The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-01-10 00:00:00

VARIETIES.

IT IS SAID that the tea most in favour among unmarried
ladies is beau-he.
No MAN can avoid his own company—so he had best
make it as good as possible.
CHOICE OF A. WIFE.—In the choice of a wife, take the
obedient daughter of a good mother.
A SAILOR PoET.—Luttrell mentions a poetical midship-
man, who described the weather in his log book,—" Light
airs languishing into calms."
"COME DowN THIS INSTANT," said the boatswain to a
mischievous son of Erin, " come down, I say, and I'll give
you a good dozen, you rascal." " Troth sir, an' I won't
come down if you give me two dozen."
RAW FLESH is still eaten in Abyssinia : and Mr.
Parkyns, the most recent traveller in that country, pro-
nounces it good when eaten warm from the animal. He
has not seen a steak cut from the living cow, but has no
doubt of the fact, or of Bruce's veracity, however strange
his stories may seem.
POST-OFFICE YABN.—A letter was put into the box,
the appearance of which denoted that the writer was un-
accustomed to the use of stamps, and had failed to make
one stick at all. He had tried, and vainly tried, but the
inveterate portrait of her Majesty would curl up. At last,
in despair, he pinned it to the envelope, and wrote under
it —` Paid, provided the pin doesn't come out.
ANECDOTE OF JARNOWICK, THE VIOLINIST.—When
Jarnowick first arrived in London, he took up his resi-
dence in a central part of the west end of the town. One
day, paying some visits at a great distance from home, he
called. a hackney coach, and, having seated himself, the
coachman inquired whither he should drive him, when
the following dialogue ensued :—Jarnowick : " Home,
mon ami ; you go me home." Coachman : "Home, sir,
but where ?' Jarnowick : "Ah ! me not know ; the
name of the street has echapper out of my memory. I
forgot her. Vat sail Ido ?" (The coachman, grinning at
the foreigner's embarrassment, the latter continued)—
" Ah! you are a gag; come now, you understand the
music, eh ?" Coachman : " Music! why, what's that to
do with the street ?" Jarnowick : " Ah! vows verrez,
you shall see." (He then hummed a tune, and inquired,)
" Vat is dat ?" Coachman : "Why, Malbrook." Jarno-
wick : " Ah! that is her, Malbrook-street ; now you drive
me at home.—Musical World.

I FRIENDLY CONDOLENCE.—CarefuIIy avoid suggesting
painful or annoying thoughts to the minds of others.
Some people have no delicacy of feeling, no perception of
what is proper to be done or avoided—nothing, in short,
of that propriety which shrinks from giving pain. For ex-
ample, what can be more shocking than to say to a husband,
" How ill your wife looks !" or to a wife, the same with
regard to her husband ; or to make remarks of a depress-
ing nature relative to the health of one friend or relative
to another; and yet we have known this done from the
mere love of talking. We have seen, too, an affectionate
danghter saddened almost beyond endurance, by being re-
minded that her father or mother was getting old ; and
the informant did not scruple tcr add, that, really, the one
or the other appeared to be very failing, instancing, at the
same time, as if to prevent any possibility of misappre-
hension, that a great change has been perceptible within a
short time. We remember another instance of similar
impropriety :—Two ladies were walking together, on their
return from church, both in deep mourning, one of them a
widow, when they were approached by an acquaintance of
the slightest possible description, who came to meet them
with a broad smile and look of inquisitiveness, saying,
"I am sorry to see you in deep mourning." Conduct of
this kind is past endurance, and the person who is guilty
of it has no right to complain if a cut direct is the con-
sequence.—Family Friend.
THE CAUSES WHICH IMPEL RUSSIA To CONQUESTS.
—Marquis Custine says, that in Russia we are perpetually
reminded of two things, the absence of the Sun and the
presence of Power. Both are equally important alike in
their social and external effects ; perhaps the last is the
necessary consequence of the first. A very simple reason
makes, and ever must make, the Russians desirous above
all things of escaping out of their own country—it is the
severity of its climate. Those who live in a country
where the snow covers the ground for eight months in
the year, and the long nights of winter are illuminated
only by the cold light of the aurora borealis, long with
inexpressible ardour for the genial warmth and sunny
hills of the south, where the skies are ever blue, the sun
ever shines, and nature teems with the luxuriance of
tropical vegetation. The shores of the Bosphorus, the
Golden Horn, the dome of St. Sophia, are not only the
secret dream of ambition of every Russian, but the
undoubted object of their expectation. "I do not wish
Constantinople," said Nicholas ; "my empire is akeady
too large; but I know that I or my successors must have
it : you might as well arrest a stream in its descent from a
mountain as the Russians in their advance to the
Hellespont." The habits which necessity has given
them permanently fit, and ever must fit, them for foreign
conquest. Their life- is- a continual conflict with the
severity of nature ; actual warfare, as to the Roman
soldier, is felt chiefly as a relaxation from the rude but
invigorating discipline of peace. What are the hardships
of a campaign to, mew who never knew the luxury of
beds, whose food is black bread and water, who sleep ever
on the hard bench or cold ground, and know no pleasure
save the simple ones of nature and the exciting ones- of
conquest ? When the north ceases to communicate vigour
to the frame, hardihoood to the habits, and ambition- to
the soul, Russia will cease to be a conquering country,.but
not till then.—Alison': History of Europe, from 1.815.

ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH Llaies.—Tile English have
so signally failed in the lyric that you can almost count- on
the fingers of one hail& all the songs in the English lan-
guage that are worthy of the name, at least, all those
written by Englishmen. The English poets, whose strong-
hold has ever been the drama, where truly they have out-
shone all rivalry, have- the dramatic rage so strong that
they dramaticize the lyric, singing in every character-but
their own. Or perhaps I should say the very reverse; that
it is not because of their excellence in the drama that they
are weak in the lyric; but because they dread the open-
heartedness of a lyric- that they take refuge in the drama ;
not willing to sing in their own characters, they will sing
for any and everybody else. However this be, it is.plain
enough that the English lyric is dramatic, that therelies
its Weakness, and that this weakness is fatal.. Thereare
drinking- songs by teetotallers who trespass in ginger-beer;
love songs by men to whom love is a jest ; home songs by
bachelors who live at their clubs; work songs by the veriest
idlers; hunting songs by those whose noblest gamehave
been rats and mice, and such small deer ; war songs by
gentle ladies; sea songs by landsmen who get sick in
crossing a river ; matin songs by sluggards who never saw
the sun rise ; vespers by good fellows to whom, evening is
the beginning of the day ; mad songs by men who are never
in a passion ; and sacred songs by men who are never in a
church.—Scottish lyrics, on the other hand, express the
genuine sentiments of the individual singer ; and hence
their superiority. The Scottish poets have not been afraid
to commit themselves by a show of feeling; the English
poets have. Even of such a public virtue as patriotism
the Englishman is often very slow to make confession ; and
yet no one is prouder of his fatherland. After themanner
of Balsam the son of Beor, he gives a blessing to nations
that he cordially hates; and his love for England gushes
forth in words of reviling, if not in some dreadful malison.
" England ! with all thy faults I love thee still," says Cow-
per; and then he goes on to enumerate her faults, without
mentioning a single excellence, only hinting at English
mind and manners ; still, he says, as though it were a hard
job, he will manage to love his country. How truly Eng-
lish! how different from the "Rule Britannia," of Thomson;
from the " Ye Mariners," of Campbell ; from Scott's burst
of enthusiasm when addressing the " Land of brown heath
and shaggy wood ;" from Beattie; even from Byron, at least
when lie sings of Scotland ; and above all, from Burns !
The songs of Burns owe their success to this egotism, this
personality, this outpouring of the inmost soul which the
English avoid as they do the confessional.—Poetics by
E. S. Dallas.

TIIB CZAB NicnoLas.—He is heart and soul patriotic,
not merely in wish, but in spirit and thought. He
wishes to improve and elevate his country, and he has
done much to effect that noble object : but he desires to
do so by developing, not changing, the national spirit, by
making it become a first Russia, not a second France or
England. He has adopted the maxim of Montesquieu,
that no nation ever attained to real greatness but by in-
stitutions in conformity with its spirit. He is neither led
away by the thirst for sudden mechanical improvement,
liks Peter, uor the praises of philosophers, like Catherine,
nor the visions of inexperienced philanthropy, like
Alexander. He has not attempted to erect a capital in a
pestilential marsh, and done so at the expense of a hun-
dred thousand lives ; nor has he dreamt of mystical re-
generation with a visionary sybil, and made sovereigns
put their hands to a holy alliance from her influence. He
neither corresponds with French atheists nor -English de-
mocrats ; he despises the praises of the first, he braves
the hostility of the last. His maxim is to take men as
they are, and neither suppose them better nor worse. He
is content to let Russia grow up in a Russian garb, ani-
mated with a Russian spirit, and moulded by Russian
institutions, without the aid either of Parisian communism
or British liberalism. The improvements he has effected
in the government of his dominions have been vast, the
triumphs with which his external policy have been at-
tended unbounded; but they have all been achieved, not
in imitation of, but in opposition to, the ideas of western
Europe. They bespeak, not less than his internal
government, the national character of his policy. But, if
success is the test of worldly wisdom, he has not been far
wrong in his system ; for he has passed the Balkan, here-
tofore impervious to his predecessors ; he has conquered
Poland, converted the Euxine into a Russian lake, planted
the cross on the bastions of Erivan, and opened through
subdued Hungary a path to Constantinople. Nature has
given him all the qualities fitted for such an elevated
destiny. A lofty stature and princely air give additional
influence to a majestic countenance, in which the prevail-
ing character is resolution, yet not unmixed with sweet-
ness. Like Wellington, Caesar, and many other of the
greatest men recorded in history, his expression has be-
come more intellectual as he advanced in years, and be-
came exercised in the duties of sovereignty, instead of the
stern routine of military discipline. Exemplary in all the
relations of private life, a faithful husband, an affectionate
father, he has exhibited in a brilliant court, and- when
surrounded by every temptation which life can offer, the
simplicity and affections of patriarchal life. Yet is he not
a perfect character. His virtues often border upon vices.
His excellencies are -akin to defects. Deeply impressed
with the responsibility of his situation, his firmness has
sometimes become sternness, his sense of justice degene-
rated into severity. He knows how to distinguish the
innocent from the guilty, and has often evinced a noble
and magnanimous spirib in separating the one from the
other and showing oblivion of injury, even kindness to
the relatives of those who had conspired against his throne
and life. But towards the guilty themselves he has not
been equally compassionate. He has not let the passions
of the contest pass away with its termination. He is an
Alexander the Great in resolution' but not in magnani-
mity. He wants the last grace in the heroic character—
he does not know how to forgivc.—lfistorY cif Europe,
by Sir Archibald 114011.