The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-08-31 00:00:00

Dist rid prlus.

TUE CROPS.—Since our last, the weather in our quarter
of the island, as well as generally, has been truly glorious •
for the completion of harvest operations. The wheat has
been nearly all carried and the remainder cut, with very
partial exceptions, and these arising. chiefly from the in-
activity of the few farmers who have any vet standing,
and with whom the public will not sympathise should it
be shaken to the ground, or destroyed, should wet weather
ensue, by spritting; Here, as elsewhere, the crop is above
an average, and the same may be said of oats. Turnips
and mangels are proceeding rapidly, and as from their
nature, scarcely any kind of weather can now injure or-
much retard them, fine and heavy crops may confidently
be expected. The late potatoes alone yet furnish a topic
of inquietude, and opinions are much at variance, souse
denying the existence of disease to any serious extent;
and others alleging or predicting an almost total failure.
We• find in the Manchester Examiner, an article by
" One who whistled at the plough," with reference to
his tour through several counties, and to the nature of the
decay. He spins out a whole column, which with all duo
deference to his agricultural skill, might have been sum-
med up in a few lines—namely, (as we stated last week)
that the blight has either appeared more or less every
where ; or is it yet likely so to appear, and that its
causes and character, whether the same as that of the
last and preceding year, and its probable cure, are
equally beyond the power of any man to know. We
would fain not disturb the notions of those who are
sanguine in their expectations of all being yet right or
nearly so, for whatever deficiency may arise will be seized
upon by interested holders of breadstuffs, to foist up mar-
kets to an exorbitant extent. But we must tell .the
truth. What we see we believe. Both in Lancashire and.
Cheshire the disease is spreading in many localities, and.
none have entirely escaped. The red kinds appear to
have stood the malaria better than the white. The writer
I of this has a spot in Wallasey (a place celebrated for fine
1 potatoes), and though his early crops were upon the whole
' good, his late crops, although they appeared to be quite
healthy above ground a fow days ago, were, on trial in a
field yesterday, found to be all nearly gone or going, by a
sort of dry outward brown rot, which afterwards (as pre-
viously proved from those gathered in other plots) be-
comes black, and perforates the whole tuber. No great
alarm need arise. Some neighbours have gathered theirs
in fairish condition, or have them yet in the ground, and
good too, judging from digging a few here and there ; and
if even one third of the whole quantity begot out in keep-
ing condition, we shall not be badly off. We must, we re-
peat, use other vegetables, and more bread in lieu of po-
tatoes, and from the quantity of home grain secured and
that imported (including Indian corn and American beans),
and also the abundance of cattle and sheep food, we yet
predict a plentiful and cheap amount of food for the people
at greatly reduced prices, The corn crops of Mr. H.
Littledale, in Liscard and Wallasey, were all stacked on
Thursday last in fine order.
JENNY LIND.—The Swedish Nightingale sung at Bir-
mingham on Thursday last, and proceeded from thence on
Friday to Manchester, where she was engaged to play in
opera on the evenings of Saturday last, to-morrow,
and Friday. On Monday next, and on the Wednesday
following, sbe will appear at the Theatre Royal, Liverpool,
the first evening in " La Sonnambula' " and the second
in "La Figlia del Reggimento." On Thursday week she
returns to Birmingham, to give a concert, in the Town-
hall, for the benefit of the Hebrew National School of
that town. On the Friday following she gives a grand
miscellaneous concert in the Amphitheatre, at Hull ; and
on the Saturday she gives a concert at Newcastle-upon-
Tyne. With all these performances it is stated that the
proprietor of the Manchester Theatre Royal is connected.
Jenny• Lind then crosses the border, and gives a concert
in Edinburgh, and another in Glasgow, after which she
proceeds to the Continent, having to appear very shortly
afterwards in Berlin. Her nett receipts on this provincial
tour, it is calculated, will fall little short of £lO,OOO.
On Tuesday Evening, the 24th instant, the Annual
Meeting of the Ormskirk Branch of the Church Missionary
Society w.s held at the Town Hall. The Room was
crowded by an anxious and interested audience. On the
motion of the Treasurer, Mr. Wright, E. Boyer Esquire,
was called to the chair in the absence of the President,
Lord Skelmersdale, whose attendance was prevented by
his Lordship's detention in town. After a brief report
had been read by the Rev. W. Wannop, the Rev. C._
Hesketh, Rector of Northmeols ; the Rev. T. H. Titcomb,
Incumbent of Christ's Church, Cambridge; the Rev. T.
C. Cowan, Incumbent of St. Thomas', Toxteth Park,
Liverpool ; the Rev. J. Hughes; Incumbent of Congleton;
and the Rev. R. Frost, Incumbent of St. Matthias',
Manchester, severally addressed the Meeting, on the
operations f the Parent Society,—the openings offered
for missionary labour in several parts of the world, espe-
cially China,—the consequent greater claims of this so-
ciety for support,—and the success attending its labours,
which encourages further and increasing efforts. The
Rev. J. Jackson, the Rev. J. Power, the Rev. J. Ireland,
the Rev. C. Forshaw, the Rev. J. T. Wareing, the Rev.
R. Battersby, the Rev. R. Bickerstaffe, the Rev. J. A.
Kershaw, and several gentlemen of the town and neigh-
bourhood attended the meeting. As usual there was a
predominance of the fair friends of the society, who are
ever foremost in every charitable work. The collection
amounted to £25 ls. 3d.
MURDER OF A WIFE BY• HER HUSBAND.-On Sun-
day morning last, about nine o'clock, the town-,hips of
Heaton, Halliwell, and the neighbourhood near Bolton.
were alarmed by a report that a man, named Robert Fisk-
ington, about 56 years of age, had murdered his wife by
splitting her skull with a poer. It appears that, in con-
sequence of the dissipated conduct of the husband, the
couple had been separated about ten years, and that at
the time of the murder the deceased was residing with
her son, at his farm at Heaton. At the last Liverpool
Assizes, the son was sentenced to nine months' tin
prisonment for an assault. When the father heard of
this sentence being passed, he declared that he would go
and take possession of the farm. He generally lodged
with a woman named Cooper, but, although his son refused
to allow him to go into his house, it is said that he
frequently went into the barn and slept there, On Sun-
day morning he made his appearance at the farm, and the
servant girl, apprehensive that he was bent upon mischief,
prevailed upon her mistress to leave him, and go with her
to Barrow-bridge with the milk. • She did so ; and on
their return, about 9 o'clock, they found him in the
kitchen. As soon as they entered, ho got up from a chair
at the kitchen fire, and said to his wife, " Are you going
to take charge of this farm ?" She replied, " Yes ; our
John says I must." Thereupon he seized a large kitchen
poker, and completely split her skull. The servant girl
screamed and ran before him, to prevent him repeating
the blow, when the brute aimed a blow at her also, which
cut the scalp, but did not injure the skull. She was
fortunately able to run out, and her screams brought some
of the neighbours to the spot : but when they came the
prisoner had made his escape, and his wife was found dead
upon the floor, and literally weltering in blood. The
police were immediately sent for, parties went out in
different directions in pursuit of the murderer, and he *was
apprehended. When told that he was charged with the
murder of his wife, he denied that he had touched her at
all. On Monday afternoon the prisoner was brought up
at the county session room, Little Bolton, and committed
to Kirkdale gaol for trial.

