The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-02-22 00:00:00

THE SLUGGARD'S REVEILLE.

Awake oh ! sluggard. See the morning
Through your cvindow peeping!
Time and Nature do their work
While you lie idly sleeping.
The bramble climbs your garden wall;
Within it grows the thistle tall—
The weed—the nettle, sting and all !
A harvest for your reaping.
Awake—behold the lovely morning
Through the world diffusing
Light and beauty, health and joy,
Which you're in torpor losing.

Up ! from heaven the golden glory
Over earth is streaming ;
Hill and vale are wide awake,
`With life and music teeming.
The bee comes laden to the hive:
But when, or how, are you to thrive,
Who thus lie smould'ring, half alive,
In leaden slumber dreaming?
Awake—your heavy clay bestirring,
Use your eves for seeing.
Quick ! put off the stolid sloth,
And prove your nobler being.

Make the little ant your teacher—
From her wisdom borrow.
She for future want provides,
To save her future wirrow.
And if you've nought for time to crave,
Oh ! have you not a soul to save,
While every step is toward the grave,
That may be yours to-morrow?
Awake! if in you dwells a spirit
Born to live for ever ;
Lest the stealthy spoiler come
Your dull life-string to sever !

Haste! the precious rosy moments
Flee beyond o'ertaking.
Each a swift-winged witness goes
Where your account is making !
And what, if this sweet flower and dew
Of life and time allowed to you,
Be found perverted, in review.
When you're forever waking ?
Arise—dig up your buried talent ;
Learn for what you're sowing;
Ere the great Reveille sounds,
And Time has done his mowing !

LITER►ATURE.

H. F. G.

BooKs volt REVIEW, &c.—Books, New Prints, Music, &c
intended for review, may be left at Mr. C. Mitchell's, Red-
lion-court, Fleet-street, London, addressed " to the Editor
of the LIVERPOOL STANDARD," when they will be forwarded
and receive attention.

The Botanic Garden and Fruitist. London
Groombridge and Sons.

This work is under the patronage of the Queen,
and, considering the beauty and exquisite finish of
the coloured illustrations, is a really cheap pub-
lication. As a guide-book it will be found equally
serviceable by the owner of a large or a small
garden; and to the student, "in populous city
pent," it must he a welcome visitor, for it wafts
the fragrance of the flower garden and the orchard
to our firesides, and tells us that—

Not a tree,
A plant, a leaf, a blossom, but contains
A folio volume. We may read and read,
And read again, and still find something new—
Something to please and something to instruct.

Letters of "An Englishma7.

'' London : H. G. Bohn

Here we have the modern Junius in a handsome
volume for a few pence. The letters on Louis
Napoleon, the Empire, and the coup d'etat of
December, have been considerably amplified since
they appeared in the Times ; and the compilation
is opened with an advertisement in which the
remarkable author announces his aim to be "to
denounce tyranny, strip the tinsel from success,
tear the mask from the leprous visage of hypocrisy,
aroynt the juggling fiend of Jesuitism, champion
the rights of intelligence and reason, and trumpet
the historic and eternal truth, that Despotism is
national degradation and decay—Freedom, pros-
perity and virtue." We believe these letters to be
the production of a patriot. We must confess they
are not lowered in our estimation by the assaults
of the great un-Englishman ; and their estimate of
the French Emperor and his plans is, we fear,
more reliable than that intruded by Richard
Cobden upon his sceptical countrymen. It must
be pleasing to those who regard Napoleon the
Third as an impostor, to know that the two best
books elicited by the doings of the Emperor are both
severe exposures of that personage. We refer to
Victor Hugo's famous pamphlet,and to the letters of
"An Englishman," both of which contain passages
of powerful eloquence, seldom equalled in the
literature of modern times.

