The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1824-01-12 00:00:00

PUBLIC MONl:rlf NT-7"-O-iiii MEMORY OF

THE LATE CHARLES DIBDIN.

On Saturday evening a Meeting was held, at the Freemasons'
Tierra, to make arrangements foe the public dinner and festival,
which was numerously attended by subscribers and friends.
At eight o'clock Dr. Kitchiner was unanimously called to the
Chair; and, after a number of lztters were read from several dia.
tinguished characters, regretticg their absence on the occasion, the
buaine.s was proceeded with.
We were able to collect the following (rent the report of the ('.em.
mittee of Management, which was received with every satisfaction
by the meeting :
" That the Committee had received the strongest assurances of
support from persons of all classes, and that all those to whom they
bad applied had evinced the greatest anxiety to promote the object
which had given rise to their appointment
" That, among those who had been foremost in testifying their
zeal, the Committee could not avoid mentioning the names of
Messrs. Elliston, Kemble, Young, Kean, Braham, Broadhurst,
Bellamy, and upwards of twenty other leading professional gentle.
men, who had most kindly aignified their desire to promote the
measure contemplated, in any way that could be pointed out, and
who, with the noblemen and gentlemen who had undertaken the
office, comprised a list of near fifty stewards for the public dinner.
" That the Committee had the additional satisfaction to COMMA.
nicate, that an artist of tint-rate talent had, in an early part of the
proceedings, with a laudable desire to benefit the undertaking, in.
rated the Committee to view specimens of his ability, and even-
tually undertaken to complete a monument, front an approved de-
sir, upon terms which they had no hesitation in saying would con-
sututo him the most liberal of all the contributor*, and that a mo-
del, upon • small scale, had been already completed under the
direction of the Committee.

"anTg
chain,
ei an requesting
arrangements
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ihee meetingdinner.
irl:se undertaketCommittee
heemitalsdk
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state, that there was now a moral certainty that, however late it
may have been protracted, justice would at length be done to the
memory of a man, whose songs, breathing morality and religion in
everysfwitr, were so many irresistible appeals to the heart, inspir-
141er the must illiterate with noble and generous sentiments,
an exciting them to those acts of loyalty, bravery, and patriotism,
elflike most arduous of her struggles, maintained ands:m-
*9NT the Oonoun and glory of the British Empire."
Azathe friends of the measure who were unavoidably absent,
'the names of the Earl of Harcourt, Lord Thurlow, Ge.
„Sir P. C. Silvester, Bart. Sir F.. 11. Ommanney. Ad-
irli. l :,01 °eel+ Yorke, and several other distinguished characters.
ofeati
u e dinner was eventually fixed for Friday, March 6,
11.1.114peneal Sit Joseph Yorke is n be requested to pen ide on the
when several female vocalists are expected to sing from
titi!!'eallielyi.' '
Moe wma,fleele• anenent lose sight of the object, and consider
I= Thr
eize eis:eaypubearsliceedeinner. we sl
possessed isioaluildehenot hesitateet:tyi
411 be manta en this occasion. The musical talent at public
festivals is, in general, limited in quantity, and shackled by the In-
ternal arrangements of Stewards, and the singing, therefore, is al-
annie performed by rule : to this tout we have a " Glorious
Apollo ;" to that " Rule Britannia:" to the other " Hail ! Star
ofMrtmnick !" all very sweet, scientific, and proper 1 but we be-
lien that the truly appropriate songs that may be selected from
Bibdin's Muse, in the hands of a concentretron oft dent rarely to
be met with, will be • novelty : and if, in addition to this, we con-
side: the oecasieo, and the motives which will actuate those pre-
sent, we may pronounce it as likely to be, indeed,
* he feast of reason, and the flow of soul"

SILK ‘Vraeras.7-011 Saturday evening a very nume-
rous Meeting of Silk Weavers took place at the Red Lion,
in Phoenix-street, Spite!fields. The object of the Meeting
was to consider of the propriety of placing the Liberty. of
the Tower on the same footing as the other Silk-weaving
Districts, with regard to the wages of thejourneymen-wea-
vers. 1795, 1805, and 1810 were the three last periods in
which the prices of wages were regulated between the master
manufacturers and their journeymen, and the former
rear was the last in which there were any masters resid-
rug in the Tower District; so that when the prices
were fixed in 1803 and 1810, no regulation took place re-
garding that liberty ; the consequence is that the arrange-
ment of 1795 contames there, which puts the Master-Ma-
nufacturers now residing there, on a better footing than
those of the other tlistricts connected with the silk weaving.
There Were nearly 400 weavers present at thii meeting.
Mr. Benson, manufacturer, was called to the chair. After
a good deal of discussion several resolutions were parsed
unanimously. The meeting, about eleven o'clock, quietly
separated.
Il~reulso Fisti.—The newspapers during the past
week have been describing, as a matter of wonderment,
the prams. adopted he a Mr: Barlow, for hatching eggs,
but itt:whighotbere is in reality nothing either new or sur-
prising, the preeess having been long known and practised
in the east. The following account of a mode of hatching
fish will besallowed, perhaps, to be a little more extraordi-
nary:—The Chinese fishermen collect with care, on the
margin and surface of water, all those gelatinous matters
which contain the spawn of-fish. After they have found
a sufficient quantity, the', fill with it the shell of a fresh
hen-egg, which they have previously emptied, stop up the
hole, and put it under a sitting fowl. At the expiration of
a certain number of days, they break the shell in water,
warmed by the sun. The young fish are presently hatched,
and are kept in pure fresh water till they are large enough I
to be thrown into the pond with the old fish. The sale of
spawn for this purpose forms an important hearten of trade
in China. In this, as in some other matters, we may per-
haps take some useful lessons from the Chinese. The de-
struction of the spawn of fish by troll-nets, threatens, in
many parts, the utter extinction of fisheries that were for-
merly very productive.—Afeekank's Atagatine.
Ftowea or Lt er.—lt is a mistaken opinion, that the
arms of the Kings of France were flowers de Ince; neither
do they bear any resemblance to them ; they appear
plainly to be the heads of old fashioned pikes or halberds,
as we find them described in the following verse of William
the Breton :—" estsridis in radio incest cmittet aceittt.-
The shield of France has an iron spike iu the midst of the
halberd.

EIOISITANT DlGNlT•allll.—About the year 1200,
the canons of Bridlingtoi. complained to Pope Innocent
that the Archdeacon of Richmond, going to one of their
churches, had travelled with 97 horses, 21 dogs, and 3
hawks, whereby he consumed more of their provisions in
one hour than would have maintained the house for a long
time. In consequence of this, the Pope forbade, for the
time to come, that he should travel with any more attend-
ants than were allowed by the Council of Lateran, viz. .S 0
horses for the retinue of an Archbishop, 30 for a Bishop.
a Legate 23, and an Archdeacon only 7. According to the
ancient usage of the church, the Incumbents of Ilmefices
were obliged to maintain Archdeacons on their visitation,.
These venerable functionaries were therefore sometimes
tempted to travel with enormous retinues, which ate up,
or, as sporting men would say, cleared out the possessors
of the smaller livings. To meet this abuse, fixed money
payments were given the Archdeacons in lieu of hospitality.
and the• value of these money payments having diminished
in process of time, is the cause of the emoluments of these
Dignitaries being so much smaller than they wen in an-
cient times.