The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-07-15 00:00:00

became acquainted witlil4r.William Bingham, who was an
agent in the service of the Americans for obtaining sup-
plies abroad for carrying on the revolution. On the termi-
nation of the war, Baring and Bingham turned to account
the profits they had out of the contest, purchasing up mili-
tary and other claims against both governments, which they
procured for mere trifles, and got them admitted into the
funded debt of the United States and of Great Britain. Mr.
Bingham got rich, lived in princely style in Philadel-
phia, and had fine daughters. Mr. Baring wooed and
married one, and his brother married a second. These
two commissaries, by joining together, progressed to that
degree of opulence and power which has astonished
the world. In 1834, Alexander Baring retired from
the house of Baring Brothers, taking with him a large
fortune—leaving behind £BOO,OOO on interest; but in 1836,
the house was affected by the general pressure which took
place, and Lord Ashburton came forward and lent them
1:500,000, which is yet due, together with the original
£BOO,OOO. The house has an agency in Liverpool, New
York, New Orleans, and at several points of the Continent of
Europe—it is largely interested in the bonds and advances of
the American State, and the present visit here of Lord Ash-
burton will disclose a page of very important matter in the
current history of Britain and America.—American paper.
WINDERMERE.—" Saw ye ever banks and braes and knolls
so beautifully bedropt with human dwellings? There is no
solitude about Windermere. Shame on human nature were
Paradise uninhabited ! Here, in amicable neighbourhood,
are halls and huts—here rises, through groves, the dome of
the rich man's mansion—and there the low roof of the poor
man's cottage beneath its one single sycamore ! Here are
hundreds of small properties hereditary in the same families
for hundreds of years—and never, never, 0 Westmoreland !
may thy race of statesmen be extinct—nor the virtues that
ennoble their humble households ! See, suddenly brought
forth by sunshine from among the old woods—and then
sinking yway into her usual unobtrusive serenity—the lake-
loving Rayrig, almost level, so it seems, with the water, yet
smiling over her own quiet bay from the grove-shelter of her
pastoral mound. Within her walls may peace ever dwell
with piety—and the light of science long blend with the lustre
of the domestic hearth. Thence to Calgarth is all one forest
—yet glade-broken, and enlivened by open uplands ; so that
the roamer, while he expects a night of umbrage, often finds
himself in the open day, beneath the bright blue bow of
Heaven, haply without a cloud. The eye travels delighted
over the multitudinous tree-tops—often dense as one single
tree—till it rests, in sublime satisfaction, on the far-off
mountains, that lose not a woody character till the tree-
sprinkled pastures roughen into rocks—and rocks tower into
precipices where the falcons breed. But the lake will not
suffer the eye long to wander among the distant glooms.
She wins us wholly to herself—and restlessly and passion-
ately for a while, but calmly and affectionately at last, the
heart embraces all her beauty, and wishes that the vision
might endure for ever, and that here our tents were pitched—
to be struck no more during our earthly pilgrimage. Ima-
gination lapses into a thousand moods. 0 for a fairy
pinnace to glide and float for aye over those golden waves
A hermit-cell on sweet Lady-Holm A silvan shieling on
Loughrig side ! A nest in that nameless dell, which sees but
one small slip of Heaven, and longs at night for the reas-
cending visit of its few loving stars ! A dwelling open to all
the skyey influence on the mountain brow, the darling of the
rising or the setting sun, and often seen by eyes in the lower
world glittering through the rainbow !"—Recreations of
Christopher North.
WHISPERS.—Much has been done by whispers. Royal
favourites have been undermined and ruined. Reputations
have been stabbed. Boarding school misses, and even nuns,
have been induced to run away from schools and elope from
convents, and throw themselves, literally and bodily, into the
arms of lovers. Wives have been tempted to bid their hus-
bands good night and their gallants good morning, and if
they had children, to forget them, as if their little voices
were less sonorous upon the soul than the whispers of flat-
tery. Conspiracy has been matured, murders planned,
treasons contrived, and country maidens seduced, all in
whispers. Sighs are w hispers far more expressive than the
loudest lamentations of grief, or the loudest protestations
of love. The breath of life is in a whisper, and when it in-
creases to an audible sound, it is the vulgar and common
language of every-day wants, requests, denials, demands,
excuses, pretences, and lies. Whispering is the grand
mover of the social machine, the steam-engine of creation,
and the sine qua non of our temporal, moral, and religious
existence. He that has ears—which is rather common since
the pillory was abolished—let him hear; he that has under-
standing—which is rather uncommon—let him ponder on
these truths,

