120 Almanac. -Births, Marriages, and Deaths. THE LADIES' ALMANAC FOR MARCH, 1853. Calculated for the Meridian of Greenwich. Days of the Month. 1 Fair, frost. Births-On the 31st December, at Calcutta, the wife of John Boyd Saunders, Esq., of the 9th Bengal Cavalry, of a daughter.2th ult., at the Chateau de Middaetaten, in Holland, the wife of Major-General Charles Bentinck, of a son.-10th ult., at Ardington-house, Berkshire, the wife of The Weather. Douglass Viney Vernon, Esq., of a son and heir.-10th ult., at 53, Gloucester - place, Hyde-park, the wife of Captain J. B. Wigram, of a daughter.-10th ult., at Wiston Rectory, Sussex, the wife of the Rev. Divie Robertson, of a daughter.-11th ult., at Chester-place, Hyde-park-square, the wife of Adrian de Bruyn, Esq,, of a daughter, still-born.-11th ult., at Sunderlandwick, in the East Riding of the county of York, the wife of Edward Horner Reynard, Esq., of a daughter.- 11th, at Regent's-parkterrace, the wife of Robert Smith, Esq. of a son.-13th ult., at 6, Audley - square, the Lady Rodney, of a daughter, still born. 2 Fair, frost. 6 Gloomy. SUNDAY MONDAY ..... 7 Gloomy. TUESDAY 9 Fair, fall of temp. Fair, frost. Marriages.-On the 27th ult., at Her Majesty's Legation, Washington, by the Rev. S. Pyne, D. D., William Webb Follett Synge, Esq., Attaché to the Legation, to Henrietta Mary, youngest daughter of the late Colonel Wainwright, of the N. S. Marine Corps.- 10th ult., at Freystrop Church, Pembrokeshire, by the Rev. W. D. Adams, Peregrine Lort Phillips, Esq., late Capt. in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, of East Hook, Pembrokeshire, to Annah Jane, only daughter of the late John Davis, Esq., of Mullock, in the same county.-12th ult., at St. James's Church, Hyde-park-gardens, by the Rev. Mr. Hopkins, J. K. Jordan, Esq., grandson of the late Hon. Jacob Jordan, to Anne, Maria, daughter of the late A. J. Guitard, Esq. Deaths. On the 10th January, 1853, at St. Helena, Major Commandant David Kay Pritchard, of the late St. Helena Artillery, aged 61. He served as Aide-de-Camp to the late General Sir Hudson Lowe, during the exile of Napoleon Buonaparte on that island.-7th ult., Capt. Edward Johnson, R.N., F.R.S., in the ninety-fifth year of his age.-9th ult., at St. Anne's Parsonage, near Halifax, Yorkshire, the Rev. John Hope, incumbent, aged fifty-six.-10th ult., Arabella, the lamented wife of Dr. Addams, D.C.L., aged sixty-five.-10th ult., at Lewisham, Elizabeth, third surviving daughter of the late William Simons, Esq., of Clare-lodge, Sydenham.-11th ult., at Thornton Villa, Clifton, Catherine Elton, the relict of the late Isaac Elton, Esq., of Stapleton-house, Gloucestershire, and of White Staunton House, Somersetshire, aged eighty-two. TWENTY years ago an election in Liverpool was a very stirring event. Although the electoral body numbered scarcely four thousand, the inhabitants generally took such an interest in the affair, that the excitement of a six weeks' contest partook much of the character of a popular saturnalia. While the majority of the free and independent electors were carousing in the taverns, or lingering at the doors of the committee-rooms of the rival candidates, watching the fluctuation in prices for votes in those days were bought and sold as openly in Liverpool as bales of cotton-mobs of the disfranchised were parading the town with banners and music, and frequently indulging in a street fight, or storming a house which displayed the obnoxious colours of the opposite party. The tradesmen and merchants divided themselves into bands of canvassers; the elite of the latter, however, being in reserve, as a corps who regulated the operations of the struggle at a prudent distance-generally in the private apartments of the first-class hotels. After the disgraceful haggling, hunting, coaxing, bribing, and voting of the day was over, the leading men retired N. S. VOL. XXXIV. R to their mansions, where they gave splendid dinners, and, surrounded by only long-tried politicians of their own set, concocted the routine of proceeding for the morrow. In one of these residences were assembled half-a-dozen of the merchant princes of the place-a lord, a right honourable, a fluent barrister, specially retained for flourishes of the tongue, and a hawkeyed attorney, who knew the history of the leading families in the town and neighbourhood. The proprietor of this mansion was Mr. Blackstone, an American merchant, of some standing in the town, and in the vernacular of the Exchange area, a warm man! He seemed past fifty years of age, was tall, and had a large, bald, shining head. His partner, Mr. Robert Jarvis, was considerably younger-probably not more than thirty-five-and in appearance decidedly handsome, having a commanding figure and a fine florid countenance. The firm being a young one-that is, not descended from one that half a century before had amassed wealth in the slave-trade-supported the candidate whom the more ancient mercantile interest bitterly opposed. Politics, as now understood, had little to do with the question-local rivalry dictated the nomination, and money decided the event. Mr. Blackstone could not obtain admission into the town-council, and therefore, as well out of pique as a desire for distinction, lent his name and purse to the party which had sprung into existence with the enormous increase of the commerce of the port since the peace with France and America. His house was made one of the head-quarters of his party, and sage were the deliberations they nightly held under the inspiration derived from a liberal supply of the choicest wines, to the intense delight of the obliging merchant, who, if he carried a shrewd head on his shoulders, had a large stock of vanity under his elaborate waistcoat. "Our majority is reduced to twenty, and only half the electors polled. We must look about us," replied the attorney, with that quick, jerking movement, which seems in these days to have gone quite out of fashion. Horribly awkward!" suggested the lord. "How was it done?" chimed in the right honourable. "We commenced this morning with 1001. a tally," replied the attorney. "The other side went up to 1207.; we followed suit with 