The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-10-23 00:00:00

NOTICES.

Goers Voice in the Cholera. A S..rmon, by the Rev.
J. H. Jones. Liverpool : Neuling.

Tans is a discourse delivered by the present amiable and
talented incumbent of St. Augustine's Church, on the day
appointed for public humiliation in this town. Tt is
founded upon the latter clause of the fifth verse of the
tenth chapter of FgAiel. The author, after recognising
4' the voice of Almighty God" speaking in the various
operations of Providence, and expressing his thankfulness
that "as a people we have acknowledged the ;land of the
Lord in the chastisement which he has sent," modestly
suggests the following thoughts regarding our national
sins:—

" Now we must premise that we cannot agree with those who
hold that the term NATIONAL FIN necessarily implies—some
transgression of God's law sanctioned by the legislature of the
country, and carried into execution by its gorernme. I—or who
affirm that vice (however universal it may be among a people)
is not to be accounted a national crime, so long as it does not
receive the countenance of their rulers.
" Or COWER, the violation of God's law by the statntes of a
nation is a national sin—in the very strictest sense of the term.
We only contend that it is not the only one that can be com-
mitted.
"If the opposite theory he true ;—if i. e. we must, when we
speak of national sins, limit ourselves to sins sanctioned by the
gocernment,—then, by a parity of reasoning, we affirm that
when we speak of judaments as national punishments, we must
confine ourselves to those which are inflicted upon a nation
through its government:—as (for instance) the discomfiture of
its counsels, the defeat of its armies, or the loss of its wealth.
" And, perhaps, if we were technically defining the difference
between national and individual crimes and punishments, this
would be just the distinction we should have to make. And
therefore it might he right to say, 'Nothing can with truth'
(meaning by this, with technical aceuracy)‘l-e called a national
sin, hut a national act, that which is a transgression of the laws
of God;' only then in sense,—speaking i. e. with the same
technical accuracy,—we must also add, that this very judgment
under Wick we now mourn is note NATt(INAL punishment.
" But we find no such distinction laid down for us in Scrip-
ture, and we do not see either the necessity or the advantage of
introducing it. In the word of God, the sins of a people (indi-
vidually committed, but great enough in the aggregate to call
for special punishment.) are charged against them by the
prophets as the cause of national divine vengeance. And so
we conclude, if the sudden death of thousands and tens of
thousands among a people is to be considered a NATIONAL
JUDGMENT, we believe also that the vice and irreligion of
thousands and tens of thousands among a people is regarded
in the sight of God RS a NATIONAL SIN.
"And, therefore, in seeking for the cause of the visitation
under which we are now labouring, we cannot but thit.k that a
minister of Christ is justified in referring to the sins wine!, are
so fearfully prevalent in our land. as NATIONAL CRIMES."
The author then proceeds with affectionate plainness to
call attention to some of our leading national transgres-
sions, and to their prolific root—unbelief of God's Word—
and concludes with a most solemn and practical appeal,
calculated to arrest the attention of even the most thought-
less. A short preface to the sermon contains some allu-
sions to one of the arguments advanced in a recent pam-
phlet of the Rev. Dr. 161`Neile, pointedly alluded to in the
preceding extract.

A Journal of Summer Time in the Country. By the
Rev. Robert Aris Willmott, Incumbent of Bearwood.
Barks; author of " Jeremy Taylor, a Biography."
London : John W. Parker, West Strand. 1 vol. Bvo.
1849.
.How many find thoughts and fancies—what a host of
delicate images, and original imaginingsare lost for
ever, -and hays beemne_to mach of beauty and power
blotted out of the pages of human lire, because men will
not give themselves the trouble of jotting them down !
What would not the world give for a record of the dream-
ings of a Coleridge in his hours of reflection, when his
wonderful mind was left alone with nature ! What would
it not give for the unfinished sketch of Chrystabel, or for
the " psychological curiosities" which may have wan-
dered through the cells of an imagination such as his,
and of which

