The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-08-14 00:00:00

3 O a GENTLE WITH THY WIFE. t t utentle; for you little know Aa cl W Many trials rise ; :,, °ll sll to thee they may be small, '0 her of giant size. li, i ent le; though perchance that lip 1 4 4Y 'Peak a mourning tone ; , , :heart may heat with kindness I et, Be11(ijoY to be thine own. 4 p : Ti tle ; weary hours of pain Yield Ilwo rn an's lot to bear ; her what support thou canst, Oct all her sorrows share. qt b ,, ei i 4ti e; for the noblest hearts All ,i 1 ;e4 in el may have some grief, 11 / 4 ,. a pettish word 8,,,, - lee k ofind relief. ._tei th.. I,Nty ~' ' far unkindness now et a 'q e l lte an angry storm 1, 14 N t he after years of life 514414 1 , strive to calm. V tl it , 1, t; tione are perfect; 4 ell, qtarer far than life; 4 110 -1 ` 4, 3 bear and still forbear— 'e to t ' lly wife. NI li 4, t' Qv '-' r" I E WS. 11 1 ' 4 .14 (14 ---- p e ) . t th ' oet P oems. By Alfred Tennyson, tt t e lo 01 1 , ye ti a ureate . London : Moxon. I) gEt peg iN - l'oi . Pert is an age of hollowness, and ' ilh, ti y ,41ked by is a maxim which has Nott: l leb 'Y so many tongues, and de -1 t t to 1 mli At:'4,liille tr ue been of pertinacious assertion, k k.kl 14 ath ; received as a current and it, lo It, Yet those moral censors who %Lk)) , 4141 those t i) 4 ',l N il easy recipients of the kt k e evi d Y believ e it, have furnished no o k o ; ?t ,, ‘ e ,_ 1 +; 4 ,1 4 N: 4 t ekt7 t e t to show that the sham is Iti tl l l 4 ko at at least, in themselves, and 4 4 ,,,tti ll 'jli e h ex.clusivelv by them and their ?0 k ',. 4 11 'llee t „ ai nt has been, time out of mind, , t t'ill)lt!tit%e:alit„? measure. the world by their oh tt i l l y v o kl i i t ~, - 1 trim its arrangements, as far t qa ) ,, , l) ' 44 1 1 "le dimensions and forms which Nrltl'lltiabillve fashioned for its guidance. 0 reOtt i e to -4 4 7, ~t . N o scan the broad expanse of 1 1 4 qr()ll`tle, and and microscopically examine e ah N e ,,et h q ,, tl „ci i . O that, as in the case of al l 'res t -4 , t•:nucid water submitted to a lk i 4 0 1 th e . . t t , t , t h i e 4 e t , . dark spots and impurities N I cap e Ptical attention. What is bright I N ' , al til t'o 4° tl y b 40.11 ee—th e solar ray passes un .o*.Niero y t t e the limpid purity ; it is re 111 4 re ees 4), grosser particles. .So in the ti l A °l)s erv il e parts only which throw tc l t , Airi t, , e d—the pure, ethereal, God ', , al , e ''tiitit . sesents to such observers no .tt, be po re . 0 the pure we know all tp e tal 'k) C o ,Tid if we are to believe th e c ut er „ , the pure only, judging by ,kilkkitt.Nicle de \ye should be constrained to i , t onr7nunciation so sweepingly ut 114tis we re age, ( - 1,, tlry 4 Y fleet -,er country, and our kind ; li t () t io .°f j iist . ° n the eagerness of cnicism, th e l 'e of l ee, the qu'etude of merit, the ti i % lid cavil, v , 4i y e fa , e kriat _ e are led instinctively to 19 1 14, 4 ' fa ce _,, r Y howl. Looking abroad 1 144 .. re raiha ot nature and humanity, we te of ~.ed that Mat vod, was made in the an d , although nume- 1 , 1 1! .DwAr SUPPLEMEN Ribtrrvoi talOa'M T TO AND GENERAL COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER, rous and sickening foulnesses begrime and dis figure his truly noble nature, still these are but as spots on the solar disc—that there is enough of goodness and of greatness,—although there may be none to spare,—to redeem the world from that condemnation which belongs but to a few. With this feeling strongly rooted in us, we cannot bring ourselves to offer an indiscriminate admiration of every able expose of wickedness, nor to become consenting parties to that generalization which confounds guilt with innocence, and refuses to see aught but depravity in man, because a few loathsome features or misshapen limbs may be revealed in a critical dissection of his social polity. Now, as it has ever been, the world presents spots bright and beautiful to contrast with those which are dark and noisome—natures pure and exalted to affront and confound those which are mean and sordid ; and it is not a healthy state of morals, nor is that a pure condition of literature which contemplates only the loathsome and the vile. What would offend the eye in a good picture, The painter casts discreetly into shade. Men are made good, and brave, and virtuous quite as much at least by the incentive of example as they are deterred from crime by the dread of punishment. Such being our belief, we are in clined to question the wisdom as well as the worth of perpetual denunciations—of continually parading the black spots, and overlooking the brilliancy to be found in the every-day working of the moral world. These reflections have grown out of an atten tive study of what appears to be the morbid ten dency of our present literature. Censoriousness