The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-02-14 00:00:00

THE POLAR STAR.

THOU radiant star,
That loo'sest down, with glance so calm and bright,
From the pure azure depths of Heaven afar,
•
Pouring thy gentle light.

Thou'rt like a king,
Sitting so high upon the vault of Heaven,
And looking kindly down on everything—
Thouand the gldrious seven.

How bright art thou!
To the lone sailor in the raging storm,
When the fierce waves dash o'er his vessel's prow,
And bathe his shrinking form.

He lifts his eye

To thee, thou gentle, kind, and faithful guide,
And, coming from thy radiant throne on high,
Peace gilds the raging tide.

He blesses thee,

When guided by the light he nears the shore,
And when with beating heart he hopes to see
His well-beloved once more.

In deserts wild,
How gladly turns the traveller to thee—
How often has the weary wanderer smiled
Thy friendly light to see!

Thou faithful guide!
Where is the man whom thou bast led astray,
Who in the desert or the foaming tide
' Inquired of thee the way?

The evening star,
That like the queen sits throned in the West,
Shines .tich a light more fair and radiant far
On the blue liisavon,.. breast.

iieht
Shelters itself behind the wester.. --
Nor on the sable mantle of the night
Her radiance she distills.

But thou, like one

Placed on the watch by him he must obey,
Dost never, till the appointed time is done,
Refuse to watch and stay.

Thou watchful star,

. For ever gazing from thy station high,
;,While, mounted each upon his silver car,
The planets roam the sky ;

Thy changeless light
Revives, directs, and blesses every soul
That looks for guidance to thy radiance bright,
When night surrounds the pole.

REVIEWS OF BOOKS.

