The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1855-12-04 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

SUPPLEMENT TO THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.  them ?—what is the birth and extinction of religions, and of political systems, to life P What are the revolutions of the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of which it is composed, compared with life P What is the universe of stars and suns, and their motions, and the destiny of those that inhabit them, compared with life P Life, the great miracle, we admire not because it is so miraculous. If any artist, we do not say had executed, but had merely conceived in his mind, the system of the sun, the stars, and planets, they not existing, and had painted to us in words or upon canvas the spectacle now afforded by the sight of the cope of heaven, and illustrated it by astronomy, what would have been our admiration I—or had imagined the scenery of the earth, the mountains, and the seas, and the rivers, and the grass, and the flowers, and the varieties of the forms and the masses of the leaves of the woods, and the colours which attend the rising and the setting sun, and the hues of the atmosphere, turbid or serene, truly we should have been wonderstruck, and should have said, what it would have been a vain boast to have said—" Truly, this creator deserves the name of a God." But now, these things are looked upon with little wonder ; and he who views them with delight is considered an enthusiast or an extraordinary person. The multitude care little for them. It is thus with life, that includes all. What is life P Thoughts and feelings arise with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered, and u fragments. We live, andor i i nneywe'lose n rememberedthe but in living apprehension of life.  REMINISCENCES OF THE OXFORD erne-um—The late Mr. Bellamy, who went the Oxford and other circuits for sixty-two years, states that in every county on this circuit there was an assize-ball on the commission-day of each assize. This ball was attended by the nobility and gentry of the county, and the judges and bar. The judges used to wear at the balls the black silk gown, band, and the two-curl bob-wig. They were attended by the high sheriff, wearing a full court dress, bag-wig, and sword, and his chaplain in his gown, cassock, and band. The judges did not dance, but they usually played at whist. In the recollection of Mr. Bellamy, in every assize town on the Oxford Circuit the two courts were held in the same room, without any division or partition, and so that one judge could see the other. This continued at Gloucester till the year 1816, and the alteration was occasioned by this circumstance :—Baron (then Judge) Bayley was trying a man for murder, and his jury burst into a laugh at one of Mr. Dancey's jokes in a horse case in the other court. The learned judge thought that it was time this was altered. Formerly the judges on their circuits had an immense number of presents—venison, fruit, wine, (U.—which half kept their house during the assizes ; but in the year 1794, when so much was subscribed for the defence of the nation against the threatened invasion, the value of the different presents was subscribed, and the presents discontinued, and never renewed. About thirty years ago a story was current in Worcester, that the mayor always sent the judges a present of a loaf of sugar, and that the judges in return invited the mayor to dine with them ; but that the mayor being once uninvited, the sugar was discontinued ever after. Till the passing of the Municipal Reform Act, the corporation of Gloucester always sent each judge in spring a salmon and a house lamb, and in summer a salmon and a whole sheep; and at present the corporation of. Oxford gives to each judge a pair of white lid gloves, edged with gold lace, and ornamented with gold tassels. A