The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-06-23 00:00:00

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THE GERA.I4DINE'S DEATH SONG.

BY MRS. STEWART,

The thistle beard floats, the wild roses wave,
With the blast that sweeps the newly made grave ;
Stars dimly twinkle, hoarse falls the water ;
Night birds arc wailing the Geraldine's daughter!

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

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Speak low, speak low ! the Banshee is crying—
Hark to the echo! She's dying—dying!
What shadow flits dark'ning the face o'er the water?
'Tis the swan of the lake, the Geraldine's daughter.
Hush! hush ! Have you heard what the Banshee said?
Oh list to the echo ! " She's dead—she's dead !"
No shadow now dims the face of the water—
Gone is the wraith of the Geraldine's daughter.

The step of yon train is heavy and slow ;
There's wringing of hands, there's breathing of woe :
What melody rolls over mountain and water ?
'Tis the funeral chant for the Geraldine's daughter.

The requiem sounds like the plaintive moan
Which the wind makes over the sepulchre stone.
" Oh, why did she die ?" our heart's blood had bought her-
" Oh, why did she die ?"—the Geraldine's daughter ?

THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION.
(From the Record)
'e cannot congratulate the friends of the abolition
of slavery on the exhibition presented by the British
and Foreign Anti-Slavery Convention, which is now
holding its daily sittings in Freemasons' Tavern. The
very name of a convention, composed of delegates, is of
ill-omened sound, and a very slight attention to their
proceedings will be sufficient to convince every calm
and sound thinking observer, that these are not the
men nor the means by which slavery is to be abolished
or any great object accomplished. Among those who
take a prominent part in the convention, we in vain look
for the names of Buxton, Inglis, Lushington, Acland,
or the other distinguished labourers in this good cause.
The delegates may indeed boast that Mr. Buxton deli-
vered some remarks on African civilization. They may
may add, that their meeting was for a short period
graced by the presence of the venerable Thomas Clark-
son, and at his very advanced age, and considering his
unwearied devotion to the cause, it is not wonderful
that he should be easily induced to countenance any
great assembly, proposing an object so noble as the
extinction of slavery throughout the world. 'After his
retirement the chair was far more appropriately occu-
pied by Mr. Joseph Sturge, whose extreme political
and latitudinarian principles were recently so strangely
exhibited at Birmingham, in attending a chartist meet-
ing, and opposing the establishment of a defensive
police. . _ _

But as there is but one fountain from which pure
philanthropy can flow, so it is easy to perceive, that its
counterfeit may he easily prostituted to the gratification
of selfishness and vanity. Who does not blush for the
honour of the sex, when we hear of women who have
crossed the Atlantic as delegates to the convention, and
eagerly assert their right to speak in a Freemason's
Hall ? Who does not see that the consummate affec-
tation of pseudo-philanthropists, and the oratorical
ambition of the American ladies are calculated to throw
discredit on the cause in the United States, and to ren-
der the abolitionists the laughing-stock both of the old
and new world ? It is true that the poor American
ladies have been disappointed, as the majority of the
convention were not disposed to concede to them the
opportunity of making the display which they desired.
Their emancipation from an observance of the decorum
of their sex was not indeed rejected, but only post-
poned, probably because it was not desired to deal such
"a heavy blow," and so "great a discouragement" to
their enthusiasm for liberty in all its modes. But it
was alleged that, as the right of speaking in public had
not been conceded in America, we ought not too has-
tily to prejudge the question. It may indicate the feel-
ings of the motley group of Christians, Jews, Socini-
ans, and Infidels, who compose the convention, that
the reasons assigned for the decision against the ora-
torical ladies, has respect not to the fitness of things—
not to the deference due to the sex, and the manifest
indecency of allowing them to become public dispu-
tants, still less to the direct authority of God's holy
word—but solely to the usages of America !
There is one feature most distinctly stamped on the
proceedings of the Convention, and it is one at which
we feel no surprise, as it is always the concomitant of
spurious philanthropy. We mean the fulsome adula-
tion which they heap upon each other. Even O'Con-
nell seems to have been somewhat disgusted with the
want of taste exhibited by Dr. Bowring, and some
others, and, in the midst of some confusion, objected
to " unmerited compliments." M. Crimieux, presi-
dent of the Jewish Consistory in Paris (a French re-
publican, as we should imagine from his speech, who
talked about " equality for Ireland," and bespattered
O'Connell with flattery), actually dared to obtrude on
the meeting his denial of the Messiah before this Con-
vention, and blasphemously asserted that Jesus Christ
" derived the principles of Christian charity from the
mild and pure rules of the (Jewish) sect of the Essenes."
When this same inflated orator was giving vent to his
absurd crudities in regard to O'Connell and Ireland,
he was called to order by the Rev. Mr. Johnston; but
that gentleman seems to have been hut roughly hand-
led by the delegates, and more especially by Dr. Bow-
ring, who, being at present " out of commission" and
laid up " in ordinary," probably thinks it well to over-
look all professions of neutrality as to party politics, in
a case where the great dispenser of Irish patronage is
concerned. But although there were some isolated
voices to protest against the utterance of party politics,
there does not appear to have been one voice in the
whole assembly to rebuke the unhappy man who dared
to assert that Christ was only a human legislator and
moralist, and consequently an impostor, and that he
borrowed from a Jewish sect what gave to his impos-
tu-re " one of its most worthy titles to glory." What
have such blasphemies to do with the abolition of
slavery ? Is it for this that the Convention assem-
bled ? Is it for this that, without any recognition of
Jehovah, they assemble to do a work of philanthropy ?
Where were Mr. Burnett, of Camberwell, Mr. James,
of Birmingham, Mr. Binney, or the rest of the Dis-
senting delegates, when they heard the Master whom
they profess to serve thus insulted and blasphemed in
their presence ? They were ready enough to give their
sentiments on other questions which came before the
meeting, and we are free to confess that we think Mr.
Binney, efpecially, spoke with great good sense when he
exposed the impropriety and unscriptural tendency of
the violent resolution, which proposed that church ex-
communication should be the punishment of any indi-
vidual who was the owner of a slave in the United
States or any other part of the world. The manner in
which Mr. Knihb declared himself in favour of this
resolution, as well as his whole bearing in the course of
his speeches, did little credit to his discretion or good
sense, and certainly places his employers the Baptist
Missionary Society in a very awkward position, in con-
nexion with the opposition he has met with from the
planters in Jamaica.
We could notice much more in connexion with this
Anti-Slavery Convention. But we confess we are dis-
gusted with the spectacle of a great and glorious cause
so desecrated. It is surely a thing of ill omen when
we witness the names of Wilberforce, Macaulay, Ste-
phen, and Buxton, replaced by those of jobbing pa-
triots, by dealers in Greek loans, by mendicant patriots,
by violent republicans, and avowed assailants of the
Christian religion.

