The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-01-06 00:00:00

Etteraturr. POETRY LINES, Suggested after reading, in Part 11. of the " Spirit of Me" (Irish) " Nation," the poem " The Gathering of the Nation," by J. FY. Post-dated A.D. 1646. lIIBERNIANS' GATEIERING SONG -s—those scalding tears Too long e faflen in vain Up with the banners and the spears, And let the gather'd grief of years Show sterner stuff th in that When forth defiance rolls May cha the pol g shover But rusted rcund our souls , ear the wr, gs we can redress! To make a thing of ti The tyranny w Eternal by our dast Were crime—or v And we, whose best From first to last e than crime, ad worst was shame, May take, at length And struggle, To suffer —r ,ftier aim, What hatred of perverted might The cruel hand inspires, That robs the linr of sight, and night To make it sing bot _ Yet thus they robb'd our Eire By blotting out the ncient lore, ry loss was shown. Where e Up with the flat: ! we stand before Lther to t ar their r t January, The Saxons In Saxons of our own et your just demands, And hall Till ncw, t We'll give ed met our love, y Heave for grasp of hands, of battle brands, And gauntlet 'stead of glove. And may the Saxon tamp his heel Upon the coward's front, Who sheathes his own unbroken steel, Until for mercy tyrants kneel, Who forced us to the brunt. THE GATHERING OF THE NATION OF ISRAEL 6, 78 ; Isaiah, c. 51, v. 4 to 17 Psa. 14, 105 6.7; Numb EDICATED TO THE CHRISTIAN UNITY CONFERENCE Ali ! w tall lift fit banner high 1. - or those that would not lc g graves* ,e mo . ant::,:ins shake around, In Rot•ne's corrupt And eartl hearts vibrate the sound, e not Judah's slaves? Sleep these, of all 1 from out Is this the ti To prostr to Sure 'tis the For gull For rr lost of men, ,rn every den, Li grace in faith of Sabbath days, That lead to Jesu's Miraculous revealings now Need no engirt the prophet's brow, we Win sanction meet u.t in clay, Then rose to live in boundless Now bids, us be [lts feet.t JEHOVAH-3 He wrote us his Almi In that I nquering Lord, " trouble" day. LI to be our When sun, and r And Then t that " & d stars shall fade, ight pass away t bath made, 8 "§ hour Clothed in His red stand ed. chosen band, be new, And " heave Methinks Their loving melo !y of tongues, Bespeak their / And chanting it God their Re Pure trihni wondrous ways, And as that Is seen like By count! intain"ll Shall wil the calm ar g hear, " Y lALL NOT DIE, Come! ask 131 MORTAL BIRTH " Graves." Ezek. xxxvii. 12 " Feet." Rev. i. 15, iii. 9. WILLIAM BROOKS ' Death and hell" are forms of present power. Rev. vi. 8, r. Dan. xii. 1. Rev. vi➢. 14. esurrection.' 6. Col. iii. 1. John, v "Mountain." Isa. ii. 2. Psa. xlvi. 2, GLANCES AT EVERY DAY LIFE (For the Liverpool Standard.) NO. 1.-THE LONDON SEMPSTRESS It was nearly midnight, on one of those dull, dreary nights, which the month of November and the climate of England can alone produce, and which are seen and felt in all their heart-depressing discomfort only in the courts and alleys and lanes of the outskirts of this vast metropo lis, whose dingy loneliness is unbroken by the glare of lamps and shoplights, or the hurrying tread of the plea sure or the money-seeking crowd. The scene of our sketch is laid in one of these localities—one of those desolate places, of which the stranger, or the metropolitan inhabi tant himself, as he traverses the busy and wide main tho roughfare, could scarcely imagine the existence within a few hundred yards of the display of wealth and eager vita lity which meets his eye at every step. It was nearly midnight. The wind, as if tired with careering all day amongst thos3 dilapidated chimneys, and in and out of those pent-up and gutless abodes of human wretchedness and crime, or awed by the pall of " darkness visible" which hung over the scene, mocking the feeble attempts of the occasional lamp to pierce its blackness, seemed sobbing itself to sleep ; and the dismal silence was unbroken ex cept by the occasional closing of a shutter or a casement, or the sound of footsteps, as some houseless or belated be ing crept shivering by, to a casual shelter or perchance a home—alas! we never hear the deep-toned bell of St. Paul's swinging its solemn midnight chime through the still busy and joyous streets of the city that we do not think of the thousands of the struggling population whose ear it reaches, who can boast of no home, and to whom its invitation to rest and slumber is a mockery—who at this hour are seeking a temporary lurking place in empty houses or in wretched sheds, or huddling from the cold in corners of deserted courts, or lairs only fitted for the beasts ! At this hour, and in such a locality, we need not specify it, for there are hundreds such within ear-shot of London's proudest tra.rts of wealth or giddiest scenes of pleasure—a female figure emerged, with feeble and falter ing footsteps, from the door of a half-closed shop, of the class termed in the metropolis " chandler's shops ;" and, proceeding up the narrow street or lane, at whose corner it was situated, entered a house of miserable exterior, and closed the door behind her. Into this house, or rather into a small room at the back of its uppermost story, by courtesy styled a third floor, but more properly a garret, we propose to introduce the reader. Imagine, then —for to many such a habitation for human beings is only a thing of imagination—imagine the creaking and nearly worn-out staircase surmounted ; and enter with us the wretched " third-floor back," in which the female, to whom we have above referred, has just lighted, by the aid of a lucifer—u fire for her at midnight, where there is nothing to boil or fry, would be a luxury not to be dreamt of—the tallow dip whose purchase, and the necessity of that purchase, drove her to encounter the cold, suspicious eye and the harsh words of her creditor of the chandler's shop. A poor room it is. Its small window, when you look through its cracked and curiously patched panes in daylight, presents to the eye a cosinora mic view of chimney-pots and house-tops, smoke below and sky above,—a vision which only tells you that you are on earth, and yet not enjoying its glories and its beauty ; and that there is a Heaven on high, which to poverty, sur rounded by the temptations to which poverty—London poverty—is subjected, seems as difficult of attainment as it would be to climb from those dizzy roofs to the blue ether which opens above. It is dark, however, now— pitchy dark. Within that wretched room is the world of the poor tenant who inhabits it; and not altogether comfortless is that confined and cabined world. Its fur niture—if it is not a mockery to call the few dilapidated articles which it contains " furniture," is arranged with an eye to neatness and taste, and is scrupulonslY clean. The little truckle bed, which occupies one corner, and contains apparently a sleeping child, may not be of the softest down ; yet it has a wholesome look. The chairs— there are three—are of the most homely description, yet bear marks that they are not unacquainted with bees' wax and turpentine, or some similar cosmetic ; and the three legged deal table, upon which are disposed sundry para -phernalia which betoken the calling of its proprietress, is white as deal top and legs can be scrubbed. Nor is the appearance of the eccupant herself out of keeping with the endeavours manifested to make the best of her miserable lot,—though out of keeping with the re sult of those endeavours she is. In age she appears about one or two-and twenty, although care and suffering have perhaps imprinted upon her features the marks of more years than she has passed over. Her eye is dim—what will not candle light and tears effect to change the brightest eye ?—and yet from its blue depths there is a soul which beams out, irrepressively beautiful, like the spirit which looks down from an April sky, which has just freshened the thirsting powers with its soft weeping. Her cheeks are worn and fallen, yet still lovely—more lovely that the sad hectic of a consuming disease is flushing them ; and her figure—though frail and bent from its youthful erect ness and elasticity, is still graceful. Her dress, it is true is poor, threadbare. Could she think of dress whilst her poor child—her all—who is now sleeping, unconscious of its mother's sufferings and privations, her insults and toil unrewarded, bent its young eyes upon her for food, which she had not to give ? One look at that child—one gentle kiss imprinted on its forehead—one murmured strain, to soothe it into the sleep from which the hot tear, which dropt with that kiss upon its closed eye-lids , had half-stirred it, and the young mo ther has resumed her weary labours with the needle, and is earnestly striving to complete the task, which must be delivered and inspected before noon, in a fashionable breakfast parlour in an elegant house in the outskirts of the city ; and paid for, before the frame, which now toils f a its accomplishment, can be sustained with a meal. Her childether h unger bun on the mantel-shelf, which fitiffiC to keep from that beloved one, whose wants, in the extremity of her own privations, she has never yet forgotten. And thus hour after hour passes slowly on—oh, how slowly !