The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-12-05 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD

FASHIONS FOR DECEMBER,

(From the " London and Paris Ladies' Magazine of

Fadsion."

Velvets, satins, and all the richer materials of dress are
now fashionable; the make varies but little. High dres-
ses continue to be much worn, a la puritaine, and reding-
otes are the favourite styles for ne'plig ; for demi-toilettes
the eorsages are lower, with berthes revers of the same
material. A new style of trimming, dentelle de velours,
is likely to be very much worn, not only on velvet dresses,
for which it is peculiarly adapted, but it will be used on
various other toilettes, mantelets, manteaux, camails,
&c. The point de Venice is the richest and most delicate
gimp trimming that has yet appeared, and being open it
is often prettily introduced as quilles on watered silks,
and has an agreeable effect. Spanish buttons are also
fashionable ; they resemble small round bells attached to
a chain, and are equally used fur chenzisettes, silk reding-
otes, and velvet bodies ; they are made in gold, pearls, or
enamel. Alenfon lace is the description most used ; four
and even five flounces of it sometimes ornament the vel-
vet or satin dress. Skirts continue long and full, and often
without trimming, but they have also ornamented en tab-
tier in front, or have flounces of extreme width. Long
ceintures of ribbon in plaids, stripes, or pines, are worn ;
the sleeves a 1' orientate, with the under one of muslin
bouillonne'e, is much in favour.

Fur is now very generally introduced, and is ranch ap-
proved for dresses as well as tnanteaux, which are now
seen in every variety of form ; some are entirely lined
with fur, and sleeves are very generally introduced for
them. Paletots, pardessus, polonaises witchouras, are
all in favour, but the newest form is the valgehe, and may
be made of velvet trimmed with lace, satin bordered with
fur, or of levantine encircled with a broad border of
quilting, finished with a fringe. Camails are less worn,
and when they are, the corners in front are lengthened to
a point, and the material should be of velvet, embroider-
ed or trimmed with fur. The sleeves for manteaux arc
the Danoises, Venitientzes, Isabelle or Spanish, orna-
mented with gimp, large fancy silk buttons, branaenbourgs
of silk and velvet. Bonnets are made a little shorter at
the ears and a little more raised ; ribbon is more worn
inside than flowers, and veils are almost indispensible.
Velvet and satin are the principal materials in use, and
the colours are dahlia, green, violet, and black. Mara-
bouts and long feathers laid entirely across the front, with
wreaths of flowers, black lace and birds—not only the
entire bird, but often merely a wing—are the ornaments
in fashion. Some bonnets have nwuds of velvet, lined
with satin, supporting an aigrette or bunch of flowers.
Morning caps are small, and prettily rounded at the ears.
and the crowns are often lined with transparent gauze; all
the ornaments, folds, nceuds, nre placed en touffe at the
lower part of the cheek. Bugles are still used with
coiffures, in which there is much variety ; the Rosine and
Sevilienne are the most novel. There is a decided incli-,
nation to wear the coiffure more forward on the head
and the crowns are larger to admit the wales.

CONJUGAL DUTIES.—On Saturday night week about
forty women, led by a woman who blew a horn, assembled
around the house of a tailor residing near Pontardulais,
and who was in the habit of rather ill-using his better half.
The party (to use their own expressions) gave the "snip"
notice that. " as he made but a very bad Methodist," un-
less he should reform, they would adjourn to the adjoin-
ing river and " make a Baptist of him." The tailor be-
longed to the former denomination.—Hereford Journal.
PHONOGRAPHY.—Phonography is a system of writing
founded on philosophical principles, in contradistinction
to all other systems, which proved, are to be full of the
most gross inconsistencies ; and, indeed, how can they be
otherwise, when the problem was never so much as enun-
cioted--how many sounds were there in the hum n voice,
up to the discovery of phonography ? The voice is em-
ployed by all tribes of mankind, in all parts of the globe,
to represent ideas which are formed in the mind; and,
the using of the voice in this manner, is termed the spoken
language. In addition to this, a system of signs has ge-
nerally come into use, to provide against the deficiency of
speech, which could not of itsel Ibe conveyed to a dis-
tance. Sometimes the signs employed have been visible
representations of the ideas themselves, and in these cases
the writing was termed hieroglyphical; but the immense
amout of labour necessary to acquire a knowledge of these
systems has always been sufficient to bring them into
disuse as the people advanced in knowledge, and alpha-
betical systems have commonly, in the end, been adopted,
which, as they admit of greater simplicity, are more easily
acquired, and more expeditiously executed. But it is
strange, that although the sounds of the human voice are
the same, or nearly so, in all quarters of the globe, the
signs which various alphabetical systems contain, are
found to vary very considerably, some having only 19, and
others as high as 202, and not less so with regard to the
real sounds of the human voice. It is also strange that,
for all the attempts that have been made to frame alpha-
bets, no system of signs has ever been framed by which
the spoken language of any one country might be correctly
represented ; and surely when so much depends in many
cases on a very minute difference of sound, it is of the high-
est importance that, in representing sounds, the signs
should be of such a nature as not to admit of being con-
founded with each other, nor of being mistaken for any
other sound than that of which they are the proper repre-
sentatives. It is evidently owing to errors of th;s kind
that such difficulties have arisen in the art of orthography
and orthoepy, especially in relation to our own language,
although others are not much better, perhaps. It is be-
cause we have no sign for many words which occur in the
language—because the signs of certain sounds are used to
represent sometimes one sound and sometimes another—
and because there is no fixed rule for what combination
shall be used to represent any given sound, (which is
proved by the fact that the six simple vowel sounds are
found spelt in upwards of 30 different ways,) that so much
difficulty is experienced in learning to read, and so few
can spell correctly. In the Phonographic system learning
to write and read is the work of a few weeks, and spelling
does not require to be learned at all. Let us then say to
all who would wish, not only for their own sakes, but also
for the sakes of those who might still be sufferers from
the evils we have enumerated, at least to inquire into the
nature of Phonography, and this is all that is necessary to
make the science universally known.