The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-09-03 00:00:00

?Lit tr turn.

P 0 E R. Y.

HYMN FOR THE HEART.

BY C. D. STUART.

(From Me New York Sun.)

Give me, whatever fate may bide,
Thou,4ll every smile but chase a tear,
One sin;;ie friend 'mid fortune tried,
An,t in misfortune still sincere;

And on the stormy sea of life,
Through ail the !empest and thc., jar,
My !Jar!: shall calmly bear the strife,
Willie beams that single guiding star.

A friend l—Ah ! kintis have lest and wen
Tne trophies of a million's toil,
And died, when empire's day was done,
Unrnourn'd amid their empty spoil.

A friend !—What wreath, what fame can fill
The measure of that priceless gem,
Which victor strength and tyrant will
Can neither woo nor wed to them,

Let every other ill be Trine—
The sc,rn of foes I freely bear,
While there is left beside the shrine
One friendly heart to lorve and share

SELECTIONS.

LEVEN BETTER THAN A DOZEN.—Lord Eldon told
Miss Ridley, Lady Eldon's niece, that the king, speaking
to 'the archinshop, Dr. Charles Manners Sutton, of his
large farMly, used the expression, " I believe your grace
bas better than a dozen." " No, sir," said the arch-
bishop, " only eleven." " Well," replied the king, "is
not that better than a dozen?"—.Life of Lord Eldon.
DEGENERATION OF MANKIND.—It was the opinion of
the. ancients that mankind degenerated in size and
strength. Virgil, in the 12th }Eneid, represents Turnus
throwing a stone of such magnitude that twelve such men
as lived in his time could hardly lift from the ground. In
the first Georgic, he represents their degenerate posterity
astonished at the bones of the Romans who fell at Phar-
salia and Philippi, which, in comparison of those of later
ages, might be accounted gigantic.—Marlyit's Notes.
THE HORRORS OF A DEPARTURE.—" Your letter
found us in what we have termed, with scarcely any ex-
agg'erati•.-m, the `horrors of departure.' All the callings,
the leave-taking, the apologies for the omissions of both,
and all the other external and internal Variety and com-
plication of social contrivances for manifesting civility,
and wasting time, and diminishing comfort; and, to close
the whole, bill upon bill, and new claims coming forward,
when you suppose all had been satisfied, while the supplies
which you intended to carry away with you grow less and
less, and you doubt whether you shall have enough to go
off like an honest man."—Letter front Wilberforce.
PERSEVERANCE OF Lotto ELDON.—Shortly after his
commencing the profession, Scott reduced himself into
a state of invalidism by excessive study. In 1774, when
he and Cookson, another invalid, were returning to Ox-
ford from Newcastle, where they had gone to vote at the
general election, the good-natured cook of the inn at Bir-
mingham, where they arrived at eleven at night, insisted
on dressing something hot for them, saying that she was
sure neither of them would live to see her again. A me-
dical friend remonstrated with him on the severity of his
studies. "Itis no matter," answered Scott, " I must
either do as lam now doing, or starve." He rose at four
in the morning, observed a careful abstinence at his
meals, and, to prevent drowsiness, read at night with a
wet towel round his head.—Blackwood's .4.layazine.
IRRECONCILEABLE ENMITY.—Tbe hatred between the
Late kings of Prussia and England began by the quarrel
they had when boys, and was carried on with the greatest
inveteracy on both sides, to the day of their deaths.
George called Frederick, " My brother the sergeant,"
and Frederick, George, " My brother the dancing mas-
ter." When the king
and was surrounded by his queen, his sons, &c., he asked
the. priest, " Must I, to go to Paradise, forgive all my
enemies ?" On receiving for answer that without it it
was impossible, he turned round to his queen and said,
" Well then Dorothy, write and tell your brother I for-
give him for all the injury he has done me. Yes, tell him
I forgive him ; but wait till I am dead."—Diary of the
.Ear! of Malrnesbury.

SITE OF APSLEY HOUSE.—On this site stood a cele-
brated tavern, or better kind of public-house, called the
Hercules Pillars. Fielding brings Squire Western to this
house, and here that bluff old soldier the Marquess of
Granby would drink his second glass and pass his joke
with mine host of the Hercules Pillars, callous to the at-
tacks of Junius and unconscious of the existence of a boy
destined in early manhood to take up his stately resi-
dence on this: spOt. What Abila and Calpe were to the
ancients the Hercules Pillars at Hyde Park Corner was to
our• London forefathers. The limits of London got no
further, and all our milestones on the great west road
were measured from this spot :
" Soon as I enter at n y country door,
Aly mind resumes the thread it dropt before,
Thoughts which at Hyde Park Corner I forgot,
Meet and rejoin me in the pensive grot."
e'raser's Magazine.

