The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-07-12 00:00:00

Eibrrpoot tanbarb,

Flio.ll OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT.

MONDAY MORNING.
WREN Greek meets (some say joins) Greek, then
" &c., as the quotation is quibbled about among
critics—save the mark—l will not complete it. There
was an illustration of it—take it which way you will—the
other dewey morning in the House of Commons. The
supporters of the last government met strong—some nice
fellows among them, after all: the supporters of the
Coalition Cabinet were also in " full fig." A dunce, at
two o'clock in the morning of Tuesday, could have told
that the much-injured person in black was to pay, " and
no pitch hot," as the sailors say. The subject was the
ugly Dock-yard Commission Report. The parties im-
plicated—at least their friends—wanted it to be disposed
of there and then. " See you first," said the
opponents. Then were bandied the handsome terms of
" stifle," " shirk," " sneak," phrases which, in public
life, are scarcely ever used except at shove-ha'penny on
the taproom table ; or, if used, " a clout on the head " is
the sure result. DISRAELI was eager, as the boys say
when they toss for a " sudden death "—no best of three
for him. Dispose of the question at once, quoth Disa.AELI.
Oh ! monstrous to think that PERCY, Duke of NOR-
THUMBERLAND, and AUGUSTUS STAFFORD Dock
Enquiry, Bribery—which have formed such faithful sub-
jects for months past in common conversation, could be
disposed of in a couple of hours—and they after the short
ones had commenced—

comes,

" The wee short hours
'Ayont the twal,"

as the immortal ROME says or sings. DISRAELI grew
pathetic, for the first time in his life, perhaps : there
would be no opportunity, if the night was lost, of answer-
ing the manifesto of spitefulness (sic) until next session.
Now, it certainly would be rather hard for the Dock-yard
lads to be under the obloquy for, it may be, six months,
to afford subject for jibe and jeer at hill-side among the
grouse, over oaten cake, usquebaugh and water, from
well-spring of life, cold and clear, where healthy an
masculine wit cuts at friend and foe political un-
sparingly. No, no, DIZZY would have it : so on they went
dividing on the question of adjournment, until the ad-
journment party had it, and the house rose about four
-o'clock in the morning—the first time, for many a long
year, that that house adjourned under such circumstances ;
probably the first since the Reform Bill, when " captious
opposition," it was called, was carried on by that noble,
old, clear - headed, eagle - eyed man, JOHN WisoN
•CROKER, Secretary to the Admiralty. JOHN WILSON
CROKER and AUGUSTUS STAFFORD ! all the world
to nothing !—CROKER, kept up his peppering at the

Whigs for I don't remember how many nights ;
he at last got tired, and deputed my old playmate,
WILLIE MURRAY, Viscount STORMONT, now the fourth
Earl of MANsFIELD, to carry on the war. If my memory
serves me right, STORMONT, then in little more than

prime boyhood, worried the Whigs, and made them
divide upwards of twenty times in one sitting. CROKER
got a little wind by the brief respite, and came to the
attack like a bull-dog. The bill, however, was carried,
and much good, of course, it has done. With regard to
the Dock-yard Committee report, its yaw character, to
appropriately use a nautical term—neither one thing nor
another —it will have a broad-side or two, and no mistake.
The newspapers—" best possible public instructors"—
as llAnav BROUGHAM, in a happy burst of literary en-
thusiasm, once said, are certainly premature, touching the
resignation-of that "old file," Mr. Commissioner REY-
NOLDS, of the Insolvent Court. Here is the true state of
the case : Commissioner REYNOLDS, now half a score
years beyond the three-and-a-half. by Scriptural authority
the boundary of our sojourn in the vale of tears, has not
resigned, but he will not sit as a judge any more in that
awful court, where perjury--false oaths—calling GOD to
witness a lie—is as pregnant as dicers' oaths were once in
Bury-street. Communications have passed within the
last few days between Lord PAL?4ERSTON and Mr. Com-
missioner LAW, touching ono or two questions, viz.,
Shall the vacancy, when declared, be filled ?—and if—by
whom ? The feeler put out, naming Mr. COOKE, the
barrister, to the bench, is all my eye. Of all courts under
the Imperial Crown, individuals chosen to the bench in
the dirty Insolvent Courts, are named by the Crown.
Seniority at the Insolvent Court bar ! Precedence ! the
thing would make a donkey laugh or bray ! Besides,
Mr. COOKE is now well stricken in years—upwards of
sixty—he has been making never under a thousand
a year ; one year with another his income has been more
nearly £2,000. He is now rich ;is his own master ;
which he would not be, were he made commissioner; he
likes his otium,—he had little of it at one time, when
he, like JOHN—Lord CAMPBELL—was on the Chronicle.
CHARLES PHILLIPS, one of the commissioners, is looking
shakey since he had a knock-down the other week, by a
metropolitan vehicle ; and I refer to him, because he was,
before his transplantation, one of your Liverpool Bank-
ruptcy Court Judges. Mr. PHILLIPS is giving much
satisfaction ; he is kind and considerate for honest in-
solvents, and has little mercy for the bad ones.
A familiar, though, it is hoped, not an ill-mannered
account of some of the details of the recent christening
of the latest Prince of England may not be deemed amiss ;
they were intended for last week's communication, but,
as the details are not those of the circumspect scribe of
the Court Circular, they are quite in time. The Royal
Chapel in Buckingham Palace need not be described ; one
regrets the absence of the

