The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-09-17 00:00:00

BLACKPOOL CHURCHYARD contains two inscriptions
possessing melancholy interest. The first is on a tablet
recording the death of Major Sparks and Miss Leach,
who were drowned while leaving the vessel that had
brought them from Canada, in Oct. last. It was said that
they bad become attached to each other during the voyage,
and contemplated being married on reaching England.
Alas ! by what frail tenure are our brightest hopes held.
Just as they were about to consummate their wishes,
they were suddenly deprived of their existence; and now
silently repose together in the same grave!—the next
memento in that burying-place, is that ►ecording the
death of Betty Butcher, who died in the year 1829.
Betty was a neatly-dressing, good-looking girl of 21 ; and
had won the affections of the son of a neighbouring far-
mer. Betty was only a fisherman's daughter, and her
union with Walter Cragg was not approved by his
friends. Walter, however, sincerely loved Betty ; and she
warmly reciprocated the feeling. Going to the well one
day to fetch her a pitcher of water, he unfortunately fell
therein, and was suffocated before he could he rescued
from his perilous situation. This untoward event weighed
heavily upon Betty's mind, and she pined and died a few
months afterwards.
BETHLEHEM.—The first appearance of Bethlehem is
very striking in whatever direction it is approached ; and
it does not rayttire even the hallowed scenes and the asso-
ciations connected with its history—though they certainly
give it an additional interest—to arrest the attention of the
traveller, and bid him gaze upon the picturesque bill that
rises in parterres of vineyards, almond groves, and fig
plantations, watered by gentle rivulets that murmur
through these terraces ; an-I diversified by the tower and
the wine-press. It is a straggling village, with one prin-
cipal street, and is said to contain about 3000 inhabitants,
most of them Arab Christians, and a peculiarly determined
race, who give their oppressive rulers no little trouble.
We proceeded to the fortress-like convent, and saw in its
low door a curious evidence of the turbulence of the land.
It is not four feet high, being made thus low to prevent
the marauding Arabs from riding boldly into the house.
The monks were at prayers when we arrived, and follow-
ing one of the brothers through the great church down a
marble staircase, and along a subterranean corridor, we
stood in the grotto called the Chapel of the Nativity.
This place is declared, grossly in defiance of probability,
to be the very stable where the Saviour was born, and a
niche in a wall contains a very handsome white marble
trough like a sarcophagus, which is shown as the very
manger in which the infant Jesus was laid.—Library of
Travel. _ _

_
LIVERPOOL IN THE OLDEN TIME.-011r first day's
ramble we will devote to an inspection of the Prince's,
Waterloo, Victoria, Trafalgar, and Clarence Docks. As
we stand in St. Nicholas' Church Yard, by the flight of
steps leading to the lower portion of " homes of many a
household," and cast our eyes northward upon the
forest of masts, from which pennants of all colours are
gaily fluttering, and measure with the eye the distance be-
tween the river and the spot whereon we stand, we can
scarcely believe it possible, that in the span of a man's
life this mighty encroachment upon the stream could have
been effected. Beneath the churchyard wall, a century
ago, the angry waves boiled and bristled up, on boisterous
nights and wild days, the raging current sweeping along,
unimpeded, from the sea. This wall was the outward
limit of ancient Liverpool towards the west ; and all her
docks, and quays, and streets beyond this line are artifi-
cial. The original shore of the river being now occupied
by Strand-street. Reference to a map will explain this
at a glance. The old record tells us that the sea wall in
1655 was greatly damaged by a storm, " in which diverse
pinnacles of the chapell, of this town of Liverpoole, were
blown downe, and with falling broken all to pieces and
other hurts of glass windows, but to say the truth, fur-
ther in the night of storm was a part of our chapell walls
of this towne, next the tall sea mark, bursten and washen
out, and sonic of the greater stones moved, which the ex-
tremeness of the seas carried six or seven yards."—
Lacey's Pictorial Handbook of Liverpool.
CAPTAIN WARNER'S EXPERIMENT.—When Captain
Warner sp•alcs of his six-mile range, for which he re-
quired but a two-pounder, he states a physical impossi-
bility in the present state of chemical science; and Capt.
Warner is certainly not one is whom any reasonable hope
could be indulged, that by his knowledge any advance
will be made. By the use of the fulminates, nothing
would be gained, for with compounds so loosely held to-
gether, there appears no certainty; they are all liable to
spontaneous decomposition. The fulminate of mercury
was considered safe while mixed with spirit of wine, yet
while in this state it exploded, and Mr. Hennell, of the
Apothecaries Hall, was destroyed by it. Mr. Eley, the
inventor of the wire cartridges, who had repeatedly mixed
his fulminate of mercury, perished from the explosion of
a pound of this highly dangerous composition. A French
vessel, fitted, during the French war, with some new de-
tonating compounds, was never heard of after it sailed
from Toulon. The large gun made for Mehemet Ali, re-
quiring a charge of -10 lbs., and throwing a ball of 4801b5.,
is considered too dangerous to use. Rockets of 100 lbs.
are not found to move one yard. There appears to be a
limit to destructive powers, and we have reason to thank
Heaven it is so. The service may be improved, rockets
may eventually be made to go straight, shells may be made
percussioned, and a greater precision given to cannon
firing. It is possible, by the introduction of the patent
principle of Mr. Harding's new gun, which has given
so great an increase to the power of sporting guns, we may
improve that of the cannon ; but these, if effected, would
be but a slight step to realising the theories of Warner or
of Normandy. The evil they cause, and that is a serious
though unavoidable one, is that scientific characters are
debarred from the ground these enthusiasts claim as their
own. Every application for experiment is now refused at
Woolwich, because ninety-eight out of a hundred appli-
cants prove to be ignorant adventurers.—Polytechn.Rev.
