The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-02-08 00:00:00

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FROM OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT.

MONDAY MORNING.
UNMISTAKEABLE indications of the immediate re-asseru-
bling of Parliament present themselves. But a week ago
one might have walked from Poplar to Paddington, with-
out meeting an M.P.—evenCOLSIBTHORP,an honourable
gentleman who rarely leaves the metropolis, unless on a
flying visit to his devoted constituents. Now, we meet
members of both houses almost in every street ; while
within the walls of Parliament all is activity, putting
things in order—brushing beautiful works of art, placed
so high that the spectator cannot distinguish the subjects—
polishing the tall and popish-looking candelabra, which
help to give the interior of the upper chamber more the
appearance of Queen ISABELLA'S than that of our own
Gracious Queen VICTORIA. Some hot work is expected
immediately on the meeting of the Legislature. This,
however, is nothing new. " Sufficient unto the day

is the evil thereof" is literally exemplified at every meeting
of the houses. Each succeeding session is looked upon
as more important than was the preceding one ; still
business is got through much in the same fashion, their
lordships taking their seats about five o'clock, prtsenting
petitions, " moving bills forward a stage," and then
returning home to dress for dinner. This, for the most
part, is the manner in which the Peers of the realm get
on ; but when they do sit, certes they are in no hurry to
rise. In the Commons, as usual, we find half-a-dozen or
a dozen Irish members in attendance, an hour after mid-
night, to knock up a little debate on their own never-
ending grievances. $o wags the world away.

Mr. COBDEN has made a mistake, his wager with Col.
BROTHERTON being quite illegal. Out of it, however, has
sprung this good—the gallant soldier becomes a life-
subscriber annually of £2 125., and a donor cf £5, to the
excellent charitable institution in your sister city of Man-
chester—so the Colonel has intimated.

One of the demonstrations of the week (barren it has
been) was the meeting held in St. Martin's-ball, touching
the opening of the Crystal Palace—that is to be—at Syd-
enham, on the Sabbath-day, with HENRY MAYHEW in
the chair. There must have been a hundred trades repre-
sented, every representative with his certificate in his
pouch, to chew there was no sham. HENRY MAYHEW
does not deal in that article. In describing the simple
annals of the poor, reality is enough. I think I never
saw such an assemblage of intellectual faces and skulls—
the latter especially, gloriously configurated, yet somehow
or other the intellectuality as displayed by the night light
was wan, so to speak ; it appeared to have a doubting
more than a confiding character about it : it was, in short,
the intellectuality of working men—not over-fed. Tower-
ing above them all sat HENRY MAYHEW, of majestic pre-
sence and imperturbable gravity. His forehead is magni-
ficent, ample, massive, and high ; it resembles that to be
seen in the best portraits of the Bard of Avon. But to
the meeting. I give no opinion in regard to the keeping
of the Crystal Palace open or shut on Sunday; I
know how my own affections tend ; thus much I will
certainly say, that I would have liked the meeting
much better, had declaration number three not have
been broached, to the effect that the Sabbath, whether
viewed as a Divine or a Social Institution, is
designed especially for the benefit of the labourer;
and that the meeting wanted the rest of the labourer
to be somewhat different from that which wan given by
the fourth commandment to the ox and the ass ; and

again, PALEY,—not in your correspondent's opinion a
great authority in every thing though,—sic by Mr. MAY-
HEW, states that the Sunday, as recognised, was not in the
Christian Church a divine, but merely a human institu-
tion. These and other remarks might have been spared.
What's the use of them ? We have the Sabbath—let us
thank our Maker for it. The meeting went off well, and
Mr. MAYHEW intimated that another would be held on
the same subject, and in the same place, this week. They
have got a curious mound not far from the site of the
Crystal Palace. GEORGE ALFRED WALKER routed out
in my presence hundreds of dead bodies from Enon Chapel,
where they had been festering for years under a dense con-
gregation of Baptists, assembling for divine worship several
times a week, and removed the debris of mortality to
Sydenham, at his own expense, and there buried them in
a pit for moralisers.

The musical season may now thus early be said to have
commenced. The rival Sacred Harmonic Societies, with
SURMAN—father and founder, as it were, of one, and
COSTA at the other, have been drawing crowded audiences
to Exeter-hall during the week. Requiem and epitapliat
both having been performed con gusto in memory of the
late Mr. HARPER, of whose death I sent you a few
lines last week, omitting to mention that the poor dying
musician, with his trumpet in his hand, was carried across
the street from Exeter-hall to Mr. SURMAN'S house,
where he breathed his last on a sofa with a portrait of
HANDEL—Whose strains he had so often vindicated—
hanging over it, and literally surrounded with scores of
that great master's works, with which the chamber was
crammed. LUDOVICO SPHOR, better known by his less
familiar friends as Dr. SPHOR, is coming over to give a
lift, as conductor of some of his own learned compositions.
FREDERICK GTE, the indefatigable impresario of the
I{oyal Italian Opera, Covent-garden, is to scour every
musical capital in the world, to secure novellies for his
establishment. With all this, however, and more to be
mentioned by and by, the fashionable season will be long
in beginning—certainly not till the middle or end of May.
A whole flock of musical birds of passage have resolved to
visit the metropolis ; among them several violoncello-
p'ayers of note—tricksy spirits, no doubt, puzzling

