The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-10-08 00:00:00

t our eyes and imaginations was over

," she writes,

began to feel the cravings of our grosser natures. The
Niederwald, the Noble, the Rosbel, all were forgotten in the
vision of the pleasantest of all repasts (7)—a dinner on the
deck of a Rhine steamer. We'll not have a seat near her,'

I whispered to the girls, as with some difficulty we doubled
the end of the table. No ; farthest from her is best,' said
K ; so we proceeded to the other extremity of the table, when
we were met by the head waiter. Places for four, if you
please,' said I. He bowed civilly, was very sorry, but there
was no room.' Surely you can make room ?" Impossible,
madame !' A moment's reflection convinced me that a Ger-
man would not risk the comfort of one guest by crowding in
another, so I said, Well, give us a table to ourselves.' I
cannot ;it is impossible !' What !* exclaimed the girls,
does he say we cannot have places ? Do order a lunch then ;
lam starved.' And so am I.' And I.' My next demand
showed how narrowed were our prospects. Then," said I,
I'll ask for nothing more if you will give me some bread and
butter, and a bottle of wine.' Afterward, afterward, ma-
dame,' lie replied, his German patience showing some symp-
toms of diminution ; afterward lunch, dinner, or what you
please ; but now it is impossible.' Here then lay the miser)] ;
we can easily suppose the rest. By and by the seats are all
taken—the company are ranged, and the soup makes its ap-
Next came the bouilli, with its three satellites,
potatoes, a la nulitre. d' hotel, cucumbers, and a fat com-
pound called gravy' ; then appeared the entremets—sausazes,
tongue, cauliflower, macaroni, and other messes, to the tune
of twenty plates exchanged. If they would only give us a
bit of tongue !' said K., ' or a croquet,' said M.,
one sausage,' said L. But tongue, croquet, and sausage
vanished within the all-devouring jaws, and again the emptied
dishes were swept off, and on carne salmon, tench, pike, and
trout, and the delicious puddings. Now came my trial. The
puddings, so wholesome, with their sweet innocent fruit
sauces, are always my post restante at a German dinner.
But' what was Ito Hecuba, or Hecuba to me ?"111te pud-
ding in its turn, was all eaten, and our fat friend, wiping his
mouth after the last morsel, turned round and laughed—yes,
actually laughed ; and we being at that point of nervousness
when you must either cry or laugh, laughed too, rather hys-
terically."

pearance

or just

The scene is drawn out to a length that is almost tiresome;
but the upshot of the matter is, that the Germans played
away,' wholly regardless of the American authoress and her
companions ; and that the one party continued to stuff, and
the other to starve, with every possible advantages for the
full enjoyment, or endurance of each of those two opposite
states of being, until they arrived at Bieberich, which was
the end of their journey.
We cannot help feeling acutely for the ladies under such an-
noying circumstances, and particularly as they seemed to have
borne their trial, and moralised upon it, with a very tolerable
share of philosophy ; but with regard to the company and the
waiters, churlish and unfeeling as their conduct would seem
to have been, we cannot concur in thinking that it was alto-
gether so savage as one of our hebdomadal critics; in com-
menting upon the passage, would have us consider it. "We
fear," says he, "that the Germans are only polite within
the range of their own methodic routine of manners and du-
ties ; at any rate, we say that such gross selfishness and ill-
breeding as are described in this narrative, could not have
taken place in any part of England—no, not among the
rudest of the people." We applaud the sentiment from
which this strength of observation proceeds ; but we are not
so sure of the impossibility of which the writer speaks.
We think, in short, that such a scene might have occurred
in England. There were Englishmen on board the steamer,
who, it seems, never thought of offering their places to Miss
Sedgwick, or of tendering her their services in any other
way ; and the lady herself does not charge upon our country-
men, or upon the Germans, all that barbarity which our
critic, in the warmth of his gallantry, so freely bestows upon
them. There is a most material difference, however, in point
of situation, between the people of the steamer and the
reviewer of Miss Sedgwick's book ; for the one party has now
the advantage—if we may call it so—of knowing all about the
fair traveller, and the extremitY of her sufferings, whereas
the other knew nothing at all on the subject. This is our
plea for the engrossed selfishness of their behaviour, and
their apparent indifference to so poignant a case of distress ;
it was quite out of the course of business, and they perceived
it not.

BaCoarity of this sort is, paradoxical as it may seem, a
result of civilization. Steam-boats, and railroads, and regu-
lated travelling of all sorts, are producing it. The cliemin
de fer has an evident tendency to make the cceur de fer—de
fir at least for all such distresses, however acute they may in
reality be, as occur, like those of the fair American voyayeuse,
from " not attending to the regulations", or not studying
them, or being just a wee bit too late. What should we
think of a sentimental journey, by railway, from Liverpool
to Birmingham, or from Birmingham to London? What
hasty traveller stopping to dine on the road would think of
charging himself with the care of stranger parties—albeit of
the weaker sex—and renouncing his place to them on a
mere conjecture that through ignorance of the rules, or tar-
diness in their movements, they had secured no place for
themselves ? Alas ! the age of such chivalry is gone ; for
ever, Nve fear, at an end. Lose the train, and however vexa-
tious th:e circumstance may be to yourself, you need not ex-
pect ro pity from others ; wander about seeing lighis,
when von should profit by the short half hour allowed for
taking dinner ; or be guilty of any other neglect, or violation

f the known rules of the way, and you have no sympathy to
expect, no remedy to hope fur, among the preoccupied
crowds that you see around. What is this then but an effect
and consequence of civilization, or what the world is in the
habit of calling such ? There is no causation which neces-
sarily produces benevolence in a highly-civilized state of
society—civilized, we mean, without the element of chris-
tianity : the tendency of such a state is rather in the opposite
direction. Hospitality, we have heard it often remarked, is
the virtue of " imperfect civilization"; but to " use hospi-
tality one to another, without grudging", is certainly a chris-

