The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-09-01 00:00:00

THE WATERS OF GERMANY

The fashion of visiting the Brunnens of Germany during
the recess has latterly become so general, that the subject
may fairly be regarded amongst our regular newspaper topics.
A pleasanter trip—at so small an outlay of time, fatigue, and
money—is scarcely to be traced on the map of Europe ; and
if the great end of travelling—which we take to be health,
mental and physical—be attained by variety of costume and
language. by complete change of atmosphere, by novel and
beautiful scenery, and by all those excitements which spring
out estrange and delightful associations, we know notwhere
the English tourist can lay up such a stock of vigour and en-
joyment for after days as in a rapid journey through Nassau
and the adjacent Rhenish provinces. This route presents
to him the obvious advantage of being always near home, if
circumstances should require his sudden return, while it em-
braces as many points of interest and freshness as if he were
ten thousand miles from the shores of his native country.
The facilities of making the journey are now so available,
that you may transport yourself to the banks of the Rhine in
less time than it would occupy to go to Edinburgh ; and it
is superfluous to observe that the transition is in every re-
spect more attractive to all classes of travellers, idlers, inva-
lids, or intellectual inghirers. First from London to Ant-
werp by steam—then by railroad to Liege—then to Aix-la-
Chapelle—and so to Cologne and the storied banks of the
blue Rhine. By and by we shall have a railroad the whole
way to the Rhine, and the journey may then be accomplished
in a still shorter period. But there is no excuse whatever
for lingering on the road more than two or three days, even
as it is.

The grand object of the tourist is to reach the Brunnens,
and as so many of our countrymen are annually in the habit
of visiting those pleasant and picturesque springs, a few pass-
ing hints or suggestions may not be altogether useless at this
part of the season. .

