The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-06-16 00:00:00

ore you
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rd you; and I write to
ion the first nutnber of the Chi

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be most useful and desirabl
to call it forth. I heartily a

merit of the w

e recommendation of
circulation as can

'• London, Ala

History of the
and 2

'.l. B. CHESTER,

Reformation, by Dr.D'Anbigne. Vols. 1
Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh.

The two first volumes of this most valuable work have
been forwarded to us by the publishers, who have been
fortunate enoueh to obtain the revision of this translation

" line by line and word by word," by the eminent histo-
rian himself, and which, as he informs the public in a tes-
timonial, is " the only one which he has corrected." Dr.
D'Aubigne has also made various additions, not hitherto
published. This edition will therefore become, from its

necessary accuracy, a favourite c
est in the a

rring scer

such graphic power as to m
gaged personally in the tran
sixteenth century when the
complished. Most of our
our own columns or elsewh

H who fee

the author depicts with

fancy we are en-

style, and proof

ctions of that portion of the

course;
urn r it

Jorious reformation was

!dawns of our ma

It is no

superfluous to enter into an examination of this

original and important informs-

tion has been sufficiently established, and its accuracy in
every. detail which could by possibility be assailed, has

; fully a

...., numerous and unscrupulous
coition before us will comprise four

handsome volumes

Roscoe's Lffe of Lorenzo di

Medici—Bohn Standard

Librarj

is forms the seventh volume of a series of valuable
s, now publishing in beautiful and uniform style, la:

w price

Bohn, it an eats

is a=nother

work Vi

This
oh it is now too late to criticise, but this edition
is enriched by a new memoir of the author, written by his
son, and contains a fine portrait of "The Magnificent."
In our previous notices we have said that this series is
printed in a new and elegant form, and this duly consi-
dered, it is a marvel how the price can possibly remune-
rate the publisher, who has certainly succeeded in fulfil-
ling the promise in his prospectus of " rendering the pro-
jected series worthy of distinction," and we hope he has
secured the success which he has certainly used all the
means in his power to merit.

The Memoirs of the Court of Charles the Second by
Count Grammont forms an " extra volume " of the series
last alluded to, and is printed with the above title and in a
different coloured binding, to mark the distinction from
the Standard Library; and the publisher has given i
this distinguishing exterior, because having shown his in
tentions in pu

g works of
ion as those of Robert Hall, .S.

to manife

such established reputa-
smondi, &c., he is anxi-
h to deserve the

idence of his w

fidence of his subscrib

of whom would other-

wise be startled on seeing in' such-a
series an issue of a

work embued with so much of the leaven of Charles the
Second's days. The volume has a beautifully executed
portrait of Nell Gwynne.

Ilogg's Weekly Instructor continues to deserve its
acter for high moral sentiment, for a vast mass of in-
ation important to every branch of society, and for
miscellaneous and amusing literature.

Sharpe's London Magazine, of a character _____.
resembling the preceding publication improves in its pic
torial embellishments, and must win its way with ti'e
nubile.

somewhat

The Tiny Library, for which Mr. Connor, of London-
road, is the local agent, is a new candidate for the eppro-

val of our juvenile friends, who will find Wothing in its
pages beyond the grasp of their comprehension, while
they will find abundance of moral entertainment and in-
struction, which is illustrated by a great numb:A- of well
executed woodcuts, calculated at once to stamp more for-
cibly the impression and the writer's meaning on the in-

fant mind

The Union Magazine. London : Barker and White, 33,
Fleet-street.

This publication has now completed its first volume,
and fully maintains the high character of its first numbers.
The present number for Juae contains some excellently-
written articles, of a class calculated at once to amuse and
We cordially recommend the Union Maga-

to instruct

t to the reading public:

VARIETIES.