Autobiographic Sketches. By Thomas de Quincey
Edinburgh : James Hogg.
Few men of the present day, whose profession
has. been merely literary, have occupied so large a
portion of the world's concern as Thomas de
Quinces. It is many long years since the " Con-
fessions of an English Opium Eater" gained for
their author a notoriety almost equivalent to fame ;
and more than a quarter of a century has elapsed
since an alleged " puppyism." in his name provoked
the excitable wrath of Dr. Macginn to such an
extent as to make De Quincey the subject of a
bitter invective. During all that period the author
of these sketches has been plying his laborious
vocation of penning essays for the . purpose of
making men wiser and better than they were
before he took to teaching them. The success of
these toilsome efforts has been variously estimated;
some affirming that he has been eminently useful,
others maintaining that his labours have been
misdirected, and their results negative. Such is
inevitably the fate of men who, departing from the
common route, lay down a path for their own
progress, and ask others to follow them in it. If,
however, this be a portion of the penalty attached
to novel teaching, it has advantages of no ordinary
order to counterpoise such drawbacks. Members
of the intellectual aristocracy, by its means, become
familiarised with a name which otherwise might
never have reached their knowledge : such fami-
liarity becomes a passport in their realm, and thus
the lucky wight has secured for himself the chance
of a reflected immortality at least. Far be it from
us to hint even that De Quincey owes any of his
popularity to such an adventitious source as this.
Thc, 00,...6 roffoo L.:p o.o.rth;ocrraphy f, 0 •
fully arranged, to show that from early youth he
was,habituated to what is called " good society,"
and through a large quantity of very dull reading
we are instructed in what our author shows to be
the usages of parties occupying an exalted station.
It may indeed be true, that every one who has
spoken with a lord has not been domiciled with a
Lord and Lady Massey ; and every youth of sixteen
has. not had the inestimable luck to be a sort of
hobble-de-hoy tutor to a lady of rank and title ;
still, we confess our inability to see the real use of
wasting sixty or seventy pages of well-printed
paper, with an elaborate narrative of the absolute
nothin,o•nesses which passed current in that intel-
lectual (P) circle within whose charmed span our
author found such inappreciable joy. Men who
have occupied any space in the literary sphere,
must at some time have lived beyond the range of
" Laxton Hall," attractive though that residence
may have been, and so has Mr. De Quincey. With
feeling of no ordinary pleasure we bound over that
park-wall, and find ourselves in company with
Coleridge and Southey, with Wordsworth and with
Wilson, albeit Thomas De Quincey is of the party.
Where such intellectual giants are, babyism for the
time being goes to sleep. Even twaddle about
such men is very different twaddle from that which
suffices to describe the trim and orderly array of
Lord Carberry's stables, or the odd vagaries of
an 'erratic Irish lord. Accordingly the latter por-
tion of Mr. De Quincey's book is infinitely superior
to its opening. The author feels that he has
something to do, and ex necessitate does it. Brief
and disjointed memoranda of the great " Lake
Poets" form the staple of the volume, apart from
the, introductory rubbish which has nearly choked
it, and these notanda are interesting in a high
degree ; and although the narration is, indeed, a
very tangled maze, beset with disquisition and
digression, there are numerous passages of golden
worth inwoven in its tissue. He dwells at consi-
derable length upon the fatal weakness which, in
air, evil hour, led Coleridge to the use of opium,
and adduces numerous instances of its baneful
operation in shattering the majestic mind of that
great son of song. Only one illustration of this
can we find room for ; it is in reference to a series
of lectures on Poetry and the Fine Arts, delivered
by Coleridge at the Royal Institution, at which
time, says De Quincey, his intellect was entirely
prostrated by the use of the pernicious drug.
COLERIDGE BOWED BUT NOT BROKEN.
Generally speaking, the selections were as injudicious
and as inappropriate as they were ill delivered; for
amongst Coleridge's accomplishments, good reading was
not one; he had neither voice nor management of voice.
However, this defect chiefly concerned immediate impres-
sion ; the most afflicting to a friend of Coleridge's was the
entire absence of his own peculiar and majestic intellect ;
no heart, no soul, was in anything he said ; no strength
of feeling in recalling universal truths ; no power of
originality or compass of moral relations in his novelties—
all was a poor faint reflection from jewels once scattered in
the highway by himself, in the prodigality of his early
opulence—a mendicant dependance on the alms dropped
from his own overflowing treasury of happier times.
Of Coleridge's father we have a picture of gro-
tesque fidelity. He is represented as a man of
profound learning, great simplicity of character,
and, no small amount of oddity. Among other
whims to which his good nature prompted him was
an endeavour to simplify the Latin Grammar,—a
leading feature in which simplification was to do
away with the unmeaning name of the accusative
case,and substitute it by the more significant one of
quale-quare-quiditive, an improvement in the
matter he was unable to effect,—a circumstance for
which the first-form boys at our academies must
be duly thankful. An illustration of the learned
and rev. gentleman's simplicity (he was a clergy-
min) will be found in the following
DINNER-TABLE INCIDENT.
Dining in a large party, one day, the modest divine was
suddenly shocked by perceiving some part, as he con-
ceived, of his own snowy shirt emerging from a part of his
• habiliments, which we will suppose to have been his waist-
coat. It was not that ; but for decorum we will so call it.
The stray portion of his own supposed tunic was admo-
nisheda of its errors by a forcible thrust back into its
proper home; but still another limbus persisted to emerge,
or seemed to persist, and still another, until the learned
gentleman absolutely perspired with the labour of re-
establishing order. And, after all, he saw with anguish
that arrears of the snowy indecorum still remained to
reduce into obedience. To this remnant of rebellion he
to apply himself—strangely
confounded,
was proceeding
however, at the obstinacy. of the insurrection—when the
mistress of the house,
rising to lead away the ladies from
the table, and all parties naturally rising with her, it be-
came suddenly apparent to every eye that the worthy
Orientalist had been most laboriously stowing away, into
the capacious receptacles of his own habiliments—under
the delusion that it was his own shirt—the snowy folds of
a lady's gown belonging to his next neighbour ; and so
voluminously, that a very small portion of it, indeed, re-
mained for the lady's own use ; the natural consequence
of which was, of course, that the lady appeared inextrica-
bly yoked to the learned theologian, and could not in any
way effect her release, until after certain operations upon
the vicar's dress, and a continued refunding and rolling
out of snowy '
which at length mazes upon snowy mazes, in quantities
proved too much for the gravity of the
company. Inextinguishable laughter arose from all
parties,- except the erring
and unhappy doctor, who, in
dire perplexity, continued
still refunding with all his
might—perspiring and refund' until he had paid up the
last arrears of his long debt, and the put an end to a case

of distress more memorable to himself and his parishioners
than any "quale-quare-quiditive" case that had probably
ever perplexed his learning.

The latter portion of this volume abounds in
anecdotes and sweet descriptive sketches to such
an extent as makes us grumble sadly at the loss
of space devoted to the opening scenes.

Remarks on Malignant Cancer, and a Remedy
for the Disease. By. J. Pattison, M.D.
_ _

London : J. J. Guillaunie.

The small pamphlet, of which the above is the
title, is one devoted, in some degree, to a con-
sideration of the means of curing cancer, and a
host of other diseases usually classed under the
name of cancerours and scrofulous maladies,
without the use of the knife or of caustic applica-
tions. His treatment consists in the use of a
vegetable remedy, the precise nature of which he
does not indicate. He complains, however, appar-
ently not without cause, that the medical profession
look coldly, or even adversely, upon his mode of
practice, and throw obstacles in the way of his
being allowed to introduce his remedy. In con-
solation for this unfriendliness, he has the reflection
that the established practitioners of the respective
dates obstinately opposed Harvey, in his theory of
sanguineous circulation—Jenner, in his discovery
of the value of vaccination—Hunter's views on in-
flammatory action—and a host of other well known
instances. He backs the efficacy of his remedy
by a numerous list of cases in which its success
has been complete ; and, on the strength of these,
maintains his claim to a fair trial. The observa-
tions put forth by him are temperately written, and,
from all we can see, little ground can exist for
ernTifing* which he so earnestly
desires.