COMMERCIAL REPORT, LIVERPOOL, 27th OCTOBER, 1821. 1064 Ar this season of the year, when the export demand for many colonial articles, ceases, the trade of our port generally becomes languid; the home consumption trade, however, seems to be on the increase, and this will be more observable by a reference to the transactions of the past month. The sales of Cotton during the last four weeks, amount to 22,955 packages; the imports for the same period only comprise 18,577 packages-the dealers and consumers have been the principal customers, and they restrict themselves to the supply of their present wants: the present currency will be best ascertained by a reference to the operations of the week ending this dayd. 1410 Bags of Uplands, d. d. at 8 to 11 154 Bags of Minas 729 Orleans, Demararas, Surat Bengal Maranham, 11 to 12 1253 150 223 d. 71 to 71 6 to 6 The chief feature in these transactions is a diminution of price in Uplands. Sea Islands are supported better than expectation. Brazils barely maintain last week's currency. The holders of Cotton are generally willing sellers, and the buyers being sparing in their purchases, there seems little prospect of an amendment in the price whilst such continues to be the case, or until the market be aided by some cause at present unforeseen. Tobacco. Leaf Tobacco and Stemmed, suitable for home use, have been in moderate request at previous rates. Sugars. The public sales of British Plantation Sugars go off at full prices, fine qualities have fetched an advance of 1s. to 2s. per cwt. for Ireland. The sales of Coffee have been wholly confined to the Grocers, and consist principally in fair ordinary Jamaica at 103s. to 104s. per cwt. and middling Dutch, at 114s. per cwt. Since the decline in the Corn Market, many articles remotely connected therewith have been influenced in a similar proportion.-In the first place may be reckoned, Rice. The sales in Carolina have been at a reduction of 2s. per cwt. and in East India the decline has been fully 3s. per cwt.-1500 bags were held up to auction on the 25th inst. when only about the moiety thereof was sold, at 11s. to 12s. per cwt. Rums have been also depressed, from the cause above alluded to.-Jamaicas, 16. O. P. have attained 2s. to 2s, 1d. per gallon; but there appears an evident tendency to a deeline. Dry Salteries, &c.-There has been a most extensive demand for Ashes-New York Pots, 39s. to 39s. 6d. Montreal Pots, 32s. 6d. to 33s. Boston Pearls, 41s. to 42s. Montreal Pearls, 37s. 6d. to 38s. per cwt. 1500 barrels good American Turpentine obtained, by auction, 12s. per cwt. A lot of 250 tons of good Campeachy Logwood has been taken at £9. 10s. per ton. Spanish Fustic, £5. per ton. Nicaragua Wood, £60. per ton. 2000 bags of inferior Saltpetre were offered by auction two days since, and taken in at 22s. per cwt. 30 chests of Tincal sold at 28s. per cwt. American Bees' Wax at £12. 5s. per cwt. Fish Oils keep tolerably steady: a cargo of Cod Oil just arrived offers at £20. per tun. Pale Seal Oil rates at £25. to £26. Palm Oil is lessened in value. Olive Oil gives way; and a sale of 30 tans of Leghorn has been effected at £60. per tun. Seed Oils remain as last quoted. The prices of Baltic goods continue to recede: Yellow-candle Tallow now offers at 47s. per cwt, at which rate there is but little sale. Hemp likewise moves off slowly; and for Flax, the demand has been very trivial for some time past. Pine Timber is but limited in sale at present. Mirimachi offers at 20 d. per cubic foot. Red Pine and Quebec Oak go off steadily. For Baltic Timber and Deals there is at present a regular, though not extensive demand. Quebec Staves are scarce, and a short import is anticipated. Our Corn Market is very flat and heavy, and still declines, in consequence of unusually heavy supplies, principally from Ireland; and the low average of Wheat leaves no immediate prospect of open ports, even to Wheat from Canada: the average is only 58s. 4d. per quarter. The supplies of farmers' new Wheat from Ireland are generally more or less mixed with sprouted grains, which causes a great range in price; for whilst there are samples of new Irish Wheat, which will not command above 5s. per 70lb. there are others tolerably saleable at 7s. 6d. to 7s. 9d. per 70lb. These remarks will apply to Oats and Barley, most of the samples of which (as yet received) have sustained injury from the weather. There is not any sale at present for bonded Wheat. Oats under the lock have buyers for export to the colonies. For sweet Flour in bond, 29s. per barrel has been accepted; but sour at present is unsaleable. No new Flax Seed yet arrived: the price for crushing is steady. Nothing doing just now in Clover Seed. Of the Rev. SAMUEL LEE, whose Portrait ornaments this Number, an interesting Memoir may be found, Col. 178, of the First Volume of the Imperial Magazine. LONDON PRINTED AT THE CAXTON PRESS, BY H. FISHER. MONTHLY OBSERVATIONS. [1821. creature becoming torpid, to pass through this state without loss of life, is, that this sluggish circulation should still be adequate to furnish irritability sufficient for vitality to act upon. Natural Occurrences in December. In this month, the kingdoms of nature are usually considered as presenting to our view a blank; the gloom of which can only be relieved by the anticipation of better days. But if we more narrowly investigate the subject, we shall find as much to excite curiosity, and raise admiration, as