The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-09-20 00:00:00

English minister

During the past week the metropolis has been in a
state of ferment. Save us from the double evil of unedu-
cated surgeons and uneducated surveyors.—self-su

ificient

the latter ; well paid, yet lazy, to the shame of our parish
authorities, who neither show spirit nor intelligence in
this regard. I know a few of our metropolitan surveyors

—men, for the most part, who can draw a pretty house,
with a lawn in front, and a pond in the distance—looks
nice on Bristol board ; with a recommendation and the
aforesaid drawing they are fastened on a parish, and stick
to it like burrs on a beggar's coat. They know nothing
of architecture—ca.nnot tell plinth from volute ; certainly
not where the former can be dispensed with, or where it
is indispensably necessary. Superadded to this, they are,
as I have intimated, careless, and fond of country air ;
they are out of town when most needed. New houses are
being erected, old ones pulled down ; the architect's eleva-
tion is produced--pronounced capital ; excavators are em-
ployed—a cracking is heard, down falls the fabric, smother-
ing everybody within, and damaging some without. This
has been the case in half-a-dozen places since my last com-
munication. There will be more of it ; only the sur-
. veyors(?) have come back to town from their shrimping
excursions, and we are told are now on the qui rive.
How long will it last ? the usual period of a nine days'
wonder. Some of CHARLES DICKENS'S bleak houses I
expect will tumble shortly. Let me be understood : in a
decent cab' drive of an hour, I have counted nearly a dozen
" Bleak houses" real Court of Chancery bricks and
mortar; desolate, the foul habitations of the rat, the
burglar and the spider ; these are houses in chancery—
disputed ownership. Some of them attracted the atten-
tion of CHARLES DICKENS, hence his current work.
Nobody will repair them, nobody will occupy them, but
the very wretched. There are several of these buildings
in the great thoroughfare of—nations I was going to say-
-the Strand; in Holborn, also, possession is disputed of
'many ; chancery and death does the remainder. 'One of the
most famous taverns in the Strand has no one to receive
its rents; not a penny has been paid in rent for years. I
mentioned surgeons along with surveyors ; little will serve
for them. None but good surgeons can now get a
living; the bad are dying off going gone to
Australia others. The dark places of the earth
are full of the habitations of horrid cruelty
such or such like words speaks the inspired one;
A visit to Lambeth first, and then to Bermondsey.
amongst the tanners, and through the Tunnel over
to Wapping, enables me to say, that, with few excep-
tions, there is not a parish authority who ought to escape
impeachment, and if not beheaded on Tower Hill,—cer-
'thinly thrown into Tower Ditch. Such filth—needlessly
so—such stench from inattention—want of coercion—l
never experienced. We are naturally prone to evil, it has
been truly said • among these people, read for evil—dirt.
In the last-mentioned locality, water, hot and cold, had been
let off ; the gutters were running pure and limpid. lam
not fond of praising Thames or New Riverwater, nor water
companYdirectors— several of the latter, however, had given
orders to their turn-cocks for a continuous run of water—
`that all might wash and be clean. As if this were not
.enough, the proprietors of large establishments—factories,
and so forth—also ordered a run of clean hot water down
the streets; on either side of these streams I saw scores of
dirt-begrimed creatures—men; women, and children—
loitering, afraid to wet their feet as if they were cats.
What can you do with such people ? Force them to be
Clean—set the beadle at them. Cholera feeds on filth and
bad :we have got all three ! " Down among the dead
Intt' is a piece of grave music, which has every ap-
pearanee of being popular, chiefly from the inactivity of
those who are paid to watch over us. Many portions of
London never were filthier than they are at present
though we have two boards of health and two sewers
commissions.

