The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-03-04 00:00:00

PUSH ON!

AwAxE! and listen. Everywhere—
From upland, grove, and lawn,
Out breathes the universal prayer,
The orison of morn.

Arise! and don thy working garb;
All nature is astir:
Let honest motives be thy barb,
And usefulness thy spur.

Stop not to list the boisterous jeers,
(He would be what thou art :)
They should not e'en offend thine ears,
Still less disturb thy heart.
What though you have no shining hoard,
(Inheritance or stealth ;)
To purchase at the broker's board
The recompense of wealth—

Push on ! you're rusting while you stand ;
Inaction will not do;
Take life's small bundle in your hand,
And trudge it briskly through.
Push on!

Don't blush because you have a patch
In honest labour won;
There's many a small cot roof'd with thatch
Far happier than a throne:
Push on ! the world is large enough
For you, and me, and all ;
You must expect a share of rough,
And, now and then, a fall.

Bat, up again ! act out your part—
Bear smilingly your load;
There's nothing like a cheery heart
To mend a stony road. _

Push on !

Jump over all the ifs and buts ;
There's always some kind hand
To lift life's waggon from the ruts,
Or poke away the sand.

Remember, when your sky of blue
Is shadowed by a cloud,
The sun will shine as soon for you
As for the monarch proud.

It is but written on the moon,
That toil alone endures;
The king would dance a rigadoon
With that blithe soul of yours.

Push on ! you're rusting while you stand ;
Inaction will not do;
Take life's small bundle in your hand,
And trudge it briskly through.

LITERATURE.

