of the harbour. From one of these heights it was fearfully beautiful to wit ness the progress of the fire as it spread on every side with unprecedented fury; and when the sun went down, and the flames were more distinctly seen, I believe so sublime and awful a picture was never before exhibited. It is only at Con stantinople where such a terrible display can be beheld, the position of the ground and the nature of the buildings alike affording facilities for destruction. How often I wished for our great artist Martin to be present, and immortalise the scene, as his imagination. gifted as it is, can never conceive so magnifi cent a subject for his pencil. About seven o'clock the whole of the houses in the valley were consumed, and the fire then mounted the hills which rise at either side, and spread to the rear, in the direction of the sea Of Marmora, making a circuit of nearly two miles. There it was most curious to behold it 'varying its form every half hour, lying on the whole expanse at one time like a sea of flame,_ or separating into burning steeples at another, which at the distance from which I beheld them, appeared like so many volcanoes: AbOnt nine o'clock the full moon rose, and at the same period a.heavy storm began to gather in the southward, and then a scene was presented to us, to which not Ling can do any thing like justice. At one view we saw the Seraglio, with its beautiful white towers and lofty trees, shining tranquilly in the moonlight, the centre of the city blazing with numberless fires, and at the other extremity of Constantinople the atmosphere hung, with massive clouds, or the heavens opened with repeated - flashes of lightning. We saw the sea of Marmora like a placid lake in the distance, the towers of the Seraglio reflected in the Bosphorus, and the burning piles glowing in the waters of the harbour. About ten o'clock the wind fell a little, and as the smoke was not blown against the hill side, the progress of the flame became more distinct from the position which I occupied at Pera. It was then we observed the curious effects of the flames on the mosques and minarets which lay in their course. It was beautiful to behold an immense dome similar to that of the Colosseum in the Regent's-park, standing in dark relief in the middle of flame, and the slender white minarets shining like pillars of silver in a field of fire. Each dome appeared like a fountain of white flame, as the lead with whits it was covered melted, strangely contrasting with the ruddy laze of the burn ing timber, and the tops of the minarets, from the same cause, burned like one of those wax lights which are borne in proces sion in the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic church. About thirty of the smaller mosques were destroyed, but none of those of royal foundation, which are the pride of Constantinople, were touched. The progress of the flames towards the two superb buildings which I have before mentioned was watched with intense interest; and I observed an exultation iu the crowd when that of the Sultan Mahomed, which was a long time obscured .with smoke, was saved by a sudden shifting of the wind. The sight was so irresistibly attractive that the inha bitants of Pera remained watching it till after midnight, and then the greater part retired, giving up Constantinople as totally lost, and not expecting to see a trace of it in the morning. Happily, however, at one in the morning the wind considerably lessened, and the fury of the fire was by degress abated. It ceased towards the southward about three o'clock; and on the bill to the rear it was stopped at the same hour for want of food, as it reached exactly the ground where the late fire in the be- • ginning of August was arrested; thus cutting the city in two, and making a, blank from the harbour to the sea of Marmora.— On the north, where it still lingered, it was more resolutely dealt with by the firemen, as it climbed the hill were the palace of the late Janizzari, now the residence of the Chief Mufti, stands, in consequence of the Sultan's declaring, —some say in person, others through the Grand Vizier,—that he would order every one of these gentry to be strangled if thatpalace was not saved. Alarmed by this threat, the firemen set to work with energy, and, covering the mansion of the Mufti with carpets, did not allow it even to be discoloured, and at the same time they over came ths flames on every side of it so rapidly that, by the break of day, the fury of the fire was stopped as if by miracle. It is now curious to see thak mansion untouched on the hill side over looking the valley, which is a mass of ruins, and to behold in the rear of it the immense aqueduct which supplies the city with water, and which before was scarcely noticed., in consequence of the houses which blocked it up at all sides, now standing in high relief, every arch being counted at some miles distance. _ Some persons say that one-fifth of Constantinople has been destroyed; but if I do not go that length, I am certain that a circuit of three miles, comprising 12,00() buildings, and making houseless 50,000 persons, has been devastated. It