The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-05-23 00:00:00

VARIETIES.

A COUNTRY-PLAYER, who had to enact the part of a
ghost, asking if he were to bow to the audience, the stage-
director made answer, " Why, yes, if you are the ghost of
a gentleman, certainly."
BENEFIT DERIVED FROM ADVERTISING.—E. D. W,
Clifford, a young gentleman living at Leavenworth,
Indiana, recently advertised in the Louisville Democrat
for a wife. He writes to the editor that he is thoroughly
convinced of the advantages of advertising. He says he
has received, in answer to the advertisement, 794 letters,
thirteen daguerreotype likenesses of ladies, two gold finger
rings, seventeen locks of hair, one copy of 1k Marvel's
" Reveries of a Bachelor," one thimble, and two dozen shirt
buttons. He ought to be convinced.
THE BRIGHT SIDE.—Dr. Johnson used to say that a
habit of looking at the best side of every event is better
than a thousand a year. Bishop Hall quaintly remarks,
" for every bad there may be a worse —and when a man
breaks his leg, let him be thankful it was not his neck !"
When Fenelon's library was on fire, " God be praised !"
he exclaimed, " that it is not the dwelling of some poor
man." This is the true spirit of submission—one of the
most beautiful traits that can possess the human heart.
Resolve to see this world on its sunny side, and you have
almost half won the battle of life at the outset.
WONDERS or CHEMISTRY.—The horse-shoe nails,
dropped in the streets during the daily traffic, re-appear
in the form of swords and guns. The clippings of the
travelling tinker are mixed with the parings of horses'
hoofs from the smithy, or the cast-off woollen garments
of the poorest inhabitants of a sister isle, and, soon after-
wards, in the form of dyes of brightest hue, grace the
dress of courtly dames. The main ingredient of the ink
with which I now write was probably once part of the
broken hoop of an old beer barrel. The bones of dead
animals yield the thief constituent of lucifer matches. The
dregs of port wine, carefully rejected by the port wine
drinker in decanting his favourite beverage, are taken by
him in the form of seidlitz powders, to remove the effects
of his debauch. The offal of the streets and the washings.
of coal gas re-appear, carefully preserved in the lady's
smelling-bottle, or are used by her to flavour blancmanges,
for her friends.—Lyon Playfair.

A TRUE BRISTOL WomAN.—The Athenian women
bread-sellers are said to have possessed' both shrewdness
and loquacity. Our ladiet., of the Gate, in Billings' Ward,
are probably not behind them ;. and I am- inclined to think

that a true old-fashioned Biistol market-woman would
surpass both. Let me cite an instance :—" Some years
ago, an old member of this' ancient sisterhood was stand-
ing at her stall in front of one of the Bristol banks. She
had a £lO Bank of England note inher hand ; and as, in
her younger days, she had been nurse-maid in the family
of one of the-partners, she thought she might venture to
enter and ask for gold for her note: She did so but it
was at a time- when guineas were worth five-and-twenty
shillings a piece, and gold was scarce, and, in short, she
met with a refusal. The quick-witted market-woman,
without exhibitiirc, any disappointment, thereupon asked
the cashier to let her have ten of the- bank's £1 notes in
exchange for her 'Bank-of-Englander: The cashier was
delighted to accommodate her in this fashion. The ex-
change being completed, the old lady taking up one of the
provincial notes, read aloud the promise engraved upon it
to pay the bearer in, cash. ' Very good r (said she, with
a gleesome chuckle) `now gi' me goold for your notes, or
I'll run to the door and call out, ' Bank's broke !' There
was no resisting thii, and the market-woman departed
triumphantly with her-gold. Light-heeled Mercury could
not have helped her better than she helped herself by
means of her own sharp wit."—Dr. Doran's " Table
Traits."

LINLITHGOW PAcacz.—Pausing here, let us look
around and survey a scene• replete with singular interest,
an interest invoking proud remembrances of by-gone
chivalry and regal pomp, those remembrances chilled by
the humiliating, contrast of present desolation. The palace
whose mouldering and dilapidated walls are now before us,
once formed the dwelling-place of kings, and have rung
with joyous acclaim and royal revelry—have been the
birth-place of princes, and have sparkled with the rich
array of courtly dames, and gallant knights; new alas,
fallen from such palmy state, they are tenanted by the
obscene bird of night, and have their echoes disturbed only
by cawings of the raven, or the twitter of the bat. The
song of the minstrel has given place to the sighing of the
night-wind ; and the stately halls which shone in the
radiance of regal splendour, are blackened, bare, deserted,
and forlorn. This delightfully situated palace was the
favourite residence of a long line of the Scottish kings,
who, charmed with its beauty, emulated each other in its
adornment. It was destroyed by fire, occasioned by. the
carelessness, if not attributable to the malice of General
Hawley, on the 31st January, 1746. That officer having
been defeated at Falkirk, by the rebels, and forcedito
retreat under very discredible circumstances, took up his
quarters at Linlithgow, and along with some of his
dragoons occupied the royal apartments in the palace
The straw used as bedding by the troopers caught fire : a
result foreseen, and its probability pointed out to the
general by a lady of the Livingston family who bad charge
of the palace. On representing the likelihood of such an
event to Hawley, he treated her remonstrances with ridi-
cule, which, exciting the ire of the proud dame, she uttered
the cutting sarcasm "be it so, I can run from fire as fast
as you can, General," in allusion to his disgraceful flight
from Falkirk, and having delivered herself of this stinging
reproach, she immediately took horse and galloped off to
Edinburgh. The night of her departure saw the palace
reduced to ashes.—Banks' Guide to the Land of Scott
and Burns : unpublished.

