The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-02-12 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Nodes Ambrosiana. By Professor Wilson. In Four
Volumes. Vol. 111. Edinburgh and London:
William Blackwood and Sons.

The third volume of this wonderful repertory of
worth and wit, of wisdom, fun, and badinage, is now
before us, radiant with its many-hued glories, and
rich as ever in its thousand fascinations. The expan-
sive range and freedom of its mirth, mingled with the
sharp sagacity of its satire, and both combined with
the lofty tone of its morality, confer upon the work,
as a whole, a value rarely conceded to periodical
literature. The strong admixture of these ingredients
have contributed to sustain it in that high literary,
political, and moral position which it at first assumed,
as, like the pure and sparkling cascade of a mountain
stream, it dashed into the sunny valley of public
approbation, through which its fertilising waters have
ever since continued to flow with refreshing sweetness.
Envy, petty jealousy, and other opponents of the
truth, have from time to time endeavoured to dissi-
pate and weaken the current, or to throw blackening
and corrupting rottenness upon its bosom, but the
pure and noble stream has rejected their admixture,
and still rolls on in pellucid and majestic beauty,
as it
wins its way through the verdant vale, gladdening all
around. In the present as in the preceding volumes,
we have lively disquisitions on what were then passing
events, though now in numerous instances chronicled
with the past, yet in every case so skilfully analysed,
so lucidly exposed, or so tastefully adorned as to retain
all the freshness of interest and all the useful beauty
for which they were at first conspicuous and admir-
able. The war and many of its sad concomitants have
recently brought prominently into notice the alleged
physical deficiency of our countrymen, induced, as that
is said to have been, by too exclusive an attention to
the fostering of manufactures, and most ungratefully
as well as unpatriotically and wickedly gloried in by
Messrs. Cobden and Bright, the luminaries of the
manufacturing school. Those gentlemen, not content
with having aided in bringing about the deterioration
they remark, are boastful of it, and use it as a power-
ful argument in favour of their country submitting
to accept degrading terms of peace ! The evils of
that system whose perfection would consist in
reducing man to the condition of an animated though
unreasoning machine, did not escape the eagle glance
and mental perspicacity of Wilson ; but, unlike the
oracles referred to, his voice was raised in warning
against, not in glorying over, those fatal consequences.
Strongly and sympathisingly he felt that
"A bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied ;"
and at Midsummer of 1830, he delivered his opinion
as follows, on

TUE FACTORY SYSTEM AND ITS TENDENCIES.

Tickler.—Besides, in a country urging on like ours so impetu.
ously in commercial enterprise, there is another consideration.
Is there not a sort of sacrifice of the labouring people to the
insatiable appetite for wealth of their employers ? A most in-
ordinate demand for labour has thus been created; for, observe,
gents, that I consider not this present juncture of affairs at all.
But what is the commercial spirit of the age and country ?
Thus sex and age have been swept into the work with no dis-
crimination. Thus the wife and mother of the family has
been called from her own place of duty, to be made an instru-
ment of work; girls of the tenderest age have been called into
the manufactory, and grow up to the age of wives and mothers,
with no knowledge of their duties, as instruments of work;
and boys that should become the Men of the Community,
immersed from their early years in noxious employments,
and oppressed with interminable labour, rise up a deteriorated
race—susceptible of the appetites of men, but bereft of that
vigorous spirit which ought to mark the manhood of a
people; and which, if it contains the violence of passion, con-
tains also its generosity; contains, too, the principle of stub-
born endurance, and of hardy contention with any severer
fortune. And how hung upon that trade, and trembling with
every breath that shakes it, is a family which only subsists,
while father, and wife, and children, are all racked with em-
ployment ! What sort of population will that country pos-
sess to meet the vicissitudes of trade itself,—and those far
greater vicissitudes which the political changes of the world
throw into it ?