is now three days since the fire occurred, but the ruins are still smoking, and if 'a wind again arise, which happily has not been the case, die safety of the rest of Constantinople cannot be depended on. The only way in which I can make the extent of the mischief familiar to a London reader is to have him imagine that from the Southwark side he sees the whole bank of the river from Westminster-bridge to Waterloo-bridge on fire, and the flames cutting their way to Hyde-park-corner at one side, and to Rus sell-square on the other, the whole space between being at the same moment in one extended blaze. If he can imagine seve ral churches like the Colosseum, with an infinity of marble pil lars, like the Monument, in the centre of the flames, he will have an idea of the scene, provided lie makes the v hole to rise from the ruins to an elevation in the rear as great as that of Hampstead-hill. This will give him a notion of the extent and form of the injury done, but not of the value of the property destroyed, as here the greatest part of' the houses are of little price, and only one rich quarter having been laid bold of. The damage has altogether fallen upon the Turks, and it is wonder ful to see the patience with which they brave it. A person who was at Constantinople during the fury of the fire, assumes me that he saw several owners of the burned houses smoking their pipes in the neighbouring coffeehouses with the most perfect indifference. Their conduct strangely contrasted with about three hundred Jews, apprehensive that a quarter in which they had property would be attacked, who screamed and tore their garments. As I said in the commencement of this letter, it is uncertain whether the event arose from accident or design; but many persons are confident that the musket -factory was maliciously set on fire; as several placards were posted in Constantinople and Pera, announcing some mischief of that nature as inevita ble. The agitation produced in the public mind is very great, and every k rank at Pera has packed - up his most valuable good s in case the same occurrence should take place there. But lam astonished that those great fires do not more frequently occur, as the houses are all of wood, and every inmate smokes a pipe of six feet long s with the bowl so far from him uncovered. ft is also the practice for the servants to bring lighted coals in little pincers, to light the pipes; through every apartment, and even in a house occupied by Englishmen, holes are every day burned in the floors, from the awkwardness of servants in bringing the fire, or the carelessness of masters in setting down their pipes. The wonder is, that Constantinople exists for a week, and not that these calamities occur. The calculation is; however, that the city . is burned down once in every seven years, and, indeed, so fast is it rebuilt after one of those events, that several houses are already erected in the place where the fire ocerased the first week I came here. _ _ With regard to other events, none in reality occurred, though rumour has been busy in circulating reports that the Russians bad been recalled, and that treason was about to burst on every side. I will not needlessly alarm you; and knowing huw des perately people here exaggerate, I will wait for proof before I give credit to what they say. Small fires have broken out in some of the villages on the Bosphorus, as if Swing was at work in this quarter of the world; but I allude to great events, and not to those minor acts which are, at all ages, of daily occur rence in Constantinople. The insurrection in Albania conti nues ; and at Cyprus, where three ships of war have been sent, and troops also passed over from the mainland. SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD AT TARBEirr.—On the sign -board of a public-house near Tarbert, is the following inscription ; " Mrs. M'Phail, Licensed to retail Spirits, Porter, and Ale, In the afternoon she has for sale Oatmeal Bannocks, Flesh and Kai', Which travellers, hungry and athirst, May swallow till they're like to burst ; And Mrs. M'Phuilbere lets them know kler charges are all very low." Glasgow C'ourier. ) CC'''. -3, EMIGRATION. It will be recollected that about a year ago we noticed the singularity of an emigration which had taken place from the island of Coll, in the Hebrides, to Van Dieman's Land—a Mr• M‘Lean having purchased a smart little vessel for his own us " and transported in it himself and his whole family to thatdistent part of the world,•with only a captain and one or two nautical hands to sail the vessel. Only a few weeks have elapsed sine news reached this country of Mr. M'Leau having safely reache. his destination ; and on Monday last we had the pleasure et seeing the captain engaged by Mr. M'Lean pop in up on us, with a file of one of the Van Dieman's Land newspapers in his pocket for our use, and with many agreeable particulars to cora mnuicate verbally,both as to his voyage, the state of the co lon. / to which he sailed, and the settlementand prospects of the farnill he conducted thither. The little vessel which he navigated out was named the John Denniston, and