The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-11-27 00:00:00

SUPPLEMENT TO THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

to be mentioned ; I intend to take him out of your
hands and reform him myself." Neither do the poor
like such unceremonious mercy, such untender tender-
ness, benevolence at horseplay, mistaking kicks for
caresses. They do not like it, they will not respond
to it, save in parishes which have been demoralized
by indiscriminate benevolence, and where the last
remaining virtues of the poor—saving self-help and
independence—have been exchanged (as I have too
often seen than exchanged) for organised begging

and hypocrisy.---Kingsley.
VERBOSITY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. Our
writers for the press, especially the periodical press,
have no conception whatever of style, as an art.
Hence they heap up a huge collection of sentences, in
the most tumid and tumultuous way, in which all
idea of sequence is lost soon after starting, and
the graces of simplicity and clear-flowing speech are
merged in a torrent of verbose and windy loquacity.
So wide-spread has become this disease, that the ap-
pearance of any book, .discourse, review-article, or
newspaper leader, written in terse and vigorous
English, excites universal remark. Not only is our
literature thus burdened with the vices of a cumbrous
and chaotic style, but our language is suffering from a
growing plethora of vicious forms of expression and
slang phrases. Pure idiomatic English has become
almost obsolete, and its place is usurped by a mongrel
and depraved dialect, composed of the oddest jumble
of French, German, fustian, and Billingsgate, with
long words ending in ology, osity, and ation. This
frightful medley of the worst materials seems first to
have risen from the gutter into ordinary conversation,
then to have been imitated in the newspapers, and
finally to have been produced in more permanent forms.
Their permanence, however, thanks to the preserva-
tion of the better models, and to the moral sanity of
the human intellect, is not yet an established fact ;
and we congratulate our countrymen, in view of the
vast daily spawn of the American press, and the
enormous editions of irreclaimable trash which are
daily sold, that probably there are no books which
the world will more willingly let die.—The North.
American Review.
THE "LAUGHING JICKASS."—We laughed at the
pompous inscription, " General store and provision
warehouse," scrawled in whitewash over the door of
a wretched little bark hovel, where were exposed for
sale on a sheet of the same material, a cabbage-tree
hat or two, a few bottles of ginger-beer, a tumbler full
of bull's eyes and lollipops, and half-a-dozen shrivelled
oranges. Nor did we look particularly grave while
deciphering with difficulty the abstruse sentence,
" Tailor, habitmaker," chalked on a plank, which was
nailed against a tree, above an equally small and soli-
tary sheeling, perfectly out of humanity's reach. and
more particularly of any human entitled to wear a
habit. But we laughed, held both our sides, when at
the Solitary Creek, where we stopped for breakfast, we
heard the ludicrous song of the " Laughing Jackass."
It is no uncommon thing for a writer to pronounce an
object to be utterly indescribable, and forthwith set to
work to describe it. I must try my hand at a descrip-
tion of this absurd bird's chaunt, although no words
can possibly do him justice. He commences, then, by
a low cackling sound, gradually growing louder, like
that of a hen in a fuss. Then, suddenly changing his
note, he so closely imitates Punch's penny trumpet
that you would almost swear that it was indeed the
jolly " roo-to-to-too" of the public favourite you heard.
Next comes the prolonged bray of an ass, done to the
life ; followed by an articulate exclamation, apparently
addressed to the listener, sounding very like—" Oh,
what a Guy !" And the whole winds up with a sup-
pressed chuckle, ending in an uproarious burst of
laughter, which is joined in by a dozen others hitherto
sitting silent. It is impossible to hear with a grave
face the jocularities of this feathered jester. In spite
of all reasoning, I could never help feeling that it was
myself he was quizzing. The Laughing Jackass, or
Dacels gigantea, is a large species of woodpecker,
black and gray in colour, with little or no tail, and an
enormously disproportionate head and bill—a most
ugly and eccentric-looking fellow.— Our .Antipodes.
ORIGIN OF THE FILIBUSTERS.—The Filibusters
first began by associating together in bands of from
fifteen to twenty men. Each of them carried the
buccaneer musket, holding a ball of sixteen to the
pound, and had generally pistols at his belt, hold-
ing bullets of twenty 'or twenty-four to the pound,
and besides this they wore a good sabre or cutlass.