in the more cheerful seasons of spring and summer. Our misapprehension springs from fixing our eyes on wrong objects, or not rightly viewing right ones. The providence of the Deity has fixed the residence of various animals in countries where the variation of the seasons is so great, that while there is abundance of food and warmth at one period, but little of these necessaries are to be found at another; and the man-heat, answers the same purpose. ner in which creatures, thus circumstanced, are enabled to survive these deprivations is worthy of notice. Even in the human body an effect of extreme cold is to induce a state of torpor; and those who perish from this cause, if not conveyed to a warm place, are found to die with the least suffering .imaginable. Another circumstance necessary to the safety of life, seems to be, that the body should be protected from the open air, to which, if it were exposed, the degree of cold might be so great as to exhaust the whole remaining warmth; or the alterations of temperature might cause such irregularity of action in the vessels as their small degree of power would not enable them to support. Uniform protection from cold seems, therefore, necessary to torpid animals; and they seek it under ground, where they lie wrapped up in hay or grass collected in summer; and sometimes beneath the snow itself, which, being a non-conductor of A similar effect, but not ending in such a tragical result, is produced from the same cause in many creatures which have constitutions not capable of resisting its violence. The irritability of the heart and arteries not being operated on, through the abstraction of the usual stimulus of heat, a slower degree of the circulation of the blood is the result; hence follows a more languid action of the bodily organs; and in consequence the waste of vital energy is so little, that the creature consumes not more life in a month at this season, than in a summer's day. If the pulse beats but three or four times in a minute, instead of sixty times, every other function acts, and consequently wears, in the same proportion; and the only circumstance necessary to enable a No. 34.-VOL. III. The bat seeks some solitary cavern or crevice, where, suspended by its hinder legs, it continues wrapped about by its leathern wings. No creature appears capable of living in a state of torpidity, and of surviving it, whose life cannot be retained with a circulation from twenty to thirty times slower at one time than at another. Those which have not a sufficient supply of the irritable principle with so great a diminution of arterial action, may, indeed become torpid; but the torpidity will invariably end in death. Animals which assume this state in one country, know nothing of it in another; and except reptiles, the greater part of British animals may rather be said to doze than become torpid: a mild day revives them; and the dormouse and squirrel then visit their hoard of nuts, and the bat flies abroad in pursuit of insects. Animals awake in a temperature considerably lower than that in which they passed into the torpid state; the reason of which seems to be, that during the time of inaction, the irritability not being carried off as it is produced, is accumulated; and the vessels become thereby 3 Y 1067 Poetry of Mr. Leigh Hunt. 1068 so much more liable to be affected by OUR METROPOLITAN SCHOOL of poets. the application of stimuli. (Concluded from col. 976. ) But having now discharged the most unpleasing part of our critical duty, in A similar effect is seen in vegetables. Having suffered a diminution No. 1.---The Poetry of Mr. Leigh Hunt. of their irritability by the summer's process of flowering and fruiting, the decrease of the usual stimulus of heat causes them to sink into a state of inaction. Winter, by inducing this ef-pointing out the blemishes of our aufect, is as necessary in the economy of nature, as summer itself. During its dominion, irritability is again accumulated, and with a warmer sun the vegetable awakes to life with renovated vigour. In mild seasons, a few spring flowers are seen; and black hellebore, helleborus niger, has been called Christmas rose, because it sometimes flowers in this month. The sketch, and it is a mere sketch which has been attempted, of natural occurrences in the ever varying seasons, will afford a glimpse of the Deity, who has created these things for the purpose of helping us in our endeavours to understand his nature; and the more we understand, the more intensely we shall exclaim-Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God !---Certe Deus carmine dignus est. Utinam modo dicere possem JONATHAN COUCH. thor, we approach the more delightful one of doing justice to his merits. "Audi alteram partem" is an observation no less applicable to criticism than to law. Though Mr. H. cannot be allowed a very high place in comparison with many of his greatest contemporaries, he must still be allowed to possess no small share of positive excellence, and this of a very original stamp. There is a liveliness and clearness of thought and expression in his whole manner, which cannot be easily mistaken. This is no less manifested in his poetic than in his prose composition, and is what entitles him to the character of a remarkable, if not of an able, writer. As an editor of periodical papers, either in politics or literature, whether Examiners or Indicators, he is distinguished for a degree