CONVIVIAL BLUNDER.—The lord mayor, at a dinner
ch ambassador, proposed the health of
s. The toast was repeated by the toast.
as the " Health of the Three per Cent. Consols.
Hip, hip, hip, hurrah."
__

en to the

the three consul

To PRESERVE MEAT TN HOT WEATHER.—First wipe
the meat gently and lightly with a clean cloth, then dust
over every part with pure eaten meal. The meal imparts
a sweet flavour to the meat. It must all be wiped away
before the meat is put down either to be boiled or roasted.
—Magazine of Domestic Economy.
ANCIENT IMPORTATION INTO ITULL.—About 1595,
we find entered in the household book of the Cliffords,
a sum of eleven shillings "for six cabbages and some
caret roots bought et Hull." These were then imported
from Flanders, whence even Queen Catharine, in the
reign of Henry VIII., had her salads. Potatoes and tur-
nips were not generally known, even to the gardener, un-
til the reign of Elizabeth.—Hull Packet.
THE CAUSE OF CORNS.—If shoes were constructed in
the shape of the human foot, neither too large nor too
all, and making an equal pressure everywhere, corns
bunions of the feet would never exist. But, unfortu-
are seldom made after this fashion; and in

-specially there are generally two signal de-
fects,—first, the extremity of the shoe is much too nar-
row for that part of the foot, (namely, the toes,) which it
is to contain ; and, secondly, for the purpose of display-
ing as much of the foot as possible, the whole of the tar-
sus and metatarsus is left uncovered, and the pressure of

the shoe in front is thrown entirely upon the toes. The
toes are thus first squeezed against each other, and then
pushed out of their natural pobition ; and all the project-
ing points' chiefly where the bones are situated, are
pinched and tormented either by the neighbouring toes or
by the leather of the shoe ; and thus it is that corns of the
feet are generated.—Sir Benjamin Brodie's Lectures.
A RAPID COURTSHIP.—The history of Robert Hall's

marriage was a singular one. It has been related in a
dozen different ways, but I believe the following account
of it to be correct :—One day, whilst alighting at a friend's
door for the purpose of dining with him, he was joked on
his bachelorship. He said nothing, but whilst at table

After dinner, Rs he

d it with the coal-scuttle, %when Mr. Hall, whom she
s than a king, said to her,

sect scarcely

" Bali:do you love the Lord Jesus Christ?" The girl
replied, that she hoped she did, taking the question merely

stomed one fi

'rom a minister. To her utter sur-
Mr. Hall immediately
ais knees and exclaiming,
and asked her to

g on'
.st 1,

prise and consternat►on, boys-ever,
followed it up by failin
" then, Betty, you e

ye me,

marry him. In her astonishment she ran away, and said
she believed Mr. Hall gone mad again (he had been
once deranged). Her master, like herself, was surprised,
and on his speaking with Mr. Hall on the subject, the lat-
ter declared his intention of marrying the girl, who he said
had taken his fancy by the manner in which she put th
coals on. They were married, and lived happily together
His widow survives him.—Pen and Ink Sketche
Tip

kTMENT OF LITERARY MEN.--The soldier, the
sailor, the architect,' the painter, are all within sight of
the most lavish prizes of public liberality. Parliament has
just given titles and superb pensions to the conquerors of
the Sikhs. The India Company has followed its example.
We applaud this munificent liberality in both instances.
Two general officers have thus obtained a peerage, with
£7OOO and £5OOO a-year. They deserved those rewards.
But the whole literary encouragement of the British em-
pire, with a revenue of filly-two millions sterling, is £l2OO,
little more than the tenth part of the pension allotted to
those two gallant men. £l2OO for the whole literary en-
couragement of England ! There can be no greater scan-
dal to the intellectual honour of the country. The pettiest
German principality scarcely limits its literary encourage-
ment to this sum. We doubt whether Weimar, between
literary offices and pensions, did not give twice the sum
annually. But, named in competition with the liberality
of the leading sovereigns, it is utterly nsean. Louis XIV.
two hundred years acre, allotted 80,000 francs a-year to
his forty members of Academy, a sum equivalent in
that day, and in France, to little less than £5OOO a-year
in our day, and in England. Frederic 11. gave pensions
and appointments to a whole corps of literary men. At
this moment there is scarcely a man of any literary dis-
tinction in Paris who has not a share in the liberal and
;rise. patronage of government, either in office or public
But if we are to be answered by a class, pletho-
th wealth and rank, that literature ought to be con-
tent with living on its own means, must not the obvious
answer be—ls the author to be an author, down to his
grave? Is there to be no relaxation of toil? Is there to be
no allowance for the exhaustion of his over-worked facul-
ties ? for the natural infirmities of years? for the vexations
of a noble spirit compelled to submit to the caprices of
public change ; and with its full share of the common
calamities of life, increasing their pressure at once by an
inevitable sense of wrong, and by a feeling that the delight
of his youth must be the drudgery of his age? When the
great Dryden, in his seventieth year, was forced, in the
bitterness of his heart to exclaim `Must I die in the her_
ness ?' his language was a brand on the common sense, as
well as on the just generosity, of his country.—Blackwoo

Standard-office, Ten o'clock.

