The Illustrated Usk Observer and Raglan Herald

POLITICAL GOSSIP. MR. BRIGHT, M.P., is spending part of the recess in a tour m Wales. The hon. gentleman is at present staying at Dolgelly. MR. R. P. COLLIER, M.P. for Plymouth, is appointed one of her Majesty's Commissioners for the purpose of inquiring into the fees of administration of the Irish Admiralty Court. THE treaty between Denmark and Sweden, it is said, has not yet oeen signed, and that they are not anxious to hurry the signature for fear of giving cause of offence to Germany. This is forbearing: may the Germans prove equally só THE oddest report from the Yankees is that they intend to abolish the king and queen in playing-cards, as they are not Republican. The king is henceforth to be a colonel, and the queen is to be called liberty-that is, the goddess of liberty. We presume the knave will be retained as a national character, as no objection has been raised to him. WHATEVER may be the result of the diplomatic correspondence, it is evident that Russia is making ample preparations for contingencies that may arise. It is stated that 4,000 pieces of ordnance of various sizes are being constructed in this country for the Russian Government. By the latest accounts we find that leave of absence to all the officers of the fleet is suspended, and that 20,000 troops have been stationed in Finland. THE Army and lfarvy Gazette says:—" We under- stand that Captain George de la Poer Beresford, late 16th Regiment of Foot, has ceased to be a member of the Army and Navy Club, and that in consequence the general meeting of the members has been rendered unnecessary. IF reports speak truly, the Emperor of the French feels disinclined to grant his political guarantee to the new King of Mexico, and M. Fould declines to grant his financial guarantee. This is one way of taking away the two stools from the newly-made Monarch. Is France sorry, says the Court Journal, that the offer: made so generously has been accepted so promptly, and the opening thus closed for a Frangais pur sang ? MR. MILNER GIBSON is taking his holiday out in yachting, like the Lord Chancellor, and we see a country paper reports Mr. Gladstone has been doing the nautical abroad; he is now, however, in attendance on her Majesty at Balmoral. Lord Palmerston is at Broadlands, Earl Russell still in Scotland, the Duke of Somerset has been in town, Lord Clarence Paget is in Wales. IT is said that in consequence of the long illness of Lord Robert Pelham Clinton, the member for the northern division of the county of Nottingham, in conjunction with the Right Hon. the Speaker of the House of Commons, it is probable that he will retire from the representation of the constituency at the close of the present Parliament. From the great popu- larity of the Duke of Newcastle (the Lord-Lieutenant of the county), it is most likely that his son, the Earl of Lincoln, will be requested to sit in the place of his uncle. SINCE the beginning of the Polish war France has not sent a single French journalist or diplomatist of any note to Poland. The conduot of the English, on the other hand, excites great admiration at Cracow. £ During the last six weeks the town has had a great many English visitors — diplomatists, journalists, £ savans, and tourists. They go about everywhere—in the towns, in. the country, in the insurgents' camps, and everywhere they ask questions and take notes. The interest thus shown by Englishmen has done much to strengthen the sympathy the Poles have always felt for England, and their admiration of her institutions. KING FRANCIS II. of Naples has sent an autograph 8 letter to Lord Henry Lennox, M.P., in which his a Majesty thanks the noble lord for the kind sympathy he expressed for the sufferings of the prisoners and of the Neapolitan people in his speech in the House of t Commons on the 8th of May last. King Francis is r well aware that Lord Henry Lennox is not a declared r and open partisan of his dynasty; but that con- sideration, far from stopping him, has, on the con- j trary, more strongly urged him to render justice to the E part so worthily fulfilled by the noble lord, and to express to him his gratitude and his admiration for 1 the courage which he displayed in making known the c whole truth to the English Parliament and people. THE Honourable Frederick Lygon has issued an address bidding farewell to the one constituency and I soliciting the suffrages of the other. The West. Wor- I cestershire Liberal Registration Association have I passed the following resolution:—"That considering I the valuable and long continued services of the late < Earl Beauchamp as one of the representatives in ( Parliament of the county of Worcester, and afterwards ] of the western division of the county, and the high j esteem in which he was held by the electors, this 1 meeting feel that the Hon. F. Lygon may reasonably seek to occupy the seat so long held "by his late 1 father, and more recently by his brother, and recom- mend to the liberal party that no opposition should 1 be offered to his election thereto." No successor to Mr. Lygon, at Tewkesbury, has yet been named. WE are authorised to state, says a local contempo- rary, that Mr. Serjeant Pigott has accepted the office of Baron of the Exchequer, recently rendered vacant by the appointment of Mr. Baron Wilde to the Probate and Divorce Court. This event, which had for some time been hinted at, will deprive the borough of Read- ing of a sound, liberal, and enlightened member, one who has consistently fulfilled his pledges to the electors since his election in 1860, when he was called to fill the position so long and so worthily held by his brother, the late Mr. Francis Pigott. The borough of Reading may now boast of having contributed three members to the judicial bench of this country in succession —a fact, we believe, not to be paralleled in the records of political changes in any other town, and one which, whilst it enhances the importance of the borough, reflects great credit upon the choice of the electors in their judgment of high intellectual powers and sound political principles. Since writing the above we have received an address to the electors of Reading from Mr. G. Shaw Lefevre, nephew of Lord Eversley, from which we extract the following passage:—"I venture to redeem the pledge which I made upon re- tiring at the last election by presenting myself to you as a candidate. I do so with the greater confidence, recollecting the numerous promises of support which on that occasion I received, and that I retired from the contest in accordance with the wish expressed by many of you, rather than endanger the unity of the liberal party. I have already announced to you my warm attachment to the principles of the liberal party; and if elected I shall be prepared to give a hearty support to Lord Palmerston's government."

