The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-09-09 00:00:00

FIRST ESTABLISHMENT OF POPERY IN IRELAND BY
ENGLAND.—Thus it was that popery became the esta-
blished religion of Ireland. An ambitious monarch and
an encroaching pontiff conspired against its temporal and
spiritual independence. Henry agreed to reduce the
hurch to an ecclesiastical subjection to the Church of
Rome, as the price of being acknowledged as the sove-
reign lord over its lands and inhabitants. It is not sur-
prising that the great temptation held out to the clergy,
not only of station and dignity, but of ample possessions,
should have won many of them to the cause of the inva-
ders. Rome was at that time in the plenitude of its power
and greatness, and pointing to the kingdoms and the glory
of the world, could say to those from whom she claimed
homage, " all these will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down
and worship me." The wonder is, that there remained
so many sturdy recusants, by whom this splendid and daz
zling offer was resisted. But every day must have dimi-
nished their numbers. In proportion as the power of
England prospered, the religion of Rome must have pre-
vailed. And the acknowledgment of the English sove-
reign as the undisputed lord, would necessarily have in-
volved the establishment of the pope's supremacy; and
this, in point of fact, became established and recognised,
and the phalanx of popery organised and completed, just
about the time when the church in England began to be
actuated and agitated by a spirit of enlightened reforma-
tion.—Dublin University Magazine.
WOMAN IN AFFLICTION.—I have very often had occa-
sion to remark the fortitude with which women sustain
the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those disas-
ters which break down the spirit of man and prostrate
him in the dust, seem to call forth all the energies of the
softer sex, and give such intrepidity and elevation to their
character, that at times it approaches to sublimity. No-
thing can be more touching than to behold a soft and ten-
der female, who had been all weakness and dependence,
and alive to every trivial roughness, while treading the
prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising in mental force
to be the comforter and support of her husband under
misfortune, and abiding with unshrinking firmness the
bitterest blasts of adversity. As the vine, which has lung
twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and has been
lifted by it in the sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is
rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing
tendrils, and bind up the shattered boughs ; so is it beau-
tifully ordered by Providence, that woman, who is the
mere dependant and ornament of man in his happier
hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with
sudden calamity—binding herself into the rugged recesses
of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and
binding up the broken heart. I have observed that a mar-
ried man falling into misfortune is more apt to retrieve
his situation in the world than a single one, partly because
he is more stimulated to exertion by the necessities of the
helpless and beloved beings who depend upon him for sub-
sistence, but chiefly because his spirits are soothed and
relieved by domestic endearments, and, his self-respect
kept alive by finding that, though all abroad is darkness
.and humiliation, yet there is still a little world of love at
home, of which he is the monarch ; whereas, a single man
is apt to run to waste and self-neglect—to fancy himself
alone and abandoned, and his heart to fall to ruin, like
some deserted mansion, for the want of an inhabitant.—
Washington Irving.

BURKE'S FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE.—There ap-
peared in this debate a new speaker, whose fame for elo-
quence soon rose above the ordinary pitch. His name
was Edmund Burke, an Irishman, of a Roman Catholic
family, and actually married to one of that persuasion. He
had been known to the public for a few years by his " Es-
say on the Sublime and Beautiful," and other ingenious
works : but the narrowness of his fortune had kept him
down, and his best revenue bad arisen from writing for
booksellers. Lord Rockingham, when raised to the head of
the Treasury, had taken Burke as his private secretary, as
Mr. Conway had his cousin William. Edmund imme-
diately proved a bitter scourge to George Grenville, whose
tedious harangues he ridiculed with infinite wit, and an-
swered with equal argument. Grenville himself was not
more copious ; but with unexhausted fertility, Burke had
an imagination that poured out new ideas, metaphors, and
allusions, which came forth ready dressed in the most or-
namental, and yet the most correct language. In truth,
he was so fond of flowers, that he snatched them if they
presented themselves even from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
His wit, though prepared, seldom failed him; his judg-
ment often. Aiming always at the brilliant, and rarely
concise, it appeared that he felt really nothing but the lust
of applause. His knowledge was infinite, but vanity had
the only key to it; and though, no doubt, he aspired
highly, he seemed content when he had satisfied the glory
of the day, whatever proved the event of the debate. This
kind of eloquence contented himself, and often his party ;
but the house grew weary at length of so many essays.
Having come too late into public life, and being too con-
ceited to study men whom he thought his inferiors in abi-
lity, he proved a very indifferent politician—the case of
many men I have known, who have dealt too much in
books or a profession ; they apply their knowledge to ob-
jects to which it does not belong, and think it as easy to
govern men when they rise above them, as they found,
when themselves were lower, and we their superiors, by
flattery. It is, perhaps, more expedient for a man of mean
birth to be humble after his exaltation than before. In.
solence is more easily tolerated in an inferior, than in an
inferior mounted above his superiors."—Walpole's Me-
moirs of the Reign of George 111.
