The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-06-26 00:00:00

14 SUPPL DILIGENCE IN BUSINESS,—" Seest thou a man diligent in his business," says Solomon ; " he shall stand before kings." We have a striking illustration of this aphorism in the life of Franklin, who, quoting the sentence himself, adds, " This is true ;' I have stood in the presence of five kings, and once had the honour of dining with one." All in consequence of his having been " diligent in business " from his earliest years. What a lesson is this for our youth, and for us all !—Pictorial Pages. gPRING.—How wonderful is the advent of spring ! the great annual miracle of the blossoming of Aaron's rod, repeated on myriads and myriads of branches,—the gentle progression and growth of herbs, flowers, trees,—gentle, and yet irrepressible ; which no force can stay, no violence restrain ; like love, that wins its way and cannot be withstood by any human power, because itself is Divine Power. If Spring came but once in a century, instead of or:ce a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and *not in silence, what wonder and expec tation would there be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change.—Longfellow. INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE ON THE COLOUR OF MANKIND. —For 1800 years the Jewish race has been dispered into dif ferent latitudes and climates, and they have preserved them selves most distinct from any intermixture with the other races of mankind. There are some Jews still lingering in the valleys of the Jordan, having been oppressed by the successive conquerors of Syria for ages—a low race of people, and de scribed by trustworthy travellers as being as black as any of the Ethiopian races. Others of the Jewish people, partici pating in European civilisation, and dwelling in the northern nations, show instances of the light complexion, blue eyes, and the light hair of the Scaudivian families. We see then how to account for the differences of colour without having to refer them to original or specific distinctions.—Professor Owen. AN OLD ROMAN EPITAPIL—Some workmen, in making • an excavation at Constantina, in Algeria, a short time back, came on an ancient tomb, which turned out to be that of a Roman citizen. It offered no peculiarity in construction, but the inscription, which is in well hexameters and pentameters, appears so curious, that a translation of it seems worth giving. It runs thus :—" I, Procilius, whose remains repose here, state the exact truth in these verses. I have spent a life, without annoyance, exercising the calling of silversmith in my house at Cirta. I have always been of the strictest probity, and of the most complete frankness towards every man. I have nothing whatever to complain of, for I was always gay and always happy, until the death of my chaste Valeria. I have celebrated with honour and in prosperity one hundred anni versaries of my birthday ; and, at last, my final day arrived, when 'my enfeebled frame rendered it welcome. The lines which you are now reading I composed myself during my life-time, being permitted so to do by the kind goddess Fortune, who never forsook me. Follow the path which I have taken : I await you here below ; come I" THE WOLF OF SCANDAL,—Mr. Wilberforce relates that at one time he found himself chronicled as " St. Wilberforce," in an opposing journal, and the following is given as an " instance of his Pharisaism :"—" He was lately seen," says the journal, " walking up and down in the Bath pump room reading his prayers, like his predecessors of old, who prayed in the corners of the street, to be seen of men." "As there is generally," says Mr. Wilberforce, " some slight circumstance which per verseness turns into a charge of reproach, I began to reflect, and I soon found the occasion of the calumny. It was this : I was walking in the pump room in conversation with a friend : a passage was quoted from Horace, the accuracy of which was questioned, and, as I had a Horace in my pocket, I took it out and read the words, This was the plain bit of wire' which factious malignity sharpened into a pin to pierce my reputa tion." How many ugly pins have been manufactured out of even smaller bits of wire than that ! _ ECCENTRICITIES OF COSTUME.