LITERATURE AND THE ARTS. MB. MARSHALL WOOD is at present engaged in executing a figure to illustrate Hood's Song of the Shirt." A FEW weeks ago, when a peasant was digging in a field in the environs of a village on the river Saar, he was fortunate enough to find, in a Roman tomb, a, golden diadem, of excellent workmanship and in good preservation. The value of the gold alone is about one hundrad Prussian dollars. THE list of experiments for the preservation of the stone of which the Houses of Parliament are built is, not yet complete. The authorities have permitted a trial of Messrs. Bartlett's- process. Let us hope that some good may result from all these experiments. THE French Minister of Fine Arts has announced that the exhibition of the Works of Living Artists, to be held next year in Paris, will open on the 1st of May and close on the 15th of June. Foreign as well as French pictures will be admitted. Works for exhibi- tion are to be sent in between the 10th and 20th of March next. A MEMORIAL is to be erected at Totnes to Wills, the Australian explorer, he having been a native of that place. Mr. Ritchie, of Chester, has supplied the design for this work, which is to consist of an obelisk, one face of which bears a medallion portrait of Wills. The obelisk rests upon a pedestal, with plinth and cornice, placed upon a rusticated base. The whole is to be thirty-three feet high, the base eleven feet square. THE "greenbacks" of America have been of some advantage to the commercial public in England, for we are told the green ink cannot be photographed or destroyed by alkalies. THERE is a sort of poetical felicity, says the Athe- nceum, in the fact that there is about to be erected in the Sandwich Islands a monument to Captain Cook, whom his countrymen have, so far, forgotten to honour. It is true that some of the greatest bene- factors to England remain uncommemorated, and peculiarly so of those who have served her at sea- boasted to be her peculiar element. Where is the public monument to Rodney, to Duncan, or, out of St. Paul's, to Howe, Jervis, Shovel ? Have any of the Arctic discoverers monuments to say how great were their courage and endurance ? Dibdin, who served his country in his way, has not even a stone with his name on it erected at public charge. Above all, there is the memory of the author of "Robinson Crusoe,a book which has done infinite service towards making English lads into sailors,—entrusted to his works alone. THE Ambrosian library at Milan has just suffered a heavy loss. An entire case containing the autograph correspondence of the Medici with the Dukes of Milan from 1496 to 1510, has disappeared from the very study of Dr. Gatti, the conservator. All the Milan journals have spoken of this robbery, committed with strange effrontery and address. SINCE the appearance of Mr. Kinglake's first edition of the "Crimean War," writers of the highest authority, military men and others, have exposed many erroneous statements, and justly blamed, says the Court Journal, the inopportune attacks made with such unmeasured severity by the Crimean historian against the French Emperor, and his chief counsellors, ministers, and private friends. To all these corrections, to all these remonstrances, Mr. Kinglake has turned a deaf ear, and a fourth edition has just been published, with all his mistakes retained; and a few egotistical notes alone, excusing nothing, making no confessions of error, serve to proclaim, as Victor Hugo used to do, after the condemnation of a play, how entirely satis- fied the author is with the first cast of his reck- less genius. THE death of Mr. Tooke, F.R.S., will be heard of with feelings of deep regret in literary circles, he having been for many years of his long life an ardent supporter of literature and literary associations throughout the country. He was the younger son of the Rev. William Tooke, and was born at St. Peters- burg in 1777 he was therefore in his 86th year at the time of his death. He was brought up to the law, and practised in his profession for some years in London. In 1804 he published an anonymous edition of Churchill's works, which was republished with his name as editor amongst the Aldine Poets in 1841. Mr. Tooke took an active part in the founding of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, of which he was for many years treasurer. The Monarchy of France; its Rise, Progress, and Fall," was amongst the most important of his numerous pro- ductions. From 1835 to 1837 he represented Truro in Parliament in the Liberal interest. Mr. Tooke was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and President of the Society of Arts. THE sight, at the present moment, which attracts Parisians' attention, says a contemporary, is a monster lying dead in the Avenue Dauphine and the Avenue de l'Impératrice — one avenue not, we presume, being enough to encompass its vast size, which is about 8,000 metres. We do not allude to a dead whale, but a dead balloon (The Monster), which is waiting to have its gassy life inflated into it, and then rise like a Franken- stein's production, perhaps to prove as intractable, and take its wings in a rapid flight to the regions of eternal ice, as that monster did.