In the first place, all travellers ought to be forewarned
against placing too much confidence in the medical books
that undertake to describe the virtues of the various baths
and springs. The opinions of English physicians, even when
they are thoroughly candid, are frequently found to differ
widely from the opinions of physicians who live upon the
spot, and who may be presumed to be best acquainted with
the effects of the waters. But this is not all. Such books
are. sometimes unworthy of trust on other grounds. The
Brunnens are well known to yield so considerable a revenue
to the ducal and princely houses in whose hereditary domi-
nions they are found, as to be regarded with no little anxiety
by their royal proprietors. Sir Francis Head was so im-
pressed with their importance in a fiscal point of view, that he
called the Duke of Nassau a lodging-house-keeper on a large
scale. No pains consequently are spared to bring them into
fashion, and. to draw crowds of invalids from all parts of
Europe to test the efficacy of their remedial application. The
result is an open rivalry between those small states, or sove-
reignties, where the Brunnens are found :—a rivalry as dis-
tinztly marked by the usual features of jealousy and puffing
as we daily observe amongst the venders of rival. nostrums.
Of course all kinds of influence are employed to bring the
different baths into repute, and the writers of books are very
naturally, and sometimes unavoidably, exposed to be acted
upon in divers ways, direct and indirect, in the expectation of
a favourable report in their pages.
These circumstances, which we have only lightly touched
upon, will explain many of the contradictions to be found in
such works, and even in the various editions of the same
works. Travellers will, therefore, easily perceive, without
being troubled with more minute details, the necessity of
being very careful before they implicitly adopt the advice of
any of these books.
The fact seems to be that the waters of Germany affect
different constitutions differently, and that they are effica-
cious in certain diseases only in reference to certain habits
and states of body, all of which must be proved upon the spot,
and cannot be decided upon general principles. The Wies-
baden Spring, for instance, has given occasion to a marvel-
lous diversity of opinions, and many people, who have gone
over there to try upon the suggestions of medical men, have
been grievously disappointed. The only fact that seems as-
certained clearly and established about it is, that it is good
for gout and rheumatism. Every body seems to agree about
that. One gentleman has found it so effectual in gout that
he has actually taken up his residence in the town perma-
nently. On the other hand. the assertion ventured so posi-
tively by Head that these waters arc injurious in cases of
fever and consumption, does not appear to be borne out by
experience—at least so far as fever is concerned—although
neither the waters, nor the still warmer atmosphere, would
seem to be very salutary for consumptive patients. We
know an instance of a gentleman who tried the Wiesbaden
Spring after having first recovered from a fever, and found
no ill effects whatever. For the first few days he felt his
head grow giddy and confused, and was at last obliged to get
himself cupped ; but he persevered, nevertheless, and after a
prolonged experiment, declared that the waters were of no
avail either for good or evil. It has been clearly established
that they have the effect, upon some persons at least, of pro-
ducing a rush of blood to the head, accompanied by lethargic
symptoms. In one ease this result threatened such serious
consequences, that the patient -was obliged to abandon the
experiment at the end of four days. We allude to these facts
simply to show that no general statements, or even particular
details can be safely relied upon, except in so far as the ana-
lyses of the waters indicate obvious conclusions.
There are nearly a dozen works exclusively dedicated to
the subject, some in German, others in English. Of these
we may mention especially the publications of Zimmerman,
Stett, Granville, Richter, Peez, &c. Remarkable incon-
sistencies and contradictions pervade them ; and the best
piece of advice that can be derived from the best of them is
to consult a physician on the spot. In a little work of this
nature by Mr. Edwin Lee, which made a noise in Nassau last
year, the invalid was strongly advised to take the opinion of
a resident physician; and in confirmation of his own theory,
and very appropriately to avail himself of its fruits, there
was Mr. Edwin Lee, at Les Quartiers Saisons, ready to ten-
der his services to his nervous countrymen. All this was
fair enough, but the German physicians objected to the in-
terloper, and some strong allusions were made to a statute of
Nassau which prohibited foreigners from acting in a medical
capacity in that duchy. Two parties were rapidly formed,
and several meetings were held at Wiesbaden, followed by
angry discussions. How the matter ended we know not ;
but we believe Mr. Lee carried his point. One of the hu-
morous features of this affair was the publicity that was
given to Mr. Lee's treatise on the waters. Wherever you
went throughout Nassau, you saw the title of the book pla-
carded at the shop windows, on the walls, and in the hotels
and bazaars. The frequent occurrence of the name of Edwin
produced an involuntary expectation to find it at last asso-
ciated, as it ought to be in such poetical regions, with the
name of Emma :—but you drank the waters, and fell asleep
in utter oblivion of all such imaginative notions.
We might fill a budget with hints concerning the Brun-
netts, but enough for the day is a column thereof. Should
the stream of emigration, however, continue to flow in that
direction, we will resume the subject, and induct the reader
into some of the mysteries of Ems, Schlangenbad, and
Langen Schwalbach—those inexhaustible retreats of indo-
lence and hips.—Atlas.

Lord Viscount Falkland, Lieutenant Governor of the pro-
vince of Nova Scotia, goes passenger in the Britannia steamer
from this port, on the 4th September.
CoLNE.—Comparative quiet has been restored in this dis-
turbed district, and many of the extra police have conse-
quently been withdrawn. It is to be hoped that the late me-
lancholy occurrence will have a beneficial effect, and that we
shall hear of no renewal of those lawless proceedings which
have caused so great an excitement in the country.

