The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-08-09 00:00:00

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GIBBS, the ever vigilant, had, perhaps, remembered the
classic fact about HOMER becoming " Old Dozey." Be

as it ma

the Prince of WALES was not missed

from the Palarp for several hours. When the discovery of
his absence was made, I believe you, there was a hubbub.

" No, he wasn't there"—'
on with half-a-dozen messa

Nor there"—'

No"—and so

ges. The fact is, the Prince of

WALES wasn't to be found. " Stop till we return from
Osborne, and you shall go to Chobham." " Humph !"
quoth the PRINCE. The telegraph was set to work.

": Have you heard anything of the Prince of WALES ?"
" Yes, he is here, all alive and jolly." The little fellow
had " cut his stick," and went to the camp at Chobhani
unattended and unknown to anybody—staid all night
under the canvass, and went home in the afternoon of the
following day. His Queenly mother, you may be sure,
did not rate the boy very severely. But he is not to do
that or anything like it again. Won't he ? If the Prince
of WALES do not turn out a clever musician, I have no
skill in the future ; he has all the peculiar developments—
cranial—of the musician.

In the evening, the Royal box at the Opera-house was
occupied by the QUEEN, Prince ALBERT, and the two
elder of the Princes ; and here I have no hesitation in saying
that the Prince of WALES, excepting in the entre-actes,
never took his eyes off the stage. The opera was the hand-
work of LUDOVICO SPOUR, Prince ALBERT'S friend, the
greatest living musical composer. ROSSINI, though he
yet live, is ignobly dead ; METERBEE
is too heavy and sanctified—ecclesiastical in style—to
please my musical palate. DONIZETTI daft and dead ;
BELLINI dead ; VERDI, who ought never to have lived—
or at least to have scored—anything but a milk bill, is
well ; MENDELLSOHN dead ; all gone, indeed ! but learned,

a great creature,

graceful, intelligent LIIDOVICO thrives ! Every musician
is familiar with the morceaux d'ensemble of " Jessonda."
Concerts, sacred and profane, for the last twenty years
and more, have had them in the bills, but never as a
whole, on the Italian stage, was it presented till Saturday.
In the earlier part of the season I was told that Spoors
was to conduct. He did not. lam not going to interfere
with the cause. I am not sure that the public has any.
thing to do with it, seeing that COSTA was at his
desk, and conducted as he only can. The new
opera is a great work, greatly, gloriously rendered.
Old and cold Musicians, critics, noblemen of musi-

cal eminence, in heaps, all about, and under the
Royal box, were not sparing in their applause. " Jessonda"
is the closing novelty, and well it will sustain the reputa-
tion of the house, though it is more an opera for the
musicians than the general public. The many-headed
monster—never far wrong in the long ran—will, however,
appreciate and make " Jessonda " its own. It is a splen-
did addition to the first repertoire in the world.

The QUEEN, you have heard, does not prorogue Parlia.

sent in pers

is to be a week in Dublin, the Corporation of which are to
be invited to dine with Han MAJESTY at the Vice-regal
Lodge ; after that—Balmoral. Mine host of the Trafalgar,
of Greenwich, will have his charcoal and stewpans in order
for next Saturday, the Ministerial fish dinner day—the
usual prelude to prorogation ; but I have been at the fish
dinner a full fortnight before the close of Parliament
could be accomplished. Never did a Ministry more thirst
for relief than the present. A couple of weeks ago, I tobi
you that the 25th of August wtg the day appointed for
the finale. Some of the papers say the 20th. I still hold
to the 25th. Two or three days signify nothing, and the

fact of the SOVEREIGN'S not proroguing always leads to

uncertainty as to a day or two. The fish dinners
now are poor, cold—mean, dull affairs. During all
the long rule, or mis-rule, whichever you like, of the
Whigs, their magnificent white bait dinners were enough
to redeem their evil doings for a Session. Fox MAULS,