SPORTS AND PASTIMES. THE Earl of Chesterfield, with his guests, the Duke f Cambridge, Prince Edward of Saxe Weimar, Lord tanhope, and the Earl of Derby, have commenced heir annual sport on his lordship's estate. On the G rst day the party started from Mrs. Tomlin's farm, t: .ear Ratcliffe, on the Morken Hills. In the course of y* he day the party brougLt <5own 7braoe of par- ridges, one quail, and 134 hares. The day's excursion w losed at 5.40, and the noble earl and his guests re- 1'1 urned to Gedling-lodge, "and have continued their 0 ports during the week. The same guests assembled h ,t Gedling-lodge last year. ° Sport with. Otter Hounds. v The staunch little pack of otter hounds belonging j, o Mr. M'Donald Moreton, of Kyntire, Argyleshire, s met at Macharamore-bridge, a short time ago, accom- s lanied by a select few of the right sort, among whom g rere the Hon. H. Somerville, the gallant master C. F it'Donald Moreton, Esq., Capt. M'Allister, Messrs. 1J Stewart, Winter, and Barber, with several others j vhose names we did not know. No sooner were the c iminds on the water than the deep notes of old Mar- y rery and Wisdom proclaimed the fishmonger abroad. c Hark to Margery! cries the huntsman; together 1 —hark and in a second the pack were away up a t nill-race to the left, round the dam, and back to the iver, hunting the drag every inch, axd making the 1 lills and rocks resound to the echo of the soul-stirring, nusic. There was a slight check here, as the hounds c sagerly dashed from side to side of the river, and tried jvery root and stone for the scent, till Bellman's 2~ loarse voice told the line the varmint had gone. ( tway they went up-stream at a splitting pace,, sending, the water into foam as they dashed through the stickles, 1 so close together that a blanket could cover them. In bhis style they carried tke drag upwards of a mile, at j such a pace that it was truly bellows to mend with J the toddlers; when suddenly the hounds swung out to j the left on dry land, and across the meadows Leading to a gorse covert, through which ran a small 1 stream. In covert—hark! Loo in all! we have him here! cries young Campbell, the huntsman, and in an instant every bush seemed alive as the j hounds dashed through and through the covert, making j the welkin ring to the joyful noise. It was more like the find of a fox than the bolt of an otter, when Jamie, the whip, from the middle of the gorse, gave the cheering Halloa! Tally-ho See Stole away! stole away and in a second the hounds were at him, and rattled the otter in grand style round and round the covert, and down to the river, into which he plunged, with hounds and men all but on him. Look out below was now the cry; and scarcely had Rob, the first whip, put in an appearance in the ford than he viewed our friend on the skedaddle down stream, and cleverly headed him back into the deep. Now the scene became most exciting-men and dogs halloa- ing, wading, and swimming. Bubble a vent here 11 See, see, there!" But it was too hot to last, and at the end of ten minutes the gallant master's cheering View halloa!" proclaimed the slippery one away As he once more took to dry land, and hooked its best pace for another gorse-covert out to the right, Twang! twang went the horn; and, though the water was now full of foil, like lightning the beauties respond to the well-known sound; there was no rest for the fishy one-over the meadows, and into the gorse they rattled, and, after a beautiful burst, this game otter was pulled down on terra firma in the middle of the covert, and killed, after a gallant fight in which both hounds and terriers were severely punished.

