The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-03-21 00:00:00

Etberpool *tanbarb,

FROM OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT.

MONDAY MORNING..

• EVERY hour is big with events. Yesterday, especially
in the evening, the Clubs presented a scene of excitement
and bustle rarely exhibited on a Sabbath, even at the West
end. During the day the parks were deserted, owing;
doubtless in part, to the unpropitious weather—wet, cold,
and gusty—by so much the more were the Clubs crowded,
and the most important secret papers connected with the
project of the CZAR for the partitioft of Turkey, produced
by the QUEEN'S commands, late on Saturday, formed
ample subject for dis' cnssion. These documents are, un-
questionably, the most interesting parliamentary papers
laid before the country for many a day ; and, let the truth
be told, really do not reflect anything but apparent discre-
tion on the part of our Ministers with a wily antagonist,
and apparent duplicity on the part of the CZAR. His
-intentions with regard to Turkey are evident from the
statements of his own mouth ; and it is curious to observe
how candid the AUTOCRAT becomes in the progress of his
conversations with that able Minister, Sir HAMILTON
SEYMOUR. Haman nature, we are told, is the same all over
the world. These conversations exemplify the fact. The
comparison, by NICHOLAS, of Turkey to " the sick man," is
capital in its idea. The fear of Constantinople falling
-Into the hands of the French leans naturally enough on
the part of the CZAR, but that fear as far as regards his
communications with the British Ambassador is assumed;
however, he had his answer from Sir HAMILTON, who
told him that he felt confident that HER MAJESTY'S
Government could be as little disposed as His Imperial
Majesty to tolerate the presence of the French at Con-
stantinople. I have no doubt at all of the CZAR'S
sincerity in his expressed wishes to stand well with Eng-
. land; that, in shorttqwith us, he would not care as he
almost says a straw for the rest of the world. But then
there is this difference : NICHOLAS must needs "play the
first fiddle in such an arrangement, which, of course,
JOHN Bum, will always prevent, if he can. The
nonehalance with which the Emperor Russia treats
Austria must be galling to that recrea " state. " Oh,"
replied NICHOLAS to the British Ambassac .'sfeeler,"Oh
you mast understand that, when I speak of Russia, I
speak of Austria as well; what suits the one, suits the
other; our interests as regards Turkey are perfectly
identical." Altogether, as I have said, the papers are
deeply interesting. Sir HAMILTON SEYMOUR, who plays
so important a part in the drama, well sustains the
renown of his illustrious name; and the CZAR found a
match in his equally far-seeing, without the Emperor's
cunning, Sir HAMILTON could grapple with it. To his
courtesy and manly bearing the nation is indebted for
these expressed sentiments of the Emperor of all the
,Rusiias, who never would have committed himself, if he
had not been drawn out so nicely by the English
Ambassador.

Another topic. of conversation has been the rumour—
that. the EMPEROR had refused, what is, in diplomatic
language, called the ultimatissimum—that he had re-
fused to evacuate the Danubian provinces of Turkey.
Knowing pretty well every inch of telegraph from Vienna,
I cannot think that this intelligence could have arrived
so early as Saturday afternoon, as stated. Coming events,
I am aware, are said (poetically) to cast their shadows
before; with respect to telegraphic events, poetry, I
imagine, will have the whole to herself. Though lam free
to confess, that rumour, with her thousand tongues, has
travelled from Vienna, from Berlin, and from Frankfort
hours before the telegraph, and yet both were true. This
was neither more nor less, than a lucky guess—a coinci-
dence. One thing is certain, that the CZAR'S formal re-
jection is expected here this day, and then " up guards
and at 'em," though WELLINGTON never used the words.
NA.PIER'S last telegraph to the fleet before sailing—
" Ships for the Baltic, a double allowance of chloroform,"
is as significant as some people think quaint and inappro-
priate. The last munition—if, indeed, they come within
that category—shipped was—mirabile dietu I One can
hardly refrain from laughing even at the sorrowful cause
—about a thousand wooden legs ! A large quantity of
improved scaling ladders was also taken on board the Wel-
lington and other ships under sailing orders. The debates
in both houses this evening are looked forward to with
immense interest.