" Westminster Abbey, or a Peerage ?" Victory ! ex-
claimed the immortal NELSON, at the affair of Teneriffe.
Sir ROBERT PEEL, the founder of the Income-tax, has
achieved Westminster Abbey : were he alive, I should
leave it to himself to define the character of the victory he
bragged so much of having gained just before his ill-starred'
"death. Hundreds of hard-working penmen, and, poorer
with each, a dozen hungry children at their firesides, when
they have coals or wood, moan, as they are compelled to
squeeze the obnoxious tax out of their shallow earnings ;
and putting aside the cant about the poor man being
soothed by the reflection that he would eat his bread all
the sweeter that it was not taxed, I hesitate not to state
that bread is taxed—double taxed—war-taxed; and the,
Income-tax, Sir ROBERT himself; years ago, said it was a
war-tax—but it would not last long. At this moment,
years after its dire imposition, it is being collected within
the bills of mortality with an eagerness—a rapacity well
befitting resources for a beleagured town ! My mind
filled with these no very pleasant recollections, I went
down to Westminster Abbey to see GIBSON'S statue of
the dead statesman. I knew I could have my outraged
feelings soothed by the church service, and the glorious
canto fermo—better sung by the Abbey choir than in
most other places in which I have ever worshipped.
I was not disappointed : numbers of foreigners were
present, and paid marked deference to the service.
But the statue of the corn-law repealer and income-tax
founder it was unpacked a few days ago with the greatest
care, and placed on its pedestal—a solid block of rare
marble, with a surface as glossy and smooth as satin—so
said the creeping verger who attended me. GIBsoN, the
artist, is a Scotchman of the right sort, thoroughly im-
bued with a love of his art, and purely classical. He has
studied much at Rome, where, indeed, the present statue
was finished. Sometimes GIBSON essays a grace beyond
the reach of art ; such as painting his marble. Oh, mon-
strous ! turning regal grandeur to meretricious tawdriness
after daybreak and arrack at Vauxhall ! Classical in the
composition, we have SIR ROBERT PEEL, presented to us
in the toga—speaking. The size is neither colossal,
heroic, nor life ; just a little more than the latter. The
likeness is perfect, and very properly, methinks, a thought
too austere, as PEEL could affect to be when laying
down a great principle, or one which he doubted, for he
had the same expression of countenance in both positions ;
and herein, I imagine, was no great test of mind, either
as a man or minister. The statue could not be better
placed, had the Abbey been emptied for its reception. In
the north transept it stands immediately in front ;
indeed, adhering to one of the many light and elegant
pillars which form the yet more elegant arches, the great
beauty of the interior architecture. The pillar forms the
background to the statue, and sets it off admirably. The
statue of Sir ROBERT is in good company ; is it possible,
in such a place, to meet with questionable ? Rather not.
The next but one to Sir ROBERT is that tall, and courtly,
and brave Scot, Sir JOHN 'MALCOLM ; next to MALCOLM
is GEORGE CANNING ; opposite to CANNING is LONDON-
DERRY (CASTLEREAGH that was), and opposite PEEL is
that sturdy Scot and great lawyer, Lord MANSFIELD.
Luckily my esteemed and accomplished friend, Sir RICH-
ARD WESTMACOTT, one of the few English classical sculp-
tors extant, came into the Abbey to inspect the statue of
Sir ROBERT; he had received instructions from the Lords
of the Treasury to look at it,—its disposition—effect, and
report thereon. Sir RICHARD went round and round it
as far as he could—was pleased—l thought more with the
marble than the chiselling—but it might only have been
my idea. I let the artist alone, hid myself behind PITT'S
monument, until WESTMACOTT had looked his fill. We
then met in front of PEEL ; Sir RICHARD spoke well of
the statue ; of course I did ; and then the sculptor came
out with the observation, in the thank Heaven ! tone,
that it was not a " coat and waistcoat" statue ; to the
which I smiled, and said, " Certainly, it is not." I did
Zztehoose to say more on that head to the pet scptor of
tast lla-E IV. WESTMACOTT has got seventy ears of
and of learning, experience, in the best of schools
a sticielkleieties ; he is matured, refined to the last degree ;
the
Hence geometrical coat and inexpressibles of modern times.
As a peurrark.
bonrt, let m^
very great
e, that I
dignified clervrisriat resent
" We know
become even bcferwee arE
DEAN OF WEBTAii we leave this ever-shifting scene. Thk
providence and theQ,TER, head-man of the Abbey, under
least all that reniainst'orl, is Professor BIICKLAND, or at
a giant in thew ai;an,,ilti ;—a son of ANAK he was—
I, grand. Divine, wirr —gigantic also in intellect,
sonal advantages, you „iv d geologist with those per-
cand have thought nothing could
touch his manliness. I ventured to ask how he I
partlyunder restraint "
Great BrCICIA.ND. how unlik, ~ was the response.
gentle dulness"—yet yO4

