The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-07-19 00:00:00

LTVERPOOL STANDARD, TUESDAY

THE

ever, there is one consolati6n in the pleasing fact
that "A Life-Drama," has already reached a second
edition ; and such a notice as that in the Dublin
must now produce more good than harm both to
poet and publisher.

The New Bond of Love.

New York : Published

for the Author. 1 S 53.

We have here 113 pages, crammed with the
wildest absurdities that ever flowed from the pen of
an insane Yankee. We are not surprised that the
book has no printer's name attached to it. It
ought never to have been printed. The author,
denouncing the selfishness of humanity as the root
of all evil, proposes that a bond of love be esta-
blished, each member of which shall devote one
month in the twelve to the service of his or her
fellow-creatures who require assistance. If the
world is not willing to accede to this proposal, then
there is but one alternative left :
" But if there should be no answer ; if the black stream
should roll on sluggishly, doggedly ; would the heavens
frown if a holy being were to make a supreme effort and
concentrate in his bosom all the nameless sufferings of
millions and millions who are gone, of millions and mil-
lions who are living, of millions and millions who are to
come, and shout forth in agony and despair—Stop the
supplies ! Let there be no new beings produced before
the black stream is stemmed."

The author of these ravings intimates that
humanity is to be regenerated by the influence of
the " noble new world." One passage from the
modest Yankee on this head, and then we have done
with him :

" The love of truth which comes down from heaven
may be misunderstood in the Old World, because there
the people are nothing, but here the people are every-
thing ; and, unmolested by the selfish lamentations of
disappointed demagogues, or the frantic sobs and sighs of
fanatical day-dreamers, they can well afford to give a
hearing to everybody; since they know that to make them
act against their own convictions is in the power of
nobody. This love of truth is the almighty swayer of
their convictions ; the love of truth is written upon the
face of your citizens ; the love of truth is written upon
the graceful faces of your women."

vtr 4, uta ura Ya.buV rua
This is pretty tall swagger, even for an American.
graphs, instead of founding a new bond of love,
had better be intrusted by his friends to the salutary
bonds of a strait-jacket.

Ballads and Lyrics. By Robert Bower. Edinburgh :
James Hogg.
A well-meaning, but a mistaken man is Mr.
Robert Bower. A rather imperfect judgment as to
the value of his own
.handiwork, or the praise of
inconsiderate friends, has made him fancy that he
is a poet, and accordingly he has plunged at once
into publication. We wish we had it in our power
to praise his volume ; for he is an amiable person,
we can imagine, and is evidently wishful to make
his literary abilities subservient to the best pur-
poses. But an amiable and well-intentioned man
does not constitute a poet, as a few samples from
Mr. Bower's sky-blue volume will amply attest.
" The Infanticide" is a painful piece of work,
opening thus :

" Born in a dismal den,
Where thieves and robbers dwell,
She grew in want and wickedness ;
How sad her tale to tell !

" Her mother—let us draw
A veil o'er aught of her :
Her father—drunkard, sluggard—
Scarcefrom his glass would stir."
Mr. Bower is a Scotsman, we presume, and, doubt-
less, from his circle of acquaintances has drawn
the picture delineated in the last line. But this
thirsty parent,—if his abiding place was Edinburgh,
he must have been "one in fifteen," we fancy--
deepens the complexion of his guilt by sending out
his girl to beg and steal :
" For crimes when put in jail,
She felt it little pain ;
So soon as she was free,
She went and stole again.
" At length she had a child,
Then she began to think ;
And thus she thought as she
Stood by a river's brink :

" ' Shall this child also grow
Like me, in want and sin ?'
She kissed the little babe,
And then she threw it in.

"They hanged that guilty mother,
And all the world said,
'Twas just that she should die,
Because the child was dead 1"
Verily, thou lovest simplicity, Mr. Bower. Thy
lines are quite Wordsworthian,—all the words
without any worth in them - with all the apparent
purility, and not a spark of the poetry which dis-
tinguishes the effusions of the bard of -Rydal.
We do not know whether Mr. Bower has come to
his courting days yet; but we hope that if he has
not he will, before entering on that agreeable epoch
in his history, modify his idea of a kiss. It is at
present positively frightful to contemplate. For,
says he—depicting a fierce, tempestuous night—
" The wild winds seemed to kiss
The waters of the stream."
Rough work this, Mr. Bower. We have heard of
wild winds lashing the waters into billowy wrath,
and it requires certainly a long stretch of the imagi-
nation for a man at the Ormes Head on a stormy
night to fancy that old Bill Boreas and his fickle
crew have come down on a love expedition to have a
quiet night's caressing of the waves. But our
author is not very choice in the selection of his
figures. Here is another example :
" With matchless fury Douglas fought,
His sword, of wondrous weight and length,
Unto the earth assailants brought,
Like saplings crushed by woodman's strength.

