The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-12-28 00:00:00

morning.

To those amongst our readers who, during the past year,
have fought that good fight which enables us to hope for the
prosperity of that which is to come, we need not say " be
merry." They have thrown down the Dagon which has
trampled conservatism beneath its chariot wheels for years
past ; and we need not say to them" rejoice." A happy and
a merry Christmas to all such ! Light be your hearts and
heavy your hands, to put down and to keep down the foul
thing which would pollute your hearths and desecrate your
altars—which has insulted, and would gladly enslave you.
Health a thousand times to our loyal operatives, who have
spurned the thing " liberalism," in its garb of hollow seem-
ing, and defied it equally in its truculent reality ! There is
not a Christmas board, throughout the length and breadth
of England, which loyal Protestant men sit round, at which
these our townsmen are not worthy to he remembered, as
having struck the blow which first staggered, and finally over-
threw the enemies of the faith and the constitutional liberties
ofthe people of this Protestant land.
Gladly, most gladly, would we extend our greetings to an-
other, and, we fear, a too numerous body of our fellow-
townsmen—to whose hearths at this moment comfort is a
stranxer, and who are incapacitated from welcoming, as they
were wont to do in better days, this festive season. To such
it would, we feel, be a mockery to wish " a merry Christ-
mas ;" but we seize the opportunity of impressing earnestly
upon those of their brethren who are happier and merrier
than they, to bestow their kindly consideration upon their
deprivations—more keenly felt than ever at such a season as
the present. Conservatives are wont to be generous as they
are loyal ; and we do fervently pray that, at a period when
so many high and inspiriting hopes crowd around them, they
will not omit the opportunity of spreading their soothing in-
fluences beneath the roofs of those of their humbler brethren,
to whom Providence has not accorded the means of enjoying
" A merry Christmas."

The custom of Christmas boxes arose with sailors. In the
infancy of navigation, they nailed a box to the mast of the ship
on going to sea, and at times of storm or danger, dropped a
piece of money in the box, for prayers to be said for them,
which collections, if they returned safe, they presented to
the church. These gifts, received at the time of the Nati-
vity at the entrance of the chapels and cathedrals, were called
Christmas boxes.

-------
THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD.—It appears that some
idle fellow thought proper to predict that Manchester would
be visited with an earthquake on Tuesday last ; and such
credence has the absurdity obtai d ne-amongsCignotuknt people,
that, as we are informed, some have actually left the town to
be out of the reach of danger. The knave who originated the
report, is at present a prisoner in the New Bailey ; so that,
come what may, he at least cannot get out of the way. It is
astonishing that in the nineteenth century there should exist
such gross superstition.
AMATEUR HANGING.—Some of the younger boys of a
school in the Faubourg Saint Germain, three days ago, while
free from the superintendence of their masters, took it into
their beads to amuse themselves with an execution by way of
hanging. The victim was chosen, and in a trice, notwith-
standing his resistance, was suspended, and, receiving a
strong push, swung like a pendulum. The effect, however,
was different from what the urchins—the eldest of whom was
not more than ten years old—imagined, for they had per-
formed the task of hangman so professionally that the sup-
posed culprit soon turned black in the face, his eyes started
from their sockets, and his tongue protruded from his mouth.
Terror-struck, they fled and hid themselves. Fortunately
an older boy saw their panic, hastened to ascertain the cause,
and cut the poor little fellow down. Had another minute
elapsed, life would have been extinct.—Paris paper.

Mr. Handley, at Holbeach, late M.P. for Lincolnshire,
certainly made one true observation. Speaking of the de-
funct whig ministry, he said, "He would assert, without
fear of contradiction, that they had never perpetrated one
job !"—true, not one, their name is legion. Why, whiggery
and jobbery are synonymous terms—and our columns would
scarcely contain sufficient space for a bare recital of the
proofs of whig desecration of power to the purposes of faction
—a deep and sluggish stream of corruption, unbroken save
by the occasional corruscatiolis of some more glaring act of
political turpitude.—Lincolnshire Chronicle.

VEGETABLE SELF-COMBUSTION.—It is not by any means
an unusual circumstance for persons travelling by dark dur-
ing the night, in the vicinity of the northern Circars, which
abut on the line of road between Simelea and Rhoordab, in
the province of Bengal, to behold vastconflagrations, extend-
ing for a considerable distance, upon the tops of the hills
which range along the interior of the Indian peninsula. The
above eminences are enveloped in forests of thick jungle, and
are quite uninhabited, and it was some time before it could
be warrantably ascertained how these instances of incendi-
arism could so frequently occur, which is, for the most part,
the case during the hot months of April and May. It has
since been discovered, that those igneous outbreaks are occa-
sioned by the long and successive friction of the contiguous
branches of bamboos, and other arunclinaceous timber, which
abound in the above-named localities, and which, when once
ignited, spread desolation all around. The wild beasts, on
these occasions, descend into the plains beneath, and do great
mischief among the herdsmen by carrying away their cattle,
and, not unfrequently, the former. The wood of the bamboo
is cased with a silicious boating, and, in the dry weather, is
easily ignited by friction. These brilliant coruscations, in a
dark night, produce a very imposing effect on the eye of the
beholder, and were, for a long time, attributed by the native
Peastwtry to a supernatural agency.