RAILWAY TRAVELLING ON SUNDAY. To W. Leaper Newton, Esq.-1840. It is with the most sincere regret that I feel myself unable to give an unqualified support to the resolution which you propose to bring forward at the next general meeting of the proprietors of the North Midland Railway Company. Of course, if I held the Jewish law of the Sabbath to be binding upon us, the question would not be one of degree, but I should wish to stop all travelling on Sundays as in itself unlawful. But holding that the Christian Lord's Day is a very different thing from the Sabbath, and to be observed in a different manner, the question of Sunday travelling is, in my mind, quite one of degree; and while I entirely think that the trains which travel on that day should be very much fewer on every account, yet I could not consent to suspend all travelling on a great line of communication for twenty-four hours, especially as the creation of railways necessarily puts an end to other conveyances in the same direction; and if the trains do not travel, a poor man, who could not post, might find it impossible to get on at all. But I would cheerfully support you in voting that only a single train each way should travel on the Sunday, which would surely enable the clerks, porters, &c., at every station, to have the greatest part of every Sunday at their own disposal. Nay, I would gladly subscribe individually to a fund for obtaining additional help on the Sunday, so that the work might fall still lighter on each individual employed. * * I believe that it is generally agreed among Christians that the Jewish law, so far as it was Jewish and not moral, is at an end; and it is assuming the whole point at issue to assume that the Ten Commandments are all moral. If that were so, it seems to me quite certain that the Sabbath would have been kept on its own proper day; for, if the commandments were still binding, I do not see where would be the power to make any alteration in its enactments. ** I should prefer greatly diminishing public travelling on the Sunday to stopping it altogether; as this seems to me to correspond better with the Christian observance of the Lord's Day, which, while most properly making rest from ordinary occupation the general rule, yet does not regard it as a thing of absolute necessity, but to be waived on weighty grounds. And surely many very weighty reasons for occasionally moving from place to place on a Sunday are occurring constantly. But if the only alternative be between stopping the trains on our railway altogether, or having them go frequently, as on other days, I cannot hesitate for an instant which side to take. ** The main question is, whether that rest, on which the commandment lays such exclusive stress, is really the essence of the Chris tian Sunday. That it should be a day of greater leisure than other days, and of the suspension, so far as may be, of the common business of life, I quite allow; but then I believe that I should have much greater indulgence for recreation on a Sunday than you might have; and, if the railway enables the people in the great towns to get out into the country on the Sunday, I should think it a very great good. I confess that I would rather have one train going on a Sunday than none at all; and I cannot conceive that this would seriously interfere with any of the company's servants; it would not be as much work as all domestic servants have every Sunday in almost every house in the country. At the same time, I should be most anxious to mark the day decidedly from other days; and I think that one train up and down would abundantly answer all good purposes, and that more would be objectionable. * * I am really sorry that I cannot go along with you more completely. At any rate, I cannot but rejoice in the correspondence with you to which this question has given occasion. Differences of opinion give me but little concern; but it is a real pleasure to be brought into communication with any man who is in earnest, and who really looks to God's will as his standard of right and wrong, and judges of actions according to their greater or less conformity. ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, 1784-1842. ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, a happy imitator of the old Scottish ballads, and a man of various talents, was the son of humble parents, and was born at Blackwood, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, December 7, 1784; and, after having received an ordinary school-education, he was apprenticed to a stone-mason, and for some years followed that business. But, growing weary of this, in 1810 he removed to London, and connected himself with the newspaper press. In 1814, he was selected by Sir Francis Chantry as a superintendent and assistant in his studio, and it is thought that that eminent sculptor is indebted to Cunningham for the marks of imagination and fancy that appear in his works. He continued in the establishment of Chantry, and at the same time constantly employing his indefatigable pen, till his death, which took place on the 29th of October, 1842. Allan Cunningham was a most industrious writer,' and all his works, whether of prose or poetry, are instructive and pleasing in an unusual degree. He evi 1 The following works are from the prolific pen of Cunningham :-" Gallery of Pictures," 2 vols.; "Lives of Painters, Sculptors, &c.," 6 vols.; "Lord Roldan, a Romance," 3 vols.; "Maid of Elvar, a Poem;" "Paul Jones, a Romance," 3 vols.; "Songs of Scotland,” 4 vols, ; Traditionary Tales of the Peasantry," 2 vols.; "Sir Michael Scott, a Romance," 3 vols. ; "Sir M. Maxwell, and other Poems;" "Life of Burns," &c. dently puts his soul in all that he writes, and makes us feel because he feels first himself. Some of his smaller poems are perfect gems, and his dissertation upon the history and peculiarities of Scottish song exhibits a prose style of great clearness, eloquence, and power. From this select the following. After dwelling with amiable partiality on the greater love of music and song which the Scotch possess, as compared with the English, he thus speaks of THE INFLUENCE OF SCOTLAND AND HER SONGS. Song followed the bride to the bridal chamber, and the corpse when folded in its winding-sheet, the hag as she gratified her own malicious nature with an imaginary spell for her neighbor's harm, and her neighbor who sought to counteract it. Even the enemy of salvation solaced, according to a reverend authority, his conclave of witches with music and with verse. The soldier went to battle with songs and with shouts; the sailor, as he lifted his anchor for a foreign land, had his song also, and with song he welcomed again the reappearance of his native hills. Song seems to have been the regular accompaniment of labor: the