The Express.
London, England, 1847-11-09 00:00:00

PROVINCIAL.

COMPENsATION I,olr.Lt;tor OFFICE.—By a
clause in the late Liverpool Solitary Act, the council were
empowered to grant compensation to such parties whose em-
ployment its operation might supersede, provided they were
not famished with an office of equal value under the new
act. The corporation, acting under the advice of counsel,
determined, as a general principle, to grant two-thirds of the
fixed salary previously received, not taking into account
whatever emoluments there might have been. Under a
power in the act, Mr. E. 0. Deane, law clerk to the late
highway board, Mr. Snowball, who filled • similar office
under the Toxtetk Park commissioners, and the powers of
both of which b are now transferred to • (laminates of the
council, and five tubs'. parties, appealed to Gilbert Hendee-
ran, Esq., recorder of the borough, in substautiation of their
deigns. The reorder, alter many months' oonsideratioa,
yesterday gave judgment in the sessions-house, at Liver-
pool. Mr. Deans''' salary had been fixed by set
of parliament at 1001. per annum, but the board
had also employed him u their solicit'', in the recce
very of debts and the transaction of parliamentary business.
Although there was no doubt that the board might have
employed another solicitor in the transaction of this business,
the recorder considered Mr. Deane entitled to compensation
for loss of these particular functions, and awarded him a
gross sum of not less than 3,8001. To Mr. Snowball he
awarded 3,4001.; and to the other appellants (who have been
employed, but in less lucrative offices) equally liberal com-
pensation.
THE AMERICAN LECTURER. MR. EMERSON's
SZCOND ADDRII.B4.—" Swedenborg, the Mystic," was de-
livered on 'Thursday evening, to an auditory filling the
lecture theatre of the Manchester Atheneum. Mr. Emerson
said : Among the great persons of history, it is remarkable
that those who are the most near and dear to men are not of
the class which the political economists call producers. A
higher class, in the estimation and love of this city-
budding, market-going race of mankind, are the poets,
who, from the intellectual kingdom, feed the thought and
imagination with ideas end picturrs, which raise men out
of the world of corn and money, and console them for
the short-comings of the day and the meannesses of
labour and traffic. Then, the philosopher, also, has his
value, who flatters the intellect of this labourer by
engasing him with subtleties, which instruct him in new
faculties, and acquaint him with the light of a new sphere.
But there is • class who lead us into another region,—the
world of morals, the world of will. There is somewhat com-
manding to all men in the saint. The privilege of this class
has been, that they had some nearer access to the secrets
and structure of nature than other men, and that by some
higher method than by experience ; not by particular expe-
riment, but by an intuition of the elements of things. The
Arabians asy that the mystic and the philosopher having con-
ferred together, the philosopher, on parting, said, "AIl that
he sees, I know ;" and the mystic, "All that be knows, I see."
If he that inquires have a holy and god-like soul, if by being
brought nearer unto and assimilated to the First Canoe, or
original soul, by whom and after whom all things subsist,
easily and naturally the soul of this man does then flow into
all things, and all things flow into it ; they mix; and be is
present and sympathetic with their structure and laws. The
religious history of all nations contains traces of the trances
of saints ; " the flight," Plotinus calls it, " of the alone to
the alone." The trances of Socrates, Plotinus, Behmen,
Fox, Bunyan, Pascal, Guyon, and Swedenborg, readily
come to mind ; but what as readily comes to mind is the ac-
companiment of disease. This shocks and " o'er informs
the tenement of clay," or oftener gives a certain violent bias
to the judgment. No such remarkable example of this in.
troversion of mind has occurred in modern times sa the life
of Emanuel Swedenborg. This man, who appeared to his
contemporaries a visionary, no doubt led the most real
life of any man then in the world; and now he begins to
spread himself into the minds of thousands. (Mr. Emer-
son then gave the outlines of Swedenhorg's biography, and
enumerated his numerous and voluminous works ia so many
different sciences, physical and theological.) No one man
is perhaps able to judge of the merits of his works on s s many
subjects. His books on mines and metals are studied to this
day; it seems he anticipated, in various departments, the
scienc of the 19th century ; in astronomy, the discovery of
the planet Herschel, and the views of modern astronomers in
regard to the generation of earths by the sun. In chemistry,
the atomic theory was an anticipstion of Swedenborg. In
anatomy, he anticipated the discoveries of Munro and Wil-
ton ; and he first demonstrated the office of the lungs. His
principal work, on the animal kingdom, published in 1744,
but only recently Englished, was written with the highest
end,—to put science and the soul (long estranged) at one
again. Nothing could exceed his bold and brilliant treat
ment of a subject usually so dry and repulsive ; it was a
picture of nature so wide and free as the most impassioned
poet could not have surpassed. He decided peremptorily for
the analytic against the synthetic method, and claimed to
confine himself to rigid experience. Swedenborg hav-
ing conceived the ide• that certain books of the Old and
New Testament were written symbolically, devoted the
later years of his life to the extrication from the literal of the
universal sense. He held that the cause of all things in
heaven and earth being representative, is, that they exist
from an influx of the deity. But this design of his, which, if
' adequately executed, would be the poem of the world, in
which all history and science would play an essential pert,
was narrowed and reduced by the theological direction
which his inquiries took ; and the whole field still remains