In foreign affairs the old game of the bulls and bears
Is in the ascendant ; one day's telegraph is merely the
precursor to its contradiction by the following flash, both,
perhaps, to be proved mere " inventions of the enemy"
of truth, by the arrival of the regular correspondence in
the ensuing third or fourth day. Thus, at the beginning
of the week, they took Kalafat for the —th time, I am not
sure of the figure or figures that should be written here.
Of course, we, since, as well as before, were convinced it
was not taken at all. The like dreadful fate, with the
massacre of its inhabitants, and the capture of stores,
guns, and munitions of war, befel Matschin, at the oppo-
site eastern extremity of the map of Turkey in Europe.
This, too, was very sad, but Matschin, like Kalafat, was
used to being taken, with the addition of being burnt ;
accordingly, the last news tells us that the Russians, in-
stead of taking Matschin, very nearly got taken them-
selves. They were repulsed, with a loss of three officers,
half-a-dozen subalterns, and some three hundred men,
and, had they not been covered by their flotilla, would
have been captured by the Turkish cavalry. This re-
minds us of poor JOHNSON'S laconic explanation to Don
Juan, in the slave market at. Constantinople, of how he
came there, namely, by failing to do what he went about :
_ " Who, taking lately, by Suwarrow's bidding,
A Turkish port, was ta, en instead of Widdin."

The Russians, however, did not come in for the polite at-
tentions of " Six Tartars and a drag-chain," but may yet
find a hotter reception from the combined and emulous
soldiery of the two greatest nations in the world, whose
glittering bayonets and silken ensigns will soon be seen
on the Danube ; while Britannia's thunder shall again
awake the echoes of the Baltic on the northern shores of
the common disturber of Europe. Of course, it would be
here surplusage to give you the force and quality, the size
and number, of the first division of the fleet that left Spit-
head on Saturday week ; but I may state that Kiel, or the
Sound of Wingo, will be their joint rendezvous. The
latter, lately reported on by the Hecla, is the more
probable. In the Indian world, we know, by the arrival
of the Nile at Marseilles, that all is tranquil in Persia and
Affghanistan. Though old DrNDAs is still at Beicos, a
cruize to the north of the Black Sea, and operations on
the shores of the Crimea, are confidently spoken of. Au
reste, Austria and Prussia are still endeavouring to " hold
with the hare and run with the hounds." The latter has
sent Prince HOHENZOLLEICS-SIGMAILINGEN to Paris,
where the Emrcaon has adroitly given him his answer
before hearing his question, in this point resembling, in
some measure, the young lady known as

"The forward Miss Baxter,
Who said yes to the gent afore ever he axt her."

When the prince with the unpronounceable name was in-
troduced, His IMPERIAL MAJESTY congratulated him
warmly on his visit, expressed his delight at seeing him—
bat, oh, cruel kindness ! finished by saying that, if he had
brought any bases for negotiation, " he was, unfortunately,
too late." General GROEBB27, who has brought the
counterpart of these propositions to London, has not
found such promptness and candour here. He went down
to Osborne to see the QUEEN, and the "good ABERDEEN"
will give him time to see the lions en attendant the
answer of His IMPERIAL MAJESTY the autocrat, de
tante.? les Rus(s)es which is hoped for by him on the 26th.

To those who have time, a rainy day on hand, and a
little knowledge of the French language, a perusal of
either, or of all, the French papers will produce immense
fun, by reason of the numerous and absurd blunders made.
I am not about to cite many examples. The Earl of
ABERDEEN, we were gravely told the other day, after the
delivery of one of his long speeches on the Russian ques-
tion, hurried to the Argyle-rooms ; and that it was the
noble earl's usual custom to repair to that Terpsichorean
temple ! Rather a curious resort for a staid minister of
the Crown on the verge of threescore years and ten.
Argyle-house, the Earl of ABERDEEN'S residence, of course
was meant. One of the last numbers of the Siecle naively
fills up an omission, made by the London reporters of the
late banquet given to the Admiral of the Baltic fleet, in
the Reform Club ;—it is an exquisite specimen of a full-
fledged French canard. The correspondent of the Siecle,
writing upon the NAPIER dinner, says there
NAPIER, and
was an inte-
resting wager offered by Sir e l
registered in the books of the Reform Club. Sir CHARLES
proposed to lay 212,000 (300,0 —OO francs) that he would,
on the day following that on which the first cannon shot
was fired between the Russians and Anglo-ec Fr n h forces,
bombard Cronstadt ; that he would take it within twentyt
hours, or within five days afterwards would anchor off s
Petersburg. The wager was accepted, and I need not say
how happy the gentlemen who accepted it will pay if they
lose. The pride of JoRN BULL will, indeed, be gratified
when his flag floats on the Neva. This heats the COBDEN
wager all to nothing.
Since the never-to-be-forgotten-but-somewhat-inconsi-
derate-and-harsh adjective applied to a Hants clergyman
by Mr. CANNING, the application of the word " reverend"
has not caused so much mirth in the House of Commons,

