The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-12-15 00:00:00

VARIETIES

Tat DEFINITE ARTICLE.—The mere substitution of the
definite for the indefinite article is capable of changing en-
tirely the meaning of a sentence. " That is a ticket "is the
assertion of a certain fact ; but " That is the ticket ! " means
something quite different.—The Comic English Grammar.
NEW MODE OF MARKING LlNEN.—Simply cover the
linen with a fine coating of pounded white sugar ; impress
upon it a stamp of iron very much heated, and in two seconds
the linen will be slightly but indelibly scorched—marked with
the. mark.

A prudent master advised his drunken servant to put by
his money for a rainy day. In a few weeks after the master
asked the man how much he had added to his store ? " Faith
nothing at all," said be, "it all went yesterday. I did as
you bid me ; it rained very hard yesterday, and it all went.',

No. 18, THE RULING NUMBER IN THE FATE OF NAPO-
LEON.—The circumstance of the Belle Poole frigate having
left St. Helena with the remains of Napoleon on the 18th of
October, has led to an article in a German paper, stating
several events of importance connected with the career of
the Emperor as having taken place on that day of the month.
The article names—the Revolution, which gave him the
consulate ; the battle of Torlina, on the Boresina ; the battle
of Leipsic ; the battle of Waterloo ; and his arrival at St.
Helena. _

—The Boston Notion, surpassing its contem-
poraries in magnitude, has surpassed them all in its extrava-
gant admiration of the dancing of Fanny Elssler ! Noticing
her appearance in the Tremont, the Notion remarks that it is
" no longer wonderful that she has been able in Europe to
make crowns her playthings, and thrones her footstools ! !"
She is then likened to "the spirit of dreams, sporting in reck-
less and unrestrained delight." " A cloud wandering be-
tween earth and heaven seems not more etherial." " The
sea-bird on the ocean wave moves not more lightly." Her
dancing is said to be " the result of mind chastened and dis-
ciplined by study !." And the Notion absolutely goes so
far as to intimate that the chief occupation of the tenants of
heaven will be such dancing as Fanny Elssler's !
THE ORIGIN OF PLOUGHING MATCHES.—The occupa-
tion of the ploughman is one upon which the very existence
of the whole human race depends ; shall he not then be con-
sidered respectable and worthy of support? " Let," says
the Maidstone Gazette, " the origin of ploughing matches
answer. An extensive farmer in Essex, not many years ago,
happened to lose his ploughman, and went to the overseers
to make enquiries for another. To his surprise, however,
he discovered that out of upwards of 60 men who were then
working on the roads, not one of them could hold a plough !
The magnitude of the existing evil soon induced several other
farmers to join him in a society, which offered premiums to
the best ploughman. This, we believe, was the small begin-
ning from which our present numerous and valuable agricul-
tural associations have arisen."
THE FORMATION OF PUBLIC COMPANIES IN THE UNIT-
ED STATES.—The President. steam -ship, brought us an
amusing specimen of the mode in which Trans-Atlantic spe-
culators attempt to procure capital in this country for the
formation of joint-stock companies in the United States. By
it we received a letter from a gentleman in New York, of
whose existence we had no previous knowledge, informing
us of all the preliminary steps he had taken to form one of
the most likely companies in that city ; how he had obtained
the best charter, induced men of the first-rate respectability
to join in the direction ; how he was determined to have
every dollar paid in cash, or bank and state stocks in sound
banks, whose stocks are above par; how he could command
the best business, and would pay the highest profits ; but
how unfortunately he could only procure one-half the capital
he required in his own country. In this predicament he
thought it possible—to use his own words, "we can render
each other some mutual assistance, either directly or indi-
rectly ;" we could draw " the attention of our capitalists to
the subject in a few lines ;" he would be all liberality. " If,"
said our correspondent, " upon examination of the subject,
you can, with the aid and influence of your friends, assist
Mr. —, the American consul at —, in forwarding our
views, and carrying out our plans in London, we shall be
disposed to pay you the liberal sum or bonus for your time
and trouble of 5000 dollars !" The proposal is certainly
liberal as well as characteristic ; but it should have been made
to a stock-jobber, and not to a journalist in England. We
suppose they manage these things better in the States.—
London Journal of Commerce.

