The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-04-23 00:00:00

"'SUMMER.

The full ripe corn is bending
In waves of golden light,
The new mown hay is sending
Its scents upon the night.
The breeze is softly sighing,
To cool the parched flowers;
The rain to see them dying.
W, eps forth its gentle showers.
The merry fish are playing
Adown yon chrystal stream,
And night from day is straying,
As twilight gives its glea n.
And thus manhood in its prime is fu I, and ripe, and str ,ng,
And is scarcely deems that time can do its beauty wrong;
Like the merry fish we play adown the stream of life,
Abel we reek not of the day that gathers what is rife.

" AUTUMN.
The flowers are all fading,
Their scents are rifle,: now,
And night sends forth her shading
Along the mountain's brow;
The bee bath ceased its winging
To flowers at early morn ;
The birds have ceased their singing,
The scythe hath mown the corn ;
The harvest now is gathered,
Protected from the clime,—
The eaves are seared and wither'd,
That late shone in their prime.

Thus when fourscore years are gone o'er the frail life of man,
Time sits heavy on his throne, as near his brow we semi;
Like the autumn leaf that falls when wind, the branches wave,
Like night-shadows daylight palls,—like all, he finds a grave."

Already was the summer blending gradually wrh autumn,
but it was not this so much as tha train of thought awakened
in the great Chuich, which seemed to me so much in unison
with the beautiful poetry I have quoted.

[ORIGINAL.]
" SITTING ON A RAIL."
BIT SECOND.

"Didn't we laughlaeartily when sitting on a rail in a se-
cond class, whilst pausing at the Wigan station ? We es-
pied a drunken old man lifted in by his friends, whose
• teeth were gone, and the sands of life had well nigh run
their last, as a device occurred to his friend in order to
prevent him losing his ticket, he plucked it out of the
fumbling old man's hand, and sticking it in his hat, com-
mitted it to the safe-bind—safe-find guardianship of his
hat-band. " There then now, when the guard comes,
he'll see thy ticket just like every body else's, and thou'lt
have no more trouble about it !" The old man behaved
during the rest of the journey as all drunken old men, or
drunken young men will, replying when nobody spoke to
him, singing to himself, interpolating the conversation
around him with interjections, adjectives, and the like,
ridiculously droll from their very irrelevancy ; but we
shall not take upon ourselves to record either the sayings
or doings of this drunken old man, lest ears polite should
jar. But didn't we laugh again, more than before I—when,
just as the train was starting, a young man standing beside
the rail, gave us a parting nod, with apparently no ordi-
nary significancy of expression, though it struck us at the
time he must have the advantage over us in the matter of
recollected acquaintanceship, our memory not serving us
rightly to the amount of recognition, on our part, of an
old friend. We stared—we prepared to look even grate-
fully upon the features of a fellow-creature, who seemed
inclined to bestow upon us this expression of parting in-
terest and regard ! 'Twas but for half a moment we felt
in this suspense, for a whole process of thought can take
place in less than the smallest lapse of time ; and just when
we were getting up a most proper nod in reply, we were
surprised to observe a distinct nod of the fullest recognition
power got up and performed by a party who sat opposite
.to us!! We speck advisedly when we aver that this was
a c:se of the clearest mistake possible on our part—the
convergence of the two organs of vision in a focus with
the middle line of the face, corresponding to the point of
the nose and the tip of the chin, indicating that the visual
rays in general naturally establish a " grand junction ter-
minus" not far off, and enjoy their concentrated focus in
sympathy and common with the other adjective features
of the countenance. Judging then from these data, which
we don't mind the danger of being contradicted in, whilst
looking earnestly at the man's three-quarters face, we did
feel completely floored at the idea of a nod which was
clearly meant for us, being appropriated by any one else,
and further that such should be " all right," and the guard
again "'beg leave to sit—on a rail ;" puzzling ourselves to
make out whether, in the present case. mesmerism had
attained so far as to make angles of incidence and angles
of reflection, in matters of parting, equal to each other, as
in the matter of meeting. We thought of the "Yankee ex-
periment with the " bowl of treacle," and the " mirror of
ink," as reflecting media; but our philoshphy tumbled
down from her ideal range, upwardstoward'stheledge of cau-
sality and comparison, when, on the man turning his face
by chance more fully towards the carriage, we discovered
that the eye nearest to us " had no connexion with the
other concern on the other side of the way !" correspon-
dence having been mutually declined, we suppose, from
the reason we once saw labelled up in an Irish village,
over an artisan's door, " El opposition is the life o' trade."
Backward we fell in our seat, as far as we could, cramming
our handkerchief into our mouth, endeavouring to stifle a
huge laughing fit, which immediately assailed us on our
discovering that the diagonal of a squint had well nigh un-
done us! and that we were liable to be tried for poaching
in our opposite neighbour's preserve!
After progressing along our journey for mile upon mile
of jar and rattle—rattle and jar—we were favoured at one
of the stations with the company of a little girl, placed un-
der the care of the guard by some ladies from whom she
parted, in the innocent sadness of childhood's simplicity ;
but the tears also rolled fastly one after another down her
cheek, indicative of sorrow at parting with her friends.
Woman's tears at parting moments are not infrequent
episodes in every day life; but girlhood's tears are less
scarce still, being their ready silver currency whenever
golden moments are about to be broken up and exchanged !
Whilst the train slowly increased towards its velocity, our
sympathies could not be entirely diverted from our little
travelling companion, any more than that of others pre-
sent, not excepting the iron-faced guard, to whose tender
solicitude her juvenile fears had been consigned, a lamb of
the human flock ; and to whose guardianship as well, we
afterwards observed, a bleating lamb of a less gifted race
bad been committed, and which occupied the " locker"
under her seat, and which he lugged out, tied by a fore
and bind leg together, after a few miles run, having much
enjoyed, doubtless, the ride it had " booked" for, its own
locomotives being now sick of their strike for work !
What ails thee, young one ? what ? why pull so at thy cord?'

