The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-12-26 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STiNDARD.

THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST'S

BARGAIN. By CHARLES DICKENS.

have injured beyond human reparation. But there is one
thing.'
" You speak to me of what is lying here,' the Phan-
tom interposed, and pointed with its finger to the boy.
"' I do,' returned the Chemist. " You know what I
would ask. Why has this child alone been proof against
my influence ; and why, why have I detected in its
thoughts a terrible companionship with mine ?'
" This,' said the Phantom, pointing to the boy, "is
the last, completest illustration of a human creature, ut-
terly bereft of such remembrances as you have yielded up.
No softening memory of sorrow, wrong, or trouble enters
here, because this wretched mortal from his birth has been
abandoned to a worse condition than the beasts, and has,
within his knowledge, no one contrast, no humanising
touch, to make a grain of such a memory spring up in his
hardened breast. All within this desolate creature is
barren wilderness. All within the man bereft of what
you have resigned, is the same barren wilderness. Woe
o such a man ! Woe, tenfold, to the nation that shall
ount its monsters such as this, lying here, by hundreds
and by thousands !' "

REPUBLICAN FIRST FRUITS.

(From Blackwood's Magazine.)

Never, since humanity first took to stocking-wearing,
was a vender of that useful article more scurvily treated
than he was by the French republic of 1848. The 25th of
February beheld hitn a prosperous man and an ardent re-
publican,—" a republican of the morrow," certainly. but
no worse for that ; four months of liberty and fraternity
brought him to ruin and suicide. At first, all his antici-
pations are rose-coloured. Increase of trade, an unlimi-
ted demand for hosiery, must be the consequences of the
new order of things. He is fully persuaded great days are
coming for the renowned establishment at the sign of the
Spinning Monkey. The day atter the revolution he opens
his shop as usual, but only to be bullied by an ouvrier,
who steps in to buy a red cap, finds none but white,
curses Bonitrdin for a Carlist, and carries off his national
guardsman's musket. Uproar recommences in.the street;
the ,hop is shut, and continues so for some days. The end
of the month arrives ; there are payments to be made, and
M. Bonardin sends t riquet to the bank with bills for dis-
count—first-rate paper at short date. Criquet brings
then► back ; the best signatures no longer find cash. N.
Bonardin is in all the agonies of a punctual paymaster who
sees a :..hance of his signature's dishonour, when .-4uddenly
he is summoned to his duty as national guard. On his
return, after a sleepness night and a fagging day, he has
scarcely got amongst the blankets, when he is roused by
voices in the street calling out, in a measured chant, for
lamps at his windows. _ _

Bonardin, awaking in alarm, and jumping out of

What is that? (Cries in the street, `Des lampions !
des lampions !) Good ! here they are again with their
infernal lamps ! Impossible to sleep under this republic?

Voices of .boys in the street. —Hallo! first floor! Spin-
ning Monkey LLamps! lamps ! _

M. Bonardin.—What a nuisance ! (calling out)—
Babet! Babet !

The boys shouting,—Lamps or candles ! . . break
the ugly monkey's windows, if he does not light up di-
rectly !
M. Bonardin.—Lord bless me!
Babet !

Babet !

Babel, (running in.)—What is it, sir ?
M. Bonardin.—Don't you hear them ? Cut a candle
in eight pieces directly. Not a minute to lose !
The boys.—it's a Carlisse, (Carli.st.) Hallo, there !
lamps or candles !
Mr. Bonardin. (in his nightgown, opening the window.)
—Directly, citizens, directly ! A minute's patience!

7he boys.—Ah ! there's the old monkey himself !
Bravo ! bravo !
D'un sang impur engraissons nos sillons!'

M. Bonardin, (,flourishing his night-cap.)—Yes, yes,
my friends, d'un sang impur Certainly, by all means ;
Viva la Republique
The bogs,—Vive la Rtfpublique I Down with the car-
lisses (Babet enters with eandle-ends ; .111. Bonardin
retreats behind his bed-curtains.) Ah ! there's the mon-
key's wife lighting up at last. Bravo ! bravo ! Vive la
.I?publigue The monkey's wife not bad-looking in her
night-dress !

Cabet, (shutting the window.)—Do you hear, sir, those
ragamuffins call me your wife?

