The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-11-19 00:00:00

SELECTIONS.

A MAN OF ONE IDEA.—Some ten years ago, Robert
Owen was taken by a party of friends to see the tragedy of
" Macbeth ;" and when it was over, he was asked his
opinion of the piece. "It is very sad," replied the phi-
lanthropist, " to see individuals placed in such injurious
circumstances. In our new syst, in, there will be nothing
of this kind, except to show what a shocking state the old
society was in.—New Quarterly Review.
HINT TO SCOLDING Wives.—" And I dare say you
have scolded your wife very often, Newman," said I,
once. Old Newman looked down, and the wife took up
the reply. " Never to signify—and if he has I deserved
it." "And, I dare say, if the truth were told, you have
scolded him quite as often." " Nay," said the old wo-
man, with a beauty of kindness which all the poetry in
the world cannot excel, " how can a wife scold her good
man who has been working for her and her l'ttle ones all
the day ? It may be for a man to be peevish, for it is he
who bears the crosses of the world ; but who should make
him forget them but his wife ? And she had best for her
own sake—for nobody can scold much wl.en the scolding
is all on one side.—Bulwer's Student.
Ma. CANNING'S ORATORY.—As an orator Canning
stood beyond rivalry, and almost beyond comparison.
* * It is scarcely an exaggeration to affirm, that in his
single person were united all the highest gifts of elo-
quence which nature had distributed among the most
eminent of his Parliamentary competitors. A lucid, close,
and forcible logic, effective alike for the establishment of
truth and the exposure of absurdity, hypocrisy, and pre-
tension,—an elevated tone of declamation, appealing not
so much to passion, as to what was noblest in thought
and sentiment,—a stream of imagery and quotation, rich,
various, and yet never overflowing the main subject—a
light `artillery of wit,' so disciplined, that not a shot of
it flashed without telling upon the issue of the conflict—
an unfailing, yet constantly diversified harmony of period,
and a magical command of those lightning words and
phrases, which burn themselves, at once and for ever,
into the hearer's mind—these, and all these in their per-
fection, were among the powers of that eloquence which
death had thus suddenly hushed.—Life of Lord Eldon.
THE CHILDREN OF THE IRISH PEASANTRY.—It wilt
be seen from what I have said that nothing could be more
extreme than the poverty of the Irish peasantry. And yet,
notwithstanding all the hardships through which they have
to pass on their journey through life, I never saw a set of
finer-looking children than those you meet with in the
poorer districts of the country. They far surpass, in the
comeliness of their little countenances, the children of
this country. 1 saw hundreds of them whom, from the,
regularity of their features and the symmetry of their
forms, I thought perfect pictures. It is true, that as they
advance in years, they lose the singular beauty which cha-
racterises them in early life ; but this is solely to be as-
cribed to their hard destiny, which compels them to be
constantly employed in the hardest outdoor labour with-
out half the requisite amount of food. It is only surpris-
ing that the Irish peasantry can exist at all on their limited
supplies of food, considering the great amount of labour
they have to go through. Englishmen would perish in
masses were they compelled to perform, for one short
month, the same amount of hard work, without more than
one or two scanty meals a day, and those meals consisting
solely of potatoes.—lmpressions of Ireland and Me Irish.
LONDON IN DANGER.—NearIy the whole of London
rests on a clay bed; this clay has great absorbing powers,
is strong, and possesses its cohesive property only so long
as it retains a sufficiency of moisture ; remove this, it
shrinks, cracks in innumerable directions, and becomes
dangerous to heavy masses of bricks and mortar super-
imposed upon it. It is from this cause that so many
foundations of new buildings sink or partially give way
almost as soon as the superstructure is raised, drainage
taking place after the work is completed, instead of proper
attention having been paid to it beforehand. There can
be no doubt that if the lower beds on which London rests
were drained as proposed, by Artesian wells, a vast deal
of mischief would arise from the general or local contrac-
tion of clay beds, occasioned by the lower as well as the
subsoil drainage ; and the cavernous chalk, deprived of its
support, would in many places fall in, and occasion a cor-
responding depression of the surface. Were the subsoil
and strata beneath, on which vast masses of buildings are
disposed, thoroughly drained by all the appliances of art,
much good might result, and greater stability be insured
to the super-imposed masses • but, when a city like Lon-
don rests on a bed of clay, the tenacity and strength of
which depend upon its retaining a certain degree of
moisture, we ought to pause ere we give way to plans
which in the end, in consequence of there being an ex-
haustible (not inexhaustible) supply of water, would recoil
upon the projectors, and lay the seeds of great destruction
of pro; erty.— The Builder.

