The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-02-22 00:00:00

HOUSES IN A MOORISH TOWN.—The houses of Yahndi
were most of them extremely well built, and consisted of
various apartments round a series of courts, the principal
entrance to which, being the usual open reception-room,
faced the street. The lower and outer portions of these
rooms were constantly washed with red ochre ; the upper
were covered with the most elaborate patterns, formed in
relief with pliant wood, and washed over with white clay.
The roots. supported by square pillars, were sloping,
made of palm leaves, and having rafters of bamboo inside,
which were blackened and polished. The street-rooms
were halls of audience for men of consequence; the doors
within were richly carved, and coloured with various pig-
ments, procured chiefly from vegetable substances.—Mrs.
Lee's". African Wanderers."
INACTIVITY OF THE NEGRO.—The negro is perhaps
more fully alive than any other class of mankind to the
luxury.of undistut bed idleness. He has few wants, and
those few are easily supplied in such a splendid island as
Jamaica, where his provision ground, with the smallest
possible amount of cultivation, will afford him every ne-
cessary, and some of the luxuries of life. What he cannot
raise for himself must, of course, be obtained by labour;
but a very slight portion indeed of the primal curse now
lights upon the emancipated negro, who has no ambition,
and consequently no motive to persevere. Nor, indeed,
can we wonder at this, if we only reflect seriously on the
scenes which are visible at home. Do we not all know
how difficult it is to rouse the western Highlander to any
thing like active exertion ? How many thousands of the
Irish are there at this moment who will not work, prefer-
ring to depend for life itself upon the precarious existence
of a miserable root, which, of all articles of human food,
requires the smallest degree of culture ? And can we,
while such things happen among Christians, in a land
where the severity of the climate ought to be of itself a
sufficient inducement to exertion, wonder that the negroes,
who have neither the same advantages, nor the same cogent
motives for labour, should abandon themselves to a life of
lazy sensuality, and look upon the naked cane-fields, and
choked coffee-plantations with an eye of utter indifference ?
—Blackwood.

A LAUGHABLE TRICK.—A few days ago an old farmer
entered a town not twenty miles from Stourbridge, and
put up at the Blue Pig Inn. After taking some refresh-
ment, he entered into conversation with some gay young
sparks, who had been cracking their jokes at the old
old farmer's unsophisticated and country manners, and
who now equally enjoyed his numerous platitudes and
simple observations. Having ascertained that it was his
intention to walk through the town, to which he was a
stranger, they expressed their fears lest he should be un-
able to regain his inn, and while so engaged one of them
affixed a placard to the farmer's back, which he had on
the instant printed and pasted, bearing this inscription—
" I put up at the Blue Pig Inn." The old gentleman,
perfectly unsuspecting the trick that had been played him,
immediately took a stroll through the town, and as he
passed along the streets became "the observed of all ob-
servers." A gentleman stopped and read the inscription
aloud, " I put up at the Blue Pig Inn ;" to which the
farmer replied, "Do you ? so do I." A second gentle-
man met him, and read, " I put up at the Blue Pig Inn."
" Doyouthough, really ?" said the farmer, rather surprised
at the coincidence, "so do I." A third came up, and
seeing the placard, read out, " I put up at the Blue Pig
Inn.' "Is it possible ?" exclaimed the farmer, now quite
bewildered ; "so do I." A fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a
seventh, and at last a whole crowd of persons stopped to
read the inscription, and simultaneously shouted, I put
up at the Blue Pig Inn." "Tile d-1 you do !" cried the
old farmer, now completely obfuscated, " then the whole
town lodges there, and if I don't make haste back, I shan't
get a bed." Saying which, the old fellow scampered off
towards his hostelry, pursued by a multitude of voices.
e...
crying at their utmost pitch, " I put up at the Blue Pig
Inn ; ' to which from time to time, the old farmer, per-
fectly unconscious of the meaning of the iteration of the
fact, replied, " Very well. I tell you, so do I. Do you-
think I'm deaf, you confouudelLaimillt-tons ) What ar
you grinning at, hey ?" Ten Towns Messenger.

M. Gunot —A fatality hangs over this once-honoured
statesman. Whether he is coerced by a superior influence,
or whether it is from preference that he pursues his tor-
tuous course, every act in which he exhibits himself to
the world tends to the demolition of his once high and
pure political tame. As though he had been at the head
of the strongest government in the world, he commences
by flinging down the gauntlet unnecessarily to his oppo-
nents. M. Guizot has, or affects to have, a horror of the
Reform movement in France. It is natural to a man of
his caste that he should fear a transfer of electoral power
from a manageable few to the less corrupt many. But,
more probably, his dislike of the movement arises from
its being made a cheval de bataille by his political rivals.
Whether or no, he has provoked animosity in a party
who, at present, have derived their chief importance from
his hostility. By introducing the words " blind and
hostile passions," in reference to an agitation perfectly
legitimate, he has given that party at once a strong motive
and a political weight. Stormy discussions in the Cham-
ber of Deputies have sufficiently shewn what are the feel-
ings of the Liberals, although the government, by the
force of its majority, was able to prevent an amendment
being carried. * * The Reform movement in France is
differently regarded by different persons; but by the
ministerial party it has hitherto been treated much as the
movements of the Anti-Corn-law League were treated in
England until their organization became formidable. Not
long since, however, M. Guizot began to perceive that
there was danger in the distance from the Reform meet-
ings. More especially he grew-alarmed at them when he
found them tolerated, and, in a negative sense, patronised
by M. Duchatel. A large portion of the Conservative
party begin to admit that the concession of reform may
avert a demand for revolution ; and this opinion has of
late transpired in Paris. It has produced a singular re-
sult. The committee for the Reform banquet in the
immediate neighbourhood of Paris, the holding of which
was forbidden by the police, publicly intimated that the
banquet will be held notwithstanding. This was a bold
and significant step. The tone of the Opposition in the
French Chambers has grown daily more bold, and coupl-
ing their increased activity with the resolution of the
banquet committee, we are inclined to agree in the opinion
entertained by reflecting Englishmen resident in Paris,
that there is in fact no real reform party in France, though
the natural wishes of the people are made the stalking-
horse of a faction.--Fraser's Meg. •