The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-11-20 00:00:00

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SUPP

would fall as severely on the man as on the woman.
A marchande, therefore, desires to please universally
all that come into her shop. She is amiable, cheerful,
agreeable, polite, and graceful to all—making no dis-
tinction of sex, and though perhaps taking a little
more pains to please the women than the men, be-
cause it is a more difficult task. Flirtation, intrigue,
or passion, never enters her well-regulated head—she
has no moments in which she feels that life is a bur-
den, that her husband is not so elegant as Monsieur
that she is an unfortunate woman, misplaced on
earth, understood by none. She never sets her grief
to desponding rhymes, for she has her double entries
to make. She has very little time, too, to give to
literature in general ; but after the shop is closed, and
her children have said their prayers, kneeling at her
feet, she just reads a page or two of the feuilletons
which her careful husband cuts out of the papers, and
pins together for her especial use. She is fond of
music, too ; but then it is only of a certain kind---and
we are afraid it is not of the most scientific kind. Her
idea of music consists in those wonderful little tunes
introduced into the French vandevilles at the most
critical and exciting moments. These, words and all,
she catches up with the most extraordinary rapidity,
and carolling them about in the most joyous manner,
with a tiny little canary-bird voice, to the delight of
her children and her husband---the former loving the
air, and the latter the little epigram at the end of each
verse.---Bentley's Miscellany.

LONDON IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.—London, in
1465, consisted principally but of one long straggling
line of street, commencing on the river side of the
Strand, and terminating a few hundred paces beyond
the site of the present Mansion-house. From this
line of street there were many off streets to the north-
ward into the open country; and to the south of
Chepesyde down to the bank of the Thames, was a
mass of mean mud and thatched residences in such
close proximity, and enjoying so truly a republic of
filth and dirt, that Stowe might well grievously com-
plain of the noyous state of ye city, in which there was
much danger—" pitfalles and men of loose reporte."
. . . The houses, or rather hovels of the poor, were
composed of plaster and timber covered with thatch,
while many really noble structures of solid masonry
were to be found in and around the ancient city ;
these were, however, mingled indiscriminately with the
meanest buildings. Henry, Earl of Northumberland,
had a handsome mansion in Fenchurch-street. The
Earl of Essex's palace, for a palace it was, was in
Throgmorton-street, and both the Bishops of London
and Ely lived in Aldersgate-street. There were
straggling buildings from Lombarde-street to the
Tower, but not sufficient to be entitled to the name of
a regular street. The Surrey side of the river was a
swamp ; and the traffic across London-bridge was ex-
tremely limited.

CAUSES WHICH LED TO THE BELIEF OF ALCHEMY.
—The conduct of the scientific alchemists of the thir-
teenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries presents a
problem of very difficult solution. When we consider
that a gas, a fluid, and a solid may consist of the very
same ingredients in different proportions ; and a
virulent poison may differ from the most wholesome
food only in the difference of quantity of the very same
elements ; that gold and silver, lead and mercury, and
indeed, all the metals, may be extracted from trans-
parent crystals, which scarcely differ in their appear-
ance from a piece of common salt, or a bit of sugar-
candy ; and that diamond is nothing more than char-
coal)—we need not greatly wonder at the extravagant
expectation that the precious metals and the noblest
gems might be produced from the basest metals. These
expectations, too, must have been often excited by the
startling results of their daily experiments. The most
ignorant compounder of simples could not fail to wit-
ness the magical transformations of chemical action ;
and every new product must have added to the pro-
bability that the tempting doublets of gold and silver
might be thrown from the dice-box with which he was
gambling. But when the precious metals were found
in lead and copper, by the action of powerful re-agents,
it was natural to suppose that they had been actually
formed during the process ; and men of well-regulated
minds even might have thus been led to embark in
new adventures to procure a more copious supply,
without any insult being offered to sober reason, or
any injury inflicted on sound morality,sir D. Brew_
ster's Martyrs. of Science.