A. NOTION !

A GHOST STORY.—In the hot weather of this last slimmer,
Lord Ashburnham's very old uncle, the Bishop of Chiches-
ter, was waked in his palace at four o'clock in the morning
by his bedchamber door being opened, when a female figure,
all in white, entered, and sat down near him. The prelate
who protests he was not frightened, said in a tone of autho-
rity, but not with the usual triple adjuration, " Who are
you ?" Not a word of reply : but the personage heaved a
profound sigh. The Bishop rang the bell; but the servants
were so sound asleep, that nobody heard him. He repeated
his question : still no answer ; but another deep sigh. Then
the apparition took some papers out of the ghost of its pocket,
and began to read them to itself. At last, when the Bishop
had continued to ring, and nobody to come, the sprectre rose
and departed as sedately as it had arrived. When the ser-
vants did at length appear, the Bishop cried, " Well! what
have you seen ?" " Seen my lord !" "
"man Ay," seen; or who,
what is the woman that has been here ?! my
lord!" (I believe one of the fellows smiled ; though, to do
her justice Lady Onslow did not say so.) In short when the
lord had related his vision, his domestics did humbly appre-
hend that his lordship had been dreaming: and so did his
whole family the next morning, for in this our day even a
bishop's household does not believe in ghosts : and yet it is
most certain that the good man had been in no dream, and
told nothing but what he had seen ; for, as the story circu-
lated, and diverted the ungodly at the prelate's expense, it
came at last to the ears of a keeper of a mad-house in the
diocese, who came and deposed, that a female lunatic under
his care had escaped from his custody, and finding the gate
of the palace open, had marched up to my lord's chamber.
The deponent further said, that his prisoner was always read-
ing a bundle of papers.—Horace Walpole.

ORIGIN OF THE TERM " PROTESTANT."—The name of
Protestant took its rise from the following circumstance. At
a diet of the princes of the empire, held in Spires, in Ger-
many, in the year 1520, it was decreed by the majority there
present, " that in those places where the edict of Worms had
been received it would be lawful for no one to change his
religion •, that in those places where the new religion (i. e.
the Lutheran) was exercised, it should be mainthined till the
meeting; of a council, if the ancient (the Popish) raligion
could not be restored without danger of disturbing the public
peace ; but that the mass should not be abolished, nor the
Catholics hindered from the free exercise of their religion,
nor any one of them allowed to embrace Lutheranism ; that
the Sacramentarians should be banished the empire ; that
the Anabaptists should be punished with death ; and that no
preachers should explain the gospel in any other sense than
what was approved by the church." Six princes of the
empire entered their protest against this decree, viz., John,
elector of Saxony ; George, margrave of Bradenburgh ;
Erxest and Francis, dukes of Brunswick and Lunenburg ;
Philip, landgrave of Hesse ; and Wolfgang, prince of Anhalt :
to these were joined the following free cities of Germany,
viz., Strasburgh, IsT orimburg, Ulm, Constance, Lindaw,
Memmingen' Kempen, Nordlingen, Halibrun, Reutlingen,
hne, St. Gall, Weissenburg, and Windscheim ; and from
this protest the Lutherans first obtained the name of Pro-
testants, which was afterwards given in common to all who
separated themselves from the tyrannical and idolatrous
practices of the church of Rome.
SACK OF A VILLAGE BY AN EGYPTIAN ARMY.—As soon
as the general and his suite had disappeared, I and my
comrades, being resolved to see something, turned our
horses' heads towards the village whose smoking ruins the
general had pointed out. It lay about a mile and a half
from his tent. As we approached, the wind, which blew
from it, seemed actually laden with the foeter of half-burned
carcasses. It was an odour perfectly unlike any I bad ever
before encountered. There was no escaping from it. It
clung to one's nostrils, clothes, every thing. But we had
short time for reflection, for we were soon on the spot. A
broken part of the rampart served us as a gate, through
which our horses clambered with some little difficulty.
What a terrible sight burst upon our eyes ! immediately
before us were a party of Nubians rooting amongst the rub-
bish and yet burning vvallsl still fringed by the half-expiring
flames. They were delving for treasure concealed by the
unfortunate inhabitants, nearly a dozen of whnnl lay dead at
the entrance of the breach, which they had died in defend-
ing. The appearance of the bodies was horrible in the last
degree. Most of them seemed literally to have been burnt
to death. There having been no outlet for escape which
was not taken possession of by the invaders, the flames
and heat of the adjoining houses, when fired, must
have consigned them to the most painful and torturing
end. Filled with disgust, I was urging my horse for-
ward, when the noble animal, with the instinct of his race,
refused to budge ; and on looking down I saw, stretched
across the narrow path, the body of a young woman, clasp-
ing an infant to her breast. Her clothes were still burning;
add as the offensive exhalations rose from her body, I either
heard, or fancied that I heard, the hissing noise of the flames,
as they licked up the juices thai oozed through the ppres in
the body. Even there—there, of the midst of all that is
horrible or devilish—the bland smile of infancy seemed yet
to linger on the face of the infant, which in the struggles of
death she had clasped to her bosom with all that frightful
energy which a mother alone can feel. Yet one of the feet
of the child had been burnt off. It must surely have been
freed from all mortal suffering ere that terrible agony could
have reached it, for its
face was as the face of slumber.—
From Fraser's Magazine for December.
GLACIERS IN SCOTLAND.—Dr. Buckland has stepped
forward to support his friend, M. Agassiz, with respect to the
theory of the latter on the existence of glaciers in Scotland.
At the Geological Society, London, the doctor lately read a
paper to this effect. He seems to think that glaciers may
even have covered the Calton Hill and the Castle Hill of
Edinburgh ! They existed in all parts of Scotland •, and he
had observed grooves and striae on the surface of granite
rocks near the east base of Ben Nevis, and also near the base
of Ben Wevis, where there is a high ridge of gravel, arranged
obliquely across the valley, and not explicable by any action
of water. These phenomena, he is convinced, since his ex-
amination of the Swiss glaciers, may, be explained by the ac-
tion of ice upon rocks. It is impossible, Dr. Bucklaud ob-
serves, to refer the striae to the action of pebbles set in motion
by water, because fragments of stone moving in a fluid can't
produce continuous parallel lines ; and because, if they could
produce them, the striae would be parallel to the direction of
the current. The vast longitudinal and insulated ridges of
gravel, extending two or three miles up the valley east of
Blair Gowrie, and the transverse barriers, which ' form a se-
ries of small lakes on its west, in the valley Lnhanburn, Dr.
Buckland considers to be moraines ; also the lofty mounds
composing the ornamental grounds adjacent to Dunkeld
Castle, the detritus which covers the left flank of the Tay,