English Opium Eater.—Say,—what is the bulwark of a
people—the foundation of its greatness, and the substance of
its power? The virtue of the people; their courage, their
independence, the severe fortitude of their souls, their hearts
filled with just and strong loves, the power of their happiness.
This is the conception we form of the people of this island,
from north to south. This is the character which all tongues
have spoken—which has been avouched from age to age—the
traditionary faith received by our childhood : and now we
look around, and tremble to discover that the dream has
passed away from the land. The overflow of wealth has run
through it, unsettling all ancient conditions—breaking up the
bonds of life, casting, even upon the husbandman amidst his
fields, the restless, ungoverned, aspiring spirit of commerce—
dazzling and blinding the imaginations of the people, and
scattering among them the vices of prosperity, if it has not
brought them its enjoyments.
Shepherd.—Dinna mak me despond o' the kintra, Mr. De
qainchy. Hoo aften, when a's black in nature, outbursts the
and the warld's filled wi' Licht ! Oh, man ! but there's
a majestic meaning in thae twa words.--GREAT BRITAIN !
Think ye it 'ill ever bae a Decline and Fa' like the Roman
Empire ?
_English Opium Eater.—lt seemeth alike to my reason
and my imagination immortal.
Shepherd.—And then think, sir, o' the march o' intelleck.
That strengthens a state.
English Opium Eater.—lt does. But not without the
flow of feeling.

Shepherd.—Capital! I was just ann' to hae said that,
when you took the words out o' my mouth.
English Opium Eater.—We want not, Mr. Hogg, a quan-
tity of reasonable, contented, steady, sober, industrious in-
habitants—mere Chineses, and nothing more; but we want
men, who, if invaded, will spring up as one man—loving their
ancestors, who cannot feel their gratitude.
Shepherd.—lt would be unreasonable to expeck it.
English Opium Eaten—and doing everything for their
posterity, who have done and can do nothing for them.
Shepherd.—Gie them first time to get intil existence—and
then they'll—

English Opium Eaten—Men among whom crime is
restrained, not by a vigilant police, but by an awful sense of
right and wrong—who love their soil, and not only see it to
be rich, but feel it to be sacred. Yea! to whom poverty and
Its scanty, hard-wrung pittances are the gift of God.
Shepherd.—That's roosin ! You're an eloquent--
English Opium Eater.—Who are sustained and animated
in this life by the operation on their minds of their convic-
tions of another—a people in whose vigorous spirit joy is
strong, under all external pressure ; and who, stooping out of
*he low doors of their huts—clay-built, perhaps, yet flower-
covered—hold up smiling faces in the sunshine, and
from their bold foreheads fling back the blue beauty of their
native skies.

Such are the people Wilson claimed as his country-
men—such the warning, which more than a quarter
of a century ago, with burning eloquence, he poured
into the ears of his countr. The warning, alas ! has
been unheeded. The highest authority tells us in
emphatic
language, if we " sow the wind, we shall
reap the whirlwind." The grinding spirit of " com-
mercial enterprise" has had full domination—Messrs.
Cobden and Bright, the great apostles of the move-
ment, like the demons of romance, point with hideous
glee to the ruin and degradation which their system
has wrought, and glory in proclaiming that our men
are imbecile and spiritless—degenerate in physical
frame, and " who, if invaded, will not spring up as one
man" in defence of their hearths and homes—men
who have not virtue, courage, independence, and
severe fortitude in their souls. Events of recent
occurrence have tested the accuracy of those malign
grounds of joy, and proved their falsehood. The bold
sons of Britain have proved themselves indomitable,
and worthy of their sires ; but such evidence does not
invalidate the importance of Wilson's warning, while
the unfounded chuckling of the Cobden crew strongly
inculcates its propriety and value.
Every page of these fruitful miscellanies is laden
with maxims or illustrations of practical wisdom, and
in all of them love of truth, magnanimity of purpose,
and greatness of soul are inculcated in
" Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn."
Even in the wildest and seemingly most idle sallies,
images of moral beauty and gems of mental purity are
sown broadcast with an extent of liberality which, to an
intellect less richly stored and less elastic, would have
amounted to reckless prodigality. They abound in
criticism the most liberal, and observations the most
profound; yet each tinctured with the kindliest feel-

ing of appreciation of merit, encouragement of
genius, and of sympathy with.worth. "In this
age," says the sage and eloquent author, in one
of his beautiful reveries contained in the pre-
<sent volume, " genius often lives the life and dies
the death of a slave. True devotion is lost in idol
Iworship—a shepherd has no chance against a lord—
:his sweet solitary pipe is drowned in the clangour of
many trumpets." The work, which is ably and judi-
ciously edited, is printed with an accuracy and beauty
which sustain the well-earned reputation of Edinburgh
typography, and do ample credit to the printing estab-
lishment of the Messrs. Blackwood.

