The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-05-26 00:00:00

Voetrp.

ON THE DECEASE OF A VERY DEAR FRIEND.

BY JOS. TOMPSON, ESQ.

O art thou really past from earth, my first and dearest friend,
To experience God's blest promises—with angel hosts to blend--
To join the glorious army of the Saviour's sacred throng,
And laud the great Redeemer in the grand seraphic song
Of holy, holy, holy '—Nly friend beloved, when here

Thy organ, touch'd by thy hand, has;ounded in mine ear,
And warm'd my heart's devotion with that soul-inspiring strain
Which, with the like emotion, I must never hear again.
0 bast thou really left me—thou whose kind and gentle voice
Reproved excess with tenderness, and made me oft rejoice
When sorrow, as some gloomy cloud, has o'er my spirit hung,
And spoke ofheaven when to earth, with sinfulgrasp, I've clung.
0 Harry !—how can I repeat that ever sacred word
Without a sigh—to think how oft, in early life, I heard
It uttered.by our schoolmates, when urging thee away
From contemplative musings to join their heedless play.
Ah ! how the heart with fondness now to every trifle clings,
Flom which a reminiscence of my once fond Harry springs.
Each school-book brings thee to my mind, and wakes the pass-

ing thought
.
How, for many pleasant years, we were together taught.
My Ovid and my Virgil too, with every other book
We studied in the school, or which we in our rambles took,
Is cherish'd with affection now, since in a brighter age
Those eyes, which now are dim in death, ha% e scann'd its classic

page.
And can I think upon the fields where we have rov'd at will,
Or ponder in my mind the grove, and not behold thee still ?
Can I wander in my fancy—for, alas! I'm far away—
The ruin'd halls of Ashby, where we spent the closing day,
And not again behold that face, so gentle and so mild—
That face on which with joy I gazed when but a playsome child?
But which has often charm'd me as time progressing ran,
And shed a pleasure round me when arriv'd at years of man.
And when I visit that lov'd spot, shall I not long for thee
To wander in the self-same walks where once we wander'd free?
Shall I not call at thylate home, where wont, when young, to
to share'
Each passing pleasure ?—But, alas ! I shall not find thee there.
Ah ! then shall I not wander to thy grassy, hloomy grave,
And once more hanging o'er thee, whom no prayer of mine could

save,
Weep,-but rejoice with holy joy to think how thou art blest,
And ushered to the holy realms of never-changing rest.

O Harry !—how I loved thee befits not men to know,
Nor can the graphic art give vent to nature's tender flow :
How dear I was to thee too no power of words can tell ;
Suffice it may to truly say we loved each other well.
But all is o'er, and thou no more canst answer to thy name-L--
Yet, though far absent from thee, I can love thee still the same;
And there's the thought—the happy thought—of meeting on
that shore
Whereangels harp, and seraphs sing, and countless hosts adore.
Liverpool.

SELECT EXTRACTS.

A METHOD OF SECURING MONEY IN LETTERS.—Take
card such as are played with, split it half-way through, put
in your money, then wet the split part with yeast and press
it together again, let it dry, arid no person can take it out by
fair means.

YANKEE DISCIPLINE.—GeneraI Howe's army running
rather short of fresh provisions previous to their descent on
Long Island, a foraging party was sent cut one night to
drive off, if possible, some of the rebels' cattle. The pro-
vincial watchword for that guard was Cambridge, and pass-
word Swamp. It happened the foragers stumbled unawares
on one of the advance provincial sentinels, who hearing them
approach, bawled out in the true Yankee dialect, " Cam-
bridge!" To which no answer being given, he repeated it
again—" Cambridge, I say once more ; if you don't say
Swamp I'll shoot."—Upon which the British party instantly
cried—" Swamp"—" Pass," was the reply. In consequence
of which, without the least interruption, they drove off a very
large herd of fat black cattle, with which the army and navy
were regaled for some days, enjoying at the same time the
ludicrous circumstance to which they were indebted for their
extraordinary treat.

