The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-01-06 00:00:00

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" Graves." Ezek. xxxvii. 12
" Feet." Rev. i. 15, iii. 9.

WILLIAM BROOKS

' Death and hell" are forms of present power. Rev. vi. 8,
r. Dan. xii. 1. Rev. vi➢. 14.

esurrection.'

6. Col. iii. 1. John, v

"Mountain." Isa. ii. 2. Psa. xlvi. 2,

GLANCES AT EVERY DAY LIFE
(For the Liverpool Standard.)

NO. 1.-THE LONDON SEMPSTRESS

It was nearly midnight, on one of those dull, dreary
nights, which the month of November and the climate of
England can alone produce, and which are seen and felt in

all their heart-depressing discomfort only in the courts
and alleys and lanes of the outskirts of this vast metropo-
lis, whose dingy loneliness is unbroken by the glare of
lamps and shoplights, or the hurrying tread of the plea-
sure or the money-seeking crowd. The scene of our sketch
is laid in one of these localities—one of those desolate
places, of which the stranger, or the metropolitan inhabi-
tant himself, as he traverses the busy and wide main tho-
roughfare, could scarcely imagine the existence within a
few hundred yards of the display of wealth and eager vita-
lity which meets his eye at every step. It was nearly
midnight. The wind, as if tired with careering all day
amongst thos3 dilapidated chimneys, and in and out of
those pent-up and gutless abodes of human wretchedness
and crime, or awed by the pall of " darkness visible" which
hung over the scene, mocking the feeble attempts of the
occasional lamp to pierce its blackness, seemed sobbing
itself to sleep ; and the dismal silence was unbroken ex-
cept by the occasional closing of a shutter or a casement,
or the sound of footsteps, as some houseless or belated be-
ing crept shivering by, to a casual shelter or perchance a
home—alas! we never hear the deep-toned bell of St.
Paul's swinging its solemn midnight chime through the
still busy and joyous streets of the city that we do not
think of the thousands of the struggling population whose
ear it reaches, who can boast of no home, and to whom its
invitation to rest and slumber is a mockery—who at this
hour are seeking a temporary lurking place in empty
houses or in wretched sheds, or huddling from the cold in
corners of deserted courts, or lairs only fitted for the
beasts ! At this hour, and in such a locality, we need not
specify it, for there are hundreds such within ear-shot of
London's proudest tra.rts of wealth or giddiest scenes of
pleasure—a female figure emerged, with feeble and falter-
ing footsteps, from the door of a half-closed shop, of the
class termed in the metropolis " chandler's shops ;" and,
proceeding up the narrow street or lane, at whose corner
it was situated, entered a house of miserable exterior, and
closed the door behind her. Into this house, or rather
into a small room at the back of its uppermost story, by
courtesy styled a third floor, but more properly a garret,
we propose to introduce the reader.
Imagine, then —for to many such a habitation for
human beings is only a thing of imagination—imagine the
creaking and nearly worn-out staircase surmounted ; and
enter with us the wretched " third-floor back," in which
the female, to whom we have above referred, has just
lighted, by the aid of a lucifer—u fire for her at midnight,
where there is nothing to boil or fry, would be a luxury
not to be dreamt of—the tallow dip whose purchase, and
the necessity of that purchase, drove her to encounter the
cold, suspicious eye and the harsh words of her creditor
of the chandler's shop. A poor room it is. Its small
window, when you look through its cracked and curiously
patched panes in daylight, presents to the eye a cosinora-
mic view of chimney-pots and house-tops, smoke below
and sky above,—a vision which only tells you that you are
on earth, and yet not enjoying its glories and its beauty ;
and that there is a Heaven on high, which to poverty, sur-
rounded by the temptations to which poverty—London
poverty—is subjected, seems as difficult of attainment as
it would be to climb from those dizzy roofs to the blue
ether which opens above. It is dark, however, now—
pitchy dark. Within that wretched room is the world
of the poor tenant who inhabits it; and not altogether
comfortless is that confined and cabined world. Its fur-
niture—if it is not a mockery to call the few dilapidated
articles which it contains " furniture," is arranged with
an eye to neatness and taste, and is scrupulonslY clean.
The little truckle bed, which occupies one corner, and
contains apparently a sleeping child, may not be of the
softest down ; yet it has a wholesome look. The chairs—
there are three—are of the most homely description, yet
bear marks that they are not unacquainted with bees' wax
and turpentine, or some similar cosmetic ; and the three-
legged deal table, upon which are disposed sundry para-
-phernalia which betoken the calling of its proprietress, is
white as deal top and legs can be scrubbed.
Nor is the appearance of the eccupant herself out of
keeping with the endeavours manifested to make the best
of her miserable lot,—though out of keeping with the re-
sult of those endeavours she is. In age she appears about
one or two-and twenty, although care and suffering have
perhaps imprinted upon her features the marks of more
years than she has passed over. Her eye is dim—what
will not candle light and tears effect to change the brightest
eye ?—and yet from its blue depths there is a soul which
beams out, irrepressively beautiful, like the spirit which
looks down from an April sky, which has just freshened
the thirsting powers with its soft weeping. Her cheeks
are worn and fallen, yet still lovely—more lovely that the
sad hectic of a consuming disease is flushing them ; and
her figure—though frail and bent from its youthful erect-
ness and elasticity, is still graceful. Her dress, it is true
is poor, threadbare. Could she think of dress whilst her
poor child—her all—who is now sleeping, unconscious of
its mother's sufferings and privations, her insults and toil
unrewarded, bent its young eyes upon her for food, which
she had not to give ?
One look at that child—one gentle kiss imprinted on its
forehead—one murmured strain, to soothe it into the sleep
from which the hot tear, which dropt with that kiss upon
its closed eye-lids, had half-stirred it, and the young mo-
ther has resumed her weary labours with the needle, and
is earnestly striving to complete the task, which must be
delivered and inspected before noon, in a fashionable
breakfast parlour in an elegant house in the outskirts of
the city ; and paid for, before the frame, which now toils
f a its accomplishment, can be sustained with a meal.
Her childether hunger bun on the mantel-shelf, which
fitiffiC to keep from that beloved one, whose