I The Poetical Works of Robert Burns. With
Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory
Notes, by the Rev. George Gilfillan. Vol. I.
Edinburgh : James Nichol.
This, the first volume of the 'fourth yearly series of
Mr. Nichol's beautiful library edition of the British
Poets, is also the first volume of Burns' Poetical
Works—a. noble opening for the year. The volume is
rich in the fervid strains of the great Ayrshire bard,
and contains not a few of his most admired pieces,
including, inter alia," The Cottar's Saturday Night,"
" Man was made to Mourn," the lines " To a Moun-
tain Daisy," the " Epistle to a Young Friend," and,
though last not least, the racy, rollicking, and charm-
ing tale of " Tam o' Shanter, besides :host of minor
pieces, and such a profusien of impassioned lyrics as
would have made fortune and secured fame to half a
score of ordinary bards ; though, in addition to these,
there still remain a sufficient number of the Ayrshire
poet's effusions to fill two coming volumes, the work
being to consist of three. A newspaper criticism on
the poetry of Burns must now be looked on as a
needless labour. His golden numbers have sounded
their happy notes, or pealed their plaintive accents in
every clime and country of the world—the broad
truthfulness of his hilarious humour has awakened
the echoes of the Orinoco—his pathos has mingled
' with the murmurs of the Nile—his warm-hearted
patriotism has braced the air that floated o'er the
Ganges' wave—while every strath and valley, ravine
and glen of his native land have rung with wild de-
light, burned with enthusiasm, or melted into tender-
ness, obedient to his magic lyre. A power so varied
yet so strong, a renown so wide-spread yet so vivid,
can receive no benefit, and need fear no injury, from
anything we could say or do respecting it. In Liver-
pool, however, some lingerins, fondness for the " strong
sweet singer." still prevails,' and the " Queen of the
Mersey " yet reflects in conscious pride, that to the
literary taste and friendly industry of one of her
denizens, the world owes the first collected edition of
Burns' Poems and Letters. The friendly tenderness
and judicious care of Dr. Currie laid the foundation
of all that has been editorially good in the numberless
editions of these poems and letters which have since
issued from the press : these invaluable attributes
of the doctor did more than that, they formed the
ground on which was reared the structure of compe-
tency to the widow, and they cleared the way to for-
tune for the sons of Burns. With such gratifying
reminiscences, it is not to be wondered at that in
Liverpool the memory of Burns is cherished ; and less
so, considering the universality of his genius, to hear
his effusions quoted to admiring assemblies. It is
but a night or two ago since our ears tingled with
delight, to hear the rapturous applause which fol-
lowed the quotation of a few stanzas by the Rev. Dr.
M`Neile, from the " Epistle to a Young Friend,"
which the doctor recited with all the graces of his
accomplished elocution. He could not have given
them better than he did, indeed, unless a more scru-
pulous adherence to the text might be considered an
improvement.
We are wandering from the volume before us, how-
ever, which we are happy to welcome and to recom-
mend as one of a pure text, unloaded by commentary
and unencumbered by notes, few of the latter being
introduced beyond those given by Burns himself in
explanation of peculiarities. The typography is bold
and beautiful, and all, so far as the poems go, appears
to be faultless. The volume, too, is furnished with a
copious glossary ; and so far the Rev. Mr. Gilfillan,
confining himself to the duties of an editor, has done
well. When casting off the habiliments of a literary
watchman, however, he assumes the toga of the
author, and seizes the pen of the biographer, he is less
easy and less fortunate. With a desperate effort to
appear impartial though severe, Mr. Gilfillan conveys
a picture of the moral character of Burns, in which
the deep and sombre shadows overpower and obliterate
the lights. Having in his brief biography introduced
and exhausted numerous antitheses, he concludes by
casting a doubt on the sincerity of Burns' Christian
belief—an insinuation which, if well founded, would
be a subject of deep regret ; but, supported in the loose
fashion adopted by Mr. Gilfillan, it deserves severe
reprobation. " He," says his biographer, " had no
leading principle or guiding star :—not conscience, for
that was often asleep; not benevolence, for his humane
feelings, though sincere, were fluctuating and uncer-
tain ; not religion, for although not an infidel, neither
was he a firm believer." How does Mr. Gilfillan
know that, though not an infidel, he was not a firm
believer ? This species of vile insinuation as to the
religions views of others seems a besetting sin of Mr.
Gilfillan. After giving a string of what they might or
might not have been or done, he generally throws in
a crude mass of detractive matter, and sours the
unhappy leaven with a doubt about their Christianity.
Thus he says of Professor Wilson, after a good deal of
the same kind of wordy conflict of qualities : " He was
not, we think, satisfied with any of the present forms
of the Christian religion ; yet there was something in
him far beyond nature-worship." How came Mr. Gil-
fillan to know this want of satisfaction ? He thinks
it, and that with him is sufficient ground to justify his
endeavour to make others think with him. We think
such a course as dangerous and uncharitable as it is
unnecessary and unjustifiable, and in protesting against
it have at least the advantage of Mr. Gilfillan, in so far
as following an opposite course can lead to no evil
consequences.
The Train. A First-class Magazine. London :
Groombridge and Sons.
The second number of " The Train" supports the
character for vivacity, variety, and smart effect so con-
vincingly set up by the first. Its contents are multi-
form and pleasing, and they are characteristically
illustrated by wood engravings.