EATING.—Every animal eats as much as it can procure,
and as much as it can hold. A cow eats but to sleep, and
sleeps but to eat, and not content with eating all day long,
" twice it slays the slain," and eats its dinner o'er again.
A whale swallows 10,000,000 of living shrimps at a draught;
a nursling. Canary bird eats its own bulk in a day, and a
caterpillar eats 500 times its own weight, before it lies down
to rise a butterfly. The mite and the maggot eat the very
world in which they live ; they nestle and build in their roast
lo,ef ; and the hyena, for want of better, eats himself. Yet
a maggot has not the gout, and the whale is not subject to
sciatica. Nor does Captain Lyon inform us that an Exqui-

inaux is troubled with a toothache, dyspepsia, or hysterics,
though he eats ten pounds of seal, and drinks a gallon of
oil at a meal, and though his meal last as long as his meat.
ROYAL WIVES IN THE EAST.—" His four wives, all
very handsome, burnt themselves with his body, as did five
of his Cachemirian slave girls, one of whom who was called
the Lotus, or Lily, I often saw last year in in) first visit to
Lahore. Every thing was done to prevent it, but in vain.
They were guaranteed in their rank, and in all their posses-
sions, but they insisted upon it ; and the account from the
European officers who were present, describes it as a most
horrible sight. The four wives seated themselves on the
pile with Runjeet Sing's head on their laps ; and his princi-
pal wife desired Kurruck Sing, Runjeet's son and heir, and
Dheean Sing, the lat- priine minister, to come to her on the
. .

pile, and ma-de the for-mer take the Maharajah's dead hand
in his own, and swear to protect and favour Dheean Sing as
Runjeet Sing had done ; and she made the latter swear to
bear the same true allegiance to the son which he had faith-
fully borne to the father. She then set fire to the pile with
her own hands, and they are dead—nine living beings having
perished together without a shriek or a groan. .Dheean Sing
threw himself twice on the pile, and said he could not sur-
vive his master, but was dragged away by naain force."—
Osborne's Court and Camp of Runjeet Sing.

WHO AND WHAT WERE THE CELEBRATED WOMEN

OF GREECE ?—But who were these gifted and powerful
women, these priestesses of a rtligion and sentiment, these
destinies of fren states (whose smiles and frowns decided the
fate of despot empires), these adored companions of heroes,
these trusted friends of legislators, these disciples of philoso-
phers, and associates of sages, these models of wit and themes
of poetry, these professors of abstruse sciences, and enlight-
ened lovers of all the refined. arts, which tend to soften and
cheer society, and to convert man from barbarism to civili-
zation ? Were they the honest mothers and virtuous wives
of the free and noble citzens of the Greek states—the women
of the Demos of Athens, or of the soldier patriots of Sparta ?
Was their knowledge acquired, were their talents developed
under institutions peculiarly favourable to the cultivation of
female intellect? Were such accomplishments united to
those moral qualities which give to wise maternity the cha-
racter and influence of a wholesome legislation ? Gifted as
such women must have been by nature, gifted as they noto-
riously were with that personal beauty peculiar to their
climes and races, and with those fine perceptions of the beau-
tiful and the true in works of art and literature, were they
themselves ennobled by that sense of rights to be enjoyed,
and of duties to be performed, which creates the crowning
perfection of all, characters in either sex? No; these wo-
men, whose names ate linked with those of the greatest and
wisest men of antiquity, were the outcasts of society—its
admiration, its pride, and its shame—the agents of its refined
civilization, the instruments of its rapid moral corruption.
Born in slavery, or sold to it, infant captives taken in war,
or of a class too lowly to be recognised as citizens by the
state, these victims of civil combinations, foredoomed by the
accidents of their birth, or of their lives, to an inevitable
social degredation, had one privilege incidental to their sin-
gular lot ; and of that they availed themselves, to the triumph
of mind over station, and of usurping acquirement over es-
tablished ignorance. They were not under the ban of that
intellectual proscription which was reserved by the law for
the virtuous and the chaste. Chartered libertines, of their
minds as of their actions, they were left free to pursue the
bent of their natural talents, to sip at the fountain of every
science, to cull the flowers of rhetoric, to rifle the whole hive
of knowledge, and to possess themselves of the treasures of
philosophy. Thus gifted, they obtained a mastery over all
that was eminent in the male population ; and, possessing
the hearts of statesmen, orators, and philosophers, became
influential on the destinies of the people. Standing half
way between virtue and vice, a class apart, in the social dis-
tinctions of the sex, the Hetterse, or " fair friends," fre-
quently exhibited the qualities of honest men, though they
wanted the purer virtues of honest women. Such estimable
qualities, however, were but happy accidents, an anomaly,
not a general rule. The position of these women was a false
one, dangerous to the best interests of society ; and their
privileges and their influence (for rights they had none),
though uncontrolled by the lawgiver, and freely permitted
by the conventional manners of the times and country, be-
came a deteriorating principle, which worked out the political
rein of Greece, through its moral depravity.—LadyMoroade
Woman and her Master.

