The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-05-23 00:00:00

dinals will not have a committee at all. Thus, to the
nomination of Mr. WALPOLE, although no personal ob-
jection is taken to or understood to exist against the
appointment of the right honourable gentleman, not
fewer than eight separate notices of amendment were
given on the question that he be appointed, each one of
the amendments involving the certainty of a complicated
and protracted debate. Ex-uno disce omnes:thus clearly
establishing the impossibility of appointing any committee
during the present session. This mockery of legislation.,
and entire check to parliamentary proceedings, is hypo-
critically censured in terms of mild reprobation by Lord
Jon:s RUSSELL, who yet adds an expression of his satis-
faction at the practical defeat of Mr. CHAMBERS' inquiry
through its agency : the factiousness of the course pursued
is admitted, adopted, and defended by Mr. BRIGHT, yet
both these honourable gentlemen are great sticklers for
the freedom of debate, the privileges of parliament, and
the liberty of the subject. In the face of so singularly-
constituted, yet so mischievously effective an opposition,
Mr. CHAMBERS had obviously only the alternative of
withdrawing his intended inquiry, which he accordingly
did on Thursday night. The defeat of his piroposal is a
matter deeply to be regretted on its own merits, but
doubly so as demonstrating that, how carefully so ever we
may guard ourselves against the usurpations of Popery,
it is an unquestionable and dangerous fallacy to proclaim
that the POPE has and shall have no power within this
realm. Though the proceedings of Thursday evening in
the House of Commons commenced so uncheeringly, the
true interests of the state were advanced to no inconsider-
able extent by measures discussed, and suggestions thrown
out at an after period of its deliberations ; conspicuous
among which must be recorded the sensible and judicious
remarks made on the Merchant Shipping Bill by your
sober-minded and intelligent member, Mr. HORSFALL.
His observations and hints on the various subjects he
introduced were so obviously the emanations of thorough
knowledge, that they made a deep and lasting impression
upon the house, and as such redound to the honour of his
constituents, while they establish for himself a reputation
for sagacity and usefulness, as valuable personally as it
will be practically beneficial.
If the past week has been legislatively a busy and a
varied one, among the members of the beau monde it
has been equally busy and important, though less varied
in its complexion, which has generally been one of gaiety
and grace, the leading event being the state ball given by
HER MAJESTY at Buckingham Palace. This entertain-
ment was on a scale of grandeur and magnitude unpa-
ralleled in the court annals of our gracious SOVEREIGN,
rife although these are with records of tasteful splendour,
combined with virtuous gaiety. The whole of the state
apartments were devoted to the gorgeous pageant, and
were radiant with all the magnificence which taste and
art united to rank,' beauty, and elegance could confer.
The assemblage was numerous and noble beyond former
precedent, comprising seventeen dukes, and sixteen
duchesses, eighteen marquisses, and sixteen marchionesses,
eighty-four earls, and seventy-two countesses, thirty-six
viscounts, and thirty-three viscountesses, one baroness,
eighty-one lords, and a galaxy of ladies, numerous and
sparkling as the stars which gem the firmament ; in addi-
tion to all which there was a gathering of honourables and
right honourables of both sexes, of naval and military
officers, and of learned and grave civilians,

—Thick as the leaves that strew
The brook of Valambrosa.
The accompaniments of this fete were on a scale of regal
pomp seldom equalled, and never surpassed. The saloons
were charmingly decorated with groups of flowers dis-
playing the most brilliant blossoms, and rendering the air
odourous with their rich perfumes ; " gold and gems, and
jewels and bright eyes,' displayed beneath a flood of
ambient light which streamed from chandeliers and crystal
lustres, from glittering sconce and sparkling girandole,
gave animation to a scene of gorgeous beauty unmatched
in even the poet's dream. Conspicuous among the noble
host which thronged those stately halls, marked chiefly
by the severe though elegant simplicity of her attire and
her winning gracefulness of manner, was the honoured
and loved lady of our land, who welcomed and cheered her
royal and noble guests with an ease and beauty of
demeanour
_Which charmed all hearts and_loosened every tongue.

