The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-12-27 00:00:00

For good succes
On your

saltries play,

_ .
That sweet luck may
Come while the log is a-tending

e strong be,

Cut the white loafe here

The whl
For the rare mince-pie,
And the plums stand by ,
To fill the paste that's a-kneading."

le the meat is a shredding

We might describe many other customs which enlivened
the naturally gloomy season of Christmas in the old
and pursue the subject until lost in the gloom of al
were we sure that our readers would follow us with as much

!n time,

alacrity as we ourselves should feel in the pursuit. We
might show how little images of the Virgin Mary and Infant
Christ, made of paste, and called the Yule Dough, or Dow,
were formerly carried about the towns, and presented by the
bakers to their customgrs; how the minstrels made their
progress through the village singing their carols and praying
for the health and success of the inhabitants; bow the was-
sail-bowl, decorated with ribands, was paraded from door to
door, accompanied by the most beautiful damsels, singing
with dulcet voices verses composed for the occasion ; and
how every one, from the highest to the lowest, greeted each
other with presents and good wish

These and ma

matters connected with the subject, might be descant upon,
did
,we not deem our readers to be somewhat more impatient
than we, in the delight of our antiquarian studies, profess to
be. We shall not therefore pursue the subject further at
present.

* See ` The Abbot,' vol. i. chap. xv.
t Pictorial History of England,' ii. 253.
$ Alluding to the custom of lighting a brand oti Candle-
mass-day (February 2nd), which, when quenched at sun-set,
was preserved until the succeeding Christmas-day.

AMUSING CHARACTERISTIC.—I have often spoken of the
formalities of German officers. In the mere matter of send-
ing a parcel, which any coach-office in England would for-
ward without delay, if only wrapped in a bit of brown paper,
and tied with a string, what difficulties meet you in Germany !

A parcel must be wrap

It must have

so man

seals upon

written outsic

ust go oy one convey
)f another, by a third
be wrapped

It must un,

certain circ

I an oil

cloth. Failing any one of these formalities it cannot go. It
is returned, or sent from one office to another, till more time
is consumed than is necessary to take it to its destination. A
title-deed was sent from England for my signature, which
was urgently wanted back by return of post. Though signed
and sent to the packet-post the same day, under the direc-

tions of our German barker; yet so many obstacles arose
that, after several days delay, we sent it by the omnibus pro-
prietor to the Steam Company at the Rhine: Two months
afterwards, the sender in England wrote, in great distress, to
know why the deed was not returned ; and on inquiry at the
omnibus proprietor's we found it still lying In his house ! The
Rhine company had not dared to take it because it belonged
to the packet-post department ; and the poor man could not
tell to whom to return it. He had even advertised it in the
little Heidelberg newspaper, which we never see ; but though
there were only about six English families in the place, and
he knew it came from one, it had never occurred to him to
send round and inquire. A common hostler, or boots, in
England, would have done it in ten minutes. In four months
the parcel reached England ! !—Howitt's Rural and Domes-
tic Life of Germany.

THE RHINE.—My entrance to Germany was by the Rhine,
the way by which the great bulk of travellers enter it, and
certainly the most beautiful and impressive of all. You are
thus introduced, at once, to that class of its natural scenery
in which its uatural beauty lies, its mountains and its rivers.
gimongst these again, you behold, considered in all points of
river, and mountains which, if not on the
perhaps, the fairest average specimens of
tth. They have no pretence
,f the Alps which belong to
s lofty as most other of the
n their aspect; are full of

its mountains that can be met

to compare with thos

Germany, but t

German hill

ore var

iistory and co-rntm;tions; anc
o extensive, so perfect
•of the nation. Spit
Rhine, from the glow
11_ remains the MO£

or so picturesque in any (
of all that has been writtei
ing poetry of Childe Harold, whicl

descriptive, and most answering in the felicitous truth of its
epithets to one's own feelings, dowel through the journals of
hosts of travellers, to Fennimore Cooper's elaborate com-
parison of it with his native Hudson, in his Heidentnauer,
it is much to say, that though many visitors are somewhat
disappointed on first approaching the Rhinegau near Bonn,
yet there are few who are not thoroughly enraptured with the
full course of this scenery from the Seven Mountains to
Bingen, and the more so, if they remain a few days on its
banks, penetrate into its hidden valleys, or if they view it a
second time. The great want about it is that of full-grown
and noble wood ; but this is a great, common, and growing
want in Germany, where wood is the almost only fuel with
wn h forty millions of people have to cook the year round,
and to warm themselves through their long and severe winter.
But the loftiness and varying wildness of its hills; its sky-
seeking pinnacles of crag, on which are often perched the
most pic
eturesque of ruined, or yet habitable castles ; its bin:,
”rprinirs: ity

pie,,,,,„,,,. , ..a bpuntered and naked gigantic piles of rocks
its miles and scores of miles of hanging vineyards, all in tb,
neatest order of cultivation, and supported with terraces and
walls on rocky and steep eminences,
which bear testimony ti
the most incessant labour of ages ; its wood-crowned sum-
mits°Pgeanridnegns, full of happy-looking
pro-
ceed ;;right and left as you i itsts deliciousgre en
fields valleys
and
peasantry, on its river banks; its fine old ruins of castles ant
convents on the mountain heights; and towns, and towers
and villages strewn along its shores fur scores and hundreds
of miles, so quaint, so old-fashioned, so dimmed and darkened
with the hues of antiquity, and yet so full of life and popula-
tion ;—it is impossible to witness all this Without the deepest
delight and enthusiasm ; and, when you have seen many other
and-very glorious rivers, you shall still acknowledge that tll6
is a true region of poetry and beauty.— William Howiteb
Rural and Domestic Life of German,.