NEWS FROM HOME.

(FfiOM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

Edinburgh, October 29th. TERRIFIC QUWPOWUBR EXPLOSION IN

IiO» DOS

Tho London newspapers, which were pining for a sensation to relieve the dullness of their columns, filled as these were with interminable reports of interminable congresses, got o)io with a vengeance on the 2nd iust. About five minutes to five a.m. on that date, a tremendovta explo"sion took place on the canal in Regent's Park, London, through the blowing up of a barge containing some four tons of gunpowder. ', 'lireo barges were being towed along tho canal westwards by a steamtug, and were almost underneath the Northwßridge—just opposite the Avenue Road—when the explosion took place. The effects were appalling. Not only were the bargo and its occupants blown to atoms, but the bridge —a massive stone structure —was utterly smashed, and ruin was wrought in thousands of houses, whoso windows, and in some cases even doors and walls, were blown in. The park keeper's residence a,nd North Lodge, the latter a splendid mansion, were totally wrecked, and it is marvellous that their inhabitants were not killed. Many of tho trees in the Park also were cut short off. The damage to windows was immense ; literally, thousands of them were smashed, and great damage was also done to tho contents of many of the houses. In one of them, in particular, the damage done is especially to be regretted. I refer to the house of Mr Alma Tadema, the celebrated painter of classical interiors. Mr Tadema had caused his house to be fitted up inside in the classical style, without regard to expense, and all his costly fittings were in a moment shivered to atoms. In the Baptist College, 2500 panes of glass were broken. Mrs Howard Paul hud a narrow escape, the glass of hor windows being driven into the wall all round her head where she was lying in bed, but without touching her. Mr Joseph Halton, the late editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, in a letter to the Times, detailed some curious facts regarding the effects of the explosion in his house. " The strangest freaks of destruction," he writes, "are apparent. Here a cumbersome article of furniture in splinters ; there a piece of china perfectly whole. The top of a silver cruet twisted oftj and flying a distance of some yards, while a spirit stand and bottles close by remain entire. Part of the front door, two inches thick, blown up the stairs. A pair of statuettes—one standing within two inches of another— which ia broken into a dozen pieces." At one time the report was current that the explosion had set free the animals in the Zoological Gardens, which are quite alose to the scpno of the -disaster. The statement wa3 incorrect, but it caused great terror, and is said to have hastened the death of one old lady at least. A few of the smaller birds escaped; through their cages being shattered, and the monkey, house was a good deal i'ljured, but beyond this and the frightening cf the animals no harm vr&tj done, the force of the. explosion being fortunately les&ened by a high bank. It was as fortunate as it vr&l rem.arkablo that the plate glass confining tho snakes awl other reptiles was not broken, as'otherwise some 150 boaconstrictors and other large snakes would have been let loose upon Her Majesty's lieges, ]n. a very few hours hundreds of workmen were employed in repairing the injured houses, and the scene was like that which takes place after a siege. . A great many poor persons suffered loss, and for their relief subscriptions are still being raised. One good Samaritan, whose name has not transpired, sent glaziers to a number of the poorest houses, with in-structions-to put in all their •windows, and in reply to inquiries as to payment, to say it was "all right." It seems to be very doubtful whether the sufferers will recover anything in the shape of damages, as the |aw on the point appears to be in a most unsatisfactory state,

wfc^t&Kw? Ther^btal"damage?;,done' iS'^estmiated^at; £33,000, \vh^ is cot^ a'te'Vb6impiitetibn.:-j;;--inIde'.ea^i'ofti':fr'lh'6-'fi^t; blush of the affair/ no less a'' paper .than the Spectator set down the damage at £200,000. The inquest, which extended over nearly three weeks, disclosed a most extraordinary and discreditable state of things.: It showed that it was. a matterof dnily occurrence for 1 barges to: bo towed along the canal laden witte'tons .of gunpowder, as; well as large? .quantities of benzoline and other highly inflammable oils, and that there 'rwere absolutely no regulations against a fire, or. smoking, or wearing hob-nailed boots on board." Under these circumstances, it is astonishing that an explosion did not take place long ago. On one occasion a barge was towed along which had on board 9 tons of gunpowder—the explosion under notice was of four tons only—and a large quantity of naphtha as well, It was morally proved during the enquiry that the explosion was caused by benzoline gas igniting at a fire on board the barge and setting fire to the gunpowder. In view of this and the facts "above mentioned, it is not surprising that the coroner's jury severely censured the Canal Compauy for their carelessness, and the only pity is that the Company cannot be made 'to. indemnify those to whom this carelessness has occasioned griovous loss. •