111. Bonardin.—Well ! are you not flattered ?
Babet.—Yes, indeed, the monkey's wife ! It's flatter-
ing ! They take' me for an ape, then ?

M. Bonardin.—lf they will only let me sleep at last.
Midnight already.
Babet.—Prav, sir, is this to last long ? This is our
sixth illumination. A whole packet of fives gone already !
M. Bonardin.—No, no, Babet—it is only the first mo-
ment. Recollect, the republic is but ten days old. .. . A
single decade, no more.
Babet.—A proper business it has been, your decade !
Alarms at every hour of the day and night ; the shop shut
three quarters of the time, and no buyers when it is open !
A nice decade! And then the bank, that refuses your
paper ; and then your bills, which you can't pay ; and
then....

M. Bonardin.—Let me sleep, my poor Babet. All
that is very true ; but what matter ? We have got the
republic ; and you know as well as I do—THERE ARE NO
ROSES WITHOUT THORNS."

With this trite saying, the epigraph of the book, Bo-
nardin, a bit of a philosopher in his way, consoles himself,
at the close of each disastrous decade, for the annoyances
and calamities he has experienced in its course. These
Pre countless, and of every kind. Now it is a polite note
from the tax-gatherer, requesting him to pay down, in
advance, the whole of the year's taxes, including an ex-

traordinary contribution just decreed by government.
Then Criquet, who has imbibed communist principles, in-
sists on sharing his master's profits, and M. Bonardin is
afraid to refuse. Criquet, however, is glad to fall back
upon his wages, on finding that, instead of profit, the shop
leaves a heavy loss. Next comes a scamp of a nephew,
emancipated from Clichy for the abolition of imprison-
ment for debt, who gets his uncle into various scrapes ;
and a drunken godson, one Pacot, a soldier, who knocks
his sponsor under the table, on pretence of his being reac-
tionary. Benardin goes to Rouen to assist at a wedding,
and the railway takes him into a cross-fire, the town be-
ing in full revolution. Rent-day arrives, and he sets out
as usual with receipts and a canvass-bag to collect the
quarter's rent from the occupants of the five upper sto-
ries of his house ; but nobody pays. The workman in the
attics takes the receipt and refuses the money, threaten-
ing to hang out the black flag if his landlord insists. One
tenant feigns madness—another declares himself ruined—
a third denies himself. Poor Bonardin returns home with
a heavy heart and an empty bag. In short, his misfor-
tunes are innumerable. He is mixed up in revolts against
his will, and without his knowledge ; is sent to prison,
thumped with musket-buts, hidden in a cask, robbed in
the national workshop. Finally, at the end of the thir-
teenth decade, he stands upon the bridge leading to the
National Assembly, his face partly concealed by a hand-
kerchief, singing republican songs and asking alms. None
give them. "lam a proprietor, my poor man," says
one; " I can give you nothing." "Impossible, my good
fellow," says the next ; " I am a manufacturer." "No
change," says a third ; " I am a shopkeeper, and I sell
nothing." " Sorry for you, my friend," replies another,
" but lam an artist. In these times, that is as much as
to tell you, I have not a sou in the world." " Alas !" ex-
claims a fifth, " I would relieve you with pleasure, but I
am a poor employe, and the revolution has struck off a
quarter of my salary." " What ill luck !" cries Bonar-
din ; " the revolution has ruined every body, it seems.
But this is about the time when the representatives of the
people repair to the National Assembly. They are gene-
rous, the worthy representatives. The millions they daily
vote away sufficiently prove it. Courage ! people who
spend so many millions will perhaps give me a few cop-
pers." He is mistaken ; the deputies pass, but none give
him any thing ; whereupon he concludes they have not yet
received their five-and-twenty francs. And as the repub-
lic will not give him bread, he resolves to seek water in
the river, climbs the parapet, and throws himself into the
the Seine—thus tragically terminating the volume, which,
up to that point, is a farce, both broad and long, cram-
med with jokes and double-entendres of various merit, but
all exhibiting, in a light as unfavourable as it is trun, the
disastrous effects of the revolution upon the trade and
prosperity of Paris.

AN EXCEPTIONAL POETESS.-Tt is a remarkable fact
that whilst the Ocean has elicited some of the loftiest
compositions of Byron and other poets, in Mrs. Hemans
it awakened no other thoughts than those of desolation
and ruin. More than once she adopts a scriptural phrase,
" And there shall be no more sea," as an expression of
singular joy and congratulation, whilst throughout her
works she looks at the expanse of water as the emblem of
a ruthless and destructive Dower.