now Lord PANMURE, and " Yes and No," " Matilda"
NORMANDY, as near fast-livers as prudence would permit,
generally faced each • other. Fox MAULE in the chair.
For three hours fun and frolic was the order—a bit of a
song also—the interests of the country were left to them-
selves. The Whig Ministers used to stroll about the
garden of the tavern, playing all sorts of tricks ; I verily
think they would have had pipes and baccy, but for de-
cency. I remember, at one of the feeds, during the usually
dismal half hour in England before dinner, NORMANDY
and Fox MAITLE got hold of a huge buffer of a turtle,
which was creeping lazily about the garden ; a child was
enjoying the fun, MAULE took the lad up and placed him
astride the turtle, touched the latter under the raw—he
has his tender parts even out of the pot—and made
Master Turtle wriggle a triumphant circle of the garden
with the boy on his back. Now, these Whigs are
getting old ; NORMANDY is obliged to go to Germany
to drink the stinking water there, and PANMIIRE, long
kept out of his patrimony, is in Forfarshire killing rabbits,
or time, or anything. The Conservative fish dinners are
dearer and duller (I am sorry 4 say) than— those of the
Whigs, but far more respectable. They have always
plenty of carriages to take one home. The I'Vhigs 'bus
it back.

Every one connected with the business of parliament,
ministers, peers, commons, newspaper-men, even little
rundy-tundy, turnip-headed WILLIAMS who guards the;
entrance to the commons chamber, is 'heartily sick and
tired of the unprecedentedly prolonged session, now, thank
the Fates, fast , drawing to a close. Many of the most
'active and valuable members of the representative body
have left town already, in anticipation of the prorogation,
the great majority of those remaining at their posts, with
all the appearance of faithful sentinels, having no. Other
businessbe in view than the arrangement of a little
"on their own account" with Mr. 1-I.4.•xxzE,
the immaculate Secretary to the Treasury and dispenser-
general of patronage for the government. This is just
the happy moment for knocking some good things
out of the aforesaid good-enough HAYTER, and according
to that gentleman's own account he receives more
pressing applications for appointments during the fort-
night immediately preceding the " break-up " than in
any six or seven weeks throughout the session. Young
members especially, just at this time, are to be found in
hot pursuit of the Government whip, reminding him of
the number of votes they had recorded on divisions where
Ministerial defeat would have been death or disgrace, and
pressing their claims for berths in the Inland Revenue,
Stamps, Post-office, Customs, Excise, or Income Tax de-
partments. " It's no use refusing, Mr. HATTER," sates
one oily-tongued senator, from the manufacturing districts.
" I can't return to my borough, without appointments for
five or six of my committee-men, and their sons." " Make a
vacancy in your own office," exclaims a second. A third
pinions Mr. HATTER in the corner of the library, or in
one of the nooks of the corridors, and positively won't let
him stir one inch until he sees "booked" the asked-for
favor. This individual-boring for places is bad enough ; but
it is sweet as honey, delicious as seltzer water and Chablis
on a sunny summer's day, when compared with the depu-
tation-hunting to which unfortunate Mr. HATTER is sub-
ject. An applicant for place comes up to town, and
happening to have eight or ten parliamentary friends, he
solicits the favor of their interference. They all promise,
but none of them will weaken their chances of success
for other parties about whom they are interested, by
making separate personal application for the latest arrival.
They will join in any request, or back up any
recommendation which any other member chooses to
originate, but to put in i personal demand for the fulfil-
ment of the country individual's requirements, is just the
thing which none of them will do. In this dilemma, the
place.-hunter fancies it would be a master-stroke of policy
if he could bring all his friends together, and persuade
them to wait on Mr. HATTER in a body. The idea he
conceives to be, a grand one, and success now appears cer-
tain. Down he goes to the Central Hall of the House of
Commons, through which the members must pass on
their way to the chamber or to the library. After waiting
there four or five hours, he sees the most of his friends,
and they agree to wait on Mr. HAYTER en masse. In the
secretary's little room behind the Commons post-office the
interview takes place, lasting some ten or fifteen minutes,
each deputationist saying something commonplace for the
candidate, and Mr. HAYTER declaring that " he will give
the matter the most favourable consideration." One day last
week, while engaged in looking for confirmation of some
important political news I had heard, when breakfasting
at the 'Reform Club, I saw no less than nine of those
deputations formed, and the same number of interviews
sought with Mr. HAYTEE. But these deputations are the
veriest shams in existence, and the man whose solicitation
for government place is laid before Mr. HATTER, or any
• other member of the executive, in that manner, has-not
• the most remote chance of success. Mr. HAYTER thinks
the whole affair a right good joke. He knows that the
ceremony is performed to satisfy the jlace applicant, and
when the deputation withdraws, he thinks no more about
the matter ; indeed, I believe there is no instance on
record of an appointment having been conceded to the ap.