How A BRISTOL MnA WAS TOO BUSY TO COURT A.
WIFE.—I have heard from an old inhabitant of Bristol=
anecdote of the forefather of one of our first commercial
families, which is a little-characteristic and amusing. My
informant had the story from his father, who personally
vouches for the fact. It occurred some eighty years or so
ago. The Bristol merchant, who had not time for that
delicious trifling called courting, was very largely engaged
in trade, and so entirely didlie enter into and was engrossed
by the spirit of commerce, that he attained to the age of
nearly forty before the idea of getting a wife, and pros-
pectively an heir, to his vastly accumulating fortune ever ,
occurred to him. Morning, noon, and night, in hisinner
counting-house, he might be found, the only company he
saw being sea-captains and clerks. Bills of lading were
his sole billets-doux, and the only invitations he aecepted,
invoices. As he went to and from his place of business, if
he passed fair faces, the eye still bent upon distant tran-
sactions, never turned aside to scan them : the winter went
and the summer came, and the bloom of flowers and of
beauty were alike ineffeetual to distract that earnest man
from those things which appertained to his business. The
transactions of his counting-house were to him the tran-
sactions of the world; yet he was no miser.; it was more
the spirit of trade than the desire of money that occupied
him. One day a clerk came in to say that a lady wished
to see him ; he turned from the pile of papers before him,
with the look of one who was annoyed at being inter-
rupted. " You know lam particularly engaged," said he.
The clerk told the lady so, but returned with word that
she would detain him but a few minutes. The merchant,
thinking she was one of the numerous ladies who dispersed
themselves about to collect money for philanthropic pur-
poses, told the clerk to ascertain her business and give her
a contribution. The lady did not want money, but to see
the merchant himself ; this time, too, she gave her name,
which the merchant recognised as that of a lady with
whose trusteeship he had been encumbered by a deceased
friend. She was admitted : her business was to consult
him on the propriety or otherwise of her accepting an offer
of marriage which she bad received. Now, for the first
time, occurred to the Bristol merchant the idea of this holy
state in his own case. " Marriage," said he, listlessly
turning over some West Indian correspondence ; " Well,
I suppose every body ought to marry, though such a thing
never occurred to me before. Have you given this
gentleman an affirmative answer ?" "No." " Are your
feelings particularly engaged in the matter ?" " Not
particularly." " Well, then, Madam," said he, turning
round on his office-stool, " if that be the ease, and if you
could dispense with courtship, for which I have no time,
and think you could be comfortable with me, I am your
humble servant to command." There were people who
thought that the lady had a purpose in going there, but,
if so, she prudently disguised it. She said she would con-
sider the matter : the Bristol merchant saw her out with
the same coolness as if she was merely one of his corres-
pondents, and when she was gone five minutes was once
more immersed in his letters and ledgers. A day or two
after, he had a communication from the lady, accepting his
offer, very, considerately excusing him from an elaborate
courtship, and leaving him to name " the most convenient
day." They were married, and the match made in five
minutes, in the business atmosphere of a Bristol counting-
house, during a business call, in a business way, and in a
business hour, got on as prosperously as if they had met
by moonlight under a willow, there vowed eternal love,
cooed like turtle-doves for a twelvemonth, and expended
reams of satin post in passionate epistles.— Correspondent
of a Bristol Paper.
BIBLICAL CRITICISM.—In conclusion, it is matter of
congratulation that here, as elsewhere, the Bible has passed
triumphantly through the ordeal. English Infidels of the
last century raised a premature wan over the discovery
and publication of so many various readings. They
imagined that the popular mind would be rudely and
thoroughly shaken, that Christianity would be placed in
imminent peril of extinction, and that the Church would
be dispersed and ashamed at the sight of the tattered
shreds of its Magna Charta. But the result has blasted
all their hopes, and the oracles of God are found to have
been preserved in immaculate integrity. The storm
which shakes the oak only loosens the earth around its
roots, and its violence enables the tree to strike its fibres
deeper into the soil. So it is that Scripture has gloriously
surmounted every trial. There gathers around it a dense
" cloud of witnesses," from the ruins of Nineveh and the
valley of the Nile ; from the slab and bas-reliefs of Sen-
nacherib and the tombs and monuments of Pharaoh ; from
the rolls of Chaldee paraphrasts and Syrian versionists ;
from the cells and libraries of Monastic scribes, and the
dry and dusty labours of scholars and antiquarians. The
scepticism of history has been silenced by the vivid re-pro-
duction of the ancient and eastern world. And if the ex-
ternal annals of Israel be confirmed, attestation is given
by this same process to that religious and supernatural
element, which so prominently characterizes them. Our
present Bibles are undiluted by the lapse of ages. While
the world has suffered its boasted classics to be so conta-
minated and blurred, the Church rejoices over the fair page
of her precious books, and amidst all the variations pre-
sented, can put her unwavering trust in the records of the
Evangelists, and glow with cordial sympathy at the min-
strelsy of Isaiah, belieiing that the far descent of these
venerable treasures has neither altered their character nor
changed their identity. Those oracles written amidst
such strange diversity of time, place, and condition,—
among the sands and cliffs of Arabia, the fields and hills
of Palestine, in the palace of Babylon and in the dungeons
of Rome, have come down to us in such unimpaired fulness
and accuracy, that we are placed as advantageously toward
them as the generation which gazed upon that " book of
the law " to which MOWS had been adding chronicles and
statutes for forty years, or those crowds which hung on
the lips of Jesus as he recited a parable on the shore of
the Galilean lake, or those Churches which received from
Paul or Peter one of their epistles of warning or expo-
sition. Yes, the river of life which issues out from beneath
the throne of God and the Lamb, may, as it flows through
so many countries, some times bear with it the earthy
evidences of its chequered progress, but the great
volume of its waters has neither been diinmed in its trans-
parency nor bereft of its healing virtue,—North -British
Review.