The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-12-07 00:00:00

and fears, with tr
few extracts :

This sarr

and fur

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from an egg se
to be hammer
tumult like tl

for npro.._ , -
for noise, and ti
of " Nabachodot— r-
-
Now, this same theatre isexactl,
d'Angleterre, so that when, by dint of time, patience, and

,eir grea

'rent Of the H

a partial dulness of the acoustic nerves, we were getting
used to steam-factories and shot-foundries, down comes
Verdi on us, with din and clangour to which even the
works of Seraing were like an JEolian harp ! Now, of all
the Pretenders o these days of especial humbug, with our
" Long ranges," Morison's pills, and Louis Napoleons,
I don't think you could show me a greater charlatan than
this same Verdi. I don't pretend to know a bit about
music ; I only knew two tunes all my life, " God save
the King" and " Patrick's Day," and these only because
we used to stand up and take off our hats to them in the
Dublin Theatre ; but modulated, soft sounds have always
had their effect on me, and I never heard a country girl
singing as she beetled her linen beside a river's bank, or
listened to the deep bay of an old fox-bound of a clear
winter's morning, without feeling that there was some-
thing inside of me. somewhere that responded to the note.
But this fellow is all marrow-bones and cleavers ! Trum-
pets, drums, big fiddles, and bassoons, are the softest
things he knows. I take it as a providential thing that
his music cracks every voice after one season ; for before
long there will be nobody left in Europe to sing him, ex-
cept it be the steam-whistle of an express train ! But we
live in strange times, Tom, that's the fact. The day was
when our operas used to he taken from real life—or what
authors and poets thought was real life. We had the
" Maid of the Mill," and the " Duenna," and " Love
in a Village," and a score more, pleasant and amusing
enough ; and except that there was nothing wrong or in-
comprehensible in them. perhaps they might have stood
their ground. There was the great failure. Tom ; every-
body could understand them, and nobody need be shocked.
Now, the taste is, puzzle a great many, and shock every
A grand opera now must be from the Old Testa-

Not even drums and kettledrums would save
you, if you haven't Moses or Melchizedek to sit down in
white raiment, and see some twenty damsels, with petti-
coats about as long as a lace ruffle, capering and attitu-
dinizing in a way that ought to make even a Patriarch
blush. Now, this is all wrong, Tom. The public might
be amused without profanity, and even the most inveterate
lover of dancing needn't ask David and Uriah for a pas
de deux. And now, let me remark to you, that a great
deal of that so much vaunted social liberty abroad, is nei-
ther more nor less than this same latitude with respect
to any and everything. We at home were bred up to be-
lieve that good breeding mainly consists in a certain re-
serve—a cautious deference not alone for the feelings, but
even the prejudices of others; that you have no right to
offend your neighbour's sense of respect for fifty things
that you held cheaply yourself. They reverse all this,
here. Everybody talks to you, of yourself, aye, and of
your wife and your mother, as frankly as though they
were characters of the Heathen Mythology; they treat
I you like a third party in these discussions, and very likely
it was a practice of this kind originally suggested the
phrase of being " beside oneself."

TRAVELLING EXTRAVAGANCE

You tell me that I'm not to expect any more money till
November ; but you forgot to tell me how I'm to live
without it. We compromised with the Jews for fifteen
hundred. Our " Extraordinaries," as the officials would
call them, amounted to three more; so that, taking all
things into account, we have been living since April last
at a trifle more than eleven thousand a-year. It's a mercy
that when they sell a man out by the Encumbered Estates
Court, they ask no impertinent questions about how he
contracted his debts. I'd cut a sorry figure under such
an examination.