The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-11-26 00:00:00

ANECDOTE OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.—The
first and noblest character of the present age to be men-
tioned in common wi.l. Eton scenes and Eton men, must
be the Duke of Wellington. Wellington was an Eton
boy, and, if tradition may be credited, a daring and ad-
venturous one. He seems to have been a lad not given
to much study and painful research i to books. Nature
having already placed an original stamp upon him, and
presented him with the highly favoured signet of her own
right hand. He who is now familiarly called the " Iron
Duke," might well have been in the earlier stages of life
yclept the Iron Boy. Instances of the Duke's hardiness,
or rather of young Welleslev's hardiness (as he then
simply was) are on record; and among them it is related,
that when all the good burgomasters and thrifty trades-
men of Windsor and Eton had retired to rest, :young
Wellesley, on the commencement of a cold winter's
night, would be proceeding up old icy Father Thames, in
a lonely skiff, to the vicinity of Maidenhead Bridge, and
there, wrapt in a single blanket, and watching with single
gun, he would be ready by daybreak to get a shot at the
wild ducks, or other wild fowl, which were accustomed
to congregate under shelter of the eyots, and other har-
bours of refuge on the Thames. . Every one to his taste,"
a fashionable dandy will exclaim : but young Wellesley
was no man of fashion, and his tastes were all of the dar-
ing and grand. When we consider the stratagem neces-
sary at a school like Eton to achieve what Wellesley did';
perhaps the squeezing through a small window, and tra-
versing frozen roofs of houses ; the obtaining clandestinely
the gun, and the skiff, and ammunition, with the convey-
ance of his blanket, and the needful prog ; and then the
difficulty of an undiscovered return, loaded with booty ;
let us think of these things, and then acknowledge in the
very boy something that prognosticated the wonderful and
unexampled career of the European Duke. The poet
Wordsworth, another Wellington in his way, has written
truly, that " the child is father of the man." Young
Wellesley seems to have been liked in his generation at
Eton, because his feats were admired by the whole school,
and very few could dare to be his companions in many
perilous and persevering endeavours in pursuit of a fa-
vourite object or pastime.—Bentley's Miscellany.
THE SOCIALIST SYSTEMS AND FREE SOCIETY CON-
TRASTED.—Nothing is more charming to the imagination
than the first general idea of some new community, where
all men are to be happy, every body active, benevolent,
reasonable. But the moment we leave this general idea,
enter upon particulars, and set about the arrangements
necessary for this universally comfortable state of things,
there is nothing in the world more tedious and oppressive.
Proposals for new political institutions are sufficiently
wearisome; but proposals for earthly elysiums, which are
to embrace the whole circle of human affairs, become in-
supportably dull. It is child's play, played with heavy
granite boulders. No ' • if we were capable of being seduced
for a moment into the belief of some golden age of equality,
where a parental government, presiding over all, should
secure the peace and prosperity of all, we should need no
other argument to recover us from the delusion than sim-
ply to read on, and learn how this parental government
intends to accomplish its purpose. When we find that,
in order to be relieved from domestic cares, we are to have
no home al all; that our parental government, in order to
provide for pur children, begins by taking them away from
us; when we picture to ourselves the sort of wooden me-
lancholy figures we must become, (something like the large
painted dolls in a Dutch garden, stuck here and there with-
out choice or locomotion of their own,) we speedily lose all
inclination to enter upon this discipline of happiness. We
quit with haste this enchanted garden, which turns out to
be an enormous piece of clockwork, and embrace with re-
newed content the old state of personal freedom, albeit at-
tended with many personal inconveniences. Whilst read-
ing of Utopian schemes, the idea has very vividly occurred
to us : suppose that some such society as this, where land
and wives, money and children, are all in common, had
been for a long time in existence, and that some clever
Utopian had caught an inkling of the old system so fami-
liar to us, and had made the discovery that it would be
possible, without dissolving society, to have a wife of one's
own, a house of one's own, land and children of one's own.
Imagine, after an age of drowsy clockwork existence, one
of these philosophers starting the idea of a free society, of
a social organization based upon individual rights and in-
dividual effort—where property should not only be pos-
sessed, but really enjoyed—where men should for the first
time stretch their limbs, and strain their faculties, and
strive, and emulate, and endure, and encounter difficul-
ties, and have friendships. What a commotion there
would be ! How would the younger sort, rebelling against
the old rotten machine in which they had been incarce-
rated, form themselves into emigrating bands, and start
forth to try upon some new soil their great experiment of
a free life ! How would they welcome toil in all its seve-
rity—how willingly practise abstinence, and suffer priva-
tion, f, r the sake of the bold rights which these would pur-
chase!—how willingly take upon themselves the responsi-
bility of their own fate to enjoy a fortune of their own
shaping ! Hope herself would start from the earth where
she had been so long buried, and waving her rekindled
torch, lead on to the old race of life !—Blackwood.
