The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-01-27 00:00:00

r resources brought into pla

directed ; with the Duke of Wellington

still living, still active, and still capable of infusing his
spirit into other men, and guiding the military councils
of the kingdom ; with one Napier at the height of his
lame, and possessing the confidence both of the popula-
tion and the army; and another as able to command the
feet as when he captured Acre, and mieht have swept the
Mediterranean ; and with younger men, scarcely less
powerful in intellect, or gallant in enterprise, panting to
be called into positions where arduous duties, well per-
formed, would lead to honour and win renown ; Louis
Napoleon will pause ere he strike the inevitable blow
that must end in his rapid personal humiliation, or the
total lo&s of all the external resources of France—its co-
lony of Algeria; its West Indian dependencies ; its pro-
tectorate in Tahiti ; its influence in Egypt and Morocco ;
and its commerce throughout the world.

" How long," asks an able correspondent of a morning
paper, " would Louis Napoleon reign in such disaster and
disgrace? He promises France peace, and he would give
ler wear ; plenty—and her cornucopia would teem only
with taxation ; trade—and her finance wo !Id be insol-
vency ; commerce—and Marseilles and Havre would be
starved ; glory—and her shores would be insulted ; the
boundary of the Rhine—and Algeria would be lost. How
long would it be until there arose that sinister cry which
Las reached him once already— 'A brie le lyran' ? For
the contest would not be despotism and England against
liberty ; but England and self-government against despo-
tism. The faction and the arms of Bonaparte would be
opposed to us, but with us would be the intelligence of
Frenchmen, their constitutional sympathies, their repub-
lican convictions. Liberty would be our flag—Tyranny
his, and who can doubt the issue ?"
Speculation upon the mere chances of warfare, how-
ever, have never been very congenial to the minds of Eng-
lishmen ; and turning from them we light upon another
theme of general gossip—the mystery which still enve-
lona the retirement of Lord Palmerston from the Foreign
Office and the Cabinet. The causes of his precipitate re.
treat or dismissal must of course be explained in the
course of a few days; but in the meantime all kinds of ru-
mours on the subject are still rife, one of which ascribes
the event to the influence of one of the highest personages
in the realm. The intimation of this piece of court scan-
dal comes to us from Germany, where it is said the very
fortunate House of Coburg are desirous of making friends
with Austria and Russia, in order that they may put an
end as early as possible to that system of rigid economy
which has materially reduced the incomes of minor Ger-
man princes, and rendered their future position as inde-
pendent sovereigns extremely precarious. For this end,
at-was considered necessary to counteract much of the di-
plomacy of Lord Palmerston, and private correspon-
dences are therefore said to have been entered into, re-
vealing, serious differences of feeling and sentiment be-
tween the responsible chief of the Foreign Department
and greater personages than himself, which, on being de-
tected, led to that instant resignation which has asto-
wished England, confounded M. Kossuth, and called for
4' Te Deums" at Rome, Naples, and Vienna. But all
this wants better confirmation than it has yet obtained,
and in the meantime comment upon the subject would be
premature. . . . .

- The 'Anti-Romanist spirit which was excited in this
country some sixteen months ago, appears by no means
to have died out with the enactment of the Ecclesiastical
Titles Bill, as was expected by its friends, and was said
to have been relied on by the Ministers of the Crown.
Public meetings in opposition to the renewal of the May-
Doothendowment are of daily occurrence both in London
and the provinces; and they are generally much better
attended, and the proceedings carried on with more en-
thusiasm, than any similar demonstrations against the
diffusion of papal principles, since the passing, of the
Emancipation Act. That form of Protestantism which
approaches to the forms, and in some respects tothe faith,
of the Romanists, so closely as to be scarcely distinguish-
able therefrom, appears, at the same time, to be obviously
declining ; and mediaeval zeal, in literature at least,is grow.
ing out of fashion, and beginning to be subjected to the
chilling judgment of wintry criticism.
A notable sample of this change of tone and sentiment
is afforded by the reception which Miss Agnes Strickland's
4' Lives of the Queens of England" experienced at its
first publication, and on its reissue, in a new edition which
is now in progress. Originally, the authoress's admira-
tion of the martyr-
making Mary, of Mary Queen of
Scots, and of the wife of James 11., was looked upon as a
mere amiable toleration of persons who had received less
than impartial justice at the bands of historians ; while
her implacable animosity to Elizabeth, to liar__y, the wife
ascribed
of William of Orange, and to Queen
negr ecoans es r
to natural reaction of mind in one, who,
original authorities, found that more eulogy had been
bestowed than was due, and was therefore anxious to
chew that there was a dark as well as a bright side to the
figures which had been ostentatiously paraded as exam-
ples for imitation. Now, it is broadly asserted that the
writer had another and more sinister object. She is dis-
covered to be, if not absolutely a Romanist, as are most
of her friends and family connexions, at least a caviller at
the established order of things ; and she is accused of
having maltreated the very authorities to whom she refers
for her facts, iu order to exalt those personages who ad-
hered through good and evil to the pontifical creed and
formularies, and to depreciate the agents, objects, and
work of the Reformation. The popularitf of the lady's
literary effusions is decreasing accordingly ; and they
are likely to take rank, hereafter, with those romantic
biographies with which Dr. Newman and his immediate
friends sought to turn back their countrymen from the
noonday light of the Gospel, to the glimmering lamps of
a superstitious and twilight age. This is as it should be,
for that literature which professes to be History should
be truth ;—the wisdom of past ages teaching by experi-
ence. It should conform to the dictum of the inspired
writer of the book of Job, " Enquire, I pray thee, of the