The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-01-04 00:00:00

SANT IN OLD AGI

PEER AND PI

(From Mr. Warren's

Now and Then.")

Mr. Hylton was moved almost to tears at the spectacle
which was before his mind's eye of these two old men

upon earth ; and his offer to accompany his lordship at
once to the cottage the earl eagerly accepted, and they both
took their departure. As the carriage approached, the earl

owed no little agitation a'

one whom angel

Jr. Hyltc

bath there ever communion

,n exultingly, " yonder is the
11, and for but a little longer,
lnistered to—with whom God
and it is a hallowed spot !"

•
The earl spoke not ; and in a few minutes' time he was
3 be seen, supported by Mr. Hylton and a servant,
losely approaching the cottage door, another preceding

him to announce h
side the door as thi

arrival, and
arl entered i

Adam, here con
rstoke—who s.

alp Lora Milv

iding uncovered out--
lis lordly master him-

le9ri, done to 3

hither to tell yon so.

23 he stopped within,
ho led him up to old
s one to speak with you

kith that he long, in

sa m while he

air of r

and yours injus
." The earl tren

bled on Mr. Hylton's
uncovered, gazing with

id this

who, WI
on 1

.ed, was sitting near the fire, leaning staff beside
a table, on which stood his old Bible open, with his spec-
tacles lying upon it, as though he had but just laid them
there. He rose slowly as Mr. Hylton ceased speaking.
" My lord," said he, solemnly, and standing more
erectly than he had stood for years, " we be now both
very old men, and God hath not spared us thus long for

ale, and take 1]
his right hand.

said the earl faintly; advancing

have had somewhat to forgive. For a father am 1, and a
father wast thou, my lord. Here, since it bath been asked
for, is my hand, that never was withheld from man that
kindly asked for it ; and my heart goes out to thee with it!
God bless thee, my lord, in these thine old and feeble days
—old and feeble are we both, and the grasshopper is a

urden to us !

Let me sit c

I am feebler than thou ; auu Ua thou seated also ?"
They both sat down down opposite to each other, Mr.
Hylton looking on in silence. " God may forgive me
(and may He, of His infinite mercy !)—thou, my fellow-
creature, mayst forgive me ; but I cannot forgive myself,
when lam here looking at thee. Good Adam ! what
hut thou not gone through these twenty years !" faltered
the earl. . .

....
" Ay, twenty years it is !" echoed Ayliffe solemnly,
sighing deeply, and looking with sorrowful dignity at the
earl. " Life hath, during these twenty years, been a long
journey, through a country dark and lonesome ; but yet
here is the lamp that bath shone ever blessedly beside me.
or I must have stumbled, and missed my way for ever and
perished in the valley of the shadow of death !" As he
spoke his eyes were fixed steadfastly on the earl, and h
placed his hand reverently upon the sacred volume besid
him

" Adam, God hath greatly humbled me, and mightily
afflicted me !" said the earl. "I am not what I was !"
" The scourge thou doubtless didst need, my lord, and

'
with an eye and in a tone of voice belonging only to one
who spoke with authority. "It is in mercy, too," he con-
tinued, " to me, that I am here to receive and listen to
thee. 1, too, have been perverse and rebellious, yet have
I been spared ! And art thou, then, my lord, in thy
heart, satisfied that my poor son hath indeed suffered

wrongfully ?"
" Good Adam," said the earl sorrowfully, and yet with
dignity, " I believe now that thy son is innocent, and
ought not to have suffered ; yet God hath chosen that we
should not see all things as he seeth them, Adam. The
law, with which I had nought to do, went right, as the law
of men goeth ; but, alas ! as for me, what a spirit hath
been shown by me towards thee and thine ! Forgive me,
Adam ! There is one here that knoweth more against me"
—the earl turned towards Mr. Ayliffe with a look of

gloomy significance—" than I dare tell thee, of mine own
awful guiltiness before God."
" He is merciful, he is merciful

said Ayliffe

STORIES OF THE BEDCHAMBER.—The most sordidly
ridiculous anecdote we remember of a bedchamber is one
in the life of Elwes, the rich miser, who, asking a visitor
one morning how he had rested, and being told that he
could not escape from the rain which came through the
roof of the apartment till he bad found out one particular
corner in which to stow the truckle bed, said laughingly,
and without any sense of shame, " Ah ! what ! you found
it out, did you ? Ah I that's a nice corner, isn't it ?"
This, however, is surpassed in dramatic effect by the story
of two ministers of state, in the last century, who were
seen one day by a sudden visitor furiously discussing some
great question out of two separate bedsin one room, by
day time, their arms and bodies thrust forward towards

each other out of the clothes, and the gesticulation going
on accordingly. If our memory does not deceive us, one
of them was Lord Chatham_ He had_the gout, and his
colleague coming in to see him, and the weather being
very cold, and no fire in the room, the noble earl had
persuaded his visitor to get into the other bed.—L. Hunt.
CHRISTMAS.-All hail, thou season of rightful, but
solemn and elevating joy! Oh, what EVENT, gracious

lu not commemorate !