LEGAL SAGACITY.—Lord Eldon's sagacity gave him
additional triumphs on the northern circuit, where be soon
took the lead. He was counsel in a cause which depended
on his being able to make out who was the founder of an
ancient chapel in the neighbourhood. " I went to view
it,"said Lord Eldon. " There was nothing to be ob-
served which gave any indication of his date or history.
However, I remarked that the ten commandments were
written on some old plaster, which, from its position, I
conjectured might cover an arch. Acting on this, I bribed
the clerk with fire shillings to allow me to chip away a
part of the plaster; and after two or three attempts, I
found the keystone of an arch, on which were engraved
the arms of an ancestor of one of the parties. This evi-
dence decided the cause. Here was an instance of good-
luck, undoubtedly, but also of great diligence and great
sagacity. A nedigent counsel would never have thought
of examining the chapel in person • a dull counsel would
'lever have thought of examining the arch ; but it happens
that the sagacious are generally lucky and that, therefore,
the first quality is sagacity.- Blackwood's Magazine.
DATES.—Datea so well known and so esteemed in an-
eient times, are oftener served at dessert in Spain, Italy,
and the south of France than in England. Theophrastus,
Plutarch, and Pliny speak in rather extravagant terms of
the date tree, and the excellence of its fruit. Nicholas of
Damascus' in Syria, one of the most distinguished mem-
ber of the Peripathetic school, sent to the Emperor Au-
gustus the famous dates that grow in the valley of Jericho.
Pliny says they are so thick, that four ranged together
would be the length of a cubit. This fruit is gathered in
the autumn, and dried in the sun. The Tunisian dates
are tile best ; they are pulpy, mucilaginous, saccharine,
and nutritious. The expressed juice of the grape yields a
syrup, which serves as a substitute for butter, and is used
as a seasoning. Lemery says that those who feed on dates
are generally afflicted with the scurvy, and lose their
teeth. We have always considered them a dry and strin-
gent fruit. Though incentive to wine, they are indigesti-
ble, and, in Spain, have generally a harsh, rough, and
unpleasant tas: e.—Fraser.

AGES OF SENATORS IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES.—A
more just limit seems to have been fixed by our legislators
—a more happy medium between excess of encourage-
ment to juvenile loquacity and harsh prohibition, than
was achieved by the senates of ancient or modern times.
The councils of Athens and Sparta were composed of
greybeards of 50; at Rome, with better discretion, the
statutable age for admission is said to have been 35. Our
volatile neighbours appear to have erred in deference to
classical authority, no deputy being introduced to the
chamber before 40. In America, the president of the
congress must be 35 years of age, every senator must be
30, every member of the house of representatives 25. The
mame'period, 25 years complete, was the statutable age at
which every Venetian noble had a right to take his seat at
the great council. But the names of those who had passed
the age of 20 were annually put into an urn, and four-
fifths
elected by lot. " Were spinsters allowed to vote,"
said Cobbett, and to vote by ballot, what mass of youth
and beauty would St. Stephen's exhibit!" Even as it is
the majority of members have often been estimated as I
under 35 years of age.—Townsend's House of Commons.