LANDING OF THE BRITISH IN HOLLAND DURING
THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WAR.—" War is of all
things the most picturesque, and there never was a gala
on the waters of the Adriatic more gay or glittering than
our landing. But we had infinitely the advantage in the
numbers, the brilliancy, and, what gave a higher feeling
to the whole, in the reality of all its objects. This was no
painted pageant; it was real strength, real soldiership ;
the cannon that roared above our heads, as we descended
into the boats, were the thunders which had shaken many
a battlement ; the flotilla of launches, long-boats, and
cutters, which covered the sea, was manned with the
soldiers and sailors sent forth to fight the battle of human
freedom on every shore of the globe. The ships were
that British fleet whose name was synonymous with the
noblest exploits of war, and which it would have been
well worth going round the circumference of the globe to
see. On this night we bivouacked ; the shore offered no
human habitation, and it was too late for the landing of
our tents. But the sand was dry ; our fires were soon
lighted ; all was sport and activity ; our bands played
' Welcome to Holland ;' our men danced with the pea-
santry; all had the look of a magnificent frolic; and,
when at last I threw myself on my open air pillow, I
dreamed of fairy-land. At daybreak we marched, in the
highest spirits, and only longed to try our strength with
the enemy. From time to time, the sound of a cannonade
reached us, and heightened our eagerness to advance.
But Holland is proverbially difficult for any movements
but those of a trackschuyt ' • and the endless succession of
narrow roads, the perpetual canals, and the monotony of
her level fields, rich as they were, exhausted us, more
than if we had marched twice the distance. But the spell
of human hearts is excitement, and war is all excitement.
All round us was new, and from the colonel to the tank
and file, the " general camp, poineers and all," enjoyed
the quaint novelty of Dutch life. The little villages, so
unlike our own, and yet so admirably fitted for peasant
comfort, the homesteads embedded in plantations of wil-
lows, the neatness of every thing round the farm-houses
and even the sleekness of the cattle which seemed by
their tameness to form a part of the habitancy—all were
objects of constant remark on our march ; and we could
easily comprehend the horror with which the arrival of a
French commissariat must strike these comfortable bur-
ghers. But the punctuality of British payments was
perfectly known already; the whole plenty of the land
was poured out before us ; we regaled sumptuously."—
Blackwood's Magazine.
WOODEN RAILWAYS FOR IRELAND.—The system is
that about to be practically exhibited on several projected
lines : from Guildford to Woking, from Hyde Park Cor-
ner to 'rick:mond and Staines, from Gloucester to Fish-
guard, from Waterford to Kilkenny, and others ; the ave-
rage total cost of which will not exceed £5OOO per mile.
The new mode may be thus described. The rails, or ra-
ther trams, of seven to eight inches scantling, are indu-
rated and protected against the ordinary destructive agen-
cies of fire, rot, and insects, by a very philosophical pro-
cess, to wit, the injections, by successive exhaustion and
pressure, of two solutions, mineral and alkaline, which
by decomposition transmute the timber into a new and in-
corruptible substance. These trams are laid down on the
principle of the " double way" of the ancient tramroads,
which is also the modern principle of the Great Western
Railway ; that is to say, they are let into wooden trans-
verse sleepers, and secured thereon by wedges, forming
one great frame of longitudinal and cross sleepers, on the
levelled surface of the ground. The tires of the wheels
are perfectly flat, and before and behind each carriage two
guide-wheels are fixed, at an angle of forty-five degrees;
a deep groove in their circumference embraces the upper
and inner edge of the trams, and the friction being thus
thrown upon the axle, the carriages are guided with per-
fect safety, and without any perceptible abrasion of the
rails. Upon a level, experiment has proved that less
power is required to move an equal weight upon a rail-
way of this construction than upon the flanged wheel car-
riage of an iron rail ; at the same time, the bite of the
wood affords a greater power of ascending gradients, and
the bevel wheels give the facility of travelling the sharpest
curves. A machine of seven tons can thus mount and
descend gradients cf less than one in twenty, and traverse
curves of 500 feet radius at the rate of twenty-five miles
an hour. On the one hand, the durability is attested by
the fact that wood properly prepared has recovered the
deflexion occasioned by the pressure of 140 tons upon a
segment of an iron wheel three inches in the tire, and that
an experimental traffic equivalent to seven years of an or-
dinary line did not obliterate the saw-marks upon the
wooden trams, which, on the contrary, actually polished
the bevelled surface of the guide wheels. The superiority
of longitudinal sleepers over stone blocks and chairs, is
demonstrated by the successful experiment of the Great
Western Railway ; and the rationale of such a mode, and
its peculiar adaetation to the circumstances of Ireland, in
spite of the abundant stone of that country, are well ex-
hibited by Mr. Vignolles in the Appendix to the Irish
Railway Report, (Appendix A, No. 1.) The rigidity and
the vis inertias of stone supports, indeed, may be held to
be one among the many causes in operation which induce
such a fearfully rapid wear and tear upon some of the
existing railways. Another advantage of the prepared
longitudinal beams is to be found in the action of the de-
liquescent salts which enter into their preservative com-
position, and which effectually prevent slipperiness from
frost, and from the opposite extreme of intense summer
heat._ The comparative cost is stated to be for an equal
length
of rail, wooden £1746, iron £3556, showing a say-
ing favourtear
and oft
wheeaformer
ao £lBO9
,inery besides,ecc.
p o less;y i
e cuttingeh.
R ev .