A BRITISH HURRICANE,

A storm exceeding in violence any experienced in Britain for more than six and a-half years, blew over the whole of England, Scotland, and Wales, and a groat part of Ireland, on the night of the_ 20----21stinst. The havoc it has caused, especially in Scotland, is enormous. Everywhere houses have been damaged and even blown down, as likewise have many factory chimneys and two or three churches. Many lives have been lost; somti in remarkable ways, as, for iustance, in the case of a man who was blown in front of a train and killed. At Kirkcaldy an old woman was lifted up by the wind and de.posited in a trough ; arid at Scarborough a fisherwoman, who had a large basket on her back, was made to describe a complete somersault. At Bea the weather was something awful, and great numbers of casualties occurred, A now paddlesteamer called the Chusan, built for river service in China, -was lost on the rocks at the entrance to Ardrospan Harbour, and her captain, "second mate, and seven of her crew were drowned. All of the latter were coloured men. The Glasgow paddle steamer Mary, while about 300 miles off the Lizard, on her way to Trinidad, broke into two pieces. All hands got into two boats or en a raft, but the captain was drowned in an attempt to swim from one boat to the other. Thirteen of tho men were afterwards picked up by passing vessels, but five are still missing. It was on the Hebrides, however, that tho.most terrible wrecks took place. A splendid now Dundee clipper, the Maja, a vease! of 1000 tons register, was lost there with all hands, to the number of twentyfour. From wreckage that has come ashore, moreover, the large Glasgow ship Isabella Korr. is believed to have been lost, with 30 souls on board. 'If this be true, 20 wives in Greenock will have been made widows by this single disaster. Other wrecks, cf vessels both kuo.wn and unknown, have been numerous, and the shoie near Stornoway is strewn for miles with wreckage to the depth of a couple of feet, while even yet bodies arc frequently seen tossing about in the surf. In oth^r parts of the British seas many small craft have been lost, and many of the steamers from Continental ports have sustained serious Jdamage. Although eight days have elapsed since the storm, the papers are still every clay chronicling some new manifestation of its fury.. On tho day after it blew, the leading Edinburgh and Glasgow papers gave no less than a page and a half each to the accounts of the damage done by it. To them, and tho other British papers, I refer your readers for all further particulars.

T.JJJ3 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS,

Two big schemes with respect to settling the vexed question of how to benefit the agricultural labourers of England hiw« been propounded of laie. The first of fcheae was made public at «, met'this; ot the Warwickshire district of the National Agricultural Labourers' Union. It was then stated that a number of gentlemen were prepared to advance any sum up to £100,000 for the purpose of placing land under agricultural labourers for cultivation, and it was resolved,' stir le champ, to form a land company with £1 shares, and to buy farms to be cultivated in the manner indicated. The other proposal was considered at a meeting of the ExecutiveCommittee of the National Agricultural Labourers'Union on the 26th inst., and was of a much more startling character. I*, was made by the authorities of the State of Mississippi, and proposed the emigration of no less than half a million labourers to that State, the farmers in which were prepared to pay the men's passages. An oiler made at the same time to defray the expenses of a Union delegate to inspect the State and report upon it,was adopted, I may mention hero that Mr Henry Taylor, the Secretary oi the Union, who lately accompanied a batch of agricultural labourers to Canada, has written in a rather disappointed manner of their prospects in the Dominion. From tho United St»4es quite a stream of omi gration back to Britain is going on, almost every steamer bringing back numbers of unsuccessful searchers after Eldorado in the once flourishing Union.

THE COLLIERS AND IRON WORKERS,

These two important sections of tho working classes have fallen on evil times lately. In nearly all the leading mining districts they have had to submit to heavy reductions in their wages—reductions reaching as high "as 20 per cent. The masters appear to havo the best of the situation just now, and it is to be hoped they will use their advantage generously I am glad to say that in more than one leading district they have ghown a desire to do so, and impending strikes of great magnitude have in several cases been, averted by a compromise or by a reference of the disputed points to arbitration. In Northumberland, for instance, a dispute as to a proposed reduction of 20 per cent, was compromised by the reduction being altered to 1-1 per cent, Jn South Wales a promise averted a still larger threatened strike, though the trouble there is not quite over yet. In Fife and Clackmannan the men were obliged to resume work on the master's terms, and it is stated the effect of- the lock-out will be felt in the district for fully twelve, months to come. In the Wigan district there are 15,000 colliers on strike against the wish of their leaders, and in spite of the masters having lessened the proposed reduction in wages from 15 to 10 per cent. This district has had a split with the main body of the Amalgamated Association of Miners, of which it is a branch ; and at the half-yearly meeting of delegates of the parent association, held lately at Birmingham, some lively discussions took place. Gn the same occasion it was stated by tbe President, Mr Halliday, that during the half-year the membership of the Union had deoreased from 106,363 to 57,766. The Dean Forest Amalgamated Association of Miners has an almost equally doleful tale to tell, its membership having fallen since last April from 100,000 to 60,000. While all this wrangling about wases has been going on, some consternation has been created by the discovery that, both in Sheffield and in Staffordshire, Belgian iron had undersold the locally made article. A few more occurrences of this kind will be useful if they have the effect of making the men think.