—and as chime after chime peals out from a hundred steeples—a kind of life in death that chime in the night hours—an announcement to the wakers in a sleeping world that time goes on although we " take no note"—the poor sempstress was roused anew to more incessant efforts, although her eyes grew dimmer at each successive reminiscence, and the wandering thoughts grew more unruly and shrunk more frequently from the irksome task of attending to, and directing, the motions of the still busy fingers. And whither wandered those unruly thoughts in their half-dreamy state ? Far—far back they wandered, and to a scene—how different from that lonely attic prison ! They sped away to the years of girlhood—to the days of happy innocence, ere she who now sate wearing out her young life with unrequited labour had been beguiled. They brought before her tear-dimmed eves the loved fea tures of a mother, now sleeping in the church-yard of her native village—of a father, bowed to the earth with the shame of her disobedience and fall—of friends, who would now pass her by as a thing to be shunned and loathed — of lovers who had since blessed their fate that they had not been united to one whom temptation had proved so frail. Oh ! men, men—how loathsome must ye be in the eyes of Him, who formed ye to be the stay and support of erring and weak woman, when ye thus look down with undying scorn upon the wretched victims of your own deceits! Surely that unhappy one, toiling through the long and lonely night for the support of the fruit of her misplaced love, and the shame which it brought her, is not a thing so low as to be beneath your contempt, when she is not below the pitying care of the Father of all! Yes, the thoughts of that poor beguiled girl have borne her in fancy, and almost in reality, beyond her hapless lot; and by her native streams, upon her native hills, in " the old house at home," and even in the church of her native vil lage, she is fur a few passing moments of unalloyed hap piness, once more a bounding, careless, and sinless girl. Oh ! the glorious, buoyant, godlike spirit of youth, in whose undimmed eyes all the changeful features of earth and heaven—their hill and valley, woodland and plain, gushing stream and bounding torrent, sunlight and cloud— are alike beautiful ; for whose ears and heart every bright fountain has a voice, every rill a story, every flower a lan guage ; to whose glowing fancy every breeze, that whispers its happiness to the trembling leaves, or sighs round the ivied ruin—every hurricane which bends the forest, or lashes the ocean in wrath—every star which looks down from the blue night-heaven, and every cloud which sails over its vast expanse—have a dreamy life, a beauty not of earth, and suggest visions, whose fantastic shapes, gor geous or mournful, cling to us in after years, dimly and imperfectly, whilst we strive in vain to hug them once more to our hearts, and to gaze upon them again in their pristine and unearthly loveliness :—would that it were given to us more frequently in this world of strife and pain even in fancy to revel in youth's light, and shut out from our vision for awhile the ghastly realities which surround us, even as that fair young being whom we are contem plating is now forgetting, amidst the wildering mazes of a dream of happy childhood, the toil and suffering endured day by day in this, her dreary solitude! But it may not be. Such blissful forgetfulness comes seldom ' • and from that poor unfortunate it has vanished already. A murmur from her child, as it stirred uneasily in its bed, has dis pelled the dream, and presented in its stead, as in " the swift elision of a thought," the panorama of her fall, fr m happiness and innocence to her present fate, and the dark reality which is before her. A miserable awaking ! Hour after hour has sped ; and still, still those thin and weary fingers ply at their unfinished task. At length the dawn slowly, and as if unwillingly, creeps through the murky atmosphere which hangs around the awakening city, and a small, attenuated hand is raised from that lit tle truckle bed, as its infant occupant wakes from its happy slumbers, and begins that daily outpouring of innocent prattle, which beguiles and saddens, by turns, the waking hours of its fond mother. Another hour of toil, and her dreary task is done; and, with an aching heart and feeble worn-out frame, the poor sempstress prepares to set out, through the now busy streets of the city, with the produce of her night of labour. ---+---- VARIETIES WlSUOM.—Wisdom is the composure of the soul ; and as in war steel is better than gold for use, so wisdom is better than wealth. The chief business of a wise man is to distinguish what is good, and to show what is other wise.— Socrates. FIFTEEN steamboats make a mile, is, according to a recent traveller, one of the recent improvements made by our America-English brethren in mensuration, the west river steam• boats being about three hundred and fifty feet long. The eye has fire tunics to guard it against danger. The first is like a spider's web—the second is like a net--the third is like a berry—the fourth is like a horn—and the fifth is the cover or lid of the eve. H ere is guard upon guard, resembling the various ways providence bath to secure us from harm. Hence the five cardinal virtues. PETTICOATS IN IMEXICO.—Every lady in Mexico, not withstanding the heat of the climate, wears frim seven to eleven petticoats, stiffened with canvass to stand out like a balloon ; yet the fair wearers will pass straight through a crowd with the greatest ease, because they are elastic. — Times. POPERY, THE PROBABLE CAUSE OF GIBBON'S DIS LIKE TO CHRISTIANITY.—Perhaps (observes Mr. Suard) it will not be difficult to trace in the impressions from which a conception of his " Decline and Fall " arose, one of the causes of that war which Gibbon seems to have de clared against Christianity. the design of which neither appears conformable to his character, little disposed to party spirit, nor to that moderation of thought and senti ment which led him in all things, particular as well as general, to view the advantages as well as evil conse quences. But struck with a first impression, Gibbon, in writing the " History of the Fall of the Empire." Christianity only an institution that bad placed vespers, barefooted friars, and processions, in the room of the magnificent ceremonies of the worship of Jupiter, and the triumphs of the Capitol. STATISTICS OF ROYALTY.—The Geneological Alma nack of Saxony, for 1816, jnst published, gives a list of all the sovereign houses of Europe, which consists of 683 members, of whom 536 are males, and 327 females. Among the sovereigns of Europe there are twenty, in cluding the Pope, who have no male children, five who have married wives of a different religious persuasion from their own, three who profess a religion different from that of the majority of their subjects, four who are the last of their race, and four who are natives of a different country from that over which they reign. These are the Kings of Hanover, Sweden and Norway, Belgium, and Greece. The reigning families in which there are the most male members are the princes of Lippe, who number thirty eight; of Austria, in which there are twenty-seven; Liechtenstein, twenty - five ; Wurtemburg, nineteen ; Prussia, fourteen ; and Bavaria, eleven. CHRISTIANITY THE TRUE CIVILIZER.—Does it ap pear that civilization alone, with its intercourse and traffic ; its arts and its useful' sciences ; its town crowded industry, and its disorderly peopling of wilder nesses; its hurry and impatience of restraint; its in tensity and individual will, and its contempt of authority ; its uncontrollable sway of the masses ; its unlooked for upturns and reverses; its passionate pursuit of moment ary advantages, and its appetite for such gratifications as may be snatched in all haste—does it appear that civiliza tion alone (Christian influence not considered), is likely much to promote the personal and home felicity of the millions it is summoning into life ? Judging of what is future from what we see around us, dare we look to mere civilization as worthy to be trusted with the moral or even the physical well-being of the human family, and with the guardianship of the generation next coming up ? Dare we, if we had the infant human race in our arms—dare we turn ourselves to that care-worn personage, our mo dern civilization, sitting at her factory gate, and say to her, ' Take this child, and nurse it for me ?'