Perhaps the rapid motion of the train tends to subdue
the activity of thought, and exuberance of restless obser-
vations, down into the more sober channel of reflection,
not less profitable perhaps than the former, either in point
of direct mental exercise or habit ; yet we remarked that
whilst for some time this state of mind may combine the
dslce with the utile, still that after a time the physical
condition of being constantly whirl ng on a rail tends to
produce a gradually increasing listlessness or vacuity of
thought, upon which commonly succeeds a sleepy state—
a state not altogether devoid of danger, when the party
has passed the meridian of life, and immediately after
having made a very full or hasty meal ; apoplexy having
in more than one or two instances occurred to such par-
ties, and that of a fatal character, owing in some cases to
the want of sufficiently early discovery,—and medical aid.
But in reference to the soporific influence of " sitting on
a rail," and whirl, whirl, whirl ; the rapid transit of object
after object, in seeming giddy dance, perhaps may be con-
sidered a semi-mesmeric state, a la mode de Braid,
.-wherein the fatigue of the organ of vision seems capable
of inducing a corresponding state in the brain; at least,
to such class of phenomena it seems to us not altogether
wide of the mark to refer the state alluded to. Whether
or not we should very soon, in that not very particularly
attractive part of the country, have fallen a ready prey to
this act-of-parliament mode of carrying out mesmeric
experiments by wholesale, we don't undertake positively
to guess, nor would it much concern our reader whichever
way we might have ultimately concluded ourselves to
have been tested. No doubt the engineer would have
done his best to have had us asleep like many of the rest ;
but " returning to our sheep"—orlamb rather—this unlock-
ing of the crystal sluices for the relief of overwrought
sensibility, even in a child, is a subject tbat was at once
calculated to awaken the curiosity of the guard and our-
self, prompted perhaps by a corresponding flow of the
tnilk of human kindness in our not-altogether-obdurate
breasts. Surely we might take credit for the former as a
qualification of benevolence rather than anything else,
seeing that the joys and sorrows of childhood, as they
,ebb and flow, may be said never to appeal in vain to the
sympathy of those around them, be they old or be they
young. If old, they read before tbem the transcripts of
their own youthful hours drawn to the real life, in unso-
phisticated naivete of character. Childhood's smile is
reflected from their own matured features, almost, we
may say, with the faithful portraiture of youthful origi-
nali y : the tears of childhood have called forth, before
now, a correspondent welling up of tears in the eyes of
old age, or of ordinary indifference to human passions. This
is matter of trite remark, which every one can make,
even the most superficial observer of mankind ; but is it
as generally observed how beautiiul and passing wise are
the arrangements of Providence, whereby age shall syre-
pathise with youth in stronger and more intensely glowing
interest, because, as Wordsworth says in one of his
beautiful lines,

"'The child is father of the man ;

because age lives again its joyous hours of innocence,
when the sunny face of childhood irradiates its fading
Paths
; and because the tears of childhood's grief
again the old man's tears of childhood flow, at the me-
mory of bygone troubles, proportionate in their magni-
tude to melt the tender passions of the infant breast, and
whose very contrast with the after stein realities of life
is sacredly written down in characters of hallowed joy;
for the whole drama of childhood's chequered hours is to
the fostering memory of age but one many-coioured joy,

associated there with the tender reminiscences of the en•
deared past, when the path of life had more flowers than
thorns to every one of human race. We think the joys
and piers or the child we look upon are but so many
mirrors of our own witching past—gone, gone—never to
return! Tuis is the real secret of that close sympathy
between the extremes of life, when reciprocated by age
towards childhood, in commemoration of our once many-
coloured joy—our fresh and budding springtime. Thus
again we could

