English News.

Clutha Leader, Volume III, Issue 123, 17 November 1876, Page 7

English News.

Forty-two persons died of sunstroke in Paris between July 1 and August 15 The death is announced at Bale, in his 56th year, of M. Nefftzer, the founder of the " Temps." The original of Mrs Stowe's " Uncle Tom," the Rev. Josiah Henson, has been preaching in London. The Spanish Government have issued an order prohibiting the display of any signs or symbols of the Protestant religion. The anniversary of the battle of Sedan was celebrated throughout Germany on September 2, by festivities of various characters. During a thunderstorm in August, a meteoric body dscended on Windsor Castle, shattering portions of a parapet, and causing much alarm. It is asserted that the Czar has given Prince Milan three million roubles, and that a large body of Cossacks are ready to enter Seryia by way of Koumania. Young Lord Mayo, aged 25, has thoughtfully provided aero wningscandal for the London season, by eloping with Lady Zouche, who was married only a year ago. A society has been established under the designation of the " Society of the Holy Cross," to the membership of which only priests of the Church of England will be entitled. An Ayr correspondent of a London journal states that the inventory of the personal effects of the late Mr James Baird has been registered, and gives a personalty of &1, 190,000. By a premature explosion of dynamite recently, four men were killed and several wounded, two fatally, at the Government works, Hell-gate, New York, One man was blown to atoms. The Dutch Colonial Department have concluded a contract with Messrs Lfifiiltre and Co., of London, for the construction of a harbour at Bafcavia, with a canal and railway, for the sum of 18,965,000 francs. A dispatch from St. Petersburg denies al) reports of warlike preparations on the part of Russia, and ascribes the rumours to the excited state of the population. The number of volunteers for Servia, however, is daily increasing-, A Calcutta special says great preparations are making at Delhi for the proclamation there on the Ist of January of Victoria's title of " Indae Imperatrix." 15,000 British and native troops will participate. A week's holiday is intended. A tremendous " Amen from the vast congregation followed Mr Spurgeon's prayer, the other day, that the Turks might soon be driven out of Europe, and the whole of the Mahornmedan power swept away from off the face of the earth. The first appearance of the potato bug" in Europe has been made in Sweden, where a number of potato crops have been devastated this season. The bugs are supposed to have had American parentage, and have emigrated with grain cargoes. Cardinal Manning, preaching at Nottingham a i'ew days ago, dwelt at length on the rise and decline of Romanism in England centuries ago, and pointed to the signs now apparent that this country would once more be under the sway of Rome. The inauguration has just taken place of the canal from Amsterdam to the North Sea. It is sufficiently wide and deep to admit vessels of the greatest tonnage, and is one of the most gigantic works executed since the cutting through of the Isthmus of Suez. A duel with pistols was fought on Friday, September 1, between two exofficers of the British army in a wood between Tournai and Plaindain, in Belgium. Neither were wounded, and both are about to appear as plaintiff and co-respondent in the Divorce Court. ' The second great Pan-Anglican Synod will be held in the autumn of 1877. A number of Colonial prelates have intimated their intention ef being present, and the Chui'ch in New Zealand will send its Metropolitan, the Rev. Dr Harper, Bishop of Christchurch. Mrs Wombwell, the widow of the vvorLd-ren owned originator of travelling menageries, died in London on the 3rd inst, aged 89. She had retired from the menagerie business for ten years, but still took an active interest in it, frequently helping less prosperous owners of such exhibitions. The cedars of Lebanon are likely gradually to die out, owing to the change of climate, which is slowly taking place in that part of Palestine. So says Dr Frass, a German botanist and geologist, who has lately explored the district for minerals, under the employment of the Turkish Governor. It is officially announced that the indemnity of 300,000 francs, paid by the Ottoman Government to that of Ger-

