The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-11-22 00:00:00

pii ILITARaON IC-HALL
HANDEL'S SUBLIME. ORATORIO,
"SAMSON,"
N, "
THISEVENING (TUESDAY), the 22nd bastant.
To commence at a Qnarter before Eight.
MADAME GA RrIA will sing " Let the Bright Seraphim,"
• with Trumpet Obligato.
Boxes and galls, ss. ; Gallery Stalls, 35.; Gallery, 2s.

,
irr'mot tanbarb.

PROM OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT.

MONDAY MORNING.
NOTHING definite has yet been arranged with regard
to the period when Parliament will meet for the despatch
of business, although the rumours in monetary and
political circles which I noticed last week, respecting an
-early convocation of the Senate, have been again revived,
the Government brokers, among others, taking an active
part, for reasons best known to themselves, in giving
-currency to the report that there will be what your old
'politicians call a pre-Christmas Session. It was stated in
some of the clubs on Saturday night, that the subject
had exclusively occupied the deliberations of Ministers at
their council in the course of the afternoon ; and if there
be any truth in the gossipping which one hears in the
saloons of " The Reform," the ranks of the ABERDEEN
Coalition Cabinet are pretty equally divided on this knotty
point. Another council has been summoned for to-morrow
(Tuesday), and the question must then be decided, for on
Thursday or Friday the QUEEN will hold a Privy Council
at Windsor Castle, to fix the day to which Parliament
shall stand further prorogued from the 26th inst. I
may mention that the SPEAKER of the House of Com-
mons has come to town rather unexpectedly —that all
the officers connected with both branches of the legisla-
ture have received instructions to hold themselves in
readiness for " active service," and that BARRY, the
architect. has been directed to expedite the works which
were commenced in the interior of Westminster Palace
immediately after the close of last session. These certainly
are somewhat significant facts, and give indication of an
early gathering of the People's Tribunes—but as I have
already said, nothing has yet been determined by HER
MAJESTY'S Ministers, and much will depend on the au-
thentic reports which reach Downing-street from the
seat of war during the next forty-eight hours. Lord
ABERDEEN'S friends are vigorously occupied in represent-
ing the PREMIER'S health as "quite deplorable," and his
physicians, well-informed men assert, have prescribed
immediate abandonment of the cares of office. Upon
whose shoulders the Premiership is to fall, there are
,various conflicting opinions some say PALMERSTON,
others CLARENDON, others again RUSSELL. I am not
'sufficiently versed in political prophecy to fix upon the
embryo Prime Minister of England, but I believe I am
not far wide of the truth in asserting that our SOVEREIGN
has expressed her royal desire that the first vacancy
which occurs in the Cabinet should be filled up by
calling to HER MAJESTY'S Councils your ex-repre-
sentative, Mr. CARDWELL, the present President of the
Board of Trade. Viscount CANNING, the Postmaster-
General, is also an object of his Royal Mistress's solicitude,
and both men are certain, at no very remote period from the
assembling of Parliament, to occupy seats at the Council
table of the ABERDEEN Cabinet.
With regard to the Turkish question, messages on Fri-
day afternoon and Saturday morning passed and repassed
in rapid succession from minister to minister. The pub-
lic only know this, that hostilities have taken place be-
tween the Turks and Russians, and, it is supposed, with
advantage to the former, who have recrossed the Danube
—or, in more diplomatic language, " they retired for rea-
sons of strategy." The French and English Fleets are
looking on, it is said, judtging that the Turk can do the
business himself; meantime the Government of France
has issued a notiee for a contract, to furnish provisions
to their ships, from Constantinople to Odessa, from and
after the 16th instant, during the whole peribd of the
sojourn of the Mediteranean squadron in the Bosphorus
and in the Black Sea. This really looks as if France
meant something. Ransack every club or political re-
union in London, youcan gather no more. One or two
litterateurs and artists started for the seat of war on
Friday morning ; they are determined to be in the thick
of it, if it be not all over before they arrive, which they
rather anticipate.
In eight or ten days after the publication of the present
issue of the Liverpool Standard, one of the plague-spots
of the United Kingdom—London especially—shall have
ceased to exist,—ln these realms at all events. I refer to
the moribund pests,—Bwrxtme OFFICES. Never was a
more stringent act passed ainoo cwis ±,E, CROMWELL had
e Lexie L. tue Government or Protectorate. Every penny
held by the varlets, in deposit on races however distant,
must be disgorged--:returned to the :apples depositing.
The betting offices, for the most part kept by penniless
scamps, have been on the wane for the last ten or twelve
months; the city magistrates, well piloted- by WHITTLE
HARVEY, the Poliee Commissioner, did much to ruin
them, as they had ruined many city 'prentice, porter and
clerk. The betting offices are pretty well all closed ; the