THE DISCOVERY 01" THE PLANET NEPTUNE.—A lonely
almost sunless planet, far withdrawn into the dim voids
of space, nearly to the limit of human power of search for
star so pale and small, has wandered slightly from the
path which man has traced out as the one allotted to it
among the hosts of heaven. It is but a little way ; a hair-
breadth here, and a hairbreadth there; and that path in
its full extent is very vast : surely such deviation can be
small account in it ; and surely to man may easily have
lost himself amid these mighty journeyii:gs, and erred
these hair-breadths in his prophecy of such a cycle. Not
so ; his prophecy again and again is tested by a mightier
"power of numbers" than Pythagoras dreamt of, and no
fault is found in it : and not so too for the path itself;
these hairbreadth aberrations, if unaccounted for, indicate
that law is powerless, and order all gone wrong. And
now the thoughtful student bends in his solitude over the
records of these deviations. He seeks to behold in its
obscurity of dimness and distance a heavenly orb on which
the eye of man has never been fixed ; but his eye never
seeks the heavens: and night after night the stars come
out in the fulness of their glory and the kindliness of their
love, yet fail to woo him from the complex records and
figured papas over which his pale and aching forehead
droops. His chase is one which leads him forth into the
unknown of things, and the unknown and far off of space.
But it is the mind and the soul alone which journey thi-
ther. Shut out that glaring sun from him; its light can-
not aid him ; and he is seeking a realm where. if its force
is, its light can hardly. Shut out those gleaming night-
stars too : he seeks to know the place of this hidden one
among their multitudes : but they cannot and will not
direct him. These loose scraps of paper, covered with
strange devices and complicated signs, are of more avail
than all the guidance and enlightenment of sun or stars.
The haven is gained at last; he stands in spirit upon the
new found world ; surveys its greatness, tracks its path,
feels the whirl of its flight; casts one brief glance from it
into the yet deeper night beyond ; and bids others, whose
task it is, seek and see it with the bodily eye. And it is
according to his faith; his faith in the power of numbers,
in the stability of order, in the assurance and perfection
of law; and deviation and irregularity stand revealed as
results of the perfection of order and the assurance of law;
or—to go to the essence and reality of which order and law
are but the apparent and sensible exponents—of the
Hies
in His providence, faithfulness, and power, of
who calleth all these stars by name, and leadeth them on
in order.—British Quarterly.
A ROYAL MAGISTRATE.—H. W. Newman, Esq., Of
Thornbury Park, a magistra.te of this city, is lineally de-
scended from Edward 1., being the 21st in direct descent.
Mr. Pusey, the well-known M.P. for Wilts, is only the
1 ith remove from Edward 111.—Bristol paper.
" Mother wants to know if you won't please to lend
her your preserving kettle, 'cause as how she wants to
preserve ?" "We would with pleasure, boy (LWfrijit_
truth is, the last time we loaned it to your myr shit
preserved it so effectually that we have never r
" Well, you needn't be sarcy about y..r..)
Guess it was full of holes when we b. re :r*
mother wouldn't a' troubled you againjonr
you bringing home a new one."—Galt Am(
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