-f--

LAMENTABLE OCCURENCE.

We have just received information of a lamentable oc-
currence which we are sorry to say has involved a sac-
rifice of life. It appears from the brief particulars we
have learned, that about eight o'clock last night a joiner,
named Richard Wignall, residing in a cellar in Gore-street,
Tosteth-park, had some words with his wife sufficiently
loud to attract the attention of the neighbours, by whom
he was observed to fell her at one blow (with, we learn,
a piece of wood,) to the ground, from the effects of
which she died immediately. Dr. Cameron, of the
South Dispensary, was promptly in attendance, but his
services were of no avail. The perpetrator, who is 26
years of age, is in custody.

THE FALL OF ROME.
ITS CAUSES AT WORK IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE

The peopl

(From Blackwood's Magazine.)
e in our great cities do not call out, as in an-

bia or Egypt ; but they clamour just as loudly for free
trade in grain with Poland and the Ukraine, which has
the effect of swamping the home-grower quite as com-
pletely. The great capitalists do not make collossal for-
tunes by the plunder of subject provinces, as in the days
of the Roman proconsuls ; but they never cease to exert
their influence to procure a contraction of the currency
by the measures of government, which answers the pun
^c ' -ir fortunes at the expense of

pose of augmenting their fortunes at the expense of the
industrious classes just as well. Poliiical writers, social
philosophers, practical statesmen, fall in with the pre-
vailing disposition of the most influential classes; they
deceive themselves into the belief that they are original,

yielding to the pressure of the strongest, or at least the
most noisy, class at the moment in society. The Reform
8.11 gave three-fifths of the British representat on to the
for boroughs. From that moment the eventual
of legislative measures favourable to the inter-

members

ests of capital, and agreeable to the wishes of the inhabi-
tants of towns, how destructive soever to those of the
country, was as much as the daily distribution of Egyp-
tian grain to the inhabitants of Rome, Antioch, and Con-
stantinople was, when the mob of these cities became,
from their formidable numbers, an object of dread to the
Roman government.
The only answer which the partisans of free trade in
grain have ever attempted to these considerations is, that
the ruin of the agriculture in the central provinces of the
Roman empire was owing, not to the importation of fo-
reign corn as a mercantile commodity, but to its distribu-
tion gratuitously to the poorer citizens of Rome, Con-
stantinople, and some of the larger cities in the empire.
They admit, in its fullest extent, the decay of domestic
agriculture, and consequent ruin of the state, but allege it
was owing to this gratuitous distribution, which was in
fact a poor-law and not to the free trade in grain. But a
very little consideration must be sufficient to show that
this is an elusory di3tinction ; and that is what the unre-

stricted admission of foreign wheat by purchase, which in
reality, coupled with the contraction of the currency, de-
stroyed the dominion of the le

1. In the first place, the numb
gratuitous distributions was,

who received these
hown, so small,

as already

when compared to the whole body of the grain-consnming
population, that they could not materially have affected
the market for agricultural produce in Italy. Not more
than 150,000 persons received rations in Rome daily, and
perhaps as many in the other cities of Italy. What was
this in a peninsula containing at that period sixteen or
eighteen millions of souls, and with 2,300,000* in its capi-
tal alone ? It is evident that the gratuitous distributions
of grain, taking those at their greatest extent, could not
have embraced a fiftieth part of the Italian population.
What ruined the agriculturists, who used to feed the re-
maining forty-nine fiftieths ? The unlimited importation
of cheap grain from Spain, Egypt, Sicily, and Lybia, and
noth;-

2. In the next place, even if the gratuitous distributions
of grain had embraced twenty times the number which
they did, nothing can be clearer than that the effect on

agriculture is the same, whether cheap foreign grain is
imported by the private importer, or bought and distri-
buted by the government. If the home-grower loses his
market, it is the same thing to him whether he does so
from the effect of private importation or public distribu-
tion; whether his formidable competitor is the merchant,
who brings the Lybiau grain to the Tiber ; or the govern-
ment, which extracts it as a tribute from Sicily or Egypt.
The difference is very great to the urban population,
whether they receive their foreign grain in return for their
own labour, or get it doled out to them from the govern-
ment store as the price of keeping quiet. But to the ru-
ral cultivator it is immaterial. whether destruction comes
upon him in the one way or the other. It is the impor-
tation offoreign grain which ruins him ; and the effect
is the same, whether the price paid for it is the gold of the
capitalist, or the blood of the legions.

