The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-12-06 00:00:00

ADMINISTRATION OF PAROCHIAL RELIEF.

Poverty and destitution must bring into the dwellings 1
of the poor, pestilence or disease of some sort, before
they can be found to merit help from the Unions. It is
one great defect in our poor-law system, that the honest
poor man in health is left almost to starve, or be driven
to commit crime in order to obtain food to satisfy nature,
not only for himself but for his poor wife and dependent
children. We are willing to admit that the poor working
man is often improvident when in full employ, and neglects
that, which the ant and the bee are observed to do, viz.,
provide for the necessities of the winter season ; but we
ought to look with Christian charity on the weakness and
follies of our poorer and more ignorant fellow-creatures.
The present mode of administering relief to the poor is
very objectionable in many points of view, too frequently
It offering, as it were, a bonus to poverty. It is to be
lieMititalsgiti of vice. Poor iniaanaeirien'Ottalgybpertntled
arguments to prove this assertion ; to a reflecting mind,
and to one who can trace effects from causes, this state-
ment is self-evident. Suffice it to say, that the fact of a
person being in a state to entitle him to parochial relief,
is considered degrading to all the fine feelings of human
nature : for one of the effects of receiving such relief, and
in such a manner, is the loss of self-respect ; which is a
great cause of crime. A certain degree of reasonable
pride and independence of thought and action tend to
elevate the character, for there is an instinctive feeling in
human nature to desire to be thought good and respect-
able-7hence the love of dress, and the wish to have good
furniture and a clean household. We knew an instance
of a woman having a large family and a drunken husband,
all living together in two small rooms. She was very
industrious, and a good needle-woman ; by her exertions
she maintained herself and children. When brought to
a state of starvation, she opened her heart and related
her troubles ; she was advised to put her children in the
Union Workhouse. She said, " What, put them in that
den of infamy ! One of my girls was there for a short
time, and from what she saw, and what she related to
me, I would rather see them dead, than go to such a
school of vice and wickedness.

The object of the author of this very unpre-
tending volume is to lay bare the immoral and
irreligious maladies which in their more aggra-
vated forms afflict society. The purpose of his
exposition is salutary. That he is not the only
labourer in the field is true, and that truth is at
once a source of grief and of rejoicing—of grief,
that the malady is so extensive and inveterate as
to require, while it defies, so many goodly efforts
for its cure—of rejoicing, that, thankless as the
task is, there is still so numerous a body of good
and enlightened men to grapple with and combat
its loathsomeness.

The Christian Lift : a Manual of Sacred Verse.
By Robert Montgomery, M.A. Sixth Edition.
London : Rivingtons.
This very handsome little volumes is, indeed,
what its title professes it should be—a manual of
sacred verse. The writings of this rev. gentleman
have been long extensively known to the religious
public ; and the fact that this volume has reached
its sixth edition speaks more loudly in its favour,
and of the author's popularity, than the most
laboured panegyric we could bestow. The volume
is dedicated by permission to Her Majesty, and
contains a collection of Mr. Montgomery's smaller
pieces, with which most of our readers must be
familiar. That he is a more zealous Churchman
than an obsequious courtier, will be obvious from
the lines with which he ends his collection. They
are from a poem entitled

" GOD SAVE THE cuuncrr."
God save the Church and save the Queen !
Mitre and Throne have ever been
To weal and woe alike related—
By Truth revered, and Treason hated.
" God save the Church 1." be this our cry
Both while we live and when we die;
For, rail her foemen as they will,
The Church is England's glory still !
The above quotation we think will be readily
admitted as no very tame conclusion to a volume
dedicated by permission to Her Majesty.

The Human Hair Popularly and Physiologically
Considered. By Alex. Rowland.
Under this title we have a book full of interest
and amusement. This work of Mr. Rowland is an
important addition to our very limited ethnological
literature. It also treats the physiology of this
portion of the human cuticle in a superior manner,
the microscopical plates and descriptions being in
the most masterly style. An abundance of interest-
ing anecdotes relative to the hair are scattered
through the book. The work contains the only
rational rules for managing the hair we ever recol-
lect to have seen in print.