—There is no part of .our costume, either male or female, that has not already passed from one extreme of absurdity to another, and been most admired at its highest point. Coats have been worn with voluminous skirts dangling about the wearer's heels, and with scanty lapels descending six inches below the waist. Coat sleeves at one time fitted skin-tight; and more than once have been so wide as to sweep the ground. Flapped waist coats, which in the time of George the First reached nearly to the stocking, were 'soon cut so short as to be nearer the armpits than the thigh. The close-fitting, tightly-strapped trouser contrasts ludicrously enough with the trunk-hose of the sixteenth century, stuffed out with five or six pounds of bran to such an extent that, as a Harleian manuscript tells us, alterations had to be made in the Parliament-house, so as to afford additional accommodation for the members' seats. It is related that a fast man of the time, on rising to con clude a visit of ceremony, had the misfortune to damage his nether integuments by a protruding nail in his chair, so that by the time he gained the door, the escape of bran was so rapid as to cause a collapse. It may have been that similar mishaps caused the substitution of wool or hair for bran, which afterwards became common. Holmes, in his "Notes on Dress," says, " A law was made against such as did stuffe their bryches' to make them stand out; whereas, when a certain prisoner (in these tyines) was accused for wearing such bryches contrary to law, he began to excuse himself of the offence, and endeavoured by little and little to discharge himself of that which he did weare within them ; he drew out a pair of sheets, two table cloths, ten napkins, four shirts, a brush, a glasse, a combe, nightcaps, and other things of use, saying, Your lordship may understand that, because I have no safer storehouse, these pockets do serve me for a roome to lay my goods in ; and though it be a strait prison, yet it is a storehouse big enough for them ; for I have many things more yet of value within them.' And so his discharge was accepted and well laughed ..at, —London Quarterly Review. ,EMENT TO THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD. A CITARACTERISTIC ANECDOTE.—One day when the two young Grand Dukes (Alexander and Constantine) were play ing with several of their comrades in one of the halls of the Winter Palace, they suddenly made so great an uproar that the Emperor Nicholas, having heard it from the seclusion of his closet, ran forth, out of all patience, to call them to order. The Emperor hastily opened the door of the hall; but, at view of the scene there passing, he paused in astonishment at the threshold. The Grand Duke Constantine was violently hold ing Alexander bent under his knee ; he had passed round his neck a scarf, which he was pretending to draw tight ; his com rades were eagerly helping him, whilst Alexander, simulating despair, was crying : " Pardon !" " What means this game ?" cried the Emperor. He soon learned that the children had wished to represent a scene in the history of Russia—the scene indeed of the death of Paul the First. He addressed to them a severe admonition ; telling them that it was not per missible to represent so odious a deed; he then placed Con stantine and his companions under arrest for having made the heir to the throne play the part of a victim. As to this latter, guilty of having cried " Pardon !" he was sent to prison. "A Russian sovereign," said Nicholas to him, "ought never to ask for pity."—From " L'Enzpereur Alexandre II.," par M. Leouzon-Leduc. " TONGUES IN TREES."—Nice observers of nature have remarked the variety of tones yielded by trees when played upon by the wind. Mrs. Hemans once asked Sir Walter Scott if he had noticed that every tree gives out its peculiar sound. " Yes," said he, " I have ; and I think something might be done by the union of poetry and music to imitate those voices, giving a different measure to the oak, the pine, the willow," &c. There is a Highland air of somewhat similar character, called the " Notes of the Sea Birds." In Henry Taylor's drama, " Edwin the Fair," there are some pleasing lines, where the wind is feigned to feel the want of a voice, and to woo the trees to give him one. He applied to several ; but the wanderer rested with the pine, because her voice was constant, soft and lowly deep ; and he welcomed in her a mild memorial of the ocean cave, his birth-place. There is a fine description of a storm in " Coningsby," where a sylvan language is made to swell the diapason of the tempest. " The wind howled ; the branches of the forest stirred, and sent forth sounds like an incantation. Soon might be distinguished the various voices of the mighty trees, as they expressed their terror or their agony. The oak roared, the beech shrieked, the elm sent forth its deep groan, while ever and anon, amid a momentary pause, the passion of the ash was heard in moans of thrilling anguish." THE STUFF THAT OLD LONDON WALL WAS MADE OF.