* There are now 20,c00,000 inhab tants in Italy, and it was
certainly as populous in the time of Augustus, when Rome
alone, which now has 180,009, contained 2,385,000 souls.

YORKSHIRE REDECCAITES.—There were Rebeccaites
in England in the last century, and bold enough were
their proceedings, most certainly. On Friday, the Bth of
May, 1752, (says a Manchester paper of that date,)
"Benjamin Woodsworth, the bellman or common cryer
of Selby, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, made procla-
mation, by ring of bell, in the public street of the said
town of Selby, for the inhabitants thereof to bring their
axes and hatchets, at twelve o'clock that night, in order
to cut down the turnpike erected at that place by act of
parliament; and on the 7tb, Bth, 9th, and 11th instant,
divers persons assembled in an outrageous manner, and
cut down and totally destroyed the great gate of the said
turnpike."
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE RADICALS.—The im-
mediate passing of this important measure (the Corn Bill)
may now be considered as assured ; the majority consist-
ing not only of proxies but of peers present, so that no
serious attempt to mutilate the bill in committee, where
proxies do not count, could be made with a hope of suc-
cess. It is given out, however, that the Whigs now hold
themselves at liberty to defeat the government, with the
Protectionists as allies, and that the present cabinet is to
be overthrown before the end of the session, by an under-

standing between the two parties. «'e think their power
to do so is calculated upon a very doubtful data. The
bill passed, the Protectionists will find that they have no-
thing to gain by a chang,e, and their present bitterness will
subside by degrees. Moreover, the sympathies of the
country at this moment are unquestionably with Sir R.
Peel, and it will be his opponents, rather than himself,
who will be damaged vvith the public by factious votes.
Among the Conservative members of the House of Com-
mons the irreconcileable enemies of the Premier do not
exceed sixty, and the last vote of Lord John Russell on
the factory question has alienated at least that number of
free-traders from the Whig leader.— Westminster Review.

PERSONAL CHARACTERI,TICS OF THE CELEBRATED
PREACHER, ROBERT HALL.—After we had waited for
about a quarter of an hour, Mr. Hall made his appearance.
He was rather below the average height, stout, and in-
clined to corpulency. His chest was very broad and ca-
pacious—the face large, and the features massive. His
eyes were large, dark, and full, and his forehead high and
broad. The head, which was bald, except at the back,
and over the temples, had an incle6cribable grandeur about
it. The worst part of the face was the mouth, which was
very large, and the under lip somewhat protruded ; the
chin was large and projecting. This gave an appearance
(f heaviness to his general aspect. No one with an ob-
servant eye could for a moment gaze on Mr. Hall's ma-
jestic countmauce without being at once struck with the
expression of almost torture which was evident in it. He

