The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-10-14 00:00:00

_,`VALUE OF LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS.O—DUring that
period of the year in which the produce of the West is
principally brought.to Orleans, the banks of the river are
literally covered with thousands of bales of cotton, bar-
rels of molasses, hogsheads of sugar, and cases of various
other articles, which remain wholly or in part thus ex-
posed during the space of some weeks. The merchants
and agents to whom these goods are consigned, provide
private armed watchmen to protect them during the night
against the negroes, a race of people who appear to in-
herit a peculiar liking for sugar and treacle in particular.
Probably this penchant Is considerably increased by the
practice adopted by some slave-owners of allowing their
slaves to " hire themselves out" at a certain sum per
week or month, that is, to pay their owners that sum in
the place of service, and make as much more as they can
for themselves, and it is more than probable, that some
considerable portion of the sweet fabric used in the ma-
nufacture of these articles of juvenile traffic, is extracted
by night from the barrels and hogsheads lying upon the
Levee. A man in my neighbourhood, who used to wear
a great coat made of coarse green baize, and, who con-
sequently looked much like the personification of Spring,
as it appears in Dutch Guiana, was one of the night
watchers upon the Levee, who, during my stay, chanced
to shoot a slave in the act of filling a bag with sugar out
of a hogshead which he and an accomplice had broken
open for that purpose. " And what," said I, "if the
negro should happen to die?" " I shall have to stand
my trial, that's all, and of course be acquitted, as I have
done no more than my duty. The fellow ran away when
I called to him to surrender, and of course I fired."
Had this slave died, the trial, I believe, would have been
gone through more for the purpose of recovering damages
for his loss, than for any purpose of criminal justice.—
Simmond's Colonial Magazine.
CITY CHURCHYARDS.—It has been held to be a wise,
deep-thoughted ordinance of the Egyptians that at their
banquets was served a skeleton, that, in its grim naked-
ness, it might preach their coming nakedness to all the
revellers : that it might show their future outline of bone,
when called to lay aside the fleshly garment, laced and
interlaced with so divine a mystery of nerves that, subtle
as light, conveys the bliss of being. And so was a skull
made a moralist; and solemn were the mute exhortations
falling from its grinning jaws ; profound its comic teach-
ing. For, apart from association, the expression of a
bare skull has, to ourselves at least, nothing in it serious :
nay, there has always seemed to us a quaint cheerfulness
in it. The cheek-bones look still puckered with a smile,
as though contracted when it flung aside the mask of life,
and caught a glimpse of the on-coming glory. And the
Egyptians are lauded for their dinner skeleton. Indeed,
at the first thought, it seems a notable way of teaching
sobriety and good manners. Yet, could we come at the
truth—could we know the very heart of the banquet,
throbbing after an hour or so, with hot wine,—we should
know, past dispute, how grievously the great Preacher
Bone had failed in his purpose. We should hear of
quick-witted Egyptians making unseemly jokes at bis
gaunt nakedness ; we should see one reprobate idolater
of leeks capping death's-head with an empty bowl, even
as a boy ventures a joke upon his sleeping schoolmaster.
We should see another—a fine young Theban—spirting
wine in the cavernous eye-holes of Death, bidding him
look double for the libation. But of these jests we hear
nothing; we only hear of the wisdom of the whereabout
of the skeleton, and nothing of the affronts that—we
would almost swear to the fact—its familiarity with the
living drew upon it. And therefore—oh, legislators !
remove city churchyards from the shop-doors of citizens.
Your goodly purpose has altogether failed. By huddling
the dead with the living, it was doubtless your benign
intention to place a lesson continually in the eyes of tra-
ding men—to show them how vain and fleeting was even
a cent. per cent. profit—to prove that however thumping,
the balance on the books, Death, with his dirty, grave-
yard fingers, might any minute come and wipe it out.
The thing has not succeeded. How many hackney-coach
stands have with the best intention been established near
churchyards! For hours and hours the drivers sit and
sit, with one eye upoe the grave, and another on the
have
to
oav
el
be
measuredew toet
r hu ebs
awtyre
hddt
eo
withmb tombstone t o
un
w e ieloquence—thesegtt e d
bullion.
pavement.. And yet these men, so open to daily medita-
atiroens—casrocealpyi
dspreedaktiwmiethsofn wae
hsaaeyk tnheayt.
cnooate
h m abovean return-
ing thuur
nn
ing sovereigns which, in a moment of vinous enthusiasm,
had been unguardedly tendered for shillings. No : we
could swear it. Not above a hundred times.—Douglas
Jerrold's Magazine.

THE MUSCLES OF THE MlND.—Fraser's Magazine,
in noticing a work published in 1649, by John Buiwer,
surnamed the Chirosopher, entitled. " Pathomyotomia.
or a Dissection of the Significative Muscles of the Affec-
tions of the Mind," &c., commences thus:—

• " • Is there an art
To find the mind's construction in the face ?'

