The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-07-03 00:00:00

TUX PftOPRIST 1710,--Let us suppose ourselves ear•
tied back sixty years in the stream of time, and to live again,
the youthful subject of the young king, George 111. Let
us likewise imagine, that, in those days, the divine spirit of
prophecy had come upon us, unveiling to our sight the events
of the future. In seven years from this time, the British
empire shall be rent in twain (American war, in 1776). In
fifteen years men shall rise from the earth, and fly through
the air (invention of balloons, 1780). In twenty years the
French monarchy, the oldest that ever was, and now so
flourishing, shall come to an end. A virtuous prince (Louis
XVI. 1793), not yet king, shall in twenty-three years lay
down his life on the scaffold : his wife and sister shall share
the same fate. In those same days, news shall travel with
the speed of the wind, and what was done at mid-day shall
be known at the farthest bounds of the kingdom ere the set-
ting of the sun (the Telegraph, 1794). In twenty-six years
a conqueror shall arise (Bonaparte), who shall water his horses
in the Nile, the Jordan, the Tagus. and the Borysthenes.
This conqueror shall restore the chair of St. Peter, and
throw down what he had restored (dethronement of Pius
VII.) Finally, he whom the world could not contain, shall
die a captive on a rocky island (St. Helena), neither in Eu-
rope, Asia, Africa, nor America, but in the midst of the vast
ocean : a few feet of earth his empire, a willow his monu-
ment. In those days metals shall be found which float on
the water, and burn under it (sodium and potassium, disco-
vered by Sir Humphry Davy). Ships shall stem the
stormiest ocean without sails or oars (steam-ships). Car-
riages shall run without horses, with the speed of the
wind (locomotive engines.) (The ordinary speed of the
wind is 35 miles an hour; that of the engines on the Great
Western Railway is 39.) Men shall be conveyed from India
to the mighty Babylon in a month; from America in ten
days ; from one end of England to the other in eight hours.
Bridges shall hang by a chain over the sea, while roads shall
be made under it (the Menai Bridge and the Thames Tunnel.)
To those days of bloodshed shall succeed days of liberty. The
negro shall no longer be bought or sold. The slave shall be
set free. The Greek shall be freed from the Turk ; the ca-
tholic from the orangeman. The very beasts in those days
shall have laws to protect them. Those days shall be days
of great light. Men shall plough without horses (steam
plough ;) they shall spin without hands (power-looms ;) they
shall calculate by wheels (Babbage's machine ;) the sun shall
engrave for them (the Daguerrotype they shall write with
the lightning (electric telegraph.) One machine shall print
in one hour many thousand books, each of which shall take a
man many days to read; a man may buy a book for a penny ;
for a penny he may send it to the ends of the empire. They
shall read the rocks instead of a book (geology,) and decipher
the history of beings which lived and died ere man existed.
In the heavens new stars shall be discovered : some, sisters
of the earth ; some, brothers of the sun (the planets, five in
number, discovered since the American war; and the double
stars by Sir William Herschel ;) and of all the colours of the
rainbow. In those days, likewise, they shall read the Pyra-
mids (Young's and Champollion's discoveries.) They shall
find out the mouth of the Niger and the Magnetic Pole : the
- - . • - L- 1,.. hnt the WAIT /1
be happy.—Phrenir (Erliniurgli newspaper.)

THE Day. FOUNTAIN.—An American correspondent sends
us an account of the drying up of a fountain, called the
Silver Springs in Florida, which had never before failed, and.
was relied on by all living things in that region as exhaust-
less. Its name (he observes) was naturally suggested by its
bright aspect. "In the depth of the forest, and bordered
by a matted growth of live oak and other evergreens, a cir-
cular or oval hollow. about sixty yards in diameter, shelvedl
down through sand of perfect whiteness to its centre, where
the spring gushed upward so vigorously as to agitate the sur-
face some fathoms above, filling the entire basin with water
of delicious purity and coolness, through the diamond trans-
parency of which were seen fish of different kinds and various
colours, which, always refusing a bait, were believed by the
Indians to be enchanted or blessed spirits ; and under the
blaze of a tropical summer, a sensual fancy could hardly have
imaged, even in the land of flowers, a more delightful heaven
than the bath of the Silver Spring—perhaps the very foun-
tain of rejuvenescence, in search of which the romantic old
Spaniard found that immortality in death which he hoped to
enjoy in life. There was ample room and verge enough for
a little boat, in which visiters amused themselves floating
over the secluded little lake. On a visit, a few weeks since,
some officers found the spot deprived of half its beauty and
of all its wonted freshness. The silver sands were dry as
the desert; the spirit fish and the water had vanished; and
thickly strewn in the woods around, where the bleaching
skeletons and withering carcasses of horses, deer, wild cows,
and a variety of other animals, which had perished of thirst.
The dry basin somewhat resembled the crater of a volcano ;
for though there was not a drop of moisture, the boiling
motion was kept up in the sand, and on thrusting down the
foot or a stick, the gas escaped in puffs distinctly audible."—
Athenaum.