wants, in the extremity of her own privations, she has
never yet forgotten. And thus hour after hour passes
slowly on—oh, how slowly !—and as chime after chime
peals out from a hundred steeples—a kind of life in death
that chime in the night hours—an announcement to the
wakers in a sleeping world that time goes on although we
" take no note"—the poor sempstress was roused anew to
more incessant efforts, although her eyes grew dimmer at
each successive reminiscence, and the wandering thoughts
grew more unruly and shrunk more frequently from the
irksome task of attending to, and directing, the motions of
the still busy fingers.

And whither wandered those unruly thoughts in their
half-dreamy state ? Far—far back they wandered, and to
a scene—how different from that lonely attic prison !
They sped away to the years of girlhood—to the days of
happy innocence, ere she who now sate wearing out her
young life with unrequited labour had been beguiled.
They brought before her tear-dimmed eves the loved fea-
tures of a mother, now sleeping in the church-yard of her
native village—of a father, bowed to the earth with the
shame of her disobedience and fall—of friends, who would
now pass her by as a thing to be shunned and loathed—
of lovers who had since blessed their fate that they had not
been united to one whom temptation had proved so frail.
Oh ! men, men—how loathsome must ye be in the eyes of
Him, who formed ye to be the stay and support of erring
and weak woman, when ye thus look down with undying
scorn upon the wretched victims of your own deceits!
Surely that unhappy one, toiling through the long and
lonely night for the support of the fruit of her misplaced
love, and the shame which it brought her, is not a thing
so low as to be beneath your contempt, when she is not
below the pitying care of the Father of all! Yes, the
thoughts of that poor beguiled girl have borne her in
fancy, and almost in reality, beyond her hapless lot; and
by her native streams, upon her native hills, in " the old
house at home," and even in the church of her native vil-
lage, she is fur a few passing moments of unalloyed hap-
piness, once more a bounding, careless, and sinless girl.
Oh ! the glorious, buoyant, godlike spirit of youth, in
whose undimmed eyes all the changeful features of earth
and heaven—their hill and valley, woodland and plain,
gushing stream and bounding torrent, sunlight and cloud—
are alike beautiful ; for whose ears and heart every bright
fountain has a voice, every rill a story, every flower a lan-
guage ; to whose glowing fancy every breeze, that whispers
its happiness to the trembling leaves, or sighs round the
ivied ruin—every hurricane which bends the forest, or
lashes the ocean in wrath—every star which looks down
from the blue night-heaven, and every cloud which sails
over its vast expanse—have a dreamy life, a beauty not of
earth, and suggest visions, whose fantastic shapes, gor-
geous or mournful, cling to us in after years, dimly and
imperfectly, whilst we strive in vain to hug them once
more to our hearts, and to gaze upon them again in their
pristine and unearthly loveliness :—would that it were
given to us more frequently in this world of strife and pain
even in fancy to revel in youth's light, and shut out from
our vision for awhile the ghastly realities which surround
us, even as that fair young being whom we are contem-
plating is now forgetting, amidst the wildering mazes of a
dream of happy childhood, the toil and suffering endured
day by day in this, her dreary solitude! But it may not
be. Such blissful forgetfulness comes seldom ' • and from
that poor unfortunate it has vanished already. A murmur
from her child, as it stirred uneasily in its bed, has dis-
pelled the dream, and presented in its stead, as in " the
swift elision of a thought," the panorama of her fall, fr m
happiness and innocence to her present fate, and the dark
reality which is before her. A miserable awaking !
Hour after hour has sped ; and still, still those thin and
weary fingers ply at their unfinished task. At length the
dawn slowly, and as if unwillingly, creeps through the
murky atmosphere which hangs around the awakening
city, and a small, attenuated hand is raised from that lit-
tle truckle bed, as its infant occupant wakes from its happy
slumbers, and begins that daily outpouring of innocent
prattle, which beguiles and saddens, by turns, the waking
hours of its fond mother. Another hour of toil, and her
dreary task is done; and, with an aching heart and feeble
worn-out frame, the poor sempstress prepares to set out,
through the now busy streets of the city, with the produce
of her night of labour.

