The Sun.
London, England, 1831-09-17 00:00:00

I.IIERATUR

EPISTLES TO A FRIEND IN TOWN,
AND OTHER POEMS.
By CHANDOS LEIGH, Esq.
NEW EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS. SHALE SVO.
We are glad to see a new edition of this
volume of Poems, and still more glad to find,
by the additional verses, now for the first time
published, that the author, instead of abusing
the influence given to him by wealth and birth,
either in addicting himself to the dissipations
often indulged in by the rich, or in helping to
hinder the political and social improvements of
the age, continues to cultivate his literary taste,
and in his writings, from time to time, to prove
himself a true Whig and Reformer. The Poems
of Mr. Leigh are marked by great variety of
style and subject, though it is plain to see that,
like Rogers, he admires the school of Pope
rather than that which has succeeded and for a
time supplanted it. The " Epistles to a Friend
in Town" are written, we should suppose, in
a purposed imitation of the Epistles of Pope,
touching in an epigrammatic manner on many
themes, and throwing over all some portion of
the stores of an accomplished mind. From these
Poems we shall take leave to extract a few pas-
sages, confirmatory (so at least we think) of
what we have said, and exhibiting their author
in the light of a man of reflection, of taste, and
of sound principles in politics and morals.
The following is the opening to the third
Epistle :
"The golden morn of youth is gone, and man
Reaches his noon of life without a plan :
As snow falls softly on the mountain's height,
Time passes by : 'tis scarcely eve, 'tis night :
Though whispers oft the still small voice within,
To waste, or misapply thy time, is sin.
Yet it is pleasant here to gaze away
In sweet forgetfulness of cares the day,
The long long summer's day ; while flowers exhale
Their fragrance borne along the western gale
That o'er our Avon's bosom gently breathes,
Till in the sun her "crisped smiles" she wreathes ;
Or glory in that sun, till thought elate
Would o'er the horison round its orb dilate;
Or trace resemblance to that monarch proud
Of Alps, Mont Blanc, in some high towering cloud;
Or wander lonely through the solemn grove
With every feeling hush'd, save that of love,
Love of a Being who is evermore
All that a grateful spirit must adore !
As clouds along the stream in varied hues
Their lovely shadows rapidly diflbse ;
So o'er life's current changeful Fancy glides,
In shapes swift-flitting o'er the restless tides.
All the fine plans thy subtle mind bath spun
Melt into air, like mists before the sun;
Yet why regret: substantial systems wrought
By heads of statesmen crumble into nought.
The wings of time, through oft repeated shocks,
Beat down opinions strong as granite rocks ;
Senates have sanction'd schemes they now deride;
How mortifying this to human pride!"
And here is a passage in the proper vein—
" But Freedom here can show a nobler prize
Than loveliest nymph, if Claudius will be wise;
Fortune and birth, be he but blest with sense,
Will give him more than labolied eloquence !
What though deficient he in Grattan's fire,
Canning's fine irony, Grey's nobler ire,
Let him but heed the people's genuine voice,
Their boundless love will make his heart rejoice.
Soon will he thank his God that gratitude
Can warm a peasant's heart however rude!"
We must conclude with the following noble
tribute to the memory of the late Mr. Canning
:
" Scarce on his self-raised eminence appear'd
Publius; the harass'd sons of freedom cheet 'd.
To him, as to the pillar'd fire that burn'd
At night before the Israelites, they turn'd.
Struggling 'gamst tyranny's recurring wave
They heard his voice, all-powerful to save;
(A voice that fulmining o'er Europe shamed
Power from attempting schemes that cunning framed,)
With energy renew'd then upwards sprung,
And firmly to their rock of safety clung.
As falls the mighty column in its pride,
Publius had reach'd ambition's height, and died.
Perish'd a statesman as erect and great,
As from its watch-tower e'er o'erlook'd the state."
There is reason here, as well as rhyme,
strength as well as elegance, the fancy of the
poet blended with the judgment of the man.
We wish the generality of our modern bardlings
would write in this style, instead of taking
" Ercles' vein" as a passport to notoriety.
Poetry then would not be in the state in which
it now is—a mere bye-word for cant, bombast,
and frivolity. We take leave of Mr. Chandos
Leigh with feelings of respect and admiration,
and not without the hope that we shall shortly
see him again in print.

SHIPPING INTELLIGENCE-(THIS DAY.)

FROM LLOYD'S.

- -
STANDCATE CREEK, SEPT. 16.—Arrived the Thomas
and Mary, Thompson, from Archangel ; and Regent
picket, Howlett, from Hamburg.
PORTSMOUTH. SEPT. 16.—Wind N.E.—Arrived off the
Wight, the Phensmens, Meregans, from Padang.
PLYMOUTH., SEPT. 15.—Arrived the Grecian, Smith,
from St. Andero.

