The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-05-17 00:00:00

8

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FROM OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT,

MONDAY MORNING.
THE leader of the House of Commons, Lord JOHN
RUSSELL, gave the Roman Catholic members a feast of
hear, hears, cheer, cheers, on Tuesday evening ; but he
got—luckless wight, pitiful pugilist—a damaging blow for
his pains before the night was over. The motion before
the House was an important moral one, propounded in
terms modest to a fault, by Mr. THOMAS CHAMBERS ; it
merely went for a measure to " facilitate the recovery of
personal liberty in certain cases," those cases having
reference to conventual establishments, such as nunneries,
to permit of visitation or inspection by two or three pro-
perly authorised persons, at various periods, on the same
plan as other asylums are visited with the most salutary
results. lam not going to meddle with Mr. CHAMBERS'
maiden speech—here and there it was crude ; but it was
fragrant with damning proofs of necessity in favour of the
motion. At a rather late hour Lord JOHN RUSSELL got
up flurried ; he knew he was going to do what is called
in university language " not the cheese." He opposed
the bill. LUCAS and MURPHY moved about extatic, and
screamed the leader on till he appeared " clean daft,"
and talked away at no end of its being the boast of I
Englishmen that the law of the country was all-powerful
on the subject. Why, then, your emasculated Ec-
clesiastical Titles Bill ? Then his inane babble
about Habeas Corpus ; how are the deluded in-
mates of a convent to get it, JOHNNIE ? by
tying a bit of paper under the wing of a stolen pigeon, ,
and letting the bird fly out of the grating, eh ? Then
again, said the Protestant Lord JOHN, many of those
ladies entered the institutions from feelings of deep devo-
tion, and with a view of passing their lives in devout con-
templation of the greatness and glory of Gon. Sic nearly
spoke his lordship. " Many." How many ? Is one incar-
cerated ? Yes. Then the power ought to be abolished—
or at least inquired into. Yet again, quoth the leader of
the coalition cabinet in the House of Commons, if the
motion were carried, they must pass a law, not for the in-
spection, but for the suppression of nunneries. This is
going beyond the question. Oh, but says Lord JOHN
RussELL,—author of the Durham letter, written most ap-
propriately, by accident on purpose, as O'CONNELL would
hare said, on the eve of the city election, when Lord JOHN
knew he needed a lift, even if a left-handed one, to get
into the stirrups,—leave the subject of convents and their
inmates to the intelligence and common sense of Ro-
man Catholics themselves ! Fie on you, JOHN RUSSELL ;
and then your peroration about the indignation—bothera-
tion of the Irish nation if the measure were carried !
People asked what was the meaning of the noble lord's
speech ? Some said that Mr. CHAMBERS would not have
carried his motion if Lord JOHN RUSSELL had held his
tongue. Certain one thing is, that the Roman Catholic
Irish members, the ultramontaners especially, never left
the house since they had a footing in it with greater glee
with Lord JOHN RUSSELL and his speech, which was
lauded to the skies as magnificent. But Lord JOHN was
licked, and his government kicked. Ile has one or two
more such operations in store, and the ministers know it,
feel it, and shake. I cannot help repeating that a new
member, with a maiden speech, beat the ABERDEEN
Government in the plenitude of their power ; that all the
coalitionists got were cheers from a handful of Papists—
their natural enemies !

