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

OUR PORTFOLIO.—No. IV.

Miss Sedgwick describes the mingled feelings of hunger
and disappointment—(two rather disagreeable sensations)—
with all the nice touches of one who had very acutely expe_
rienced them. The scene lies in Germany, on the Rhine,
and she and her fellow-travellers, who are of the softer sex,
have gotten them a goodly appetite. " Now that the feast

of our eyes and imaginations was over,"

she writes,

gan to feel the cravings of our grosser natures

Niederwald, the Noble, the Rossel, all were forgotten in the
vision of the pleasantest of all repasts (7)—a dinner on the

Leck of a Rhine steamer. ' We'll not have a seat near her,'
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,' 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 maitre d' hotel, cucumbers, and a fat com-
pound called' gravy' ; then appeared the entretnets—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., or just
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 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."

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.

Barbarity 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 chemin
de fer has an evident tendency to make the c(eur 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 't exa-
tious the circumstance may be to yourself, you need not ex-
pect much pity from others ; wander about seeing li4hts,
when you should profit by the short half hour allowed for
taking dinner ; or be guilty of any other neglect, or violation