MODERN JERUSALEM GRAPHICALLY DE*CRIRED.7—
We ascended a mountain ridge, strewed over with enor-
mous grey rocks, piled one on another as if by human
hands. Here and there a few stunted vines, yellow with
the colour of autumn, crept along the soil in a few places
cleared in the wilderness. Fig-trees, with their tops wi-
thered or shivered by the blasts, often edged the vines,.
and cast their black fruit on the grey rock. On our right,
the desert of St. John, where formerly " the voice was
heard crying in the wilderness," sunk like an abyss in
the midst of five or six black mountains, through the
openings of which, the sea of Egypt, overspread with a
dark cloud, could still be discerned. On the left, and
near the eye, was an old tower, placed on the top of a
projecting eminence ; other ruins, apparently of an ancient
aquaduct, descended from that tower, overgrown with
verdure, now in the sear leaf ; that tower is Modin, the
stronghold and tomb of the last heroes of sacred story,.
the Maccabees. We left behind us the ruins, resplendent
with the first rays of the morning—rays, not blended as
in Europe in a confused and vague illumination, 'but dart-
ing like arrows of fire tinted with various colours, issuing
from a dazzling centre, and diverging over the whole
heavens as they expand. Some were of blue, slightly sil-
vered, others of pure white, some of tender rose-hue,.
melting into grey; many of burning fire, like the corus-
cations of a flaming conflagration. All were distinct, yet
all united in one harmonious whole, forming a resplendent
arch in the heavens, encircling, and issuing from a centre
of fire. In proportion as the day advanced, the brilliant
light of these separate rays was gradually dimmed—or
rather, they were blended together, and composed the co-
lourlesslight ofday. Teen the moon, which stillshoneover-
head, " paled her ineffectual fire," and melted away in the
general illumination of the heavens. After having ae-
cended a second ridge, more lofty and naked than the
former, the horizon suddenly opens to the right, and pre-
sents a view of all the country which extends between the
last summits of Judea and the mountains of Arabia. It
was already flooded with the increasing light of the morn-
ing ; but beyond the piles of grey rock which lay in the
foreground, nothing was distinctly visible but a dazzling
space, like a vast sea, intersperced with a few islands of
shade, which stood forth in the brilliant surface. On the
shores of that imaginary ocean, a little to the left, and
about a league distant, the sun shone with uncommon
brilliancy on a massy tower, a lofty minaret, and some
edifices, which crowned the summit of a low hill of which
you could not see the bottom. Soon the points of other
minarets, a few loopholed walls, and the dark summits of
several domes, which successively came into view, and
fringed the descending slope of the hill, announced a city.
It was Jerusalem, and every one of the party, without
addressing a word to the guides or to each other, enjoyed
in silence the entrancing spectacle. We rested our horses
to contemplate that mysterious and dazzling apparition ;
hut when we moved on, it was soon snatched from our
view ; for as we descended the hill, and plunged into the
deep and profound valley which lay at its feet, we lost
sight of the holy city, and were sumunded only by the
solitude and desolation of the desert.—Lanzaetine's
7 ravels.

PAISLEY IN 1800 AND 1841.—From 1790 to 1800 nearly
one half of Paisley was built by weavers from savings of
their ordinary wages. Every house had its garden ; and
every weaver being his own master, could work it when
he pleased. Many were excellent florists, many possessed
a tolerable library, and all were politicians, so that about
the period of the French Revolution, Mr. Pitt expressed
more fear of the unrestricted political discussions of the
Paisley weavers, than 10,000 armed men. Had Paisley
been then what Paisley is now, crowded with half-in-
formed Radicals and Infidels, his fears would have been
justified ; but truth and honest dealing could fear nothing
from a community constituted as Paisley then was ; and
never, perhaps, in the liitory of the world, was there a
more convincing proof of the folly of being afraid of a
universal and thorough education, especially when im-
pregnated with the Religion of the Bible, than in the state
of Paisley at that period. At the period alluded to,
every man, woman, and child, above eight or nine yea• a
of age, could read thc Bible ; and many could write and
cast accounts • and not a few of the weaver's sons went
throgh a regular course at the grammar-school. To have
had a distant relative unable to read, or one sent to prison,
would have been felt as equally disgraceful. The inha-
bitants were so universally regular in their attendance
upon church, and strict afterwards in keeping in-doors,
that it is recollected, at the end of the last century, or
the commencement of the present, that not a hying crea-
ture, save two or three privileged blackguards, were ever
seen walking the streets after Divine service ; or if any
chanced to appear. an errand for the doctor was supposed
to be the probable cause. In 1818-19, during the Radical
period, there were found full three thousand, Paisley-born
and Paisley-bred, who could not read ; and the decline of
intelligence has been followed by the decline of that tem-
perance, prudence and economy, which are the cardinal
virtues of the working-classes, by which alone they can
elevate their condition, or preserve themselves from sink-
ing into the most abject poverty. The Paisley weaver of
forty years ago married early, because he foresaw that he
could, in decency, support a family, and even save some-
thing for sickness, or age, or the fluctuations of hid trade.
The Paisley weaver lad, in 1842, marries equally early on
a pittance that scarcely supports himself ; because he has
neither judgment to reflect on the misery which he is en-
tailing on himself and others, nor moral principle to feel
the solemn obligations of the state into which he is enter-
ing. Those who have no consideration concerning the
things of this life, are not likely to have any forethought
regarding the life to come ; and just in proportion as the
modern Paisley weaver is without religion. does he
despise it. All clergy are necessarily hypocrites, as all
kings and magistrates, in their estimation, tyrants. Uni-
tarianism, Infidelity, or reckless profanity, too generally
abound • and the popular cry is against all the Church
Establishments,' however much demanded by the poverty
and irreligion of our own town ; and against all distinc-
tions of ranks. Thus, measuring themselves by them-
selves, they would reduce society to their own level.
Paisley thus furnishes an affecting illustration of the de-
claration of holy writ, "'That righteousness exalteth a
city ; but sin is the ruin of any people."—North Briti:h
Review.