The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-10-11 00:00:00

THE WHIG SOLON.

We cart all remember the time when that pompous and
impudent old dogmatist Dr. Parr was held up to society,
in all Whig companies and publications, as a paragon of
learning and knowledge. He caricatured the disagreeable
parts of Dr. Johnson's character, without the power to
emulate those qualities of head and heart, which alone
could render such eccentricities bearable. His low habits
and brutal coarseness had its due effect upon his Whig
friends, and they sent him their children to learn the ac-
complishments of smoking, swearing, and drinking, and
seemed to regard his brutal and disgusting habits of life
as so many additional passports to their favour. But it
turned out that he was but a superficial scholar after all,
and that even his brutality was in part affected, and that
there was nothing sterling about him, save his dirt and his
impudence. Still they went on writing books and making
speeches about him; nay, a fat bookseller in Bond.street
was taught to consider him so fashionable (for he " hates
every thing that's low,") that he printed a volume of his
sayings; for the old fox used to get his pompous nothings
now and then reported in the Morning Chronicle, and, as
was quite natural in such inflated things, they went off
tolerably well. To furnish some notion to our readers of
what is necessary in a literary man to entitle him to
participate in the hospitalities of Lansdowne and Devon-
shire houses, we will present them with an anecdote of
Dr. Parr, which has lately been extracted with much
seeming exultation by some of our Whig contemporaries.
It is so whimsical withal, and evidences so completely the
respect with which he treated those who were silly enough
to endure his grossness and vulgarity, for the sake of his
imputed reputation for wisdom:—" On the evening (says
Mr. Galt in his Autobiography) that I dined with him at
Lord Blessington's he had his pipe brought in, as usual,
after dinner; and the servants, not being accustomed to
such a ceremony in the house, had neglected to provide
'him with a basin. The Doctor, however, merely no-
ticing the omission, rose, and going to the sideboard,
which was gorgeously ornamented with gold and silver
vessels, brought away a golden chalice, and placing it
at his feet found, till a basin was brought, that it an-
swered the purpose equally well." A man of inferior
rank to Lord Blessington would, in all probability, have
desired his fs)otman to kick the learned hog into the
street. But lie was a Whig, and hence his complaisance
to the Whig Solon.—Old England.

IRELAND.

LIBEL ON LADY DE BURGH.

CORK CITY SESSIONS, FRIDAY, OCT. 4.—Robert Milliken
was given in charge for, on the Ist September, printing and
publishing, or causing to be printed and published, a false and
scandalous libel on Lady Anna Matilda lie Burgh, in a paper
called the Freeholder. The indictment consisted of four counts,
varying as to the printing and publishing, or causing the libel
to be printed or published, and, the last count left out all the
inuendoes, except as to the parties named. The libel was set
forth in the indictment in the following words:—
"Mr. Freeholder, how have you fulfilled your duty to the
public, in restraining vice, while the lady of a baronet is suffered
to riot in an infamous intimacy with a chap who, under the
cloak of relationship, puts even her own servants to the blush
by repeated acts of indecency.—l pray you to look to this.
"PAUL PRY."
Counsellor Francis WCarthy stated the case to the jury in
a very perspictioas and eloquent speech, in which he dwelt in
severe terms on the infamous character of the libel, and on the
utter groundlessness of the insinuations contained in it, and
alleged that, on the part of the prosecution, he was authorised
to dare the traverser to furnish the smallest iota of evidence on
which to found a justification for the infamous imputations
against the 'conduct of the lady which were alluded to in the
b el.

When our reporter left the court, Richard Lane, Esq., stamp
distributor, Henry Orlando Bridgman, Esq., a nephew of Sir
John De Burgh, Bart., and a cousin to the lady in question,
and also the person alluded to in the paragraph containing the
alle,ged libel, and John Russell, the proprietor of the Freeholder,
were examined on the part of the prosecution, and Dr. M‘Na-
mara was just called up to give his evidence on the same side.
It appeared in the course of the trial, that further insinuations
against the character of the lady were continued in Nos. & and
10 of the same publication, the original letter having appeared
in No. 5.

Half:past three o'clock.—The jury has just returned a verdict
of Guilty against Mr. Millikin, but the sentence was postponed
'until the next sitting of the court, he being allowed to give bail
for his appearance on that day.—Cork Herald.

We are told that a singular circumstance has recently oc
curred in Dublin. Lieut.-Geneial Sir Hussey Vivian. the
Commander of the Forces, on being sworn in as one of the
Lords Justices of Ireland, during the temporary absence of the
Lord Lieutenant, conceived that he thereby became possessed
of so much of the character of royalty as to entitle him to the
mark of respect which ail other soldiers pay to his rank;* he
accordingly ordered the officer of the Guards, doing duty at the
castle, to present arms to him. On the fact being known to the
Horse Guards, a reprimand was immediately sent to Sir Hus-
trey ; and it is said that his Majesty actually wrote a letter to
him with his own hand; expressive of his displeasure at this
circumstance. The King's regard for etiquette,- and his feverish
anxiety to avoid the slightest encroachment on the privileges of
royalty or of the aristocracy, harmonize strangely with the ideas
which the radicals entertain of William the reformer!
• There is an absurd privilege attached to the Guards, that they are
irmcr to resent arms but to royalty and to their own officers.—ED
united service Casette.

A very rich veil of copper has lately been discovered be-
neath the site occupied by the gasometer at Tavistock. In
excavating a portion of the ground, in order to form a cellar for
the leception of coal, the workman employed found the soil a
short depth below the surface so extremely hard as to almost
dery his utmost strength and skill in removing it. Upon exa-
mination, however, it was found that several of the preLes he
lind detached were strongly impregnated with copper, and upon
sill further prosecuting the dist overy, a fine rich vein has been
detPcted, which has since yielded not less than ;CAW worth of
••a. able metal.