The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-08-05 00:00:00

Etteraturr.

SELECTIONS.

SECULAR KNOWLEDGE.—KnowIedge is not virtue; it
may elevate the objects of crime, but it will never prevent
its commission in some form or other. It did not teach
Bonaparte to sacrifice his own desires to the happiness of
any living creature • it neither made Augustus respect the
life of Cicero, nor ;he pupil of Aristotle restrain the fury
of his passions. Mirabeau, the genius of the French re-
volution, ails a monster of deprrvity ; and Robespierre
himself was a man of education. lin,wledge, on the con-
trary, when undirected by religion it is made the servant
of vice, has in all ages produced most fearful consequences.
—Hogg's Weekly Instructor.
THE IRISH COLLEGES.—The only case inexistence which
can fairly be adduced as parallel, or nearly parallel, to that
which the government is about to establish, is " University
College," in London. There we have, indeed, a semi-
nary so rigidly secular, that the teaching of religion. and
the exercise of its rites, in any shape, are forbidden. Now,
has the experiment answered? Does University College
flourish ? Can it be said to have answered the expecta-
tions of the philosophers and liberal-n-.inded men, who
called it into existence ? We rather think not. The po-
pulation of London and its suburbs amounts, by the late
census, to somewhere about one million eight hundred
thousand souls. And the two colleges composing the
University of London—one of which, by the by, is con-
ducted on strictly Church principles—are attended by
something under four hundred students, of whom more
than one half are students of medicine. If this be suc-
cess, then are our ideas of what success ought to be mar-
vellously exaggerated.—Fraver's Magazine.

Way is ECHO FEMININE ?—Wben the exhibition was
'over, and we were plodding up the Gay, I asked Spillane
why echo was always of the feminine gender? The bu-
gler scratched his head as if trying to elicit something
from his brain, but soon acknowledged that he was unable
to give a satisfactory answer. He observed that, although
be had heard her every day, yet he had never seen her,
and could not tell whether she wore petticoats or small-
'clothes. All at once Spillane seemed struck with some
new idea, and exclaimed. " May be, your honour, that
echo is represented as a female because she has always
,the last word." A newly-married couple were with us
when Spillane delivered himself of his brilliant concep-
eon, and to the bride I referred the solution of the
enigma. She very quickly and spiritedly replied,
`" What, sir! would the lords of the creation wish to
engross both the first and the last word! In that case,
we poor women might lock up our tongues, as we do our
jewels, to be used only on gala days."—Dr. James John-
son's Tour in Ireland.

INCOME, &c., OF SIR W. FOLLETT.—As, like Scarlett,
his main object was to make money, his gains must have
been immense. He had as many special retainers as Scar-
lett in his best day, and more general and varied business;
but Scarlett enjoyed forty-four years' practice, while Fol-
lett had only been twenty-one years at the bar when he
died. Scarlett had been twenty-five years at the bar be-
fore he obtained a silk gown ; Follett obtained one in ten
years, as Lord Plunkett had done ; but they were both
in this respect outstripped by Erskine. who obtained his
silk gown in 1783, when he was only of five years' stand-
ing in the profession. Scarlett was thirty-six years
standing before be became attorney-general, while Follett
was not twenty ; and only ten when named solicitor-ge-
neral. The professional income of Scarlett was for many
years rated at £17,000 a-year ; and we have ourselves
heard him say, he one year made £19,500; but we doubt
that Follett ever made more than £15,000 a-year ; and we
incline to think the gains of Lord Abinger must have been
greatly exaggerated. He tins left not more than £BOOO a-
year behind him ; and making full allowances for some
imprudent purchases, we doubt that his professional gains
- put together ever amounted to £22o,ooo.—Fraser.

MR. PITT'S DEATH-BED.—I happened to observe that
I had read an account of Mr. Pitt's last moments in
Gifford's " Life" of him, and that his dying words, pray-
ing for his forgiveness through the merits of his Redeem-
er, or words to that effect, together with the whole scene
of his death-bed, appeared, as I thought, too much made
up, and ton formal to be true; leaving the impression
that the author, and those from whom he gathered his
information, bad considered it a duty to make tile close
of a great man's life comfortable to their religious feelings
rather than to facts and reality. " Who is it that says it
of him ?" asked Lady Hester. " Dr. Pretyman and Sir
Walter Farquhar." `• Oh, it's all a lie," she replied,
rather indignantly " Dr. Pretyman was fast asleep
when Mr. Pitt died ; Sir Walter Farquhar was not there ;
and nobody was present but James. I was the last per-
son who saw him except James, and I left him about
eight o'clock, for I saw him struggling as if he wanted to
speak, and I did not like to make him worse." After a
short pause, she resumed :—" What should Mr. Pitt
make such a speech for, who never went to church in his
life ? Nothing prevented his going to church when he
was at Walmer ; but he never even talked about religion,
and never brought it upon the carpet."—Memoirs of
Lady Hester Stanhope.
A HINT TO THE ANTI-REVELATION GEOLOGISTS.—
Nor let the mere naturalist say that this appeal to revela-
tion is out of place; for no other account can possibly be
given of the present constitution of the earth, than one
which admits of an agency which is supernatural. Things
actually are in situations where they could not have
placed themselves at first, and where they could not re-
main at the present time, save by the overruling of their
natural properties and known laws by some power superior
to these; contravening them in the first instance, and re-
sisting their tendencies ever since. And who can contra-
vene or resist laws ordained by the Creator but he him-
self? What, for instance, can be a more general law of
nature than gravitation? Namely, that bodies heavier
than water should sink—bodies lighter than water should
swim ; and that when bodies of different gravity, yet
heavier than water, are dissolved, they should subside to
depths corresponding to their relative weights? But none
of these things are so. For all the earths and stones,
which form the land, are heavier than water; therefore,
by the laws of nature, there should be no dry land—no
earth or stones above the level of the sea. The whole
globe, if left to arrange itself according to the laws of
gravitation, would have been entirely covered by the sea;
and even now, if left to the unrestrained action of those
laws, would, by the natural tendencies of earth and
water, speedily return to a condition in which neither
men nor animals could subsist; and ere long, by the laws
of gravitation, the heaviest bodies e raild reach the ocean,
and be arranged one above the other according to their
specific gravities; and one uniform sheet of water, varied
only in its depth by tidal forces, would cover the whole
surface of the earth.—Cnurch of England Quarterly.

