The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-03-22 00:00:00

Tim LIVERPOOL STANDAhIJ.

A Mrs. Rainsay, whom T Well knew, was a most extraordinary
steady-minded, and gentle-mannered woman, as my tale will
shew. She was extreinely ill at night; and calling her confi-
dential maid-servant to her bed-side, whispered her—" Jane
am dying • but make uo noise, because if you do you will wake
Mr. (then sleeping soundly in the same room), and you
know when his slumbers are broken he grows nervous, and can-
not fall asleep again ; but come you in the morning at the usual
time, when 1 shad be dead, and he will have his full allowance
'of rest." And, so saying, died accordingly."—l'iozziana.
What shall we do, when our favours arc requited with ingra-
titude.? Repeat them, though they should seem to be repeated
in vain. Let us persevere in our kindness, even when it may
appear to be thrown away. There is no reason why a crowd
os uugrately receivers should make us unwilling to deserve
their gratitude. Let us persevere in showing kindness, even
after we despair of meeting with a grateful return. Cease not
from well-doing, but pursue the undeviating course of the
j ust.—Seneca.

THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK.—At what precise
minute that little airy musician doffs his night gear and prepares
to tune up his uuseasonabie matins, we are not naturalists
enough to determine. But for a mere human gentleman—that
has no orchestra business to call him from his warm bed to such
preposterous, exercises—we take ten, or half after ten, (eleven,
nf course, during the Christmas solstice,) to be the very earliest
hour at which he can begiu to think of abandoning his pillow.
To think of it, we say; for to 'do it in earnest requires another
half hour's good consideration. Not but there are pretty sun-
risings, as we are told, and such like gawds, abroad in the
world, in summer time especially, some hours before what we
have assigned; which a gentleman may see, as they say, only
for getting up. But, having been tempted, once or twice,
in earlier life, to assist at those ceremonies, we confess our cu-
riosity abated. We are no longer ambitious of being the sun's
courtiers, to attend his morning levees. We hold the good
hours of the dawn to sacred too waste them upon such observ-
ances; which have in them, besides, something Pagan and
Persic. To say truth, we never anticipated our usual lions, or
got up with the sun, (as 'tis called) to go a journey, or upon a
foolish whole day's pleasuring, but we suffered for it all the long
hours after in lisilessness and heaclachs:—nature herself sue-
ficicntiy declaring her sense of our presumption, in aspiting to
regulate our frail waking courses by the measures of that celes-'
tiat and sleepless traveller. We (icily not that there is some-
thing sprightly and vigorous, at the outset especially, in these
break-of-day excursions. It is flattering to get the start of a lazy
world; to conquer death by proxy in its image. But the seeds
of sleep and mortality are in us; and we pay usually in strange
qualms, before night falls, the penalty of the unnatural inver-
sion. Therefore, while the busy part of mankind are fast hud-
dling on their clothes, are already up and about their occupa-
tions, content to have swallowed their sleep by wholesale, we
choose to linger a-bed and digest our dreams. It is the very
time to recombine the wandering images, which night in a con-
fused mass presented; to snatch them from forgetfulness; to
shape and mould them. Some people have no good of their
dreams. Like fast feeders they gulp them too grossly to taste
them curiously. We love to chew the cud of a foregone vision;
to collect the scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over
again, with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies ; to
drag into day-light a struggling and half-vanishing night-mare ;
to handle and examine the'terrors or the airy solaces. We have
too much respect for these spiritual communications to let them
go so lightly. We are not so stupid, or so careless, as that
imperial forgetter of his dreams, that we should need a
seer to remind us of the form of them. They seem to us
to have as much significance as our waking concerns; or
rather to import us more nearly, as more nearly we approach
by years to the shadowy world, whither we are hastening.
We have shaken hands with the world's business; we have done
with it; we have discharged ourself of it. Why should we get
up ? we have neither suit to solicit, nor affairs to manage. 'I he
drama has shut in upon us at the fourth act. We have nothing
here to expect, but in a short time a sick bed, and a dismissal.
We delight to anticipate death by such shadows as night affords.
We are already halt acquainted with ghosts. We were never
much in the world. Disappointment early struck a dark veil
between us and its dazzling illusions. Our spirits showed gicy
before our hairs. The mighty changes of the world already ap-
pear as but the vain stuff out of which dramas are composed.—
We have asked no more of life than what the mimic images in
play-houses present us with. Even those types have waxed
fainter. Our clock appears to have struck. We are SUPERAIS-
TiUA'TED. In this dearth of mundane satisfaction, we contract po-
litic alliances with shadows. It is good to have friends at court.
The abstracted media of dreams seem no ill introduction to that
spiritual presence, upon which, in no long time, we expect to be
thrown. We are trying to know a little of the usages of that
colony ; to learn the language, and the faces we shall meet with
there, that we may be less awkward at our first coining among
them. We willingly call a phantom our fellow, as knowing we
shall soon be of their dark companionship. Therefore, we che-
rish dreams. We try to spell in them the alphabet of the invi-
sible world ; and think we know already, how it shall be-with
us. Those uncouth shapes, which, while we clung to flesh and
blood, affrighted us, have become familiar. We feel attenuated
into their meagre essences, and have given the hand of half-
way approach to incorporeal being. V, e once thought life to
be something; but it has unaccountably fallen from-us before its
time. Therefore we choose to dally with visions. The sun has
no purposes of ours to light us to. Why should we get up ?"