PHONETIC SPELLING.—The remedy which is proposed
for the state of things resulting from the extraordinary
confusion into which our spelling has fallen, from the ca-
price or ignorance of those who first reduced it to writing,
and the wilfulness of modern scribes, is to have an alpha-
bet of such a nature, that every letter in it shall have one
definite signification, and shall always express the same
sound under the same circumstances. The elements
which have been chosen for alphabetical representation,
are the sounds expressed by the italic letters in the words
eel, ale, alms, all, ope, food ; /11, Ell, Am, Olive, Up,
foot ; isle, oil, owl, mule; Yea, Way, Hay ; Pea, Bee,
The, Doe, chest, Jest, Coat, Goat; Fie, Vie, thigh thy,
Seal, Zeal, vicious vision; Lull, Rare; Mum, Nun, sing.
Those who take the trouble to separate these sounds from
the words which they contain, will see the philosophical
order which prevails in the above arrangement. The
forms of the letters are those with which we are already
familiar. Out of the old alphabet, k, q, z have been re-
jected ; old letters are used for the 23 sounds in the words
commencing with capital letters in the above list. and the
17 new letters introduced for the other sounds bear such
a marked resemblance of form to the old letters as to be
immediately recognisable; thus the sound in eel is repre-
sented by a modification of e, that in isle by a modification
of i, and so on. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find pm -
sons, even in advanced years, who have never made or-
thography or writing their study, take up works printed
in the new alphabet, and read them with ease. Indepen-
dently of the great results which may be expected from
introducing a philosophical alphabet into schools, there is
a secondary advantage which is almost as great. This
system will be invaluable to the missionary, in reducing
unknown languages to writing. Mr. Ellis has already
extended his alphabet to embrace all the European and
Asiatic languages, and given examples of its use in 27
languages, (in his " Essentials of Phonetics," a scientific
treatise on Phonology,) and there must be very few lan-
guages in the world which have sounds not found in these.
In his newspaper, it will be instructive to see how the
names of foreign persons and places, with which our co-
lumns are now so incomprehensibly filled, will dwindle
down into intelligible sounds. We look forward to seeing
Windischgriitz, Jellachich, Czech, and other monstrosi-
ties thus reduced to utterance. At present they ara mere
middles to thousands of our readers.

INGRATITUDE AND AVARICE.
A REAL INCIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND. I

Among the persons concerned in the Rye-House plot
was a man named James Burton. By his own confession

aiscussea by bis accomplices. When the conspiracy was
detected a reward was offered for his apprehension. He
was saved from death by an ancient matron, named Eli-
zabeth Gaunt. This woman, with the peculiar manners
and phraseology which then distinguished her sect, had a
large charity. Her life was passed in relieving the un-
happy of all religious denominations, and she was well
known as a constant visitor of the gaols. Her political

' and theological opinions, as well as her compassionate
disposition, led her to do everything in her power for
Burton. She procured him a boat which took him to
Gravesend, where he got on board of a ship bound for
Amsterdam. At the moment of parting she put into his
hand a sum of money which, for her means, was very
large. Burton, after living some time in exile, returned
to England with Monmouth, fought at Sedgemoor, fled to
London, and took refuge in the house of John Fernley, a
barber in Whitechapel. Fernley was very poor. He was
besieged by creditors. He knew that a reward of a hun-
dred pounds was offered by the government for the appre-
hension of Burton. But the honest man was incapable of
betraying one who, in extreme peril, had come under the
shadow of his roof. Unhappily it was soon noised abroad
that the anger of James Ras more strongly excited against
those who harboured rebels than against the rebels them-
selves. He had publicly declared that of all forms of
treason the hiding of traitors from his vengeance was the
most unpardonable. Burton knew this. He delivered
himself up to the government ; and he gave information
against Fernley and Elizabeth Gaunt. They were brought
to trial. The villain whose lite they had preserved had
the heart and the forehead to appear as the principal wit-
ness against them. They were convicted. Fernley was
sentenced to the gallows, Elizabeth Gaunt to the stake.
Even after all the horrors of that year, many thought
it impossible that these judgments could be carried into
execution. But the king was without pity. Fernley was
hanged. Elizabeth Gaunt was burned alive at Tyburn on
the same day on which Cornish suffered death in Cheap-
side. She left a paper written, indeed, in no graceful
style, yet such as was read by many thousands with com-
passion and horror. "My fault," she said,