Remedy for Kicking Cows. A correspondent of the Country gentleman (Al- bany) gives the following hints upon this subject: Last November I bought a kicking cow," black as a coal, as homely as Lear, and to strangers appeared a real tiger." The owner, a farmer of forty years old, said she would make more butter in a year than any one he ever had, and he offered her for sale solely be- cause her heels were too light for her body, and as he depended on hired help entirely to do his milkrng, he wouldn't bother with her any longer. 11 aid him six- teen dollars for her, which was her value to fat for beef. I milked her three times—the fourth time she pushed the bottom of nay pail out; but as I am a peaceable man I made no words with her, thinking that, as she was six years old, she had probably heard as strong arguments in her youth as any I could offer. Instead of words or blows, or trying to catch her foot," or quieting her by letting her sit m iny lap, &c., I set up firmly a strong plank close behind, her, having a two inch hole in the lower end; put a ring in the post of the stable, some three feet farther back; • took the hitching strap from a halter, pat it through the hole in the plank, and buckled it to her Ii ;ht hind ankle; having first taken up one fore leg and buckled a strap around it, so that she would be obliged to allow me to put the strap to her hind leg. I then put the other end of the strap through the ring, and drawing it taut, buckled it; then let down her fore leg and bid her kick if she dared, and sat down and finished milking. After a few efforts, she saw it was useless to try, and gave up. In two or three days she learned to let me put the strap on her ancle quietly, without raising her foreleg, and she has had it on every milking since, and proves to be a very valuable cow, worth to-day forty-five dollars. It does not take the fourth part of a. minute to put on and take off the strap, and I set the pail under her and milk with perfect impunity, while she actually appears to like to be milked, without being in fear of a scrape. I milked her to within three weeks of calving, when she gave two quarts per day-now gives eighteen to twenty-two quarts, and very rich at that. To any one who has a first-rate kicking cow," and can con- veniently turn her into a stable to milk, I say go and do likewise. Don't "fret and stew," scold and maul the innocent cow, because her bag is as ticklish as some children's necks An extra cow is worth saving at so little extra trouble as mine costs me. After a year or two, and perhaps less, I think she will forget that she ever could kick, and the strap may be left off; but if not I care but little. A staple and ring in the stable floor might be better, where several kickers are milked side by side, than the upright plank.

Flower Garden and Shrubberies. Chrysanthemums will soon be beginning to occupy attention; let them be tied out so as to display their blossoms to the best advantage, and, where too thick, thin out the buds. Protecting materials had also better be got ready for such plants as require to be covered up in winter where dry fern can be had it answers the purpose perfectly. If the weather sets in wet, choice sorts of hollyhocks may be taken up, potted, and wintered in a cool house; they will be exceedingly useful for furnishing cuttings, and these if got in early in spring will make excellent plants for next season. Be careful to secure transplanted things against wind, especially large plants, which should never be left until they are properly staked or other- wise made fast, for when this is put off it frequently happens that the roots get injured through the tops being rocked about. Get spare ground intended to be planted early next season deeply trenched and ridged up so as to expose it as much as possible to the weather, putting in plenty of good rotten manure, especially where strong-growing plants, such as holly- hocks or dahlias, are to stand, for these require a deep rich soil.

Hardy Fruit and Kitchen Garden. The weather hitherto has been favourable for the ripening of late fruits. Continue therefore gathering both apples and pears, most varieties of which will now be fit. Nonpareils should be amongst the last gathered, and the same may be said of glou morceau, beurre ranee, and Easter beurre pears. If Coe's golden drop plums be carefully gathered, wrapped singly in thin paper after remaining some days in a dry airy room, and then packed in shallow boxes, they will keep a long time, and so will the blue imperatrice and the Ickworth imperatrice, the latter being the more preferable plum of the two. It cannot be too often repeated that all choice fruit should be gathered when perfectly dry, and in storing, wherever an extensive surface of fruit is exposed, air must be admitted freely, for at this period exhalations are most abundantly given out, and more especially by the early varieties on their becoming fit for use. These, in fact, ought not to be in the same apartment with the more valuable late keeping sorts. Look frequently over the fruit room, and remove at once any fruit that appears to be unsound. Prepare ground for planting. Take advantage of wet days for making fresh mushroom beds, and clearing out those that are spent; also collect and prepare droppings for forming fresh beds by spreading them in a shed and turning them every day. -Gardeners' Chronicle.

