The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-08-05 00:00:00

TALK IN TOWN.

(FROM OUR PRIVATE CORRESPONDENT.)

Temple, Monday Morning.

On all sides the symptoms of a move The whitebait
dinner took place on Saturday evening. at Greenwich,
under the presidency of the Attorney-General, all whose
proverbial fun and bon-hootesie must have been needed
by his colleagues, under circumstances in which Mr. Mark
Tapley himself could have admitted " there was some
merit in being jolly." They were meeting within a week
of the break-up of their last parliament, and they are
expiring without even a " good cry." They have gone
down " between two stools." The Papists and the Jews
have been lost, and decent people have not been gained.
The first class of their former supporters have shown
themselves at Limerick, where Lord Arundel has beaten'.
an Irish patriot, because the patriot was a Protestant.
Raleigh (the tradition says) gained the favour of Elizabeth
its favour that afterwards cost him his head, from the
enmity of the greatest wretch that ever sat on a throne—
James -by a small expenditure of Genoa velvet, in
throwing this cloak in the mud (having, doubtless, like all
" court gallants" before and since, that carelessness of
dress which arises from having tic at his tailor's) ; but if
Raleigh got an admiral's place by spoiling a mantle.
Arundel has got a representation by demolishing a pair of
pantaloons. His flinging himself in the dirt before the
littleover-fed priest, called " Bishop of Limerick," was not
a bad•piece ofacting. The venerable Vincent Crumles would
have been delighted to have seen Bishop Ryan anal Lord
Arundel travelling down together in the train from Dublin,
dismissing, probably, their sandwiches and sherry at the
stopping stations, and then, when they reached Limerick,
and-the open-mouthed aborigines had assembled in a suffi-
cient crowd, playing " Faithful con of the Church" and
" Venerable Bishop ;" just as Vincent Crumles himself
played respectable father in a brown George, at the mar-
riage of Miss Henrietta Petowker. It will be recollected
that, in the instructive history of Mr. Nicholas Nickleby,
Mr. Crumles, the manager, could not give Nicholas his
adieux in any private place, but reserved his weeping for
the departure of his " lion.hearted boy" till he reached
the coach-office, and had the advantage of a crowd. So
the Romish bishop could not give his benediction to the
Earl of Arundel in Dublin, or on the way, but waited till
be reached Limerick, where, to the manifest detriment of
hie lordship's inexpressibles, the representation was faith-
fully given. We wonder to read of the mandarins who
who go and commit suicide at the order of the Emperor,
and we do not wonder at the son of the Earl Marshal of
England making a mental obeisance and prostration such
as this. However, this "jockey of Norfolk" succeeded
in jockeying Russell, the Protestant candidate ;—and now
may come back before Friday to inform the House of
Commons that he does not consider his soul his own.
Amongst the other marks of a coming change of minis-
try, is the approaching move in the law appointments.
Lord Chief Justice Jervis, it is said, has got consumption,
and must go to Madeira. This will make room for the
Attorney-General—a gentleman againet whom there can
be no charge but that of being a Whiz, for he has
been very active and honest in his office, a fair debater in
Parliament, and a zealous law reformer, while his ability
as a lawyer and an orator are both undoubted.
The corruption and favouritien whirls were suspected to
exist in some affairs about the Exhibition Glass-house
have not been the less credited from the case of the statue
of " the sleeping Nymph." It is really sickening in the
highest degree to have read the declarations of the great
respect that those who got up the Exhibition wished to
pay. to " the Sabbath," and then to learn that " the
friends of the Executive Committee" are admitted on
Sunday. and that they proceed so far as to remove statues
from their pedestals, break them by their bungling, repair
them again, take photographs of them, and then restore
them to their places, so that the unconscious purchaser of
a work of art may first find that it is mutilated, and then,
for his further comfort, ascertain that the Italian hawkers
of plaster of Paris figures can accommodate him with a
copy for a shilling.
It is of course with the most poignant regret that I per-
ceive that my allusion to "literary snobs" has been taken
as personal by the editor of the Liverpool Chronicle, an
organ of public opinion I never before saw. If I had
known the gentleman was of that particular " nest," as
be phrases it, I should have decidedly excepted him, as
my allusion seas to metropolitan snobs, and not provincial.
If he wishes, however, to become the champion of literary
snelkery (for, be it remarked, of literary gentlemen I said
nothing), I can only give him the answer of the Lacede-
=miens to Alexander.—"Ei Alexandros bouletal stoat
Thews, Theos esto." If he wants to be champion of the
snobs, let him be champion of the snobs, and lead a new
war of the dunces, till, as he says, the stones that Thack-
Cray " lives to tread" (and not lightly, either, I can tell
him) "rise up 'and' mutiny." He is quite welcome to
indulge his rustic dream of the " fine and honourable
spirits" with which he has peopled the region of metro-
politan literature. His idol, Tnackeray, does not seem to
be of his opinion about them, and, as an humble spectator,
neither am I. The same article, I see, compliments you by
stating that your style is like something the writer has
" heard or read in the most exceptionable of the London
weekly Tory prints." How one can "hear" a weekly
print, may be understood on the Irish side of the Channel,
but does not seem very clear on this ; but n'importe,
what does the man mean by the " most exceptionable of
the weekly Tory prints ?" There are but two weekly
Tory prints.—One is the Britannia, established, but, un-
fortunately for literature, no longer conducted, by an able
writer, a deeply-read scholar. and an accomplished zentle-
man, Mr. D. T. Coulton, than whom, in the chair of
criticism,

