The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-08-19 00:00:00

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SIMPLICITY OF DRESS.—:Female loveliness never ap-
pears to so good advantage as when set off with simplicity
of dress; and our dear human angels, if they would
make good their title to that name, should carefully
avoid ornaments which properly belong to Indian squaws
and African princesses. These tinselries may serve to
give effect on the stage or 043 the ball-room floor, but
in daily life there is no substitute for the charm of sim-
plicity. The absence of a true taste and refinement or
delicacy cannot be compensated for by the possession of
the most princely fortune. Mind measures gold, but gold
cannot measure mind. Through dress the mind may be
read, as through the delicate tissue of the lettered page.
A modest woman will dress modestly. A really refined and
intellectual woman will bear the marks of careful selection
and taste.

SHEIL'S WlT.—The pungent wit of Mr. Sheil was not
the least remarkable of his shining qualities. What he
said of a late Irish member of parliament could not have
been surpassed by Congreve. On being asked whether
Mr. bad any Irish estate, Sheil exclaimed' " Why,
he's an Irish estate in himself ! He is heavily encum-
bered—he is openly for sale—and though he has a parlia-
mentary title, he can find no buyers at all !" His good
things were always said with a rapidity of utterance and
pungency of manner that doubled their effect. One
night he was asked by Lady Morgan, who was a Mr.
who made himself unreasonably conspicuous in Irish agi-
tation ? "He is patriot to a brewery," was Sheil's
answer—of which the humour may not be understood in
England, but in Ireland, where speculators often trade in
porter and in politics together, the description is tho-
roughly comic.—Athenaeum.
PRUSSIAN ANECDOTE.—Frederick of Prussia had a
mania for enlisting gigantic soldiers into the " Royal
Guards," and paid an enormous bounty to his recruiting
officers for getting them. One day a recruiting sergeant
chanced to spy an Hibernian who was at least seven feet
high ; he accosted him in English, and proposed that he
should enlist. The idea of a military life and a large
bounty so delighted Patrick, that. he at once consented.—
" But," said the sergeant, " unless you can speak German
the king will not give you so much."—" 0, be jabers,"
said the Irishman, " sure it's I that don't know a word of
Gronan."—" But," said the sergeant, " three words will
be sufficient, and these you can learn in a short time.
The king knows every man in the Guards. As soon as he
sees you, he will ride up and ask you how old you are ;
you will say twenty-seven—next, how long you have been
in the service ; you must reply three weeks—finally, if you
are provided with clothes and rations, you answer both."
—Patrick soon learned to pronounce his answers, but
never dreamed of learning the questions. In three weeks
he appeared before the king in review. His Majesty rode
up to him : Paddy stepped forward with " present arms."
—" How old are you ?" said the king.—" Three weeks,"
said the Irishman.—" How long have you been in the
service ?" asked his Majesty.—" Twenty-seven years."—
" Am I or you a fool ?" roared the king.—" Both," re-
plied Patrick, who was instantly taken to the guard-room.
TURKISH COURTESY.—We happened to be serving in
the Adtiatic under the orders of the late Admiral Free-
mantle, then commanding on that station, and attended
him, with other officers, on a visit of ceremony to the
Pacha of Scutari, a young man who had scarcely ever had
any intercourse with Europeans before. He invited the
party to accompany him in a ride, and mounted them all
in excellent style. The Admiral remarked the extreme
beauty and docility of the Pacha's horse, and he was glad
the Admiral admired him. A Turk says but little at a
time, never laughs, and seldom pays or returns a com-
pliment. After inspecting the palace, surveying the
fortifications, and partaking of coffee and pipes, the
party took leave and returned on board the flag-ship, the
Milford, a noble seventy-four. The first thing the Admi-
ral saw when he ascended the ship's side was the horse,
standing on the deck, as the Pacha had dismounted from
him, with a demipique saddle, considerably the worse for
wear, bridle with tarnished embroidery, and velvet
housings of faded hue. He was accompanied by two
officers, bearing a message from the Pacha to the
Admiral, expressed in the most courteous language, to the
effect that he would do him much honour by acceptirg
the horse, exactly as he had ridden him that morning.
There was something in the whole manner of this which
indicated one of nature's gentlemen. A pupil of the
artificial, or Chesterfield school, would have been
shocked at the old saddle and bridle. He would have
sent the horse entirely uncaparisoned, or with new and
gorgeous trappings. The Admiral, who was himself a
noble specimen of what the British officer should be, in
mind and manners, always quoted this as the most per•
feet instance of gentility he had ever met with.—Dublin
University Magazine.
__