many on account of the Salonica outrage, has been handed over to Mrs Abbot, the widow of the German Consul who was murdered. That lady has expressed her thanks in a letter to the Imperial Chancellor. The Bishop ot Durham has written to the Archbishop of York suggesting !h it the Couniy of Northumberland should be constituted a separate see, and offering to relinquish £1500 per annum of his own income, if an additional £1000 a year is provided by private contribution for the endowment of such new bishopric. The project of tunnelling the Mersey is gaining considerable impetus, and ah announcement has been issued applying for the sum of 100,000 dols. for the heading fund. About 30,000,000 passengers cross the river Mersey annually, and the traffic amounts to 3,U00,000 tons, the transit of • which at presentcosts from 37^ to 50 cents per ton. It is affirmed that the Italian cardinals have unanimously agreed to>&the proposal to omit certain minor ceremonies in the Conclave that will be held when the election of a successor to the Papal See becomes necessary. The object of this proposal is to hasten the election of a new Pope, and to keep the Conclave free from all foreign influence. A French physician, who has just been received by the Pope, reports as follows to the Homan correspondent of the Universe : — "The Pope is healthy and vigorous ;he has no disease. All his organs are in perfect harmony, and his countenance, voice and gestures are those of a man of sixty, not of eighty-five. He can, and even should, apart from any unforeseen accidents, live ten years more." Writing to Mr A. M Stewart from Carlisle recently on his way home from Scot'and, Mr Spurgeon sends the following characteristic note : — " Dear Friend, — I have returned to England. I had eleven clear weeks in Scotland, and was asked to preach more than 50 times. That when I came for rest ! and in a Christian country, too! 'A merciful man, &c.' God speed you. — Yours truly, C. H. Spurgeon." According to the London Solicitors' Journal, the English courts are adopting the Transatlantic style of law dress with other American habits. Gowns and wigs are going out. It saj f s : "Mr Justice Field appeared on the bench of Vice-Chancellor Malm's Court in an ordinary morning costume, and the bar, or some members of it, presented themselves in extraordinary costume, one of the barristers arguing a motion in a blue serge jacket." The three months' " Butcher's Bill" of the railways of the United Kingdom, from January 1 to March 30, of the present year, amounts to 315 killed and 1585 wounded. Oi' rhe Isillert thirty are passengers, half by causes beyond their own control, and half by their own careless and negligence. The companies' servants killed numbered 185, of whom 160 had themselves to blame. The coupling and uncoupling alone killed thirteen and injured 102. It appears, according to the Scientific American, that even the cig-ars manufactured in Havana are now composed by no maans entirely of tobacco, but to a considerable extent of " a kind of brown paper," prepared especially for the purpose in New York. Sheets of this material are saturated with the juice pressed from tobacco stems, and are then passed through a sort of printing machine, which gives them the exact appearance of tobacco-leaves. London has another scandal. It is said that a gentleman, whose wife was supposed to be on a visit to her sister, and who was himself in Paris for a short time, took it into his head to visit Biarritz. He saw more there than he bargained for. He had gone after a fair friend, and while in her company he came across his own wife playing the same part with a devoted cavalier, of whom he had long been jealous. Moral : " Served him right," though the werld will not judge both parties equally. The Rector of Cheadle, Cheshire, records an act of heroism by a medical student named Irvine at the Manchester Infirmary. A poor factory operative had his leg recently amputated. He was all but dead, when the surgeon stated that nothing but an infusion of blood would save his life. Mr Irvine voluntered to be bled, and twenty-five ounces of his life-blood were taken from him at his own serious risk, and infused into the dying man, who is now on a fair way to convalescence. The Gibbon Wakefield bust, sculptured by Mr Joseph Durham, A.R.A., has been placed in the corridor of the Colonial Office on a bracket, bearing the following inscription : — " Edward Gibbon Wakefield, author of c The Art of Colonisation ' Born, London, 20th March 1796. Died at Wellington (N.Z.), 16th May, 1862. To commemorate his statesmanlike qualities and disinterested efforts for the impiovement of the Empire, his friends and admirers have presented this bust to the Colonial Office." Two. tourists have had a very perilous adventure on the steps on the cliffs at Bedruthen steps, near Newquay, Cornwall. They were hemmed in by the tide in the evening, but managed to climb up out of danger from the rising tide. Their position was discovered by the chief of the coastguard on the station, but it was found impossible to haul them- up the face of the 'cliffs. Refreshments were, however, lowered

