The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-11-04 00:00:00

LORD WELLESLEY AT HARROW.

The late Marquis Wellesley, above all men, possessed the
enviable talent of conversing well, and no person, perhaps,
in hours of social intercourse, indulged with greater satis-
faction in reminiscences of Lis early career. Of the many
anecdotes of his boyhood. there is none to which he more
frequently recurred than the following. Often has his lord-
ship dwelt upon the incident as the most important in his
early life. seeing that it placed him in contact with those
whose colleague and intimate friend he became in after
years :

On the death of Dr. Summer, head master of Harrow
School, in 1771, it is well known that the late Dr. Parr,
then under master, expected the appointment would be con-
ferred on him. Very popular with the boys of the upper
school, to whom he had endeared himself by the conversa-
tional powers he displayed in illustrating the more beautiful
passages from the classics, which he generally rendered
doubly so by aptly quoting parallels from our own poets,
particularly Spencer, Dryden, Pope, Milton, &c., his pre-
eminent attainments as the first classical scholar of the day
seemed to ensure his election. The governors, however, to
the astonishment of every one, elected Dr. Heath, a man
of very inferior talents, one of the under masters of Eton,
who was unpopular with the scholars, while every boy
in the school was in favour of Dr. Parr. Such a flagrant act
of injustice, as it seemed to be, was not to be passed over by
the boys, who rose up in open rebellion, and seizing upon
the first obnoxious object that presented itself, determined
upon a full and summary vengeance. This was nothing less
than the carriage of Mr. Bucknell, one of the governors of
the school, which was quickly demolished amidst the shouts
of the whole assembled boys. The Marquis Wellesley, re-
cently arrived from Ireland, had been placed at Harrow by
his father's friend, Archbishop Cornwallis. As may be sup-
posed, be was one of the foremost in resenting this insult
offered to the favourite candidate (:?,f the boys, and one of the
ringleaders in the work of destruction of poor Mr. Bucknell's
carriage. On the news reaching town, the archbishop im-
mediately despatched a messenger_ for Lord Wellesley, who,
upon his arrival at Lambeth Palace, entered the room,
shouting " victory ! victory ! my lord archbishop; behold
what a trophy I bear from the field,"
,exhibiting at the same
time the tassel of the carriage window, which he continued
with boyish exultation to whirl round his head. No time
was to be lost, the carriage was still in waiting, and, ac-
companied by the archbishop, the marquis was speedily on
his way to Eton, where he was entered at the age of eleven,
and within a few hours of the exhibition at Harrow, and
which would otherwise have led to his expulsion from the
school. To his tutor, the late Jonathan Davies, head
master, and afterwards provost of Eton, Lord Wellesley
acknowledged his obligations in his farewell verses, in
1778:

" Non tamem illa prius discedat, quam tibi sertum
Nexureit, docilem qui, moderare gregem,
Debuit illa suas artes tibi ; flute canit, hausit
Carmina przeceptis qualiacunque tuis !"

His attachment to Eton continued ardent to the end of his
life, and many passages in his recently printed volume, en-
titled " Primitite et Iteliquim," record the grateful feelings
of the man for the benefits conferred upon the boy. Lord
Wellesley was elected student of Christ Church, Oxford, in
December, 1778, in his 19th year, and, In 1780, won the
Chancellor's prize by his beautiful poem on the death of
Captain Cook. He had been induced to attempt Latin hex-
ameters but a few months previously, by his tutor (Dr. Wil-
liam Jackson, afterwards Bishop of Oxford), who wished
Lord Wellesley to try for the prize. '