Almighty Redeemer of mankind, the joy and glory of
heaven and earth ! In the wrapt contemplation, behold
the very dust of earth become instinct with heavenly in-
telligence : even as the stars sang together for joy ! Let
an universal ROSANNAR fill the hearts and voices of man-
kind. For HE came ! and was God With Us ; dwelling
In the flesh ! With us ! HERE ! on this dim speck,
amidst the bewildering and inconceivable vastness of V-

,WIL -.Llig
need out for such purpose in the unsearchabit.

wisdom of the Most High
Angt_Awi

Angels unseen

bow wit

prLiouna! Together let us celebrate this Mystery, saying.
" Glory to God in the highest; and on earth PEACE,
GOOD-WILL TOWARDS MEN ! Thus, heaven-kindled, is
the joyousness of Christmas : soul-elevating : heart-
opening. Therefore do all Christian people welcome this
solemnly cheerful season : their hearts being first pros-
trate before God, and then expanding towards man, in
deeds of charity and virt " Now and Then," a Tale
by S. Warren, Esq., F

SEC(

LIVERPOOL

DITION.

Aided by a payt

L~

is ha;i'e airiv

lard-office, Two o'clock, p.m

NT EXCHANGE-THIS DAY

Valparaiso

The transactiol

,d, several Irish and coasting
close of last week, furnishing

fine qualities ful
all other kinds a
Flour met a slo
The fresh arriv3
terms, and Malt

Wheat fr

rate time, including a few
and Flour from the Ui
om Odessa, Petersburg;

Egyptiai
ported ow

vier in val
without an

were on a limited s,
ates of this day week

Oats a]

qr. cheat
. Pease

Indian
Corn Me

y change in prices.
taken off on rather hi,

per ; other kinds barely
same as before.
e, and Oatmeal recedec

I in valu,

at a decline of Is. per 48C
arrel cheaper.

b,i&. n

NATIONAL TRANSGRESSIONS.-
CALAMITIES.

NATIONAL I

There is nothing, says Blackwood's Magazine, in
historical experience to forbid the idea, that peculiar
nations may have been appointed to separate purposes.
If to ancient Greece was almost exclusively given the
intellectual advancement of the world ; if to ancient
Rome was as exclusively the preparative discipline for its
government; there can be no doubt that to Judea was
assigned

the guardianship of religion. The process may
be diversified in later times ; but the principle may re-
main. The rapidity with which the derelictions of duty
in Judah were followed by punishments declaredly divine,

ut x
and on this point vi

finds a memorable counterpart in the annals of England,
even down to the present hour. B--"-111 limit our-
selves to the evidence in Ireland •

shall be as brief as possible. In the latter part of the
seventeenth century, Popery, hitherto kept down, became
suddenly triumphant in Ireland, and began its habitual
system of severity to the heretic. Confiscation and exile
swept away the rights of Protestantism. The result was
the national punishment by the scourge of civil war, a
renewal of conquest, the expatriation of the Romish
army, and the decay of all the sources of national pros-
perity. Another era came. Under the government of
Protestantism the country had recovered, privileges were
successively awarded. and it enjoyed the peace and gradual
opulence which belonged to English government. But,
a parliamentary faction at length allied itself with Popery ;
parliament was subdued by clamour, or seduced by popu-
larity, and the Popish population obtained the elective
franchis" scenes of

The elections instantly becam
national iniquity. Perjury was scarcely less than a pro-
fession, and that notoriously ruinous system of " sub-
letting," which has covered Ireland with pauperism,
became general, for the sole object of multiplying votes.
This was followed by the foundation of Maynooth, a col-
lege expressly formed for the training of a Popish priest-
hood, whose tenets, every man who had voted for this
foundation had sworn to be superstitiousand idolatrous."

