The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-01-25 00:00:00

PERIODICAL LITERATURE : ITS PERILS AND EXAC-
TIONS.—" W hat's the news ?" So said the Athenian
gossip in the days of Thueydides ; and so he still said in
the days of St. Paul. In England we do not now use
precisely the same form of words ; we say, " Have you
seen to-day's paper ?" The occupation of the gossip is
indeed gone. The verbal newsmonger is no more.
The coffee-house and the barJer's shop are sought as
places for eating and drinking, and shaving, rather than

as repositones of the last new—bit of scandal, or the last

new terrible rumour. No future Horace Walpole will
, chronicle the fleeting events of the political world, from

sources of information exclusively his owr
phrase, " Have you seen to-day's pdaier ?
revolution in our modes of thought and vehicles of in-
formation, as remarkable as the marvellous change in the
means of locomotion, which is now being r pidly con-
summated. Observe, too, that we do not say, " Have
you read?" We must gather our information, as we per-
form our journeys, at race-horse speed. If the news is
not to be caught up by a glance, it will be unheeded. A
few minutes must suffice for the perusal or examination of
a quantity of matter equal to that of an octavo volume.
The morning's newspaper is actually stale by the evening.
The toil of hundreds begins to lose its value by noon-
day. That vast result of intellectual labour and compli-
cated machinery, which is one of the wonders of the age,
must be enjoyed over the breakfast-table, or during the
first two or three hours spent in the counting-house, or
its flavour will grow vapid, and stimulate the taste no
more.—Rambler.

INSANITY CAUSED BY OPIUM EATlNG.—Amongst the
lower class of women who apply for entrance at the ex-
pected period of accouehement into parochial infirmaries,
a large proportion of them are addicted to the daily use
of ardent spirits; and, from some inquiries which I have
instituted during the last three years, I have found that
the habitual consumption of opium amongst the same
class is to a far greater extent than is generally supposed
by the public. I have been surprised at disco%ering how
universal the practice has become, and to what an extent
in some cases this drug is taken by them with impunity,
or rather, without immediate fatal effects. It is not at all
an uncommon circumstance in the infirmary for the head
nurse to discover under the pillows of the patients a phial
of laudanum or a box of opium pills, secretly put there for
daily use; and several young girls even have stated, on
being questioned, that independently of the use of spi-
rituous liquors, they are in the habit of purchasing daily
their pennyworth. or more, of laudanum as a dram, and
that there are favourite druggists' shops, a. which they
get better measure than elsewhere. It might naturally
be expected that at. the period of labour, with the removal
of such accustomed stimulus, and its usual consequences,
we should find cases of puerpera; aania much more frequent
in this class, but the tabular statement does not bear out
the fact. I may be allowed, however, to state, that in the
eighteen years, during which period I have had to sign
the certificates of all those who are received as insane into
the infirmary, previously to their being transmitted to the
various lunatic asylums in the county, I have frequently
of late been struck with the increase in number of cases
of general in,anity, which is certainly disproportionate to
the annual increase of population ; the habitual use of

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opium amongst this class may perhaps explain the tact.—
C?. 2 Dr. Winslow's Journal of Psychological Medicine.
„ •""„
where;
contain everything, and are found every-
i;..; the only difficulty is to read them_ The thrp.rha

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of newspaper correspondence enclose the whole globe in a
net-work of espionage. Nothing can happen that is riot
sun, to get into a newspaper while it is happening, and
sometimes before it has happened. It is no ;We bluster
to say that the eyes of Europe are on you. The eyes of
Europe are the newspapers of Europe; and these same
eyes are on every man, woman, and child, whose lives are
of the slightest interest outside their own circles. It has
been beautifully said of flowers, that they start up in the
most unexpected places, where there is hardly a handful
of soil, and even where there is none, striking their ten-
der yet vigorous roots into the crevices of the naked rock.
The same thing may be said of newspapers. Tney seem
to be sown, like certain seeds, by the caprice of the winds.
Wherever there is a sentiment of a dozen people, you may
look out fur a newspaper. The first necessity of a new
population is a newspaper. It inverts sometimes the vul-
gar principle 01 polit►cal economy, which wilt insist that
the demand produces the supply ; for it happens with
newspapers, every now and then, that the supply produces
the demand. The newspaper of a little colony often conies
into existence before the readers; sonic far-sighted spe-
culator being always in advance with an article of con-
sumption which he knows well enough will become indis-
pensable by and by. Even New Zealand, while it is yet
undergoing the early stages of an excruciating experiment
had a newspaper, and Hong Kong, where the fatality of
the climate might he supposed to deter any sensible man
from risking wore than a mouth's subscription, has its
Gazette. incited. we are not quite sure that a newspaper
is not a sort of social instinct. People get up newspapers
where there is nobody to read them but themselves. Pas-
sengers on a long voyage, who have no news to tell, ex-
cept that which they get from each other, and nobody to
tell it to when they get it, frequently amuse themselves
by playing at newspapers. This is more remarkable than
the most. out-of-the-way birth of flowers. A harebell on.
a rack is not so surprising as a newspaper on board
ship..—Fraser'# Magazine.