" was one

which a prince might have forgiven. I did but relieve a
poor family, and lo ! I must die for it." She complained
of the insolence of the judges, of the ferocity of the
gaoler, and the tyranny of him, the great one of all,
to whose pleasure Fhe and so many other victims
had -been sacrificed. In as far as they had injured
herself, she forgave them : but, in that they were im-
placable enemies of that good cause which would yet
revive and flourish, she left them to the judgment of the
King of kings. To the last she preser-ed a tranquil
courage, which reminded the spectators of the most
heroic deaths of which they had read in Fox. William
Penn, for whom exhibitions which humane men generally
avoid seem to have had a strong attraction, hastened from
Cheapside, where he had seen Cornish hanged, to Tyburn,
in order to see Elizabeth Gaunt burned. He afterwards
rclated that, when she calmly disposed the straw about
her in such a manner as to shorten her sufferings, all the
bystanders burst into tears. It was much noticed that,
whilst the foulest judicial murder which had disgraced
even these times was perpetrating, a tempest burst forth,
such as had not been known since that great hurricane
which had rac,ed round the death-bed of Oliver. The
oppressed Puritans reckoned up, not without a gloomy
satisfaction, the houses whica had been blown down, and
the ships which had been cast away, and derived some
consolation from thinking that heaven was bearing awful
testimony against the iniquity which afflicted the earth.
Since that terrible day no woman has suffered death in
England for any political offence.—Macaulay's History.

there's the prim-rose.
PROBLEM.— Given, An estate in Tipperary. Required,
The rents. Any one solving the above problem may
have the estate in question to himself.—Punch.
THE NORTHERN COUNTIES 160 YEARS SINCE.—A
large part of the country beyond Trent was down to the
eighteenth century in a state of barbarism. Physical and
moral causes had concurred to prevent civilization from

spreading to t

tint region

The air was inc

was generally such as required skilful and industrious
cultivation ; and there could be little skill or industry in a
tract which was often the theatre of war, and which, even
when there was nominal peace, was constantly desolated
by bands of Scottish marauders. Before the union of the

as great a difference between Middlesex ai
land, as there now is between Massachus

.nd Nortbumbe

tts and the set-

), far to the West of the
Mississippi, render a rude justice with the rifle and the
dagger. In the reign of Charles the Second, the traces

tletw:nts of t

hose squatters vi

left by ages of slaughter and pillage were still perceptible,
many miles south of the Tweed, in the face of the country
and in the lawless manners of the people. There was still

'roopers, w

.
dwellings and to drive away whole herds of. cattle. It was
found necessary soon after the Restoration to enact laws
of great severity for the prevention of these outrages.
The magistrates of Northumberland and Cumberland were
authorized to raise bands of armed men for the defence of
property and order ; and provision was made for meeting
the expense of these levies by local taxation. The pa-
rishes were required to keep bloodhounds for the purpose
of hunting the freebooters. Many old men who were
living in the middle of the eighteenth century could well
remember the time when those ferocious dogs were com-