—ln 1841 an excavation for sewerage was commenced at Blackfriars, and the workmen having advanced without impediment to the foot of Lambeth-hill, were then stopped by a wall of extra ordinary strength. " Upon this wall," says Mr. Roach Smith, " the contractor for the sewers was obliged to open his course to a depth of 20 feet, so that the greater portion of the struc ture had to be overthrown, to the great consumption of time and labour. The delay occasioned by the solidity and thick ness of this wall, gave me an opportunity of making careful notes as to its construction and course. The foundation was made in the following manner :—Oaken piles were first used, and these were laid in a stratum of chalk and stones, and then a course of hewn sand-stones, from 3 to 4 feet by 2 feet and 21 feet, firmly cemented with the well-known compound of quick lime, sand, and pounded tile. Upon this solid superstructure was built the wall—composed of rag and flint, with layers of red and yellow plain and curved-edge tiles, from which it could not be separated by force." Many of the large stones which were worked into this ancient wall, evidently had formed por tions of buildings of still greater antiquity, being sculptured, and ornamented with mouldings, which denote their prior use in a frieze or entablature of an edifice ; the magnitude of which may be conceived from the fact of these stoness weighing in many instances upwards of half a ton. Whatever might have been the nature of this structure, its site, or cause of its over throw, we have no means of determining. The probability of its destruction by the insurgent Britons, under.Boadicea, sug gests itself. LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE.—In the year 1769, two little cradles were rocked in two very different portions of the world, one, in an old castellated mansion in a wild part of Ireland ; the other, in a small dwelling in an obscure island in the Italian Sea. "What possibility could bring these two districts of the earth into connection ?—the Castle Daugan, in the county Meath, and the dwelling-house in Ajaccio, in Corsica ? In the one cradle lay Napoleon ; in the other the Duke of Wellington. While one of these names grew great in Europe, and the conqueror of Italy was acknowledged as the greatest of captains at the age of thirty-four, at the same age all India was filled with the glorie s o f th e Other. A few years passed on. Divided still by half the globe, the one advanced his triumphant march from one end of the Spanish Peninsula to the other, and the heart of England answered to every step of his progress ; the snows of Russia for the first time presented an insurmountable obstacle to the other's career ; and, at last, while the whole world hung in hope and terror on the scales, the destinies of the two cradles were accomplished, and the tremendous meeting took place upon the field of Waterloo. In our own village streets, or country lanes, may be running, at this moment, boys who, when they grow up, may have great influence on the fate of kingdoms— Arkwrights or Watts, to double the national power, or Chathams or Peels, to " shape the whisper of a throne." He was a wise old man, the German schoolmaster, who delivered his lessons with his head uncovered in obeisance to the future doctors, governors, councillors, and generals, who might be sitting on his benches. At the concluding years of James's reign, Pym was upwards of forty years of age, but utterly unknown ; Eliot was thirty-three, and also undiscovered ; Hampden was twenty-nine; and Cromwell himself twenty-four. [JUNE VARIETIES. 11 ' r LIGHT LABOUR.—Preparing for an illumilla 440 - hea " IT'S ail round my hat," as the hypocrite said on mourning for his wife. Pi ' THERE are now 267,091 milliners in Englan (l. ,1" very ungallantly, calls them the " army of vanity. , r eBt A COCKNEY being told the Megatherium was ot I re ir that eat trees, said he was himself uncommon fon d WHERE IS FANCY BRE(A)D ?" Tell me whereis r:j,‘,;P:ter —Shakspearian Song. Answer :—" In the baker s-01 , "MY HORSE, SIR ? Why, I'll wager it to stand AiA than your horse can gallop ! ' ° ri BRICKS AND MORTAR.—A couple of British art # with their cannon. A GRUNTER.