The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-09-10 00:00:00

MR. THOMSON'S REPLY.
" 13, South Audley-street, Sept. 5, 1839.
" Sir,—l have had the honour of receiving your letter of
the 3d instant, inclosing a copy of resolutions agreed to at ft
meeting of the British North American Association of Liver-
pool, at which you presided.
" I beg you will do me the favour of conveying to the
members of the association my assurance that no one can be
more deeply impressed than I am with a just sense of the
great value and importance of the trade of the North Ameri-
can possessions, and that it will be my earnest desire to pro-
mote by all the means in my power whatever may tend to as-
sist and increase it, as well as to adopt whatever measures
may be for the advantage of the colonies entrusted to my go
vernment:—l have the honour to be, Ike.)
" ' A. Parlane, Esq.'

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POULtTT THOMSON

STATE OF TRADE.

LEEDS.--The business in our great woollen marts this
week has undergone little variation from what we have ex■
perienced during several weeks past. A fair business is
doing, principally in winter cloths, but the unpromising
weather in the early part of the week caused the market on
Tuesday to be rather dull.

BRADFORD MARKET.—There was a somewhat scanty at=
tendance of buyers at our market on Thursday) and tilt
amount of business done was rathtt less than has been trans-
acted of late. Considering the litnited extent of the sales of
manufactured gootls, the demand for yarn was very good, and
former rates Were maintained ; but the wool market was very
flat, and the sales limited. Prices underwent scarcely any
variation.
WAKEFIELD WOOL MARKET, SEPT. s.—There have not
been so many buyers of long wools at market this week, and
although there is no variation in prices, not so much busi,
ness has been done. Blankets and clothing wools are with-
out alteration.

BARNSLEY LINEN TnAnh.—The trade of this town re
mains moderately good ; all hands are more or less em.
ployed.,

OLDHAM.—Trade in cotton mills appears to improve al-
most every day. A few mills, however, are only working
four days per week, but several firms have given notice that
they will commence working full time next week, and if it
shall continue to improve there is no doubt that the hands in
all the factories will have full employment in a few days.
The manufacturers have better prospects than they have had
for many months past. The hatting branch is as good as can
be expected at this season. At some shops the hands are
busy in making women's bonnets for the winter. There are
more being made this year than for many years past. Wages
remain firm.

ASIITON-UNDER-LYNE.—The manufacturers here expect
to commence working the machinery in their mills full time
n a few days ; they seem to think there will be a better
:rade.

SILK TRADE.—The silk dyers at many places have consi-
derably more work this week than they had a fortnight since.
At some places in Manchester the dyers are very busy. Silk
weaving at Middleton, Failsworth, Leigh, and other neigh-
bouring towns, near Manchester, has a better prospect than
it had three weeks since. Figured work and fine satins are
in particular request. Serges have again begun to be much
inquired for, and this week masters have been seeking for
weavers, yet some few sorts of silks are rather slack, but it is
by no means general, for at some large firms they cannot get
a sufficient number of hands. Wages for silk weaving are
rather better than they were twelve months since.

SONGS.

(From Blackwood's Magazine.
The honest old English song never was at a greater dis-
count than-in this most musical age. We do not get a decent
one once a year; and, when we have that luck, it endures
only for a week. Our modern fashionable ballads are the
most execrable compounds pf mawkish sentimentality that
ever melted the soul of a nursery maid—full of pale high
brows, and dark flashing eyes, and long flowing tresses of
raven blackness—strong spirit-yearnings, and heart-tempests
of appalling violence. Unhappy music appears doomed
henceforth to a perpetual state of ancient maidenhood ; for
there is no longer any " immortal verse " to marry her to.
Even good music, when burthened with the trashy words
with which these days are afflicted, is, to my thinking, three
parts ruined ; but this is a matter about which our modern
musicians trouble their heads very little—words are made for
tunes, not tunes for words ; and one would think they were
made by contract into the bargain;; sometimes they rhyme,
and for the most past seen ; but as to anything beyond, why,
a black swan would be nothing to the rarity. Our list of
modern song-writers (I do not mean mere metre-ballad_
mongers" and Havnes-Bayley-ites, but good honest song-
writers) is small indeed ' • of living ones we have scarcely any.
Moore seems to think he has done enough, and so he has,
for fame ; for there is immortality enough and to spare in
the Irish melodies. Allan Cunningham has written stirring
strains—why is his pen idle ? Poor Captain Morris is dead !
—peace to his manes ! his songs (and so were Dibdin's) were
superb in their way—that is, when men were seasonably
well advanced in the second bottle. Of Burns, I fear I may
say, little but the name is known in these parts, save to a
few. Walter Scott has written some glorious songs, but
who sings them ? and last, `'not least in our dear love,"
Felecia Hemans has penned some strains of passing beauty,
which one would think the world would not willingly let die ;
yet, are all these passing away silently to their oblivion, to
be recalled, now and then, only by such old-fashioned folks
as myself and the mayoress.
We English, I suppose, neglect our own music more than
any people upon the face of the earth, and with as little rea-
son for doing so. We are the most loan-loving nation under
the sun; we borrow pretty nearly everything ;—our dresses,
our habits of life, and now, at last, our music. We are not
an idle people, nor a foolish people ; but somehow or other
we have got hold of a notion that nothing of our own is
worth a brass farthing, and everything belonging to every
body else is worth its weight in gold. We go upon tick for
taste, and we are put off with an inferior material into the
bargain. I never yet heard an overture, or a fantasia, or a
fugue, or an aria, that could stand any thing like a compari-
son with three-fourths of the old Irish and Scottish melodies
which one scarcely dares call for, for fear of being stared
down by a parcel of people who never even heard of their
existence. Those of Scotland, in particular, have to me.
though I am no Scotchman, an inexpressible charm. I could
listen to " Auld Robin Gray," and Ye banks and braes,"
and " My love is like the red red rose," and fifty more that
I could name, every night of my life, without being weary
of them. These, after all, are the strains that come home
to our hearts ; these are the sounds at which the very falling
of a pin is an interruption " grating harsh discord" to
our ears—which float around us in our slumbers—which
haunt us in our rambles—which are with us in the woods
and by the stream, lapping in an elysium of harmony the
discordant and jarring passions of our most unmusical
" working-day world." The concert-room, with its " in-
tricacies of laborious song," moves our wonder and charms
our ear ; but it stirs not our feelings : we are no more touched
by " Vivi tu," much as we may applaud its execution, than
we are by the street minstrel, whom we bribe with a whole
penny to bestow his oft-repeated " All round my hat," on
the unsuspecting inhabitants of some more diatant locality.