LIVERPOOL, SEPT. 15.—Arrived the Eggarden Castle,
from Trieste.
ST. MAttoattrr's Flom SEPT. 15.—Arrivcd the Jere-
miah, liorny, from Archangel ; and Mary, Ritchie, from
St. Petersburgb.
HUMBER, SEPT. 15.—Arrived the Woodhouse, Ross,
from Rig,.

THE FUNDS.-(THIS DAY.)

CITY, TWELVE O'CLOCK.

The most unwelcome news for some time past is an-
nounced this morning, the capitulation of Warsaw, after
two days' fighting in its environs, with the storming of the
Polish entrenchments by the Russians. The fate of the
brave, but unfortunate Poles, is in general deplored
throughout the city ; some faint hopes are expected from
the Polish army, who have made good their retreat to-
wards Plock ; no doubt the Emperor of Russia will grant
them favourable terms, which they must accept as their
grand point d'appui.
Warsaw is lost, we must now look to Paris and to the
French nation : how they will receive this sad catastrophe,
and the effect it will have on the Ministers of the King
of the French, will, no doubt, cause a great agitation
throughout France; but it is too late—the die is cast.
In the Stock Exchange they do not give implicit credit
to the fall of Warsaw, we wish it was in our power to
contradict it. Up to the present time it has not had much
effect on the Funds.

LONDON,
SATURDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 17, 1831.

From one end to the other, the country is in
motion. County—city—town—and village, are
all busy in forming themselves into committees
and associations, for the purpose of expressing,
for the last time, their fixed, invincible deter-
mination to wrest Reform from the borough-
mongers. The more the Parson Magistrates
and Tory Lord Lieutenants oppose this spirit,
the more eagerly bent are the people on ma-
nifesting it. The conflagration spreads the
wider and burns the fiercer, in proportion to
the pains taken to smother it. Before the end of
next week, thousands and tens of thousands, and
hundreds of thousands of Reformers, intent on one
object, inspired to a man with one soul; high-
mettled, but temperate ; steady, serious, but un-
alterably resolute ; will have met, and publicly
recorded their sentiments on the subject of the
Bill. ‘Vill the Lords be deaf to the thunder of
this appeal ? Will they laugh to scorn the
voice, pregnant with awful meaning, which
swells up from the north and south, the east
and the west ? Will they term that the
mere murmuring of the summer wind,
which is the sound of the boding hur-
ricane ? Surely not. Instinct, if not reason,
will teach them better. Their keen sense
of interest will help them to a right decision.
They will think of their sumptuous palaces,
their well-preserved parks, their fat farm-steads,
their carriages, their horses, their wines, their
Almacks, their Crockfords, their Newmarkets ;
and, thinking of these, they will say, Shall
we put them all in jeopardy by the mere ex-
pression of a monosyllable—by saying No,
when we should say Yes ?" These consi•
derations alone will, we are persuaded, in-
duce the Peers to swallow the unpalatable
dose of the Reform Bill ; and provided they do
so, they may make what wry faces they please :
we will not quarrel with them about that.
No man objects to another that he looks ugly
while he is taking physic. It is a matter of
course.

But notwithstanding the probability that the
Lords will pass the Bill, the people must not
for an instant relax in their exertions. They
must keep on duty to the last moment. The
enemy, we can assure them, is night and day at
his post. He is Argus-eyed and hundred-
handed, a Nestor in experience, a Ulysses in
subtlety. Even now he is at work in Dorset-
shire, striving heart and soul, by lies, bribery,
and every species of paltry huckstering, to pro-
cure the return of his darling representative, Old
BANKES. Old BANKES, M.P. for Dorset-
shire ! No, no, this must never be. Free-
holders, were such a disgrace ever again to attach
to your county, we know not the man among you,
who would be able to show his face in society.
You would be repudiated as Englishmen—he
branded as apostates to the remotest posterity.
You arc all to a man, irrevocably linked with
the great cause of Reform ; you stand out in the
forehead of the age ; are proudly conspicuous in
the front of the battle ; Hold aloft the sacred
banner of the Constitution ; and if you now
desert your colours, or betray your cause ; if you
even show the slightest symptoms of doubt
vacillation, or timidity—the curses of your indig-
nant countrymen will stick to you like burrs,
sting you, like serpents, to the death.
Do you need assistance ? You will have it.
Subscription Committees are, for this purpose,
afloat in the metropolis, and the example will bta

nit doubt, fullowml promptly throughout the
country. indeed, no sacrifice must be con-
sidered too great, that has the efFect of pro-
longing old BA N K ES'S retirement. Poor
old gentleman, what deadly crime has he
committed that the Ultras should be thus
malignantly bent on drawing him from the
bosom of domestic felicity ? Can they not allow
him, if only for the honour of literature, to con-
tinue his Constitutional history of Rome un-
interrupted ? Can they not permit him still to
enjoy the deep, the refreshing slumbers that
his readers have so often experienced over that
immortal publication ? But the Ultras have ma-
nifestly no bowels, and it is your duty, freeholders
of Dorsetsh;re, to set them an example of benevo •
lence. It is your duty to respect the grey hairs of
old BANKEs, and not subject his honoured age to
the cares and anxieties attendant on protracted
sittings in the House of Commons. Take pity
on his years, and continue him still in the se-
questered retirement of Cone Castle.