of ability and information in conducting them, not only highly respectable, but which we have seldom seen surpassed. The "Indicator" embraces a range of literary subjects, equally amusing and original, and occasionally treated in a very happy manner. On the "Examiner," and the more tender ground of politics, we do not choose to touch, further than to remark, that Mr. L. H.'s own hand is easily discernible in it, from its peculiar characteristics of shrewdness and of force, of flippancy and of singularity. His earlier poems are still more original than his later productions, with less correctness and cultivation, and a stronger tincture of quaintness and familiarity. These qualities, with an air of youthful vigour and freshness of character, are strikingly manifested in the poems entitled " Foliage," in his "Hero and Leander," and several other of his minor pieces. Of this originality and liveliness of genius, we shall subjoin a few specimens, which may not be wholly uninteresting to our readers. The description our poet's favourite village retreat, is at once characteristic of the beauty and singularity of his manner. It is of 1069 Poetry of Mr. Leigh Hunt. in the height of Mr. H.'s natural description, but has something too much like a bird's-eye view of the scenery he delineates. SONNET. DESCRIPTION OF HAMPSTEAD. "A steeple issuing from a leafy rise, seen, Now down below with smoking roofs between, Nature's own ground; woods that let mansions through, And cottaged vales with pillowy fields beyond, And clump of dark'ning pines, and prospects blue, And that clear path thro' all, where daily meet Cool cheeks and brilliant eyes, and morn elastie feet." There is much affectionate feeling, mingled with a tinge of affectation, in the following tender lines to his little boy : TO T. L. H. SIX YEARS OLD, DURING A SICK- "Sleep breathes at last from out thee, And balmy rest about thee Smooths off the day's annoy. I sit me down and think Of all thy winning ways; Yet almost wish with sudden shrink- Thy sidelong pillow'd meekness, The little tender hand That wipes thy quiet tears, My bird when prison-bound, My hand-in-hand companion;-no, My prayers shall hold thee round.” But we cannot afford to give the whole, or one that follows, much more lively and singular, to his other little boy. The spirit of it is, indeed. 1070 "Full of little loves for ours, Full of songs and full of flowers;" but we have promised to cull from the poet's "Foliage," a few only of the brightest and the greenest leaves, forming a fresh and glowing wreath for the poet's brow. We have pretty stoutly insisted on his faults, and we now take the more pleasure in exhibiting his merits. We were much struck with some lines in a tribute to the memory of the late Princess Charlotte. It is entitled "His Departed Love, to Prince Leopold." (set to music by Vincent Novello.) The Princess is supposed to address her beloved Consort: I know, dear love, thou canst not see But all this pow'r is mine; A hundred brides, who all like me And we inhabit wondrous bow'rs, For as on earth ye spread delight, The leaves are thick and flow'rs grow bright. Then turn thee to thy wonted will, Dry thine and others tears; Such lines are expressive of much feeling, and no little poetic power, while there is less of Mr. H.'s peculiarities observable than usual. But it is not in the descriptive or pathetic only that he exeels, he can occasionally strike a bolder chord, which vibrates on some of the strongest feelings of our nature. His natural style of expression is also well adapted to give clear and forcible versions of some of the great poets of antiquity. Thus in his translations of some very pathetic parts of the great father of poetry, Homer himself, he has succeeded far beyond our expectations. It is really too good to omit. Priam, in anguish for the loss of Hector, and getting.ready to go and ransom the body, vents his temper on his subjects and children. We think Mr. H. very power 1071 Poetry of Mr. Leigh Hunt. 1072 fully preserves the feeling and spirit | Brave sons in Troy, and now I cannot say "Off, with a plague, you scandalous multitude; That time, and Troy laid waste and trampled on, Shall have gone down into the dark some house. killed, Instead of Hector, at the ships! Oh me, Liars and dancers, excellent time-beaters, forth." But perhaps the following is even superior, both in the subject and execution of it. The poor old king approaches the tent of Achilles to petition for the body of his favourite son, whom he had slain. "Great Priam came, without their seeing him, Which had depriv'd him of so many sons. And he has none to keep his evils off, The knees of many of these, fierce Mars has loosened; And he who had no peer, Troy's prop and theirs, Him hast thou kill'd now, fighting for his Hector; and for his sake am I come here What never mortal bore, I think, on earth, He spoke; and there arose But when divine Achilles had refresh'd To this specimen of Mr. L. H.'s powers as a translator, we must beg leave to add a no less admirable one from the Italian. It is Torquato Tasso's celebrated Ode on the Golden Age, sung by the chorus in the beautiful pastoral drama of the Aminta: CHORUS. "O, lovely age of gold! With milk, or that the woods dropp'd honey dew; Not that the ready ground Or the mild serpent had no teeth that slew; Or that the heav'n which burns, But solely that that vain And breath-invented pain, Nor did its hard law bind |