ne'er sat an Abettidin
Of more discerning eyes, or bands more clean—
a man who made, at least in one newspaper, literary criti-
cism honest and independent, and carried on his journal in
such a manner that to be connected with it was an honour.
The second " Tory print" is the John Bull, and I am at a
loss .to know what there is "exceptionable," to use your
contemporary's elegant phrase, about that paer. The
editor of the Chronicle will, as he says, " hear" it a long
time before he hears anything in it disreputable ; but
what can you expect of a man who tells you that old
Dr. Whateley is " one of the first men of the age ?" He
says lam " soporific," I perceive. He certailily is not;
abut, like the hero of the Dunciad—
Steepless himself, to give his readers sleep.

That very wonderful orator, Gavazzi, has concluded his
lectures in town, and starts for Scotland. There has been
probably no incident of all the anti-popish agitation so
decidedly injurious to the Romanists as this man's pre-
sence in London. They have felt it so, and done all in
their power to injure his popularity ; but in vain. They
dare not make a charge of any kind of misconduct or bad
character against him. They knew too well the mettle of
the warrior-priest, and too well the temper of British ju-
ries, to set about their usual libelling system. Ilis advo-
cacy of enlightenment is therefore doubly valuable. In-
deed, for the mere sake of seeing, for once, the true grace
of the " action" that Demosthenes recommended, and of
Bearing pure eloquence, there is nothing in this eventful
year better worth attending than a lecture of Gavazzi.
When he took.up a musket for Italian freedom, the Uni-
versity of Bologna lost no contemptible professor of
rhetoric.

The crisis in France is coming, with neither slow nor
doubtful pace. There is not the slightest chance of the
re-election of Louis Napoleon ; and as to what may be
the nature of the government that will succeed, it is quite
impossible to guess, that pleasant nation has so adroit a
habit of doing bv-a coup what other countries do as the
result of deliberation. The rumoured recall of the troops
from Rome turns out, as we expected, to be simply one of
those feelers that persons who are called statesmen in
France throw out for -the purpose of seeing how such a
movement will be taken. The French genius has not the
least desire to see Austria assuming a power in Italy, which
France, by a little management. might obtain for herself.
Everything points to the fact that the office of keeper of
Infallibility will probably be a subject of European con-
tention before many mouths have passed over us. In the
meantime, the rejection of ,Louis Napoleon is not to be
without the substitution of another quasi royal candidate.
It wears that Thiers willset up the Prince de Joinville
for the presidency. This ia.exeeedingly good, if the little 1
liisto4-al-rornancist means to divide one party of order so
as to give greater assurance to the faction of the Red ; but
on no ether ground is it intelligible. The Prince deJoin-
ville is deservedly the greatest favourite of all the children
of Louis:Philippe. Ho is a gallant sailor and a good
Frenchman, and as the bourgeois.class seem only to want
some one who will keep them clear ref apprehension from
the Social:sets, and be a king without intuiting French sen-
timent, by a.; Whiting the "round and top of royalty," the
Prince ile Jeinville will doubtless 'do es well as another.
However, his-election, and that of Louis Napoleon, will
be in the treasury of Ariosto before Mayday.
Gargantua declared that neither Caesar nor Alexander
-could do without his dinner ; and it appears that Pius IX,
the " Holiness of-Our Lord," as Anton-elli blasphemously
calls him in his ta;sation circular, is bard ,up for a little
money. After cq..wietely ruining the middle classes of
Rome Land that includes all the shopkeepers), by his mi-
litary violence, and that, of his masters, the French, and
after expelling multitudes of natives of the Ltoman states,
on the ground that they were not natives of the city, be
finds (as one might fancy, without being any great witch)
that the tales are sornewh:et difficult to
iget in. In -fact,
the " Centre of Unity", is pretty nearly irsolvent..endlhes
been driven to lay on new tromp to keep up the exchequer.
The rumour (whether or not owing to his alleged ill.
health) has revived of Lord Irougham's having been
offered an earldom, in gratitude for his stupendous labours,
both as a law-reformer and as a -judge of appeals in the
House of Lords. I believe lie has refused the higher step,
Preferring to have his barony made deseenditble,to hie
brother and nephew, to whom his lordship is greatly
attached, and who is a very fine and intelligent boy. It is
the fate of the most distinguished man of es time like ours
—the interregnum of genius, when one generation of
intellectual giants has almost gone, and another not yet
arrived—to occupy such a place in public attention as ren-
ders it a difficult task-for the most candid and impartial to
decide upon his merits. Nobody will dispute that the one
Englishman now living, whose name is most frequently in
the months of men throughout Christendom, and whose
actions attract the greatest measure of regard, is Henry
Lord Proughtun, From the revive phijofop4e; his