AN AMEMICAN HOTEL.—There is no smoking-room in
any hotel, and there was none consequently in ours; but the
bar is a large room with a stone floor, and there people stand
and smoke and lounge about ail the evening; dropping in
and out as the humour takes them. There, too, the stranger
is initiated into the mysteries of gin sling, cocktail, sangaree,
mint julep, sherry-cobbler, timber doodle, and other rare
drinks. The house is full of boarders, both married and
single, many of whom sleep upon the premises, and contract
by the week for their board and lodging, the charge for which
diminishes as they go nearer the sky to roost. A public
table is laid in a very handsome hall for breakfast, and for
dinner, and for supper. The party sitting down together to
these meals will vary in number from one to two hundred;
sometimes more. The advent of each of these epochs in the
day is proclaimed by an awful gong, which shakes the very
window frames as it reverberates through the house, and
horribly disturbes nervous foreigners. There is an ordinary
for ladies, and an ordinary for gentlemen. In our private
room the cloth could not, for any earthly consideration, have
been laid for dinner without a huge glass dish of cranberries
in the middle of the table ; and breakfast would have been
no breakfast unless the principal dish were a deformed beef-
steak with a great flat bone in the centre, swimming in hot
butter, and sprinkled with the very blackest of all possible
pepper. Our bed-room was spacious and airy, but (like every
bed-room on this side of the Atlantic) very bare of furniture,
having no curtains to the French bedstead or to the window.
It had one unusual luxury, however, in the shape of a ward-
robe of painted wood, something smaller than an English
watch-box ; or, if this comparison should be insufficient to
convey a just idea of its dimensions, they may be estimated
from the fact of my having lived for fourteen days and nights
in the firm belief that it was a shower-bath.—Dicken's Notes
on America.
The October number of the American Democratic Review
contains a survey of the financial and commercial conditiou
of the country during the month of September, chiefly with
the view of showing that the new American tariff has failed
in producing those advantages which the people of the Uni-
ted States had been led to expect from it. At first, it is ad-
mitted, it was highly popular with the manufacturers of those
domestic goods which were supposed to suffer most from
foreign imports, and the prices of the raw material being low,
an impulse was given to the movements of the manufacturers.
It is found, however, that trade has not in fact, been increa-
sed, and that the only actual result of the tariff has been an
advance in the price of some articles of foreign goods, which
can no longer be imported. In domestic goods there had
wouldpet
ed bre e, so theit
of
focthke
tariff was
stocks
only being already large, and the
been no advance, nor was it likely there
enthertieei
a check to the downwardtendziceyeo,f Thus
limited were the effects of legislative
ex-
pected that the gradual reactrooon, '
amoiege of money, and It was
action,
brought about by
de be u. t
so
plentiful, arrive thet;
now the
that,
timproved
withprove a
market,l
the lower prices and theaa.ohaubl.
g in o
thought that there were already nd ications of an • d
" fall' trade. The crops h
and these, it was thought,
14,
specie currency, prices must continue low.
practice for the western farmers and dealers not to draw
against produce till it is actually sold,. and this, it is said, will
form a healthy cash business, giving rise to very triflingbanking operations. A similar change has taken place at
New Orleans and the other great cotton markets, the credit
system having been destroyed by the failure of the banks
which it ruined. At present specie is generally demanded
for cotton by the factors, and tries prices are kept low : but
here again the business is exp. cted to be healthy, and the
currency to assume a sounder ,crta. For commercial pur-
poses there had been no great
oeinand for money. Great
hopes had been raised of an improved market in this coun-
try for American corn, but these bad been diminished by the
accounts of our plentious harvest ; and the disturbances in
sour manufacturing districts had cast a gloom Over the cotton
trade. Notwithstanding the closing of this channel for in-
vestment, the state securities had not improved, with the ex-
sceptiea of a few of the most unquestionable character. The
.failure of Pensylvania had thrown new suspicion on Amer-
:lean credit, but still the state i's commended for her prompt
seesolution to sell her public works, and thus relieve herself
of all financial difficulties. Among the other non-paying
states great apathy prevailed, but it'was hoped that the Legis-
lature of Illinois, which will meet in December. would find
some way of coming to eerms with her creditors by means of
Paer landed property.