A BRIDAL VISIT IN CHINA.—In the evening of the
same day, we were invited by Hok.ha, one of our neigh-
bours, to pay a wedding visit so his bride. to whom he
was married on the preceding evening. He was a youth
of about. twenty-one years of age, apparently a sincere in-
nuirer after Cttristian 'teeth. MIA-ft eittitatunt Uttpubrimrit
the means of grace, both at the chapel and at Mr. Pohl-
man's family devotions. His tither died eleven years
ago, and he was now an assistant to his uncle, a rope-
maker. The latter, on whom he was in a great measure
dependent, had frequently shown his displeasure at Hok-
ha's continual absence at the missionary services; and on
one occasion Hok-ha had to take refuge for more than a
week in the house of one of the missionaries, from the
harsh severity of his relative. He showed much grati-
tude, and was evidently attached to the missionaries. He
was in an interesting state of mind, and lived in the
daily habit of prayer. Seven years ago, his widowed
mother purchased for him a wife, who had lived in the
family ever since, and was now sixteen years old. His
mother commanded her son to celebrate the nuptials,
though he would himself have preferred waiting for twd
years, till his prospects were brighter, and he became
more independent of his uncle. But as the old lady was
anxious to establish the family, Hok-ha being her only
son, her commaLds were peremptory, and obedient sub-
mission to her authoritative will became his only alterna-
tive. Under the circumstances of the bride being already
an inmate of the family, there was no marriage procession
to conduct her to the house of her husband ; and there
had been only the usual feast and nuptial ceremonies on
the preceding evening. We were ushered by the bride-
!morn up two or three flights of steps into his humble
apartment, where we took our seats on a couch opposite a
table covered with the remains of a feast. By the side of
this table the bride stood, having her eyes cast toward the
ground, and wrapt up in strict efforts to preserve propriety
—custom not permitting a bride to speak to a visitor till
after three days, nor to go out, except to the house of her
parents, till after thirty days. She was a very pretty, in-
teresting girl, with a profusion of artificial flowers forming
a tiara on her head, and with a handsome bright red
bridal robe, her face being covered with pearl-dust, rather
beyond the limits of European taste. At her husband's
suggestion, she handed to us a plate of sweetmeats from a
drawer, of which we partook by way of compliment. She
continued to stand during the whote'of our visit. A glass
mirror lay on a table close by, into which she directed an
occasional • -••. t-

saance, to assure her mind of her strict preset -
vation of appearances. Although my companion once or
twice addressed her, she strictly preserved silence. She
appeared, however, sometimes to experience difficulty in
suppressing a simpering laugh, and to be in great danger
of breaking through her affected seriousness. Hok-ha
seemed greatly pleased with his bride.—Rev. G. Smith's
Consular Cities of China.

IS CONSUMPTION CUR ABLE ?-Dr. Deshon, in his
work entitled " Consumption, its Prevention and
' gives the following instance of the recovery (if a

£bat medicinal appliancesnwere required, but still only as
aids to the system of cold affusion and exercise :—" I was
lately requested to attend a young lady, aged sixteen,
who was represented to be in an incurable state of phthi-
sis, so ill that it was said my attendance was required
merely to alleviate her distressed and painful condition,
as a cure was out of the question : in fact, to soften, as
far as medicinal means might allow, the way to the grayp.
I found my patient in "died, in a high state of irritative
fever, pulse 130.. tongue red and thickly coated with 'a
yellowish fur; abdominal and pectoral pains, with urgent
diarrhoea, amounting on some days to a dozen evacua-
tions, and distressing cough. Percussion elicited sounds