The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-05-16 00:00:00

VARIETIES.

TESTIMONY TO THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND BY DR.
CHALMERS.—I hold the Establishment to be not only a
great Christian good, but one indispensable to the uphold-
ing of a diffused Christianity throughout the land. In
spite of all the imputations and errors which its greatest
enemies have laid to its doors, we hold that, on the alter-
native of its existence or non-existence, there would hang
a most fearful odds to the Christianity of England. We
are ready to admit that the working of the apparatus
might be made a great deal more efficient; but we at the
same time contend that, were it taken down, the result
would be tantamount to a moral blight on the length and
breadth of our land. We think it might be demonstrated
that, were the ministrations of your Established Church
to be done away, they would never be replaced by all the
zeal, energy, and talent of private adventurers. Instead
of the frequent parish church, the most beauteous specta-
cle to a truly Christian heart, because to him the richest
in moral associations, with its tower peeping out from
amidst the verdure of the trees in which it is embosomed,
there would be presented to the eye of the traveller only
rare and thinly scattered meeting houses. The cities
might, indeed, continue to be supplied with regular
preaching ; but innumerable villages and hamlets, left de-
pending on a precarious itinerancy, would be speedily
reduced to the condition of a moral waste. Our peasants
would again become Pagans ; or, under the name and
naked form of Christianity, would sink into the blindness
and brutishness and sad alienation of Paganism.
ME. BOUNDERBY'S HOUSEKEEPER.—Mrs. Sparsit had
not only seen different days, but was highly connected.
She had a great aunt living in these very times called,Lady
Scadgers. Mrs. Sparsit, deceased, of whom she was the
relict, had been by the mother's side what ifts. Sparsit
still called "a Powler." Strangers of limitedilrormation
and dull apprehensions were sometimes observed not to
know what a Powler was, and even to appear uncertain
whether it might be a business, or a political party, or a
profession of faith. The better class of minds, however,
did not need to be informed that the Powlers were an
ancient stock who could trace themselves so exceedingly
far back-that it was not surprising if they sometimes lost
themselves—which they had rather frequently done, as
respected horse-flesh, blind hookey, Hebrew monetary
transactions, and the Insolvent Debtors' Court. The late
Mr. Sparsit, being by the mother's side a Powler, married
this lady, being by the father's side a Scadgers. Lady
Scadgers (an immensely fat old woman, with an inordinate
appetite for butcher's meat, and a mysterious leg, which
had now refused to get out of bed for fourteen years) con-
trived the marriage at a period when Sparsit was just of
age, and chiefly noticeable for a slender body, weakly sup-
ported upon two long slim props, and surmounted by no
head worth mentioning. He inherited a fair fortune from
his uncle, but owed it all before he came into it, and
spent it twice over immediately afterwards. Thus, when
he died, at twenty-four (the scene of his decease Calais,
and the cause brandy,) he did not leave his widow, from
whom he had been separated soon after the honey moon,
in affluent circumstances. That bereaved lady, fifteen
years older than he, fell presently at deadly feud with her
only relative, Lady Scadgers , and, partly to spite her
ladyship, and partly to maintain herself, went out at a
salary. And here she was now, in her elderly days, with
the Coriolanian style of nose and the dense black eyebrows
which had captivated Sparsit, making Mr. Bounderby's
tea as he took breakfast.hisparinsit a
his If Bounderby had been a
ctooonkq about uconqueror,aansda Mrs.
featurescsatapttieveproopriesnsejosuss,wbhoomoo could
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jausgrt
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ohase rt f
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depreciate his own extraction, so it belonged to it to exalt
Mrs. Sparsit's. In the measure:that he would not allow
his own youth to have been attended by a single favour-
able circumstance, he brightened Mrs. Sparsit's juvenile
career with every possible
rosesssible all overadvantag
that advantage, and a
dsyh,so showered
waggon-loads of early
" And yet, sir," he would say, " how does it turn out after
all ? Why here she is at a hundred a year (I give her a
hundred, which she is pleased to term handsome,) keeping
the house of Josiah Bounderhy of Coketown !"—Dicketo.
Hard Times.