—lsaac Taulor. saw in DEATH OF RALElGH.—Thursday, 29th October, 1618. This morning, if Oliver, as is probable, were now in town studying law. he might be eye-witness of a very great and a very strange scene : the last scene in the life of Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh was beheaded in Old Palace yard ; he appeared on the scaffold there " about eight o'clock" that morning; "an immense crowd," all Lon don, and in a sense all England, looking on. A cold hoar frosty morning. Earl of Arundel, now known to us by his Greek marbles; Earl of Doncaster (" Sardanapalus Hay," ultimately Earl of Carlisle) : these, with other earls and dignitaries, sat looking through windows near by; to whom Raleigh, in his last brief manful speech, appealed, with respanse from them. He had failed in finding Eldorados in the Indies lately ; he had failed, and also succeeded in many things in his time : he returned home with his brain and his heart " broken," as be said ; and the Spaniards, wha found King James willing, now wished that he should die. . A very tragic scene. Such a man, with his head grown grey, with his strong heart " creaking"—still strength enough in it to break with dig nity. Somewhat proudly he laid his old grey head on the block, as if saying, in better iban words, " There, then I" The sheriff offered to let hi arm himself again, within doors again at a fire. " Nay, let mt be swift," said Ra leigh ; " in a few minutes my ague will return upon me, and it I be not dead before that, they will say I tremble for fear." If Oliver, among " the immense crowd," saw this scene, as is conceivable enough , he would not want for reflections upon it.—Cromtvell'sLetter's, by Carlyle. STEAM A CAUSE OF OUR INSECURITY AGAINST IN VASION.—When Napoleon congregated his great army of invasion at Boulogne, which was so long looking with wistful eyes in the direction of our sea-girt isle, his sa gacious mind led him to see difficulties in the enterprise, which, combined with other considerations, caused it to be abandoned. He knew the vigilance with which the British shores were guarded ; he knew the uncertainty which must attend the attempt of a large fleet of sailing vessels, to attempt a landing at a given place in a given time; he knew that if fifty vessels made sail from any part of the coast of France to any port in England, the probability was, that not five would be able to effect a landing at the same tide; he knew that a powerful con centration of force might be effected upon the menaced point, before any serious mischief could be done ; and that a baffled French armada might only result in augmenting our insular security, and scattering to the winds the proud invaders ; and he, therefore, wisely withdrew his powerful squadrons, dispersed his collected vessels of war, and di rected his mighty resources and his energetic mind to continental objects. But had he the same certainty which might now be calculated upon of effecting a sudden de scent upon our coast, of which the first notice might be the landing of one hundred thousand men upon some point where we were unprepared to meet them, we may depend upon it that this vast army would not hate re sembled " the old cat in the adage," and that an attempt would be made to bring the war into our own cout t •y, from which very disastrous consequences might be appre hended. We, therefore, entirely agree with Lord Rane lagh, that it is high time for us to prepare for a state of things against which neither our insular position nor our maritime superiority can any longer afford us sufficient protection.—Dublin Unitersify Magazine. rmy hour xon pow'r, THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD. JANUARY SIXTH-THE EPIPHANY. (Sharpe* London Magr!zine,) This festival is' celebrated by the whole Western Church. Pope Julius 1., iat the fourth century, is said to have directed the Nativity, and Epiphany, or Manifesta tion of Christ to the Magi, to be celebrated on distinct days. The Greeks still keep Epiphany with the Birth of Christ, on Christmas-day. From the circumstance of this festival being held twelve days after Christmas, it is called Twelfth-day. It was formerly also styled The Feast of Kings (in reference to the supposed regal dignity of the Wise Men), a name which in Spain it still retains. The customs of this day, though various in different countries, yet agree in the same eittl, to do honour to the Eastern Magi. In France, one of the courtiers was for merly chosen king, and waited upon by the real sovereign, and his nobles, at a grand entertainment. In Germany they observed nearly the same custom in cities and acade mies. At our own universities, not many years ago, and in private entertainments, it was usual to give the name of king to one of the company, and to honour him with mock homage. "In every family," says an eloquent writer, alluding to the Twelfth-day of the olden time, "a king was chosen, who ruled for the day." This choice was usually made by means of a bean found in a piece of divided cake. Mr. Horace Smith thinks this mode of perpetuating the remembrance of the Wise Men unly have been partly borrowed from the Roman Saturnalia, when the masters made a ba.nquet for their servants, and waited upon them; and partly from the Roman custom of drawing lots, or beans, for the title of king, when the fortunate party was declared a monarch of the festive circle, over which he exercised full authority until they separated. Allusion has been made to the Tweltth-night cake, in connexion with the ancient usual way of choosing the Twelfth-night sovereign. The ancient cake was com posed of flour, honey, ginger, and pepper. Mr. Fosbroke says that it " was full of plums, with a bean in it for the king, and a pea for the queen, so as to determine them by the slices. Sometimes a penny was put in the cake, and the person who obtained it i ecoming king, crossed all the beams and rafters of the house against devils." The custom of choosing a king and queen on Twelfth night, has never been wholly left off in England. A writer in 1744 says: " After tea yesterday, a noble cake was produced, and two bowls, containing the fortunate chances for the diffe?W sexes. Our host filled up the tickets, the whole company, except the king and queen, were to be ministers of states, maids of honour, or ladies of the bed-chamber. Our kind host and hostess, whether by design or accident became king and queen. According to Twelfth-day law, each party is to support their charac ter till midnight." "At present," writes Mr. Brady, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, " the honours of king and queen, and others of a festive nature, intros duced to heighten the jollity, are determined by the draw ing of folded slips of paper, on which are inscribed these ephemeral distinctions, though the practice of drawing beans is yet preserved in some few districts. Every one knows that the custom of eating Twelfth-cake, and draw ing "characters," is still retained in London and some of the provinces. In France the Twelfth-cake is plain, with a bean, and the drawer of the slice containing the bean is king or queen. There is no other drawing, and consequently the sovereign is the only distinguished personage. In Nor mandy they place a child under the table, which is covered in such a manner with the cloth that he cannot see what is doing ; and when the cake is divided, one of the com pany, taking up the first piece, cries out, " Fabe Domini pour qui ?" The child answers, " Pour le bon Dieu ;" and in this manner the pieces ate allotted to the company. If the bean be found in the piece for the " bon Dieu," the king is chosen by drawing long or short straws. Whoever gets the bean chooses the king or queen. accord ing as it happens to be a man or a woman. At the close of 1792, in the French Revolution, the Council General of the Commons at Paris ordained that " La Fete de Itois" (Twelfth-day) was thenceforth to be called " La Fete de Sans-Culottes." To this nominal change the French consented, but they would not resign the festival. " While the statue of Marat," says Cbateaubriand, " usurped the place of the image of S. Vincent de Paul, while people celebrated all those festivals the anniversaries of which are marked in our calendars as days of eternal grief, many a pious family secretly kept a Christian holi day, and religion still mingled a small proportion of joy with a sea of affliction. Simple hearts cannot recollect, without emotion, the happy hours when whole families assemb'ed round their cakes, which recalled to mind the presents of the Magi. The infirm grandfather, confined all the rest of the year to his room, made his appearance on this festive occasion. His grandchildren, who had long anticipated the expected feast, surrounded his knees, and made him young again with their affectionate vivacity. Joy beamed from