The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-12-27 00:00:00

" HIGH STYLE " IN ILLNESS.—Miss Cordelia used at
one time to come to us, and tell us she had a " pain in
her chest " so often that Ethelinda and I began to be
uneasy, and questioned Mr. Turner to know if her
mother had died of consumption ; and many a good pot
of currant jelly have I given her, and only made her pain
at the chest worse, for—would you belive it P—Miss
Morton told her never to say she had got a stomach-ache,
for that it as not proper to say so. I had heard it called
by a wors ame still in my youth, and so had Ethelinda ;
and we sat and wondered to ourselves how it was that
some kinds of pain were genteel and others were not. I
said that old families, like the Mortons, generally thought
it showed good blood to have their complaints as high in
the body as they could—brain-fevers and bead-aches had
a better sound, and did, perhaps, belong more to the aris-
tocracy.—Dickens's "Household Words."

SIIELL-CAMEO PORTILAITS.—Few persons who go to
Rome return without bringing with them some of the
beautiful shell cameos which are produced there, and it has
often been asked why it is that artistic talent has not been
applied in this direction in England, considering that the
shell out of which they are cut is as readily obtainable
here as in Italy. " Cameo," we may remind the reader'
was originally the designation of a peculiar sort of oynx,
in which figures and representations of landscapes ap-
peared naturally. It has come to be applied to all gems
or stones in which the object is worked in relievo, in oppo-
sition to "intaglio," in which the subject is indented.
The ancients have left us most marvellous works of this kind,
but the time they occupy, the increased value of artistic
labour, and the consequent great cost of what can be ap-
preciated only by a few, have led to the disuse of the art.
The working of shell cameos is a very different matter, so
far as regards the mechanical portion of it, and might be
pursued with success, we should imagine, especially
by ladies.

A PRACTICAL APPLICATION.—A lay preacher, whose
darksome daily labour brings light and warmth to our
firesides, and whose Sabbath endeavours are directed to the
enlightening of our heads and the warming of our hearts,
had the worldly misfortune, no long time ago, to be com-
pelled to dispose of a sorry old horse. To sell him in the
ordinary way would have been unproductive nobody
would have given twenty shillings for the brute ;—so the
owner, tempted by the love of lucre, made him the subject
of a lottery, and, to the scandal of many of his admirers,
realised a rare price by a profane raffle. On the following
Sunday, he was edifying his hearers with a discourse on
the Prodigal Son—on whom he bore very hardly; and
when he had pictured him in all his wickedness and
worthlessness, he asked his congregation how the profli-
gate's father was to dispose of so good-for-nothing a
wretch ? " Why," cried one of his hearers, "raffle him to
be sure !" The poor pitman was struck dumb.—Gates-
head Observer.

