The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-01-24 00:00:00

AN ANGEL IN THE WAY.

FAIR the downward path is spread,
Love and Light thy coming greet;
Fruit is blushing o'er thy head,
Flowers are springing 'neath thy feet.
Mirth and Sin, with tossing hands,
Wave thee on, a willing prey;
Yet an instant pause—there stands
An angel in the way.

Heed the heavenly warning, know
Fairest flowers the feet may trip;
Fruits, that like the sunset glow,
Turn to ashes on the lip.
Though the joys be wild and free,
Though the paths be pleasant, stay!
Even mortal eye can see
An angel in the way.

Wilt thou drown in worldly pleasure ?
Wilt thou have, like him of old,
Length of days and store of treasure,
Wisdom, glory, power, and gold?
Life and limb shall sickness waste,
Want shall grind thee day by day,
Still to win thee, God hath placed
An angel in the way.
Trusting all on things that perish,
Shall a hopeless faith be thine ?
Earthly idol wilt thou cherish ?
Bow before an earthly shrine ?
Meet rebuke to mortal love
Yearning for a child of clay,
Death shall cross thy path, and prove
An angel in the way.

When the prophet thought to sin,
Tempted by his heathen guide;
When a prince's grace to win,
Prophet-lips would fain have lied,
Even the brute the sage controlled ;
Found a human voice, to say
4‘ Master, smite me not—Behold
An angel in the way

So, when Vice, to lure her slave,
Woos him down the shining track,
Spirit-hands are stretched to save,
Spirit-voices warn him back.
Heart of man ! to evil prone,
Chafe not at thy sin's delay,
Bow thee humbly down, and own
An angel in the way.

—Fraser's Magazine.

REVIEWS OF BOOKS.

Justin, Cornelius Nepos and Eutropius, trans-
lated by the• Rev. John S. Watson, M.A.
London : Henry G. Bohn.
The histories familiar to our boyhood are in-
variably associated with reminiscences " of youth
and hope, and that sweet time" when the mind
eagerly grasps at information, and which of all
the historical and biographical epitomes, in which
the Latin tongue abounds, are at once so familiar,
and so endeared by that familiarity, as Cornelius
Nepos and Eutropius ? The succinctly told, and
masterly biographic sketches of the former live and
flourish in unfading freshness, and the heroic great-
ness of Miltiades, the military grandeur of Hannibal,
andthe personal refinement ofAlcibiades, continually
present themselves to the mind's eye, as models of
their respective classes. By this translation,
which is a very good one, opportunity is afforded
for studying the condensed wisdom of their classic
authors, to individuals whose education has not
enabled them to peruse the originals. The volume
is at once cheap and elegant, useful and instructive.