" But, lo ! like mighty vessel stranded
Upon a rock amid the water,
He struck—he fell ; his double-handed
Weapon ceased its horrid slaughter."
The author states his aspiration to " frame a song,"
superior to all that ever have been penned :

" Breathing the spirit of vitality ;
fEolian-harp-like let it be,
Such as Apollo sung—
Soft and impassioned—•harmonious and sublime—
Worthy of existence in remotest time."
Mr. Bower is probably a nice young man—the
favourite correspondent, mayhap, of some north
country blue•stockings, but we fear that he never
will be a poet, while we fervently hope that we
have seen the last of him—at least in print.

The Dodd Family Abroad. London : Chapman and

Charles Lever was by some critics supposed to be
running dry ; but his present work proves the sup-
position to have been a signal mistake. To our
mind The Dodd Family Abroad is one of the best
stories that ever flowed from his fertile pen ; and
we are much mistaken if it does not long survive
the mere circulating-library fame which it is sure
to catch in the present, and stand out in the future
as one of the best classics of the nineteenth century.
From the part for July we cull a few proofs that
Harry Lorrequer is still as fresh, funny, and buoyant
as of yore :

ancient birth—his rank, his fortune—his position, in
fact—"

" Of all of which we know nothing," broke in Papa.
" But of which you may know everything," said I;
" for here, at the postscript, is an invitation to us all to
pass some weeks at the Schloss, in the Black Forest, his
ancestral seat."

" Or, as he styles it," broke in Tames, impertinently,
" the very old castle, where for numerous centuries his
high-blooded and on-lofty-erninence-standing ancestors
did sit,' and where now ' his with-years-bestricken but
not-the-less-on-that-account-sharp- with-intelligence- be-
gifted parent Father do reside.' "
" Read that again, James," said Papa.
" Pray allow, Sir," said I, taking the letter. " The
invitation is a most hospitable request that we should go
and pass some time at his chateau, and name the earliest
day our convenience will permit for the visit."
" He spoke of capital shooting there ! " cried James.
" He told me that the Auer-Hahn, a kind of black cock,
abounds in that country."
" And I remember, too, that he mentioned some
wonderful Steinberger—a cabinet wine, full two hundred
years in wood ! " chimed in Papa.
I wished, dearest Kitty, that they could have enter-
tained the subject-matter of the letter without these
" contingent remainders," and I* mixed up my future
fate with either wine or wild fowl"! but they really were
so carried away by the pleasures so peculiarly adapted to
their own feelings, that they at once said, and in a
breath, too, " Write him word Yes,' by all means ! "

A YOUNG LADY'S OPINION OF

" Now, first of all, Mary Anne," said he, " do you
love this Baron WolfenschaFer ? "

Who ever could answer such a question in one word,
Kitty ? How seldom does it occur in life that all the
circumstances of any man's position respond to the
ambitious imaginings of a girl's heart ! He may be
handsome and yet poor ; he may be rich, and yet low
born ; intellectual, and yet his great gifts may be alloyed
with infirmities of temper; he may be coldly-natured,
secret, self-contained, uncommunicative a hundred
things that one does not like—and yet, with till these
drawbacks, what the world calls an " excellent match."
I believe very few people marry the person they wish to
marry. I fancy that such instances are the rarest things
imaginable. It is a question of compensation throughout
—you accept this, notwithstanding that—you put up with
that, for the sake of this ! Of course, dearest, lam re-
jecting here all belief in the " greatest happiness princi-
ple " as a stupid fallacy, that only imposes upon elderly
tn,flPm.n when_ they marry their househeeper. I speak
of tne considerations wnieu Ineigti yOunig 6iii WIIU
----A WhO known its roqulrewenta, and
can estimate all that contributes to what is called a
" position."

THE IRISH EXODUS IN A NEW LIGHT.
Ay, Tom, all is changing around us. The Gentry are
going, the Middle Classes are going, and the peasant is
going ; some, of their free will ; more, from hard neces-
sity. I know that the general opinion is favourable to
all this—in England at least. The cry is ever, " Ireland
is improving—Ireland will be better." But my notion
is, that by Ireland we should understand not alone the
soil, the rocks, and the rivers, but the people—the heart,
and soul, and life-blood that made the island the gene-
rous, warm-hearted, social spot we once knew it.
Take away these, and I no longer recognise it as my
country. What matters it to me if the Scotchman or the
Norfolk farmer is to prosper where we only could exist ?
My sympathies are not with him. You might as well try
and console me for the death of my child by showing me
how comfortably some other man's boy could sleep in his
bed. I want to see Ireland prosper with Irishmen ; and
I wish it, because I know in my heart the thing is possible
and practicable.