tian virtue also. Civilization—if by dial naine we are to call

improvements in science and the arts—may leave this virtue

hest as it mat• Christianity itself. Ci

~ilization brings n

s of human being; together in crowded
cities, crowded factories, crowded steam-boats, crowded
railway trains, and crop tied everything. Now the mere
tendency of such crowding—apart from other considerations—
is not to benevolence, but rather, as we have suggested, to
Selfishness. The mind of man, among a multitude, is more
driven in upon itself, and instead of thinking more of °diets,
from the distracting crowd which he sees around, he takes
refuge inward, and only thinks the more of himself. We all
know what the solitude of a great city is ; at first, perhaps, it
casts us into a dull, forlorn, melancholy habit of soul
but after a little while, the mainspring of action re-
covers its tone, and the solitary sets
.about his own

business with a resolution and intenseness rather in-
creased than diminished by the general indifference with
which his movements are regarded. The tendency of civili-
sation is to lessen the outward manifestations of mutual de-
pendence—and to remove the occasions of exercise to the
benevolent affections a little more out of sight ; but of nei-
ther does it destroy the reality. The poor congregate in
narrow lanes and dark corners, or are eventually put out of
the way in receptacles provided for them by the state ; deep
tragedies are in course of performance at every side of us, of
which we are too busy to take any notice—and the most pro-
found emotions may agitate the bosom of our next neighbour

in the train, of which we never know anything—
sudden crash comes, and separates not only the company,
but. heads and trunks, and legs and arms, of the same indivi-
Atital; then pockets are searched to ascertain identities, and
we learn with much regret that our late unfortunate fellow-
traveller was a newly-made husband hastening to return to
the eagerly expected welcome of his bride ; an only son after
a long absence to his mother—or a fond father to his happy
home. Civilisation7puts a smooth surface on the way of life ;
and by making less moving calls on the affections, has a ten-
dency to dry them up, or, to change my metaphor, let them
grow rusty for the want of exercise. We do not say that
these affections are incompatible with the existence of civili-
sation ; nay far from it ; but we do say that civilisation does
not of itself favour their growth. There is a vast difference
between civilisation and Christianisation ; and it is most de-
sirable that they should move together.
With regard to the American authoress and the German
ordinary, we have only to repeat our charitable construction
of the apparent unkindness with which the lady was treated,
to state our conjecture that the people who dined so very
comfortably had no notion how very hungry she was ; and
to add our hope that the next time she travels that way she
will use the precaution to bespeak a dinner ticket—in time,
or to take " bread and butter and a bottle of wine" in her
pocket.

—unless some

THE LEAGUE IN DANGER

There is war—fierce and bitter—just now, amongst the
members of this pure and patriotic body. Mr. Joseph Sturge
has returned from a tour through the United States, with
the impression fixed beneath the rim of his puritanical hat
that his" dear " friend Richard Cobden,—the alpha and
omega of the anti-corn-law agitation—is little better than a
political cheat. The worthy Joseph has, it seems, subscribed
some two hundred pounds of good sterling gold to advance
the objects of the league ; and has bargained 'in return for
—what does the reader imagine? For sincerity and straight
forward dealing on the part of the " motley crew who
compose the league in question. For honesty in devoting
those " monies" to the purpose for which they were sub-
scribed—viz., the agitation of total repeal of the corn laws,
irrespective of the maintenance in power of the Melbourne-
*O'Connell ministry. This sincerity and honesty, he is of-
opinion, has not been evinced ; and he has therefore. set
about pummelling, " dear Cobden " in a most unfriendly
style and vows most lustily that he will give the next " mo-
nies " due, to to some charitable institution,—which we sup-
pose he considers as the next best thing to throwing it into
the sea.

As a matter of course the Stockport philosopher has put in
a rejoinder, which, however, is not one, we think, which will
satisfy Mr. Joseph Sturge. Mr. Cobden is of opinion that
the league was justified in supporting an Bs. duty as an in-
stalment of their full demand for total repeal ; but the corn-
dealing Joseph is of opinion that the present system even is
better than an Bs. duty, in, which we fully agree with him.
He is of opinion, moreover, that the question between the
►manufacturers and the agricultural interest ought to be fought
in fair stand-up fashion ; that there should be no skulking ;
no hoisting false colours; no jesuitry ; in short Mr. Joseph
Sturge thinks it not only morally just but politically prudent
in the Anti-Corn-Law League to place their ultimate object—
the ruin of the agriculture of Great Britain—conspicuously
and intelligibly before the people, in which opinion we need
scarcely say that he will not find many of the tricksters with
whom he is " leagued " ready to coincide.
We ourselves, the reader will scarcely doubt, arc quite of
Mr. Sturge's way of thinking in this last particular too.
Men really ought not only to keep a fixed object in their own
view, but in that of others as well; and they ordinarily do
this when the object in question is an honest one. But when
the contrary is the case, they resort, as the advocates of a
fixed duty upon corn have done, to falsehood and fraudulent
concealment. We are glad, therefore, that Mr. Sturge has
so seasonably brought before our notice, and that of the
public, the fact that it is not in reality a fixed duty upon corn
against which we have to contend ; that the question which
is now at issue between the two great parties in the state is
not one as to the degree of protection to be afforded to the
agricultural interests, or the moue in which it is to be afford-
ed ; but that it is one of " protection or no protection"—
that it is, in fact, whether or not we are to lay prostrate our
whole agricultural interests before the wheels of the manu-
facturing juggernaut. Upon such a question—thus plainly
placed before us—need we hesitate now to decide ?