The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-08-06 00:00:00

LI 7' E 1?A

Bell and Co., and Simpkin and Marshall have com-
menced with tile present month the first number of The
Musical Cyclop(edia, which is to be devoted to the col-
lection, preservation, and extension of our most popu-
lar and national songs and airs. The work is hand-
somely got up, and as the price is only one shilling, we
have no hesitation in recommending it to our readers;
for, says their motto, taken from Beatie—

" Is there a heart that music cannot melt?
Alas ! how is that ragged heart loriorn!
Is there, who ne'er ti►ose mystic transports felt
Ofsontude and melancholy born ?"

Fraser has just published a neat little volume of
poems, the longest and most interesting of which is enti-
tled Barbadoes, and relates chiefly: to the scenery, the
manners, and the historical incidents of that island. The
author is a Mr; M. J. Chapman, a native of the colony,
and we readily believe him when he asserts, that "in all
that relates to the local objects, and to the to of society-,the author has scrupulously adhered to the literal truth."
We regret that. we are unable to do justice to his longer
poem, from which tile following sna oh, taken almost at
random, convoys but a very feeble specimen :
Who are those wretches of the lead-like hue,
That seem some plague-ship's horror-haunted crow--
Those net.% eless children, wo-begone, and palo,
Whose limbs seem wire-hung, and whose sinews fail?
Our Ell .land claims those wretches for her own—
Tier boast is waste of life in towns o'ergrown ;
The happier negro claims her fostering care,
While r own children vent their loud despair;
And misery haunts-the cities of the plain,
And saints and sinners urge the toil of gain.

Maligned Las Casas ! thine was not the crime
That tore the negro from his native clime. -
The horrid trail{ from love of geld began—
Thou wert the Italian's friend, and friend of man!
The dying captives, heaped upon the sea,
Their curse to nation's left, but not to thee.
Friend of the lowly, patron of the weak !
Thy gentle voice was raised—thy accents meek—
Thelndian race to rescue and to save;
Thy heart confesied a brother in the slave,
Mourned fur his anguish, sorrowed for his pain,—
Son of the Cross I thou didst not live in vain.
Millions of nutbrown Indians yet survive,
To bless the father by whose care they live ;
The mother to her child shall teach thy name,
And hill and valley keep thy stainless fame:

The English serf, allured by hope of gain,
Here toiled and found his golden hopes were vain ;
Then, dying, homeward turned his failing eye,
And murmured " England!" with his latest sigh.
Unused to slivery, and unapt for toil,
The Indian savage tilled the virgin soil ;
But in his fetters still for freedom sighed,
And lived unwilling, and rejoicin.; died.
Long since the Indian slave and E:igFsh serf
Slept their last sleep beneath the verdant turf ;
Then Libya's sons supplied their vacant place,
Bound by the curse entailed upon their race.

From Congo's swamps, and wide-extended plains—
From Coromantee, where the demon reigns,
'Who speaks in thunder and who shakes the sky,
And scares the nations with his evil eye—
From Whicidaw, and Angola, and the coast
Whose streams and barren sands the gold-dust boast—
rrmn Ebo,Vrid Mondingo, and the Fl:tht
Of Minnah, came the eaptived negro-train ,
They changed their country, but their life the same—
In wide-spread Libya freedom is a name.

Yet mourned they long their own dear village-tree,
Tlr'ir loved and pleasant home of infancy ;
The orphaned cradle, and the widowed bed ;
The sacred ground that kept their happy dead:
And oft, their exile and their grief to cud,
They, wilful, sought in death a guide and friend;
Through the free ether to o'erleap the main,
And see their rice fields and their loved again.

But, now the race has vanished from the lara
Whose hopes lie buried in far Guinea's sand ;
Now that a hri7,l?tcr faith their children warms,
hopeselelights them in a thousand forms;
Now that brute force and cruelty are gone,
Their hearths are sacred and their store their own;
Now that the. brand, the torture, and the chain,
The sharp wild shriek of agonithig, pain,
The so'•bing accents:that in vain implore,
And slavery's blotch, are seen and heard no more—
Change but the name—hunt freedom o'er the waves,
Search through the earth for happier than the slaves
Vain is the' search ! and when their minds shall be
Free as their persons, will the > laves be free.

Some of the notes which the author has appended to
Borbadoes are full of instruction. We give the following
as a sample:

One cannot help regretting the extermination of this harm-
less and amusing fault,v. 'lnc negroes had the most extrava-
gant notions on the subject of their sagacity. It was a saying
of their's, " Jacko know for talk -well enough ; but he too cute
for talk; 'spore he talk, massa buckt a make he work." Their
aulnii ation, hoe ever, coula not resist the temptation of slaying
Jai ko, on whose head the price of a dollar was set.
The mocking-bird is often heard in the sett•cms ut of Bi iii h
Guiana ; the woods of winch abound with au infinite varetv of
birds of the most biiiiiant plumage. ~y:van Mat hew 6 imi-
tates the domestic hit& very successfully. hits ov.n utile is
,hee,fll;, snit is not un ike that of the mghtingille. It is a shy
Wild, and Luitas its nest very blab, at toe extra-mitt- of a wavinA
branch. :Dr. Southey quotes Lam Davis a very etidra„te,,,stie
tneetiute. lie desei;lics in one rat e fi,tening,
maoufight, to one that usual:y pert:lied wi,hin a few ps,,is of
his .eg•huf. A tu.g.e.s IV,IS sit,iog on the tin esho!rl of the next
hoar, klyokitig the stun p lal iiia oh, pipe. "
.Tease Gad
a.ighty," ext-;akuieu the a.d'woniiiu, "how sweet that mo,,king.
li.rd-snrg! tie never. tiri ." •
. * • * * *.

The tieg;iii!s pto:•eed che4lfull t(i the it wGik. 'they ris,
with the sup, Lbouts wi.h it. 'ihe d.iy is of

A u U UST 6, di3.i3♦

twe•ve hours' duration; and the variation in it does not exceed
half an -h9ur daring the year; but, Mr. Foweil Boston says
that the nogroes work sixteen hours -I'n the twenty-tour; and.
"he is all honourable man ?" They have two or three hours in
the coarse of the day for refection. In fact, they work nine or
ten hours at most. 'Where task-work is assigned, they some-
times get dune its seven or eigh hoots.
* * dt
The Barbadians love to call their island "little England,"
whil,tacy always spak of the moJicr country as " 1:10,01."
B troad )es 'nu n'ever belon,red to an V pawcr than _Dag-
M toy of the cavalier= sheitercd tivois,,iye..s there after
th 2 orvaer of Oh vlcs 1. 14.0 :n them mane of our families aro
line lily desceoded. There are no he.ter mothers and wives
than the Barbadian woman.

It is well known that one of the chief motives of the negroes
to rebellion is a desire to appropriate the white women. Their
idea of lionty is to take pusse,siou of the property of theirmasters, and to get slaves to work for them. 'toe jealousies
am itlz them, and the ettirts..of.sonie to reduce others to the
condition of being their bon linen, Will not better their lot; the
great 111.153 of the wgroes of St. Dmainto; it is ku )wh, are is
a state of abject slavery ; theircouttit on under the French was
much happier.