(From the Oxford Herald.)
MR. MUNTZ.
Listen, sirs, it followeth thus :
" The gallant Bruin march'd next him,
With visage formidably grim,
And tugged as a Saracen,
Or Turk of Mahotnet's own kin,
Clad in a mantle de la guerre
Of rough impenetrable fur;
And in his nose, like Indian king,
lie wore for ornament a ring ;
About his neck a three-fold gorget,
As rough as trebled leathern target ;
Armed, as heralds cant, and langued,
Or, as the vulgar say, sharp fanged.
He was by birth, some authors write,
A Russian, some a Muscovite,
• And 'mong the Cossacks had been bred :
Scrimansky was his cousin german,
With whom he served, and fed on vermin;
And when these fail'd, he'd suck his claws,
And quarter himself upon his paws.
" His tawney beard was th' equal grace
Both of his wisdom and his face ;
In tut and dye so like a tile,
A sudden view it would beguile;
The upper part whereof was whey,
The nether orange mix'd with grey.
His thread of life the fatal sisters
Did twist together with his whiskers,
And twine so close that time should never,
In life or death, their fortunes sever,
But with his rusty sickle mow
Both down together at a blow.
" His back, or rather btirthen, show'd
As if it stoop'd with its own load,
For as lEneas bore his sire
Upon his shoulders through the fire,
Our knight did bear no less a pack
Of his own buttocks on his back.
To poise this equally he bore
A paunch of the same bulk before,
Which still he had a special care
To keep well cramm'd with thrifty fare.
His doublet was of sturdy buff,
And though not sword, yet cudgel proof,
Whereby 'twas fitter for his use,
Who fear'd no blows but such as bruise.
" His breeches were of rugged woollen,
And had been at the siege of Bullet],
To old King Harry so well known,
Some writers held they were his own.
" His puissant sword unto his side,
Near his undaunted heart was ty'd,
With basket hilt, that would hold broth,
And serve for tight and dinner both.
It was a serviceable dudgeon,
Either for fighting, or for drudging;
When it had stabb'd or broke a head,
It would scrape trenchers or chip bread,
Toast cheese or bacon, though it were
To bait a mouse trap, 'twould not care."

Power—the laughter-making, fun-creating Power—in the
course of his very clever personation, of Tim Moore, the tra-
velling tailor, and the unauthorised representative of Mr.
Thomas Moore, the spinner of rhymes, in the well-written
farce of the " Irish Lion," says, " Misther Wadd, Misther
Wadd, I'm a writin' me thravels, Misther Wadd, an' me
observations, an' I shall divide me book into chapthers,
Misther Wadd, and clap a piece ov poethry ov me own corn-
posin' o❑ the top ov 'ens, to make the prose slip down swate."
My readers cannot fail to have observed that I have, in
humble imitation of Sir Walter Scott, and of the most re-
spectable authority just quoted, " clapped a piece ov poe-
thry," though not of " me otvn composin'," at the head of
nearly every one of my most imperfect sketches of " Poli-
tical Characters" ; and I have done so, I frankly confess,
" to make the prose slip down swate."—(N.B. The reason
why I don't quote my own poetry is, that a friend of mine,
the editor of the " Ltterary Tomahawk," once told me that
it was not more than five hundred times better than Sir Lyt-
ton jlulwer's.)—The " poethry" this week is of rather un-
usual length, but that is on account of the individual to
whom it refers. When children have to take only a tea-
spoonful of physic, a lump of sugar will be sufficient to coax
it down ; but when the bitter draught fills a teacup, a trifle
less than a quarter of a pound of the sugary mixture will be
absolutely required. And as with children taking physic, so
with the readers of the sketches of " Political Characters."
Not more than two or three lines of " poethry" are needed
to make a sketch, however imperfect it may be. of such an
excellent and distinguished man as the Earl of Aberdeen
meet with attention ; but it is absolutely necessary that a
yard and a half of rhyme, good measure too, be prefixed to
a sketch of a Brummagem M.P., especially such an one as
he whose name appears at the head of this column, if one
would have it read at all. And now, my dear Mr. Reader,
after this explanation, which I perceive, by the amiable ex-
pression of your phiz, is perfectly satisfactory, we will pro.
ceed to business.
Making allowances for the alterations which have taken
place in dress since the time in which the worthy knight Sir
Hudibras flourished, the description which Butler gives of
his hero may appropriately be applied to the intelligent re-
presentative of the intelligence of the intelligent town of
Birmingham. With the exception of the redoubtable Sir
Hudibras, and perhaps of Don Quixote also, there never
existed such a grotesque looking animal as Mr. Muntz. Have
our readers ever seen him ? If so, they will never forget
him.