TOPICS OF THE WEEK. KILLING NO MURDER.—At the Perth assizes, W. Grrant, managing clerk of a large establishment, was tried for the murder of his wife. It appeared that the woman was addicted to drink, and, when she was known to be intoxicated noises of violence, falls, and blows, ivere heard in the house. The husband was the first to raise the alarm that his wife was dead, and his account 3f the matter was, that having found his wife help- Lessly drunk, he had attempted to carry her to her bed-room, but in the act had stumbled over some furniture, and fallen to the ground together with his wife, that he then pulled her into a doorway and left her to her fate, not having any notion that she was so seriously injured, but next day he found her dead. The atafeinf +.Tin wnmn.-n's bnclv contradicted this statement. Such a. fall as that described" could not account for the fracture of half her ribs, for bruises on every part of her body, and internal injuries. But nevertheless the y jury acquitted the prisoner on account of his excellent n: character. Is it to be understood, then, that a man with good character may kill his wife, not only with complete impunity, but with unbounded applause? j1 We purposely use the theatrical word for this very „ theatrical occasion, for after the delivery of the verdict the Court was in an uproar of cheers and clapping of ? hands. The Dundee Advertiser says that the result was as unexpected as acceptable, for though no one n supposed that Grant would be convicted of murder, yet so triumphant an acquittal" was beyond all hope. n A triumphant acquittal in defiance of evidence at least w of the crime next in degree to murder. But everybody n was pleased, the Rev. Dr. M'Gavin was eager to shake v hands with Grant, his friends pressed forward to con- a gratulate him; the judges shared in the general satis- j1 faction; the clerk of the court, in his joy, was near c recording a wrong verdict of unanimous acquittal, n instead of acquittal by a majority; and upon the dis- s missal of the prisoner, Lord Neaves said, in a pleasant tone, Let him go." Madeline Smith had hardly an a acquittal more congenial to the public feeling of the v place. Mrs. M'Lachlan had not more sympathy and 11 favour. Are not exhibitions of this sort of public feel- 1: ing against public j ustice becoming rather too frequent s and obtrusive in Scotland? There was much, we freely admit, to palliate Grant's conduct, but there t was nothing in it to be admired, nothing that f humanity can much approve. Grant had brutally t#lb,ted a brutal vice.—Examiner. DYING FROM HUNGER.—There is, perhaps, no I suffering incidental to humanity which the well-fed find it so hard to realise as the agony of starvation. They dread that form of death by instinct more than any other, strive all their lives to secure themselves against it, and admit that it is a pang which, if justifi- cation were possible, would justify breaches of moral law. However they may legislate, all good men feel that actual pressing hunger takes the moral guilt out of theft. Still they realise it far less accurately than many diseases which they dread a good deal less, and shudder at sudden and horrible deaths, such as the fall of a student into Vesuvius, recorded last week, with a chill of horror which a tale of starvation very often fails to excite. It is, perhaps, well that it should be so, or the notices which occasionally appear among the legal reports would be a serious addition to the mental strain which is the drawback, as it is also the special feature, of modern civilised life. There was a little paragraph of the kind in the Times of Tuesday, an over-condensed report of an ordinary coroner's in- quest, which when examined reveals a story filled with elements of horror such as Edgar Poe alone among fiction-makers, and Edgar Poe only when drunk with morphine, would have ventured to invent. The scene was, of course, Bethnal-green, the worst corner in that vast wilderness of houses which we call East London, which contains the population of Denmark, and is more utterly neglected by the well-to-do classes and governing men than the remotest corner of the kingdom. The victim was one George Marshall, an elderly man who had been a cooper, but, being run over, had for two years been unable to obtain employment. He was a married man, and after their furniture had all been sold his wife applied to the Union for aid. The case was not then an extreme one, and the guardians refused all assistance unless the man would enter the house, which he, sick, and wounded, and growing old, de- clared an alternative worse than death. If Miss Cobbe's stories of poor-house infirmaries are as true as we believe them to be, he had reason for his abhor- rence, and in any case he must have lost the care and sympathy of his wife—a loss to a man slowly dying of disease which some at least of our readers may be able to appreciate. He remained in a wretched lodging, a single room, with a bedstead for all the furniture, for L which they paid eighteenpence a week, and the wife went out to try and earn bread for both. She sold matches, getting rid of some fourpenn'orth a day, half of which was profit, and probably begging the amount of her rent. Out of these few pennies she had to feed her husband and herself, both of them usually eating a little dry bread once a day. Lying helpless there, the man had, his wife said, an overpowering crave for meat; but in two years of labour she never once earned enough to be able to let him have it. The necessity for food increased with the progress of the disease, but it was not to be obtained, and the man, worn down by tvjo years of continuous hunger till his corpse excited a shudder among the jury, at last died of exhaustion— a fate the horror of which