Yet even wit

the hills and moraeses ; for the geography of that wild
country was very imperfectly known. Even after the ac-
cession of George the Third, the path over the fells from
Borrowdale to Ravengl: s was still a secret carefully kept
by the dalesmen ; some of whom had probably in their
youth escaped from the pursuit of justice by that road.
The seats of the gentry and the larger farm-houses were
fortified. Oxen were penned at night beneath the over-
hanging battlements of the residence, which was known
by the name of the peel. The inmates slept with arms at
their sides. Huge stones and boiling water were in readi-
ness to crush and scald the plunderer who might venture
to assail the little garrison. No traveller ventured into
that country without making his will. The judges on
circuit, with the whole body of barristers, attorneys,
clerks, and serving-men, rode on horseback from New-
castle to Carlisle. armed, and escorted by a strong guard
under the command of the sheriffs. It was necessary to
carry provisions ; for the country was a wilderness which
afforded no supplies. The spot where the cavalcade
halted to dine. under an immense oak, is not yet forgot-
ten. The irregular vigour with which criminal justice
was administered shocked observers whose life had been
passed in more tranquil districts. Juries, animated by
hatred and by a sense of common danger, convicted
housebreakers and cattle-stealers with the promptitude of
a court-martial in a mutiny; and the convicts were hur-
ried by scores to the gallows. Within the memory of
some who are still living, the sportsman who wandered in
pursuit of game to the sources of the Tyne found the
heaths round Keeldar Castle peopled by a race scarcely
less savage than the Indians of California, and heard with
surprise the half-naked women chanting a wild measure,
while the men with brandished dirks danced a war-dance.
—Macaulay's England.
SINGULAR COINCIDENCES IN FRENCH REVOLUTIONS.
—ln the elder branch of the Bourbons, the Duke de
Berri, the son of Charles X., espoused a foreign princess,
and had: by her a son, who was regarded as the heir to the
throne: in the younger, the son of Louis Philippe 1.,
likewise espoused a foreign princess, and had by her a son,
likewise regarded as the eventual heir to the dynasty. The
father to the Duke de Bordeaux was assassinated on the
thirteenth of February, 1820: the father of the Count of
Paris died by an accident on the thirteenth of July, 1842.
In both the years preceding the fall of either monarch,
the price of provisions was at an excessive height, the
want was great, and the cold such that the Seine was fro-
zen over—a circumstance which did not occur between
the winters of 1829 and 1847. In both instances, the
anti-liberal tendencies of the heads of the state, after
most inviting promises, called forth from their best friends
remonstrances upon the course they were pursuing, and
warnings of an approaching crisis, which in both instances
were rejected. In both instances, the last speech of the
crown to the parliament assembled, contained words con-
cerning the " culpable manoeuvres," or " blind inimical
passions," of the Opposition which created the discontent
and called forth the protest of several deputies, and the
resolution to hold the famous banquet. The capture of
the Dey of Algiers, and that of Abd-cl-Kader, which im-
mediately preceded each catastrophe, were both in vain
considered as triumphs by the ministry of the day. The
ordinances of July suspended the liberty of the press ; an
ordinance in February prohibited the banquet. In both
cases these ordinances caused a commotion in the capital,
and a species of presentiment of revolution on the Monday
evening ; on the following day the revolt broke out, and
lasted during three days, commencing on the Tuesday, and
terminating op the Thursday ; and the power fell into the
hands of the insurgents. The gendarmerie in the one
case, the municipal guard—another name for the same
corps—in the other, offered the chief defence of royalty.
were overcome, and finally disbanded. Charles X. fell
from his throne at the age of seventy-four, Louis Philippe
at the same age ; the one in July, the month in which the
Duke of Orleans died—the other in February, the month
in which the Due de Berri was assassinated. Each mo-
narch abdicated in favour of his grandson ; each was met
by the fatal cry, "Il est trap lard." In each case a pro-
, visional government was established, and the royal family
' was obliged to quit the French territory ; both the mo-
narchs sought a temporary refuge in England. Here,
however, the " coincidences" offer a striking dissimilitude.
The one monarch was accompanied, in his departure, by
his guards and numbers of faithful servitors—the other fled
poor, wretched, and in disguise, abandoned by those who
had called themselves his friends : the one shed tears on
landing in the country of exile—the other hailed it with
joy. In both cases the ministers of the fallen king were
impeached. In even smaller circumstances, other coinci-
dences have been recorded. During the combats of both
revolutions, the temperature was excessively warm for the
season of the year—a circumstance not wholly without its
weight, if the well-known barometric nature of the Pari-
sian temperament be taken into consideration : and a few
days after in both years, an extraordinary tempest burst
over the capital, obscured it for many hours in darkness,
and swept down the new flag placed aloft upon the column
of the Place Vendome. Coincidences, predictions, reve-
lations—all may, perhaps, be looked upon, by the scepti-
cally reasoning mind of plain matter-of-fact, with scorn.
To such, then, they are here only given as curious mat-
ters of historical interest. At the same time, in the un-
certainty as to the issue of the convulsions under the
throes of which Europe is at present writhing, the trou-
bled wind may surely attach itself to the obscure revela-
tions of such strange announcements, and endeavour
clea'.ly to see its way through their dimness, without too
mrich deserving the stigma usually attached to supersti-
• tious credulity.—Blackwood's Magazine.