suffering—and it was so, for he was in reality a martyr to
one of the most painful disorders that can affect humanity
—calculi in the kiineys. After he had divested himself
of his great coat, he had a pipe and some tobacco brought
him, end having puffed away for a little time, he pulled off
his dress coat, lay down on his back on the hearth rug,
and was soon enveloped in a cloud of smoke. This was
his usual habit, before entering the pulpit. The agony he
endured compelled him to spend, a great portion of his
time in a recumbent position, and it was only by the use
of tobacco and opium, in Urge (palatines, that he could
ever obtain even omparatice ease. His custom was to
smoke prodigiously until the very moment arrived when
it was required of him to commence his sermon. He
would then rise, and leave his pipe at the door of the pul-
pit, in readiness for him to resume his Nicotian habit the
moment after he had concluded his discourse.—Pen and
Ink Sketches of Painters, Poets, and Politicians.
THE USE OF TAPERS ON ALTARS.—In a church whose
meetings were held below ground, artifical light was a ne•
cessary accompaniment to every service. Some persons
have viewed in this custom the origin of tapers, employed
in the daytime by Romanists ; and have wished to consi-
der the continuance of candles in churches as a thank-
offering for liberty to worship God in the upper air; a
grateful recollection of former privations and concealment.
But history seems to contradict so favourable a construc-
tion of the original motive of " candle religion," and to
refer it undeniably to a different source. The general
habit of using lamps, mostly of terracotta, is proved by
the discovery of thousands in the catacombs. The cubi-
cula clara, or chapels open to the day, were rare ; perhaps
they did not exist till after the last persecution, when the
fear of discovery no longer forbad an aperture from the
Compagna. But the employment of artificial light for the
mere purpose of rendering objects visible is quite distinct
from the ceremonial use of it, whether to illuminate the
shrine of a saint, or to ". do vain honour to the Father of
Lights." This ceremonial use, against which the Homily
energetically declaims, appears to have been generally
connected with idolatry, excepting in the case of the
Jewish ritual, and to have been unknown to Christians
until after the time of Constantine. The burning of lights
is specified among the idolatrous rites forbidden by the
Theodosian code : " Let no one, in any kind of place
whatsoever, in any city, brim lights, pfferincepse, or hang
up garlands, to senseless idols." Vigilantius, in reference
to the custom of using lightsin divine service, exclaims :
" We almost see the ceremonial of the Gentiles intro-
duced into the churches under pretence of religion : piles
of candles lighted while the sun is still shining ; and every-
where people kissing and worshipping I know not what :
a little dust in a small vessel wrapped up in a precious
cloth. Great honour do such persons render to the blessed
martyrs, thinking with miserable tapers to illumine those
whom the Lamb, in the midst of the throne, shines upon
with the splendour of His majesty." This passage proves
that Vigilantius, who must have known well the customs
of Paganism, was struck with the resemblance between
them and the rites newly introduced into the church.—
Dr. Maitland's Church in the Catacombs.

PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF MRS. HEMANS.—I Can-
not well conceive a more exquisitely beautiful creature
than Mrs. Hemans was—none of the portraits or busts
I have ever seen of her do her justice, nor is it possible for
words to convey to the reader any idea of the matchless
ye! serene beauty of her expression. Her glossy waving
hair was parted on her forehead, and terminated on the
sides, in rich and luxuriant auburn curls; there was a
dove-like look in her eyes, and yet there was a chastened
sadness in their expression. Her complexion was remark-
ably clear, and her high forehead looked as pureand spotless
as Parian marble. A calm repose, not unmingled with
melancholy, was the characteristic expression of the face ;
but when she smiled, all traces of sorrow were lost, and
she seemed to be but " a little lower than the angels"—
fitting shrine for so pure a mind ! Let me not be deemed
a flatterer or an enthusiast, in thus describing her, for I
am only one of many, who have been almost as much cap-
tivated by her personal beauty, as charmed by the sweet-
ness and holiness of her productions. If ever poems were
the reflex of the beauties, personal and mental, of their
writers, they were indeed so in the case of Mrs. Hemans.
—Sketches of Poets, Preachers, and Politicians.
ASCENT OF rite HOLY STAIRCASE AT ROME.—I never
in my life saw anything at once so ridiculous and so un-
pleasant as this sight : ridiculous in the absurd incidents
inseparable from it, and unpleasant in its senseless and
unmeaning degradation. There are two steps to begin
with, and then a rather broad landing. The more rigid
climbers went along this landing on their knees, as well as
up ti the f- the-, cut in their shuffling.

the stairs; ana _ Agates , t.,
progress over the level surface no description can paint,
Then, to see them watch their opportunity from the porch.
and cut in where there was a place next the wall! And
to see one man with an umbrella (brought on purpose, for
it was a fine day), hoisting himself, unlawfully, from stair
to stair! And to observe a demure lady of fifty-five or
so, looking back every now and then to assure herself that
her legs were properly disposed! There were such odd
differences in the speed of different people too. Some get
on as if they were doing a match against time; others
stopped to say a prayer on every step. This man touched
every stair with his forehead, and kissed it; that man
scratched his heal all the way. The boys got on bril-
liantly, and were up and down stairs before the old lady
had accomplished her half-dozen stairs. But most of the
penitents came down very sprightly and fresh, as having
done a real good substantial deed, which it would take a
good deal of sin to counterbalance ; and the old gentleman
in the watch-box was down upo-