of spirit and a narrow conventionality of feeling appear to be in a great degree its characteristics — to disparage and degrade its business ; at least these are leading features in the productions of many who occupy a prominent place in popular esteem. Such a vocation may be congenial to to men like Mayhew, Thackery, Cruikshank, and a few who, adopting the grosser peculiarities of Hogarth, forcibly illustrate their familiarity with vice without evincing a kindred intimacy with virtue. A feeling somewhat analogous we regret and almost fear to observe in the recent work by Tennyson. His " Maud" is an allegorical tale, illustrative of the feeling, spirit, and tendency of the age, which he arraigns in style of coarse in vective, and with a ruggedness of rhythm scarcely in keeping with his usual polish, or nearly allied with his usual beauty of sentiment. Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace ? we have made them a curse, Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own ; And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone ? But these are the days of ailvance, the works of the men of mind, When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's ware or his word ? Is it peace or war ? Civil war, as I think, and that of a kind The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword. Sooner or later I, too, may passively take the print Of the golden age —why not ? I have neither hope nor trust ; May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a dint, Cheat and be cheated, and die : who knows ? we are ashes and dust. Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex, like swine, When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie ; Peace in her vineyard—yes !—but a company forges the wine. And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head, Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife, While chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread, And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life. Anil Sleep must lie down arm'd, for the villanous centre- Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights, While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he sits To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimson lights. When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee, And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones, Is it peace or war P better, war ! loud war by land and by sea, War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones ! For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill, And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam, That the smooth-faced snub-nosed rogue would leap from his counter and till, And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yard wand, home. Mr. Tennyson seems to think that war is the only agent which can effect a thorough purifica tion of the contaminated moral atmosphere, as thunder clears the natural air, and a large portion of his poem is devoted to a demonstration of this. The tale itself is a very ingeniously worked though simply contrived one. A young man left alone in the world by the violent death of his father, under circumstances which at least give room for doubt as to whether his death were accidental or not—if the latter, whether self-inflicted or death by the hand of another. If this last were the true solution, whether it was not through the in strumentality of one who was an associate in his pecuniary speculations, and largely profited by their derangement occasioned through his death ; and who becomes the purchaser of the estates and property which should have descended to the dead man's son. The son becomes misanthropic in his isolation, and it is he who moralises on the world as we have just seen ; but he is awakened to a sense of the beauty of virtue and the holi ness of love through a renewed intimacy with Maud, the daughter of his deceased parent's ancient though suspected friend, and now the possessor of his property. Maud loves him in return ; but she has a haughty and insolent bro ther, who insults her lover. A duel takes place between the young men, in which the brother is slain ; after which the lover flees, and only re turns to find that Maud is dead, and that he is " once more a lone spirit in the world." He be comes delirious, but recovers. In his frenzy, he has discovered the root of the evils that afflict the world. He now enters the lists as a champion to aid in the conflict against all tyranny and wrong, in which latter capacity of course he finds his .hands pretty well filled with work, of a kind much more laborious than satisfactory. That the poem is unequal is true, and that some portions of it are only equal to what it was once the fashion to expect from a Poet Laureate is undeniable ; but it is not less true that there t r ri`:l d•~.