HOSPITAL SATURDAY IN- LONDON.

Saturday, the 17th October, was fixed upon as the day on which &a opportunity should bo afforded to the wording classes

;6f|]j6Mon^^ w^s;;the|supp^ metropolis"; The arrangements ytevii niade priricijially by CaptainM^rcier; and'Lord; Brabazon, the -latter!tjbeirig theNnomirial, and the' former the actual, leading spirit ;in the affair;;: About 25Q0 collecting boxes were placed in public-houses and other likely situations, and 40 ladies ;also took up public stations in leading^parta; of the town; having, in'addition to their collect; ing boxes, a red^cross banner, and a banneret bearing the inscription, M Contribute to the Hospital Saturday Fund." About a fifth only of tho ladies desired for this purpose could be induced to come forward. Each had a gentleman beside her for protection, though this was fotmd to be altogether unnecessary. Mrs Mercier thus stood?at the Peabody Statue from 9 to 5, with only a few minutes' interval for refreshment, and her zeal was rewarded by her collection—£37 Os Of d—being the largest made during the day. Lady Brabazon, who was stationed at the entrance to Oapel Court, in which tho Stock Exchange is situated, collected nearly £34. lii one of the boxes was found a piece of paper on which was written— u A workman who knows the value of hospitals, and wishes well to the movement, through being out of work is too poor to give." The sum collected up to the present time exceeds £4000, but all the subscription sheets and boxes have not yet been gathered in.

A TOITERINq INSURANCE COMPANY.

Much apprehension and a good deal of newspaper correspondence have been caused by the bruiting abroad of the fact that a life insurance company doing a large business in the United Kingdom was considered by experienced actuaries to be in an insolvent condition. The name of the company has of course not been menr tioned, nor have I been able to loam anything more about its. individuality than that it is not a Scotch office. The question has been freely discussed as to whether s me protection ought not to be afforded by law to, say, a body of actuaries to enable them to warn the public against insuring in a concsrn in such a condition as that under notice. It is stated that it is regarded as possible for the company to weather' the breakers ahead by declining any new liabilities and reducing its expenses as much as possible; and it is added that this course has been urged upon its Directors by the Directors of several other leading companies, as being the only course likely to aveit bankruptcy and the subsequent injury both to the shareholders and policy--holders of the company in question, and to the cause of life insurance generally. A feeling of distrust already prevails towards all Life Insurance Companies, and parsons to whom I have spoken of tho New Zealand Government scheme of life insurance have expressed a strong desire that a similar scheme' should beset on foot, by the Home Government, More will be heard of this matter before long.

CREMATION OF LADY DItKE,

For some weeks past the newspapers have been publishing paragraphs on the above subject, and the various conflicting and supplementing statements contained in them may be brietty summed rip as follows :— Lady Dilke l tho, wife of Sir Charles Dilke, died about seven weeks ago, and as she had before death expressed great horror of burial, and desired that her body might be burned, endeavours were made to carry out her dying wish. Much difficulty was experienced in doing so, however, as the authorities in a number of places on the Continent, where it was Bought to perform the ceremony of cremation, refused to allow it to take place. At length tho necessary permission was obtained at Dresden, sub ioct to the conditions that twelve persons —the majority of them scientific men— should be present, and that the furnace should be left sufficiently open to allow the coffin to be seen. All present at the ceremony were obliged to promise not to make public tho details, but this pledge has not been kept, and a description repulsively miuute has bean given of the gradual consuming of the frame of a once lovely woman. I will confine myself to statingthat in 75 minutes all that remained of Lady Dilke's earthly tabernacle was ()lbs, of dust, which-was placed iu an urn. I ought to have mentioned that cremation took place five weeks after death, tho body having previously been ombalmed. A London penny illustrated paper has published a hideous representation of the ceremony to suit the depraved taste of its readers.

A EEVEREND TUKFITR.