open. Yet the interpreter, whom mankind must still expect,
will find no predecessor who has approached to near the true
problem as Swedenborg. His perception of nature is not I
human and universal, but mystic and Hebraic. He fastens each
object of nature to atheologic notion: thus, to him, a horse sig-
nifies carnal understanding; the sun, love ; the moon, faith ;
• field, doctrine ; and • city, heresy ; an ostrich means one
thing, and an artichoke another. But the scripture of nature
is not of so private an interpretation ; the slippery Proteus
is not so easily caught. If asked to account for that un-
questionable fascination which Swedenborg exerts over a
class, and a growing class, of the best and purest minds, he
(the lecturer) would say it is, that Swedenborg is a man of
genius, and served religion by his genius. To the withered
traditional church, yielding only dry old criticism, he let in
the light of nature; and the worshipper, accustomed to re-
ceive into his understanding certain cold verbal results, is
overjoyed to find himself a party to the whole of his religion ;
that his religion thinks for him, and is of universal applica-
tion. Of course that which is real and universal in Sweden-
borg cannot be confined to the circle of those who sympa-
thise strictly with his genius, but will rapidly pass into
the common stock of the wise and just thinking in
the world. Under certain limitations, which always'
attend him, he is, of all the moderns, the strictest
and faithfullest idealist. He abounds in golden
sayings, which express, sometimes with singular beauty,
ethical law' ; as when he says that in heaven the angels ad-
vance eontinuaily to the spring-time of their youth, so that
the oldest angel appears the youngest. Again, love, and
not the wish to be prominent, constitutes heaven ; for, to
' wish to be greater than others, is not heaven, but hell.
But still his books have no melody, no emotion. no humour.
no relief to the dead prosaic level. His system of the world
wants central spontaneity ; it is essentially dynamic, and
lacks power to generate individuals ; it is mechanical power
without life. It requires for his just apprehension, al-
most • genius equal to his own. Every ardent and con-
templative young man, at eighteen or twenty, ought to
read once these theological books of Swedenborg, and then
throw them aside for ever. The vice of 8 wedenbonr's mind
is its theological determination ; nothing, with him, has
the liberality of universal wisdom—l speak, of course, of his
theological writings : his scientific works are not at all open
to this objection ; they are, I suppose, of a value not yet at
all estimated. His cardinal position in morals is, that evils
should be shunned as Bing. More tette and healthy, to shun
evil as evil. Another dogma growing out of his pernicious
limitations, is his belief in evil spirits, devils. That pore ma
lignity should exist, is an absurd proposition • it is atheism.
Man, wheresoever thou see'st him, in brothels, gaols, or on
gibbets, is on his way upward to all that is good and true.
Everything is superficial and perishing, but love and truth
only : the largest is always the truest sentiment. Sweden-
borg has rendered • great and double service to mankind,
which is as yet far from being exhausted ; which, indeed, is
only now beginning to be known. By the science of experi-
ment and use, by science in a sense that fools and sages can
both acknowledge, he apprehended and stblished to man
the laws of nature, and, ascending by just degrees from the
grossest external phenomena to their summits and causes,
he was fired with • rapture of piety and love at the har-
monies he saw and shared, and abandoned himself to his
joy and worship. This was his first service. If the glory
was too bright for his eyes to bear—if he staggered under
the trance of delight—the more excellent then the wondrous
spectacle of the realities of being which beam and bless
through him, and which no infirmities of the prophet are suf-
fered to obscure. And he renders a second passive service to
man, not less than the first, perhaps, in the great circle of
being, and, in the retribution of spiritual nature, not lees
glorious or less beautiful to himself.
STATE OF TRADE.—The mill returns this week
show • further reduction in the number of hands employed;
but it is accounted for, to • great extent, as consequent upon
two large firms having stopped, and taken advantage of the
existing depression of trade to make alterations in machi-
nery, cleanse boilers, &c., without intending permanently to
close. The turn-outs at Mottram have accepted the reduc-
tion, and it is said that those of Ashton have signified a dis-
position to resume on the same terms.

AMATEUR SURGERY.—OR Friday, an inquest was
held at Liverpool, on the body of Patrick Falkoey, a la-
bourer, 32 years of age, alleged to here met his death from
violence. J. M•Nalty, a laxcirer, stated that three weeks
ago deceased and he and two other men were drinking at a
public-house in Dale-street. While ;there some words took
place between the deceased and Edward Freeman, and
the latter struck the deceased with his Rat somewhere
about the head. Witness took him away, when a
man named Grady struck the deceased a blow with a
stick (which be had not before) on the back of the head.
Deceased cried out, that there was iron or lead at the
end of the stick, and him bead bled profusely. After this,
Freeman's wife struck him also (witnees saw nothing in her
hand), Raying that she owed him a spite, and could not re-
venge herself till then. Deceased's head swelled, and he
died on Thursday Wt.—Mr. Lynch, surgeon at the Dis-
pensary, proved that deceased died of erysipelas, which might
have been produced by the blow of a stick. He added that
when he visited him (on Wednesday night) he found a man
holding a basin beneath the temple of decease& He asked
who had been bleeding him, and was told, " Dr. St.
Pierre," who was then up in the garret. The " doctor "
shortly afterwards came down, and said he knew it was An-