The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-07-30 00:00:00

F-iteraturr.

P 0 E T 11 Y.

THE CHIEF OF WATERLOO.

BY ROBERT STORY, ESQ.

We will not—need not—name him ;
His deeds shall live in fame
When those that dare to blame him
Have neither place nor name.
But thinking, as we think him,
To Britain's glory true,
In flowing cups we'll drink him—
The Chief of Waterloo t

To fields of fame he led not
Ambition's gathered might;
His faithful legions bled not
But for his country's right.
Her high, devoted lover,
For that his blade he drew ;
And stainless laurels cover
The Chief of Waterloo !

Like him unmatched on ocean,
This Ne'son of the land,
By one red day's devotion
Left no work for his brand.
But, happier than the seaman,
He Tires with honours due,
The pr;de of every free man,
The Chief of Waterloo

THE DYING SPANIEL.

[The following very beautiful and touching verses are extracted
from a recently-published volume of poetry, by Dr. Muir, of
Edinburgh, the " Delta," in Blackwood's Magazine.]

Old Oscar, how feebly thou crawl'st to the door,
Thou who wert all beauty and vigour of yore;
How slow is thy stagger the sunshine to find.
And thy straw-sprinkled pallet—how crippled and blind !
But thy heart is still living—thou hearest my voice—
And thy faint-wagging tail says thou yet Canst rejoice;
Ah ! how different art thou from the Oscar of old,
The sleek and the gamesome, the swift and the bold !

At sunrise I wakened to hear thy proud bark,
With the coo of the house-dove, the lay of the lark;
And out to the green fields 'twas ours to repair,
When sunrise with glory empurpled the air ;
And the streamlet flowed down in its g Id to the sea ;
And the night-dew like diamond spa, ks gleam'cl from the tree;
And the sky o'er the earth in such purity glowed,
As if angels, not men, on its surface abode!

How then thou would'st gambol, and start from my feet,
To scare the wild birds from their sylvan retreat;
Or plunge in the smooth stream, and Lring to my hand
The twig or the wild.flower I threw from the laud :
On the moss-sprinkled stone if I sat for a space,
Thou would'st crouch on the greensward, and gaze in my face.
Then in wontonness pluck up the blooms iu thy teeth,
And toss them above thee, or tread them beneath.

Then I was a schoolboy all thoughtless and free,
And thou wert a whelp full of gambol and glee ;
Now dim is thine eyeball, and grizzled thy hair,
And I am a man, and of grief have my share !
Thou br.ng'st to my mind all the pleasures of youth,
When Elope was the mistress, not handmaid of Truth ;
When Earth looked an b den, when Joy's sunny hours
Were cloudless, and every path glowing with flowers.

Now Summer is waning; soon tempest and rain
Shall harbinger des late Winter again,
And thou, all unable its gripe to withstand,
Shalt die, when the snow-mantle garments the land :
Then thy grave shall be dug 'neath the old cherry tree,
Which in spring-time will shed down its blossoms on thee
And, when a few fast-fleeting seasons ,re o'er,
Thy faith and thy form shall be thought of no more !

Then all who caressed thee and loved, shall be laid,
Life's pilgrimage o'er, in the tomb's dreary shade;
Other steps shall be heard on these floors, and the past
Be like yesterday's clouds from the mertory cast z
Improvements will follow; old walls be thrown down,
Old landmarks removed, when old masters are gone ;
And the gard'ner, when delving, will marvel to see
White bones where once blossomed the old cherry tree !

Frail thingi ! could we read but the objects around,
In the meanest some deep lurking truth might be found,
Some type of our frail:y, some warning to show
How shifting the sands are we build on below ;
Our fathers have passed, and have mixed with the mould—
Year presses on year, till the young become old ;
Time, though a stern teacher, is partial to none ;
And the friend and the foe pass away one by one !

SELECTIONS.

LORD ELDON'S EARLY DAYS.

In the autumn of 1779 he did not go the circuit. He
had borrowed money from William for so many of these
journeys, and earned nothing by them, that he could not
make up his mind to apply again : and on discovering why
be had staid in town, William writes thus to their younger
brother Henry :—" I heartily wish that business may
brisken a little, or he will be utterly sick of his profession.
I do all I can to keep up his spirits, but he is very
gloomy."

Meantime a certain solitary case which he had argued
in the Rolls Court in 1778 was about to be heard on appeal
in the House of Lords. In that case he had urged a point
not only not suggested in his brief, but entirely discoun-
tenanced by the solicitor. The Master of the Rolls de-
cided against him. :His own client disapproved of the ap-
peal, which was the act of another party. Mr. Scott was
desired to state at the b,r of the House of Lords that his
client " consented." He insisted on restating his point.
The solicitor smiled, but allowed him to do so—it could
not make things worse than they were already—he should,
however, have no better fee than one guinea. Behold,
Lord Thurlow listened very earnestly—took three days to
consider—reversed the decree of the Rolls Court solely
on Mr. Scott's argument ; and this decision of Lord
Thurlow has regulated all similar questions since that
day, March 4, 1780. This was the case of Ackroyd versus
Smithson, Lord Eldon's account concludes thus :