AN ETON SCENE.—It was about an hour before sun-
set, the day of this very breakfast, and a good number of
boys in lounging groups, were collected in the Long
Walk. The sports and matches of the day were over.
Criticism had succeeded to action in sculling and in
cricket. They talked over the exploits of the morning ;
canvassed the merits of the competitors, marked the fel-
low whose play or whose stroke was improving, glanced
at another, whose promise had not been fulfilled; dis-
cussed the pretensions, and adjudged the palm. Thus
public opinion is formed. Some too might be seen with
their books and exercises, intent on the inevitable and im-
pending tasks. Among these, some unhappy wight in the
remove wandering about with his hat alter parochial
fashion, seeking relief in the shape of a verse. A hard lot
this, to know that you must be delivered of fourteen verses
at least in the twenty-four hours, and to be conscious that
you are pregnant of none. The lesser boys, urchins of
tender years, clustered like flies round the baskets of cer-
tain vendors of sugary delicacies that rested on the Long
Walk wall. The pallid countenance, the lack-lustre eye,
the hoarse voice clogged with accumulated phlegm, indi-
cated too surely the irreclaimable and hopeless votary of
lollypop—the opium eater of schoolboys.—Coningsby.
MADAME DE SEVIGNE.—In appearance she was every
way captivating. Her complexion was of a rare and ex-
quisite transparency and freshness; her eyes were bril-
liant and animated; her hair was light and luxuriant;
her features, though somewhat irregular, were exceed-
ingly expressive; her shape and form had been stamped
in the mould of perfect symmetry; she was graceful in her
movements and attractive in her manners. The fresh air
of the country, and the freedom of exercise which a coun-
try life permits, added to her natural openness and beauty
of appearance and stability of health. * * Her's was,
after all, a very strange destiny. tier course of life was
ever attended with prosperity; there were no turns,
shifts, changes, or alternations of joy or sorrow, to awaken
rnpathies or agitate our hearts ; her career
hforuotmc uarliomuossitnied:rilrtis_
our secret sy
was uniform and of placid teannodr,
yet,wit
or remarkable adventures ;
fancy to old age, she moved among
w the most illustrious,
the noblest, the gayest; and she as the eye-witness of
all the great which event? •
ch characterised the times. Her
descriptions, therefore, are valuable, even if unaccompa-
nied by the exquisite charms of style. Of these
perso-
nages and events she has made herself the faithful histo-
rian, without being at all aware that she was about to
place herself in so important a position. One might al-
most fancy, from the perusal of her Letters, that she was
the centre figure of intrigues, cabals, adventures, and
scenes without number ; such is her vividness of fancy
and the minute facility with which the descriptions are
even.—Fraserio Magazine.

ORANGES.—There is not a more grateful or a less nox-
ious fruit at dessert, than oranges. Loins XIV. was par-
ticularly fond both of the tree and the fruit. When the
monarch cave those magnificent fetes, so vaunted both in
prose and verse, the porticoes, hails, and ante-chambers
of his palaces were decorated with orange-trees, and the
fruit, then esteemed rare, always appeared at dessert.
The Maltese oranges, were, at that period considered the
fire,t ; while the fruit of Portugal maintained a secondary
rank only. But even Portuguese oranges were deemed a
present worthy of being offered to the children of kings.
" Monsieur me vint" (says the Duchess of Montpensier
in her Memoirs ;) "il me donna des oranges de Portugal.,'
Moliere, in gving a description of the comedy which
formed a portion of the famous fetes given at Versailles in
16S8 by Louis XIV., remarks that there was first laid. a
magnificent collation of Portuguese oranges, and of all
sorts of fruits in 30 baskets. About this period a species
of sweet citron was much in vogue. It is mentioned by
Lernery in his treatise on foods, written about 1705, who
says, " that the ladies of the court carried about sweet
citrons in their hands, which they bit from time to time
to produce red lips."—Fraser.
BURYING CLUBS AND THE RATE OF MORTALITY.—
In the evidence of one of the physicians examined before
the Commissioners of Inquiry into the state of large towns,
&c., whose first report has just appeared, we observe
these words :--" I used often to observe great apathy in
a certain class about the death of their children. They
did not seem to look on the death of the young as t
great evil which is commonly regarded ; they said, God
took care of young children who died ; that their death
did not matter much : that life was full of hardships and
misery, and that the child was provided for when it died.'
This feeling I found to be rather common " (3,313, p.
203. The picture here presented is true to nature so far
as it goes ; but the shades in which it must be finished,
we regret to say, are of a much deeper grain than those
yet laid on. There is not merely indifference among the
labouring population of England in regard to the death of
their children ; in some places there is a positive premium
upon the event. The new sacrifice to Moloch is perpe-
trated in this way :—Soon after the child is born it is en-
tered on the books of as many burying clubs as the parent
can command funds to pay for. The sum subscribed to
each is but a few pence, or even halfpence, weekly; so
that those in full employment can sometimes of to
have the name on the register of ten or a dozen of these
societies. And the investment may always be made a
profitable one. The hapless child has but to be killed by
exposure, by neglect, and worse treatment, to give these
unnatural parents a claim upon the several societies of
which they have enrolled their infant a member, to the
extent in all, perhaps of £3O or £4O, and even £5O. We
feel the hot blood rising to our cheek, as the outward
sense follows the pen thst is fixing indelibly such state-
ments as these, which will soon be before the public in all
their revolting details, authenticated by the commission
whose first report is referred to above. What comment
shall we make—what comment can be made--upon a state
of society so horrible ?—Medical Gazette.

