The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-02-28 00:00:00

VARIETIES.

A PECULIAR EXPRESSION.—When Moore was getting
his portrait painted by Newton, Sydney Smith (who ac-
companied the poet) said to the artist, " Couldn't you
contrive to throw into his face somewhat of a stronger
expression of hostility to the church establishment ?"
A GENTLEMAN.—Show me the young man who can
quit the brilliant society of the young to listen to the
kindly voice of age—who can hold cheerful converse with
one whom years have deprived of charm—show me the
man who is willing to help the deformed who need help—
show me the man who shuns a blasphemer, the traducer
of his mother's sex—who scorns, as he would a coward,
the ridiculer of woman's reputation—show me the man
who never forgets an instant, the delicacy, the respect
that is due to woman in any condition or class, and you
show me a gentleman—nay you show me a better—you
show me a wise man and a Christian.

WATER IN BREAD.—The quantity of water which
well-baked wheaten bread contains amounts on an average
to about forty-five per cent. The bread we eaf, therefore,
is nearly one-half water ; it is, in fact, both meat and
drink together. The flour of wheat and of other kinds
of grain contains water naturally, but it absorbs much
more during the process of conversion into bread. One
hundred pounds of fine wheaten flour take up fifty pounds,
or half their weight of water, and give 150 pounds of
bread, One of the reasons why bread retains so mu&
water is, that during the baking a portion of the starch
is converted into gum, which holds water more strongly
than starch does. A second is, that the gluten of flour,
when once thoroughly wet, is very difficult to dry again,
and that it forms a tenacious coating round every little
hollow cell in the bread. which coating does not readily
'allow the gas contained in the cell to escape, or the water
to dry up and pass off in vapour ; and a third reason is,
that the dry crust which forms round the bread in baking
is nearly impervious to water, and, like the skin of a
potato which we bake in the oven or in the hot cinders,
prevents the moisture within from escaping. The pro-
portions of water, gluten, and starch or gum in well-
baked wheaten bread are nearly as follow ;—Water, 45 ;
gluten, 6 ; starch, sugar, and gum, 49 ; total, 100.—
The Chemistry of Common Life.
LOVING AND LIKING.—Of the French language, Can-
ning is reported to have said in a dispute, " Why, what
on earth, sir, can be expected of a language that has but
one word for liking and loving, and puts a fine woman
and a leg of mutton on a par, as `J'aime Julie ; l'aime
un gigot " Onr American women, however, are open
to the brilliant Englishman's sarcasm, confounding, as
they do, the words to such an extent that their distinction
is practically annihilated. To " like," as a contemporary
observes, is altogether too tame an expression for a lady's
choice. She "loves" everything for which she has any
affection, penchant, appetite, or fancy. "Oh, I dearly
love turnips!" exclaimed a lady, the other day at the
table, says the Post, who merely meant to say that she
liked the vegetable in question. "Do you, indeed !" ex-
claimed an ascetic old bachelor of her acquaintance, who,
sat opposite. " What more could you say of your hus-
band ? or that beautiful child of yours ? or even of your
Redeemer, madam ? Love turnips ! I hope you may find
something more worthy' of your affections !"—Northern
Farmer, U. States.

CIRCASSIAIC AVERSIaIf vc RIIMA.—A few years ago
a slave-ship sprang a leak ont at sea, just as a Russian
steamer passed in the• distance: The• Turkish slave-dealer,
who preferred even the chill blasts of Siberia to a grave
even in deep water, made signals of distress, and the
steamer came up in time to rescue the ship and its living
cargo from destruction.• But so deeply is hatred of Russia
implanted in every Circassian• heart, that the spirit of the
girls revolted at the thought of becoming the helpmates
of grey-coated soldiers, instead of sharing the sumptuous
couch of a Turkish Pasha. They had bid adieu to their
native mountains with little emotion, but as the Russian
ship approached they set • up terrible and despairing
screams. Some sprang headlong into• the sea; others
drove their knives into their hearts.; to these heroines
death was preferable to the bridal bed of a detested
Muscovite. The survivors were taken to. Anapa, and
married to Cossacks, or given to ofikers as servants.—
Blackwood's Magazine.