The Natural History of Dee-side and Braemar.
By the late William Macgillivray, M.D. Edited
by Edwin Lankester, M.D.
This book, which has been printed for private cir-
culation, has many claims upon general attention, and
presents itself to us with peculiar interest. As a
charming and diligently compiled transcript of the
natural history of a most interesting district of the
Scottish Highlands, the work is sure to command a
wide circle of admirers ; while its merits as the pro-
duction of a sagacious and unpretending though
zealous and enlightened naturalist will secure for it
the approbation of the scientific student. Apart from
these considerations, however, the general reader will
find much to interest and delight him in its pages,
while the facts connected with its production confer
on it an adventitious value. The district of country
. the natural history of which is traced with such pains-
taking fidelity by the late Professor Macgillivray is
one presenting a variety of claims upon the attention
of all classes. The varied beauty, the grandeur—
indeed the sublimity of the scenery included within its
range, have long rendered it a favourite theatre of
study to the tourist in search of the picturesque. In
its secluded dells, among its bold mountain ridges,
and on its precipitous and craggy steeps, the botanist,
the zoologist, and the mineralogist have found exten-
sive and varied stores in which to prosecute their
favourite studies. Added to these sources of interest,
within these few years past, Dee-side and Braemar
have acquired fresh and strengthening claims as the
favoured northern retreat, " the Highland home " of
our beloved sovereign, the arena in which are centred
the forest and hill sports of the Prince-Consort ; and
among whose glades and mountains their children, as
well as themselves, inhale the invigorating mountain
breezes. To each one of all these claims to notice,
Professor Macgillivray was sensitively alive. The
district was familiar to him from frequent examina-
tion, and dear through many associations ; and in the
year 1850, he paid it his last exploring visit. On this
occasion he completed the MS. which forms the body
of the work, but which, alas ! he was not destined to
see published.
It embraces elaborate and tasteful descriptions of
the scenery, is rich and valuable in its geological
memoranda, and is full and interesting in its details of
the botany and zoology of the district; and it is more-
over so full of the modest spirit, so replete with the
patient industry, and so fully instinct with the pains-
taking earnestness of the author's character, as to be
at once instructive and delightful. Professor Mac-
gillivray was one of those remarkable men with whom
the history of our literature and science abounds.
Born in one of the humbler walks of life, and with few
opportunities of early culture, he nevertheless, through
difficulties of no ordinary kind, pushed his way by slow
degrees through the earliest stages of his elementary
education ; and, from childhood, devoted to the study
of natural history, he began, while yet in dawning
manhood, to occupy attention among the naturalists
of the Scottish metropolis. Shortly after the opening
of the magnificent museum of the Royal College of
Surgeons in Edinburgh, in the noble building which
it now occupies Mr. Macgillivray was appointed its
conservator; which responsible and honourable office
he held till, in 1841, he received from the Crown the
appointment of Professor of Civil and Natural History
in Mareschal College, Aberdeen. He was a volumi-
nous writer on various subjects connected with natural
history, and was the literary coadjutor of the cele-
brated Audubon, in bringing out his great ornitholo-
gical work.
The work now under consideration is the last from
the pen of its accomplished author, and, besides its
intrinsic merits as a literary and scientific production,
will be looked on with increased interest from the
peculiar circumstances under which it has been pub-
lished. The death of the author occurred almost
simultaneously with the completion of the text, and it
is not improbable that the publication of the book
would not have been proceeded with, but for the
interference of Her Majesty, who, being well acquainted
with the object and character of the work, commanded
that the MS. should be purchased and published.
This has been done, and the volume has been issued
in a style worthy of the subject and the circumstances.
It is very handsomely printed, and is most tastefully
got up. It is illustrated with fourteen engraved
views and two maps : among the former are three
scenes from the pencil of the Viscountess Canning,
the others being chiefly the artistic productions of
Professor Macgillivray and his accomplished daughter.
Copies of this beautiful work have, with regal munifi-
cence, been presented by Prince Albert to numerous
distinguished naturalists and most of the public
libraries in the kingdom, among which institutions
the Liverpool Free Library has received one. The
book, which is written in a pleasing style, is at once
popular and instructive. The peculiar bearing and
bias of the author's mind, and also the advantages to
be derived from a patient inquiry into the arcana of
Nature, are well illustrated in the following remarks
ON THB STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY.
Onr object in examining the stone, the rock, the lichen, the
moss, the flower, the fruit, the insect, the bird, or the quad-
ruped, is to exercise our faculties by learning how beautifully
and with what wisdom all things have been constructed, how
wonderfully they are formed with relation to each other, and
how manifestly they display a power of which we could form
no conception were we not to attend to its working as exhibited
by them. It is true we cannot fully comprehend the compli-
cated relations of the most common objects, much less under-
stand the ordination of the universe, or even of our own
world ; but we labour in hope; we are studying, some of us,
iio doubt, very superficially—others more profoundly—the
works of the Deity, and the more progress we make the more
we glorify- Him by an intelligent, not a vague admiration.
There are some who aim at the knowledge of general laws,
some who seek simple facts. Both parties will find enough to
engage their faculties, and neither will do the work of the
other efficiently. There is no reason why one should despise
the other. Contempt of anything but vice indicates an
unsound mind, a defective judgment, an ignorance of the
relations which men have to each other and to their Creator,
an undue self-estimation and a contempt of the rights or other
men. He who measures the orbit of a comet has not, there:
fore, higher faculties than he who examines the cytoblast of a
fungus ; and there is far more to be seen by us in a beetle
than in a planet—upon that granite mountain opposite, at the
distance of nine or ten miles, than in the sun and the moon
and the stars.
Such pleasing self-abnegation and sincere devotion
to his favourite study was eminently characteristic of
Macgillivray. Jealousy of others found no place in
his simple and unpretending yet earnest mind. The
work has been carefully and judiciously edited by
Dr. Lankester, who adds an interesting appendix to
the volume, under the title of " Notes on the Deer of
Scotland," in which much valuable and not very
generally known information is conveyed.

The Papal Conspiracy Ea:poled ; oi., the .Romish
Corporation Dangerous to the Political Liberty
and Social Interests of la„. By Edward
Beecher, D.D. ; with Preface by the Rev. James
Begg, D.D. Edinburgh : James Nichol.
This is a volume containing the result of much
teading and no small amount of study. It is written
'with much energy ; and, if lacking in some of the
attributes of polished literary composition, it more