But, when did faction care what it swore ? The cup was
now full. The priesthood of Maynooth had scarcely
begun to learn their trade when vengeance fell upon

Popery and the Parliament. Instead of the promise of
gratitude, which had been so ostentatiously given by the
Popish associations, and so ostentatiously echoed by Par-
liamentary Liberalism, the first act of the Popish pea-
santry was to take up arms ; a rebellion of the most
treacherous and bloody nature broke out, in which the
murder of Protestants was perpetrated in cold blood, and
with the most horrid atrocity, Ireland was convulsed and

impoverished, the rebellion was extinguished and punished
by the sword, and at the cost of ten thousand peasant
lives. The next blow was on the feeble and fractious
Parliament. The Irish Legislature was extinguished at a
blow; and its fall was as ignominious as it was judicial.
lts national pride and acknowledged talent gave way with-
out a struggle, and with scarcely a remonstrance. It had
already lost the respect of the nation. The mind of Ire-
land disdained the deliberations which had suffered the
dictation of a mob. Parliament, existing without national
honour, perished without national sympathy. Its own
principle was retaliated on itself. The Papist sold it, the
Borough-monger sold it, the Protestant sold it, not for
the baser bribe of the populace, but for the prospect of
peace ; it was given over to execution, with the calm
acquiescence of a sense of justice, and tossed on the
funeral pile amid a population which danced round the
blaze. Popery now talks of its restoration. It is im-
possible. The very idea is absurd. As well might the
ashes of the dead be gathered and reshaped into the
living man. As well might the vapours of the swamp be
purified by filling it with the fire-damp. Every hour,
since that time, has made the country still more unfit for

legislation, more furious and inflammable
the nakedness of the people be covered by rags, reeking
with the pestilence. We rejoice to escape from the sub-
ject. It can be no gratification to us to trace the pro-
gress of disease through the political frame which it first
enfeebles, and then makes a source of contagion. We
have no love for the history of an hospital, or those fright-
ful displays of a " surgeons' hall," where every skeleton is
connected with public crime, and where science is demon-
strated from the remnants of the scaffold. But, it is
notorious that the morals even of tha Irish peasant have
been degraded in the exact proportion of his rise in poli-
tical power. Every favour of the English Parliament,
from the beginning of the century until the fatal year
1829, only furnished him with an additional weapon, to be
used with more seditious violence. In that year, the
British Legislature was thrown open to him, and he
entered it in a barbarian triumph. From that moment,
England and Ireland were sufferers alike. In England,
Irish faction was an insolent mercenary, which opened
and alternately hired its services to both sides alike. In
Ireland it was a ferocious rebel, which, as the notorious
preparative for broader hostilities, exercised its arms in
midnight murder. At length the final endowment of
Maynooth came ; and, as an establishment, solely for the
Romish priesthood, without any admixture of the laity,
and allowing the means of an increase in the number of
those pupils of Rome, and propagators of Romish doc-
trines, from about five hundred to double the number,
was fixed on the empire for ever, taken wholly out of the
further deliberation of the legislature, and conferred, to
three times the amount of its former grant, on a religion
which professes the worship of a creature, the Virgin
Mary—which bows down to images—which assigns thrones
in heaven to dead men, promoted by itself to nominal

_ wiers weekly absolution for all crimes—
which apportions the judgments of the eternal tribunal
in a purgatory, and releases the supposed criminal on pay-
ment of money for masses=and which offers the most
solemn adoration to a composition of flour and water,
manufactured by a baker, distributed by the hands of a
priest, and which it actually declares to be the Eternal
God, whom " the heaven and the heaven of heavens can-
not contain." These are doctrines utterly abhorent to

saintship—w

.otestants

uestiona-

propagation of a belief in which they pronounce desperate
defiances of the truth, startled many wise and religious
men with fear of the consequences. We leave the con-
nection of this most unhappy act, with the subsequent
events to the various contemplation of our countrymen.
The subject is too solemn for the mingling of human con-
jectures with its awful reality. But, whether in

of retribution or warning, the singular force of the blOw

Len on

-the Irish criminal and the
:—may well humble us before

ttor of the crime

the Power which holds the prosperity of nations in its
hand. Yet even now, while the two countries are still
lying struck down by the same irresistible flash, and
while the cloud which discharged it is still overhanging
the horizon—while the only voice which ought to issue
from the national lips would be the supplication for help
and the hope of forgiveness, they are meditating an act
more hazardous and daring than ever. We disclaim all
exclusiveness in the exercise of the common rights of
as a folly. and abhor all - co. on.rt rsllvt swst .11 hicrntrir

