The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-11-04 00:00:00

lied from ti

g from their 1'
dust and c

for the purpose of keeping up the hospitality and gaiety
of past days—for, alas ! few of them have money now to

spend on superfluities—but to preserve them in case the
long-promised " good time coming" should ever revisit
the glimpses of the moon. Some few coronetted car-

riages have even made their appearance, and the eques-

trians of Rotte

d the charioteers of the ring are

all aspiring tailors

tuous publicans, and

such-like rabble rout as have had these courses to them-

selves for many a dreary day. An occasional dinner or soi► ee
is given by some fair leader of ton, whose fortune has sur-
vived the general wreck ; and first in rank and tasteful
munificence, the amiable Duchess of Somerset takes the

lead. Other kind and fashionable hostesses are preparing
to follow the Duchess's example, so that the votaries of
pleasure, and the youthful members of distinguished
houses may still encourage the hope that good society is
not quite extinct, and that all the once-hospitable and
magnificent mansions of the high nobility may not for
ever present the desolate appearance of Chandos House
in Pall-mall.

The low Kossuth fever still, I am sorry to say, rages in
certain unsavory localities, and in one or two places seems
to have attained a virulence beyond the cure of hellebore.
Several members of the Corporation, morbidly liable to all
sorts of infections, have caught it, and they are pronounced
incurable by all who are acquainted with their tempera-
ments and habits of life. They rave about Kossuth, they
run wild after Kossuth, and if they don't stand on their
beads and dance fandangos, after the manner of Barry,
the clown at Astley's, hi frantic honour of Kossuth, it is
only because their short necks and ponderous rotundity of
person prevents such gymnastics, except on pain of instant
death by apoplexy. It may do very well for that sincere
patriot, and devoted friend to all mankind in general, and
the happy and contented tillers at Snigs-end in particular
--Mr. Feargus O'Connor—to declare that he would die
for the great citizen, that he would shed his blood for him,
and give him his heart ; but a plethoric Common Council-
man of London cannot die so easily. nor spare the little
blood in comparison to the blubber that is in him so
conveniently, nor part with his heart, which is a solid
substance, not a nonentity, so readily as Red Feargus. Of
course the Chartist self-elected champion would give his
life, and his blood, and his heart, aye and his body, bones
and all—that is, figuratively,—to any friend—for a proper
consideration ; but your Common Councilman does not
comprehend these nice distinctions between words and
things, which Feargus understands thoroughly, and there-
fore the patriot of Guildhall will freely give his voice to
Kossuth ; but when it comes to the question of a donation
of his scanty reservoir of blood, or of his gastronomic
organs, he stands in pause, and his enthusiasm incon-
tinently halts. In plain unvarnished truth, the greatly
puffed metropolitan demonstration of honour to, and
sympathy for, the illustrious Hungarian run-away was
a paltry affair. Fancy the opinions of the nobility, gentry,
commercial respectability, and general inhabitants of this
vast capital, represented by that amiable but silly person,
Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart, by Mr. Alderman Wire, and
by Mr. Gilpin—the lineal descendant of the famous
Johnny, who run the comic race from London to Ware
and back ! The amusing part of this ridiculous (eating is,
that the dupes of ignorant puffery and bombastic roman_
cing are beginning to find out that the idol they have been
worshipping is a cheat, that he is an aristocrat in disguise,
and that all the fine flourishing things said about him as
a liberator, a regenerator, and a man of the people, are
claptraps, without a word of truth at the bottom. They
are-discovering that he was a backbone aristocrat, and a
military despot in Hungary—that he was a red republican
at Marseilles, that he is a gentle agreeable limited-mon-
archy man in England—in short, and in expressive verna-
cular, that he is a precious humbug, as all professional
agitators are.

" Men change with fortunes, manners change with climes,
Tenets with books, and principles with times."

What this political chamelion will be across the Atlantic,
remains to be seen ; but that he will lavish his Magyar
blarney on the people of the States, and upon all their in-
stitutions, north and south, in turn, I have little doubt.
You may judge how far his fervid eloquence will carry
Lira in New York and Carolina, when in the sober Guild-
hall of London he indulges in such outrageous and fulsome
rhodomontade as the following :—" Even the grass which
will grow over my grave will cry out to Heaven and to
man—' England and America, do not grant a charter to
the Czar to dispose of humanity,' " &c. But lam sick of
the hero and the hero. worshippers, and shall say no more
about him ;

He is a bore,
A charlatan, a coxcomb, and has been,
At best, no better than a go-between.

Talking of honour given where honour's due, what do
you think of the unusual crop of full-fledged knights that
have sprung up within a few days ? We may give over
sneering at Polish counts and German and Hungarian
barons, for, if we go on manufacturing knights at the rate
they have been turned out lately, every hodman, glass-
bower, policeman, and carpenter in the United Kingdom
will belong to the equestrian order. In Elizabeth's days
knighthood was indeed a distinction, reserved only for
those who were the foremost men of all their time ; but
now knights are made by the score, and " Sir Joseph" or
" Sir Charles" ami "my Lady" will soon be, like the
Magyar nobles, honourably employed holding horses
in the thoroughfares, or crying " mackerel—fresh
mackerel."

in the thoroughfares, or crying " mackerel ! fresh

mackerel."

The Lord Mayor of London was once asked by
his lady, immediately after he had the royal sword laid
on his shoulder, 4' Well, well, my dear, I know you're a
real knight, but what sort of a knight ? Are you a Knight
of the Garter ; or of St. Patrick ; or of the Golden Fleece?"
This question was a poser. The poor Lord Mayor could
only reply, " Upon my life, my love, I forgot to put that
very important query ; but I will run this instant to the
Minister, and make the inquiry. Of course it is only fit
that I should know to which of the illustrious orders I
belong." My lady was grievously disappointed when she
found out that her portly spouse was only a carpet knight
after all, and, what provoked her beyond endurance, that
she was henceforth only to be received as the " lady of a
Bachelor." I understand that some of the new knights
are sorely puzzled to find appropriate arms and mottoes,
and, therefore, I think, it is only an act of common good
nature for any one who can to assist them in this difficulty.
I take the liberty to suggest to Sir Joseph Paxton the
adoption of the Crystal Palace, of course, for his arms,
with the following motto :

Fortuna vitrea est, qua, cum maxirne splendet frangitur,

If he can get a better, so : if not. there is one for him cut
and dry.
The Bloomers have come out this week in great force,
and with extraordinary eclat. They have had their first
grand ball (and most probably their last) for the season,
in Hanover-square-rooms. Every variety of Bloomer
costume was represented there in perfection, and all the
charming agaceries of Bloomer manners were played off
with an ease and freedom worthy of the regenerators of
old-fashioned womanly modesty and womanly reserve.