The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-08-28 00:00:00

SUPPLEMENT TO THE LIVERPOOL STAN OCEAN : THE CHANGEFUL AND THE PERMANENT IN NATURE. THE ocean, the same now as in creation's dawn, is yet never the same from moment to moment ; still less from day to day. Its waters are mo mently, hourly, daily ascending into the sky as vapour, at the rate of some hundreds of cubic miles a-day, to be returned in the shape of rain or snow, either directly on the sea, or by a long circuit through springs and lakes, and rivers, glaciers, and icebergs. They are, moreover, kept in perpetual motion, not merely by the action of the wind rippling or agitating their surface, but by vast never-ending streams and currents com municating to them as regular a system of circu lation as is given to the blood of our own bodies. The waters that bathe our own shores to-day are not those which washed them yesterday, or will wash them to-morrow : they have come to us from the West Indies, and are on their way to the shores of Norway and the Arctic Sea. They bring us occasionally fragments of tropical pro ductions, and it is said even that, before the time of Columbus, bodies of West Indian savages had been cast ashore on the coasts of Ireland. The waters that sweep along the eastern shores of North America travel from Baffin's Bay, and bring down with them great floating icebergs from those northern rep:ons. What is true of the waters of the opposifb shores of the North Atlantic is true also, with modifications, although it may not be so well known, of every other shore, of every other ocean in the world. The quasi eternity, the very unchangeableness of n ature i s produced, not by immobility and stagnation, b ut by never-ending changes, and by never-ceasing motions—all so admirably arranged as exactly to balance and. compensate each other, and to com bine, by means of the very play of apparently antagonistic forces, all the variety of life with perfect constancy of state. The whole solar system, the very universe itself, is constantly changing ; everybody in it exerts and feels an hourly varying influence on and from all the rest, so that they are kept always vibrating and quiver ing about their mean or legitimate paths, but in such a way that every perturbation on the one side is ultimately exactly balanced by an equal disturbance on the other ; and, after some almost inconceivable lapse of time, every star and every satellite, having passed through " cycle and epicycle, orb in orb," returns to precisely the same relative position they had once held before. What is true of the motions and circulation of the heavenly bodies is true also of the drops of water that compose the ocean. They pass from one part of the sea to another, and follow through current after current round about the globe, till they come again to the same spot. They rise from the sea into the sky, becoming successively vapour, cloud, rain, hail, or snow ; and, after spending perhaps ages on the mountain top, or in the bowels of the earth, they run down again as rivers into the sea. A time must come when all the widely-separated drops re-adjust themselves into the relative positions they once held before. Contemplating these ceaseless changes, and their resulting uniformity, which require for their evolution time, that seems to stretch into eternity, listening as it were to the perpetual beating of the great heart of nature, and feeling with reverent hand the pulses of her life, the philosopher learns at once humility from a sense of his own indi vidual littleness, and hope, and confidence, and courage, from a consciousness that he also has a place in the universe, and that nothing that exists is ever lost, wasted, or thrown aside. " I think, therefore I am," he extends into " I am, therefore I shall be." LITERARY EXTRACTS. A NICE SUMMER DRlNK.—Before my departure from Macon, I supped in the large room of the hotel. I had frequently observed the singular mixtures which many of the Americans make at their meals : I here observed that a gentleman, after calling for a glass of milk, deliberately shook a portion of the contents of the pepper-box into it, and, having added a teaspoon ful of salt, stirred the whole together, and drank it. There is certainly no accounting for taste ; but this, among all the strange compounds which I met with in the United States, was the most extraordinary.--- Col. Cunynghame' s Glimpse at the Western Republic. FEEDING ON WATER-CRESS.—OFFERS OF STONES FOR FOOD.—We halted at the khan of Episkopi, close to a little stream full of capital water-tresses, which I began to gather and eat with some bread and cheese, an act which provoked the Epirote bystanders of the village to extatic laughter and curiosity. Every por tion I put into my mouth delighted them as a most charming exhibition of foreign whim ; and the more juvenile spectators instantly commenced bringing me all sorts of funny objects, with an earnest request that the Frank would amuse them by feeding thereupon forthwith. One brought a thistle, a second a collec tion of sticks and wood, a third some grass ; a fourth presented me with a fat grasshopper : the whole scene was acted amid shouts of laughter, in which I joined as loudly as any. We parted amazingly good friends and the wits of Episkopi will long remember the Frank who fed on weeds out of the water.