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

glory was—

" fuimus Troes : fuit Ilium et gloria magna Troiae"—
and that, like the gloss from our last new coat, it has de-
parted. Alas for the aristocracy of whiggery ! It has fallen
into the sere and yellow leaf; is decayed, and is fast be-
coming vile.

But it will rise again—we think we hear some flattering
prophet say—the respectability and the influence of whiggery
in Liverpool will recover itself and flourish once more. New
alliances will he formed ; the legality of the operations of the
Protector Society has been established ; the municipal con-
stituencies can now be inundated with the hordes of Popery ;
and whiggery, like a scum, will once more float upon the
surface, when those dirty ingredients have been thrown in
sufficient quantity into the cauldron. But wait one moment,
gentlemen, we reply, and tell us whether it is not quite pose
sible that you may be foiled even at this game. Two may
play at it, you know, as well as one ; and perhaps conserva-
tism has quite as many weapons within its reach as whiggery,
even with the aid of Popery. Conservatism, moreover. will
not have to stoop quite so low in search of its allies as the
" rump" of whiggery must do to make itself numerically
respectable. We shall not be called upon to enfranchise
paupers for the sake of their venal votes ; we are not com-
pelled to dive amongst the stews and cellars aback streets
and courts for support ; but, on the contrary, we have ready
at our hand, eager to enrol itself under our banners, a sound
Protestant democracy, sufficiently numerous to beat down
every attempt of the crawling, abject thing which calls itself
whiggery, and to keep it down.
The whig party never can rise again—never shall rise
again—in Liverpool at least. The thing whiggery is at this
moment dead. Its vitality has long ago ceased ; and it now
moves only as its limbs are worked and distorted by the evil
spirit of Popery, which has entered in and taken possession
of the dead carcase. Superficial observers may fancy, indeed,
that it still lives and moves, as many, we doubt not, have
imagined that the William Rathbone who on Saturday night
played a shrieking accompaniment to the performance of
Mr. Richard Kelly, the "working man," was the same in-
dividual who not many years ago was mayor of Liverpool;
but we can assure them that they were never more egre-
griously mistaken. The aristocratic whig, William Rath-
bone, is dead long ago ; and what we see daily is only his
galvanised corpus—his wardrobe animated by a fallen spirit,
which is bringing into melancholy disrepute the name of him
who once owned it. Alas, we say again; for the aristocracy
of whiggery !

.
OUR PORTFOLIO.—No. IV

Miss Sedgwick des'cribes the mingled feelings of hunger
and disappointment—(two rather disagreeable sensations)—

with all the nice touches of one who had very acutely expe_

enced them. The scene lies in Germany, on the Rhine,
rid she and her fellow-travellers, who are of the softer sex,
ave gotten them a goodly appetite. " Now that the feast

of our eyes and imaginations was over," she writes, " we
began to feel the cravings of our grosser natures. The
Niederwald, the,Noble, the Rossel, 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,'

whispered to the girls, as with some difficulty we doubled

he 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 I' 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 lie say we cannot have places ? Do order a lunch then ;
lam starved.' And so am 1." 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,' he 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 misery
we can easily suppose the rest. By and by the seats are all
taken—the company are ranged, and the soup makes its ap-
pearance. Next came the bouilli, with its three satellites,
potatoes, a la niditre d' hotel, cucumbers, and a fat com-
pound called gravy' ; then appeared the entremets—sausages,
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
♦anished within the all-devouring jaws, and again the emptied
dishes were swept off, and on came 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 ?' The pud-
ding in its turn, was all eaten, and our fat fviend, 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." '

` 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-
noying4Fircurostances, 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 bf 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.

Barbarity of this sort is, paradoxical as it may seem, a
mesult of civilization. Steam-boats, and railroads, and regu-
lated travelling of all sorts, are producing it. The chemin'
de fer tas an evident tendency to make the cceur de fer—de
fer at least for all such distresses, however acute they may in
reality be, as occur, like those of the fair American voyageuse,
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, we fear, at an end. Lose the train, and however vexa-
tious the circumstance may be to yourself, you need not ex-
pect much pity from others ; wander about seeing lights,
when you should profit by the short half hour allowed for
taking dinner ; or be guilty of any other neglect, or violation