ANECDOTE OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.—The
first and noblest character of the present age to be men-
tioned in common with 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 band. 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 Wellesley'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 Faliper 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 he his companions in many
perilous and persevering endeavours in pursuit of a fa-
vourite objet_ or pastime.—Bentley's Miscellany.
MODERN JERUSALEM GRAPHICALLY DESCRIBED.—
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 he 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-
lourless light ofday. Then the moon, which still shoneover-
head, " paled her ineffectual fire," and melted away in the
general illumination of the heavens. After having as-
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 leagwe 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
r 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 restedourhorses;
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 surrounded only by the
solitude and desolation of the desert.—Lamarline's
E vets.

A FIRST NOCTURNAL REVERIk AT SEA.—I walked
for an hour on the deck of the vessel alone, and immersed
alternately in sad or consoling reflections. I repeated in
my heart all the prayers which I learned in infancy from
my mother : the verses, the fragments from the Psalms,
which I had so often heard her repeat to herself, when
walking in the evening in the garden of Melly. I expe-
rienced a melancholy pleasure in thus scattering them, in
my turn, to the waves, to the winds, to that ear which
is ever open to every real movement of the heart, though
not yet uttered by the lips. The prayer which we have
heard repeated by one we have loved, and who is no more,
is doubly sacred. Who among us wculd not prefer a few
words of prayer taught us by our mother, to the most
eloquent supplication composed by ourselves? Thence it
is that whatever religious creed we may adopt at the age
of reason, the christian prayer will be ever the prayer of
the human race. I prayed, in the prayer of the church
for the evening at sea; also for that dear being, who never
thought of danger to accompany her husband, and that
lovely child, who played at the moment on the poop with
the goat which was to give it milk on board, and with the
little kids which licked her snow-white hands, and sported
with her long and fair ringlets.—Lnmarline's Travels.
SOMETHING QUEER.—Every age has its panics. At
one time the Turk, then the Emperor, then the Pope,
then despotism, then the Radicals, have occupied the
attention of all who had something to lose and leisure to
be alarmed. A few years back the cry was, that every
article of food was adulterated ; and nobody could be
sure it was bread he was eating, unless he had sown,
reaped, thrashed, ground, sifted, kneaded, baked, and
sliced the material with his own hands, or, as a second-
best course, by the hands of a confidential servant inte-
rested in his preservation. The cholera frightened us all
once •, comets now and then ; the new tariff spread consi-
derable consternation in some quarters ; mad dogs are
always and everywhere terrible ; the slow westward pro-
gress of white ants, and the occasional visit of a real ori-
ental locust, have in their turn considerably affected the
more cautious and provident part of mankind. But what
do our readers suppose is the last new bugbear ? A very
terrible one, to judge from the universal horror it has
excited. All parties, and almost all classes, both sexes
and all ages, agree in the most dreadful apprehensions.
The most alarming circumstance of the new enemy is,
that it has been amongst us from time immemorial, and
is impossible to be quite eradicated. The baneful cha-
racter of its operations has only just now been discovered.
Reader—prepare your nerves. The new.enemy of man-
kind is Charity.—London Times.