Muntz is a creature of such hideous mien,
That to be remember'd needs but to be seen

To those perhaps we have not had the good fortune, or
rather misfortune, to gaze upon the hon. member for Bir-
mingham, it may be necessary to say that he is a very tall
and marvelously strong man, with the whole of his face
literally covered with hair. His whiskers extend about six
inches on either side of his face, his beard almost reaches
to the bottom of his waistcoat, and his mustaches are of
most formidable character. We believe that Mr. Munts
has a nose and eyes, and a mouth, but we have never been
able to discover them, on account of the mass of black,
filthy looking hair which covers the places where those
several portions of the " human face divine" are wont to
be situated. With respect to dress, he sometimes wears a
coat of a cut so marvellously strange and out-of-the-way-
jab, that we cannot presume to attempt a description of
it. The other day we happened to be passing down White-
hall, on our way to the house, and saw Mr. Muntz figuring
away in one of those outrageous garments called " a
blouse," or something of the kind, with which linen-
drapers' shopmen or other monkeys of their class are in the
habit of doing what they call " the genteel thing, and making
the gals stare." Guess our astonishment when we saw our
hero walk, a few minutes afterwards, coolly into the House of
Commons, wearing the identical blouse which had excited
the astonishment of every person in the street ! A shout of
laughter greeted the worthy M.P., but the mirth was soon
changed into astonishment that any man should presume to
appear in the presence of a body of English gentlemen in such
an attire. This, however, is somewhat of a digression, and
we therefore proceed to say that the garments which cover
Mr. Muntz's nether limbs are, if possible, of a more extra-
ordinary description than the dress of the upper part of his
person. The mass of cloth that he carries about his legs is
perfectly astonishing ' it would prevent any other man from
walking a dozen yards, its width alone being calculated at
somewhere about nine or ten yards : his hat is of the cut
denominated, we believe, by men about town, " spicy," and
his stick is as thick as the monument, and about half as
heavy.

These details must, we are perfectly aware, be considered
very tiresome, but how can we help giving them ? Mr. Muntz
chooses to seek notoriety by the singularity of his dress and
the extravagance of his appearance; and we are therefore
bound, in giving a sketch of him, to dwell at some length
upon both of these peculiarities, just as we are bound, in
writing of the Marquis of Normanby, to notice his sweetly-
scented curls, or, in speaking of Lord Palmerston, to advert
to his well roughed cheeks, and in noticing of Mr. Joseph
Hume to dwell upon his impenetrable brass.
After the description given of Mr. Muntz, it is perhaps
almost unnecessary to add that he is an ultra-radical, for our
readers will feel assured that no conservative could disfigure
himself as lie does. Once upon a time the man was a
chartist, but now he is a ministerial tool, and votes black to
be white and white to be black, with as much readiness as
one of O'Connell's tail, and with as much impudence as the
gabbling goose of Kilkenny. To do Muntz justice we must
state that on the debate on the corn laws, he made a short
but very sensible speech, in which he completely demolished
many of the crotchets of his ministerial friends, and showed
as clearly as any thing could be shown, that the repeal of the
corn laws would no more benefit the working classes of this
country than it would tend to the advantage of the man in
the moon. This was all very well, and it would have been
better still had Muntz voted as he spoke, but oh ! monstrous
absurdity, his vote was in diretct opposition to his speech ; he
spoke for the corn laws, but voted against them! •' Oh!
that somebody were here to write me down an ass ! But re-
member, my masters, though it be not written down, that I
am an ass !"
On the very best authority we are enabled to state that
Muntz will not be exhibited at the ensuing Bartlemy fair as
" the wild houran hautang, nor the man vot vas caught run-
ning vild in the voods, and kivered vith hair." The terms
he required for exhibiting himself were considered too high,
besides it is reported that Mr. Joseph Hume intends in the
next session to propose that the Brummagem M.P. shall be
required to dance on hot iron, for the amusement of the
public, who are to be admitted at a shilling a head, the pro-
ceeds to be devoted to the liquidation of the national debt.
This project, if carried into effect, will afford a fine field for
the developement of Muntz's abilities.
Heaven be thanked, no Mr. Muntz ever sat in the House
of Commons until after it was " reformed."

