The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-11-07 00:00:00

Nov. 7, 1844.

7L tterature.

P O E T R Y.

THE SISTERS.

(From the Dublin University Magazine.)
Come hither, gentle sister,
And raise me in the bed ;
Now place yourself behind me,
And press this weary head;
For I have much to tell you,
When all are fast asleep—
You need not be alarmed
Though I should wildly weep.
There now, I'm nicely settled,
And we are all alone,
With nothing to distress us
But the wintry wind's sad moan,
And the flickering of that taper,
Where a winding-sheet I see—
Ah ! death that comes too soon to some,
Brings happiness to me.
I've placed me, dearest sister,
That you may not mark my face ;
And yet the tale 1 have to tell
Knows nothing of disgrace.
But weeks have grown to months, dear,
And months have swelled to years,
Since first I had within my heart
The fountain of sad tears.
Do you remember, darling,
An eve in leafy June?
The sun had set in crimson light,
And gently rose the moon.
We wandered by the river's side—
Henry our friend was there;
You surely must remember it,
That sunset was so fair.
Your heart is wildly beating—
I feel each heavy throb !
Oh I lay me on the pillow—
I'll give back sob for sob I
I long thought that he loved me—
That eve I heard him say
That you were all the world to him—
Oh I turn not thus away.
But let me tell you all, dear,
Whilst life and strength remain—
I know he is returning
To visit you again ;
I pray for happiness to both—
But would that I were dead,
And laid in shrouded slumber
In the churchyard's quiet bed!
Oh! promise me, that to my grave
You will together come,
And shed a tear of pity
O'er her who has gone home;
The: look up to the heavens
And remember I'm in bliss.
Where in a few short years you both
Shall share my happiness. •
Then do not grieve that I am called
To leave this earthly scene;
You know I shall be happier
Than ever I have been.
My health has been but weak, at best,
For many a weary day,
And you have been so kind to me
I love you fervently.
Now, fare thee well, sweet sister I
The dawn is cold and grey—
Oh! ope that gluomy casement
That my soul may pass away.
The cocks are crowing loudly—
The world begins to wake—
. Oh! take me to your bosom.
I knew my heart would break!
ARION.

VARIETIES.

The completest pun on the records of literature is pro-
• duced in the following words, which were inscribed on a
tea-chest :—" Tu DOCES" which is the second person
singular of the verb doceo, to teach ; and when literally
translated, becomes THOU TEA-CHEST.
A Goon ANSWER.—" What shall I do," said a liquor-
seller to a temperance lecturer, " if I quit selling rum ? "
" Go into the poorhouse," said the lecturer, " and be
supported there, and let the poor you have made paupers
come out."
AN UPSTART.—A negro boy was driving a mule in
Jamaica, when the animal suddenly stopped and refused
to budge. " Won't you go, eh ?" said the boy. " Feel
grand, do you ? I s'pose you forget your fadder was a
Jackass ? "—American paper.
It was a beautiful idea of the infant astronomer who
said the stars were " holes in the sky for the glory of God
to shine through." Another admirable answer, also of a
child, was, when asked if there was any place in the uni-
verse where God is not, he unexpectedly replied, " Yes,
God is not in the thoughts of the wicked."
THE OLD TOWN OF EDINBURGH.—There is a strength
of character, a determination to get over difficulties, in
the very positions the houses occupy. Auld Reekie is
built on, and between, and up that succession of rocky
ridges, which makes it the most wonderful town in the
world to look upon, but the most difficult to erect. The
houses, almost all, stand with their limbs gathered under-
neath them on one side, and hanging down over a preci-
pice on the other. They are like giraffes, with short hind
legs and long front ones, or vice versd. There is hardly
one which is privileged to stand comfortably on level
ground. Modern improvements enable the spectator to
take in the construction of the town at a glance. We
step with our traveller on to that grand George the
Fourth's Bridge, which now conveys all the traffic of this
side of the capital, at one leap, from one ridge to another.
A wilderness of ragged roofs, and garret windows, and
smoking chimneys, all tumbling and battered in irregular
rows, like a jaw of broken teeth, are level with our feet.
The gilt weathercock of a venerable church tower seems
within arm's length. The grand pile of the Castle rock
towers in the distance above, while deep below us runs
that other muddy current of life, the Cowgate, with a
repetition of the same scenes we have just related going
on,—coal-heaps, dirt-heaps, children, herrings and all.
From this depth, up to the level of the High Street, the
houses go climbing, like trees up a mountain side ; the
foundations of some level with the tops of others, like
trees, too, on uneven ground, throwing out deep roots of
masonary in search of support. A wildand rugged scene
of artificial growth, with those alleys or wynds deep be-
tween the houses, looking like gorges and gullies worn
by the action of mountain torrents. These wynds are the
most wretched features of all. The traveller's greatest
enthusiasm cannot gild the misery that too obviously
dwells there. There is a species of dirt and wretchedness
which goes beyond the spell of the picturesque. Some of
them are wider and less squalid, and still tenanted, here
and there, by the brass plates and iron scrapers of such
few respectable householders as still linger on in the Old
Town ; but the greater number are such as it seems pur-
gatory to dwell in, and not always safety to'pass through.
Nature does all she can to cleanse the filthy pavement
and purify the mouldering walls ; blasts of wind whistle
through them, and deluges of rain pour down them ; but
not all the rivers of Damascus, nor the breezes from Ara-
bia, could sweeten these wretched ravines. The traveller
feels, as overcoming his strong disgust he stoops under
the dark, cavern-like entrance, and plunges into the
murky twilight of the wynd, that he has entered that at-
mosphere of poverty which brings fever and pestilence,
and every ill, moral and physical, to which flesh is heir,
in its train. Here are none of the light and sunshine of
the High Street, which make all look free, if they did not
look happy. The blackened broken windows, stuffed up
with clouts of rags, look directly on a blank wall, or down
on to the opposite dwellers' misery. Neighbours can
shake hands out of the second story, or break heads,
which they are more likely to do, out of the third : for
the houses project at each story till they almost meet,
and you look up at a sepulchral light at top, as through a
dark chimney. As for sunshine, it would be melancholy
to
see it here, and moonshine to expect it.—Fraser's
Magazine.