LORD ELDON'S POLITICAL SUPREMACY.—This was,
in some respects, yet more remarkable than his supremacy
in the law. The prizes of political life have in general
been won by some or other of the arts or forces of Par-
liamentary warfare, particularly as waged in the House of
Commons—by nervous declamation, by argumentative
vehemence, by formidable sarcasm, by captivating style
Of none of these was Lord Eldon a master; vet all, and
more than all, the influence usually earned b.), them for
their possessors, became his without th it aid, and even
without his own original purpose. For his early plans of
life were wholly professional. He entered Parliament
unpledged to any political party ; and when be decided to
join Mr. Pitt. and even when he successively undertook
the offices of Attorney and Solicitor-General, it was with
a view to no ultimate distinctions but those of the law.
The unusual responsibilities which, by the events then pass-
ing in Europe, were cast upon the law officers of his
time, obliged him indeed to address himself to divers
matters of state ; but, on arriving at the Chief Justice-
ship of the Common Pleas, he gladly quitted the sphere
of politics, and only returned to it when called by George
M. to enter the Cabinet as Chancellor, under circum-
stances of somewhat peculiar and personal relation to the
King. From that time, of course, he was mixed in the
chief affairs of Government; and he then made it early
evident, that if he wanted some of the popular talents by
which political distinction is commonly attained, he was
stronger in all the higher qualities by which it is best pre-
served. These qualities—prudence, knowledge, temper,
consistency, firmness, and, above all, judgment—made
ample compensation for his deficiency in imagination and
in the forces and graces of style. Perhaps it is hardly a
paradox to say, that in the stations he was eventually
called to fulfil, his want of imagination was one of his
advantages; for the judgment, the highest of the intel-
lectual powers and in public affairs worth all the rest, was
thus left to exercise, undivided and undisturbed, its em-
pire in his mind and its influence in the councils of his
sovereign.—Life of Lord Eldon.

PAISLEY IN 1800 AND 1841.—From 1790 to 1800 nearly
one half of Pais!ey 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
be 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 history 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 years
of age, could read the Bible ; and many could write and
cast accounts; and net 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 living 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 his tra3e.
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 British
Review.

ADVANCING CIVILIZATION, AND COMPARATIVELY
INADEQUATE ELEVATION OF NATIONAL TASTE AND
PURSUITS.—We are perpetually speaking of the march of
intellect, the vast spread of intelligence, the advancing
civilization of the world ; and in some respects our boasts
are well founded. Certainly, in one particular, society
has made a mighty step in advance. The abolition of
domestic slavery has emancipated the millions who for-
merly toiled in bondage; the art of printing has multiplied
an hundredfold the reading and thinking world. Our op-
portunities, therefore, have been prodigiously enlarged ;
our means of elevation are tenfold what they were in an-
cient times. But has our elevation itself kept pace with
these enlarged means ? Has the increased direction of
the popular mind to lofty and spiritual objects, the more
complete subjugation of sense, the enlarged perception of
the useful and the beautiful, been in pronortion to the ex-
tended facilities given to the great body of the people ?
Alas ! the fact is just the reverse. Balbec was a mere
station in the desert, without territory, harbour, or sub-
jects—maintained solely by the commerce of the East with
Europe which flowed through its walls. Yet Balbec
raised, in less than a century, a more glorious pile of
structures devoted to religious and lofty objects, than
London, Paris, and St. Petersburg united can now boast.
The Decapolis was a small and remote district of Pales-

tine, nut larger in proportion to the Roman than Moray-
shire is in proportion to the British empire; yet it con-
tained, as its name indicates, and as the remains still
attest, ten cities, the least considerable of which, Gebora,
contains, as Buckingham tells us in his " Travels beyond
the Jordan," the ruins of more sumptuous edifices than
any city in the British islands, London itself not excepted,
can now boast. It was the same all over the East, and in
all the southern provinces of the Roman empire. Whence
has arisen this astonishing disproportion between the great
things done by the citizens in ancient and in modern
times, when in the latter the means of enlarged cultivation
have been so immeasurably extended ? It is in vain to
say, it is because we have more social and domestic hap-
piness, and our wealth is devoted to these objects, not
external embellishment. Social and domestic happiness
are in the direct, not in the inverse ratio of general re-
finement and the spread of intellectual intelligence. The
domestic duties are better nourished in the temple than
in the ginshop : the admirers of sculpture will make better
fathers and husbands than the lovers of whisky. Is it that
we want funds for such undertakings ? Why, London is
richer than ever Rome was; the commerce of the world,
not of the eastern caravans, flows through its bosom.