BACHELOR HOUSEREEPING.—I think I see him !
Ragged dressing-gown ; beard two days old ; depressed
dickey ; scowling face; out at elbows, out of sorts, and—
out of " toast !" Poor thing ! Don't the sight make my
heart ache ? How should he be expected to know that
bread was the forerunner of toast, without a wife to tell
him ? Bachelors never cut their " wisdom teeth !" It is
astonishing how people can make themselves merry at
their expense. I consider their case calls- for the deepest
commiseration. It is. not toast they want—it is a wife !
Toast will naturally fellow, and in fine order too!. But,
bless your soul, the poor creatures don't know half the
time what ails them.. They have a generaLundefined feel-
ing of discomfort which they cannot account for;- never
can find their winter and summer clothes when they want
them; moths eat upon their woollens ; the washerwoman
ruins their flannels—letting them soak in the water—
scorches their Sunday dickey, and irons off their shirt
buttons ; stockings get mis-mated ; if you pulled off their
boots, you would find they were—" Oddfellows I" Silk
neck-ties want hemming ; when they run their arm into
a coat sleeve it gets-tangled in a ragged lining ; lose •their
port-monnaies, because the daylight shines through their
pockets : fingers all peeping out of their gloves ; miss half
their duds, moving from one boarding-house to another ;
chambermaids thumb their nice books with greasy fingers,
use all their Cologne, and make acquaintance with their
head and tooth-brushes ; let all their letters and notes—
everything but their tailors' bills—stay down stairs a
week before they are delivered. Poor things ! They feel
themselves perfect cyphers, every time they see a family
man go strutting past, like chanticleer with his hen and
chickens ! Afraid to ask a woman to have them, for fear
she will say "Na " Ain't their sufferings intolerable ?
Fanny Fern.
THE DEATH. OF Louis THE FIPTEENTIL—ACCESSION
Or Lours THE. SIXTEENTH AND•MARIE ANTOINETTE.—
Louis XV. died at Versailles on the 10th of May, 1774,
while the dauphin, the dauphiness, the royal family, the
court, and the gentlemen of the household were silently
awaiting his last sigh in the ante-chambers of the royal
apartment. In their uncertainty of the moment when the
old monarch.might cease to exist, when etiquette required
that the new king should quit the palace of-the defunct
one, it had' been concerted with the chide- of the royal
stables—whose duty it was to bring forward: the carriages
—that a wax taper, which was burning in a window of
the royal bedchamber, should .be extinguished at the
moment when the dying monarch had breathed his last,
and that this should be the silent signal for the entrance
of the equipages into the courts of the palace. At the
moment the taper was extinguished, the dauphin, who had
retired.with the dauphiness into their apartment, heard a
soundlike a rumbling peal of thunder-in the interior of
the palace. He arose;. disturbed at: the approach of so
unusual a noise. It was occasioned by the hurried foot-
steps:of hundreds of courtiers and officers of the crown,
who.were rushing from the ante-chambers of the late king:
to precipitate themselves into those of the future monarch..
At such a sound—which tumultuously announced from
the very first moment a reign of noise and agitation—the
youthful king and queen instinctively fell upon their knees,
and elevating their hands together, exclaimed as with one
voice, t May God. protect us ! we are too young to reign.!"
The king was scarcely twenty,. the queen not nineteen ;
and the kingdom, worn out with the vices of the last
reign, would have required, to...raise and consolidate it, the
eagle-eye of genius, the heart of heroism, and the maturity
of a sage.—Lamartine's History of the Constituent
Assembly.

GHOST STORIES.—Left Holland House in tittle to get
to Rogers's, where Sir W.. Scott was to call for us. Called
at three to take us to dine with his son, Major Scott, at
Hampton. Scott very agreeable on the way. Told him
our conversation at Holland House about ghosts, which
brought on the same topic. His own strong persuasion,.
one night, that he saw the figure of Lord Byron. Had
been either talking of or reading him ; and on going into
the next room, was. startled to see through the dusk what
he could have sworn was Byron, stand, as he used to do
when alive. On returninginto the drawing-room, he said
to his daughter "If you wish to see Lord Byron go into
that room." It was the effect of either the moonlight or
twilight upon some drapery that was hanging up, which
to his imagination, just then full of Byron, presented this
appearance. Rogers's story of the young couple at Berlin
in their opera-box, between whom, at a distance, there
always appeared to be a perion sitting, though on going
into their box, it was found that there was nobody there
but themselves. From all parts of the house this super-
natural intruder could be seen.; but people differed as to
its appearance, some saying it was a Pair man, others a
dark ; some maintaining that he was old, others that he
was young. It should be mentioned, that there was some
guilty mystery hanging over the connexion between these
young people ; and as, at last, no one ventured to visit
their box, they disappeared from Berlin. This anecdote
Lord Wriothesley Russell brought with him from abroad.
Scott (who evidently did not like the circumstance being
left unexplained) proceeded to tell a story of Mrs. Hook,
the wife of Dr. Hook who wrote the Roman History ; "it
being well," he said, "to have some real person to fit
one's story on." Mrs. Hook becoming acquainted and
intimate with a foreign lady, a widow, at Bath ; their
resolving to live together on their return to London.
Mrs. Hook, on coming down stairs one day at this lady's
lodgings, meeting a foreign officer on the stairs, said to
her friend next day, " You had a visitor yesterday ?" the
other answering, "No ; she had seen no one since Mrs.
Hook left her." Mrs. H., thinking this odd, going another
day into her friend's dressing-room by mistake, and seeing
the same officer there alone stretched on the sofa. Being
now sure there was something not right, determined to
mention it to the lady ; who, at first, said it was impossi-
ble, but hearing a description of how the officer was
dressed, fainted. Mrs. Hook, convinced it was some im-
proper liaison she was carrying on, determined gradually
to give up her acquaintance. The foreign lady soon after
was Preparing to go to London ; and Mrs. Hook, being in
the room when her maid was packing (the lady herself
not being present), saw a miniature case fall out of the
portmanteau ; and taking it up and opening it, saw the
portrait of the very person whom she had met on the
stairs. " That," said the maid, "is the picture of my
mistress's husband." " Her husband ?" " Yes," an-
swered the maid; "he died a short time before we left
Germany." In a few weeks afterwards, there arrived an
order in England to have this foreign lady arrested, 911
014Argi of murdering her huphancl :—M9re'ff Pfe,