persecution as a crime ; but we cannot venture an acqui-
escence in an attempt which we consider as an abandon-
ment of the first dictates of Christianity ; we cannot be
silent when the intention is avowed to bring into a Christian
legislature a sect which pronounces Christianity to
be utterly a falsehood, its founder to be an impos-
tor, (we shudder at the words,) and our whole hope of
immortality, dependent on his sacrifice and merits, to be
wicked and blasphemous delusion. And this attempt
from no additional discovery of the truth of Judaism
or the failings of Christianity, but,
,igsirmt.pslyhftrpd ns
omseas:nse
.8_ of - slitical r-

po.— convenience, (a most sh, ate(' sense, as
we conceive ;) a feeling of liberalism, (a most childish and
uncalled for feeling, as we are perfectly convinced ;) and

political system or government of nations-, religion has no
business whatever to interfere, to be regarded, or to be

protected in any shape whatever, (an assumption which
we believe to be contrary to all the experience of man-
kind.) Our remarks, of course, are not made with refer-
ence to the individual, of whom we know nothing but the
name ; we speak only of the principle.

••
LEIGH HUNT'S LOVE OF A HARD BED.—It is a good
s• thing that custom is half the secret of content. The
reason why we like a hard bed is, that we were brought up
at a public school, without any luxuries • and, to this day,
we like just such a sort of bed as we had there. We could
find a satisfaction in having the identical kind of rug over
our sheets ; and sheets, too, of no greater fineness. And
the same reason makes us prefer the course towel to the
finer one, and the gown, of some sort, to a coat, with a
pocket in the same place as the one in which we used to
put our marbles and tops, and our pocket editions of Gray
and Collins. We have since slept in all sorts of houses—

in rich houses and in poor, in cottages, in taverns ana
inns, and public-houses, in palaces (what at least the Ita-
lians call such), and on board ship ; yea, in bivouacs, just
enough to taste the extremest hardness of the bed mili-
tary ; and for the only contrivance utterly to vitiate our
night's rest, commend us to the bed of down. That and
the wooden bed of the guard-house disputed the palm.

Habit does the same with kings and popes. Frederick the
Second preferred lying in a little tent bed, such as Vol-
taire found him in at their first interview, shivering with
an ague ; and we learn from Horace Walpole's letters that
Pone Benedict the Fourteenth lay upon one no better
(the palliasse, most probably, of his convent), by the side
of the gorgeous canopy prepared for his rank.—Men,
Women, and Books.
A RUSSIAN BREAKFAST TABLE ON EASTER-DAY.—
In the centre of the table stood a sucking pig, flanked
with small hams, German sausages, chitterlings, black
puddings, and large dishes of game. A magnificent pie,
containing at least a dozen hares, towered like a fortress
at one end of the table. The sondag and the sterlet,
those choice fish of Southern Russia, garnished with
aromatic herbs, betokened the vicinity of the sea.
Imagine, in addition to all these things, all sorts of cor-
dial waters, glass vases filled with preserves, and a multi-
tude of sponge cake castles, with their platforms, frosted
and heaped with bon-bons, and the reader will have an
idea of the profuse good cheer displayed by the Russian
lords on such occasions. On leaving the breakfast-table,
we proceeded to the place where the sports were held ;
but there I saw nothing of that hearty merriment that
accompanies a popular holiday. The women, in their best
attire, clung to the swings, I will not say gracefully, but
very boldly, and in a manner to shame the men, who
found less pleasure in looking at them than in gorging
with brandy in their smoky kabaks. Others danced to
the sound of the organ with cavaliers
_whose zig-zag

movements told of plenteous libations. We noticed on
this occasion an essential characteristic of the Russian
people. In this scene of universaldrunkenness there was
no quarrelling; not a blow was sdrtruck. Nothing can
arouse the Russians from their apathy ; nothing can
quicken the dull current of their blood ; they are slaves
even in drink. Such are the Easter festivities. As the
reader will perceive they consist on the whole of eating
and drinking inordinately. The whole week is spent in
this way, and during all that time the authority of the
master is almost in abeyance ; the coachman deserts the
stables, the cook the kitchen, the housekeeper the store
room all are drunk, all are merry-making, all are intent
on enjoying a season of liberty so long anticipated with
Impatience.—De Halls' Travels in Russia.