" We have all heard theanecdote of Socrates and the
physiognomist, which in our opinion, however, proves no.
thing but that the latter had not got beyond the rudi-
ments of his art. Being asked to decipher the face of the
wisest and most virtuous of men, he could discover nothing
in his features but folly and vice. He imagined—for we
connot accept the excuse of Socrates for him—that defor-
mity of visage necessarily indicated deformity of mind,
and could not detect the expression of the saint beaming
forth from the coarse persona (prosopon) of the man So-
crates. The ancients indeed generally, in their treatises
or scattered observations on physiognomy, seem in a great
measure to have sought for indications of the mind's cha-
racter from those parts which were most likely to resist
the impressions of passion and the plastic operations of the
soul. Hippocrates and Aristotle, among others, lay more
stress on the conformation of the nose, the size of the eye,
the greater or less protruberance of the forehead, the co-
lour of the hair, than o❑ the subtle variations of form
which distinguish one mouth, for example, from another;
and they have not been without their followers in modern
times. Gaspar Taliacottus, a hose wonderful achievements
are celebrated in Hudibras,' and who ought to have
known something of noses, since he made a good many
with his own bands, appears to have imagined that his fa-
vourite feature was the palace of the mind, whose shape
could be ascertained, like that of an ankle through a silk
stocking, by the most cursory inspection. A nose with a
sharp edge, he says, indicates aptitude for anger; a thick
and depressed nose denotes most vicious inclinations; a
full, solid, and obtuse nose, like that of lions and Molos-
sian dogs, is a sig❑ of courage and audacity ; a hooked and
aquiline nose reveals a royal and magnificent mind, but a
crooked soul is betrayed by a nose that is bent and on one
side. 'these, and such as these, are the conclusions to
which his nasal studies led Taliacottus, who doubtless as-
sisted in forming the theory of Walter Shandy, Esq.
However this may be, we must venture to dissent tofu
ccalo from these conclusions, especially as such a theory
pushed to extremes might lead to very serious conse-
quences. Already has the sage Valesius, in his ` Sacred
Philosophy,' proposed to introduce the science cf physio-
grfomy into the courts of law. When two persons, he
says, are brought up before a judge, let him unhesitatingly
select the most ill-favoured of them, and put him to the
torture : there is no doubt about the matter ; rack him
till he confesses—he is the villain ; woe betide the morn-
ing that he was born with so ugly a face ! We beg to ap-
peal from the decision, and can scarcely allow even Lava-
ter himself to be a good substitute fora jury of twelve stu-
pid honest Englishmen. In spite of all this, however, we
maintain that the language of the passions is written upon
the countenance; that its character, though obscure, in-
deed, and known only like the Egyptian hieroglyphics to
a few, are not perfect enigmas; and that Gregory Nazian-
zen, in painting the expression and gestures of Julian the
Apostate, furnishes us with ample materials for forming a
conception of the construction of his mind. But to un-
derstand this language it is necessary to be acquainted
with the alphabet in which it is written; not merely to
glance at the letters on the page of the human counte-
nance, which would be like attempting to discover the me-
chanism of a telegraph by seeing it work, but to take
them one by one, analyse their nature, study their con-
formation, and attain a clear idea of the force and signifi-
cation of each."

THE DEATH Or MozAnT.—Throughout his illness
music was still a subject of the greatest interest to him.
The " Requiem" lay almost continually on his bed, and
Siissmayer was frequently at his side receiving instruc-
tions as to effects, the production of which by au orches-
tra he could never expect to superintend personally. One
of his last efforts was an attempt to explain to Siissmayer
an effect of the drums in the " Requiem ; " he was ob-
served in doing this to blow out his cheeks. and express
his meaning by a noise intelligible to the musician. At
two o'clock on the same day, which was that of his death,
he had been visited by some performers of Shickaneder's
theatre, his intimate friends. The ruling passion was
now strongly exemplified. He desired the score of the
" Requiem" to be brought, and it was sung by his visit-
ers round his bed—himself taking the alto part. Schack
sang the soprano, Hofer, his brother-in-law, the tenor,
and Gorl the bass. They had proceeded as far as the first
bars of the Lacrynzosa, when Mozart was seized with a
violent fit of weeping, and the score was put aside.
Throughout this day he was possessed with a strong pre-
sentiment of the near approach of death, and now gave
himself up, relinquishing every hope that he bad hitherto
occasionally cherished. His physicians, indeed, thought
unfavourably of his case from the first ; and one of them,
Dr. Sallaba, some days previously, had pronounced him
beyond all human aid. It is remarkable that Mozart,
notwithstanding the religious principles in which he had
been educated, and which it is believed he always pre-
served, made no application for spiritual aid in this ex-
tremity ; nor did the priests offer to bestow the last sa-
craments of their church upon the dying man. As he
had not solicited their attendance, they left him to depart
without the viaticum. It was late in the evening of De-
cember 5, 1791, that his sister-in-law returned, but only
to witness his dissolution. She had left him so much
better, that she did not hasten to him. Her own account
may now be given. " How shocked was I, when my
sister, usually so calm and self-possessed, met me at the
door, and in a half-distracted manner said, ' God be
thanked that you are here. Since you left he has been
so ill that I never expected him to outlive this day.
Should he be so again he will die to-night. Go to him,
and see how lie is.' As I approached his bed he called to
me—' It is well that you are here : you must stay to-night
and see me die.' I tried as far as I was able to banish
this impression, but he replied, The taste of death is
already on my tongue—l taste death; and who will be
near to support my Constance if you go away ?' I re-
turned to my mother for a few moments to give her in-
telligence, for she was anxiously waiting, as she might
else have supposed the fatal event already over; and then
hurried back to my disconsolate sister. Siissmayer was
standing by the bedside, and on the counterpane lay the
' Requiem,' concerning which Mozart was still speaking
and giving directions. He now called Isis wife, and made
her promise to keep his death secret for a time from every
one but Albrechtsberger, that he might thus have an ad-
vantage over other candidates for the vacant office of
kapellmeister to St. Stephen's. His desire in this respect
was gratified, for Albrechtsberger received the appoint-
ment. As he looked over the pages of the Requiem'
for the last time, he said, with tears in his eyes, Did I
not tell you that I was writing this for myself?' On the