each face, and every heart swelled with transport; the festive apartment was unusually decorated, and each individual appeared in his best clothes. Amid loud bursts of merriment, the happy company drew lots for those royalties which cost neitl et sighs nor tears; and oftimes an artifice, which heightened the mirth of the subject, and drew complaints from the queen alone, transferred the highest dignities to the daughter of the house, and the son of some neighbour. lately arrived from the army. The young people blushed, embarrassed as they were with their crowns; the mothers smiled ; the fathers made signs to one another, and the grandfather drank his glass to the prosperity of the new queen. "The pastor, who was present at the festival, received the first portion, styled the portion of the poor, to be dis tributed among them, with other gifts. Diversions handed down from days of yore ; a ball, at which some aged domestic performed the part of first musician, pro longed the pleasure's of the festival till late at night ; and the whole company nurses and children, farmers, servants and masters, joined all together in the sprightly dance. "These scenes were formerly repeated throughout all Christendom, from the palace to the cottage. And what a succession of happy days ! Christmas, New-year's day, and Twelfth-day. At that time the farmers renewed their leases, the tradesman was paid his bills; it was the time of marriages, of presents, and of charity; the companies, fraternities, courts of justice, universities, corporations assembled according to the ancient Gallic custom ; the infirm and indigent were relieved. The obligation you were under to receive your neighbour at this season, made you live on good terms with him all the rest of the year.' ARTESIAN WELLS.—The simple well has been known and used from the earliest periods for procuring water. In ancient times it was raised from these pits by means of a vessel let down by a rope or chain, and hence the ex pression of drawing water. Modern science has greatly improved this simple machinery by the introduction of pumps of various kinds. But a still more remarkable ap plication of science has been made in the general intro duction of what are named Artesian wells. They are so designated from the province of Artois, in France, where they have been in use from the twelfth century. They have also been long known to the Chinese, who employ them in some of the central provinces for procuring salt water, from which they condense the salt by fires of na tural gas which rise from other similar holes. The prin ciple of Artesian wells will be readily understood rrom the illustration lately used. Were we to suppose two bowls, one within the other, and the interval between them full of water. it is evident that on a hole being pierced in the bottom of the inner one the water would flow up through it, and as fluids in connected vessels always stand at the same height, or, as it is commonly expressed, seek their level, were a tube placed in the hole, the water would rise to the same elevation in it as between the vessels. Now, as formerly mentioned, valleys or extensive basins occur, in which the rocks and the water contained in them are disposed in a similar manner. Thus London stands in a basin of tertiary rocks, consisting of beds of sand and clay, nearly horizontal in the centre, but rising up all round to the chalk hills in Surrey, Hants, Berks, Buck ingham, and Hertford. The chalk itself forms somewhat of a similar basin. and, like the beds of sand, is very per vious to water. When, therefore, the London clay is pe netrated to one of the reservoirs of water, it rises up sometimes to the surface, at other times even above it. Many wells of this kind have been formed of late years, in which water has been found at various depths. At Sheerness it was obtained at three hundred feet in the London clay or tertiary beds, and lose above the surface; but at Fulham the bore bad to be carried about - seventy feet into the chalk before a successful result was attained. In the gardens of the Horticultural Society at Chiswick, a plentiful supply was secured at three hundred and thirty feet. But in the grounds above Chiswick no water was met with in the tertiary strata, nor until the chalk had penetrated to a great depth ; but at six hundred and twenty feet a source was reached which rose to four feet above the surface.—Hogy's Weekly Instructor. MAY FIELDING ' S " GENTEEL MAMMA."—May ut tered no word, good or bad, but sat quite still, with her eyes cast down; and made no sign of interest in what had passed. The good lady her mother now interposed : ob serving, in the first instance, that girls were girls, and byegones byegones, and that so long as young people were young and thoughtless, they would probably conduct themselves like young and thoughtless persons: with two or three other positions of a no less sound and incontro vertible character. She then remarked, in a devout spi rit, that she thanked Heaven she had always found in her daughter May, a dutiful and obedient child; for which she took no credit to herself, though she had every reason to believe it was entirely owing to herself. With regard to Mr. Tackleton, she said, that he was in a moral point of view an undeniable individual; and that he was in an eligible point of view a son-in-law to be desired, no one in their senses could doubt. (She was very emphatic here.) With regard to the family into which he was so soon about, after some solicitation, to be admitted, she believed Mr. Tackleton knew that, although reduced in purse, it had some pretensions of gentility ; and that if certain circumstances, not wholly unconnected, she would go so far as to say, with the Indigo Trade, but to wl, 2,b she would more particularly refer, bad happened difier ently, it might perhaps have been in a possession of wealth. She then remarked that she would not allude to the past, and would not mention that her daughter had for some time rejected the suit of Mr. Tackleton; and that she would not say a great many other things which she did say at great length. Finally, she delivered it as the general result of her observation and experience, that those marriages in which there was least of what there was romantically and sillily called love, were always the happiest; and that she anticipated the greatest amount of bliss—not rapturous bliss; but the solid, steady going ar ticle—from the approaching nuptials. She concluded by informing the company that to-morrow was the day she had lived for, expressly ; and that when it was over, she would desire nothing better than to be packed up and dis posed:of, in any genteel place of burial. As these re marks were quite unanswerable : which is the happy pro perty of all remarks that are sufficiently wide for the pur pose : they changed the current of the conversation, and diverted the general attention to the Veal and Ham-Pie, the cold mutton, the potatoes, and the tart. In order that the bottled beer might not be slighted, John Peery bingle proposed to-morrow : the Wedding-Day : and called upon them to drink a bumper to it, before he pro ceeded on his journey. --Cricket on the Hearth. WILL THE GOVERNMENT REPEAL THE CORN LAWS? (From Frazer's Magazine.) Whatever may be the opinions of men out of doors, there is no disputing the fact that the present House of Commons is, by a great majority, made up of members who stand pledged to their constituences to protect the agricultural interests. The Lords, likewise, are, almost to a man, opposed to any further interference with the Corn-laws ; indeed, there needed all the skill of Peel and all the moral influence of Wellington to lead their lord ships forward, even amid the dangers of 1842, to the point at which they no longer make a secret that they are de termined to stop. Are we to suppose that Sir Robert Peel, knowing all this, knowing that it was the agricul tural constituencies which brought him into office—his fixed duty scheme and nothing else having sent Lord John Russell into opposition—are we to suppose that Sir Robert Peel, with these truths patent before him, has ever meditated a step so wild as the recommendation by the crown of an unconditional and immediate repeal of the Corn-laws ? The idea is quite monstrous. Sir Robert may regret, as many other good and wise men do, that such laws ever had existence. He may wish that it were possible to get rid of them, and cherish the belief that their repeal would effect changes neither so ruinous as their advocates apprehend, nor so advantageous for com merce as is assumed by their assailants. But he cannot fail to be aware, that to repeal them in the lump is not possible, except on peril of the very existence of the con stitution. Now Sir Robert Peel may be as resolute a po litician as you please, but he is not a revolutionist. He is not prepared to array one