LAMENTING THE IRISH TRIALS.—We cannot but feel
that it is among the very worst consequences of party con-
nexions that some persons are found almost to lament the
issue of these trials because they have been conducted by
a Whig government. A more melancholy feature in the
history of faction could not well be disclosed. We will
not be suspected of any partiality towards the present
ministry, whose tampering with sedition and truckling to
intimidate we have never ceased to denounce. Had it not
been for the encouragement which they ever extended to
the late Mr. O'Connell, the patronage with which they
invested him, and the honours which they conferred on
him in return for his parliamentary support while he still
continued his seditious career, we would not now be writ-
ing on state trials, nor would we be living under a sus-
pended habeas corpus. If it be true that every danger is
most successfully encountered when encountered manfully
and resolutely, it is emphatically so of sedition. Check
this agitation et once, when it assumes the aspect of sedi-
tion, and the evil is crushed in the bud ; but truckle to it,
or foster it by extorted concessions, and it extends with
increasing rapidity over the whole society, and becomes
uncontrollable. Yet such has ever been the course of the
present ministers down to within the last few months,
when the necessity for a contrary course was forced upon
them—when they would themselves have been traitors to
the Queen and Constitution had they faltered but an in-
stant ; and we cannot hesitate to say that by their ill-con-
ceived and unstatesmanlike policy, they have been the
primary but unintentional authors of all the evils that have
arisen. But though this be so, is it not unreasonable and
senseless in the highest degree to treat the deeply-laid
and well-matured schemes for a revolution in Ireland as a
question at issue between the rebels and the cabinet mi-
nisters ? Whose property was at stake when Mr. Smith
O'Brien declared that the estates of such of the Irish
gentry as did not side with the people should be confis-
cated, and transferred to the national exchequer ? a de-
claration which his letter to the Mining Company showed
to be no empty threat. Whose life was at stake when
Mr. Meagher declared that if Irish nationality were re-
fused by the crown when demanded by a deputation from
the parish delegates of Ireland, " then up with the barri-
cades, and invoke the god of battles ;" or when Mr.
Mitchell taught his readers that "the plainest path to
liberty was the path of a rifle bullet on point blank to your
enemy's heart ; ' or when Mr. Duffy, in the Nation, re-
minded the servant-men of Dublin that they should be
organized, " as they had the keys and arms of the citadel."
Was it the person or the property of Lord John Russell
that was imperilled by these atrocious doctrines ?—No ;
it was our own properties and lives—the properties and
lives of the well-affected and the loyal, of every denomin-
ation, in this island, but chiefly of the Protestant popula-
tion, as being, before all others, the mainstay of order,
and of the British connexion. This was the stake that
was at hazard. The choice was offered to us, either to
yield to terrorism, to forswear our allegiance, to renounce
the advantages of British connexion, and submit to the
self-constituted directors of the country, or to yield our
properties to confiscation, and expose our persons to the
pikes, vitriol, and rifle-bullets, with which it was sought
to intimidate us. It was to us—te every loyal Irishman—
and not to the Whig ministry, that this alternative was
presented ; it is from this that we have escaped by the
recent vindication of the law ; it is our own security, not
a Whig triumph (if such it can be called), that we rejoice
at ; and we confess that our satisfaction at being rescued

from the revolutionary vortex is so great that we could
well afford to accord to our political opponents any credit
that they may claim for the suppression of a rebellion
which their own pernicious policy materially contributed
to produce.—Dublin University Magazine.