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

A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO OUR READERS.

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A merry Christmas to our readers, one and all ! Light
and happy hearts, and smiling, joyous faces be around your
hearths ! The sky, which has gloomed over your heads, in
the year which is departing, shine brighter upon you in the
rear which is to come ! The tear-bowed head be faised ; the
anguished breast be eased ; the care-worn and despairing be
enabled to look up, amid the gladdening influences of this
festive season, and welcome the bright hope of better and
happier days, which beams forth for us all, we trust, from
the coming future ! Even now the cloud which has over-
shadowed us as a people, is passing away, and its edges are
tipped with the glory of the sunshine which is beyond it.
" There's a brave day coming," and we call upon all loyal
and true-hearted men to spurn from before their path the
creeping, slimy things which love the darkness, and to stop
their ears against the night-owls, which hoot unceasingly at
the approaching dawn, as they seek, with heavy wing, the
loathsome hiding places out of which they came, at the sum-
moning of the darkness, to prey upon and defile the fair face
of the world.

Awa', Whigs, awa' !" We will toast your departure
over our Christmas cheer. We will bury your memory and
Your misdeeds beneath a mountain of holly and misletoe—a
PYramid of green boughs, which arc even too fragrant a co-
vering for the rankness of your offences. We will build it
high as your presumption, wide as your professions, and it
Shall wither and rot beneath the sun and rain, until it present
a picture of your corruptness, and of the fall to which it led.
Awa', Whigs, awa'!"—hence with your atrabilious visages,
Which obscure our sun-light and repress our mirth.
They are gone ; our spirits are again lightsome and
buoyant ; and, in cheerfulness and unfeigned sincerity, once
more we wish to each and all our readers a " merry Christ-
mas." The sun of the future smiles now upon all who love
their country and her sacred institutions ; and though some
eyes there may be which are still wet with recent tear s—
ome hearts which are still throbbing with recent anguish—
some memories which still linger around the ashes of those
loved ones whom the grave or the world has claimed during
the Year which is passing away, and whose place is empty at
the festive board ; yet upon such even, we trust, the cheering
influence of the season will not all be lost. At this time, we
trust, even these mourners will withdraw their gaze from the
Past, and look forward to the future, remembering that, dark
as may be their night of sorrow, yet " joy cometh in the
Morning

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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 be remembered, as
having struck the blow which first staggered, and finally over-
threw the enemies of the faith and the constitutional liberties
of the 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
Stranger, 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-
rasa ;" 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 sa;lors. 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 obtained atnongstignorant 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.—SOMC 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 heads 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
proof of whig desecration of power to the purposes of faction
a deep' and sluggish stream of corruption, unbroken save
by the occasional corruscations 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-
mg the night, in the vicinity of the. northern Circars, which
abut on the line of road between Simelea and Rhoordah, in
the province of Bengal, to behold vastcontlagrations, 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-
*fitful 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-
eGned by the long and successive friction of the contiguous
branches of bamboos, and other arundinaceous timber, which
aboard in the above-named localities, and which, when once
Wetted, 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 tile bamboo
is eased with a silicious boating, and, in the dry weather, is
eUily ignited by friction. These brilliant coruscations, in a
!lark night, produce a very imposing effect on the eye of the
beholder, and were, for a long time, attributed by the native
try to a supernatural agency.