The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-10-16 00:00:00

VARIETIES.

When King James I. travelled from London to Edin-
burgh, some years after his accession to the Crown of
England. the journey occupied a month. Queen Victoria
has just travelled from Balmoral, in Aberdeenshire, to
Osborne House, Isle of Wight, in three days.
PRECOCIOUS CHILDREN.—The Feauty of childhood is
that it is not like manhood or w ,manhood. When, there-
fore, a child loses its childhood, it loses half its interest
by that loss alone; and it loses the other half by being
what it ought not to be—a usurper of airs and manners
which exclusively belong to a maturer age.
ROYAL TURFITES.—George IV. outstripped all his
royal predecessors on the Turf, and succeeded in forming
a magnificent stud during his racing career—breeding
Whiskey, the sire of Eleanor, the winner of both Derby
and Oaks, and possessing many other first-rate animals.
At Hampton Court stables were to be seen the Colonel,
Waterloo, Tranby and Ranter—stallions ; also the cele-
brated mares, Maria, Fleur-de-lis, Posthuma, and others
in foal to such horses as Sultan, iEmilius, Camel, and
Priam, the best blood of that or any other day ! The
Prince of Wales (George IV.) won the Derby in 1788, when
only six-and-twenty years of age, and in less than three
years afterwards, was actually " warmed off" Newmarket
Heath by the Jockey Club, because his horse Baronet, an
outsider, if so he could be called with only 20 to 1
against him—won the Ascot Oatlands from Escape—
the favourite in the royal stable—and a fair field supposed
to have been tried to beat all England, and of course his
Royal Highness into the bargain ! The imputation of
Turf fraud was never satisfactorily proved against the
Prince to our thinking ; and the innumerable instances of
horses running "in and out," or being fit or otherwise,
when the most unlooked-for results have occurred, irre-
spective of all intent or malice prepense, go far to prove
the Jockey Club to have been simply beaten as betting
men, through the accident of Baronet's winning from
being fit on the day ; his owner having backed him
heavily, no doubt, as he did everything for the off-chance.
Bentley's Miscellany.
THE FALLS OF NIAGARA IN WINTER.—The great
cataract is seen by few travellers in its winter garb. I
had seen it several years before in all the glories of
autumn, its encircling woods, happily spared by the re-
morseless hatchet, and tinted with the brilliant hues
peculiar to the American " Fall." Now the glory had
departed ; the woods were still there, but were generally
black, with occasional green pines ; beneath the grey
trunks was spread a thick mantle of snow, and from the
brown rocks, inclosing the deep channel of the Niagara
River, hung huge clusters of icicles, twenty feet in length,
like silver pipes of giant or!,ans. The tumultuous rapids
appeared to me to descend more regularly than formerly
over the steps which distinctly extended across the wide
river. * * 4. The portions of the British, or Horse-
shoe Fall, where the waters descend in masses of snowy
whiteness, were unchanged by the season, except that
vast sheets of ice and icicles hung on their margin ; but
where the deep waves of sea-green rolled majestically over
the steep, large pieces of descending ice were frequently
descried on its surface. No rainbows were now observed
on the great vapour cloud which shrouds for ever the
bottom of the fall ' • but we were extremely fortunate to
see now plainly what I had looked for in vain at my last
visit, water-rockets, first-described by Captain Hall, which
shot up with a train of vapour singly, and in flights of a
dozen, from the abyss near Table Rock, curved towards
the east, and burst and fell in front of the cataract. Vast
masses of descending fluid produce this singular effect, by
means of condensed air acting on portions of the vapour
into which the water is comminuted below. Altogether
the appearance was most startling. It was observed at
one p.m. from the gallery of Mr. Barnett's museum. The
broad sheet of the American Fall presented the appear-
ance of light-green water and feathery spray. also mar-
gined by huge icicles. The great masses of rock at the
bottom were covered, as it were, with pure white heaps of
cotton, whilst on the left and in front of the fall a cone
was in process of formation from the congealing vapour.
As in summer, the water rushing from under the vapour-
cloud of the two falls was of a milky whiteness as far as
the ferry, when it became dark and interspersed with
floating masses of ice. Here, the year before, from the
pieces of ice being heaped and crushed together in great
quantities, was formed a thick and high bridge of ice,
completely across the ricer, safe for passengers for some
time ; and in the middle of it a Yankee speculator had
erected a shanty for refreshments.—Sir James Alexan-
der's l'Aeadie.