THE ODOUR ACCOMPANYING ELECTRICITY Mr C. F
Schcenbein, professor of chemistry, Bale, has had atten-
tionhis.
long directed to the remarkable fact, that odour,
resem-
bling that of phosphorus, is given off during the escapeo
positive electricity from the point of a conductor into air ,•
and is likewise perceptible when lightning has struck any ob-
ject, and also when water is electrolyzed. He has therefore
investigated the circumstances attending these phenomena' •
and the results he has obtained will, he expects, afford a clue
to the discovery of their cause. The odour which accom-
panies the electrolyzation of water, he observes, is only dis-
engaged at the positive electrode. He also finds that the
odoriferous principle can be preserved in well-closed glass
bottles for any length of time. The only metals which yield
this odour are gold and platina ; but dilute sulphuric, phos-
phoric, and nitric acids, and aqueous solutions of several of
the salts, also disengage it. Raising the temperature of the
fluid to the boiling point prevents the odour from arising ;
and the addition of comparatively small quantities of powdered
charcoal, iron, zinc, tin, lead, antimony, bismuth, or arsenic,
or of a few drops of mercury, to the odorous principle con-
tained in a bottle, immediately destroys the smell; and the
sam e happens when platina or gold, heated red hot, is intro-
duced into the vessel containing that volatile substance.—
Athenantm.

LONDON NEWSPAPERS.—A London newspaper is a vo-
lume—a volume of no trifling magnitude—and that volume
the production of a single night." Such were the words of
Lord Lyndhurst, when last year he presided at a public din-
ner, given in support of a fund for the relief of the widows
and orphans of contributors to the periodical press. It was
a pithy and correct description. A newspaper is indeed a
volume—a volume which few men, singly, could write at all,
and none, perhaps, in less than a twelvemonth, but of, which
nearly the whole, by a systematic division of labour, is
nightly written out, composed, corrected, revised, and printed
off, between the hours of seven in the evening and five in the
morning. The morning paper, then, is eminently•the work
of the night ; and the hardest work about the office is gene-
rally going on when the great bulk of those for whose benefit
the labour is performed are in the quiet and undisturbed en-
joyment of
" Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep,',

About one or two o'clock in the afternoon the housekeeper
at theoffice of a morning paper begins to sweep away the
litter of the preceding night, and to prepare the rooms. for
the operations of that which is to come ; and at five or six
o'clock, perhaps, the several editors drop in for an hour or
so, to read their letters or to receive the favoured few who
happen to have been honoured with an appointment, some-
thing in the same way that certain Cabinet Ministers
con-
descend to look in at their offices at about four o'clock in the
afternoon, on their way " down to the House." The sub-
editor shortly afterwards begins to study the evening papers,
from which he cuts away, with a pair of scissors, such para-
graphs and miscellaneous matter as it may be thought pru-
dent to keep in reserve, to supply the incessant cravings of
the printer's boy for fresh " copy." The letters of occa-
sional correspondents are stored up with a similar view ; and
the police reports and the various heterogeneous contribu-
tions of the penny-a-liners pass in succession under the cri-
tical eye of the sub-editorial judge, upon whose tact and dis-
cretion the general character of the paper often depends a
great deal more than upon the talents of the leading man of
the establishment. The reporters who have been attending
the courts of law in the morning begin to drop in. They are
most of them employed later in the evening at the House of
Commons, and are now writing out their notes, that they
may be ready for the night's work. At eight or nine o'clock,
every department of the office has begun to wear a bustling
business-like loek.—Monthly Chronicle