tires the imagination. It was the lot of the writer once to see a man starved into weakness, though stiil with his grasp of life remaining. He had been a powerful, healxhy middy of eighteen but, wrecked on a deserted coast, he had lived nine days on clams, and as he was brought into hospital surgeons familiar with every form of suffering avoided a glance at his face. Ten years' after, when again a healthy and a heavy man, the look of suppressed torture which he then bore was still visible on his face; yet his sufferings had not been a fiftieth part of that endured by this poor cooper. The facts were confirmed by medical evidence, and by the appearance of the wife, who seemed, as a juryman said as she gave her evidence, to be dying of starvation then and there, and so horrified the court that, as it broke up, a subscription was raised just to keep her alive. The jury found a verdict of death from want of suf- ficient food, and added a sharp censure upon the workhouse authorities. The horror of the case is not, however, in the conduct of the guardians, and, indeed, they may be almost exonerated. The system of grant- ing relief in aid of wages nearly ruined England, the tendency is always to return to it, and the only check yet' discovered is that steady adherence to relief within the house, which in individual cases sometimes works so cruel a wrong. The true horror lies in the occur- rence of such an incident in a city so full of wealth and liberality as London, the co-existence of such suffer- ing for two long years with the charity which would have relieved it. There is not the shadow of doubt that could London have been made' aware of the existence of such a case, the poor couple would have been drowned under benefits, and the fear of hunger, at all events, have passed away for ever.-Spectaior. THE CHANNEL FLEET.-The hospitalities at Liver- pool offered by the liberality of the Mayor and Corpo- ration, and by the members of the Yacht Club, to the officers and sailors of the Channel fleet have been a source of real sentiment and of true eloquence. If oratory be rightly described as the visible expression in words of the thoughts and feelings entertained by the large majority of the persons addressed, then was the reply of Grant, the sailor of the Royal Oak, who returned thanks in behalf of his shipmates of the fleet at the grand entertainment given to the sailors, a specimen of true eloquence. There was no possibility of mistaking that his language exactly gathered up the meaning and reached the precise measure of the senti- ments of his companions. Unabashed by the august presence by which he was surrounded, in true Jack-tar fashion he did not attempt any departure from the everyday vocabulary used among his messmates of the forecastle or cuddy-room, and yet expressed himself so admirably, that in this phraseology he attained to .the dignity of giving heartiness to his thanks, and sincerity to the assurances of his gratitude. So true is it that one touch of real feeling, in whatever language it be clothed, proves us all of kin, and finds an entrance into, and an answer from, all hearts. Admiral Dacres, in more polished and sonorous periods, and yet with a blunt straightforwardness characteristic of the sailor, acknowledged the honours conferred upon himself and his brother officers. He rightly availed himself of the opportunity of offering a word in season. He exhorted the inhabitants of the great commercial borough by whom he was then Conned and caressed, High placed in hall, a welcome guest, that they should assist in promoting the efficiency of the navy by greater attention to the numbers and discipline of the naval reserves. The aphorism of the admiral on this occasion is worthy of general atten- tion:—"The Government find ships-the country must find men." Lord Stanley acknowledged with admirable tact and undisguised enthusiasm the lau- datory mention of the name of his honoured father, Lord Derby; and then, unwilling that so auspicious an occasion should pass without deducing from it the lesson it was calculated to convey, he confirmed the observation of the admiral by declaring, as a member of the lower House, that the Commons wojild "grudge no outlay which was necessary for efficient defence, and that above all it was their duty to avoid the fault of being satisfied with what they had accomplished- of resting upon their oars-and of assuming that what was considered as the perfect model of to-day would be the actual perfect model of ten years hence."—The Press. ——————————————— u

OUR MISCELLANY. s The saying that there is more pleasure in giving e than receiving," is supposed to apply chiefly to kicks, medicine, and advice. Singular Coincidence.—Canning's parting from his mother forms as curious a coincidence as any. He took leave of her with the following expressionj Adieu, dear mother; in August we meet again!" £ when, strange to say, in July Mrs. Canning died sud- g denly, and her son followed her in the course of the r next month. ( Contentment better than Wealth.-A Scotch a nobleman, seeing an old gardener of his establishment ( with a very old, patched, though not ragged coat, f made some passing remarks on its condition. It's a verra guid coat," said the honest old man. I cannot -| agree with you there," said his lordship. Ay, it's s just a verra guid coat," persisted the old man; "it j covers a contented spirit, and a body that owes no c man anything; and that's mair than mony a man cam ( say o' their coat." i The Cotton Famine.-A traveller, domiciled at < an American hotel, exclaimed one morning to the waiter, "-What are you about, you black rascal ? you have roused me twice from my sleep, by telling me breakfast is ready, and now you are attempting to strip off the bed-clothes. What do you mean?" "Why," replied Pompey, "if you isn't goin' to git up, I must hab de sheet anyhow, 'cause dey're waitin' for the table clof." The Convict's Child.