—Lear's Journals of' a Landscape Painter in Albania, 4.c. WAX AND HONEY.—Wax-lights, though we are accustomed to overlook the fact, and rank them with ordinary common-places, are true fairy tapers---a white metamorphosis from the flowers, crowned with the most intangible of all visible mysteries---fire. Then there is honey, which a Greek poet would have called the sister of wax---a thing as b eau tif u l t o ea t as the other is to look upon ; and beautiful to look upon too. What two extraordinary substances to be made, by little winged creatures, out of roses and lilies ! What a singular and lovely e n e rg y i n na t ure t o i mpe l th ose little creatures thus to fetch out the sweet and elegant properties of the coloured fragrances of the gardens, and serve them to us for food and light !---honey to eat, and waxen tapers to eat by ! What more graceful repast could be imagined on one of the fairy tables made by Vulcan, which moved of their own accord, and came gliding, when he wanted a luncheon, to the side of Apollo !---the honey golden as his lyre, and the wax fair as his shoulders. Depend upon it he has eaten of it many a time, chatting with Hebe before some Olympian concert ; and as he talked in an under tone, fervid as the bees, the bass strings of his lyre murmured an accompaniment—Leigh Hunt. POPULARITY OF FINE TERMS.—Every man has his hobby of magniloquent mystification ; for instance, what surgeon would announce to a jury that his patient had received a black eye, and would not rather describe the injury as a hypopium, developing much sanguineous extravasation about the ophthalmic epi dermis ? What young gardener, newly promoted from a hedgerow, would sacrifice his position by call a dandelion other than by the botanical term " leontodon," to the stupefaction of nursemaids and the perplexity of schoolboys ? Indeed, as to botany, the " rabies verborum" has so spread as to induce a doubt' whether if Solomon himself, who " spake of " that science, from the hyssop on the wall to the cedar which grew upon Lebanon, had walked arm-in-arm through the Crystal Palace with norroy-king-of arms, during the late exhibition, both would not have been considerably at a nonplus to recognize the hum ble families of honeysuckle and Clarke under the hybrid association—plant and man upon one stalk— cassifolium polycotydonum Clarkii ? Imagine these ancient worthies, or the progenitors of the said Mr. Clarke, gazing upon this singular production, identify ing their descendant. Doubtless they would conceive that in the changes which had passed over the world since their time, humanity had reverted to its pristine muck, and was just again putting forth its embryo vitality in the shape of vegetation as its first stage, so that the botanist should absolutely be represented by a rhododendron, the astronomer by a sunflower—stay, we are wrong, an helianthus—an ancient spinster by a sensitive-plant, or mimosa pudica, and the areca, or cabbage-tree, embrace with its parental petals the , ARD. cross-legged family of m, masons' Monthly 31agazi THE LAND'S END.—Si grows upon you. Here th, with the ocean ; and far round on either hand till of the rugged shore, stre The billows come tumblin; the base of the cliffs, dash nigh to the summit. You to a lower level, and see V their plunging assaults ha' side of the buttress to tlu they rush into the recess, behind the mass which sol member of the rocky grout There, on the largest of tl from shore, stands the Lo: between is foam and swirl and leaping high with the known as the Kettle's BO chafes round the Armed and the Fresh Lady on thk lumps. Yonder, under th Whitesand-bay, are the M. with a fearful interest.—A Land's End. THE JesmlNE.--We art cany was the first possesf Europe ; and he was so should enjoy what he alai strict injunctions were iss' give a slip, nor so much person. To this comman, been faithful, had not love ling eyes of a fair but porti, of a little dowry, and his pi the hymeneal altar. On he presented her with a n, bouquet more acceptable, of jasmine. The Povera the bloom of this new flow , and the branch remained following spring it grew, an' It flourished and multiplic nymph's cultivation, that sl fortune from the sale of ti had made her ; when, wit breast, she bestowed her hi gardener of her heart. A. day, preserve the remembi invariably wearing a nosega, ding-day ; and they have a girl worthy of wearing this make the fortune of a good HABIT OF PROFANE SWE. The revolting habit of sw( has happily diminished, h. teristic of the English foi national adjuration which " the continent, appears to period than is generally observes Henry, " were (between 1399 and 1485 Europe, for the absurd profane swearing in coif Luxemburg, accompanied and Stafford, visited the ut at Rouen, where she was loaded with irons. The co the English, pretended that her about her ransom. A ft " contempt and disdain, shy the two earls and said, " determined to put me to deal I am dead you will conquer • were a hundred thousand irt4 in France than there are, 0 1 kingdom." So early had 1 nickname by their frequep, horrid and disgusting Jo' Queries. SPANISH ETIQUETTE:":' Charles had presented _the, Andalusian horses, that sy _ of the chase. 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