The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-12-21 00:00:00

LITEII NITRE.

Sic, &C,

I " to tile F.,liter

LSTAND.kItD,

The Hero's Funeral. A Poem, by Robert Mont
M.l. London : G. Routledge and Co.

gomery,

The reverend author of The Omnipresence of the
Deity has vied with the poet laureate—Mr. Alfred
Tennyson—in solemnising the obsequies of the
Duke of Wellington ; and, taking into account how
greatly the charm and influence of poetry depends
upon distance—upon that vague remembrance of
circumstances which permits the creations of ima-
gination to mingle with and become portion of the
realities of the theme, while the whole life and ac-
tions, the death and funeral, of the British hero are
fresh in the memory of the public, and allow no
such combination of fact and fiction to heighten the
effect of poetry ; taking these things into account,
Mr. Montgomery has given us more life-like pic-
tures of the last scene of the duke's history than
could have been hoped for during the present gene-
ration. The vivid description of the crowd gathered
to pay homage to the ashes of the warrior and states-
man, as they were borne through the streets of the
metropolis to St. Paul's Cathedral, will illustrate
what we mean :

and palace,

T trees;

'els, and ro
nen then cc

sands coma

listant hum;

Eve;:y f,irm and every face

n's trace,—

FCh for each, and
_all on all
For succour
Till thE

i chorus call,

g air around

.... ..... r,
Surzes like a sea of sound !"

This is admirable word-painting. The scene is
placed before us almost as distinctly as the pageants
of the theatre. In the following passage, there is a
higher strain of poetry, with equal force of truth :
p, the banner, nor the plume,

" Twas not the po
Nor all which gl
That touched with superhuman power
The awful pathos of that deathless hour.
'Twas moral grandeur !—'twas the true sublime
Ot sacred Nature soaring out of time,
And drinking in from worlds which Faith can see

And one su,

t moment

,raps an age of life,
than poetry a"

With it

-passion rife;

Making us feel immortal.
And claim celestial kinship with the skies
Mr. Montgomery, we are pleased to see, in noticing
the European homage paid to the liberator of the
nations, and the seven marshals, sent from
" Belgium and Prussia, Portugal and Spain,
And distant Russia, from her ice-bound plain,
With Hanover, and England too,"
has not hesitated to allude in terms of strong re-
probation to the conduct of another power :

,stincts rise,

" Austria sent no warrior chief,
Her own to blend with Britain's grief!
Coldly apart from those united kings,
Who each their homage to a hero brings,
Preferred to stand, and gracelessly forget
The past she burdens with an unpaid debt,—
Because some woman scourger felt
A recoil from the blow he dealt.
Wnen brutal Vengeance in wild passi ,n did
What the high chivalries of heart forbid.
Alas ! that in an hoar like this the pride
Of less than littleness was gratified I
And caused a kingdom thus to stand alone,
Nor honour him who saved her shaken throne."

As a whole, the poem is the best which has yet ap-
peared on the subject. The time for an heroic
poem to celebrate the entire career of the duke has
not yet arrived. Hereafter we may have an epic
worthy of the nation, with a greater theme than
that of Tasso or Camoens, if not greater than the
Iliad and the _Eneid, for the events immortalised by
Homer and Virgil had less influence upon the des-
tinies of the human race than the liberation of
Europe by the victor of Waterloo.

The Scottish Educational and Literary Journal.
Edinburgh : James Hogg, Nicholson-street.

This journal contains much interesting practical
matter for the use of teachers and managers of
schools, well written, and carefully printed. The
first article, on the " Scotch Accent," gives us a
history of the decline of that provincial dialect,
which was wont to betray and shame " chiels frae
beyond Tweed," till Burns and Sir Walter Scott
rendered it classical. Railroads and extended in-
tercourse with England are now fast obliterating
what remained of that Doric vernacular ; and we are
assured, in the paper referred to, that lately, " when
a company of Scotch gentlemen were challenged to
make out the meaning of a line in their national
poet, 'A dairnen-ickre in a threave,' not one of
them could divine the meaning of it." The num-
ber also contains some useful historical essays, and
several valuable mathematical papers.

POLICE COURT.

YESTERDAY.