ATHENS DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.—It is usual to
suppose that Athens was a miserable and decayed town
during the whole of the middle ages, and that Attica then
offered the same barren, treeless, and unimprovable aspect
which it does now as a European kingdom. Such, how-
ever, was not the case. The social civilization of the
inhabitants, and their ample command of the necessaries
and many of the luxuries of life, were in those days as
much superior to the condition of the citizens of Paris
and London as they are now inferior. When Walter de
Brienne succeeded to the duchy, it occupied a much
higher position in the scale of European States than is at
present occupied by the kingdom of Greece. The
Spaniard Muntaner, who was well acquainted with all
the rich countries around the Mediterranean, then the
most flourishing portion of the globe, and who was
familiar with the most magnificent courts of Europe,
says that the Dukes of Athens were among the greatest
princes who did not possess the title of king. He has
left us a description of the court of Athens, which gives
us a high idea of its magnificence ; and he declares that
the nobles of the duchy then spoke as good French as the
Parisians themselves. The city was large and wealthy,
the country thickly covered with villages, of which the
ruins may still be traced in spots affording no indications
of Hellenic sites. Aqueducts and cisterns then gave
fertility to land now unproductive ; olive, almond, and
fig trees were intermingled with vineyards, and orchards
covered ground now reduced by the want of irrigation to
yield only scanty pasturage to the flocks of nomade shep-
herds. The valonia, the cotton, the silk, and the leather
of Attica, then supplied native manufactories, and the
surplus commanded a high price in European markets.
The trade of Athens was considerable ; and the luxury of
the Athenian ducal court was celebrated in all the regions
of the west where chivalry flourished. Nor was the position
of the Greek subjects of the dukes at this period one of
severe oppression. Civilization had penetrated deeper
into the social relations of men in Greece than in the rest
of Europe ; and its effects were displayed in the existence
of a middle class, living in ease, and by the decay of
slavery and serfdom. Though the Greeks of Athens were
a conquered race, the terms of capitulation granted by
Otho de la Roche secured to them all the privileges as
individual citizens which they enjoyed under the Byzan-
tine government, with much greater freedom from finan-
cial oppression. The feudal conquerors of Greece soon
perceived that it was greatly for their interest to respect
the terms of the capitulations concluded with their Greek
subjects, and to gain their goodwill. Each grand feuda-
tory soon became aware that the Greeks from their wealth
and numbers might be rendered useful allies in opposing
the exorbitant pretensions of their own immediate vassals
and military followers, and in restraining the avarice of
the Latin clergy, the ambition of the Pope, or the pre-
tensions of the Emperor of Romania. The peculiar con-
dition of the Greek landed proprietors, who were in some
degree both capitalists and merchants, taught their princes
the necessity of alleviating the natural severity of the
feudal system, and modifying the contempt it inculcated
for the industrious and unwarlike classes of society, The
high value of some of the productions of Greece before
the discovery of America and the route to India by the
Cape of Good Hope, placed the landed proprietors on the
coasts of Greece, and particularly those of Attica and
Bosotia, in the receipt of considerable money revenues.
They were thus enabled to pay to their dukes an amount
of taxation which many monarchs in western Europe were
unable to extract from numerous cities and burghs, whose
trade depended on slow and expensive land eommunica-
hone, and from cultivators without capital, who raised
little but corn and hay.—Mediaval History of Green.

FOREIGN AND COLONIAL.

FRANCE.

It is announced, though not officially, that the'Presi-
dent of .the Republic will, between the 20th and 25th of
this month, make a tour in the departments, proceeding
first to Angouleme, thence to Bordeaux, la Rochelle and
Rochefort and returning to Paris through Ferigueux,
.Limoges, Moulins, and Nevers. He will be accompanied
M. .Leon Faucher, Minister of the Interior, .Ceneral
Randon, Minister of War, and M. Fould, Minister of
Finance. _ _

Thereere now no less than three classes of Orleanists.
There :are the Orleanist-fusionists, who can scarcely be
anything but Legitimists in disguise; the Orleanists who
support the candidature of the Prince de Joinville for the
Presidency., and the Orleanists who oppose it, because
they wish only for the regency of the Duchess of Orleans,
and think that the election of the Prince de Joinville
would tend to consolidate and strengthen the republic.
A feeling of some uneasiness prevails at Lyons, owing
to the.great sympathy which a large portion of the:popu-
lace arelnown to have with the prisoners now on their
trial before the court-martial. Nothing like a serious de-
monstration of public feeling has, however, taken place
hitherto. The state of siege which still continues enables
the military authorities to take every precaution. The
people, too, understand, that the best way in which ,they
can serve their friends is to remain quiet.
SOCIALIST AMUSEMENTS IN PARIS.—A soldier was
recently drinking in company with two workmen in a
public-house at Grenelle. A man with a huge beard and
a broad brimmed hat came in, and in a loud voice cried,
'` Citizen,
_give me a glass of wine : if I were to take two
I should be an aristo 1" On perceiving the soldier he
began singing a song in which the army was grossly
insulted. .He then abused the President of the Republic
in the grossest terms. The soldiers and workmen pro-
tested against such language ; this led to a quarrel, and
the quarrel to blows. The public-house keeper interfered,
but was grossly illtreated by the demagogue. At last the
man was secured and taken to the guard house.