-keepers of them know the " doubly-hazardous" game of
taking money, and those who have deposits to any amount
have —cut ; I use their own language. lam not here to
occupy space and time for perusing descriptions of these
betting houses on Saturday nights. Such is the fatal
fetch for gaming, when facilities present themselves, that
I have known highly educated and—as the world goes-
-
moral gentlemen, pay one of their last few sovereigns for
a bit of pasteboard, and high hopes of winning, which
were never realised. If such men are gammoned (I again
use the appropriate language of the parties), shall we
wonder at the juvenile clerk, the heretofore trustworthy
Porter, the messenger, or servant doing the same ? No.
• But betting houses are not to die; Boulogne's the word
In brief, I am well informed that betting lists, even on a
more prodigal scale, are to be opened in that resort of
mongrel poodles and other vagabonds. However, the
pest is driven from our walls.
Are 'we never to have done with effigies of Sir
ROBERT PEEL and their attendant absurdities ? Sup-
Porters of the Right Honourable Baronet's policy—a
Strange mixture—do not imagine that I would, could, or
should, breathe (a sigh ?) a word to the deterioration of
his posthumous fame ! It is art,—high art, in the city—
• save the mark,—that now induces me to ink my thumb.
-Most of your readers, who do not reside within the bills
of mortality, have visited the metropolis, and as certainly
have walked along Cheapside eastward. In the known
world, —world pre-adamite ultra-mundane anything,
—there never was a more monstrous absurdity in art
than thi equestrian statue of the great Duke of WELLING-
TON. I apply " monstrous absurdity " not to the com-
position, not to the execution—the details of the horse and
rider. The latter, as a portrait, is faultless ;—the former,
notwithstanding Cuelernex's sainted name—in art
canonized,—might have been more appropriate. The
poet who " lisp'd in numbers " says some pretty words to
the effect that—.
" Honour and shame from no condition rise..
This I know,—if I judge from the tenor of the Royal
Academy lectures, delivered by living professors, Royal
Academy lectures delivered by Sir Josnue, and Sir
THOMAS ; remarks made by that eccentric genius, FUSEL! ;
remarks made by that heavy artist, Sir JOHN Venni:mare
the best draper of architecture that ever tried it ; remarks
made by that gentle creature DAVIE WILKIE, who would
have been P.R. A. if he had not been so anxious about it ;
this I know from these, that a bit from the chisel of
PYGMALION, of PHIDIAS, of ALCAMANES or his associates,.
all of whose sandals CHANTREY would have been glad to
unloose—l say, were a statue from such hands to be
placed in the position of CHANTREY'S one of WELLINGTON
in front of the facade of the Royal Exchange, it would at
once become a wart—supremely or simply ridiculous !
But referring to our friends proceeding eastward through
Cheapside, they are presented with the most remarkable
example of "fore-shortening" extant, either in stone,
bronze, or canvass. In short, the DUKE and his horse
are bundled up ; nothing being seen but the head of the
four-footed animal. But the DUKE and his charger are
there. Pass to Sir ROBERT PEEL'S effigy—that is to be.
I went into the city two or three days ago, having been
apprised that certain " effects, " in theatrical slang,
were to be tried. There was TITE, city architect, Cox-
-ISINGHAM, clever fellow, BEHNES, the sculptor, and two
or three others. Oh, Dome of St. Paul's !in a few
minutes, a number of Irish labourers succeeded in placing
a piece of deal board, or pieces thereof attached, having a
horrible likeness of the late Baronet, bareheaded, and on
foot, in front of the revered DUKE,—he on horseback. In
two words, the effect was triumphantly ridiculous ; not
because the effigy of PEEL was in lath, but simply from
its Position, which beadles, ushers from the Mansion-
house, Guildhall, and both the Exchanges, policemen,
charity boys, bankers, merchants, dealers in bullion, bank
and exchequer tallies, cads, cab drivers, and, as a climax,
your correspondent, inaugurated with loud and long
" 611frawe "—laughter—enough to make Tuomes GRE-
'MAX'S grasshopper gather up his spindle shanks and hop
away from the neighbourhood. You will now have two en-
samples of foreshortening in the City of London, a thousand
-tittles more preposterous than that of HAYDON'S Curtius,
the Itrnnen boy, who sprung, horse and all, into the gulph,
~,,i;trwards called Curtius lacus, as all classical scholars,
,d,ll,'_,leed the perusers of LEMPRIERE, are aware. Super-
, '''t to the absurdity, the bareheaded Senator foremost,
ekitb? "loremost man of all his time" riding behind!
city_..„;,',..•l;e cause of this ? Partly want of room in the
cede a—nt",7ls; the gross and uneducated ees of certain
the leatemoorities. They may fill the niches, the corners of
mniraeule itaitn.ge, with all sorts of nude figures—most
men hi. nunations—but do let the statues of public
to be sec,ue '" Places be in proper ones. A decent—little,
someof t,e7liPot, east of the Exchange, was proposed by
because eommittee, negatived, as a matter of course,
wzLLl2,4oB.xabans thought it would be better to have
° a4IOI'EMI, in proximity—forgetting their
%cll riding on horseback one must ke