Mr. HUNT'S motion for the total repeal of
the Corn Laws was as unreasonable as the ge-
neral tenor of that Honourable Member's speech.
To say nothing of the mid-adroitness—not to
call it bad faith—of bringing forward, to the in-
terruption of the Reform Bill, and before a
House wholly indisposed to entertain the ques-
tion at the moment, a proposition of such a
nature ; the motion is in itself not such as is at
all likely to command the assent either of the
House or of the public. For although the Corn
Laws must, before long, be considerably modi7
fied, the country being generally indignant at
the monopoly they tend to uphold, and although
the system of averages be admitted to be infinitely
inferior in practical advantage to a system of
fixed duties, yet no possible reason can he as-
signed
why corn, unlike other commodities,
ought to be imported duty free. The exigencies
of the Treasury are such, that a main article of
consumption, like corn, cannot fairly be excused
from contribution to the public service, provided
a reasonable rate of duty be imposed for the
sake of revenue, and for its sake only. A duty
having the object of protection we hold to be
unjustifiable, but a fixed imposition, say of five
shillings per quarter, for the purposes of revenue,
appears not open to objection on any intelligible
principle.
The people of Bolton, according to Mr.
HUNT'S account, have announced the support
of the total repeal of the Corn Laws to be one
of the pledges they would require from their
future Members—the others being, to vote for
an equitable adjustment of the National Debt—
the bringing of justice to every man's door—the
abolition of all places, pensions, and monopolies
—the repeal of all taxes oppressing the middle
and lower classes—and the repeal of the Law of
Primogeniture. This is tolerably thorough-
going indeed, and is certainly remarkable as a
proof of the temper of a considerable portion of
the population. But it is not so easy to criti-
cise vague expressions, such as the equitable
adjustment of the debt, which is a phrase capa-
ble of so many explanations, or the repeal of all
taxes oppressing the middle and lower classes,
which is, we suppose, intended to mean that
there ought not to be any taxes at all. The
people have unfortunately so indistinct notions
of the mode in which Government is carried on,
that they are open to all kinds of absurd ideas
with which demagogues can fill their minds,
whereas, when a sensible man, like Mr. HUME,
attempts to point out their errors; he is either
reproached for insincerity, or sneered at as a
political economist.
Reforms will come in due time to all abuse e,
but it is obvious that it is not the way to expedite
them, to frustrate that most important Reform
of all, which is now at so perilous a crisis. Mr.
HUNT is liable to just imputations of insincerity
for the perverse line of conduct he has adopted
throughout the progress of the measure. Be it
from hypocrisy, or ignorance, or whatsoever other
cause, the people it is to be hoped have by this
time appreciated duly this gentleman's behaviour,
and will visit him with the contempt he deserves.
The Member for Preston is an instance of the
want of knowledge among the people, for no
electors of ordinary discernment could choose
such an ignoramus knowingly for their represen-
tative. However, the mischief such a Member
is able to do is but little, for his errors and
absurdities are constantly exposed by those who
are able and willing to state the truth. So it
will be in a reformed Parliament. There will
be many in such an assembly ill-versed in poli-
tical science, but there will still be plenty of wiser
men to set them to rights, and the truth in the
end will be sure to prevail. Parliament is like
the Press, which, though ever liable to error,
ought not on that account to be deprived of that
freedom in its essence, without which it becomes
a stagnant pool of corruption, instead of a
fountain of living water.

In an article in the Moniteur of Wednesday,
which will be seen in another column, our
readers will find an eloquent and temperate ex-
position of the conduct and motives of France
with regard to the occupation of Belgium, and
the intended demolition of the fortresses.

The Alkemeine Zeitung gives some striking
and singular details respecting the late insurrec-
tion in Hungary of the peasants against the
nobles, on suspicion entertained by the former
that they were to be poisoned by the latter. The
details are well worthy the reader's notice, who
will probably exclaim on reading them, " What
sort of a Government must that be which can
cause the people to entertain such horrid notions !"

. .
FROM THE FRONTIERS OF HUNG RY, SEPT. I.—The
dreadful scenes in some counties of Hungary are now put
an end to by the interference of the military, and those
guilty of them receive the punishment of their crimes.
Yet great as is the guilt of these individuals, and great as
their punishment may necessarily be, they are to be pitied,
as having been deluded, though by their own fault. The
suspicion that the cholera was c 'used by the poisoning of
the wells was universal amongst the peasantryof the coun-
ties of Zips and Zemplin, and every one was fully con-
vinced of its truth. The first occasion arose in Kluknow,
where it is said some peasants died in consequence of tak-
ing the preservatives, whether by an immediate use of me-
dicine, or whether they thought they were to take chlo-

gflll
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY MURDO YOUNG, ,

SUN OFFICII, 112, STRAND, LONDOY.