It would be altogether supererogatory, and by no
means news, to tell you that the conduct of ALGERNON
Puncy, D.C.L., F.R.S., the second son of the second
Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND, and now Duke of that ilk
himself, has been much canvassed since my last commu-
nication,
in connection with the monstrous dock-yard
doings, now developing themselves like ugly fungi, and
much faster than healthier vegetation. One of the pre-
sent heads of the Admiralty, a good Conservative, sup.
porter of Church and State—Bible and Crown for ever !
a friend to the poor, whether in dock-yard or the work-
house, told me that the Duke's error lay in his not
looking sharper. He had great power—took everybody to
be as gentlemanly as himself—good easy man—he is blame-
able and blamed for not Making deeper into the administra-
tion of the details of his high office. This is the head and
front of NORTHUMBERLAND'S offending. I have it as I
have stated from the mouth of one of themselves now in
office. It was capital to see and hear the Duke give his
evidence, there was such nonchalance about it. In one
of the c. L. i. o. papers in the Spectator—not RINTOUL'S
newspaper, but the periodical of the days of ADDISON—
we read of a fast man of that distant period, who would
sign a deed conveying thousands, sans cerernonie, without
pulling off his glove. The Duke's manner put me
in mind of that hero of the Sir CHARLES COLDSTREAM
School. " I don't know, really," said the Duke to a vital
question ; " I didn't want to renew the vexatious ques-
tion ;" " I took no notice." Of a vast number of ques-
tions put and answered, the samples given form the gist
of his grace's evidence. Calm, provokingly cols., when
a biting Whig (I remember no names !) put a ques-
tion, the Duke answered with a suavity worthy of imita-
tion.
It is a great acquisition, if you are not phlegmatic,
to he able to keep your temper. I could not help remark-
ing,
how much the Duke resembles his late brother : tall
and of fair complexion, and dressing in the same style— 1
splendid blue frock of course, trousers of any colour ex-
cept black or brick-dust. The present Duke is a quiet
man, but well vindicates the character of England for
grand hospitality. He is a scholar, though a sailor from
eleven years of age—fond of the fine arts antiquities '1
also—Ninevehean-telling, undeniable truths of the great
prophets of the Bible. It is stated that the Duke was
never angry in his life but once; he was then Lord
PRUDHOE, and a captain in the navy ; he had been
" mooning" about with his ship near Alexandria, there was
nothing doing—not a fly buzzed. At Alexandria cer-
tain excavations were going on ; PRUDHOE took a hand
in them,—paid the beggars well who dug for him ;
they had to be well watched—greater thieves never
were crucified. After au outlay of a large sum, Lord
PRUDHOE succeeded in raising to the surface a pair
of colossal lions in red sandstone, weighing, I hesi-
tate to mention how many tons. No sculpture has
ever been produced like that of the period ; if you doubt,
go, during these Whit-holidays, and look,—admire, and
then kiss the stony lips of the granite Musisoa: in the
British Museum. MICHAEL ANGELO, great father of
the graceful and magnificent CANOVA, WESTMACOTT,
CHANTREY, BAILY, all of you would have given your
fortunes, could you have endowed with such love and life
the statues you have all but made immortal. But ho !
Touching PRUDHOE'S Alexandrian lions, he paid well for
raising them out of the opthalmic dust, and chartered a
British ship to take them to England. Soon after his
lordship returned home, heard of his lions, went down
to the dock with a friend or two, saw the antique cargo
got out of the hold—beheaded ! The graceless buffer at
Alexandria thought he could stow the sculpture better if
the heads of the lions were sawn off ! It was even so;
and to this day you may see them with their heads
puttied on. Lord PRUDHOE stormed more at this
than he has done at AUGUSTUS STAFFORD. The
Earl of DERBY, you will perceive, came to the rescue
of Mr. STAFFORD both before the committee and in his
place in the House of Peers. The noble earl was quick
about it in the latter assembly. A mis-statement of his
evidence appears in an evening newspaper, published at
the usual hour in the afternoon ; soon after five o'clock
his lardahip calls the attention of the peers to the subject,
contrasting the inaccuracy of one evening organ with the
accuracy of another,—all within an hour or so of publica-
tion. I remember lesser men being more periphrastic,
when complaining of the papers, two or three days after
the cause of complaint had appeared in the journal ; a
" mushroom" generally gave the house to understand
that he never saw the paper in question—that " his atten-
tion had been called to the erroneous statement." Fudge !
At it again—more pictures and less need of them. Ever
since the death of the late King of the French, and months
before it, a great number of packages arrived at Clare-
mont from Paris, addressed to the " old foozzle." Many
of them were carefully lined with oil cloth to keep water
away ; they contained pictures chiefly collected from the
Spanish school of art. The Custom-house authorities
always had orders from our Government to let Lours
have the packages without examination or payment of
Customs' duties. Louis was a remarkable man, I need
not tell your readers; even in exile in his son-in-law's
(LEOPOLD'S) pretty house at Claremont—beautifully
situated in Woodland-vale, a brief " spin" from the me-
tropolis,—he used to order a bottle of Medoc, and jingle
a glass with humble visitors if they had the entree.
Clever, shrewd, and varied in conversation, he outshone
all his children; if you had not known him, one would
have taken him for a pedagoguist—a very rich, somewhat
learned, and retired London tradesman, who had paid as
much attention to foreign politics as to parish ones ; and
there are many such within the bills of mortality. But,
for all this, and his capabilities as a linguist, ancient and
modern, I.question if he in the fine arts was a real judge.
A man is not made so in a day, or by mecha-
nical teachings; he must be to the manner born
—have an eye to the beautiful—must not look at
a picture merely as money's-worth, which Louis
frequently, if not always, did. Well, then, a tre-
mendous lot of—no, I won't say Spanish rubbish—but
Spanish pictures have been on view some time back, and
knocked down the other day by the hammer. One word
about art. We have all seen and admired "MvaiLLo's
nature-touches of Spaniards and Spanish life. There are
more of them valuable in this country than in Spain it-
self—let me couple France and Germany ; then why add
to our stock of that great vagabond-painter's works ? To
be sure, we have not many specimens in the National
Gallery, but they are in the country— inwich Gallery,
and so forth. Lorts's Spanish pictures were brought to
the hammer, many of them sorely damaged. ; the gamins,
and other blackguards of Paris, were not nice withhtil: e?ld
man and his hoards, they played the deuce with ole-
tures, mimicked JOINVILLE in the Tuileries smo a
k.
cigarette—very insulting—but, hang them, why did they
damage the pictures ? The varlets had found their way
bad
their to Louis's cellars, and, careless of corkscrew,
their fill, and came up stairs like sons of BELIAL, and
ruined many grand works. These were afterwards glued
together the best way possible, hut, after all, they looked
many of them, last week, battered Indeed. They were
polished off, and the auctioneer set to work. A gentleman
was there for the National Gallery, a man of good fame ;
he looked wonderfully wise, or stupid, or important, or
all three. Sprite of St. LURE! the agent for the National
Gallery—the people's gallery—sanctioned by the ABER-
DEEN Government, began bidding like mad for a picture
done in treacle—and bad treacle, too ;the picture was
said to be by ZURI3ARAN, a Spaniard. Had it been a
NluaiLLo, stocked as we are with them, the act might
have been excused. Did the agent bid against himself ?
He had it all his own way ; and had the dirty, dingy
Spanish liquorice knocked down to him for the country
at a price close upon £3OO. I would not give a five
pound note for the bargain ; no country gentleman with
a knowledge or taste for the fine arts—and there are many
such, though evidently unknown to the Government,—
would place this ZURBARAN in the summer-house of his
orchard,—nor, indeed, in out-house used for bumbler
purpose. A few hours after the purchase, the Earl of
ABERDEEN and the Marquis of LANSDOWNE, both good
men in the arts, intimated in the House of Peers that—
yes—there were pictures on sale—Spanish ones—some
had been bought for the Gallery—they believed in
Short, they didn't know whet they were talking about.