The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-03-21 00:00:00

VARIETIES.

Ax ORLEANS paper says that it requires three persons
to start a business firm there ; one to die with yellow
fever, one to get killed in'a duel, and a third to wind up
the partnership business.

A PROMISE,—A promise should be given with caution
and kept with care. A promise should be made by the
heart and remembered by the head. A promise is the
offspring of the intention, and should be nurtured by the
recollection. A promise and its performance should, like
the scales of a true balance, always present a mutual
adjustment. A promise delayed is justice deferred. A
promise neglected is an untruth told. A promise attended
to is a debt settled.
LADIES AT Cnuncn.—Alphonse Karr says :—" I am
often struck with the power of memory exhibited by ladies
who go to church regularly on Sundays and week days.
Is it not, indeed, something superhuman which enables a
woman, after she has passed an hour and a half in church,
without even lifting her eyes from her prayer-book, or
letting them wander from the preacher, to describe to
you the toilette of every lady in church, without omitting
the smallest details ? She will not forget either their
gloves or their collars ; she will never give to one lady the
lace or ornaments of another. Not only does this require
great perfection in the powers of memory, but a singular
and phenomenal development of the sight, for ladies who
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turning her head, and without having exhibited a sign of
being engaged with anything but—her prayers."
THE FIRST TIME IN LOVE.—A youth who is in love
for the first time is wonderfully romantic. The beloved
object is far above ordinary mortality, and he could do
more than humanity ever did before for her sake. He half
wishes that somebody would run away with her, that he
might ride upon a black horse, draw a pistol, and shoot
the villains, and carry her back all in tears, fainting and
languishing upon his shoulder ; and that her father would
then take his hand in both of his, and make some elegant
remarks. He cannot think anything more joyous than to
live with her in some old castle, very far away from steam-
boats and post-offices ; and pick geraniums for her hair,
and read poetry with her under the shade of very dark
ivy or vines. And he Would have a charming boudoir in
some corner of the old ruin, with a harp in it, and books
bound in gilt, with cupids on the cover, and a fairy couch,
with the curtains hung upon carved doves. These first
kindlings of love are very pleasant, but are they lasting?
—Home Journal.
SINGULARITIES OF THE ENGLISH LANGITAGE.—"Your
language," said a learned' foreign philologist in speaking
of English, "is the most =philosophical, and yet the
most practical in the world." We become familiar with
contradictory modes of expression, and do not notice them
as do children and foreigners, When we sand the floor,
we cast sand upon it, but when dust the furniture, we-
remove dust from it. When we paint the house, we lay
something on, but when we skin the ox, we take something
off. We dress a child by overlaying it, and scale a shad
by removing that by which it is overlaid. If it be proper
to say, " skin the ox," why is it not proper to speak of
woolling the sheep instead of shearing it? What would
we think of a farmer who should talk of corning or
grassing his fields, or appling his orchard ; or of his wife
who should speak of feathering her geese, or blacking her
'knives, or dirting the clothes ? But we do that which is
equally ridiculous when we speak of dusting the furniture,
skinning the ox, and scaling the fish, although custom
has sanctioned those modes of expression, and Noah
Webster recorded them in his dictionary.—New York
Illustrated News..
ITALY WITHOUT A NATIONAL AlR.—Alas, Italy !. thou
and of song ! thou outcast of the nations of Europe! Ten
thousand operas, and. not three notes of a national hymn !
Out of so many fathers of melody, not one who can find
the motive that will sink to thy children's heart and
dwell there 1 France has her pa ira, the Alpine people
their cow-gathering, England her loyal anthem, Germany
her fatherland toasts. In Italy alone nationality is mute.
The sorry ditty that popular outbreak calls forth to-day
dies to-morrow amidst the yawns of thy listless populace.
Proscriptions itself cannot secure a patriotic air against
the ficklenes of fastidious fashion. Strange to say, our
composers have, in several instances, supplied less gifted
people with the music that never fails to send a thrill
through their hearts, that leads them to battle, that serves
them as a rallying-point against all chances of future
dispersion ; and not a miserable chorus, not a paltry
march for home consumption !—Castellamonta : Italian
Life during the Insurrection of 1831.
A TAX ON BA.CIIELOES.—It has been suggested, as one
of the best means of raising a fund for carrying on the