than compensates for that deficiency by the intense
earnestness with which the subject is treated, and in
the clearness with which the social dangers against
which it holds out warning are treated. The author
of the work has, with much zeal, devoted his attention
to an examination of the origin and progress of papal
domination. In prosecution of this object he has dili-
gently read the popular and collated the less generally
known authorities ; and from these he deduces argu-
ments in favour of the conclusion inferred in the title
of his book. The scenes and incidents upon which his
theory is built are not new, but are, unfortunately
for the credit of our sinful nature, too well known
and too generally authenticated to admit of contradic-
tion, or to be even open to cavil. The chief duty of the
author, then, has been so to connect and weave them
into a continuous, consistent, and strong web, and so
to present them to his readers that no one can miss
his object or mistake his meaning. This he has done
clearly and well. His next object has been to point
out the gross inconsistency between the papal usurpa-
tion, as that is taught and acted on by its accredited
teachers, and the freedom of thought and action incul-
cated by American institutions. He satisfactorily
shows that the wiles and cruelty of the Romish
Church, as these have been exercised with undeviating
aim through successive ages, have proved too strong
for the practical opposition of civil government ; while
her peculiarly constructed tenets, framed entirely for
her own aggrandisement, have invariably resulted in
such a prostration of the human intellect as to render
her sway, politically, as dangerous as it was morally
noxious and degrading.
Having established and illustrated these points
of importance, he proceeds to show, that as Popery
has been, so it will always be, inimical to free institu-
tions and to free thought. This latter position he
deduces, with considerable logical clearness, from the
past history and present operations of the Romish
adherents in the United States, and argues with much
force, that if a check be not put upon those proceed-
ings, even the vigorous republicanism of America
will quail and perish before the insidious machina-
tions of Rome and the stealthy advances of her
cunning and unscrupulous myrmidons. To avert
this, he calls loudly upon his countrymen to resist the
inroads of the Romish clergy made in all directions,
and emphatically warns them of the danger ere it be
too late.

The volume, which is illustrated by a spirited wood-
cut from the graver of Adams, is also furnished with
a preface, addressed to the British public, by the Rev.
Dr. Begg, in which that gentleman, in his usual style
of declamation, calls the attention of British Protest-
ants to the value and importance of the work.

Blackwood's _Magazine. Edinburgh : Blackwoods.
The number for March opens with a review of a
History of Rome, by the Yen. Dr. Liddell, Dean
of Christchurch, Oxford, in which much interesting
light is thrown on ancient history, by the inscriptions
discovered through the researches of enterprising
travellers in the East. " Monteil" is a story from
the French, and though we have a kind of national
prejudice against French literature, the present cor-
dial alliance between the two nations may justify the
translation of a story which possesses considerable
merit. " Biography gone Mad," is a withering sar-
casm of the recently-published biographies of two
notorious New York editors. The writer is unsparing
in his denunciation of the libel upon literature by such
works, and might have included in his anathema the
Recollections of the late Samuel Rogers. An article
on the Greek Church contains some valuable informa-
tion on a phase of Christianity which, whilst it was
made the pretext for a quarrel which led to the war
with Russia, will, after peace has been concluded,
excite still greater interest than it has yet done, as
being the direct antagonistic principle to Mohammed-
anism. The recent war of words:in the United States,
on British influence in Central America, though not
likely to result in more than bluster, will give an
interest nevertheless to the article entitled " Nicaragua
and the Filibusters," which details the recent pro-
ceedings in that district. In a paper on " The Scottish
Fisheries," attention is called to a subject of con-
siderable importance to our northern neighbours, from
its promising, under proper management, to become
one of the most considerable sources of wealth as well
as means for the employment of native industry. In
striking contrast with the previous article on " Bio-
graphy Gone Mad," is a review of the memoir of the
" Rev. Sydney Smith." As a rare event in Black-
wood's Magazine, this number concludes with two
papers on the same subject ; the one headed " Peerages
for Life," by an English, and the other entitled
" The Wensleydale Creation," by a Scotch lawyer.
By both writers the subject is Ith.ndled in a masterly
style, and the dangers to the Constitution, had resist-
ance not been so nobly made by the House of Lords,
are ably pointed out. On the whole, this number
contains much, both of the useful and ornamental,
that is well deserving of perusal, and Blackwood's
Magazine maintains its position at the head of our
periodical literature.