" talk of sunshine-and of song;
And summer days, when we were young; •
Sweet childish days. that were as long
AS twenty days are now."
Such reflections, as they stole upon our mind, almost
amounted to pleasing sadness, and we treasured up what
appeared to us the philosophy of the subject before us—
viz., the moving sympathy of the old iron-faced guard
towards the' child before him, expressed in the language
of truest significance—by the suffusion of each eyelid
with a tear. The picture drawn thus to. out corporeal and
mental vision seemed a cabinet gem, and we accordingly
framed and hung it up in the treasury of our recollec-
tions!
In the course of a short mile or two another element
in the field of our curiosity presented itSelf. The train
stopped—hardly so the girlish tears. A little boy, redo-
lent with heath, buoyant with animal spirits to bursting
—he was a boy full of boyishness in every sense of the
word—awaltedourstopping,whilst some carting trick of fun
must be let off against the party who handed hicr. into the
carriage, and placed him opposite the tearful one. She
was expecting him to join her: the meeting was ope of
mutual affection : be might 'be two years older than her-
self, perhaps eight years old : smiles were interchanged,
and a hasty kiss as well, by these little lovers, somewhat
abashed at the presence of strangers ; whilst the train
again gradually broke into its accelerated speed. The
thing was natural: smiles and tears, and tears and smiles,
chequer the countenance of youth, like April showers and
sunshine ; and everybody knows this—and everybody
knows, too, that children's sympathies are keen and
quickly excited. It was quite proper that smiles should
be exchanged for tears when a little sister greets a little
brothel from whom she may have been separated for
months, and so too with children of a
,larger growth
under similar circumstances ; and it was .quite natural,
too, that the brother's ever-smiling countenance should
kindle with brighter glow on regaining his long-lost sister,
and that a touch of tenderness should gravitate from his
beaming eye down through laughing features : all this was
as it ought to be. Perhaps they were both returning from
school, whither they had been sent, for the time, to be
estranged from the endearments of home. So it was in reality
a fact, which our benevolent euriosity learned and gathered
as its reward. But again—the little episode of greeting
joy being passed—a transient sunbeam through a watery
sky—again the 'ears commenced afresh to pour down the
untur•rowed cheeks of that little sister, and this though
she was returning hack to her home ! We cannot account
for it, neither could she; therefore the old guard and
ourself were !Awed to the necessity of•" booking" them -
as tears of joy ! Highly wrought indeed must be the tone
of that infant mind which has no other mode of expressing .
the thrilling and rapturous notes of joy but in the secret
and unaccounted-for—yea, mysteriously-wrought—ca-
dences of sorrow ! Though this occur in numberless
instances every day, yet no less striking because common
is this passage in human sensibility ; nor less exquisitely
balanced and' faithfully true must be those tones of sym-
pathy from the heart of affection, because it has been and
ever presents itself a matter of common-place occurrence,
in which note answers for note in harmony and full ac-
cord, whether the keys of joy or sorrow are struck, or
struck alternately. The harmony of love must respond :
one chord must answer to its fellow and ❑one other, be
that sounded high or low. or both successively. We
have all heard that if two stringed instruments, placed
together, and if a chord in one instrument, be struck, the
corresponding chord will vibrate its responsive echo of
unison, provided they were both of perfect tune. Thus,
though we were at first a little surprised, yet the reflec-
tion of a moment or two struck out the analogy we have
alluded to, as a satisfactory explanation of the interesting
psychological problem that followed it; for as both these
little creatures had smiled together in greeting joy, so the
joy of greeting, through the bond of sympathy, as was
actually the fact, must bid their tears together flow !
Were not their hearts in unison? Did not the chords
respond? There could be but one pulse, then, flowing
in but one stream from separate hearts. God grant it
may be ever so !

If but we bad possessed an artist's pencil, we would
have sketched, as well as noted in a book, the embodi-
ment, the living portraiture of that sweetest of human
passions, that sensibility par excellence, whose natural
study was before us—the crown-jewel of human dignity.
The majesty of human nature rose before us, to assert the
loftiest prerogatives of its crown. What a study ! How
did that picture travel on with us, rivetted on the field of
our organ of reflection ! When the little joy-twins
stopped, our musings went on ; till at last we pulled up
short at the end of our trip, the pretty little port of
Fleetwood,—and just on the eve of swallowing the body
and bones of a proposition conjured up by our imagina-
tion—almost an absurdity, perhaps quite so—viz., that
Joy and Sadness were born twins, severed by the vulgar
mind, but blended in the " ideal," so as to become—dare
we utter it ?—mutually convertible terms!