1307., and stopped there for two hours; our opponents snapped us up with 1501., and so hour after hour headed us, until both of us left off at 2007.; which you know, gentlemen, is 207. a man, and I must say it is a high price even for Liverpool!" "We musn't be beaten!" chorussed the lord, the right honourable, and the merchants. "Of course not," replied the attorney, forthwith proceeding to elaborate a comprehensive scheme of tactics. How stands the exchequer?" inquired the barrister. "Ten tallies at 2007. will clear us out!" was the ominous reply. "Mustn't let those old Tories have it all their own way!" said Mr. Blackstone. "If money is wanted, money must be had!" "Put my name down for another thousand!" shouted a pursy old merchant prince. The other five bellowed the same welcome command. "Six thousand raised in a jiffy, gentlemen!" said the host, looking round him complacently. "What does Mr. (this was the candidate, a very opulent man) propose?" "To double the amount of this night's subscription," answered the attorney, producing a note, which made a mystical allusion to a purchase of Russian tallow. Mr. Blackstone rubbed his hands together, and exclaimed: "I'll make up four, that will be ten, and with Mr.'s ten, we shall have twenty thousand to carry on the war! Hang it, that ought to do!" The junior partner trod on his toe, to intimate that he was going too far; but the elated senior only bestowed on him a severe look in return; and the junior, half out of dislike to the growing hilarity of the company, after awhile quietly withdrew to the drawing-room, leaving the head committee to mature their operations for carrying on a campaign which had already cost each side upwards of 30,0001. The ladies of Liverpool have always been distinguished for their spirited interference in such an important matter as the choice of a representative in Parliament; therefore it was not surprising that, while Mr. Blackstone held his levees, his wife should do the same. On this occasion, when the junior went up stairs, he found Mrs. Blackstone, a hard-visaged Scotch matron, in deep conference with the wives of the six merchants. Miss Blackstone-Julia, her brother dared to call her her sister Maria, with Henry, the hope and pride of the family, in an opposite corner, surrounded by three or four young ladies in ringlets, were enlarging upon the manifold attractions of the handsome lord and right honourable, who were drinking their parents' champagne down stairs, in happy ignorance of the sensation their temporary sojourn in the house had excited. The sisters were decidedly plain; Julia was twenty-five, and had a slight tinge of vermilion on the tip of her nose; Maria was short and flabby, therefore remarkably sentimental. Henry was tall and thin, with a short, narrow face, adorned with a large hooked nose-which feature, his fond mother said, denoted immense moral energy. He was in the church, and had recently received an appointment worth 400% a year from a congregation of the modern Liverpoolians, who had built the church by subscription. Report whispered that the father of the minister had borne at least half the cost. However that might have been, the Rev. Henry Blackstone was a very solemn young man, and having a vast command over scriptural interrogatories, was esteemed as a rising minister, and much liked by the ladies of the new church party. The young men of the old families, it is true, indulged in irreverent remarks at his expense; but that kind of annoyance, as he averred, "only consolidated his zeal for his holy calling, and rendered him impervious to the base attacks of the reprobate Tories." Remote from this imposing coterie, sat a mild-visaged old lady in widow's-weeds. This was the junior's mother. By her side on the settee, reclined, rather than sat, an awkwardly-dressed and rather singular-looking young girl. From her complexion, she had evidently a slight admixture of the blood of Africa in her veins, but her ensemble was, as near as possible, that of a brunette, and her features were beautifully delicate in their outline. Her eyes were large, languishing, dark ones; and her hair, of which she had a profusion, was glossy black. In figure she was slight, but tall, and straight as an arrow. Her age was seventeen, but, from her rusticity, she appeared quite a girl. The junior, on entering, approached his mother, and very cordially saluted the Creole, as the Miss Blackstones contemptuously termed her. "Are you going to plague me like the rest?" said she, sneeringly, as she cast a wild glance up to the face of the junior partner, and then suddenly withdrew her gaze, as she caught the kindly beaming expression of his countenance. 66 Plague you, Nina!" said he, laughing, as he took a seat beside her; "how can you suppose so, when we have always been such good friends?" "I am always plagued," retorted she, with a fierce accent; morning, noon, and night I am plagued! My cousins treat the nasty dogs they nurse better; and if I go into the kitchen, I am mocked at and taunted!" .“ "My dear Nina," said the old lady, in a voice still sweet and musical, "your cousins are very lively, and you may misinterpret their playfulness." Lively!" echoed Nina, her large eyes dilating very much; "they are a pair of spiteful cats!" At this unfeminine speech, Mrs. Jarvis looked grave; her son smiled, and strove to coax the girl out of her ill-humour, but she was obdurate. "I don't mind telling you, Mrs. Jarvis," said she, with some vehemence,; "for I know you won't tell it again but Julia and Maria are the spitefullest creatures alive; they are always beating me. Last night they fought in bed about some young man ; and this morning they were at it again; but, catching me, they hit me over the head and shoulders with their slippers, until they could hardly stand. And do you think I am going to put up with such treatment? No!" The latter monosyllable was uttered with more than girlish unction; but however much her auditors were shocked at such a domestic disposure, they refrained from pronouncing an opinion, and endeavoured to direct her attention to some other subject. "It's of no use," persisted Nina; "I promised myself I would tell |