The London Quarterly Review. No. IL Lon-
don Partridge, Oakey, and Co.
In noticing briefly the first number of this work,
we stated our conviction that it was possessed of
many claims on popular sympathy, and stated that,
although not disposed to endorse all its opinions,
theological, political, or even literary, we were yet
enabled to express a general concurrence in several
of the views laid down in it. A careful perusal of
the second number has widened the scope of our
general acquiescence in its literary canons, and has
materially augmented the pleasure with which we
have become familiar with its contents. Political
bias appears to be carefully avoided in treating of
literary matters ; its polemical tendency is not
obtrusively insisted on, and although the amount
of learning it brings to bear on theological sub-
jects may not be very great, nor its illumination
of the first brilliancy, it is still of so creditable,
and, withal, of so unostentatious a character, as to
disarm active hostility. The strong hold by which
this periodical seems likely to link itself to public
consideration is the generally interesting character
of the. subjects treated of in its pages. In the
number before us this claim is well illustrated. It
opens with a comprehensive article on the progress
and results of Oriental discovery, in which the im-
portant labours of Layard, Rawlinson, Hincks,
Fergusson, and Vans are succinctly, yet interest-
ingly analyzed, and laid before the general reader
in a popillar and comprehensible form. To this
succeeds an able paper on the " Natural History
of Man," founded on the voluminous and able re-
searches of Drs. Prichard and Latham. The next
article is devoted to the proceedings of " The
British and Foreign Bible Society.' This is fol-
lowed by articles on " Monkish Literature," on
" The Captivity of Napoleon," on " The Dukes
-and Cardinals of Guise," on "Alford's Greek Testa-
ment," on the "Auto-Biography of De Quincy," and
the list of chief articles is brought to a close by a
paper on " Our Australian Possessions." In so
varied a chapter of contents, variety of skill and
discrepancy of talent must naturally be looked for ;
but all of the articles enumerated evince much
painstaking, no small amount of information, and
a creditable degree of literary acquirement. To
two of the articles we would, in an especial degree,
direct attention as worthy of general study. These
are, the paper on " The Natural History of Man,"
- and that on " Our Australian Possessions," the
former as discussing many points of great ethno-
logical importance, the latter as conveying an ad-
mirable summary of facts, circumstances, and
inferential incidents connected with the most ris-
ing and one of the most important appendages
belonging to the British Crown. We had marked
several passages for extract in both of these
papers, but feel constrained to limit our quota-
tions to the last-named one. For the length to
-'which these extracts extend we make no apology ;
their importance will more effectually justify their
amplitude than could be done by deprecatory state-
ments or explanations. We commence with the
OPENING REFLECTIONS ON ArSTEILIAN EMIGRATION.
Short as is the time since Thomas Campbell ceased to
sing among us, it is not without an effort that we now
enter into the feeling under which he made the " Departure
of Emigrants of Australia," the subject of a finished poem.
To us, that spectacle is ordinary, business-like, and pro-
mising; to him, the emigrants seemed exiles, with hunger
behind them, and hope before, painfully exchanging a
country which offered to their desires everything but bread,
for one which had nothing but bread to offer ; whose har-
vests no neighbour's sickle would help to reap, and no
forefather's homestead would enclose ; which lay beyond
the waves of the Bay of Biscay, and the roaring gales of
the Cape, as far from the scene of all the wanderer's loves
as it was possible for him to be driven, while still on the
bosom of the world that bore him ; which had heretofore
been known, not as a real human home, but rather as a
spot beyond the world, whereon the most forlorn tribes of
barbarism, and the most corrupt offcasts of civilization had
met, each appalled at the other's degradation ;—an unac-
countable and outside country, which the science of Blu-
menbach had inclined to set down as no proper part of our
earthly creation, but as some comet that had strayed and
fallen into the South Sea, which even the wisdom of our
legislators had selected as an end for the bad, standing in
point of terror next door to the gallows. The poet's prompt
eye saw broken ties hanging around each emigrant's
bosom, like chords round a shattered harp ; e heard
them, as tossed continually by gusts of feeling his ,
ea
give out
mournful notes; and he sung of—
"Shores so far apart
From England's home, that e'en the home-sick heart
Quails, thinking, ere that gulf can be recross'd,
How large a space of fleeting life is lost."
Little did he think that before he had been seven years in
his grave, that far country would become the land of pro-
mise to tens of thousands in England, who had never been
pressed by eitlttr hardship or suspicion • would attract
youth of all ranks, from our fairest valleys and our proudest
towns ; would be talked of, in almost every family in Eng-
land, as the honourable home of some brother, cousin, or
kinsman ;—that the Exchange of Liverpool would ring
, with huzzas, welcoming a mariner who, without help from
steam, had; in less than twelve months, made two voyages
thither and back ; and that, with that aid, another ship
would go and come, each time, in four-and-sixty days.
A wonderful, indeed an almost incredible, con-
tradiction of the poet's views, and one which, to the
ineffaceable glory of Liverpool, the sagacity and
enterprise of her shipowners, and the intrepidity
and matchless skill of her intelligent mariners,
have been, under the favour of Divine Providence,
mainly instrumental in bringing.about—itself con-
stituting an era in successful navigation which even
remote posterity will look on with exultant wonder,
and recount with emulative admiration. Pursuing
the train of thoughtfully suggestive hope, glow-
ingl Pictured in the lines of Campbell, the author
in t e review gives the great bard's encouraging
vision of the Australian future
Untrack'd in
Undng the ore thatliesmarble
Fair Australasia! that shall -iat thy roofs shall slime ,
they are to be,
Proud temple-domes, with give to thee
cus._ in galleries winding high—
So vast in space,!
420 compliDientinaintuition whiGl3

thus enabled the poet to foreshadow scenes and
circumstances which the undeviating course of
events seems bringing to a rapid maturity, he pro-
ceeds with his