POPULATION OP NEW YORIC.—We mean no disrespect
to the miraculous city of New York when we say that it
gives by no means a fair representation of an American
capital ; at least one-third of its population is the spawn
of other lands, for to every three natives you have at least
one foreigner, the predominance of those sons of emigra-
tion being Irish and German. The census of New York,
if strictly scrutinised, would be found to consist of human
contributions from every part of the habitable globe, who
tend much to disfigure the genuine chameter of the
natives. This is not so much the case in any other State
of the Union, though we by no means wish it to be in-
ferred that every portion of it is not, to a certain extent,
so inflicted. In New England Nis clearly less cEssernible ;
and the genuine American character is nowhereso conspi-
cuous as in the peculiar realm of Yankeeism. We are per-
fectly well aware that a New Yorker would feel himself
regularly insulted if you were to designate him as a
Yankee, and so would a Yankee if you called him anything
else.—Bunn's Old and New England.
AMERICAN PRONUNCIATION.—Noah Webster, in the
preface to his own " Dictionary of the English Language;"
thoroughly disparaFT Dr. Johnson's, and most Americans
are of Webster's opinion. When Stuart,their distinguishe&
painter, was introduced to the leviathan of our literature;
Johnson, surprised at his speaking such good English;.
asked him where he learnt it ? and Stewart's cool reply
was "Not in your Dictionary." In addition to the use of
words which are only to be found in their own vocabulary,
they have notions of prontmciation that are peculiarly
their private property; It is not the fashion with us, as we
have already observed, to call "beauty" booty, nor " duty"
dooty, nor " due" doe ; neither would the adoption tew
for " too," nor of noes for "news," nor of en-gine for
" engine," nor of gene-ine for " genuine," of deefe for
" deaf," of bnquirry for "enquiry," and countless similar
expressions, slip very glibry off oar tongues; but if you
only ask an American why he so pronounces them, he will
tell you that he believes it to be the right way; and, if
you remind him that there' are no such words, as he occa-
sionally uses, in the English language, his answer will be,
" There mayn't be in yours, but there are in ours I"
Affred Bunn's Old England' and New England.
CIIARACTER 07 A Thur CIIERGYMAN.—A clergyman,
by his character and design of life, ought to be a man
separated from the, cares and concerns, of this world, and
j dedicated to the study and meditation of divine matters ;
whose conversation ought to be a pattern for others, a
constant preaching to his people•; who ought to offer up
the prayer of the people• in their name, and as their
mouth, to God ; who'ought to be praying and interceding
for them in secret, as well as, officiating among them in
public ; who ought to be distributing- among them the
sacred rites, which are the badges, the uniOn, and the sup-
ports of Christians. He ought to• adinonish, to reprove,
and to comfort them; not only by his. general doctrine in
his sermons, but from house to house; that so he may do
these things more homeand• effectually than can be done
from the pulpit. Hers to. watch over their souls, to keep
them from error, and to alarm them out of their sins, by
giv'ng them warninir of' the• indginelabs of God • to visit
vtiesick, and tuprepare themptor the judgment and life to
come Above all: studies, he' ought to apply
himself to understand the.lrolY Scriptures-aright ; to have
his memory well furnished' that way, that so upon all oc-
casions he may be able to enforce what he says out of them,
and so be an able• minister of the New Testament.—
Bishop B'urners Discourse-of the Pastonul Care.
TITE CREOLES or TIDE WEST INDIES,—The variations
are startling; A soft bliv, eye, with long- black lashes,
such as I saw yesterday over• a pair of tawny lips eurved
with the Alhambra's own model of Castilian scorn, looks
strangely contradictory ; and the singular. persistence of
Nature preserving faultless teeth and raven hair to the
dark Hebe; whatever other-variation of feature she may
have, makes them all comparatively beautiful. We think
we must go to Athens,or-Napoli to see the. straight Gre-
cian nose; with its thin nostril, in perfeotion ; but no
sculptor could bettermould one, than from the models of
tan and orange which heseould beckon to Mtn from every
corner of St. Thomas. The short upper- lip of high de-
scent, and the delicate small oval of the shin are equally
common. And these gifts, priceless to princesses, are held
in careless unconsciousness by fruit girls, subject to none
but municipal laws—tile Mustis and Pustis, whose merry
eyes never saw alphabet, and whose brown ancles never
knew stocking. * * Every female- is trained from
childhood' to carry burthens upon the head. From a tea-
cup to a water-pail, everything is placed on the small
cushion at the top of the skull. The absolute erectness
of figure necessary to keep the weight where it can best
be supported by the spine, the nice balance of gait to poise
it without being steadied by the hands,,the throwing for-
ward of the chest with the posture and effort that are
demanded, and the deliberateness with which all turning
round or looking- aside must be done„combine to form an
habitual demeanour and gait of peculiar loftiness and
stateliness. A prouder-looking procession than the
market-women, as they come and go> with their baskets
on their head, across the square below our veranda, could
not be found in the world. They look incapable of being
u into a quick movement - and are, without ex-
ception,sr6sedqueenly of mien—though it come, strangely
enough, front carrying the burthens, of the slave.—N. P.
Willis's T) .s to the Tropics.