House of Parliament against the other, even if he were sure of carrying the Commons along with him, far less to coerce the Lords by pitch forking or threatening to pitchfork 100 members at the least into the chamber. Yet, without some such pro cedure, we question whether any minister would be able to carry a bill for free trade in corn ; for we know that a good hundred peers at least would be necessary to equal ize the strength of parties in the upper house of parlia ment. Again, it is no secret to Sir Robert Peel, that however free he may stand in his own person from all pledges one way or another, his party accepted him for their leader, and followed him with an enthusiasm which has no parallel in the history of political warfare—for this single reason, that they put faith in him as the advocate of the views—fiscal, religious, and economic—which they them selves entertained. Had their confidence in regard to these matters been less surely fixed, there would have been no rally worth the name from the defeat of 1833. Doubtless the incapacity of the Melbourne administra tion to carry on the detail business of the country must have made itself felt sooner or later ; and, in the common course of things, the powers of the executive would have passed from one set of hands to another, till somebody was found of sufficient judgment to wield them. But there would have been no such industry or ready expen diture of time and money in watching the registration courts, and seeing that the lists of voters were full, as has brought us round, iv point of public feeling, well-nigh to what we used to be ere the Reform Act passed. Sir Robert Peel cannot forget this; no, nor the one great rallying cry which ach'eyed it. He has tried his party pretty well, it must be confessed. They have given up much tor him in various ways—much of Protestant pre judice, since it is the fashion so to speak of that which our fathers used to call a holy principle; consenting to his Charitable Bequests-bill, to his alaynooth Endow ment-bill, and bearing with astonishing fortitude the li beralism which dismisses gentlemen from the bench of magistrates on no other grounds than that their attach ment to the constitution in Church and State is excessive. They have seen the amount of protection offered to the British corn-grower cut down to a figure which no other statesman than he could have presented, and are suffer ing, some of them not very patiently, under the pressure of an income-tax which they owe to his boldness. Let them have reason to apprehend that he means to go far ther, and there will be an end at once to their confidence. And then where is he—ay, and where is the country ? Sir Robert Peel knows all this. He may regret that the public temper should be what it is. He may feel the re straints of party gall and hamper him sorely, and, in his more earnest moments, he may come to the determination of breaking through them. But he cannot break through them. Neither he nor any other man living can govern this great country except by a party, for the attempt to do otherwise will overwhelm in one common ruin both the individual who makes it and the constitution. Lastly, Sir Robert Peel has some knowledge of human nature, and does not, therefore, need us to tell him that men who cannot be brought to fight for anything else, will fight like lions for their breeches pockets. Now the agriculturists may be right or they may be wrong, but it is past dispute that the conviction has established itself among them, that the repeal of the Corn-laws would re duce the incomes of landowners by one-third at the least, besides throwing an immense quantity of the land of the country out of cultivation. We know, indeed, of our own personal knowledge, many tenants-at-will, the occu piers of enormous farms, who are so satisfied of the mis chievous working of a repeal measure, that nothing would induce them to accept at this moment leases from their landlords. Their argument is this, "We are doing well enough now ; arid, if we could be insured against any fur ther tampering with the Corn-laws, we should be happy to engage to pay the same amount of rent that we are pay ing now, for as many years as our landlords might pro pose ; but, whether rightly or wrongly, we are convinced of the impossibility of competing, on our present terms, with the foreign grower, and are, therefore, prepared to throw up our farms the moment the ports are opened, and to Wye in idleness till things find their level." Now, with such a prospect before them, is it reasonable to ex pect that the landlords of England will consent, whether they he peers or commoners, to an immediate and total repeal of the Corn-laws ? Can they afford to exist on two-thirds of their present income, making good the en gagements to which their estates are liable ? and if they could, who will undertake to guarantee even two-thirds of their income from the outset? No one. A sudden opening of the ports, an abrupt repeal of the Corn-laws, would tend as surely to anarchy for a while as the wiping out of the national debt; and five years of anarchy, through the throwing up of leases or the breaking of te nants—and we cannot anticipate less—would suffice to make beggars of the representatives of all the beat families in the kingdom. Can it surprise us to learn that the landlords are determined to resist a sudden repeal to the death ? and seeing that in their ruin the ruin of the pea sants, at all evens, must be involved, is the driving of such a body of men to desperate measures a contingency to be thought of without horror ? Whatever changes Sir Robert Peel's plan may involve —that is, supposing him to have a plan in preparation— we are on these grounds satisfied that he cannot contem plate either the unconditional or the immediate repeal of laws amid which all the domestic arrangements of all the landed proprietors and cultivators of the kingdom have for the last five-and-thirty years been formed. And we come to this conclusion, not only from contemplating the effects which such a procedure must have upon the social condition of a very large portion of our population, but from a perusal of the arguments of those who endeavour, by fair means and by foul, to push the change onwards. Whatever our private opinions may be in regard to the wisdom of a protective system in connexion with the corn trade, we can never consent that the policy of England's prime minister shall be forced upon him by the Anti- Corn-Law League; and we are inclined to believe that the majority of the aristocracy—of the Whig aristocracy not less than of the Tory —are of our way of thinking. Messrs. Cobden and Bright, in the fervour of their anti cipated triumph, let out a little too much for the good of the cause which they advocate, at the great Covent Gar den meeting. The English people entertain a profound respect for the hereditary peerage ; they would not ex change so noble an institution even for Mr. Cobden's services, were he called to the Queen's councils, and in vited to bring in an abolition-bill as Secretary of State for the Home Department to-morrow. Besides, the people of England must be more gullable than we take them to be, if they are persuaded to believe that an order of things can be very injurious to trade and manufactures under which the great apostle of the repeal of the Corn laws has contrived to work his way from the condition of a poor farmer's son in Sussex, to the ownership of mills, the profits on which are rated to the income tax at an amount so enormous, that we are really afraid to particularise it. And now a word or two to all right thinking men,—to those among our readers who value the country's well being above such minor considerations as the question who shall or who shall not preside in her majesty's coun cils, and be called prime minister. We witnessed with regret the unbecoming haste with which immediately The Times' rumour got afloat, some who ought to have known better proceeded at once to condemn - and denounce the recreant premier. This was neither just nor wise. Sir John Tyrrell, and other equally respectable, though some what hot-tempered gentlemen, have no ground as yet — none with which we, at least are acquainted—for coming to the conclusions at which, with extraordinary precipi tation, they arrived. They would have done better had they waited, as we recommended others of the party to do, till Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues—who continue in office, and their friends who quit it—shall have made their explanations. If, indeed, The Times be correct in its assumptions, then each man, , whether a member of parliament or not, will be free to take his own line. The unflinching advocates for protection will, of course, resist whatever attempts are made to diminish or in any other way to interfere with it ; while such of them as take plea sure in