The sums annually squandered in Manchester and Glas-
gow on intoxicating liquors, would soon make them rival
the eternal structures of Tadmor and Palmyra. Is it that
the great bulk of our people are unavoidably chained by
their character and climate to gross and degrading enjoy-
ments ? Is it that the spreading of knowledge, intelli-
gence, and free institutions, only confirms the sway of
sensual gratification, and that a pure and spiritual religion
tends only to strengthen the fetters of passion and selfish-
ness ? Is it that the inherent depravity of the human
heart appears the more clearly as man is emancipated from
the fetters of authority ? Must we go back to early ages
for noble and elevated motives of action : is the spread of
freedom but another word for the extension of brutality ?
God forbid that so melancholy a doctrine should have any
foundation in human nature ! We mention the facts, and
leave it to future ages to discover their solution : content-
ing ourselves with pointing out to our self-applauding
countrymen how much they have to do before they attain
the level of their advantages, or justify the boundless
blessings which Providence has bestowed upon them.—
.Blackwood'a Magazine.

ORIGIN OF THE LIVERPOOL BLUE-COAT SCHOOL.—
This institution was established in 1709, through the exer-
tions of Mr. Bryan Blundell, and the Rev. Robt. Stythe,
one of the rectors of Liverpool, who, in their address to
the public, said, " whereas many poor persons are desirous
of having their children taught, but are not able to afford
them a Christian and useful education ; and there being
children whose parents are dead, and have no friends to
take care of them, must inevitably come to beggary and
ruin, both of body and soul, if not provided by the care
of some charitable and well-disposed people." It was at
first a charity school, costing £35, (the corporation having
given a plot of laud whereon to erect it at the south-west
corner of St. Peter's church-yard,) in which forty boys
and ten girls were received. The expenses were defrayed
by subscription, and by a portion of the sacrament money.
The Rev. Mr. Stythe, who was appointed the treasurer at
the commencement of the charity, having died, Mr. Bryan
Blundell was induced, in 1714, to assume that office.
Having observed that the children prefited little by the
instruction they received, in consequence of their inter-
course with their parents, and the want of restraint during
play hours, Mr. Blundell determined upon wholly main-
taining his protegees, and therefore drew up a memorial,
explaining his views, which being handed about exten-
sively, obtained from the public the sum of £2,000, (to
which Mr. Blundell contributed £750, being, as he sta-
ted, a tenth of what he was worth,) and the ancient part of
the present institution was erected, the first stone being
laid on the 7th of May, 1716.—Lacey's Pictorial L'pool.
MILITARY BLUNDERS.—Besides what iS due to the
comfort, 1 a ,piness, and proper training of the tt oops, we
must bear in mind that the conduct of subordinate offi-
cers will frequently exercise a very serious influence on
the most important events. " Colonel Napier tells us,
says a recent military writer, " that the error of a staff
officer made Colonel Colburn attack a French redoubt in
the Pyrenees, which caused the lives of 200 men of the
52d Regiment to be needlessly sacrificed." In the same
volume we find the Duke of Wellington informing the
historian that many of his manoeuvres were injured at
Waterloo by generals " whose only fault was dullness.
How many men have fallen in consequence of the blun-
ders of these gallant dunces, it is of course not easy to
say. At Marengo, the mistake of a commander of a
patrole caused Gen. Nimph's brigade of cavalry, more
than 2,000 strong, and which might have changed the fate
of the day, to be detached towards Acqui, at the very
moment when action was about to commence. In the
campaign of 1805, the credulity of Prince Auersperg and
the want of decision of a Major of Artillery enabled the
French to obtain possession of the bridge of Vienna ; a
misfortune that occasioned the needless slaughter of
Hollabrun, and ultimately, as many think, to the dis-
aster of Austerletz. In 1806 again, it was the incompre-
hensible folly of Colonel Massenbach, who, as he tells us
himself, did not know the east from the west, that led to
the surrender of Prince Hohenlohe's army at Prenzlaw.