The Band of Hope Almanaek.
Among the several sheet almanacks which have
reached us, we give preference of commendation to
this one, chiefly because it is made an instrument
in the attempt to promote the moral improvement
of the humbler classes. For aiding in such a com-
mendable effort, it is in all respects well adapted,
and is, moreover, so tastefully got up that it will
form an appropriate adornment to the cottage-
parlour.

THE LIVERPOOL SrNDARD, AND GENERAL COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER.

Jr WAS ONE of the wisest of Dr. Johnson's many wise
sayings, that " he who waits to do a great deal of good at
once, will never do anything."
WE REALLY CANNOT profess to understand the mys-
tery of spirit-rapping—but we have seen several well
authenticated cases in which a devotion to spirits has
caused many to be without a rap.
A NEW DEFINITION.—When an Irish girl was asked,
a few days ago, where her mistress was, who had gone to
a water-cure establishment, she replied that her ladyship
had "gone to soak."
A GENTLEMAN in an omnibus has always two difficul-
ties before him, if he do not assist ladies in and out, he
is called a brute; if he do, he is suspected to be a pick-
pocket.
A DEFINITION.—" Bill Tomkins, what is a widder ?"
" A widder is a married woman that ha'nt got no husband,
'cause he's dead." " Very well, what is a widderer ?" " A
widderer is a man that runs arter widders." " Well, Bill,
that's not exactly according to Johnson, but it will do."
THE EMPEROR. NICHOLkSIS MODE or LIFE.—The
Emperor Nicholas leads a life of the most feverish activity.
He rides, walks, holds a review, superintends a sham fight,
goes on the water, gives af'te, exercises a navy, and all in
the same day. He travels incessantly, passes over at least
fifteen hundred leagues every season, and all those who are
attached to his person have 'to share his fatigue. The
empress, who will follow him everywhere, loses her health
by doing so; and it is said that the young Grand Duke
Constantine will fall a victim to the mode of travelling
adopted by his father. Nichogl:sesisinin
atnheohpeabnit
eaiof
eterahev.e—l-
lAindmgrinaEnotpGlueibx:s
ssstnh,saFntihßseesvreeznvair and the Sultan.
leaeTomr.
—Perhaps it may inte-
rest the future author of the Life of the Duke of Wel-
lington to be informed of his first victory. It was not in
India, as commonly supposed, but on Donnybrook-road,
near Dublin, that his first laurels were won. This appears
from the Freeman's Journal, Sept. 18, 1789, where we
learn that, in consequence of a wager between him and
Mr. Whaley, of 150 guineas, the Hon. Arthur Wellesley
walked from the five-mile stone on Donnybrook-road to
the corner of the circular road in Leeson-street, in fifty-
five minutes, and that a number of gentlemen rode with
the walker, whose horses he kept in a tolerably smart trot.
When it is recollected that those were Irish miles, even
deducting the distance from Leeson-street to the Castle,
where the original measurements were made, this walk
must be computed at nearly six English miles. Oxicuon.
—Notes and Queries.