—" This is a regular soze-wester , said when blown overboard. Ole THE VIRTUE OF PROSPERITY is temperane of adversity is fortitude. 4 80 THE fellows of a college wished to have an chapel, but the proctor put a atop to it. ,1 3 0 THE poor fellow who " couldn't hold his 0 v e, into a worse difficulty by trying another's. WHY are the reinforcements before Sebastop o et 4 born baby ?—Because it is the long looked-for succ ° ,,ife A LADY describing an ill-tempered man said' 0 1 smiles but he seems ashamed of it." ONE of the most appropriate names we know o ' sly' Mr. Yocam, who performs most of the marriage ee Appleton, Wisconsin. t the A BRUTE, who is enjoying his "six months a t d e oo 4 mill, for beating his wife, tries to explain awaYlul, by declaring that he was simply "dressing a /T i ff QUOTH PATRICK of the Yankee —`• Be dad , 1 ` 030 07 j away on a dissolate island, he'd get up the next go round sellin' maps to the inhabitants." . estlA ONE GENTLEMAN said to another, who havir l 6. r "; 50,." his health by a diet of milk and eggs , took a wiT e ' •11 61 ' been egg'd •on to matrimony, I hope the yoke ‘l.l upon you." ,„„ thr ;tli . ien: A iNatgTa y enu o ,din u caa N tit : tih: blue-stocking having, in a passi on ' er :us ttol b re an occ d o , lmn aknrldhiesmrp-Eanitii;enrse..lyhion:agll:7..oo; black liquid, some atrocious wretch declared that George, the fact is, you see, you're such a 1 ' rot*. gent.: Yes, Julia, dear, but then r 4 ti „ supply the goose with such lots of saYuocue. , linosir ast ol;; DRUNKENNESS.—Some of the domestic ev ils (4 t it fe ness are houses without windows, gardens will' Wit fields without tillage, barns without roofs, c hildr e of principles,clothing, s morals, artln or manners. dence photographic art i —" A lady g last we ek had rplri by a photographist, and he executed it so well that Ir .„ preferred it to the original." al _a *co is Sllde f MEXICAN MILLINERS.—A stranger l in _, the appearance of the milliners' shops, where twel:lt._`" oftgi e e r u e ff 5 stout men in moustachios are employed in mal.s gowns, caps, and artifical flowers. REFLECTION OF A GENTLEMAN "in the P en 'oo l James's Palace—" I wish I were in the place of mY o der man, outside my carriage, with a bunch of flowers A t nose." h on est To oNE who said, " I do not believe there is 0n,. 1 . 1 t oa e oor in the world," another replied, "It is impossible a t should know the world, but quite possible that Ole to' himself." lkf LUNACY AND LONGEVITY .— Lunatics live pro•-rtabc, good old age, and one of the proverbs upon wI II IO4 Y itv founded is, we suppose, the old-established truism io 'A t vessels last the longest." ‘`..er i A RIGID STEEP.—It is related that a coachta- d 'snolla a mountain in Vermont, was asked by a timid 1 1- pi ed„ was steep on the other side. "Steep!" excla l :l3,s " chain lightning couldn't go down without a dr"„ ' 4 4 r BARNUM'S LAST. — The indefatigable Bartin'itlo'4 favoured the prodigy-loving public of New York- ss t ; tic:a nouncement of a new marvel, i.e., the " infant fsile s old, covered with hair, and has already a fa ll 1 41 4 whiskers !" THE DIFFERENCE.—GIasses reflect without 0 1 4 1 , 11 :e e : 1 i t o ; talk without reflecting. That's the difference be,Loe , and glasses. The difference between a carriag'e an ' l- dtpe I carriage -wheel is this—one goes best when tired, don't. little BOOK YOUR EXPENSES.—There was not 0 sense and business discrimination in the Yanhe; p ; 0 1 who, happening to see his son take from his till ti pay for a cigar, exclaimed authoritatively, " B oo " book it." BAGGING THE CRIMEA..—Mrs. Partington, on r0. :4 it was likely our t roo p s wou ld sac k S e b as topol if thei it, observed that she didn't know how they woill a bag, manage to bring suc h a s t rong f or t ress home in a that if they did it would only sell for rubbish ! la LORD BACON used to commend the advice of,l, man at Buxton, wh o so ld b rooms . A proud, 13 ,', tit# fellow, came to him f or a b room u pon trust, to who do/ man said, " Friend, hast thou no money ? .1300.( nit back, and borrow of thy belly. They'll ne'er 141 again; I shall be dunning thee every day." ~„1 . ,9 IN 'BB, when the Queen went through Temple-J1;130o! Fleet-street, the lawyers were ranked on one side , , companies of the city on the other. Said Mr. 1 0 ' 5 '.04' lawyer who stood next.him, "Nov, observe the c oart l t 1 p they bow first to the citizens, they are in debt ; if 1 they are in law." ~':~ ~, , , I:, 41 1