AN EDITORIAL ON JERSEY.

[While conducting the Jersey Times the objections of some discontented British Residents were occasionally brought to my notice. The following is one of my editorial replies to British grumblers. Were Jersey a perfect paradise, it would yet fail to give unqualified satisfaction-especially to some of my fastidious countrymen.]

MAN is a discontented animal; and of all grumblers John Bull is the loudest and the most unreasonable. When he is in his own land he envies every man who leaves it-when he is abroad he is home-sick. His present locality is always the worst in the world. Any change, he thinks, must inevitably be for the better. And so he wanders restlessly and fretfully from one country to another, in search of that happiness which, as Pope says, is every where to be found, or no where. from Dan to Beersheba, and exclaims, that all is barren. ton's Devil, to give him his due, has spoken the truth :

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

He goes

Mil

Now when we hear a British Resident loud in his complaints of Jersey, we always feel vehemently disposed to cross-examine him, and thereby discover his turn of mind. We are tempted to inquire whether he ever liked any other spot of land, while actually residing on it for any length of time. This is an essential bit of knowledge, if we wish to judge fairly of the value of his opinion. He may be a very clever man, and a very honest, and yet, from a certain idiosyncracy of mind, or from some peculiarity of condition, be quite incapable of arriving at an accurate decision upon the comparative merits of two different countries. Take the case of an old Indian Officer on his return from exile. We have heard many a Qui hye in England, talk with tears in his eyes, of the delights of India, who very emphatically cursed the country and its inhabitants every day of his life, dur

ing a residence there of nearly half a century. Such a man speaks bitterly of the change in English manners that has taken place during his long exile. But England is what she was. It is he who has changed.

To satisfy John Bull by his home fire-side is difficult indeed— to satisfy him abroad is impossible. On his foreign travels he hates all countries but his own-and he hates that when he returns:

The wish to please him, vain on every plan,

Himself must work that wonder-if he can!

He carries about with him a mental eye-glass, which discolours and distorts all near objects, and gives a charming tinge and color to the distance-to every thing beyond his reach.

If a stranger enquire of a man in London or elsewhere acquainted with this island, whether it is a cheap and pleasant place of residence, it is nineteen chances to one that he will receive an answer in the affirmative. If he come to Jersey, he will, probably, hear a different tale. Wherever men settle in expectation of some particular advantage, the majority of those who have settled there before them with the same object, are full of their disappointments, and inform the new residents, that they have come to the wrong place. They should have gone to such and such a town or country the very place that would have suited them! This provoking intelligence always comes a day too late.

What with the natural discontentedness of the majority of mankind, the narrow, one-sided views of some people, and the thoughtlessness or stupidity of others, it is rare thing, indeed, to meet with an individual whose advice in the choice of a place of residence is worth a straw; and yet in most cases when people are recommended to make an important move, they are quite satisfied to act upon such advice, if their adviser has been himself upon the recommended spot, and speaks from personal experience as if no other advantage were, in the least degree, necessary to secure an unerring decision. A person who has ample means of locomotion need not trust reports and be hurried into

blunders. He may judge for himself with due deliberation, and with his own eyes; but the greater number of those who are in search of a cheap abode are compelled to listen to the opinions of others; because if they were to hunt about the world for a place to live in, and try first one place and then another, they would soon exhaust their means of living any where. They are, accordingly, almost always disappointed--either because nothing would satisfy their desires, or because their guides mislead them.

Our own opinion may not be worth much-it may be worth something, or nothing-just as the reader please; but as we may be expected in touching on such a subject as that before us to take openly either one side or the other, we must confess that we think Jersey decidedly a cheap and pleasant place of residence, though we sometimes hear a buz of discontent around us. We admit that if the present market prices be compared with those of ten or twenty years ago, the change will seem great and lamentable. But who caused this? The British grumblers themselves. Wherever they go, our countrymen contrive to raise the price of everything. They make a prodigious noise about economy, and always spend more and get less for their money than other people. But though the British Residents, by their wants and their liberalities, have almost doubled the prices of most articles of food in Jersey, a large family of small means may still contrive to live in this island in greater comfort and respectability than in any part of England. The extraordinary cheapness of all exciseable articles, (so large a portion of a family's domestic expenditure in England, especially if they see much company,) the absence of all direct taxation, (with the exception of the single and trifling tax for the roads*), the low charge for washing, (no slight consideration,) the moderate terms of schools, and the convenience of passing our English shilling for thirteen Jersey pence-are, taken altogether, such advantages, as make all talk about the greater cheapness of living in England, quite unreasonable and ridiculous. It is true that if a man be willing to pass the life of a hermit, away from gay cities and social