The Idler : Magazine of Fiction, essay, Belles Lettres,
and Comedy. London : B. Hardwicke.
The second number of this periodical is the first
which has reached us ; and, judging from that, we
should say " The Idler" has more family connexion
with the gadfly than the butterfly. If a drone, it is,
nevertheless, possessed of a venomous sting, used with
more alacrity than beseems its title.

The Governess, and Educational Review, is a
periodical devoted to gossip about education.

RESTRICTIONS ON FOREIGN TRADERS IN RUSSIA.—No
Englishman or any other foreigner can commence business in
Russia without binding himself to pay annually in advance
£165, and bringing guarantees for the continuance of the pay-
ment for three years beyond any period at which he may relin-
quish his occupation. He is then allowed only to carry on
transactions within the walls of any single seaport city he may
previously select for his residence, and his operations must be
confined to the export of Russian produce on the one hand,
and the sale of foreign produce on the other, in wholesale
quantities. He is not permitted to sell in Russia any Russian
produce whatever; and if, therefore, he should happen to have
an order from his correspondents countermanded after execu-
tion, he has no legal alternative but to ship his purchase away
at any sacrifice. One result of this system is to preclude the pos-
sibility of his having any transactions with his own countrymen.
At the same time, in his dealings with Russian subjects, he is
limited to merchants to the first guild, of whom there are not
150 in St. Petersburg. Moreover, no English merchant, after
having paid the dues required from him, is permitted to em-
ploy any of his own countrymen, without paying similar dues
for them. The result is that there are believed not to be more
than 10 or 15 English establishments in all Russia. All
foreigners are subjected to like prohibitions, but they fall with
especial severity on the English, because our people are less
ready to escape them by parting with their nationality and
taking an oath of allegiance to the Czar. The system has
existed ever since 1807.

RAILWAY STATISTICE3.—In England and Wales there were
6,166 miles of railway open for traffic on the 30th June last,
against 6,112 in 1854. The total number of passengers con-
veyed by these railroads amounted to 43,286,1431, of whom
5,995,1391 were first-class, 15,035,7681 second-class, 8,123,0961
third-class, and 14,122,814 "parliamentary" passengers, besides
9,325 season ticket-holders. The total receipts from horses,
carriages, luggage, parcels, and mails amounted to £450,026,
and the total receipts from general merchandise, cattle, and
minerals to £4,436,914, making a grand total receipt, from all
sources of traffic, of £8,450,394. In Scotland there were 1,051
miles of line open on the 30th of June, 1855. On these lines
5,465,422 passengers were conveyed,—namely, 667,4431 first-
classers, 833,529/ second-classers, 719,200 third-classers, and
3,243,289 parliamentarians. Of season ticketholders there were
1,940. The receipts from horses, carriages, luggage, &c.,
amounted to £46,859, and the receipts from general mer-
chandise to £625,649. The grand total receipts from all
sources amounted to £997,856. In Ireland there were 897
miles of road open on the 30th June. On these railroads tra-
velled 3,0
of the63,584p coassseengned.as
passengers, including
379,228 of the first-class,
1,231,8652 658,702 of the third-class,
791,663 parliamentarians, and 2,125 k season ticketholders.
The receipts from horses, carriages, luggage, and mails
amounted to £45,558, and those from general goods and
cattle to £150,301; making a grand total revenue, from all.
sources of traffic, of £445,698. A comparative summary shows
that in the whole of the United Kingdom there were, on the
30th of last June, 8,115 miles of line open for traffic, against
7,803 miles on the 30th of June, 1854; that 51,815,149/ pas-
sengers were conveyed thereon, against 50,367,404 in 1854;
that the receipts from passengers amounted £4,125,487, ( ex-
clusive of extra fares,) against £4,081,792 in 1854; and that
the receipts from goods and cattle amounted to £5,212,865,
against £4,826,825 in 1854. The grand total revenue of all
railroads for the half-year was £9,894,049, against £9,424,603
111 the corresponding half-year of 1854.