" As I left the Hall a respectable solicitor, of the name
of Forster, came up and touched me on the shoulder, and
said, Young man, your bread and butter is cut for life.' "
Nevertheless, matters were so little mended, that when
about the Christmas of that year the recordership of New-
castle became vacant, and his friends procured him an offer
of it, he signified his acceptance of the situation. The
salary was small, but he thought he should have a fair
chance of some provintial business besides, and the
temptation was irresistible. A house was taken for him
at Newcastle—he was engaged in preparations for imme-
diate removal. This was the state of things when he went
to bed on the night of the 13th cf March, 1781. Next
morning at six o'clock—thus Lord Eldon told the story a
few weeks before his death to one of his family :
" Mr. (afterwards Lord) Curzon, and four or five gen-
tlemen came to my door and awoke me, and when I in-
quired what they wanted, they stated that the Clitheroe
election case was to come on that morning at ten o'clock,
before a committee of the House of Commons, that Mr.
Cooper had written to say he was detained at Oxford by
illness and could not arrive to lead the cause, and that Mr.
Hardinge, the next counsel, refused to do so, because he
was not prepared. ' Well, gentlemen,' said I, what do
you expect me to do, *at you are here ?' They answered,
they did not know what to expect or to do, for the cause
must come on at ten o'clock, and they were totally unpre-
pared, and had been recommended to me, as a young and
promising counsel.' I answered, I wilt tell you what I
can do. I can undertake to make a dry statement of facts,
if that will content you, gentlemen, but more I cannot do,
for I hive no time to make myself acquainted with the
law.' They said that must do; so I begged they would
go down stairs and let me get up, as fast as I could. Well,
I did state the facts, and the cause went on for fifteen days.
It found me poor enough, but I began to be rich before it
was done: they left me fifty guineas at the beginning;
then there were ten guineas every day, and five guineas
every evening for a consultation—more money than I
could count. But, better still, the length of the cause
gave me time to make myself thoroughly acqu inted with
the law. . . . . We were beaten in the committee by
one vote. . . . After this speech, Mansfield, after-
wards Sir James Mansfield, came up to me in Westmin-
ster Hall, and said he heard that I was going to leave Lon-
don, but strongly advised me to remain in London. I
told him that I could not, that I had taken a house in
Newcastle, that I had an increasing family, in short, that
I was compelled to quit London. Afterwards Wilson
came to me and pressed me in the same manner to remain
in London, adding what was very kind, that he would
ensure me £4OO the next year.' I gave him the same an-
swer as I had given Mansfield. However, I did remain
in London, and lived to make Mansfield Chief Justice of
the Common Pleas, and Wilson a Puisne Judge."
Lord Mansfield used to say he had known no interval
between no business at all and £3OOO a-year. Mr. Scott's
advance in the profession seems to have been hardly less
rapid. By 1783, at the age of thirty-two, he had a silk
gown, and was at the head of the Northern Circuit. Great
and lucrative as his practice soon came to be, it must have
been infinitely more gainful but for t}-.e rare delicacy of
his professional conscience. No fees had he from the ex-
tensive firm of " Snap, Gammon, and Quirk." Of one
very rich branch of business, of which he might have en-
grossed the lion's share if he pleased, he h td, after a very
little while. ne't to nothing—the business of " answering
questions. He would sign no opinion on a point of law
without a thorough examination of authorities ; he would
sign none as to the probable issue of a case set before him,
without sifting the facts so minutely, and suggesting the
effect of so many possibly omitted particulars, that even
solicitors of the higher class recoiled : it was as if, seek-
ing an advocate, they had stumbled in lintine on a judge.
At the bar itself be appears to have, from the first, acted
on a system equally scrupulous. We find him at a very
early period taking to task a friendly senior, in the full
career of eminence, for some such laity of forensic ethics
as even Dr. Johnson has countenanced, and compelling
the reluctant confession—" Master Scott, you have en-
sured me an }easy pillow." He never could be brought
to understand- that it was consistent with the honour of
a gentleman to misrepresent in the slightest degree either
law to a judge or facts to a jury.—Life of Lord Eldon.

CHINESE CIRCUMbS
ePECTION.—Nothing that happens in
this world ought to looked upon as of no consequence ;
let the affair be trifling or important, all ought to be con-
sidered essential, and thenceitobe treated with that careful
attention, which amounts
awat I may call respect.
It is with this reverence that monarchm ought to watch
11ents, and that he
over his own person in his leisure
ought to treat affairs as they arrive, gluing them the same
rmcoumstmence.ment.
attention at their conclusion as at ,thei
lie should bear in mind that matters
ever in the situation which he has arranged thermeTall,nv this
unvarying consistency he will easily contrive to avoid"
faults. if he applies to business with this attention, this
earnestness, and if to it he unites a heart divest of passion,s
like the head of a family in his own house, he will without
difficulty introduce good government into the empire.
This is precisely what an ancient sage has said, " Self-
respect renders a man upright and pure." It is written
in the first page of the Le-ke, " Be careful to be reverent.';
In this maxim alone the wise author of the work has found
the means of concentrating the profoundest doctrine.