Paid, I believe, by house proprietors only.

circles, and cut himself off from most of the comforts, elegancies, and enjoyments of civilised life, and deny himself even a glass of wine, to cheer him in his solitude, he may light upon some wild and secluded spot in England, where he may have a larger house for £20 per annum, than he could get here for £30 and may obtain, perhaps, meat and butter for a penny a pound cheaper than in the Jersey market :-and, moreover, we will admit, that, putting all things together, he may, possibly, even live upon as small an income in his hermitage in England, as in the busy and pleasant town of St. Helier. But we would defy him to live in equal comfort, elegance, and enjoyment, on the same pecuniary means. With the income on which a man with a family must rusticate in England, he can lead a town life in Jersey.-Jersey Times, January 26, 1844.

JERSEY.

[From the Bengal Hurkaru, March 30, 1844.]

Whilst some of our readers are thinking about a sojourn in the Far-West, we would persuade them to peruse an article, which will be found in another part of our paper, extracted from the Jersey Times, and written, if we mistake not, by our old friend, D. L. R. We happen to know something about the island of Jersey; and we willingly bear testimony to the truth of all that is asserted in this extract. We could say a good deal more in favor of the island, if we had leisure to follow our inclinations. Jersey is unquestionably an admirable place of residence for people with small incomes. It is well adapted to old Indians, for the climate is milder and less variable than that of England. Luxuries are to be obtained at a far cheaper rate than in the mother island, for the ports of Jersey and Guernsey are open to the produce of all parts of the world. The English society consists principally of half-pay officers, naval and military, with a fair scattering of retired Indian officers. Education is cheap and tolerably good, and as to the Island itself it is what perhaps D. L. R. would call the "Gem of the Occidental seas," for assuredly in no part of the world is so much variously Of course there are beautiful scenery to be found within so small a space. drawbacks, as in all other places. The laws are defective; the police of the Island bad; and occasionally disreputable characters, high and low, find their way over in the steamers, and carry on their avocations at the expense of the more virtuous portion of the community. But what of this? If a man expects to find every thing he desires, he is sure to be disappointed wherever he goes. For our own parts, we have a strong feeling in favour of Jersey, as a cheap and a pleasant place of residence.

REMARKS ON THE POETRY OF

WORDSWORTH.

A FEW years ago, it would have been a work of supererrogation to notice those defects of Wordsworth which render it impossible for a true critic to elevate him to the very highest seat in the temple of the Muses. But Wordsworth's position as an author is greatly changed, and Jeffrey's critique on the Excursion is now generally referred to as an illustration of the blindness of reviewers to the merits of poets whose works are new or unpopular. That critique, however, with some defects, had nevertheless great merit. It was honest and sagacious. Though the fantastic puerilities of the poet were severely ridiculed, his better qualities were, at the same time, most liberally acknowledged, and most amply and judiciously illustrated with favorable specimens. But if we are to believe the criticism of the present day, Wordsworth is almost a faultless writer. As it was formerly the fashion to run him down, it is now the fashion to run him up; and as the mob of cuckoo critics once recognized his defects alone, they now see nothing but his beauties. Perhaps, therefore, an attempt to speak of him as he is, nothing extenuating nor setting down aught in malice, may not be ill-timed or unacceptable.

Wordsworth has passed his life in rural retirement. His home is a hermitage. Though this sort of life is favorable to selfreflection or learned research, or abstract reasoning, or metaphysical speculation, it is ill calculated for the poet who is ambitious to describe human life, and to make men's familiar associations the subject of his verse. A daily communion with still lakes, and misty mountains, and waving trees, and gentle waterfalls, may qualify a poet to describe with accuracy the peculiarities of external nature; but Wordsworth aims at something better than