TUE LONDON PnEISS.

(FROM THE. GUARDIAN AND
_PUBLIC LEDGER.)

We give Lord John Russell joy of the accession of
business which he is likely to bring to the House of Com-
mons, by his new reform in the mode of petitioning
against returns, and bribery, and all that, and we would
give the Chancellor of the Exchequer a hint, in bringing
forward his Budget, to make a reserve of a few hundred
thousands for paying the expenses of a score or two of
petitions for select committees to inquire into such mat-
ters. When we warned Ministers on Thursday last
of the consequences of the "vicious principle which was
sought to be introduced through an attack upon the par-
ticular privileges of Liverpool," we did not expect that
the same county, and almoSt the next borough, should,
within forty-eight hours, have availed itself of the new
rule.. The Preston Pilot of Saturday tells us " that a
petition praying for an inquiry into the recent election
for this borough is in course of signature." "The
petitioners are Mr. Henry Hunt and others," complain-
ing grievously of the expense to which candidates were
put by the number of polling places appointed; and if
the fact be as stated by the honourable Ex, it certainly
seems a hard case. Then they go on to "complain of the
want of proper accommodation at some of the polling
places; allege that the Bribery Act was partially admin-
istered; complain that two hundred armed ruffians went
about maltreating the friends of the petitioner Henry
Hunt; and that during the panic created the most cor-
rupt practices were carried on by the agents, friends and
supporters of the sitting members .' The petitioner,
Henry Hunt, complains of the want of courtesy on the
part of the Mayor; and states that he was only prevented
petitioning against the return by the expense. The
petitioners finally pray that a committee of inquiry may
be granted, in order that the returning officer may be
brought to the bar of the house," &c.
This is as it should be. Mr. Henry Hunt was not
returned ; but the Hon. H. T. Stanley was. Now, Mr.
Hunt has, very naturally, imbibed a notion that " what
is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." And that,
if the voters who returned for Liverpool one member
opposed to the views of Ministers are to be disfranchised,
so the voters of Preston who rejected him, ought to be
disfranchised too. And why not ? We are a little curi-
ous to see what Lord John Russell will say when this
petition is presented. The Right Honourable Secretary
for Ireland has too high a sense of honour not to support
' strenuously the prayer of the petition for a select corn-
' mittee, out of respect to the character of his brother, one
of the sitting members.

We must confess that we do not see any difference
between Mr. Hunt for Preston, and Mr. Rathbone for
Liverpool. They both want to be members, and there-
fore they both petition to have the obstacles to their
return removed. It is pretty well understood that they
are both firebrands in their way, and they ought to have
an equal chance of sitting where, from the prevalence of
the same sort of matter, they are likely to be not quite
so conspicuous as the first honourable gentleman was in
times gone by.
We understand there are a few more petitions getting
up of the same sort. A dozen or two, more or less, will
be of no consequence to the present House of Commons.
They have a mode of despatching business peculiar to
themselves. Besides, there is no slur upon the character
of members or of voters. For the chairman of the
Liverpool select committee, when prohibiting the pub-
lication of the evidence until complete, begged the public
to recollect, that persons were to be presumed innocent
until found guilty. This was humane. Mr. Rathbone
and others go upon the opposite tack—they broadly
accuse 'two or three thousand of their fellow townsmen
of being guilty, until they are proved innocent. We
shall know in a few days how the people of Preston con-
sider it.