along a great part of the road from Dunkeld to Logierait, the
left flank of the Tumel valley from Logierait to Killiecrankie,
and the left flank of the Garry, from Killiecrankie to Blair
Athol ; likewise the vast congeries of gravel and boulders
lodged in the shoulders of the mountain opposite the gorge
of the Tumel, and accumulated, the author believes, by gla-
ciers which descended the valley of the Tumel, from the north
side of Schiehallion, and the mountains around Loch Ran-
noch. This elevated mass of moraines, and detritus of mo-
raines, in the lateral valley of the Tumel, Dr. Buckland con-
ceives was formed across the longitudinal valley of the Garry,
in the same manner that modern glaciers of the Alps, as in
the case of the Val de Bagne, occasionally descend from the
transverse across the longitudinal valleys. The climate of
Scotland must then have been cold indeed !—lnverness Cou-
rier.

THE WOUPED SNIPE.—When snipes congregate in
,g wisps" N
they are always wild ; but if they rise in flocks they
never keep together till they alight. I have seen fifty rise at
once from a piece of bog of half an acre, and disperse them-
selves over twenty times that space. Ilrider such circum-
stances, if you can mark them they will be certain to lie—a
good dog is then indispensable, one, of course, that is not
afraid of water. On one occasion last season I shot and
wounded a snipe in a favourite bog, but did not at the time
bag him. The next time I beat the same spot the wounded
snipe rose with the cry of " scape," repeated many times
the moment I put my head over the hedge surrounding the
bog, and every other snipe went with him. This happened
five or six times : the wounded snipe was so wary that I could
not get near to him, and he invariably so alarmed his com-
panions, that, in a place where I had generally eight or ten
or more shots whenever I visited it while he remained 1 sel-
dom got one. He was killed at last, by my using a wire
cartridge in each barrel, and firing them at almost the same
moment at a long distance. The snipes lay afterwards in
the bog as they had done previous to this occurrence. On
examining the bird, I found that the three outermost wing
feathers had been separated from the rest, and hung by the
skin.; it had not pined ; on the contrary, was fatter than
usual. Its fight was steady and in a direct line, like that of
a partridge, but ',lopsidedafter being first shot at.—Old
Sporting Magazine for' December.