the vulgar and confounding the wise by their dex-
terity. Mr. LINDLEY, once and long the greatest
master of the instrument in the world, and who has so
often delighted the Liverpool audiences by his graceful
execution, is at present far from well, and, with-
out predicatini too sorrowfully, I am afraid will
not again captivate the habitues of the opera. It
was as good as a guinea lesson on the violoncello,
closely to see LINDLEY play but for half-an-hour. The
instrument will never get out of fashion while we have
such amateurs as Lord SALTOUN and Sir GEORGE CLERK.
But it would take more space and time than you can
spare, or I bestow,—simply to indicate all the musical
preparations for the season just inaugurated. The two
Philharmonics promise splendidly; SPOHR and LIND-
PAINTER are to conduct the performances at the younger
establishment. The glee and madrigal people hold out
several musical banquets, selected chiefly from the fathers
of English song. Of music appreciated—loved truly by
English ear—glee and madrigal always tell, especially
with such charming and thoroughly English artists as
BIRCH and DOLBY. We shall be a musical nation in
time. I hold that we always were so, and that there are
more nice bits of English melody transplanted (I !may
not say stolen) into Italian, French, and German opera,
than we have cabbaqed from either, much as WILLIAM
BALPE and others have been accused. Does not "All
round my hat " form the staple of HEROLD'S stunning
overture to Zarnpa I Hear it, and believe.
Consideration of employers for employed is compara-
tively so rare a virtue in these utilitarian days, when
capital thinks it does enough for labour in paying its wages
regularly, that it is quite refreshing to come across an
instance which proves that liberality and thoughtfulness
for the future comfort, as well as the present well-doing of
faithful servants, is not altogether extinct among us. At
the meeting of the shareholders of the London and
County Bank, last Thursday, it was announced that the
chairman, Mr. JOHN SADLEIR, one of the new Lords of
the Treasury, had given the princely sum of £4,500
towards increasing and fixing on a firm basis the provident
fund for its officers, which that establishment had kindly,
it may be added judiciously, founded. Such a fact does
honour alike to the benevolent intentions of the origi-
nators of this fund, and to the munificence of Mr.
SEDLEIR in endowing it with an amount which places it on
a sure and permanent foundation. It may not be out
of place here to remark, that the gentleman who bas
acted in this princely manner towards
the officers of the
establishment over which he pres!des,s "the denounced"
of the Irish people—the man designatedi a
"traitor," and
a " renegade," for placing himself
hin a position under the
service to hisERDEEN Ad
country, and benistration, where
the e can rsenodfer
meanoor Ireland, will
advancing
many of his fellow-countrymen. Alas, p
it ever be the victim of quacks and demagogues, and
driven into the wildest resolves by a cabal of the wildest
politicians. It is practical, sound-thinking statesmen, like
Mr. SADLIER, which the sister country requires, and a
complete extirpation of your Lucasrrus and DUFFEYITES.
Would that some second ST. PATRICK rose up and hunted
the toads from the beautiful island.
Your correspondent must be " all things to all men ;"
so a word or two addressed to your scientific readers
during a week of unparalleled dulness may not be amiss.
I refer to the breaking of auriferous quartz and the
gold regior.s. On Saturday afternoon, by the kind invi-
tation of Messrs. GLOVER, the Ordnance engineers of
Drury-lane, a number of scientific and literary gentlemen,
among them were Lord CHICHESTER, Mr. BUTLER,
M.P., Mr. GREEN, M.P., the Hon. Mr. BINGHAM'
attended at the Ordnance Engineers' Foundry aforesaid,'
to witness the wonders performed in quartz crushing.
The machine has been manufactured by Messrs. GLOVER,
under Capt. SHRAPNEL'S patent ; the experiments were
on gold, copper, and iron quartz—rather tough customers
to pulverize. The result was wonderful—entirely success.
ful in reducing the hard and rugged masses to a perfect
powder by concussion. The cost of the apparatus is go-
verned by size. The ene experimented with oa the pre-
sent occasion cost about £3OO. It consists of a wrought-
iron chamber about 10 feet long, five feet wide, and eight
feet high, with a Venetian-formed roof to prevent the
haraber bursting. It front of the chatubeg