" It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on a dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora,"
is all that is left to us ! What would it not give for the
labours of some Boswell, to have chronicled the streams
of wisdom and poetry which welled continually from his
lips at the social board ! The published works of hun-
dreds of popular authors would have been feathers in the
balance, if weighed against such strings of intellectual
pearls as these would have been. In all ages such men
have gone down to the grave, bearing with them unre-
vealed treasures of wisdom and genius. Of hundreds we
have had to say, with our great dramatist,—
" Where are the flashes of wit,
Were wont to set the table in a roar ?"
Alas ! perished ; no record left of them for future gene-
rations ; gone for ever, like the bubbles on the stream ;
the brief blaze of an hour quenched in the darkness of
obvivion.
The very pleasing and clever work before us suggests
these reflections. It is delightful to have traced out for
us, by his own band, the thoughts and views of a man of
reading and mind, such as the reverend author of " Sum-
mer Time in the Country." We have placed before us
such an intellect in its undress; an intellect, evidently
highly cultivated, ranging over external nature, and leav-
ing for our instruction and amusement its impressions.
It is not always in the performance of a set task that the
mental powers are stretched to their utmost tension, or
their conclusions the most felicitous. All men of think-
ing habits are conscious of flashes of deep wisdom, of
poetry, of just conclusions upon matters of import to
their fellow-men, which have escaped them, and cannot
bo recalled. We read some suggestive work ;we visit
some particular scene, and are led away, sten by step,
into some train of thought, which never comes again,
however anxiously we may strive to recal it ; and it is as
wanton to destroy, or to leave to perish, these sugges-
tions of the better part within us, these voluntary efforts
of the mind or the fancy, as to destroy or leave to perish
the creations of our hands i • and it would be well if the
world of intellect would adopt the practice of Mr. Will-
mott, and allow us occasionally to contemplate them en
dishabille. There is scarcely a page in his volume which
is not graceful in style and instructive in matter; and we
thank him for his literary offering. We append a few
extracts, selected almost at random :
THE USES OF WHAT THE WORLD STYLES IDLENESS.
" It is delicious now to creep under the scented copses—
' the green-wood side along'—until you steal on the leafy haunt
of the woodlark. There is love in this idleness. I know that
formal John Wesley put a brand on it : never be unemployed,
never be triflingly employed, never while away time.' Such
an admonition might be expected from one of whom Johnson
left this character : John Wesley's conversation is good, but
he is never at leisure ; lie is always obliged to go at a certain
hour.' When Lord Collingwood said, that a young person
should not be allowed to have two books at the same time, he
fell into a similar error of judgment. The blackbird, that
pipes in the warm leaves before my window, is a witness
against the preacher and admiral. He tired of the lime-bough,
and is finishing his song on an apple-branch, that swings him
further into the sun. He wanted a change. Then what is
whiling away time? When Watt sat in the chimney-corner,
observing tne water force up the cover of the saucepan, he
aroused the anger of his relations ; but he was discovering the
steam-engine. Sir Walter Scott, walking one day by the banks
of the Yarrow, found Mungo Park, the traveller, earnestly
employed in casting stones into the stream, and watching the
bubbles that followed their descent. ' Park, what is that
engages your attention?' asked Sir Walter. I was thinking
bow often I had thus tried to sound the rivers in Africa, by
calculating the time that elapsed before the bubbles rose to the
surface.' 'Then,' said Scott, I know that you think of re-
turning to Africa.' I do, indeed,' was the reply; but it is
yet a secret.' Such is the idleness of genius. But people for
the last eighteen hundred years have been finding fault with it.
The uncle of Pliny reproved him for walking; he declared it to
be time lost. liow much truer was the confession of Warbur-
ton to his friend Hurd : It would have been the greatest plea-
sure to have dropped upon you at Newark. I could have led
you through delicious walks, and picked off for your amuse-
ment in our rambles a thousand notions which I hung upon
every thorn as I passed, thirty years ago.' They whom the
world calls id:c are doing the most. In villages and bye-lanes,
ope;, eyes are always learning. ' Let a reflective man, when
he stands in a garaen, or meadow, or forest, or on the margin
of a pool, consider what there is within the circle, although
invisible to him.' In that circumference lies a whole library
of knowledge, waiting only to be read everlasting types,
which Nature, in her great printing-press, never breaks up.
And surely he is happy who is thus taught ; for no man can
afford to be really unemployed. The tree, it has been said,
may lose its verdure; the sun need not count its rays; be-
cause the sap will strike out new foliage, and another night
refills the treasury of day. But the thinking faculty does not
suffer waste. The most saving and thrifty use of it wilt only
make it sufficient for our absolute necessities."

