The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1851-09-02 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

WOMAN.—We do not agree in considering woman altogether an angel ' • because, to verify the resemblance, woman should be faultless, and we have never yet met with one who had not some fascinating little sin left to show that she was not too good for this world. Our notion of woman, in the best sense of the word, is a being fitted to be a help meet for man. She should have a faithful, loving heart, that when, foiled in his worldly career, his spirit is dark within him, and, in the bitterness of his soul, he confesses that the " good that he would he does not, but the evil he would not, that he does," her affection may prove to him, that in her love he has one inestimable blessing yet remaining of which death alone can deprive him, and then only for a season ; for, availing herself of the fitting moment with the delicate tact which is one of the brielitest instincts of a loving woman's heart, she can offer him the only true consolation, by urging him to renew his Christian warfare in the hope that together they may attain the reward of their high calling, a reward so glorious that the mind of man is impotent to conceive its nature. But to be able to do this, she must herself have realised by the power of faith the blessedness of things unseen, and with this requisite, without which all other excellencies are valueless, we conclude our definition of " woman as she should be." Such a one was Rose Arundel, and countless others are there who, if not sinless as the radiant messengers of heaven, are yet doing angels' work by many a fire-side which their presence cheers and blesses. Happy is the man who possesses in a wife or sister such a hoesehold fairy ; and it some there be who bear alone the burden of life, whose joys are few, —for we rejoice not in solitude,—let those whose lot is brighter forgive the clouded brow, or the cynical word, that at times attests the weariness of a soul on which the sunlight of affection seldom beams.—Lewis Arundel.  ROMAN GA oi.s.—They are divided into cells of between 7 and 8 feet square, or, as it may be desirable to state the exact proportions, of 8 ft. llin. in length, ift. iin. in breadth, and ift. 10in. in height. In each of these are shut two prisoners, who are thus placed on an allowance of air little greater than that required for the consumption of one. But this separate incarceration is a privilege to be earned only by formidable guilt or purchased by considerable bribes. For the common class of prisoners there is one common room, where they lie day and night, like negroes in a slave ship, on straw too foul for a stable. On provocation given or assumed the gaoler has the power of inflicting severe flogging, or of attaching to the legs of his victims a weight of iron so great as almost to incapacitate them from moving. Besides these apartments there are others designed to hold ten prisoners each, but for which twenty is now considered a fitter complement, and in these the single window is so high from the ground that the inmates can only obtain a breath of air by mounting upon each others shoulders in turn. Once a month only is any visit allowed from friends or relatives, and then in the presence of the gaolers and with a double iron grating intervening. We have confined ourselves to a simple statement of facts without any comment, but the reader will probably be not surprised when we add, that within the space of a few days, as credibly reported, six prisoners had died of starvation, two had been put in irons for attempting suicide, and two had been carried raving to a madhouse. Even this, however, is but an imperfect sketch of the horrors prevailing. So frightful are the practices of these rooms, where the very vilest of desperadoes are herded together without any effectual supervision, that the political prisoners are glad to provoke solitary confinement by any breach of discipline as an escape from inexpressible pollution. Thosn who remember the stories of convict life which almost terrified our government from the system of transportation, will be able to imagine the enormities of these infamous abodes. and to conclude how completely even all that we have described is outdone by that which is indescribable....-- Tito Timer.,