THUNDER STORM AT WALTON HALL.—On the 10th
of August, 1842, during a terrible storm of thunder and
lightning, the poplar tree depicted in the engraving to the
first series of these Essays, was struck and sadly rent. I
had passed the day at Leeds, with oar celebrated Dr.
Hobson. Having had an early dinner, I felt a great in-
clination to get home, and repeatedly requested that the
carriage might be brought to the door. To this the doc-
tor obstinately objected, but finding me unceasing in my
entreaties, he at last consented, and off we drove. You
must know that everybody, rich and poor, has permission
to fish at Walton Hall, from the first of April to the first
of October. Having reached home, I saw that the thun-
der storm was just going to burst over us, the rain having
begun to fall. Seven of the fishermen had collected un-
der the poplar tree; and on seeing them there I ran out
of the house, and warned them of their danger, and de-
sired them to repair, without loss of time, to the saddle-
room, where they would get shelter from the impending
storm ; forbidding them, at the same time, to stay for a
moment under any of the large trees on their way thither,
as the consequences might be fatal to them. Scarcely had
they reached the saddle-room, when the lightning struck
the poplar tree, and sent fragments of it in all directions.
It may be well supposed that we were not long in thank-
ing God Almighty, on the beaded knee, for the escape
from death of those who had intended to remain under the
shelter of the poplar tree, until the storm should have
passed over. My father brought it, a plintling, in his
pocket, from a gentleman's house near Doncaster, and
planted it where it now stands, the year in which lie came
of age. It has grown surprisingly. and is perhaps the
largest Lombardy poplar in this neighbourhood. Amongst
those who had taken shelter under its foliage was a fine,
handsome recruiting sergeant. He has been to fish again
to-day, and he told me only an hour or so ago, that hehad
determined to wait under the tree until the storm should
have passed away ; adding, at the same time, how grateful
he was to Almighty God for his preservation. He said he
had only just got into the saddle-room when the storm
burst over us.—Waterton's Essays on Natural History.
EXTENSIVE AND FATAL USE OF " GODFREY'S CDR-
DIAL."—The inquiries recently made under the Chil-
dren's Employment Commission are very extensive, be-
cause the terms of that commission directed an investiga-
tion to be made into the actual condition of the children
employed, not only in mines and collieries, but also in all
branches of trade and manufacture whatever, in which
children work together in numbers, not included under
the Factories Regulation act. It was found impossible to
describe the condition of the children without giving some
account of the domestic habits and mode of life of the
parents ; and, among the facts brought to light under this
inqury, one of the most remarkable is the extent to which
opium is proved to be used by the poorer classes, and
more especially the extent to which it is given by mothers
to their children. Among others, Dr. Mitchell, one of
the sub-commissioners, reports that the medical witnesses
examined by him state that the infants and children are
seldom brought to them before they are benumbed and
stupified with opiates; the usual preparation given being
Godfrey's cordial, a mixture of treacle and opium, known
by the name of "comfort, " and an article in constant
demand. A little girl will come to the chemists and ask
for a dose of it to give to the baby next day, telling him
that her mother was going out to wash. A respectable
chemist stated that he made twenty gallons of "comfort"
in the year, and that there were chemists who lived near
the market-place, and more in the way of the country
people, who made a good deal more. "It must not be
supposed, " adds the sub-commissioner, " that such me-
dical treatment of children is pecfaliar to colliers, or only
prevails in places far remote from the light of the metro-
polis ; for, on making inquiry of a medical man, and of a
chemist, at Croydon, in Surrey, the same thing was found
to exist there, and in the country around." Speaking of
the districts of Nottingham, Derby, and Leicester, ano-
ther sub-commissioner, Mr. Grainger, states that the
practice of administering opium to infants, which is very
general in these districts, "is usually begun when the
child is three or four weeks old." But Mr. Brown, the
coroner of Nottingham states " that he knows Godfrey's
cordial is given on the day of birth, and that even it is
prepared for that event." The extent to which the sys-
tem is carried out may be judged from the fact expressly
ascertained by this gentleman, that a druggist made up in
one year, 13 cwt of treacle into Godfrey's cordial. The
result of this terrible practice is that great numbers of in-
fants perish, either suddenly from an over-dose, or, as,.i
more commonly happens, slowly, painfully, and insidi-
ously. Those who escape with life become pale and
sickly children, often half idiotic, and always with a
ruined constitution." " Compared with this," adds the
sub-commissioner, "the Chinese practice of infanticide
may be called merciful."—Evidence of Dr. Smith.