MIGRATION OF HERILINGS.—The great winter rendezvous
of the herring is within the arctic circle, and there they spend
many months in the year. In the spring this mighty army
begins to put itself in motion. We distinguish the united
shoals by that name, because the word comes from the Get,
man beer, an army, and expresses their number. They be-
gin to appear off the Shetland Isles in April and May : these
are only the forerunners of the great shoal which comes in
June; and their appearance is marked by the number of
birds, as gannet, and other sea-fowl, which come to prey on
them. When the main body appears, its breadth and depth
are such as to alter the very appearance of the ocean. It is
divided into distinct columns of five or six miles in length,
and three or four in breadth, and they drive the water before
them with a kind of rippling ; sometimes they sink for the
space of ten or fifteen minutes, and then rise again to the sur-
face - and in fine weather reflect a variety of splendid colours
—like a field of the most precious gems ; in which light this
gift of Providence ought in very truth to be viewed. The
first check this army meets with, in its journey from the
Shetland Islands, which divides it into two parts ; one wing
takes to the eastern, the other to the western shores of Great
Britain, and fill every bay and creek with their numbers ;
others pass on towards Yarmouth. the great and ancient
:iart for herrings; then they pass through the British Chan-
nel, and after that disappear. The other wing, which takes
the westerly direction, after presenting themselves at the
Hebrides, where the great stationary fishery is, proceed to
the north of Ireland, where they meet with a second inter;
ruption, and are obliged to divide again ; one party takes
the west of Ireland, and is soon imperceptible in the immen-
sity of the Atlantic ; but the other shoal, passing into the
Irish sea, feeds th inhabitants of its coasts—(this is the
shoal visited by fishermen of the Isle of Man). These last
are often capricious in their motions, and do not, like the
grand body, show an invariable attachment to their old
haunts. Tae object which induces this yearly migration is
the spawning, or depositing of their eggs. Herrings are
found also in shoals, on the coasts of America, as low down
as Carolina. Chesapeak Bay is inundated with Ahem. We
find them also in Kamtschatka, and they probably visit
Japan.
• • -

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.—An aristocracy does not expire,
like a man, in a single day ; the aristocratic principle is
slowly undermined, in men's opinion, before it is attacked in
their laws. Long before open war is declared against it, the
tie which had hitherto united the higher classes to the lower
may be to be gradually relaxed. Indifference and con-
-tempt are betrayed by one class, jealousy and hatred by the
other; the intercourse between rich and poor becomes less
frequent and less kind, and rents are raised. This is not the
consequence of a democratic revolution. but its certain har-
binger; for an aristocracy which has lost the affections of
the people, once and for ever, is like a tree dead at the root,
which is the more easily torn up by the winds, the higher its
branches have spread. In the course of the last fifty years,
the rents of farms have amazingly increased, not only in
France, but throughout the greater part of Europe. The
remarkable improvements which have taker. place in agricul-
ture and manufactures within the same pet iod do not suffice,
in my opinion, to explain this fact : recourse must be had to
another course more powerful and more concealed. I believe
that cause is to be found in the democratic institutions whiCh
several European nations have adopted, and in the demo-
cratic passions which more or less agitate all the rest. 1
have frequently heard great English landowners congratulate
themselves, that, at the present day, they derive a much
larger income from their estates than their fathers did. They
have perhaps good reason to be glad ; hut most assuredly
they know not what .they are glad of. They think they are
making a clear gain, when it is in reality only an exchange ,•
their influence is what they are parting with for cash, and
what they gain in money will ere long be lost in power..--De
Tocquerille 8 Democracy in America.