These are but a few instances of the hundreds I could
give, showing the terrible consequences that may result
to nations and armies from the incapacity of officers even
of inferior rank. It is in the detail of actions, into
which history cannot enter, that the most fatal and fre-
tment results of military inability are to be found.—
Sabertash, in Fraser's Magazine.
A BATTLE WITH RATTLESNAKES.—RattIesnakes are
proverbially abundant upon all these prairies ; and, as
there is seldom to be found either stick or stone with
which to kilt them, one hears almost a constant popping
of rifles or pistols, among the vanguard, to clear the route
of these disagreeable occupants, lest they should bite our
animals. As we were toiling up through the sandy hil-
locks which border the southern banks of the Arkansas,
the day being excessively warm, we came upon a perfect
den of these reptiles. I will not say thousands—though
this, perhaps, was nearer the truth—but hundreds, at
least, were coiled or crawling in every direction. They
were no sooner discovered than we were upon them with
guns and pistols, determined to let none of them escape.
In the midst of this amusing scramble among the snakes,
a wild mustang colt, which had, somehow or other be.
come separated from its dam, came bolting among our
relay of loose stock, to add to the confusion. One of our
mules evidently impressed with the impertinence of the
intruder, sprang forward and attacked it, with the ap-
parent intention of executing summary chastisement;
while another mule, with more benignity of temper than
its irascible compeer, engaged most lustily in defence of
the unfortunate little mustang. As the contest was car-
ried on among the waggons, the teamsters soon became
very uproarious, so that the whole, with the snake fracas,
made up a capital scene of confusion. When the mule
skirmish would have ended, if no one had interfered, is a
question which remained undetermined ; for some of our
company, in view of the consequences that might result
from the contest, rather inhumanly took sides with the
assailing mule ; and soon after they entered the lists, a
rifle ball relieved the poor colt from its earthly embarrass-
ments and the company from further domestic disturban-
ces. Peace once more restored, we soon got under weigh,
and that evening pitched our camp opposite the celebrated
" Caches"—a place where some of the earliest adven-
turers had been compelled to conceal their merchandise.
Journal of a Santa Fe Trader.
SLEEPING AT INNS.—Bedshave vast attractions; beds,
to wit, of down and roses. But we are not told who has
slumbered there the night before. In fact, we never ask
the question. Mine hostess assures us, that they have
been well aired; but she does not mean that they have
been aired by the noonday's healthy sunbeams. She
gives you to understand, by saying that the bed has been
well-aired, that, in fact, it has constantly been slept upon
by a successon of travellers, of whose health, or the want
of it, not the slightest mention is ever made. The last
occupier may have been one, whose
" Form was fresher than the morning rose,
When the dew wets its leaves ;"
" The softest blush that nature spreads,
Gave colour to her cheek ;"
or, on the contrary, the bed might have been occupied by
a rough-skinned, pimpled victim to turtle soup and cura-
coa. He bad been nearly a month, at Harrogate, without
benefit, and was on his way on the continent, with his
medical adviser, to try what the spas of Germany would
do for him. A person, on whose veracity I could depend,
and who seemed to have scrutinised the general state of
dormitories with a considerable degree of attention, once
told me' that he had not passed a single hour in bed for
14 years. He said he was his own master in that respect,
and could suit himself as he thought fir. He added, that
his aversion to enter a strange bed was extreme. He did
not know who had been there before him, or what impu-
rities might be lurking in the region of the feather bed,
or whether it bad been aired by Phoebus or Bacchus ; and
that the possibility of getting into a damp bed acted upon
his nerves more terribly than did the operation of Sir
Robert Peel's income tax. " And how did you manage,"
said I, " without a bed ?" " Uncommonly well," said he.
" My apprenticeship," continued he, "to the hard floor
only cost me a fortnight, and after that all went right."
He then informed me, that the advantages which he had
acquired by abandoning the bed for ever were incalculable.