---+----

VARIETIES

WlSUOM.—Wisdom is the composure of the soul ; and
as in war steel is better than gold for use, so wisdom is
better than wealth. The chief business of a wise man is
to distinguish what is good, and to show what is other-
wise.— Socrates.

FIFTEEN steamboats make a mile, is, according to a
recent traveller, one of the recent improvements made by
our America-English brethren in mensuration, the west
river steam• boats being about three hundred and fifty
feet long.
The eye has fire tunics to guard it against danger. The
first is like a spider's web—the second is like a net--the
third is like a berry—the fourth is like a horn—and the
fifth is the cover or lid of the eve. Here is guard upon
guard, resembling the various ways providence bath to
secure us from harm. Hence the five cardinal virtues.
PETTICOATS IN IMEXICO.—Every lady in Mexico, not-
withstanding the heat of the climate, wears frim seven to
eleven petticoats, stiffened with canvass to stand out like
a balloon ; yet the fair wearers will pass straight through
a crowd with the greatest ease, because they are elastic.—
Times.

POPERY, THE PROBABLE CAUSE OF GIBBON'S DIS-
LIKE TO CHRISTIANITY.—Perhaps (observes Mr. Suard)
it will not be difficult to trace in the impressions from
which a conception of his " Decline and Fall " arose, one
of the causes of that war which Gibbon seems to have de-
clared against Christianity. the design of which neither
appears conformable to his character, little disposed to
party spirit, nor to that moderation of thought and senti-
ment which led him in all things, particular as well as
general, to view the advantages as well as evil conse-
quences. But struck with a first impression, Gibbon, in
writing the " History of the Fall of the Empire."
Christianity only an institution that bad placed vespers,
barefooted friars, and processions, in the room of the
magnificent ceremonies of the worship of Jupiter, and the
triumphs of the Capitol.
STATISTICS OF ROYALTY.—The Geneological Alma-
nack of Saxony, for 1816, jnst published, gives a list of
all the sovereign houses of Europe, which consists of 683
members, of whom 536 are males, and 327 females.
Among the sovereigns of Europe there are twenty, in-
cluding the Pope, who have no male children, five who
have married wives of a different religious persuasion from
their own, three who profess a religion different from that
of the majority of their subjects, four who are the last of
their race, and four who are natives of a different country
from that over which they reign. These are the Kings of
Hanover, Sweden and Norway, Belgium, and Greece.
The reigning families in which there are the most male
members are the princes of Lippe, who number thirty-
eight; of Austria, in which there are twenty-seven;
Liechtenstein, twenty - five ; Wurtemburg, nineteen ;
Prussia, fourteen ; and Bavaria, eleven.
CHRISTIANITY THE TRUE CIVILIZER.—Does it ap-
pear that civilization alone, with its intercourse and
traffic ; its arts and its useful' sciences ; its town-
crowded industry, and its disorderly peopling of wilder-
nesses; its hurry and impatience of restraint; its in-
tensity and individual will, and its contempt of authority ;
its uncontrollable sway of the masses ; its unlooked for
upturns and reverses; its passionate pursuit of moment-
ary advantages, and its appetite for such gratifications as
may be snatched in all haste—does it appear that civiliza-
tion alone (Christian influence not considered), is likely
much to promote the personal and home felicity of the
millions it is summoning into life ? Judging of what is
future from what we see around us, dare we look to mere
civilization as worthy to be trusted with the moral or even
the physical well-being of the human family, and with the
guardianship of the generation next coming up ? Dare
we, if we had the infant human race in our arms—dare
we turn ourselves to that care-worn personage, our mo-
dern civilization, sitting at her factory gate, and say to
her, ' Take this child, and nurse it for me ?'—lsaac
Taulor.

