The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-12-24 00:00:00

TUESDAY MOR.NING, DEC. 24, 1844.

Our publication of this day will be laid upon the
breakfast tables of hundreds of our readers, whose
hearts and thoughts are full of anticipations of the
coming festivities of this festive season. The eve of
Christmas ! How many hearths this night will
shed their warmth and light upon happy faces, as-
sembled round them in joyous converse ! How many
tongues will this night dilate upon happy events of
the year now speeding to its close, and happy pros-
pects of the year which is to come ! How many
fond parents will be gazing upon the matured fea-
tures of beloved children, brought once more for a
brief period of holiday into the family circle !
How many will be listening with rapture whilst
they tell over their schoolday triumphs, or touch
rnayhap upon subjects more delicate and more em-
barrassing to the ingenuous mind of the young and
the pure of soul ! The Eve of Christmas ! How
many a loving heart will be this night sadly dwelling
upon the tokens of decay in some endeared form—
how many an eye watching the dimmed expression,
the furrowed cheek, the stooping form, of those
whose mature strength and anxious care have shel-
tered them in their passage through this weary
world, and looking back the while, through the dim
vista of bygone years, to a period when life's pro-
spects were brighter—when the loved ones, now
hovering on the verge of the grave, were in their
young beauty, or in their prime, and their firm hold
upon the world and its joys and possessions seemed
to defy the envious hand of Time to launch his dart
against them! How many may be marking the
seat, now vacant, at the Christmas board, which last
year was occupied by some dear one, full of lusty
youth or mature health !—but pause we here. "It
is good for us to go down into the house of mourn-
ing ;" but ours shall not be now the task to start
afresh the tear which the hand of Time has dried,
or to bring a fresh pang to hearts whose beatings
resignation has stilled.
We have, however, a few words to offer to our
readers, which may possibly excite thoughts not
pleasurable and regrets which may mar the other-
wise unclouded joy of a thoughtless hour. We
have to remind the lighthearted, the prosperous,
and the happy, who are now looking forward to a
succession of mirthful days in prosp et, that there
are those, in this world of our 3, to whose dreary lot
the Eve of Christmas brings no alleviation--to
whose heavy hearts it brings not even a hope of
better things—to whose tear-dimmed eyes the em-
blems of our Christmas festivities, the holly and the
mistletoe, bring only added and bitter floods—in
whose ears the mirthful music, heard through many
a well-barred window, are but a mockery of their
misery. Before we meet, then, around our cheerful
hearths—before we shut ourselves up in the selfish-
ness of our enjoyments—before we raise the Christ-
mas hymn, and resign ourselves to the deluding
thought that we are performing all that is expected
from us, as Christians, when to-morrow we wel-
come, with prayer and thanksgiving, the coming of
the Star of Bethlehem—let us ask ourselves," What
have we done, each in our several spheres, to dry
the tears or to lighten the hearts of these outcasts
from joy and rest? What widow blesses us ?—what
aged man's eyes overflow at the thought of our
bounty ?—what orphan tongue thanks us for a shel-
tering roof and a plentiful meal ?"
Alas! these are questions to which too many of
us, we fear, will receive replies from conscience
little calculated to satisfy the heart. We may point
to our vast commerce, to our warehouses loaded
with merchandise, to our mills and to our work-
shops, and exclaim, " How many- thousands have
these maintained in competence through the past
year !" But if this is all of which we can boast, it
will scarcely suffice to still the whisperings of the
accusing spirit. We may point to our munificent
charities—to our names emblazoned within the
walls of hospitals and colleges; but even these will
not avail us much. We may boast that we expend
freely our means, thus giving employment to in-
dustry ; but, alas ! the motive—the motive of such
liberality I The very extravagancies which we call
charity are too often made up of selfishness and an
avaricious spirit, and seldom extend their benefits
to those who most stand in need of our sympathies.
View the rich dress which adorns the fair form of
Some youthful beauty. "There," the worldling may
exclaim, " is at least no evidence of a grudging,
griping spirit !" But, turn your eyes, reader, upon
another scene. Follow the feeble footsteps of that
pale young girl, as, half-clad and half-fed, she pro-
ceeds, shivering, to her home, in the bitter cold of
this joyous Christmas Eve. Her hands fashioned
the gorgeous dress of that proud beauty ; her at-
tenuated frame was bent over it for sixteen or
eighteen hours in the day: and yet, what a wretched
remuneration for her young bloom wasted does she
bring home to the miserable room which shelters
her, although it cannot warm her, during the few
hours of worn-out nature which she is permitted to
spend out of the crowded and heated work-room!
What a " merry Christmas" is this to her ! And
yet such is the poor result of the bulk of that charity
which consists in the liberal indulgence of our per-
sonal vanity and love of ostentation. We have
made foi ourselves a different world and a different
atmosphere from those in which the humble worker ,
toils and suffers ; we have set up a griping minister
of our charities, a sordid " putter out" of the em-
ployment which we offer; and we resolutely shut
our eyes to a knowledge of the miserable amount of
the pittance which finds its way from the brilliantly-
lighted and splendidly-adorned shop—in which we
delight to feast our eyes upon the magnificent pro-
ductions of pa ient industry and ingenuity—to the
humble hands by which they are wrought. " The
poor ye have always with you," said one who was
himself poor and humble for our sakes; and yet
Christian men and women strive unceasingly to
forget that there are such beings at their very
doors, made of the same clay of which God made
us all.

Oh, what a different world would this be if wealth
and even competence would know and perform their
duties to humble poverty ! How many a cold
hearth would this night be warm ! how many a
sunken eye beaming with light ! how many a heavy
heart throbbing with happiness ! Readers, we ask
you to think over these things before you sit down,
on this eve of Christmas, to its cheer and its joyous-
ness. Ask yourselves, strangers though you have
made yourselves to their wants, their sufferings,
their natures, if even yet there is no deserving fa-
mily near you whom your bounty might make happy
to-morrow around their own hearths, and your
constant kindness and protection, during the year
to come, might raise to permanent comfort, and the
indulgeni ce of a better disposition, towards their su-
periors n Worldly station, than we fear now animates
them.
We have said our brief say; and now conclude
by wishing to our indulgent readers " A Merry
Christmas." They may yet earn happier reflections
for to-morrow, and the blessing of some fellow-
worm, if they have neglected to earn them already.

It is a lamentable infirmity, attending the oratory
of gentlemen possessed of a certain quantity of
brains and a negative quantity of discretion, that,
when they enter upon the advocacy of any particular
measure, they invariably prove too much. Such