dealing out hard names and bitter words may, with a better grace than now, give license both to their pens and to their tongues. At the same time one point there is peculiar to the crisis at which we have arrived, which seems to demand their serious attention. Sup posing they defeat Sir Robert Peel, and drive him out of office (no bard matter to do, it would appear, seeing that he would have voluntarily resigned, if he had been per mitted), are they prepared with any one to take his place, who shall prove acceptable to the crown, and of sufficient weight, personal or otherwise, to go down with the con stituencies ? They cannot look to the Whigs, that is clear. The Whigs have done their best to form an administra tion, and failed ; neither, we presume, will they conde scend to make terms with Mr. Cobden, or Mr. Bright, or Mr. O'Connell. Will the Duke of Richmond be invited to form an administration ? and if he do, will the country support him ? We cannot tell, but this much we venture to hope, that the actual measures of the existing cabinet will be found much less alarming than the sanguine on either aide an ticipated ; and, at all events, we advise our readers to suspend their judgments,ps we here undertake to suspend our own, till the mystery in which the proceedings of the last month are involved shall be dispelled ; and there are some sure grounds on which either to support or condemn the man whom, for ten years or more, the great Conser vative party has, both in opposition and in power, honoured as its champion. One of the severest penalties to which criminals in Holland were, in ancient timeslcondsmned, was, to be deprived of the use of salt. POPERY AND THE GERMAN REFORMATION (From the Church of England Quarterly.) That Rome must be broken to pieces is clear, and the Germans are leading a powerful band for its destruction ; that she cannot, and will not, be built up again by the ho nesty of those who have recently joined her communion is equally clear to any one that is at all conversant with her policy, or who will just remember how necessary it is to her interest to crush all the motions of spiritual life which might effect her standing, or weaken her absolut ism in rule ; whilst, in the secession of so many good and excellent men, a striking lesson is taught us all in the power of Romish subtlety to pervert an honest mind when once it is yielded to her fascinations : a still greater lesson remains to be taught to those who would follow her, if only they will wait to receive it, of 'that which she makes of her victim when once in her power. A broken heart or spiritual apathy—these are the alternatives that await by far the greater portion of those who are gone over to her. Be this as it may, howeves, both the move ments of which we are speaking prove that there is throughout the world a spirit at work, whose office it is to brealeiPup and to destroy ; in the exercise of whose fear ful power it is almost matter of indifference whether the household he enters be sound or unsound in the rule which it professes to follow; and from whose deadly vi sits nothing may hope to escape unscathed. " Judgment (it is written) must begin at the house of God ;" and, though the secession of the Oxford men will not help Rome, it is doubtless doing its work in the fulfilment of His word as respects England. There are some who consider Ronge as the Luther of the nineteenth century : there are others who can discern nothing in the movements of which he is the leader but lawlessness, infidelity, and rationalism. These opinions have, each in their way, much truth ; but do not express the whole of it. Ronge has before him a work, the result of which will probably be the shaking of Rome to-its very centre. In as far as this effect is conceived, that which he is doing may bear some resemblance to the labour of the great reformer; but there the resemblance ceases. Neither in the character nor powers of his mind, the ground he takes, nor the object he has chiefly in view, can he be compared with Luther, who, however the Ro manists may seek to blacken his fame, was certainly the great man of his age, and moved to his work by higher and holier motives than can be discovered in anything yet put forth by Ronge. On the other hand, whilst we firmly believe that the stand which he takes is more rationalistic than religious—for it is for political and intellectual free dom, rather than for spiritual liberty, that he is contend ing—we are persuaded, that those who will see nothing but lawlessness and infidelity in this movement have en tirely shut out from their minds the part which Rome has borne in bringing it to pass; and this, not because they have overlooked it, but because they have; such a tender ness in dealing with her worst errors as amounts, in point of fact, to an adoption of them. Now, if our hatred of law lessness hinder us from an unqualified approval of what Rouge is doing, common sense and justice demand that we pass a right judgment upon the miserable and profane policy that has prepared the way for his work. Whatever may be the nature of Ronge's reasonings in his justifica tion, the facts upon which he grounds-them are before all the world ; and he must be blind indeed who does not see in them Rome unchanged and unchangeable, unscrip tural and tyrannical : as grossly determined to force her lie on yuor ignorance, and make money of its folly, as ever ; and here we are not speaking of any disputable dog mas, but of the jugglery of Bishop Arnoldi and his coat , of hich there me many duplicates; and, which, more over, has been clearly proved, by two professors of the University of Bonn, to be nothing more than a stuff and manufacture of the middle ages 1 We would recall to the mind of our readers, that in Boxley in Kent, there was a famous crucifix, called " the rood of grace," the figure upon which, by machinery, was made to turn its head, and move its eyes ; and, when the monasteries were dissolved, the springs by which these movements were ef fected were discovered, and shown to the people. At Hales, in Gloucestershire, the blood of Christ was said to be contained in a phial of crystal; this the people some times saw, and sometimes did not. When they could not see it they were taught that they were the subjects of God's anger; but when it was visible, of his favour. A like discovery was made—the phial was found to be opaque on one side and transparent on the other ; and the blood itself, the blood of a duck renewed every week. At a more recent period, when the French occupied Na ples, the priests, in order to excite the people against the enemy, showed them the phial containing the blood of St, Januarius. The blood was, to all appearance, congealed ; a proof, as the people were well taught to believe, that the anger of God and his saint was kindled against them, This coming to the ears of the French officer in com mand, he sent a request that the blood might liquify as usual, accompanied with a gentle hint of unpleasant con sequences if it did not. It is almost needless to add that St. Januarius became propitious. Why do we recall these instances amongst the many which history records to the minds of our readers? Simply that they may know that the same dishonesty and wicked craft, which could coun tenance the " rood of grace " at Boxley—the deceitful phial at Hales—the false blood of St. Januarius at Naples, is as ready as ever to uphold the virtues of a detected im posture, if only there be credulity enough left to yield a fitting profit in its use. If any one deny this, we would refer him for the proof to Belgium, to Spain, to Italy, to Germany—even to France. Wherever Romanism has a strong-hold may be found innumerable instances of mi racle-working relics, not only of those to which time and tradition may have lent a certain show of sanctity, but of those which modern authority has, for the first time, pro nounced to be real and efficacious. It is not many months ago (it was in the autumn) that the Pope sent, as a present to the Bishop of Bruges, certain bones, with drawn from the catacombs of Rome, pronounced by him to be bones of St. Leon, a Roman soldier, martyred in the third or fourth century. These bones were enclosed in a waxen image of the martyr, representing him as dead, with a gash in the throat. This image was clothed in the worst possible taste—in the tawdry silks and spangles that usually make up the costumes of a minor theatre— and with as little resamblence to the apparel of a Roman warrior of that period as to the court dress of Louis le Grand. It was laid on handsome cushions, enclosed in a glass case, richly ornamented with gilded carving, and thus exposed to the gaze and veneration of many thou sands, who crowded, for the space of a week, to the show. Priests there were and plates for money, in course; and every aid that ecclesiastical authority could give to force the minds of the gazing crowd into a posture of worship and adoration. Many of the poor people believed that the figure which they saw was really that r,f the martyr, miraculously preserved, nor did any take pains to unde ceive them ; whilst the liberal journalist of the town poured unmeasurabie contempt on the whole proceeding, and desired to be informed how these bones had lasted for so many sges, and by what process the very bones of St. Leon had been extracted from the catacombs—how, in short, their identity had been ascertained. It is not impro bable that these bones of St. Leon will become to Belgium what the relics of Ste. Philom6ne are at present in France —the objects of intense adoration, and possessing, in the estimation of the faithful, virtues of wonder-working effi cacy. The priests, both high and low, lend th e i r influ ence in bringing their people to this relic worship ; and, whatever they may sap in controversy tq the contrary, do, in fact, as we have seen a thousand times, countenance it in its grossest forms. What are we then to think ?