ANECDOTE OF BRAHAM.—The Boston Transcript gives
the following:---" A somewhat laughable incident occurred
the last time Mr. Braham was here. The incomparable
vocalist had heard so much about the celebrated Elder Knapp,
that he one evening went with some members of his family
to hear and see the somewhat eccentric divine. Having been
obliged, on account of the crowd, to listen to the sermon at
something more than a respectful distance,' the prince of
tenors, when those who were seeking after religion were
invited to come forward and seat themselves in the pews near
the pulpit, wishing to obtain a nearer view of the preacher,
(not being able, owing to his short-sightedness, to distinguish
a man from a mouse a rood from his nose,) and not under-
standing the purport of the invitation, walked deliberately
up the broad aisle, and seated himself in one of the pews in
close proximity to the sacred desk. As he was, with the aid
of his eye-glass, scrutinising the figure and features of the
elder with the eager gaze of curiosity, completely absorbed
in his work, a reverend or lay gentleman enquired of him, in
tones of soothing tenderness, what was the state of his mind,
and bow he felt? `Never better in my life, thank you,'
responded the vocalist, on the point of grasping the hand of
the stranger, who had, as he thought, merely enquired after
the state of his health."

ST. SWITHIN'S DAY (July Is).—The predilection for the
period of forty days is as remarkable in these ancient prog-
nostications of weather as in many customs derived from re-
mote ages, which have given us the term quarantine. This,
or rather quarantena, among military and monastic writers,
denotes a space of forty days. In a truce between Henry
the First anti Robert Earl of Flanders, one of the articles is
to this effect :—lf Earl Robert should depart from the treaty,
and the parties could not be reconciled to the king within
three quaradtines, each of the hostages should pay one hun-
dred marks, By the laws of jEthelbirht, who died in 1016,
the limitation for the payment of the fine for slaying a man
at an open grave was fixed in the Saxon manner to forty
nights, by which they computed instead of days. The privi-
lege of sanctuary was also confined within the same number
of days. By the ancient costuniale of Preston, about the
reign of Henry the Second, a condition was imposed upon
every newly-made burgess, that, if he neglected to build a
house within forty days, he should forfeit forty pence.
There seems to be no reason to question that this precise
term is deduced from the period of Lent, which is itself
an imitation of the fast of Christ, who may have chosen forty
days in imitation of the fast of Elijah, who copied the fast of
Moses, who stated that the diluvial rain was upon the earth

forty days and nights. The Pagans themselves observed this
number in the mysteries of Ceres and properine, in which the
wooden image of a virgin was lamented over during forty
days, or rather nights, if the computation be not here the
same as among the northern nations. Tertullian relates, as
a fact well known to the heathens, that for forty days an
entire city remained suspended in the air over Jerusalem—a
certain presage of the millenium. The following are in-
stances of this predilection shown- by the founders of our
legal polity, when they had occasion to limit a short interval
of time for any particular purpose :—Anciently, no man was
suffered to abide in England above forty days, unless he
were enrolled in some tithing or decennarv. A widow shall
remain in her husband's capital messuage forty days after his
death, within which time her dower shall be assigned. The
tenant of knight's fee, by military service, is bound to attend
the king forty days, properly eqnipped for warfare. By
privilege of parliament, members of the House of Commons
are protected from arrest for forty days before the next ap-
pointed meeting. The acts for preventing the introduction
of the plague direct that persons coming from infected places
must remain on ship-board forty days before they be per-
mitted to land.—Customs of the Middle Ages.

QUACKERY.—Quackery, like sin, is very ancient. It
flourished in ancient Rome as well as in modern Europe.
Nor does it depend for its prosperity on the ignorance of the
uneducated classes. " The desire of wealth and health,"
says Pitt, " seems to put all understanding on a level ; the
avaricious ate duped by every bubble—the lame and unhealthy
by every quack." The faith of that singular compound of
folly and knavery, the world, is kept up by peers, judges,
and bishops, by clowns, operatives. and old women, who fur-
nish certificates to the value of nostrums, and testify in
favour of imposture, delusion, and villany. Every material
substance and medicament from the inert herb and common
weed to simple water, having no properties beyond mere
matter, have been at one period or other boasted up to the
vain and empty nothingness of a great name, as the best
remedy in the world for the inward bruises of all mankind.
Indeed, each has possessed in turn the same reputution, and
produced the same imputed benefits as a panacea for the cure
of every disease under the sun; and their imaginary virtues
have been witnessed and attested by persons from the throne
to the garret. In this country the sale of quack medicines
has kept pace with the " march of intellect. Forty years
ago they yielded an annual revenue to the state of about
£14,000. In 1841, the amount realised was £50,000. For
the last half century English governments have looked upon
this vile revenue as more valuable, in their judgment, than
the health of the people, the prosperity of the regular pro-
fession, and the improvement of phYsic• " They manage
these things better in France." There the compositions of
all the nostrums are divulged, compulsorily, to the Academy
of Medicine ; after which a license is given for the sale of
them, if they are not injurious to the public health. The
sale of hurtful nostrums is prohibited by penalties.
As to
other nostrums, the quack may sell—the dupe may buy—the
government only interfering with " the liberty of the sub-
ject" (whether that subject be quack or dupe) for the protec-
tion of life.—Abridged from a Paper by Dr. Forsbrooke of
Chester.