A WORD ON COUGHING IN CHURCH .—We copy the
following from an autobiography which Hugh Millar is
now publishing in the Witness :—" A simple incident
which occurred during my first morning attendance at
Dr. M'Crie's chapel strongly impressed me with a sense of
his sagacity. There was a great deal of coughing in the
place, the effects of a recent change of weather, and the
doctor, whose voice was not a strong one, and who seemed
somewhat annoyed by the ruthless interruptions, stopping
suddenly short in the middle of his argument, made a
dead pause. When people are taken greatly by surprise
they cease to cough —a circumstance on which he had
evidently calculated. Every eye was now turned towards
him, and for a full minute so dead was the silence that one
might have heard a pin drop. ' I see, my friends,' said
the doctor, resuming his speech, with a suppressed smile,
`I see you can be all quiet enough when I am quiet.'
There was not a little genuine strategy in the rebuke;
And, as cough lies a good deal more under the influence of
the will than most coughers suppose, such was its effect,
that during the rest of the day there was not a tithe of
the previous coughing."
THE FAVOURITE DISHES or AUTITORS.—Dr. Rondelet,
wetdd profusion
lle o
inf shrimpbed
an ancient writer on fishes, was so fond of figs, that he
died of a surfeit occasioned by eating them to excess. In
a letter to a friend, Dr. Parr confesses his love of " hot
sauce." Pope,
for days at Lord
Bolingbroke's, unless he was told that there were stewed
who
eled was lobsters,e epicure, with
lampreys for dinner, when he arose instantly and came
down to table. A gentleman treated Dr. Johnson to new
honey and clouted cream, of which he ate so largely, that
a
his entertainer became alarmed. All his lifetime Dr.
Johnson had a voracious attachment for a leg of mutton.
" At my aunt Ford's," says he, " I ate so much of a boiled
leg of mutton, that she used to talk of it. My mother,
who was affected by little things, told me seriously that
it would hardly ever be forgotten." Dryden, writing in
1699 to a lady, declining her invitation to a handsome
supper, says :—" If beggars might be choosers, a chine of
honest bacon would please my appetite more than all the
marrow puddings, fn. I like them better plain, having a
very vulgar stomach." Baron Maseres, who lived to the
age of ninety, used to go home one day in every week
without any dinner, eating only a round of dry toast at
tea. Aristotle, like a true poet, seems to have literally
feasted on fancy. Few could live more frugally ; in one
of his poems, he says of himself, "that he was a fit per-
son to have lived in the world when acorns were the food
of men."—Salads for the Solitary.
A CoAsr SCENE.—A footpath leading over the hill led
them to the top of the promontory, covered with the finest
green sward, and giving a view of the open ocean. To the
right, lay distant Flambro' Head; to the left, Scarborough,
with its castle and its bold lofty headland, and the mass of
red-tiled houses lying clear, as if only some half-mile dis-
tant. But on the sunny sea vast numbers of vessels
stretched from horizon to horizon ; all, in fact, traversing
that great marine highway from Scotland to London
which is perpetually crowded with a nation's traffic ; mer-
chant vessels ; whole fleets of colliers bearing coals from
Newcastle to the metropolis, or returning for more;
steamers bravely bearing onwards, and leaving their long
lines of smoke behind them; with the white sails of almost
myriads of those butterflies of the ocean, fishing cobles,
gleaming bright and sunny on all parts, near and remote,
of the ocean plain. But great as was this view, the one
directly under them was not less impressive. There the
sea was raging against the rocks which rose to. a consider-
able altitude. North and south extended the jagged and
imi.,,t-ca line of precrpitous cliff, rent and ravaged by the
storms of ages. 4 narrow neck of land ran out just before
them, to which they advanced, and stood aloft, as it were,
in the centre of this really sublime scene. On one hand
the sea was boiling and sweeping in milky whiteness
through a great cavern; on the other hand rushing like
an assailing army into a circular abyss, which it had worn
in the precipitous cliff, and leaping all foam on the huge
ledges of projecting rocks, and plunging back in fury into
the boiling deep. The whole mass of waters was in a
motion, like some vast and restless living thing, swelling,
eddying, and moaning with a wild melancholy, or thunder-
ing as with a thousand cannon on the dark yellow walls
of cavernous rock.—Howtit's Stories of English and
Foreign Life.
Tits ANCIENT BUILDINGS OF GREECE AND ROME
we may class with great propriety in three successive
orders. First, we have those ancient structures denomi-
nated Cyclopean, from the mythus of Homer, who attri-
butes their foundation to the sons of Neptune. These
structures consist of vast and irregular masses of unhewn
stones, put together without cement or mortar of any
kind. The ruins of the citadels of Tyrus and Mycenie,
which are of this description, have remained in their pre-
sent condition for 3,000 years, and present the most per-