as it did on Monday, when applied by Lord PALMERSTON
to JOHN BRIGHT. I told you in my last, that there was
to be a spree about Naprzz's remark, that if he did not
find war in the Baltic, he would make it. In the course
of the debate, Mr. BRIGHT delivered a lugubrious lecture
to the HONE Sncarrinv, who was chairman at the din-
ner. PAL3xnEsrorf was laughing, not merely in his
sleeve, all the time, and got up to answer the honourable
member for Rochdale, commencing, "the honourable and
rev. gentleman who has just been lecturing"—laughter
stopped the remainder of the sentence. It was in vain
that Mr. COBDEN came to the rescue, by rising to order ;
Mr. SPEAKER held his gloved hand over his nose, laughed
like the rest, said nothing, and allowed PALMERSTON to
go on at a "slashing" pace. Both the peace members
were nettled, for even their own friends on either side of
them could not help joining in the cachinatory chorus.
I surveyed the Houses of Parliament a day or two
ago, much to the annoyance of my vertebral column ,
albeit a stiff and strong one. This is, undoubtedly, the
age of gingerbread architecture. They are chipping away
at splendid specimens of oolite—for those who are not
geologists, this is a kind of lime-stone, and in England is
a considerable formation ; it is called, sometimes, and
very properly, freestone, for it does not hesitate to make
itself more free than welcome in breaking. There the
masons are at work; they have just succeeded in raising
into sight and obloquy a screen of the above stuff or
stone all the way in front of the " palace," up to the
Victoria Tower : every inch of this elaborated screen, in a
season or two after it shall have been finished and exposed
to our weather, may be easily comminuted betwixt the
finger and thumb of a tolerably masculine hand—
broken up, made impalpable powder, like the stone of the
£lOO,OOO arch of GEORGE THE FOURTH. The masons, some
of them smart fellows, and rare carvers of heraldic mons-
trosities, and things pertaining to enscript floor of abbey
or cathedral—the masons know this of the stone they
cut ; else why those unseemly cowls which cover the
tops of the ornamented pillars, to protect their fret-work
from rain and atmospheric action generally ? Rubbish ! is
that the way England should build ? No. The great tower
which is to take twenty years in building, is certainly
going on magnificently; no stone from the oolitic district
is here to be seen,—good long-during Bolsover, and in
the plainest, chastest style of ornament. The arch is the
finest in the world; the largest, and quite geometrical.
But here's the plague of the business: if there be a breath
of air stirring, above and about us, the upper current is
sure to be impetuous and bullying; the height, even
already, of the great tower breaks this current, and
}Bolus, enraged, blows down, in perpetual gusts, all the
painful distempers in noseology, commencing imme-
diately with that which learned physicians describe as a
deflexion of sharp serum from the glands about the head
and throat ; together with catarrh rheumatism, &c.
Until the Victoria Tower rose so high, the archway under
a past DUKE OF NEWCASTLE'S house, in Lincoln's Inn-
fields—a fine building, occupied by the Society for Pro-
moting Christian Knowledge, only a brick and a half
from the Duke-street Roman Catholic Chapel,—used
to be considered the coldest place in London or
Westminster; the coldest now is the spot by the tower
referred to, where the peers enter the house. It is a fact
—the cold of Nova Zembla, with the whistling wind of
the " vexed Bermoothes," a fine old sturgeon of a peer
must encounter, and in two minutes he has the sultry and
skin-parching air of Lahore, without the expanse of its
plains. Is not this too bad ? But tbey are both beautiful
houses ; yes, when there's nobody there to speak, and when
the weather is clear. Toz WAKLEY, or some other radical
—no matter—said, after sitting in the old house he spat
black ; they will find the present no improvement ; the
ventilation could not be worse if it were contrived on pur-
pose; a cold shiver at one corner, a sweat at the next. I
was so glad to get into the " panthers" that I invoked the
shade of Sir Jonx VANBRUGH, whose church is hard by,
to give BARRY a hint, and vowing almost not to enter the
house until I was—summoned.
The sudden and lamented death of Mr. Justice TAL-
FOURD, at Stafford, the very place where he, about four
years ago, received his appointment as puisne judge of the
Court of Common Pleas, has left a blank in the truly
social and literary circles of metropolitan society not likely
soon to be filled. The deceased judge was an elegant
scholar—an Oxonian—severely classical, vide lon—pas-
sim; he was also an elegant gourmet, a character, be it
observed, which he did not repress, though he never car-
ried it to excess, because the embodiment was accessory to
much refined enjoyment. TaLvotran's parties were not
distinguished by: the merely rich—the vulgar rich. On
the contrary, perhaps with the exception of his old brother
law student, WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY, the actor,
there was not a man at the judge's table with a money-bag
worth carrying away; yet all were, and most of them still
are, " prosperous gentlemen "in their vocations. MA-
CRRADY was the first:lon, HELEN TREE (Mrs. C. Klux)
was the second, and far and away the best that ever tried
it. CRESWICR, of the Surrey, is good in it. Mr. Justice
TALFOURD was fond of the theatre; and in this respect it
is curious to observe many capital lawyers, who, after a
hard day's work in a fetid court, snap a hurried dinner,
and in the evening are seen enjoying the mimic scene with
a gusto worthy of a ploughboy, though doubtless with
more intelligence. Look at the Attorney-General, Sir A.
COCKBURN, in the side box of the dress circle, sit out a
whole evening's performance; THESIGER in the bend;
PARRY in the stalls; and old Sir Joinf OWEN, the" tub
barrister," up to the last at the play every night. I think
a penchant for the theatre has been encouraged when they
were students in solitary chambers, and that they have
never got rid of it, as dignitaries of the Church, who have
been first educated at the Blue Coat School (Christ's Hos-
pital), have ever afterwards a partiality for halfpenny
buns.