EVERY MAN IS HIS OWN DECEIVER.
" A painter may sit before a glass and draw himself, but the
mental portrait must be taken by other hands. Every man is
his own deceiver. I will not give the Algebraist sixpence for
his encomiums on my Task, if he condemns my Homer, which
I know in point of language is equal to i t, and in variety of
numbers superior." The self-love of Milton was not weaker
than Cowper's. A preference of Paradise Lost to Regained,
made him angry. When Johnson was requeste'l to name the
finest couplet he had ever written, he repeated the two most
pompous verses in his works. Taso was willing to let the
Jerusalemme be estimated by its weakest stanza. The mistake
• pi Milton and Cowper in a literary, other authors have made
Iv a moral or personal sense. `What has this hook,' exclaims
terr.e of Tristram, 4.1.)nc more than the Legation of Moses,

that it may not swim down the gutter of time along with it!'
Methinks, when I write to you'rsaoys Pope to Congreve, I
am writing a cont.ossion. 1 have got (I cannot tell how) such
a custom of throwing myself out upon paper without reserve.'
The last time Dr. Warton saw Young, he was censuring the
irtlated style of poetry. He said that such tumultuous writers
reminded him of a passage in Milton :
Others, with vsst Typhman rage more fell,
Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air
. .

In whirlwinds.'
And yet Sterne must have known that his book was steeped in
corruption ;__l-ipe, that even his commonest notes4of invitation
were artilict%l ; anu Young, that a swelling exttavagance of
'isuse was the besetting sin of his genius. •
" We have an amazing instance of this self-blindness in
Hcgarth. Talking to a visitor about his favourite line of
beauty, he affirmed that no man who really understood it
could. by any accident, be ungraceful in his man ers. ' I my-
self,' he added, ' from my perfect knowledge of , should not
I)
hesitate as to the becoming mode of offering a -thing to the
greatest monarch.' And at the very moment when be was
enlarging upon the advantages of being familiar with the line
of beauty, his own attitude was so unspeakibly ridiculous, that
his friend struggled, almost in vain, to refrain from laughter.
These examples are so many calk to reflection, self-examina-
tion, and knowledge. After the Bible, a man ought to make
himself his chief reading. He must not skip a hard page, but
work out the meaning."

CAFACITY OF lIECOLLtCTION.
" English theology furnishes several splendid examples of
the faculty. Jewell was especially distinguished. On one
occasion, the mirtyr Hooper wrote forty Ir:sli words, which
Jewell, after three or four perusals, repeated according to their
position, backwards and forwards. He performed a feat not
less difficult with a passage from Erasmus, which Lord Bacon
read to him. Faunderson knew by heart the Odes of Horace,
the Offices of Cicero, and it considerable portion of Juvenal
and Persius. Dates, the eloquent friend of Howe, rivalled the
Greek philosopher mentioned by Pliny; and having delivered
a Vublic and unwritten address, went over it again with perfect
ease and accuracy. Warburton was not inferior to his illus.
trions predecessors. His comtnon•place-book was an old al-
manac, three inches square, in which he inserted occasional
references, or hints of thoughts and sentences, to be woven
into his compositions. But all the erudition of the Divine
Legation was intrusted to memory. Pope's description of
Bolingbroke is true of Warburton : He sits like an intelli.
Bence, and recollects all the questionswithin himself.' Lord
Clarei.don declared that Hales, of Eton, carried about in his
memory ire learning than any scholar in the world.
"Tiirtilift.; into a wider path, we find men of different ages
and dispositions employing this endowmentin poetical acqui-
sitions. Gassendi had on his lips the poetry of Lucretius; H.
Angelo, the greater part of Dante and tetrarch ; and Galileo,
of Ariosto, Petrarch, and Berni. To these instances may be
added that of Pope, who had not only a general, but local
memory of much strength. He recollected the particular page
of the book in which the fact or story was related. ' lf,' wrote
Atterbury, you have not read the verses lately, lam sure you
remember them, because you forget nothing.'
" I will put down one case of memory ingeniously used, and
another of the talent largely possessed, but without flexibility
or advantage. The former refers to the renowned Hyder Ali.
Unable to read or write, he had an ingenious contrivance for
insuring the veracity of his correspondence. His secretary,
having prep red the letter, read it aloud; it was then given to
another person, who repeated it; and any discrepancy between
the two was punished by the execution of the scribe The next
example refers to Walter Scott's friend, 1)r. Leyden. A single
perusal bf an Act of Parliament, or any long document, pre-
pared hint to recite it; but the collective was unaccompanied
by the analytical power. lie remembered the whole, not the
parts. To recover a passage or sentence, he was obliged to
return to the beginning."