war, to put a tax upon bachelors. Few but the parties
themselves will object to this arrangement, though it pro-
ceeds on the ungallant supposition that married men find
a wife a sufficient tax without any additional burden. We
hope that if the bachelor tax should be imposed, it will be
in the shape of an ad valorem duty, and that every
bachelor will be allowed to fill up his own form of assess-
ment of his worth, according to his own estimate. There
need be no fear that any surcharges will have to be made
by the commissioners, for it is reasonable to expect that
the valuation, if made by the parties themselves, will touch
the maximum. We know several bachelors who put such
price on their perfection of form, that they are sure to set
themselves at a very considerable figure. There are
many also who have expended vast sums in a species of
self-culture that has, in their own opinion, added greatly
to the sum at which they ought to be rated. We
heard of a case in which a moustache has been raised
by a large outlay on a somewhat barren and unpro-
mising field, and this process, which may be called
farming"the
high of the upper lip, is supposed to increase
the "permanent value" of the spot where it has been
adopted. Personal appearance is frequently a chief part
of the fortune of a bachelor, who regards a handsome face
as equivalent to an estate ; and if he preserves his hairs
on that estate, he believes that he adds materially to its
worth should he have to go with it into the matrimonial
market. We have a bachelor acquaintance who has
devoted half a life to his eyebrow, which he estimates at
five thousand pounds, and he is seriously thinking of
giving up the remainder of his days to a beard, which is
at present in a most unpromising state of stubble. If an
ad valorem duty were to be levied on this enthusiast's
estimate of himself, the proceeds would be nearly enough
to support a whole regiment, for he places a very high
valuation on the "growing crops" which cover the "face
of Nature"—as he complacently terms the face with which
Nature has—either well or ill—favoured him. By all
means let us have a bachelor tax, but let every bachelor
be at liberty to assess himself; so that however much he
may be rated above his real worth, he will never suspect
that he could have over-rated himself, and will therefore'
be quite satisfied with the self-inflicted burden.—Punch.
BUCHAREST.—Seen at a little distance, Bucharest ap-
pears a very handsome city. It contains some three
hundred churches, and each of these has two or more tall
spires. Most of the public buildings are also crowned by
turrets or domes. Every spire, turret, and dome is covered
with tin. A thin gauze-like vapour hung upon the lower
buildings, softening their outline, and above this waving
cloud rose the thousand domes, spires, and turrets spark-
ling with almost dazzling brightness in the sun. They
crowned the city like a silver diadem. Bucharest covers
nearly as great an extent of ground as Paris, but a third
of the space is taken up with gafdens, so that one saw the
bright green foliage of the trees, appearing here and there
above the shadowy vapour, and this served to increase the
charming effect of the whole scene. I was not so much
disappointed as I expected to be on entering the city.
After passing the gate, where, as I need not say, I had to
show my passport, and answer the three hundred ques-
tions in the Russian police catechism, we drove through a
long faubourg of alternate gardens and one-storied houses,
till we reached a broad well-built street, containing some
fine buildings. This is the part of the city inhabited by
the wealthier Spanish Jews. We then rolled on through
three or four streets, with handsome shops on either side,
and full of bustle, till we reached the coach-office. Except
in the principal streets, few of the houses in Bucharest
exceed two stories in height. The place was formerly
subject to shocks of earthquake, which was the reason for
making the dwellings so low. There is a great deal of
ornament about most of the newly-built houses, stuccoed
friezes, pilasters, and brightly-painted or gilded balconies.
This taste may be considered tawdry in France or Eng-
land, but after the shaky konacs of Turkey, the effect was
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formed of small squares of wood, and their quaint porticos,
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the whole embowered in trees, are very liicturesque. The
palace of the Hospodar is an unpretending building of
two stories high, situated in the principal street, with a
large court in front. Bucharest has an opera
-house,
elegantly built, and capable of holding seven or eight
hundred persons. We found an English prima donna
succeeding with an audience chiefly Russian. The city is
surrounded by a promenade, which, on a fine afternoon,
is crowded with vehicles. At one end is a triumphal
arch, lately raised in honour of Nicholas.—O'Briert's
sidence in the Danubian Principalitim