saw in

DEATH OF RALElGH.—Thursday, 29th October, 1618.
This morning, if Oliver, as is probable, were now in town
studying law. he might be eye-witness of a very great and
a very strange scene : the last scene in the life of Sir
Walter Raleigh. Raleigh was beheaded in Old Palace-
yard ; he appeared on the scaffold there " about eight
o'clock" that morning; "an immense crowd," all Lon-
don, and in a sense all England, looking on. A cold hoar-
frosty morning. Earl of Arundel, now known to us by
his Greek marbles; Earl of Doncaster (" Sardanapalus
Hay," ultimately Earl of Carlisle) : these, with other
earls and dignitaries, sat looking through windows near
by; to whom Raleigh, in his last brief manful speech,
appealed, with respanse from them. He had failed in
finding Eldorados in the Indies lately ; he had failed, and
also succeeded in many things in his time : he returned
home with his brain and his heart " broken," as be said ;
and the Spaniards, wha found King James willing, now
wished that he should die. . A very tragic scene. Such a
man, with his head grown grey, with his strong heart
" creaking"—still strength enough in it to break with dig-
nity. Somewhat proudly he laid his old grey head on the
block, as if saying, in better iban words, " There, then I"
The sheriff offered to let hi arm himself again, within
doors again at a fire. " Nay, let mt be swift," said Ra-
leigh ; " in a few minutes my ague will return upon me,
and it I be not dead before that, they will say I tremble
for fear." If Oliver, among " the immense crowd," saw
this scene, as is conceivable enough, he would not want
for reflections upon it.—Cromtvell'sLetter's, by Carlyle.
STEAM A CAUSE OF OUR INSECURITY AGAINST IN-
VASION.—When Napoleon congregated his great army of
invasion at Boulogne, which was so long looking with
wistful eyes in the direction of our sea-girt isle, his sa-
gacious mind led him to see difficulties in the enterprise,
which, combined with other considerations, caused it to
be abandoned. He knew the vigilance with which the
British shores were guarded ; he knew the uncertainty
which must attend the attempt of a large fleet of sailing
vessels, to attempt a landing at a given place in a given
time; he knew that if fifty vessels made sail from any
part of the coast of France to any port in England, the
probability was, that not five would be able to effect a
landing at the same tide; he knew that a powerful con-
centration of force might be effected upon the menaced
point, before any serious mischief could be done ; and that
a baffled French armada might only result in augmenting
our insular security, and scattering to the winds the proud
invaders ; and he, therefore, wisely withdrew his powerful
squadrons, dispersed his collected vessels of war, and di-
rected his mighty resources and his energetic mind to
continental objects. But had he the same certainty which
might now be calculated upon of effecting a sudden de-
scent upon our coast, of which the first notice might be
the landing of one hundred thousand men upon some
point where we were unprepared to meet them, we may
depend upon it that this vast army would not hate re-
sembled " the old cat in the adage," and that an attempt
would be made to bring the war into our own cout t •y,
from which very disastrous consequences might be appre-
hended. We, therefore, entirely agree with Lord Rane-
lagh, that it is high time for us to prepare for a state of
things against which neither our insular position nor our
maritime superiority can any longer afford us sufficient
protection.—Dublin Unitersify Magazine.