mariner dipped his oar to its melody; the fisherman dropped his net into the water while chanting a rude lyric or rhyming invocation; the farmer sang while he consigned his grain to the ground; the maiden, when the corn fell as she moved her sickle; and the miller had also his welcoming song, when the meal gushed warm from the mill. In the south, I am not sure that song is much the companion of labor; but in the north there is no trade, however toilsome, which has banished this charming associate. It is heard among the rich in the parlor, and among the menials in the hall: the shepherd sings on his hill, the maiden as she milks her ewes, the smith as he prepares his welding heat, the weaver as he moves his shuttle from side to side, and the mason, as he squares or sets the palace stone, sings to make labor feel lightsome, and the long day seem short. * * The current of song has not always been poured forth in an unceasing and continued stream. Like the rivulets of the north, which gush out into rivers during the season of rain, and subside and dry up to a few reluctant drops in the parching heat of summer, it has had its seasons of overflow and its periods of decrease. Yet there have been invisible spirits at work, scattering over the land a regular succession of lyrics, more or less impressed with the original character of the people, the productions of random inspiration, expressing the feelings and the story of some wounded heart, or laughing out in the fullest enjoyment of the follies of man and the pleasant vanities of woman. From them, and from poets to whose voice the country has listened in joy, and whose names are consecrated by the approbation of generations, many exquisite lyrics have been produced which find an echo in every heart, and are scat tered wherever a British voice is heard, or a British foot imprinted. Wherever our sailors have borne our thunder, our soldiers our strength, and our merchants our enterprise, Scottish song has followed, and awakened a memory of the northern land amid the hot sands of Egypt and the frozen snows of Siberia. The lyric voice of Caledonia has penetrated from side to side of the eastern regions of spice, and has gratified some of the simple hordes of roving Indians with a melody equalling or surpassing their own. Amid the boundless forests and mighty lakes and rivers of the western world, the songs which gladdened the hills and vales of Scotland have been awakened again by a kindred people; and the hunter, as he dives into the wilderness, or sails down the Ohio, recalls his native hills in his retrospective strain. These are no idle suppositions which enthusiasm creates for national vanity to repeat. For the banks of the Ganges, the Ohio, and the Amazon, for the forests of America, the plains of India, and the mountains of Peru, or Mexico, for the remotest isles of the sea, the savage shores of the north, and the classic coasts of Asia or Greece, I could tell the same story which the Englishman told, who heard, two hundred years ago, the song of Bothwell Bank sung in the land of Palestine. From the same eloquent dissertation, I select the following: BURNS, AS A LYRIC POET. A lyric poet, with more than the rustic humor and exact truth of Ramsay, with simplicity surpassing Crawford's, and native elegance exceeding Hamilton's, and with a genius which seemed to unite all the distinguishing excellencies of our elder lyrics, appeared in Robert Burns. He was the first who brought deep passion to the service of the lyric Muse, who added sublimity to simplicity, and found grace and elegance among the cottages of his native land. The beauty and the variety of his songs, their tenderness and truth, their pathetic sweetness, their inextinguishable humor, their noble scorn of whatever is mean and vile, and their deep sympathy with the feelings of humble worth, are felt by all, and acknowledged by all. His original power, and his happy spirit, were only equalled by his remarkable gift of entering into the characters of our ancient songs, and the skill with which he abated their indelicacy, or eked out their imperfections. No one felt more fondly the presence of beauty, could express admiration, hope, or desire, in more glowing language, or sing of the calm joys of wedded love, or the unbounded rapture of single hearts and mutual affection, with equal force or felicity. All his songs are distinguished, more or less, by a happy carelessness, by a bounding elasticity of spirit, a singular and natural felicity of expression, by the ardor of an enthusiastic heart, and the vigor of a clear under standing. He had the rare gift of expressing himself according to the rank and condition of mankind, the stateliness of matron pride, the modesty of virgin affection, the querulousness of old age, and. the overflowing enthusiasm and vivacity of youth. His simplicity is the simplicity of strength: he is never mean, never weak, seldom vulgar, and but rarely coarse; and his unrivalled power of clothing his thoughts in happy and graceful language never forsakes him. Capricious and wayward as his musings sometimes are, mingling the moving with the comic, and the sarcastic with the solemn, all he says is above the mark of other men: he sheds a redeeming light on all he touches; whatever his eye glances on rises into life and beauty, and stands consecrated and imperishable. His language is familiar, yet dignified-careless, yet concise; and he touches on the most perilous or ordinary themes with skill so rare and felicitous, that good fortune seems to unite with good taste in carrying him over the mire of rudeness and vulgarity, in which, since his time, so many inferior spirits have wallowed. His love, his enthusiasm, his devotion, his humor, his domestic happiness, and his homeliest joy, is everywhere characterized by a brief and elegant simplicity, at once easy to him and unattainable to others. No one has such power in adorning the humble, and dignifying the plain, and in extracting sweet and impassioned poetry from the daily occurrences of human life: his simplicity is without childishness, his affection without exaggeration, and his sentiment without conceit. Of Cunningham's poetry, the shorter pieces are decidedly the best: his more elaborate compositions fail to keep up the interest of the reader. "He is sadly deficient in plot and constructiveness; and, although his eloquence and enthusiasm never flag, the reader wearies, and cannot help deploring that these are often misdirected. He knew not where to stop, and continually perilled success from lack of critical discretion." THE TOWN AND COUNTRY CHILD. Child of the country! free as air I sing of thee;-'tis sweet to sing Of such a fair and gladsome thing. Child of the town! for thee I sigh; A gilded roof's thy golden sky, |