Lord BEAUMONT, of whom I lately gave you a " picture
in little," was found in the city, the other day, presiding
at a meeting of the Peace Society—no, the Arbitration
Society—more generally known in the neighbourhood of
Threadneedle-street, and more appropriately, perhaps, as
the Society for promoting Tribunals of Commerce, and
thus place the heel on the gorge of law and lawyers. The
society has been established about two years ; is as amia-
ble in its object and end as the Arbitration Peace Society
of Mr. COBDEN ; they are entirely the same in principle,
and are likely to go the same way. Mr. COBDEN'S Peace
Society and arbitrating brotherhood is but simply ridicu-
lous ; the Tribunals of Commerce establishment is on
an infinitely smaller scale, and much more workable in its
character. Lord BEAUMONT eulogised these tribunals in
a great commercial country like England; tribunals of
mercantile men, his Lordship contended, being parties
immediately acquainted with the subject in dispute, were
much to be desired ; for it would be better at once to be-
gin to decide, leaving out the discussion of preliminary
details. After all, however, his Lordship seemed to have
a certain class of cases in view, where appeal might be ne-
cessary. Were we in a doric state of society, the tribunals
ought to be hailed with satisfaction and gratitude to
their founders ; but we are not so situated. Beyond this,
however, there is a small, but formidable band of lawyers,
with Lord BROUGHAM at their head, calling themselves
" The Law Amendment Society." This institution, it
appears, looks with jealousy, it may be alarm, on the inci-
pient proceedings of the arbitration people, considering
them as rivals. Perhaps this is a good sign. Certainly
the lawyers and the Law Amendment Society would not
have much to do were the tribunals referred to estab-
lished, and in working order. At all events, opposition
from such a quarter indicates the existence of an appre-
hension that damage may be done to the learned profes-
sion by such an institution. Unfortunately, I have heard
of no mercantile case, or case of any kind, having been re-
ferred to it, though the secretary states that it had suc-
ceeded in obtaining the countenance and support of the
traders and merchants in the city. The case of Malta was
cited, to show the practicability, ease, and efficiency of
these courts, if I may venture to designate them as such.
Various recommendations were made, suggestions thrown
out, and resolutions carried, for the promotion of Tribu-
nals of Commerce throughout the country, and for com-
municating with the Chambers of Commerce of Liverpool,
Manchester, Glasgow, &c. The promoters are certainly
hearty in the cause.

A measure of much importance to Liverpool, and to
every part of the United Kingdom, passed a second read-
ing in their Lordships' House, on Thursday night. The
bill was ordered to be committed—its all but penultimate
stage—under such circumstances as fairly to warrant its
final acceptance. I refer to the Coasting Trade Bill, in the
conduct of that shrewd peer and business man, Lord
STANLEY, of Alderley. The measure last passed in Par-
liament, effecting so great a change in our Navigation
Laws, and which was so fiercely opposed at the time, had
notoriously many defects. The present bill removes some 4
restrictions especially those which prevent foreign vessels
being employed in the coasting trade, to remedy as far as
may be the deficiency of British shipping, more particularly
at the present juncture. A curious argument used by the
noble lord in proposing the second reading of the bill was,
that in passing it into a law, it would thereby prevent the
railways getting the lion's share of the home trade. Lord
COLCHESTER, a sailor of many years' experience, viewed
the bill as a very harmless affair, seeing what mischief
had already been committed. It appeared, as alleged,
that the resat of the act of 1848 wail an increasing ton'