" Dim, religious light,"
which, if not a necessary adjunct in the performance of
our pious duties, certainly is a graceful aid. At the royal
christening all was garish. There were no poor present ;
Of that you need not be told. The poor shall never cease
out of the land • and it struck me, as I gazed, that it
would have looked well, had, for example, those most
venerable of Gon's creatures, and the QUEEN'S fellow-
creatures—the Maundy men and women, relieved by royal
bounty—been present. Talk, as you will, rich and poor
are, or ought to be, all the same at religious duty. The
Bishop of EXETER, from the Episcopal bench, once spoke
with warmth of the performance of divine worship in the
cathedrals cf Roman Catholic Europe—there were no pews
and partitions; LAZARUS, in crutch and rags, smote his
breast, and cried " unclean, unclean." So did the noble in
ducal velvet. Perhaps, this would be too much of a good
thing in England. Be it so. The royal christening was very
imposing ; the illustrious personages present, for the
most part, wore the same attire as at the state ball, which
appeared odd. The same blaze of diamonds, yea more,
for there was the Koh-i-noor, polished into shape all
lustrous, in the centre of her MAJESTY'S forehead. The
ARCHBISHOP held the infant Prince very well, but not
nearly so nurse-like as HOWLEY, his predecessor. One
wondered how the little creature kept so quiet. The
child, for all his Honiton lace and satin, just looked like
other little things—dozed, wheezed, and would have cried,
but didn't. The grandeur of the music much enhanced
the ceremony, adding dignity. At thestate ball, was the thin
dance-music of STRAUSS and JULLIEN, appropriate and
inspiring ; but the latter was not needed, for colder, more
measured " poetry of motion," stately rhythm of step,
surely never were exemplified. At the christening there
were in lieu of such strains the massive learning of MEN*
DELSSOHN, and the light, equally learned, and more
graceful muse of HANDEL, pouring out sphere harmony.
How was it the eye became dim, fatigued, worn out ?
The close proximity to millions of pounds sterling
worth of diamonds—diamonds, all was diamonds !
sparkle, sparkle. I wished I had been a bat in
twilight—out of the Royal Chapel. Let us step
aside for a moment, not to moralise much. We
have heaved a sigh for the poor dress-maker, the
shirt-maker, the milliner. Who has said one word about
those pale-faced ones who live in Clerkenwell and else-
where in that blackguard neighbourhood ? No one.
That long street with elderly brick houses, taller than
usual some of them, has in one of its numbers £lOO,OOO
worth of diamonds and pearls at a time strewed on a
back-room table'. I have seen it. In such apparently
dismal abodes live the persons whose fingers make bril-
liant the busts of queens and princesses, duchesses, here-
ditary grand duchesses, and wives and daughters of our
" merchant princes, whose blood-royal sprang from a
three-footed stool. These diamond-setters and pearl-
setters form a class per se. The dry, burning glare of
the priceless gems they are constantly working on (not
their own) wither the juices—humours if you like—which
make an eye merry of an evening. The diamond-man's
eye is far more wistful than needlewoman's. Far up in a
garret was one working over a
_costlyt gem, ; there was a
wooden parapet in front ;
ranged on cc, ere several flower-
pots with humble things growing in them,—stonecroP,
creeping-jenny,—mostly all green and living. The man
who touched " ten thousand" a day saw me
‘looking
at
his weeds ;"Ha!" he exclaimed, like a demon, there's
life in them ; you can't tell how relieved my eyes are
when they light on my little garden." I experienced the
same feeling one hot first of May at the Royal Academy.
I had looked long at the display of green and yel lir
melancholy" on the walls, and said, with Macbeth, " II
look no more." I averted my eyes ; they fell
on the
sallow countenance of a pock-pitted female ; I shall
always remember with gratitude that lady's " ugle mug.
So it is with these diamond workmen. At the christen-
ing I was surprised at the easy way in which the King of
HANOVER minded not only his P's and Q's, hut his L's
and A's and D's, &c., in the Prince's name. The ARCH-
it as well.

BISHOP

adbare and hungry Whigs who started
into existence thirty years ago, and ripened under the
Reform Bill, there is no one more deserving of a sketch
than EDWIN CHADWICK, the Bamfyld Moore Carew,
King of the Beggars. In him the peevish and discon-
tented have an illustrious example of success. At the
beginning of the period above named, EDWIN was penni-
less, Edmost friendless, and destitute of education. Gained
a livelihood in the lowest walks of literature ; how could
it be otherwise ? When the Reform Bill was under dis-
cussion in the House of Peers, and Lord BROUGRAM
Chancellor, playing all sorts of pranks,—noes bending on
his knee praying their lordships to pass the bill, in order
to prevent broil intestine, war internecine, revolution,
and so forth ;—anon spitting out as it were on the symbol
of sovereign sway, as it lay glitterinz, bauble like, on the
woolsack,—then denouncing the useless splendour of the
Chancellorship. All this and more profaneness Lord

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