—that they believe the tales they teach, or suffer to be taught, their people? In this case, what hope can there he of a Church, whose ministers have not advanced in Christian intelligence one jot beyond the grossness of the darkest age ? Or is it that they do not themselves believe these tales, yet use them as expedients for the maintenance of their influence ? If it be so, then is their pticsicraft a craft of the most miserable and dishonourable kind : and woe to the men, who, in these days have entered their communion, hoping to find their ideals of ecclesiastical excellency realized ! Their own honesty of purpose will avail them little in the midst of a system, whose compli cated, but exquisitely wrought machinery adapts itself to every possible case wherein the energy of spiritual life may break forth to crush it, if it manifest itself in any form of scriptural and Christian truth. AMERICAN LADIES. -In Broadway, the principal street in New York, but not near so fine as Regent-street or Oxford-street. the characteristics of the Americans as a people are hardly to be distinguished, as nearly one third of the passengers are foreigners. But in walking leisurely through the other principal streets, the physical conformation of the true-blooded Yankee, as he calls himself, begins to be developed. The men have no shoul ders; they are tall and lathy, like corn-stalks, and under the nape of the neck they are sometimes as narrow as a female. The ladies of New York have been through time, which means about fifty years, so famous for their beauty, that I know I shall be accused of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, if I say that it is entirely q mis take. But the truth must be told, and I have seen more pretty women in London in one day, than ever I saw du ring all my rambles in the United States. That promi nent point of female loveliness, and which the shole Eng lish race so much excel in, is entirely wanting in the American ladies ; they are as fiat as their own horrid sea coast; and though they artfully endeavour to conceal this national deficiency by a peculiar, newly-invented, and really very ingenious corset, yet it will not do ; oar ima ginings return unsatisfied, and our worst suspicions come back confirmed.—Rubio's Rambles in the United States and England. THE SLIDING SCALE.-But some, who affect to ap prove of protection, find fault with the present form and rate of protection—in short, with the sliding scale, which, they allege, throws the whole corn trade into confusion and uncertainty. A fixed duty, they say, would be more likely to produce equality of price—Poland would then know what to sow—Arkansas know what to ship —we should have a steady market and a regular supply. This argument we have heard used by grave persons of reputed common sense ; but to us it seems the most notorious and superficial nonsense ; and the only thing that can be said in its favour is, that it happens accidentally to he directly in the teeth of all the doctrines and statistical facts of the free trade philosophers. Corn is an article of which the natural produce fluctuates from year to year, and the in trinsic price ft mu month to month ; the problem is, to bring these natural and uncontrollable variations to some thing of a level price in the market—for the purpose of keeping wages, and all the various relations of life con nected with wages (in wages we include every kind of in come from labour of the body or the mind), in such a state of approximate level or gradual variation as may not dislocate society—for the stomachs of labourers or arti sans, and of their wives and children, will not obey the seasons, and must be fed nearly to the same amount in the bad years as in the good—in the month of plenty as in the month of dearth; and this can only be accomplished by inviting the aid of foreign coin at a rate of duty sliding along the scale of prices —say—as by the present law—ls. when the price is 735.-20 s. when the price is 505., and so a shilling increase of duty for a shilling lowering of price. The prevailing mistake on this question is the confounding the duty and the price —the true ♦iew being, that a fixed duty enhances theffueltrations of price, while D./including duty tends to airy of pries.—Quar. Rev. Jan. 6, 1846. RESULTS OF THE RAILWAY FEVER (From Tait's Edinburgh Magazine.) The process of breaking up is already becoming curi ously manifest in some of these companies. As illustra tive of the real character of the railway mania, and indicative of the nature of the " consequential sorrows," it deserves a glance in passing. Internal discussions are breaking out among directors, and their co-adjutors hurrying them before mayors and bailies, preparatory to more regular campaigns in the courts of law. Newspapers are sending in their advertising bills, pressing for payment, and boards are auditing these bills, calling for vouchers, quarreling with rates of charge. Again, operative survey ors are Glamourous for wages, and secret ,ries or treasurers are sometimes hard up for ready cash. Lastly, parties to whom scrip has been allotted have not always taken it up, and now refuse to pay deposits for a concern which they believe, or affect to believe, cannot go on. Lastly, some boards, to accelerate the payment of deposits, have reduced the amount of their calls; impatient holders, who have been precipitate in paying up, ask to have the excess re funded,—which, out of an empty treasury, is not always an easy matter. Out of the discussions to which these applications and rejections give rise, come tart remarks and bitter rejoinders. One angry man goes with quiet, concentrated malice, at white heat, to consult his lawyer; another rushes, like a boy that has been soundly thrashed, into a mayor's court, to tell his " pitiful story." The newspapers, as usual, blow the coals, for every " excite ment' promotes sale. Tne public mutters, " try the responsibility of directors in a law court," and Mr. D. W. Harvey, and other deeply staked directors, respond to the hint by advertising a Defensive Association. The genius of Westminster Hall laughs, crows, and claps its wings; nay, it did so months ago. In July, the Law Magazine coolly discussed the various points likely to arise when this crisis came : the hoodiecraws croaked their consulta tions anent picking bones in the ears of their unheeding victims. All these things indicate the real character of the rail way delusion. Cold-blooded, predetermined swindling has bad little part in it. All the " stags" in Capel-court might have been seen at one time at the height of the fever in any one of the crack eating-houses of the neigh bourhood. There they resorted day after day—the Jewish variety of the Caucasian type predominating in their features—with silk and velvet lapels, rings. and brooches, coats of the newest cut, and trousers of the newest shade, yet dirty and greasy withal—slobbering turtle and cham pagne. There were not enough of them in all to take up the shares of half-a-dozen lines. The panic came and they disappeared like flies when the frost sets in. "Tom," we said to the waiter at the panic, " what has become of all these floe gentlemen " I don't know, sir, out they were the best customers in my time." Only one of them has revisited the glimpses of the day—shockingly "seedy," and asking below his breath for a basin of mutton broth. Oh no, these poor devils had little to do in getting up the steam. The standing army of swindlers has not been increased. The swell mob of trade has only taken advan tage of the railway throng and crush to do a good stroke of business. The mischief has been done by amateurs. Railways have been regarded as gold mines used to be if a railway company could but be " got up," no misgivings haunted its framers about the long