" ever loved a joke." Great geologist, sometimes by your
researches and annotations thereon, shaking less learned
ones' belief in old MOSES and the prophets! Now

you are poor BTICKLAND out of your mind !
pitcher that went so .long to the well Pieriar
vast pulls of knowledge, got broken at last
thought it queer of Professor BUCKLAND, some years
ago, expressing a notion, that the world would be
left without coals in our time. Was this incipient ? All
BUCKLAND'S friends Prince ALBERT, Sir CHARLES
LYELL, Sir RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, Sir J. DE LA

The
for
L. I

SEDGWICK, FARADAY and you:

is loss, for lost to them he is. No more
hter cheer a seance

will his hearty and um
in the dull part of the yeas
ROBERT OWEN, prince of Socialists, as JOHN• BUNYAN
was prince of dreamers ! ROBERT OWEN, once the patro-
nized of the philosopher and philanthropist, is now, I am
afraid, going clean daft for ever. In outward man, though
nearly ninety years of age, he is hale, his countenance
mantling as a man's of sixty, his eyes beaming 'intel-
ligence, and what, to my untutored fancy, is better —good-
nature. No man, short of a sea-captain, has ever crossed
the billowy Atlantic oftener to less purpose—pecuniarily,
morally, and mentally, than 808 OWEN. Pecuniarily? I
know he is near a quarter of a million sterling poorer than
he was when I first heard his health drunk in honest
sherry,—which, by the way, the aged nomadic father does
not eschew, old as he is. Morally ? These spirit-rappings,
—"second circle of the fourth sphere,"—are questionable
evidences. Enthusiasm in any man is a great blessing,
but then it must be reined in; applied to a good purpose.
ROBERT OWEN was and is of glowing enthusiasm,—one
of those " hot children of the sun" with whom that qua-
lity—enthusiasm—is virtue, if I be allowed to take a
liberty with the poet. Everything he has touched—
mostly, has gone to smash,—no ballast, poor man, aboard,
—no compass. His greatest dodge—Socialism—lives, but
it is not the Socialism of 808 OWEN. The Socialism of
the present day is tamed down by the salutary spirit and
healthful action of our laws, which won't stand non-
sense of that sort. True, the Socialists still have their
crowded Sunday meetings twice or thrice a-day ; they
have an orator, for the most part a poor grammarian;
and they have their music ; in this they rather excel.
The tunes are secular. The last time I attended a Social-
ist meeting I had previously been at a rather distingul
but dull dinner party, one door from Bedford-square,
which I left for an hour or so, and dropped into the meet-
ing-house hard by ; it was crowded, and lots of men and
women singers, with a compensation grand piano-forte ;
the subject of discourse vas our first parents in Paradise;
that I will let pass—mere ribald nonsense, vapid attempts
at profane wit—no more. Previous to the holdforth, there
was a hymn finely sung by the male and female voices,
evidently well rehearsed, to the true English air of "A
hunting we will go." The leader was a famous man in
his way, whom I had not seen for some years, and who
gave me a few early lessons in part-singing. The thing
went off well, but it was theatrical and heartless. ROBERT
OWEN has got a fine mare's nest in the supposed Chelsea
ghost ; writing about it, he at once puts up the affair as of
the genuine " Spirit-rapping" class. Now it has not even
the merit of being an imposture; a poor fellow has a fit—
his brain is softened—a dreadful affection, produced, I
need scarcely say in this place, by several causes—hard
study, hard gin drinking, among others. The individual
referred to fancies he sees and hears things not of this
world ; the " Chelsea snobs" wonder, Owen learns of it,
immediately he telegraphs PERCY BYSSISE SHELLEY, and
the Duke of KENT, they " take sights" of each other, and
forthwith OWEN gives to the world (or the Morning Post)
what he considers to be veritable assurances. Ridiculous
—sinful as this is, it is better than no belief. BACON, if I
remember aright—wisest, meanest of mankind—says, that
superstition is better than negation. Roma OWEN is
now going about our streets apparently as happy as a
prince or the discoverer of a real gold-field.

add, without 1

oeing considered

es in vain among the
i the Abbey, but saw no Dean.
but we know not what we may

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD, AND GENERAL COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER.

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