THE IRISH PROTESTANTS.—WhiISt every thing which
the rapacity of Popery demands is granted to her the Pro-
testants look on with the apathy of despair. They are
denounced as a feeble minority, worthless, and impotent,
usurping the rights and fattening on the possessions of
others. They give in a tacit verdict of guilty, and sit
down ghastly, as men who await the fatal summons. One
is shot at noon-day—another denounced by a rabid hire-
ling press, injured in character, and broken in spirit by
monstrous lying. Another is hunted from the land by
Ribbon blood-hounds; the rest sit by with their hands
before them, isolated and heart broken—winking and
nodding, as travellers tell us penguins do when sailors are
throttling their companions. Could any one believe, look-
ing at the prevent position of the Irish Protestants, that
they form a mighty and powerful party—that they have
within themselves all the elements of moral and political
greatness—that they possess nine-tenths of the property
of the nation—that they compose the whole of the aristo-
cracy, with an exception too trifling for consideration—
that in moral worth and intellectual power, they exceed in
an equal proportion ; and that in number thay exceed
two millions. Yet, with all this, they are overlooked ant#
despised by the government, and trampled on and Assailed
by the Romish party. Surely this must be their own
fault—and so it is. It arises from love of ease, and from
the total want of union amongst themselves. Their op-
ponents are confederated together—move, speak, think as
one man, and bring in a moment all their force to bear
upon a single point. They put forward their claims—
make their demands—hold their assemblies—dictate their
terms. Their success, the influence they exercise over
the government, the concessions made to them in all they
seek in reality, point out to the Protestant party the ne-
cessity of close and immediate union, if they would pre-
serve the remnant that is left.—Dublin Mail.—[Our con-
temporary then urges the Protestants of England to unite
with their brethren in Ireland, and shows the advantage
that would result from such a union.]
ROMANCE OF REAL LlFE.—There is quite a little ro-
mance connected with a building in Genoa. It was for-
merly erected and owned by a wealthy man, who was in
the habit of visiting a beautiful peasant girl in the neigh-
bourhood. Pleased with his attention, she cast off, as
ladies are very apt to do, the rustic lover sbe had before
encouraged. But although her new admirer was frequent
and steady in his visits, he never mentioned the subject
uf matrimony. Things went on this way for three years,
till one night the gentleman was startled, as he was about
leaving the house, by the abrupt entrance of the two bro-
thers of the innornarata, demanding that he should imme-
diately marry their sister. They told him that he had
visited her for three years, thus keeping away other suit-
ors, and destroying all hopes of their sister's marriage
except with him; three years were quite long enough for
him to make up his mind in, and as he had not done it,
they had concluded to do it for bim. This was bringing
things to a focus he had not anticipated. For a man of
wealth and station to marry a poor peasant girl, merely
because he condescended to be smitten by her beauty,
was something more than a joke; yet he saw at a glance
that there was more meant by those brothers' speech than
met the ear—in short, that his choice was to be a mar-
riage or stiletto through his heart. This was reducing
things to the simplest terms •, rather too simple for the
wealthy admirer. The trembling, weeping girl, the bold,
reckless brothers, and the embarrassed gentleman, must
have formed a capital group in a peasant's cottage. At
length Signor attempted to compromise the matter
by saying that then was not the time, nor there the place,
to celebrate such a ceremony ; besides there was no
priest, and the proper way would be to talk over the sub-
ject together in the morning. One of the brothers leaned
back and rapped slightly on a side door ; it opened, and
priest, with his noiseless, cat-like tread, entered the cir-
cle. " Here is a priest," said the brothers. There was
a short interval of silence, when Signor made a slight
movement towards the door. Two daggers instantly
gleamed before him. He saw that it was all over with
him—that the three years of courtship were going to
amount to something after all—and so yielded with as
good grace as possible, and the nuptials were performed.
Like a man of sense he immediately placed his wife in a
convent to be educated, while be, in the meantime,
bought a title. Years passed by, and the ignorant pea-
-sant girl emerged into the fashionable world an accom-
Wished woman. She is now a widow, and is called the
beautiful Countess of —!—Headley': Letters front
Italy.