was, we believe, one of dre smallest in which so vast a vovage was ever performed ; add tot which, that the captain, Mr. M‘Kay, who is well known in the: . Clyde, though he had previously been on some parts of the coast orßrazil, was conversant chiefly with the navigation of the Baltic and Mediterranean, and therefore was not less adventur ous in depending purely upon his scientific knowledge to con duct him aright, than was Mr. M'Lean in trusting himse lf, hie whole family and effects, to so unusually small a bark. T he y made up a full cargo by shipping from this country to the C a p e . of Good Hope coals, which they there exchanged t'or wirees• to' be delivered on consignment iu Van Dierea.n's Land. When' arrived at the latter colony, Mr. M`Lep speedily found a put" chaser for his vessel : and the captain, AtT, M'Kay, after re : maining about three months there, and visiting various parts ot the colony, returned home a passenger in the Lavinia of Liver pool. He reports that Mr. Mg,. had pitched on a fine spot fof a settlement, a considerable way into thejnterior from Nobel: Town, and had every piospect of doing remarkably well; he tells some strange stories of discovering there, and in SYmi. ney t various old acquaintances whom he had seen at the ba r o justice in this country, now riding fine horses, possessing fine houses and establishments, and ranking as high in the society that surrounded them as if they never had a blot in their scut cheou. We have alluded thus specially to M`Lean, his little, vessel, and the captain, because there was an adventurou s originality about the idea of one solitaiy family launching out in her from their native home, to traverse more than one half of the dreary waste of waters that encircles the globe, and also because the romance thus thrown round the adventure e xcited an interest at the time which cannot yet have so far subsided as to render any account of the fortune of the adventurers a matter of indifference.—Glasgow paper. JACK DOWNING'S BROTHER. (For the New York Gazette.) COL. JACK DOWNING, CARE OF GINERAL JACKSON, AT WASH' INGTON—THESE. DEAR Jecx,—l told you in my last that arter I'd got clears* up a leetle I'd write you so'thing about Yolk; but I've only been• tb the governor's, and the vise-president's, and Gine& Morton's yet; and there's so much noise, and sich an, etell l 4 snarl of folx, night and day, that my head's plaginly obtain sated. I'm here at one of the big taverns; for, you know, the brother of Jack Downing must only go to the best. But , darsn't tell the name, for they say the man's rich, and the people here are afeared of a rich man as anything, and that? bein' what they call a dimmycrat. They daresn't say their sours their own before a rich man. But he makes me pay the. matter of sixteen York shillins a day, eat or no eat, when I dine with the great folx more'n'half the time. Jack, you know' my purse is no beggar's wallet, but still there's a bottom to it, and two dollars a day will soon find it. So, you see, you must get me an office, or 1 shall starve ; and I go to this pocky dear house only to do you honour. Knowing the taverns is knowing everything, so I'll tell you about this tavern. I goes into break fast as hungary as a bear. The table must be a matter of two' rods long, and full of people from down-east ; all looked mighty grand, though I guess some on 'em have dug 'taters afore to day. I goes to one cheer. That's ingaged, says they. I goes to another—that's ingaged, and that's ingaged. Bimeby I gets mad—l grabs a cheer—that's ingaged, says a thing they call a dandee. And my breakfast's inguged, Mr. Nincompoop, says I; and more too, I'm Jack Downing's brother, and if you touch me I'm engaged. So he jist looked at me and grinned, and let me alone. Well, I waited fur dinner till my stomach made all manner of noises, and I felt like biting off a board nail. Bimeby I heard the devil's tooting horn. They said it was a gong. I han't been so scar'd for a year. You know when I was at Surinal! l in the Two Pollies I had to take a great deal of mercury. This farnel sound throw'd out two of my teeth, and the rest have been ever since so on edge, that Pile bit my tongue through and through. It would have been jist the same, at dinner, about the cheers, but by this time they knew that I was Ike Downing* and they let me set down where I would. Well, there were two fellows I used to know down-east—they were lumberers then- - but now, Lord, how big they were! I never let 'em know that I knew 'em, but only minded their catnip actions. They were the matter of an hour eating, and picking their teeth --Bimeby pop, crack goes a thing in bottles that they call Shampain. Says a big man, two parsons below, Mr. Downing, shall I drink wine with ye? Yes, I thank ye, says I, for I thort there was nothing to pay. So he fills my glass with Shampain. I'm told, its dandee drink, but I think its only sham-cider, for I'd rather have our hard cider at Downincrille, any day. These men were most all from down-east. They say they're got rich. A spil'd yankee, now mark my word, is no better than a rotten egg. I've been to Nibbler's, and