A novel scandal ]\as attracted considerable attention during the month. It seems that the owner of Apology, the horso that won tho St. Leger, is a Church of England clergyman, the. .Rev. J. W. King, Vicar of Ashby-de-ia-Lannde. This fact having come to tho knowledge of his Diocesan, the Bishop of Lincoln, the latter wrote to Mr King asking him to give up his connection with the turf. The sole answer Mr- King vouchsafed was to refer the Bishop to his solicitor, The Bishop shortly afterwards seeing in the papers that Mr King was still interesting himself in racing matters, add'eased another letter to him, written in a most gentlemanly and Christian spirit, reminding Mr King of tho vows he had taken at his ordination, and expressing his (the Bishop's) unwilliuguess to resort to legal measures, Th.o Bishop concludes as follows :—" I now entreat you once more, solemnly and affuctionately, in the name of our blessed Lord, who is riot only our Saviour but our Judge, and in ths name of the souls for which He died, either to relinquish your- pastoral cures, or else to relinquish a course which seems to me to be altogether at variance with the sacred obligations by which you are bound as a clergyman of the' Church cf England." About the time • that this letter was sent to him, Mr King met with an accident by which tho bone p£ one of his thighs was broken —a serious in* jury to a man 82 years old. In consequence of thi's his reply wa3 not sent for some time afterwards, Jn it Mr King stated that for fifty years he had bred horses', and sometimes had them in training for the turf, and that he could not think that endeavours to improve the ' breed of horses in the country wore a scandal in the Church. He oonoluded by saying that legal proceedings would be powerless against, him, and that if lie resigned his livings,'it would not be from any consciousness of wrong, or fear of legal consequences, " but simply," to use his own words, " because I desiro to live the remainder of my days in peace and charity with all men, and to save your Lordship the annoyance, and the Church the' scandal, of futile proceedings being taken against one who had retired for some time from parochial ministrations, and 'is lying oh the bed of sickness at this moment." Mr King's admirers allege oh his bohalf that although he ran horses, he never betted sixpenco on them. Still lie countenanced betting in others, for it is related thar, on it being represented to him, before the St. Leger, that Apology showed signs of lameness, and that he had better have her scratched, he replied—" The mare must run, if she goes on threo legs ;. all Lincolnshire is on her." The concluding letter of the series-r-the Bishop's reply to Mr King's, reply—was published on the 23rd. In it tho Bishop expresses his gratitude, to Mr King for the intention announced in his letter, "to sacrifice private interest to public principle, and for the sake of peace," and he concludes by wishing Mr King the enjoyment of " that comfort which arises from the consciousness of such a sacrifice," and " that consolation from above which is bestowed on the lovers of truth and charity in the time of siokness and sorrow, and at the hour of death." Mr King has sinoe resigned his livings.

RAILWAY. REFORM. T,h,e, J^djand. Railway Company, whi<&

£ wn,s p^intebtlcrtie:th^pj&cticef of; Ihayingjthird^clasasbiamages ra?ejery train- ;. on itrlmes^atf e&inplev w&ctfhas'since; I been very generally foUowed by the*other companies^ [travelling public-—is about; to take a still boltler step iu the direction of railway reformi is to abolish second-class carriages altogether, to reduce the firstclass fares to l^d per mile, and.to make the third-class fare by all trains, whether slow orvfast, Id per mile. The scheme is viewed favxmrably on tho whole by the Press, though some of the papers, and notably the Railway News, doubt its' soundness as a piece of financial policy, and all the rival companies loudly condemn it. It is remarkable that this; innovation was announced just a few days after statements. were put ■in circulation, to the effect that ihe NorthEastern Railway Company intended to increase its third-class fares by nonParliamentary trains 15 per cent., to counterbalance the passenger duty. It was also currently reported that the London and North-Western Company intended to follow the N6rth-Eaatern's example, but this intention must have received the coup de grace from the Midland's move. . The latter is decidedly the most pushing line in England. In addition to taking the initiative in the matter of third-class carriages, as already mentioned, ij> first introduced the Pullman sleeping cars into England. While speaking of -this Company, also, I may mention that it has acquired the site of the famous Debtor's Prison iii Whitecross street, London, where it is going to erect a goods station on a very large acalo, at a cost of £130,000. ,

A Trench scientist claims to-have discovered an insect which makes its home in the middle of cigars.

The Border : Post reports that • Adam Kremss, a German, residing on the Flats, Albury, tied a inanilla rope to tho top rail of a three railed -fence,'made a nooso, put his hea'l into it, and; strangled himself.

A remarkable instance of tenacity of life at Campbell's Creek is reported by the Mount Alexander Mail. Some two or three weeks since a yonng bulf fell down a deep shaft without being noticed; it was missed, and search made without avail. On Tuesday its position was discovered by Mr Hans Appel; it was still alive, and assistance being at hand, it was quickly released. It is expected that, with care and attention, it will do well. .

At the conclusion of some athletic sports at Ventnoy, the Empress of Austria, who had been watching the games for about three hours, especially enquired the name and address of a young^ gentleman named Frank Toogood, who was nrst iu nearly every racing aud jumping competition, and said that she intended to apply the same name to her best hunter. Her Majesty said she had never before witnessed sports of Buch a nature, and what she had seen that day had given her unbounded pleasure. /