SINGULAR CHARGE OF STEALING A WATCH.—James
Bellin was brought up on a charge of having stolen a
watch from the person of Edward Elliott. It appeared
that on Saturday night, about a quarter past eleven, the
prisoner went to the Vauxhall Bridewell and handed over
to inspector Cairns the silver watch produced, stating
that he had taken it from two prostitutes who were
attempting to steal it from a drunken man. Prisoner
left the watch in the care of the police and went away,
but a few minutes afterwards he was brought into the
same Bridewell by Police-constable 86, who had appre-
hended him on the information of the two prostitutes, on
a charge of having stolen the watch. Inspector Cairns,
however, thought there was no ground for the charge
brought by the women, and allowed the prisoner to depart,
but not long afterwards he was again taken into custody
by Police-constable 86, on being charged by Elliott with
the robbery, and lodged in the main Bridewell. Elliott
in giving his evidence admitted that he was the admirer
of one of the prostitutes who had first made the charge
against the prisoner, and that at the time of the alleged
robbery he was " slightly" in liquor. The magistrate
considered that there was no evidence to substantiate a
charge of felony azainst the prisoner, and he was conse-
quently discharged.
HOUSE ROBBERY.—SiX exceedingly suspicious-looking
characters, who gave the names of William Hunter,
George Hunter, Francis McGarraghan, Joseph Jackson,
George Walker, and Catherine Welch, were charged with
having broken into the house of Ellen O'Brien, in Snow-
don-street, and stolen a trunk containing various articles
of female wearing apparel. From the evidence of Police-
constable Maudsley it appeared that the male prisoners
resided in a house in Back Portland-street, and that, on
information of the robhe'y being given, a search was
made of the premises, and a skeleton key was found in
their possession ; whilst in an unoccupied house adjoining
were discovered the trunk and clothes produced. In the
house of the female prisoner a chemise belonging to
prosecutrix was found in a pail of dirty water. The male
prisoners were remanded for a week, and the woman,
Welch, was committed for two months.
ASSAULT AND ROBBERY. William Hickman and
Margaret Beesley were charged with having forcibly
taken from the person of an artizan, named Patrick
Connor, nine shillings and some copper. Connor deposed
that shortly after twelve o'clock on Saturday night, as he
was proceeding homewards, after having had a little
whiskey with a friend, he was suddenly seized by the male
prisoner, and dragged into a cellar in a back street, where
he was robbed by both prisoners of what money he had in
his pockets, something more than nine shillings. After
he was released he was followed by a man (not Hickman)
who flourished a sword in his hand, and threatened to cut
off prosecutor's head if he dared to speak a word. Prose-
cutor was accompanied by a friend until he was seized by
Hickman ; the friend was not present. Prisoners were
remanded till Tuesday (to-day) for the production of fur-
ther evidence.

---
ROBBERY BY A CAR DRIVER.—John Brown, a car
driver, was charged with stealing some dress-pieces and a
shawl belonging to Ann Houghton. Prisoner had taken
the prosecutrix from IN illiamson-square to her house in
Pitt-street, and on setting her (107 n had contrived to
parcel
possess himself of a containing the articles men-
tioned, which he drove away with before it was missed.
Committed for trial.

FALL OF DOVER CLIFF.—On Friday, about noon, the
inhabitants of Snargate-street, Dover, were alarmed by
the fall of about 40 or 50 tons of chalk, immediately at
the back of the premises. Two bed-rooms, kitchen, and
crockery ware, and some buildings formerly used as a
bakehouse, &c., were totally crushed. The fall was so
sudden, and the condensation of the atmosphere so violent,
that a person in the house was carried into the street by
the rush of air, while several panes of glass in front of
the house were also driven out by the same cause.
A WIFE KILLED BY HER HUSBAND.—On Thursday,
at Worship-street, an elderly journeyman butcher, named
John Parrett, was charged with the death of his wife,
by violence and ill-treatment. The parties had
lived very unhappily for some time. and on Wednesday
week a scuffling noise was heard by a neighbour, and
screams proceeding from the deceased ; after the sounds
had been repeated for some time, the prisoner darted out
of the house, and the woman was found on a straw mat-
tress quite dead and cold. The prisoner was remanded.