I'll tell ye about that another time. Oh! what squalling, and capering, and fire-eating. I paid four York shillings, and have got my money's worth of fun. I like so to sit in the door-way, and see the people pass; I'm so tickled , that I don't want to go no where else. Sich a steady stream Is jist like the Kennebeck in a freshet—there it is, black, yeller, gray, and all colours—sich men, I'm sure God dident make 'era so, and I'm told the tailor made 'em. But the gals are so pretty, that they are traps for sinners, I tell ye, and there's a mile on 'em, as the Gineral said, and their sleeves are as big as a barrel, and their petticoats strut out so afore and behind that their pretty walkers don't come within a yard of touching 'em. just got a picture made of one of the handsomest, and sent it home to my wife Tabby, but I'm afeard she'd be teasing me to get jist sich a gear. I don't want to turn the gals heads at Downingville. So no more at present from your loving brother, except that if you don't get me an office I'll ax Mr. Longvarn , to read you out of meeting. IKE DOWNINCi• LYRICS OF THE BAST. BY MRS. GOODWIN. BEDOL'IN LAMENT FOR A SHRIX. Dark Azrael ! thy work is done, Our father sinks to rest, As dives at eve the golden sun Deep in the desert's breast. CHoats.—He's gone !—fling loose his camel's rein, Let his brave steed range wide the plain. He's gone ! our guiding star is sped, Our father slumbers with the dead. Ye warriors !—shrouded is that eye, Your beacon light so long, Silent the lip whose battle cry So late rose clear and strong. CHORE'S.—He's gone !—what other hand shall rear The foeman's scourge,—his shining spear 7 He's gone ! our guiding star is sped, Our father slumbers with the dead. Ye hunters of an ancient race, The glorious spirit's still That urged the desert's noble chum O'er rock, and stream, and hill. Cnoaus.—He's gone'. shoot up his shafts to sail In mournful mockery on the gale. He's gone ! our guiding star is sped, Our father slumbers with the dead. Ye matrons, and ye maidens, weep, For he who loved us well, And led us forth onr flocks to keep, Where peace and plenty dwell, Cnonus.—He's gone !—unbind your braided hair-- Rouse the wild song of your despair He's gone, our guiding star is sped. Our father slumbers with the dead. TRUE VALOUR. Ask ye the warrior's falchion bright Of the strength of his red right hand ; Ask ye the plume on his turban white. Jf 'tw•as vail'd to the hostile band ; Ask ye his steed of the havoc wide-- Of the count of the foeman's slain ; Ask of the myriads his hoof of pride, Trampled down on the battle plain ; Ask ye the desert that drank their blood, And the dark earth's unfathom'd cares; Ask ye the wild and the rolling flood Of the dying within its waves ; But ask not the chief of the battle-host Of the deeds that his arm hath done, For never yet did true valour boast Of the fame and the glory won. Blackwood's Magazine for Octobe►• AN IRISHMAN'S LAMENT UPON APSLEY.IIOUS What house is yonder, which I with wonder See smashed with plunder and paving-stones— Its shutters shattered, its windows battered, AN tore and tattered, like Davy Jones? 0 ! I see it clear, 0 !—it is the hero Who beat old Boney eo clear and dame The great old fighter, and smart delighter, Who with flying banners won the plain. Thew' was Alexander, the bould commander. And Mister Hannibal so fine ; :J. But if the rat-catcher was their, body-snatehar, By all that's good 'tis he would shine! 'And, Julius Cesar, who, like Nebuchadnezzar, Was quite uncommon in his day ; But Pd lay you a wager that our old stager, The hook-nosed Duke, would have his way . Great is my sadness, and small my gladneeS, When I perceive his shutters shut— Smathered and battered, besieged and tattered, By the blackguards who are now on tut. And 0, by Japers! what sort of capers, You grenadiers, it was yours to show, When all the riffle-raffle of the London city Smashed all the panes of our old beau! Where were the guards, sir, when the blackguards, sir, Smashed down the panes of the dear duke? If Goll and Osgor were here to the fore, 'Tis they would never on such stuff look ; And there's Brien Boroo, in battle lading— Ms he'd for aid in this here fight, And smash the villains, like damned civilians. Over and over, from left to right. Like hungry hawks on a March-day morning, A-slating small birds upon a hill, 'Tis they're the covies who are adorning That most particular place they're going to kill,There was great njoiciug, and loud-mouthed voicing. _ Bawlin,t , away about the peace ; And in the king's dominions it fled about with pinions, A most plasing remonstrance in the place. There was wondrous beaming and branch-lights flaming. Sweet music a-shameing bagpipe and flute ; The windows they were scented, the people were contented. Every thing was happy—both mankind and brute. The deafman and the cripple both together they did tipple, And And Erin was rejoicing to the tuue of her " go bray ; And 'tie 1 am hard in heart here, to think that you, Duke Ar Are a smashed-windowed sort of character this blessed daT • e. Fraser's Nugaz_fnoll PRINTED BY S. FRANCEYS, NIGH - STEEL I' LIVEUPOOL 6 f