- You ask me why my step is slow And why my eye with grief looks wild ? I am heir to shame and woe, A poor, unhappy convict's child; I cannot with my playmates stay, To hear my father's name reviled; I cannot joyous be, and gay, A poor, unhappy convict's child! And still to this lone spot I creep, Where once poor mother sat and smiled; Oh! that with her, in death might sleep The miserable convict's child! Kissing.-The Russians are extraordinary people for kissing. It appears a matter of perfect indifference to him whether he kisses a woman or a man, he seems to do both with the same gusto; and it is not a cool, make-believe embrace, but a series of genuine, hearty salutes, like the smacks of a postillion's whip. The servants and lower orders seize hold of your hand and kiss it on the slightest provocation j and if you should happen to foresee their intention, and withdraw your hand, they will fall to at your arm or shoulder. When you are invited to dinner, at the conclusion of the repast all the guests kiss the hand of the hostess.- Bass'lan Jottings," in Chambers's Journal. Lord Clyde's Love.-Colin Campbell, once upon a time, fell in love and the lady fair was a young widow. She had been married six weeks to a naval officer, when he fell at St. Martinique, and she found consolation in a double pension that secured her an independence but as years rolled by, Lieut. Campbell met her, and sank captive at her feet. But how was he to marry ? He was too poor, and the moment his affianced resigned herself to him, she must resign her pensions too. So they discussed the matter, and post- poned the day of marriage; but that day never came. Before Colin Campbell was in a position to marry, death had claimed his affianced, and he went to Ms grave a bachelor. But the lady's relatives ever claimed him as their own; and one of her nephews [ followed the body to the!; omb. A Singular Looking Group.-As we were s passing along a street one day a singular looking i group arrested our attention. Two men in front carried gigantic artificial lilies, while another held a s long stick, at the top of which was a large paper 1 device, with various other articles more or less curi- ous. The most extraordinary was a kind of square framework, like a lidless box turned upside down, ornamented with white paper cut in scallops all round, so as to form a frill, and supported on four poles, one at each corner.. We had only just completed oar scrutiny of these objects when our attention was at- tracted to the house they were immediately in front of, from which was borne, on the shoulders of two stalwart-looking men, what looked to us exactly like such a barrel as Yarmouth bloaters are exported in. This we found, on inquiry, contained the mortal re- mains of an old woman of seventy-two, who, according L, to the invariable custom of the Japanese, was packed in a sitting posture within this circumscribed space, and thus conveyed to her last earthly home. The box- like construction which we had been inspecting having been placed over the barrel, as one covers eatables to keep the flies off, the cortege moved on; four men dressed almost entirely in white closing the most singular funeral procession I have ever yet witnessed. -A Lady's Visit to Manilla and Japan. By Anna D'A. A Miser's Iron Will-As two travellers were passing on foot through a sequestered valley, their way led them through a lonely little churchyard, upon one of the tombstones of which they deciphered the following singular inscription Here lies the soul of one whose name shall perish." "What a queer old epitaph exclaimed one of the travellers; "the soul of one, forsooth !-how could the soul of a man be imprisoned in a sepulchre ?" Ridiculous rejoined the other, who was a man of few words but much sagacity; and they proceeded on their journey in silence to the next town. But the sagacious man thought that he discerned in the words chiselled on the old marble slab something more than their first sense expressed. Returning privately to the lonely churchyard, then, he removed the slab from its place, and found buried underneath it a heavy iron casket, which, on being -opened, proved to be full of gold pieces. On the inside of the lid of the casket were the following words To him who has wit enough to interpret the true meaning of the words graven upon the tomb-stone I bequeath this treasure. May he make a better use of it than I did! Ha! ha!" laughed the sagacious traveller, "if not your son, I am at least your heir. Never mind the name, old boy. Let it perish." And he went on his way, rejoicing. An Unexpected Interruption. — The late Captain Basil Hall was dining in the house of a friend in Scotland, the party was large, and an errand-boy from the kitchen had been arrayed in some sort of livery, and promoted for the nonce to assist in waiting at the table. The party was rather a dull one, as often happens when a number of guests are brought together promiscuously, and the captain was striving hard to break the ice by relating some of the most wonderful adventures by sea and land. At length he told one story which seemed even to himself almost to exceed the bounds of credibility, for he stopped short, and said, Now, did ever any of you hear anything equal to that ? At that moment his eye happened to fall on the errand-boy, who, believing the question ad- dressed especially to himself, without the smallest hesitation replied, Hoot, ay, mon, there's a lass in oor kitchen that has a sister that has three thooms If a bomb had burst in the midst of the party it could not have created greater sensation.