Elementary School Atlas of General and Descrip-
tive Geography, for Junior Classes. Edinburgh :
William Blackwood and Sons.
The twenty maps contained in this demy octavo
volume are reduced from the larger school atlas of
_ _

the author, Mr. A. Keith Johnston, and include a
map of Canaan and Palestine, printed, like its com-
panion plates, in colours. There is at the end a
copious index of names of places contained in the
maps. The justly-acquired fame of Mr. Johnston
forms a satisfactory assurance that the work is well
done; while the respectability of the publishers
must strengthen the • favourable opinion of its
character. AU that an able and experienced
geographer could do in its compilation, and every
good feature which the publishers had it in their
power to introduce, are visible in this tasteful,
cheap, and substantial volume for the young, which
we cordially commend to public and private in-
atructors.
Chalmers's Bridgewater Treatise. London :
Henry G. Bohn,
The recently-published biography of Dr. Thomas
Chalmers has made the religious public of the
south thoroughly familiar with the life-story of a
man who, in his own country, enjoyed a popularity
as a preacher to which none of his contemporaries
attained. He had, on a few occasions, wandered
from the quiet routine of a Scottish preacher's life ;
and, under the auspices of royalty, and in the
British metropolis, he had the distinguished honour
of defending Church Establishments in a series of
powerful and eloquent lectures, which quite took
London by storm. But his labours were chiefly
confined to the pulpits of his native land, and the
drudgery of the Professor's chair in two of her
universities. He was pre-eminently national in his
character, although by no means wrapt up in silly
prejudices. Like Francis Jeffrey, he could not feel
thoroughly at home save in the land of his birth ;
and thus his merits, except to a certain section in
the south, were only revealed to his countrymen.
And it has been asserted, by the best critics, that
those merits were estimated at a sufficiently high
rate—that, indeed, he rose to be a popular idol on
the credit of preaching, which possessed no other
charm than that it came from a large and earnest
soul. A. matter of moment in the pulpit, this
earnestness, and one not to be undervalued ; but
now, we believe, it is pretty generally admitted
that the depth claimed for the Doctor by thousands
of his admirers vanishes whenever the oral becomes
a printed discourse ; that the cumbrous and un-
wieldy sentences rolled out in the richest Doric,
with tremendous effect, by the "old man eloquent,"
appear now dim and doubtful; that the specimens
of humour which were wont to set many an audi-
ence in a roar, when uttered in that rough Fife ac-
cent, are now for the most part dull and dismal ;
that, in short, the works by which posterity will
judge Chalmers lack the learning and the brilliancy
which might be claimed for them while their author
was alive. This opinion has been confirmed in our
mind by a perusal of Dr. Chalmers's treatise On
the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral
and Intellectual Constitution of Man." Written
in compliance with a request conveyed in the
most flattering terms by the Bishop of London,
and for a sum of money left by the Earl
of Bridgewater for that purpose, the treatise is
considered one of the ablest, though not perhaps
the most splendid, of the author's productions.
" It travels over most interesting ground," says
Dr. Cumming; "and with a beautiful and musical
pace, such as Paley neither knew nor shewed. It
pourtrays old thoughts in new colouring, and
throws over the investigation a splendour pecu-
liarly the writer's own." The work appeared in
1833, and enjoyed immense popularity. Now, for
the first time, however, we have it in a cheap form;
and,- notwithstanding our previous remarks, we
think Mr. Bohn has done well in marshalling this
volume among the noble array of works given in
the "Scientific Library." At the same time we
cannot avoid remarking on the deformities which
mar the beauties of the performance; and it has
forcibly occurred to us that a judicious collection of
the beauties of Dr. Chalmers would be an appro-
priate publication. We fear that the sale of his
voluminous works falls short of the enterprising
publisher's anticipations. It is even averred that,
when purchased, the books are little read. Hence
it becomes a necessity that an intelligent abridgment
of his writings should be published : only by the
adoption of such a course can his position among
the literary divines of the nineteenth century be
rendered permanent. The volume which has sug-
gested these remarks, when we consider the beauty
of the type and paper, is a wonderful instance of
Mr. Bohn's enterprise and spirit. Its value is
greatly enhanced, too, by a biographical sketch of
Chalmers, from the pen of the popular Dr. Cum-
ming of London, of which we may say with truth,
that
.it is for the most part pleasantly compiled.
Of come the adherents and members of the

Scottish Free Church will take exception to the
spirit of the closing part of the narrative, which
relates to Dr. Chalmers' disruption from the estab-
lishment, with which Dr. Cumming, as our readers
know, is still connected.