He said that so long as there was a current of fresh air
in the place where he laid him down to rest, he was ex-
cellently accommodated for a fair spell of sleep. Tra-
velling had no longer any nocturnal terrors for him.
Whilst others were anxious about the paraphernalia of
their bedrooms, and peevish when things were not to
their liking, he stood smiling on, pitying their distresses,
and happy with the thought that he could stow himself
away for the night in a moment, free from bad bugs, bad
breaths, and bad bedding. " And you will never more
sleep in a bed ?" said I. " Never," said he, with a smile
of contentment on his face. " Nature has accommoda-
ted herself to me, and I to nature. What more can I
wish ? He ceased on saying this. I entered fully into
his feelings ; and ere I retired to rest, I thought if we had
more of fortitude and less of self love, things would go
better with us, both night and day, than they do at pre-
sent.— Waterton's Essays on Natural History.
HORRORS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY.—Numbers of the
poor slaves in America come to an untimely end by a se-
ries of acts of barbarity inflicted upon them at different
times, which, though they do not kill them immediately,
yet undermine the constitution by degrees, so that they
do not live out half their days. It is not the mere whip.
ping while at their labour in the field which destroys
them, but the repeated punishments and sometimes tor-
tures they are made to endure, at the caprice of an over-
seer, when their labour is over in the day. Frequently
they are made to wear chains, and to work in them for
weeks together, which occasions them to suffer by exco-
riations of the skin and flesh. Iron collars are frequently
fastened to their necks, which, while they give them pain,
for the same reason hinder them from sleep, on account
of their long-projecting prongs. They are often put with
their feet in the stocks, and left there all night, (and
this for days and weeks together,) where they suffer again,
and where sleep is again impossible, and yet they are
made to rise as early in the morning to their work as the
rest of the gang, though then unfit for labour. That
dradful instrument, the thumb-screw, is also at times ap-
plied to them. It is screwed down tight till it produces
great pain, sometimes forcing the blood out of the ends of
the thumbs. The overseer then takes away the key, and
no one can relieve their sufferings, even though they faint
with the pain, till the same key is brought to unlock it.
The damp and loathsome dungeon is another source of
punishment, in which the victim may lie for months, and
even years, for so Judge Stroud says, if the owner wills it.
These instruments 'ben of torture, which are more or less
used, together with hard and forced work of fifteen hours
per day, produce a slow and lingering death, which is as
much murder as if the victim had been killed outright.
The same judge confirms a part of this account. " His,"
says he, (the slave's,) " life is ordinarily passed in inces-
sant toil. He is awaked from his slumbers at the call of
his master often before dawn ; he continues his heartless
labour with but slight intermission for rest and food till
night has closed around him. Hard worked and scantily
fed his bodily energies are exhausted." The same worthy
judge says also, " The master may at his discretion inflict
any punishment upon the person of his slave." Again,
" where," says he, p. 40, " the life of a slave is thus feebly
protected, his limbs, as might be expected, share no better
fate." I quote again from the act of 1740 of South Caro-
lina. "In case any person should wilfully cut out the
tongue, put out the eyes, castrate or cruelly scald, burn,
or deprive any slave of any limb or member, or shall in-
flict any other cruel punishment, other than whipping with
a horse-whip, cow-skin, switch, or small stick, or by put-
ting irons on, or confining or imprisoning such slave, every
such person shall for any such offence forfeit the sum of
one hundred pounds current money." " This section
has," continued the judge, " as far as I have been able to
learn, been suffered to disgrace the statute-book from the
year 1740 to the present hour. Among all the mutations
which Christianity has effected within the last century,
she has not been able to conquer the spirit which dictated
this abominable law. To say nothing of the trifling pe-
nalty for mutilation, what idea of humanity must a people
entertain, who by direct legislation sanction the beating,
without limit, of a fellow-creature with a horse-whip or
cow•skin, and the infliction of any torture which the in-
genuity and malignity of man may invent, in the applica-
tion of irons to the human body, and the perpetual incar-
ceration, if the master so will, of the unfortunate slave in
a dungeon keep, however loathsome ?"—Clarkson's
Letter.