AMUSEMENTS OF THE CHINESE.—With regard to the
general amusements which are resorted to by the Chinese
to get rid of the tedium of a luxurious and indolent exis-
tence, they may be summed up in a very short space, and
are in their nature of a perfectly in-door character. The
vice of gambling is a propensity which pervades every
class of society, from the " High Officers" and wealthy
merchants who risk their thousands, down to the lowest
beggar, who will not only stake the very rags upon his
back, but absolutely the humble porridge upon which he
exists, subjecting himself to the privation of food for
days, rather than not be allowed to indulge in this most
ruinous and demoralising of vices. The cards with which
the Chinese play are of an oval forth, and covered with
characters quite unintelligible to any one unacquainted
with their language. The players, thus engaged, at times
seem perfectly absorbed in deep thought and attention,
when they suddenly break out into fits of immoderate
joy, which they express by laughing, and by a curious
noise which they make with their tongue resembling
kissing, the whole of which has a most ludicrous effect.
The Mandarins not only stake money, but are also in the
habit of playing for great quantities of unredeemed
pawnbrokers' pledges, which many of them possess in
right of being the principal proprietors in these respecta-
ble establishments. Cock-fighting is a pastime to which
the Chinese have been long attached; they match their
cocks for large stakes in their natural spurs; they also
fight quails in the same manner. Their public amuse-
ments consist of theatres, where plays are performed
which last sometimes a whole day, the subject being
generally either historical or in honour of their most re-
nowned warriors. Amongst them may be found some
most expert jugglers ; also fortune-tellers abound, who
are much sought after by all classes. These people as-
semble in the public gardens, which are most beautifully
laid out, where the game of battledoor and shuttlecock is
carried on by women in a most extraordinary and scienti-
fic manner. They use their little peg-like feet for battle-
doors, and can strike the shuttlecock either behind or
before them with great precision, keeping up the game
for a great length of time without making the slightest
mistake. The flying of kites is a pastime which is en-
joyed by boys and men of all ages, and it is not an un-
common thing to see an old man of upwards of sixty dis-
porting himself on a breezy day with his flying dragon or
some other such mythological-looking monster.—Pit-
man's Sporting Magazine.
THE SCIENCE OF THE SCRIPTURES.—It has been said
that the Scriptures contain the germ of all true philoso-
phy. Most certain it is that science has grown up and
flourished almost exclusively among that favoured portion
of mankind to whom the sacred writings have been made
known. These ennobling truths have expanded the mind,
subdued the crude and roaming intellect, and directed the
judgment to views both of physical and moral nature,
which have been conducive in the highest degree to the
progress of civilization. Though the sacred writers on
no occasion professedly treat of natural science, yet we
find many allusions to the operations of nature scattered
through their pages. Much of the beautiful imagery of
Scripture, too, is drawn from natural objects—the flow-
ers of the field, the birds of the air, and the beasts of the
forest, are all employed to illustrate and exalt the ways of
Providence with man. What a treasure would be found
could we recover at this day the lost treatises of Solomon
on all these subjects! Many illustrations might be given
of the accuracy of scientific allusions found in Scripture;
we shall select a few. Solomon says (Ecclesiastes, i. 7),
' All the rivers run into the sea ; yet the sea is not full :
into the place from whence the rivers come thither they
return again.' This is just the modern explanation of
atmospheric evaporation. Clouds of moisture rise from
the ocean, float about in the atmosphere, descend in rain,
and, collecting into rivers, this moisture, after minister-
ing to plants and animals, flows again into the sea. From
the expression ' there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea,'
(1 Kings xviii. 43), and various other rimilar allusions, it
is perfectly evident that the sacred writers were familiar
with atmospheric evaporation. Yet, at a comparatively
modern period, it was a favourite theory of meteorolo-
gists, that the waters of the ocean made their way up from
the sea through the porous sand and rocks; and thus fil-
tered, lost their saline particles, and then issued as springs
of fresh water from the mountain tops and sides. And
this explanation was made to harmonize with the words
of Solomon just quoted. Nothing, however, could be
more incorrect than this explanation, both in a chemical
and mechanical acceptation. Unchemical, because no
filtration will deprive water of salts dissolved in it by a
chemical solution—unmechanical, because no fluids, even
supposing a capillary attraction, will rise in such quan-
tities, or to such heights, contrary to the known laws
of hydrostatics. When clearer views of the laws of evapo-
ration revealed the falsity of this theory, the error wasextended to Solomon also, although it is evident that his
statement agrees both with the actual process of nature,
as well as with the latest and most correct exposition of
this process. It is not a little remarkable to observe, that
Moses in his detail of the animal creation follows exactly
the modern zoological arrangement—that Is, he begins
with the formation of the simplest animals, and ascends
in the scale according to the complexity of the higher
in
stance
did Now, it is evident that Moses in this
did not adopt any cotemporary system of zoology, because
the system of the Egyptian priests, as far as we learn
from Pythagoras and Aristotle, who gleaned part of their
information from them, was by no means so scientific.
From Aristotle downwards a very inconitilete arrange-
ment of the animal kingdom prevailed,; and,. in fact,it
was not till the time of Cuvier, in the beginning of the
present century, that any thing like a correct, arrange-
ment *of animal beings was accomplisherl. After long and
laborious researches Made by this:great naturalist and his
coadjutors into the minute structure and comparative
anatomy of animalZ, a system was "framed, beginning with
the simplest and lowest forms of creeping thitigs, and
m a lsny
! _ ascending
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