The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-12-27 00:00:00

Vortrp.

THE CHRISTMAS HOLLY.

The holly! the holly ! oh twine it with bay—
Come give the holly a song ;
For it helps to drive stern winter away,
With his garment so.sombre and and long.
It peeps througli thttrees with its berries of red,
And its leaves of fmrnish'd green,
When flowers arid thrlts have long been dead,

_
And not even the daisy is seen,
Then sing to the holly, toe Christmas holly,
That hangs o'er peasant and King;
While we laugh aul carouse 'neatb its glitering boughs,
To the Christmas holly we'll sing.
The gale may whistle, and frost may come
To fetter the gurgling rill;
The woods may be bare, and the warblers dumb—
But the holly is beautiful still.
In the revel and light of princely halls
The bright holly-branch is found ;
And its shadow falls on the lowliest walls,
While t brimming horn goes round.
Then drink to the holly, &c.

The ivy lives long, but its home must be
Where graves and ruins are spread;
There's beauty about the cypress tree,
But it flourishes near the deed :
The laurel the warrior's brow may wreathe,
But it tells of tears and blood;
I sing the holly, and who can breathe
Aught of that that is not good ?
The sing to the holly, &c.

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

We have to announce to-day the most numerously
attended Conservative celebration of the year. We are
obliged to use a compound phrase, because, in truth, the
celebration was not made at a single meeting, but by.
several meetings simultaneously collected in various
rooms through the town of Birmingham, no single room
in the town being sufficient conveniently to accommodate
the vast Conservative multide. We are informed that the
number who actually attended exceeded 3,000 ; and that,
but for the difficulty of procuring accommodation, and
the consequent apprehension that it could not be pro-
cured, the number would have been at least doubled.
For the particulars of. this most gratifying celebration
we must refer to the report which we have borrowed from
the Morning- Herald, and which, though more ample
and satisfactory in its details, rather falls short of, than
exceeds, the accounts we have hid from,-at least, a dozen
private correspondents. Some of our letters rate the
numbers present in the several Conservative stations at
more than 4000; all represent the whole body of Con-
servatives as animated with the noblest enthusiasm. If
we may trust to the evidence of this manifestation,
Messrs. Attwood, Scholefield, Edward Gibbon Wakefield,
and Muntz may spare themselves the trouble of specu-
lating upon the result of the next general election.
We are greatly pressed for room to-day, and, as in
such cases men are accustomed to pack heterogenous
articles in the same parcel upon a journey, we will yen-
taro to append to this glorious evidence of the improved
good sense of Birmingham a remark upon the singular
taciturnity of the liberal journals at the close of the
Common Council elections.
We remember, not very long -ago, many exulting
paragraphs put forward by our ministerial contemporaries
upon occasion of the return of a liberal town councilman
in the borough of Wallingford. Now we have all re-
spect for Wallingford on every account, but chiefly
because of the admirable representative whom it sends to
parliament—an able and accomplished gentleman, and a
member of the purest and best class of Conservative
commoners. But, with all
.our respect for Wallingford,
and all our gratitude for the return of such a member as
Mr. Blackstone, we must contend for the equality, at
least in importance, of the Common Council of London
with the Town Council of Wallingford; and we think
we may conclude that at the Common Council elections
Our contempories have found nothing to boast of, or they
would not be so meekly silent. They have preserved, it
is true, some of their friends in the Common Council,
but in no very brilliant positions. Tires, at the election
just beside us—the election for Farringdon Without—
we find Mr. Galloway the 13th of the 16 returned ;
Messrs. Wells and Williams, the most ultra-Radicals of
all the ultra•Rsdicals, rejected; and Mr. Tickner, who
declared that " the O'Connell connection stunk in his
nostrik," nearly heading the poll. This looks well in the
ward which once elected Mr. Vlraithinan as its alderman,
and replaced him by Mr. Harmer. We believe that all
the other wards have evinced a similar bias; and our
belief is certainly not a little confirmed by the silence of
the Whig-Radicals; but next week we may look a little
closer into this matter.
The fate of the Whig-Radical amendment, refusing
the rates in the parish of Lambeth, is another "sign of
the times." Mr. Quin, to whom not merely his parish,
but the Church of England and the whole Conservative
body are deeply indebted for a long series of important
services, put. the matter upon the right ground, when he
said that " the question is not whether to make a church-
rate, but whether the Established Church, as such, shall
or shall not be maintained." The effect was inevitable;
men were at once awakened to the real question, and
the rate was triumphantly carried. We advise that upon
future occasions of a rate disputed upon principle the'
Lae 'marked out by Mr. Quin be followed. Let, •of
Course, all jobbing of churchwardens and parish officers—
the most jobbing officials in the kingdom, because the
most plebeian and the least responsible—let all parochial
jobbing be vigilantly corrected, and then let it be urged
upon every churchman that " the question is not of a
church-rate, but whether the Established Church, as
Such, shall or shall .not be maintained." Let this be
done universally, and there will be an end of rate resist-
ance.—Standard.