The Liverpool Standard, and General Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-09-05 00:00:00

"THE LADIES."

Ozia of the best speeches perhaps ever delivered on a
festive occasion by a gentleman, in proposing the toast of
" The Ladies," was made at a meeting held last week at
Hampton Court, Herefordshire, to celebrate the coming of
age of the eldest son of Mr. Arkwright. The speaker was
the Rev. E. B. Hawkshaw, whose wife is sister to Mrs.
Arkwright. The rev. gentleman said :—Ladies and gen-
tlemen, for the first time this day the toast which I am
about to propose will be received with mingled feelings of
sorrow and of joy—of sorrow because it is the last toast on
our list for this evening—for all things, even eating and
drinking, must come, alas ! to an end, and young gentle-
men, as has been truly and pathetically observed, only
come of age once in their lives ' • but with feelings of joy,
because it is a toast which is always received with the
greatest enthusiasm; it is the toast of " The Ladies."
If, gentlemen, your heads are capable of another toast,
after all you have done honour to, I feel quite sure your
hearts will respond to this. I might particularise some
lady present, and couple her name with this toast ; I
might name the noble lady near me, whose liberality and
kindness are so well known around Stoke Edith. I might
name the lady of our Lord-Lieutenant, and express our
confident hope that she will not unbeseem the early
promise of her married life, but will be to Lord Bateman
and to the new neighbourhood which so kindly welcomes
her, all her lord has promised that she shall be. I might
join with this toast the name of Mrs. Arkwright, who, as
we have been often informed, is a pattern to her sex. I
might select my own wife, and by so doing, secure, I
should hope, at least a week or two of domestic harmony,
because I assure you, though I tell it of course in strict
confidence, that if it be true that Mrs. Arkwright is fit to
be a pattern to her sex, it is equally true that her sister,
who I have the happiness to call my wife, is fit to be a
pattern to her. Or, again, I might take the name of the
lady—if I only knew it—who has been so feelingly and
beautifully alluded to by Mrs. Daggs just now ; but she is,
as yet but the sweet creation of the brain. Or I might
take any one of the fair ladies whom I see before me, and
whose gaze, upturned, I assure you very nearly overpowers
me, and I might link her name with this toast. I shall
do, however, nothing of the sort. I shall give you this
toast in all its full comprehensiveness—the ladies in gene-
ral—the ladies all over the world. I shall allow each gen-
tleman to begin with the one nearest and dearest to him,
and let the circle of his affections expand until it em-
braces—of course I mean figuratively embraces—the whole
female creation. It is usual, I believe, on these occasions
to entrust this toast to the care of a bachelor. In the
present instance this custom has been departed from; for
I have not the happiness—no, I mean the misery—which
is it ? to belong to that unhappy class of persons. I have
no doubt that among all the arrangements for these well-
arranged festivities, nothing has given Mr. and Mrs. Ark-
wright deeper anxiety than the consideration of the ques-
tion whether this toast should be entrusted to a married
man or a bachelor. I have no doubt it formed the per-
plexing subject of many an anxious midnight curtain dis-
course. In the propriety of the conclusion at which they
have arrived I beg entirely to concar. It is an insult to
commit this toast to a bachelor. What can he say ? He
can only expatiate on joys of which he may have read in
books—he can only picture a fireside at which he is unable
to warm himself—he can only draw a beautiful landscape
of a Paradise which he has seen through a barred gate.
Miserable man ! he strays through life without a friend
except his cigar. Deprived of the fragrance of life's
sweetest flowers, he is absolutely obliged to console him-
self with its weeds. Ladies, it has been a wonder to me
that you allow such a creature as a bachelor to exist on
the face of the earth ! And for you, ladies (and now I
speak seriously,) how thankful may you be that your lot is
cast in a land whose customs allow of your mingling with
us on such an occasion as this. In this country, above all
others on the face of the earth, woman occupies that place
in the domestic and social system which God, who made
her, formed her to fill and to adorn. She tempers with
her gentleness the fiercer and more rugged nature of man ;
she shares all his sorrows and all his joys--shares all his
sorrows to lighten them, all his joys to double them;: and
ever, through the dark clouds, which gather above his
head, she beams forth in her glad brightness, the rainbow
to the storm of his life. Here she' is not caged in. the
gilded misery of the harem, nor immured in the dismal
gloom of the convent, but stands by the side of man, where
first her Maker placed her.

" Oh I woman, not for thee the living tomb,
The harem's splendour, or the convent's gloom ;
Not thine to bend to fear's unhallow'd nod,
And scorn the world to please creation's God.
To see, to feel that earth, that life is fair,
Yet weep to think thou bast no portion there.
No!. child of joy, a holier task is thine, •
A .righter prospect and a purer shrine.
'Tis thine to curb the passion's maddening sway,
And wipe the mourner's bitter tear away ;
'Tis thine to soothe when hope itself has Iled,
And cheer with angel smile the sufferer's bed,
To give to earth its charm, to life its zest, •
One only task—to bless and to be blest."

such a cheer as shall make the old oaks around us ring
again—such a cheer as only English forests of oak ever
echo, or English hearts of oak ever give. (The call was

down amidst loud- cheers.)

FASHIONS FOR SEPTEMBER.

--.5.--

(FUOM LB FOLLET.)

THE excessive heat of the weather lately has rather tried
the courage of the fair votaries of fashion, by the exertion
involved in the adornment of their graceful figures ; but
the recollection of die old proverb, , 11 faut souffrir pour
etre belle," came opportunely to their relief; and, rather
than forego the gratification which a woman, and especi-
ally a French woman, derives from the contemplation of