them with his canister
while they were in this humour, I promise you.—
Dickens's Pictures from Italy.
LOVE OF DOGS FOR THEIR HOME.—A Newfoundland
dog of the true breed was brought from that country, and
given to a gentleman who resided near Thames-street, in
London. As he had no means of keeping the animal, ex-
cept in close confinement, he sent him to a friend in Scot-
land by a Berwick smack. When he arrived in Scotland,
he took the first opportunity of escaping, and though he
certainly had never before travelled one yard of the road,
yet he found his way back to his former residence in Fish-
street Hill, but in so exhausted a state that he could only
express his joy at seeing his master, and then died. So
wonderful is the sense of these dogs, that I have heard of
three instances in which they have voluntarily guarded
the bed-chamber doors of their mistresses, during the
whole night, in the absence of their masters, although on
no other occasion did they approach them. * * *
A few years ago some hounds were embarked at Liverpool
for Ireland, and were safely delivered at a kennel far up in
that country. One of them, not probably liking his quar-
ters, found his way back to the port at which he had been
landed from Liverpool. On arriving at it, some troops
were being embarked in a ship bound for that place. This
was a fortunate circumstance for the old hound, as during
the bustle he was not noticed. He safely arrived at Li-
verpool, and on his old master, or huntsman rather, com-
ing down stairs one morning, he recognised his former ac-
quaintance waiting to greet him. A similar circumstance
happened to some hounds sent by the late Lord Lonsdale
to Ireland. Three of them escaped from the kennel in
that country, and made their appearance again in Leices-
tershire. The love of home, or most probably affection
for a particular individual, must be strongly implanted in
dogs to induce them to search over unexplored and un-
known regions for the being and the home they love.—
Jesse's Anecdotes.
CLVOPATRA'S BANQUETS TO ANTONY.—On her
landing (from the Cyndus) she invited Antony and his
generals to a dinner, at which the whole of the dishes
placed before him were of gold, set with precious stones,
and the room and the twelwe couches were ornamented
with purple and gold. On Antony's praising the splen-
dour of the sight, as passing anything he had before seen,
she said it was a trifle, and begged he would take the
whole of it as a gift from her. The next day he again
dined with her, and brought a larger number of his friends
and generals, and was of course startled to see a costliness
which made that of the day before seem nothing ; and she
again gave him the whole of the gold upon the table, and
gave to each of his friends the couch upon which he sat.
These costly and delicate dinners were continued every
day ; and one evening, when Antony playfully blamed her
wastefulness, and said it was not possible to fare in a more
costly manner, she told him that the dinner of the next
day should cost ten thousand sestertia, or sixty thousand
pounds sterling. This he would not believe, and laid her
a wager she would fail in her promise. When the day
came, the dinner was as grand and dainty as those of the
former days ; but, when Antony called on her to count up
the cost of the meats and wines, she said that she did not
reckon them, but that she would herself banquet on the
ten thousand sestertia. She wore in her ears two
pearls, the largest known in the world, which, like the
diamonds of European kings, had come to her with her
crown and kingdom, and were together valued at that
large sum. On the servants removing the meats, they set
before her a glass of vinegar, and she took one of these
pearls from her ear and dropped it into the glass, and
when dissolved drank it off. Plautus, one of the guests,
who had been made judge of the wager, snatched the
other from the Queen's ear, and saved it from being drunk
up like the first, and then declared that Antony had lost
his bet. The pearl which was afterwards cut in two, was
made into a pair of ear-rings for the statue of Venus in
the Pantheon at Rome ; and the fame of the wager may
be said to have made the two half pearls at least as valua-
ble as the two whole ones.—Sharpe's History of Egypt.