—Frazer's Maga- zine. Remedy for the Injurious Action of Lead Pipes on Water.-The importance of discovering a really efficient means of preventing the injurious action of lead pipes on water is universally acknowledged, and the experiments of Dr. Crace-Calvert have proved beyond question that no proposition hitherto brought forward has been calculated to remedy the evil com- plained of. A discovery, however, has now been made through which the water supplied by leaden pipes may be obtained by the consumer as pure as from the original source. Dr. H. Schwartz, of Breslau, has dis- covered a means by which the portion of the lead forming the interior surface of the pipe may be con- verted into an insoluble sulphide, the natural conse- quence being that the water passing through will be as free from contamination as if glass were used. The means by which Dr. Schwartz effects this conversion are extremely simple. He simply passes a strong solution of the sulphide of an alkali through the pipe to be acted upon, and the process is completed. This solution, which is either a sulphide of potassium or of sodium, is used at a temperature of about 212 deg. Fahr., and is allowed to act upon the metal for from ten to fifteen minutes. It is stated that, in practice, the boiling solution of caustic soda and sulphur is found to answer every purpose.-Mining Journal. A White Man Changed into a Black.-Dr Dickson, physician to her Majesty's Embassy, sends us bhe following authentic report of the very singular case of a white man turned black, a rumour of which has been locally current for some weeks past, but which, in common with most who heard it, we regarded merely as a canard. Apart from the mere novelty of the fact narrated, the following has a scientific interest which well entitles it to much less ephemeral record than we can give to it:—Ovannes, an Armenian, aged twenty-eight years, a native of Geiveh, in the district of Ismid, and a brickmaker by trade, says of himself, that he was laid up for the space of two years with a long and serious illness, during which period he was more or less unconscious. He then suffered for a twelvemonth with intermittent fever, assuming at times a Sestian, and at other times a quotidian type, and which brought on an enlarge- ment of the spleen. This was followed by an attack of jaundice, which occurred about eighteen months ago-and the yellow colour of the skin then gradually changed into its present swarthy hue. The dark colour first manifested itself in his hands and face, and alarmed him very much, believing it to be an aggrava- tion of his complaint into black jaundice, but he was soon re-assured on this score, for he found that as the skin changed from yellow to bronze his health sensibly improved. The entire surface of his skin, excepting the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, is of a very deep bronze-hue such as marks the colour of the dark Abyssinian races.- Levant HeraM. Early Morning on Mont Blano.-Already there was enough of diffused twilight to render Mont Blanc perfectly visible. Though the lake lay full in view, and the whole range of Alps and their neighbour hills for two hundred miles displayed their jagged horizon of grey rock and snowy points, the eye could rest on nothing but the king of mountains. The marvellous resemblance which the outline from the north bears to a massive human head, reclining on a pillow of snow and facing the east, was never more striking than now. The straight forehead, the short finely-chiselled nose, the firm mouth and flowing beard, all lay calm and still in the grey repose of death. For a few minutes each instant brought a new delight, as- the different levels of peaks were successfully gilded by the rising sun. Gradually the glittering points seemed to descend, fixing in turn upon all the salient features of the profile. The mountain woke into life under the magic touch of light and heat: the face was no longer dead, it seemed visible to rejoice in the reap- pearance of its daily companion and friend. The great power of the sun for the last month or five weeks had added much to the illusion which it owed to the peculiar outline of the mountain, for exactly where the shoulder of the reclining giant would naturally lie a huge black precipice had been exposed by the melt- ing or sinking snow, and fifty or sixty miles of distance reduced this to the very fac-simile of an officer's epaulette. The choicest beauties of the scene did not last long nature is not prodigal of her highest efforts of light and shade. The mountains and the snow remained precisely as they were when the first herald. of the sun appeared, but the peculiar charm had left them, only to reappear when another favourable com- bination should allow the grandest portion of our world to assume again for a while its loveliest dress. No sooner had the sun risen than its hydraulic power began to mar the scene: a haze spread over all the plain towards the west, and only paused for a moment in its umvard progress to afford a hurried view of the distant "tops of the French hills, picked out against the unmeaning sky by the golden messengers of the son.— Cornhill Magazine. 4

Riot at the Dartmoor Convict Prisons.— A statement has gone the round of the papers that a. serious outbreak took place, or was contemplated, amongst the convicts in these prisons within the-last few days, and that the presence of the military was required to suppress the feeling displayed. The story first appeared in a local paper. It is now declared to be entirely a canard, and it is authoritatively denied that there has been the least ground for any such i report. The prisons were never quieter, nor the men i in better order, than at present," and "nothing has occurred there to give the slightest colouring of truth to the rumour."