down, and the unfortunate tourists passed the hours as best they could till the next morning, when they were relieved. Near Toulouse, one Moulie, jealous of his wife, concealed himself behind a door with a double-barrelled gun, and shot his presumed passing 1 rival dead 5 he proceeded to the deceased's house and killed his daughter with a hatchet ; he encountered an old woman and endeavoured to beat out her brains ; then he attacked a sheep pen, and hacked off the animal's heads; finally, he suspended'a rope from a tree with a ruining" knot, telling- tvvo men, who wnre looking on, that if they approached he would shoot them ; he put his bead into the noose, and after hanging- a time, was cut down tenseless, but living. In the village of Borg-stedt, near Rendsburg, in Schles\vig--Kolstein, an ancient cremation graveyard has been discovered, containing a vast number of urns. i hese urns, some of which are wrought with considerable art, mostly contain, not the ashes, but the bone splinters of corpses which had not been entirely consumed on the pyre. Between the bone splinters there were found small articles ia bronze and iroi , probably serving as a means of tasteuing the various parts of garments together ; also minute glass-like things which may have been used for beads. The urns on this extensive fire-burial place were ranged close together. Late on a" Saturday night an unusual scene was witnessed an Warrington Railway Station. The wife of an operative living in a neighbouring village had arranged to elope with a minister, and both hsd arrived at the station to catch the iLondon train en route for America, but the injured husband had obtained tidings of what was afloat, and made his way to the platform in time frustrate the design. His first proceeding was to belabour the amorous clergyman with a heavy stick in the presence of the station officials, and he did not cease his castigation until he considered himself fairly avenged. With his wife he was more gentle, and confined himself to a verbal remonstrance. The incident terminated in the return of the woman with her husband, and the complete discomfiture of the " minister." William Tweed, the American, better known as " Boss Tweed," who ia charged with embezzling to the extent of 6,000,000 dollars, was arrested on September 8, in the port of Vigo, on the Spanish merchant vessel Carmen. Tweed was travelling under the assumed name of Secar, with his cousin William Hunt, who was likewise arrested. The search for Tweed had proved for a considerable time fruitless, a porti'ait of him being' indispensable for identification. The Spanish authoities at length received one that had been published "by a comic paper in New York, representing Tweed boating a child, the latter being intended to personify American justice; and this was the means of leading to his arrest. A fearful story is reported at Lloyd's. Last January the Liverpool ship San Rafael, from Birkenhead to Valparaiso with coal, was totally destroyed by fire off Cape Horn. Eleven of the crew wt-re picked up a fortnight later, after having suffered fearful privations, from two of the vessel's boats, and landed in London in April by the ship Yorkshire, from Melbourne. The longboat, containing Captain M Adams his wife, the carpenter, four seaman, anrl three boys, which left the vessel along with tne other boats, parted company, and now it appears that the persons above named all landed on New Year's Island, near Cape Horn, and, as the island is barren and uninhabited, they evidently starvpd slowly to death, as a vessel recentty arrived at Stanley, Falkland Isles, reports having discovered the bodies of eight men and one woman on the island, and these are supposed to be the missing boat's crew of the Sin Rafael, An excursion pnrty left Toledo (Ohio) on August 12 for a trip to the Falls of Niagara. Mr Herman Wiegal, accompanied by his wife, was one of the party. About 430 in. the afternoon, Mr Wiegal, his wife, aud a number of others were standing on the brow ot the hill just above the Clifton House, on the Canadian side. At the point where they were standing there was a sheer fall of something more than 8l» feet from the ground to the river banks. Mr Wiegal was standing very close to the edge, looking down to the river below. His wife stood just behind him, and had hold ot his coat. She was frightened, and telling him not to stand so close to the edge, gently pulled his coat to have him comeback. Mr Wiegel replied that she need not be afraid, at the same time giving- a little jerk to get his, coat out of his wife's hands. The jerk was too much ; he lost his balance and fell headlong 1 over that frightful precipice, striking on the sharp rocks eighty feet below. He struck his head upon a sharply-pointed stone, which crushed his skull and killed him instantly.