STATE OF RELIGION IN IRELAND.—A converted Roman
Catholic priest, in a letter addressed to a clergyman at Dur-
ham, says :--" A movement in religion is at present in pro-
gress. The times are big with coming events. The Roman
Catholic aristocracy are, almost to a man, disgusted with the
conduct of their priestz and set little or' no value on their
ibinistry". Aisgustlgeltending itself among all classes,
and will, in all probability, with the spread of knowledge and
reflection, at no distant', period pervade the whole body.
Many priests of Tateiii various parts of the kingdom, urged
by the force of truth, have openly protested against the errors
and abuses of Popery, and declared in favour of the gospel.
Two priests of the name of Crotty (uncle and nephew) have,
in conjunction, established as independent Catholic conyre •
potion in the town of Birr, in the King's County. In all the
cities Roman Catholics flock in crowds to hear Protestant
sermons—quite a novel thing ; and both in town and country
many people, who never before troubled themselves on the
subject, are beginning to make vital inquiries concerning re-
ligion. If due advantage be taken of this critical state of
things, the happiest results may be expected."

- -
THE THAMES TUNNEL.—The process of what is termed
" driving the piles" in this undertaking is proceeding ra-
pidly. The total number of feet from the entrance at Wap-
ping to that on the Rotherhithe shore will be exactly 1,300,
when the tunnel is completed. The workmen, having
reached the Middlesex side of the river, are now engaged in
carrying the extent of the tunnel as far as the Wharf Wall at
Wapping, to reach which only 35 feet more are required, and
then the whole distance will be accomplished. The average
number of feet which the men arc able to finish in a week is
three ; therefore, there is every probability of the tunnel be-
ing completed in between three and four months from this
period. The whole of the premises which it was requisite to
remove for the purpose of forming the entrance at Wapping
have been pulled down; and the expenses attached to pur-
chasing the property, which was very valuable, and remune-
rating the occupiers of the houses, will form no small items
in the company s accounts : as it is, however, the tunnel will
be completed at a cost 'of less than half a million of money.
SAD REVERSE OF FORTUNE.—In the small town of Max-
welltown, on the bank of the Nith, Kirkcudbrightshire, may
be seen a poor feeble old woman destitute and distressed, who
picks up a scanty subsistence by washing clothes. This was
one of Burns's loveliest heroines, the daughter of a highly re-
spectable gentleman in Nithsdale. Of her the poet sang—
" 0 lovely. Polly Stewart!
0 charming Polly Stewart'.
There's not a flower that blooms in May,
That's half so fair as thou art.
The flower it blaws, it fades and fa's,
And art can ne'er renew it ;
But worth and truth eternal youth
Will give to Polly Stewart."
Poor Polly Stewart forgot her " worth and truth," and has
sunk from the highest circles of fashion to her present ab-
ject state. Such reverses feelingly remind us of the vicissi-
tudes of life.—lnverness Courier.

I Mrn

TIDE TABI

Height

Sundays, HoWays,

11. N. H. M. I F. I.
Tuesday 1 153 210 14 7
Wednes. 2 226 243 13 1
Thursday 3 259 317 11 3
Friday .. 4 346 412 10 3
Saturday 5 452 533 10 0
Sunday 6 620 7 9 11 0 12th Sunday after Trinity
Monday 7 746 824 12 9