THE TOMBS IN THE CATACOMBS GIVE NO SUPPORT
TO ROMISH SUPERSTITIONS.—When we reflect upon
the trials which awaited the church, and the combined
powers of earth and hell which menaced its earliest years,
it is impossible not to recognise the fostering power of a
heavenly Hand in thus providing a cradle for the infant
community. Perhaps to the protection afforded by the
catacombs, as an impregnable fortress from which perse-
cution always failed to dislodge it, the Church in Rome
owed much of the rapidity of its triumph ; and to the pre-
servatio❑ of its earliest sanctuaries its ancient superiority
in discipline and manners. The customs of the first ages,
stamped indelibly on the walls of the catacombs, must
have contributed to check the spirit of innovation soon
observable throughout Christendom : the elements of a
pure faith were written " with an iron pen, in the rock,
for ever ; " and if the church of after-times had looked
back to her subterranean home, " to the whole pit from
whence she was digged," she would there have sought in
vain for traces of forced celibacy, the invocation of saints,
and the representation of Deity in painting or sculpture.
Whatever dates may be attributed to other remains, this
fact is certain, that the Lapidarian Gallery, arranged by
the hands of the modern Romanists, contains no support
whatever of the dogmas of the Council of Trent. Rest-
ing upon this distinction, virtually drawn by themselves,
between what belongs to a pure age, and what to the times
of innovation, we may safely refer to the latter a number
of inscriptions of doubtful date, preserved in the vaults of
St. Peter's, which contain prayers to the Virgin Mary,
and other peculiarities of Romanist theology. The his-
tory of Christendom as well as that of art supplies the
means of fixing the age of many such monuments ; for in-
stance, the time of Vigilantius, when some bishops,
moved by his arguments, refused to ordain unmarried
deacons, cannot be confounded with an age in which the
celibacy of the clergy became compulsory : nor can we
easily mistake for the work of a century that knew only
the sign of the cross in its simplest form of two straight
lines, the wretched representation of the passion, in a
crucifix the size of life, smeared with the imitation of
blood, and surmounted by a crown of actual thorns.—Dr.
Maitland's Church in the Catacombs.:

AGRICULTURE AND THE FALL OF ROME.—SO ,76n-leral
was the depopulation of the empire in the time of°Justi-
nian, that it suggested to many of the emperors the pro-
jeot of re-peopling those favoured districts by a fresh
influx of inhabitants. " Justinian 11. had a great taste
for these emigrations. He transported half the popula-
tion of Cyprus to a new city near Cyzicns, called Justi-
nianopolis after its founder. But it was all in vain. The
desolation and ruin of the provinces continued, and up to
the very gates of Constantinople, which was maintained
entirely by grain imported at a low price from Egypt,
and cattle from the Tauric Chersonesus." As a natural
consequence of this entire or principal depeniedgenrecaeteostf
Rome on foreign or provincial raising of grain, there was,
on any interruption of these foreign supplies, the
scarcity and even famine in the metropolis. All the vigi-
lance of the emperors, which was constantly directed to
this object, could not prevent this from taking place.
Tacitus says, that in the scarcity under Claudius, there
only remained a supply of fifteen clays for the city. Fa_
mine in Rome was frequent under Augustus, Tiberius,
Claudius, and Nero. Claudian laments, that after Egypt
had been assigned to Constantinople, Rome had come to
derive its subsistence solely from Lybia, and depended
on the double chances of the seasons and the winds.

" Nunquam secura futuri,
Semper Mops, ventique fidem poscebat et anni."
" When Africa revolted under Gildo, in the reign of
Honoring, Rome," says Gibbon, " was on the brink of
starvation, from which she was only saved by large im-
portations from Gaul." She still depended on her pro-
vinces; domestic agriculture was ruined. Claudian re-
presents the genius of ancient Rome bewailing, in pathe-
tic and eloquent terms, her dependence for food on the
nations she had conquered, in words which all govern-
ments rendering their people dependent on foreign sup-
plies would do well to bear in mind. " Formerly," says
the poet, " my prayers used to be that my legions might
triumph on the banks of the Araxes, or that the consul
might display his eagles at Susa ; now all I ask is a sup-
ply of food to avert the extremities of hunger. The
province of Africa, which furnishes corn to my people, is
under the power of Gildo. He intercepts our supplies,
and our food is at his mercy. He sells the harvests which
belong to the descendants of Romulus; he possesses the
fields purchased by my blood. The warrior people which
conquered the world, now dishonoured and in want, en-
dures the miserable punishment of peace ; blockaded by
no enemy, they are like the inhabitants of a besieged
town. Death impends at every moment; there remain
only doubtful supplies for a few days. My greatness has
been my ruin; I was safer when my territory was more
limited ; would that its boundaries were once more at my
gates ! But, if lam doomed to perish, at least let me
have a different fate ; let me be conquered by another
Porsenna; let my city be burnt by a second Brennus.
All things are more tolerable than hunger."—Blackwood.