and dreary period during which it must be all outlay and no return. Mana ging directors, without money themselves, counted upon the deposits ; shareholders who were penniless, were sure they could find others who had pence to buy them out. The company was there, and the money was sure to come after. Confidence, dash, generosity, were sure to com mand success. So crack engineers were engaged at large salaries, and received carte blanche for their surveyors and surveying patties. Advertising agents were instructed to be active and liberal ; they boasted of their instructions to editors and proprietors of newspapers. The newspapers puffed and charged like heroes; the directors and secre taries bragged to the newspaper writers, surveyors com posed epics on the capabilities of their lines, and share holders listened to the lay with the vague, swelling► dreamy delight of opium -eaters under the influence of their drug. All concerned assumed that the nominal capitals of all the projected companies would be actually forthcoming; all counted upon the share in the plunder which they had in imagination allotted to themselves, being as sure as if they already held it in gold. But par day has come, and with it a scramble, and there is not enough for all. And like angry fools they are going to make the matter worse ; for, instead of fairly dividing what is actually there—all having been fools and deluders alike—they are calling in the - lawyers to say who is to have the oyster. -.....-.._._ THE PANIC.—The following smart note is attached to a recent review of the railway panic :—" To those w ho can imagine no efficient substitute for gold, we w ould suggest periwinkles. In Africa, and throughout a large part of Asia, gold is not of greater value than cowries is certain quantities. In the East Indies, among the na tives, 100 cowries are equal to a penny. The time will come when a periwinkle, or an oyster-shell panic, will be considered as sensible a thing among civilized communi ties as a gold panic. _ Curtio - us CusToM —At Brough, in Wesmoreland, 0 singular and ancient usage (the origin of which is en irelf lost) is still retained. On the Eve of Twelfth-day, the " holly tree" is carried in stately procession. Formerly the "holly tree" was really "holly," but ash being abundant, the latter is now substituted. There are two head inns in the town which provide for the ceremony alternately, though the townspeople mostly help in pre paring the tree, to every branch of which is fastened s torch. About eight o'clock, p.m., it is taken to a eon. venient part of the town, where the torches are lighted , the town band accompanying and playing till all is corn!" pleted, when, amid the shouts and salutes of the spectY:' tors, it is carried up and down. The band march behind it, playing their instruments, and pausing every time the!, reach the town bridge, and the cross , w h ere t h e " h o lly is again greeted with buzzes. Many of the inhabitant o carry lighted branches and torches; and rockets and other fireworks illumine the sky. After a while, the tree is placed in the middle of the town, when it is again cheered by the numerous bystanders, and then throat bwatchlazin g fo,r, holly," this opportunity; to and, e r they are allowed a copious supply of ale and spirits, and pass a "merry-night," which seldom breaks up before among e s a iz iitng them. each off t T o he ne the yd o i f nn th i e hey are contending for, whet! eagerly two in the morning.—Sharpe's London Magazine. LONDON CADMEN.—The men connected with thee! cabs and omnibuses have become formed by degrees into a class, as singularly idiosyncratic as the cabriolet-drivers of the Faubourg D'Antoine in Paris, as the cabmen ad quaymen of Dublin, or as the fisherwomen of Newhaven: The have a language of their own, and seem to spend their lives between constant moving, constant bantering , and constant liquoring. Our Edinburgh cabmen se: shrewd enough, too, but th e y h ave no t t h e k een as redeeming, though often coarse wit of their Londols brethren. For example, on stepping after arrival her ° into an omnibus, it was our chance to hear a slight quer: rel betwixt the driver and the toutor, who swings on the footboard behind. ' Lie !' cried the toutor, in answer tt; an accusation of the kind, ' I never tell a single lie. i ' That is true for once,' retorted his adversary ; ' for on o lie is no sooner out than another comes rattling behind td keep it company.' Such quicknesses of talk lead one to reflect on the curious differences in our national chore; ters, as English, Irish, and Scotch. Well does the ol d jest-book discriminate, w he n it re p res e n t s th e r eplies 0s) , one of each nation, on being asked what they would 10 to spend a winter night on the top of a certain monumen t ' ' I will take five pounds,' says the Englishman. ' 13 1 Jakers, I will take a cold,' is Paddy's replication. Ae " What will you gi,e me?' is the canny Scot's obserfe tion. Whether true or not, this ane c d o t e i s rea ll y f ou nded on a just distinction betwixt the characters of the threv nations. But, added to a certain native and blunt doW O 4 rightness of the English manner, the London cabmen 5 0 drivers generally have got th e i r w i ts so s h arpene d by ne°: tinual collision with their fellows, and the world at larg er that they may be risked against even the Irish for: smart reply. Undoubtedly, they are often irepertinel and also exorbitant w h en occas i on s erves, b ut l et us O. judge them here h ars hl y , an d s i mp l y regar d them a s, strange class, forced by the necessities of this great el into the form and aspec t w hi c h t h ey now wear. O n e° point, by the way, we must caution visitors to Londotilj ere we quit this s u bj ec t f or t h e present. L et no man he's up his finger, either in the heat of talking, or to s cree; his periwig, or fo r an y s i m il ar purpose. A l l the Cabmenwithin half a mile w ill b e a t hi m a t f u ll gallop, and tf, innocent man will get a volley of objurgations for holdle,e, up his finger without wanting a cab.—Hogg's Week il - Instructor. PROTECTION OR NO PROTECTION.—But there ari A higher and more consolatory considerations than on these. The fate of the people of England is not in ti`"4 bands of any Cabinet—it is in their own. No alteration;, the Corn Laws can be attempted, we p r esume, with prospect of success in the present House of Comni_A A dissolution must prob a bly t a k e p l ace if the ilvPi ' Leaguers should succeed in forming an administratios o , and a dissolution would b e i n it se lf a great ev il an d ace 4 siderable increase of the difficulty, for it would threo back all the r a il way pro j ects, derange additionallf 50 money market, and put off for two or three more moo 0 the employment o f th e I r i s h poor on those wor k s vi 1 1 ,,, will afford the best relief to their temporary distrff d , But sooner or later we must arrive at a general electlu; and the great question must be solved by the people the.? selves. We d o no t f orget the infatuation under 4.101 destructive parliaments have been from time to ? 0 $ elected, but the question now at issue has been :so Opt before the public mind that we hope there is less 0,, dreaded from p opu l ar d e l us i on t h an on most former '...n0 casions. We kno w th a t we —th e a d vocates o f proteet'A, —are the majority of all the most important constittno cies. We are s a ti s fi e d t h a t we h ave i n our own ened i ol the means of a certain triumph. The question enne!,d clearly stated, and not embarrassed by personal divis l / or theoretical di s ti nct i ons. I t i s t hi s : —i s the w h o le !II tern of protection to B r iti s h i n d ustry to b e abandoneLe not as to agriculture alone—but every branch of man'i/Le lure? Are we to have not only Polish wheat—but t;) man linens and woollens and cutlery—Saxon hosierll ..,/ rnuslins—Belgian cottons an d c l o th s, an d fire -aryrd Dutch spirits, Swiss watches, American reprints,Fc e o ld, china, gloves, sho es , s ilk s , paper, b es id es an toe / variety of small articles which support a multitucleol, poor artisans, all of whom would be undersold 1)1, / foreigner? We cannot believe, that if the real staff the case, the inevitable scope of the principle, be t o ' explained to the more intelligent of the manfante , population, that even Manchester or Stockport w et ! ) return advocates for a system which, even if confir! a ,F, Corn, has no object but to effect low wages, and vilvu' l l its result wonld reduce nine-tenths of the menufact9 of England to downright unemployment and starve The short issue is , Protection or no protection; el protection to wages as well as rents—protection to e° il o 0 and woollens, as we ll as w h eat an d oats — protec tiV the town as well as t o th e coun t ry — to t h e wor k s hoP ' the farm I—Or RUIN TO ALL 1--Qiityrierly Review.