On Thursday evening, HER MAJESTY, accompanied by
Prince ALBERT, attended the Royal Italian Opera, to wit-
ness the performance of BELLINI'S "I Puritani ;" and on
Saturday she held a drawing-room in celebration of her
birthday, which was numerously and brilliantly attended.
The period fixed on for opening the Crystal Palace, at
Sydenham, the 10th of June, draws on apace, and the
preparations for the great event are being rapidly pro-
ceeded with, and every exertion is made to render the in-
auguration worthy of the occasion. Her MAJESTY, as I
previously intimated, having consented to take part in the
inauguration ceremony, the Governments of France, Bel-
gium, and Prussia, and several other foreign courts have
intimated their intention of sending representatives to
take part in the inauguration pageant, the effect of which
will be heightened by a grand musical performance, which
will be executed by upwards of a thousand members of
the Sacred Harmonic and the new Philharmonic Societies.
To prevent danger, inconvenience, and undue crowding,
the directors of the Crystal Palace Company have wisely
resolved to limit the admission of the public on the opening
day to the holders of season tickets.
From the turmoil, and the glare, and the glitter of
London life —from the small contentions and vapid whis-
perings of its coteries, few asylums present more grateful
or winning allurements than those offering themselves
in the picture exhibitions by which the numerous public
galleries are annually filled in May. The season, which
by its buds and verdure animates the hopes of the hus-
bandman, and stimulates the expectation of the florist, is
one in which the artist enjoys his triumph and reaps his
reward ; to him, at this season, the exhibition-room is the
world—in its atmosphere his excitable heart swells with
the elation of the hour, and he is, for the moment at least,
a proud and a happy man. The creations of his teeming
fancy—the concentration of his mental study —the graces
of his intellectual culture—and the skill derived from his
incessant and laborious exertions, are placed before the
eyes of what, to him, should be a worshipping world, and
for the time being he is supremely blest. Your artist is
generally a man of ardent temperament, of simple desires,
and guileless habits, and, while pleased himself, he sheds
a radiance of delight around him ; and, as some such happy
being is always sure to be met with in an exhibition-room,
a lounge within its precincts is at once a cause and
an effect of pleasure. The place is in general moderately
filled with people more or less intellectual, at least it is so
before the hour at which the dictate of fashion congregates
within its embrace the credulous VERYSOPRTS and sim-
pering ANGELINAS, who meet but to be seen themselves,
and who have no admiration to bestow on ought that is
not personal ; and an assembly of intellectual people, sur-
rounded by the emanations of intellect, is at all times a
place of interest and gratification. English art has fre-
quently been charged with the crime of being merely
imitative, rarely soaring into the realm of fancy, and sel-
dom attempting to realize the poetry of high imagination.
A glance around the walls of the Royal Academy Exhibi-
tion rooms would prove that this, though partly true, is
generally false. The artist, however imaginative he may
be, is, ex necessitate, compelled to deal with material
things, and will only be successful so far as he succeeds in
rendering these with a fidelity at once appreciable and
striking • the higher attributes of his calling being to
invest these material things with new and elevating qua-
lities, and to display them under circumstances which
draw forth generous and ennobling sentiments. It may
indeed be a matter of difficulty to invest a landscape with
the moral grandeur pertinent to the embodiment of an
important historical event—and cannot be a matter of
easy accomplishment to imbue the portrait of a green-
grocer with the intellectual superiority of a sage—still the
ever-varying aspects of nature, and the ceaseless diversity
of human expression furnish ample opportunity to the
artist for displaying his learned appreciation of her works
—his deep and lively sympathy with all her numberless
meanings. Such sympathy and appreciation, duly worked
out, will be found to constitute the basis of true greatness
in art, and their application is well marked in the pro-
ductions of our artists whose genius enables them to clothe
a common-place landscape in the gentle softness of ely-
I •
slum, and to elevate the smug features of a Wapping
crimp into the simulated dignity of a senator and a sage.
' In all the departments of art, as practised in this, and it
may also be in other countries, there is much affectation ;
but in none does this peculiarity evince itself so strikingly
as in the line of portrait. Much of this is no doubt owing
\to the vagaries of the artist, but tenfold more is charge-
able against the whimsies of the sitter. It being under-
stood that the artist must produce a portrait which shall
at least be recognizable as representing the individual
meant, how can he do so without perpetrating an ab-
surdity, if the original insists on arraying his countenance
' in a guise which might well excite the envy of a Gardafui
negro ? In gazing on the numerous representations of the
" human face divine," which annually bedizen the walls of