fect specimens yet existing of the military architecture of
the heroic ages. The next improvement on this method
has been termed the Irregular Polygonal structure, from
the circumstance that the stones are no longer unhewn,
although no attempt is made to reduce them to the square.
These lateral plain sides are sufficiently smooth to form a
close joint, and the angular proportions of the one stone
fitted the angular recesses of the other; and their faces
are cut so as to give the whole wall a tolerably smooth
surface. Examples of this second class are common in
the Etruscan tombs, where, says Mr. Dennis, these blocks
are arranged so as to present their ends and sides in alter-
nate corners, in that style which builders denominate
Old English Bond, or more vulgarly, "headers and
stretchers." The same description of masonry was used
extensively by the Romans, and seemed to have reached
its perfection in the forum of Augustus. In the third
species of mural building the blocks are laid in horizontal
courses, but sometimes so irregular that none of the hori-
zontal joints are continuous, but all the joints are accu-
rately squared and fitted. Example of this kind of
masonry is to be found in the celebrated Lion Gate of the
ancient fortress of Mycenm.—The Builder.
THE THREE LITTLE ROYAL LETTER-WRITERS.—It
seems but the other day that there were three little prin-
cess destined to support a large part of the royalty of
Europe—little girls who wrote letters to each other-1
letters which all English children would have liked to
see, in order to know how people felt who were to sit
upon thrones. There was the Brazilian princess, who
had a cruel uncle ; and the Queen of Spain, who had a
cruel uncle, too ; and our own princess, Victoria, who was
thought at one time to have had a disloyal uncle also, but
who was too well guarded and too much beloved to be in
any danger from him. There were French princesses also,
who were correspondents of the three queens—the Prin-
cess Marie, who won all hearts by her virtue, as infallibly
as she commanded respect by her talents ; and her sister,
the late Queen of the Belgians. It was a remarkable
group ; and so it remains in our memories. And where
are they now ? The Princess Marie of Orleans died first ;
and the universal regret for her loss was unmingled with
any of the bitterness of disrespect. Some years later died
the Queen of the Belgians ; and her children are already
preparing for sovereignty and its perpetuation. A worse
fate than death seemed to have overtaken the two Ibe-
rian princesses—the peril of the loyalty of their people,
and the loss of the interest of Europe. Remaining chil-
dren in temper and understanding, while charged with
the duties of mature life, and with the very heaviest of
human responsibilities, they have not been equal to their
position and their fortune, and have suffered much them-
selves, and inflicted much suffering on others. What a
contrast is all this with the lot of the one remaining mem-
ber of the group ! . How unlike in every way is the des-
tiny of our English princess to that of all the rest !
Living in the prospect of long and happy years, blest in
her domestic relations, honoured and loved without doubt
or question by all her people, and safe while every throne
in Europe but her own is shaken, how would she and the
young correspondents of her youth have wondered if her
lot could have been foreshown with theirs ! We may
even say, knowing her kindly heart, how aghast would
she have been as well as they ! The Queen of Portugal
lost the husband she really loved after a marriage of a
few weeks. The Queen of Spain was violently separated
from the lover whom she preferred, and married in a way
which will excite the disgust and horror of generations to
come ; and the consequence is a present position which is
painful and precarious beyond all others, even in these
days of jeopardy of thrones. Our Queen married as she
chose, and, as far as regards the qualities of her husband,
she married to the lasting satisfaction of her people. The
natural consequence has followed—that no word of ques-
tion of the soundness of the royal home, and its domestic
peace, is ever uttered or imagined. It is the constitutional
government of Great Britain that, even imperfectly admi-
nistered, has been the saf
eguard of the sovereign full as
much as of the people; and it follows that, as perils are
renewed and multiplied abroad, the policy and duty of
sovereign and people at home is to advance the represen-
tative principle and improve the whole administration of
government, so as to obtain perpetually further security
and a higher welfare. This is what the Queen and her
husband have to impress upon their children, and to show
us more and more that they fully understand. Thus, and
thus only, while in Portugal a queen goes comparatively
unmourned to the grave, and in Spain slander besets the
throne, and loyalty almost deserts. it, the royal line of
England may continue to extend, till, possibly, it may be
the last, and some day or, other in a distant future, close,
in the history of the world, the chapter of kings.—. Daily
News.