MISCELLANEOUS.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 148, 4 January 1845, Page 175

MISCELLANEOUS.

The Lottery of Justice. — Mr. O'Connell, at a dinner given to him at Limerick during the progress of the State prosecutions, told the following anecdote in illustration of the lottery of juries: — " After all, juries are lotteries. If we draw a prize, so much the better for us ; and if we draw a blank, we must only abide the result, and we are ready to do so. When the late Chief Justice was Solicitor-General, a man was placed at the bar, in this very town, charged with the murder of a man named Morgan. I was for the defence, and Baron Smith was the judge. The Solicitor-General asked me what witnesses I had, and what my line of defence would be. I told him that the only witness I should produce was the man who was said to have been murdered. I placed him on the table, and the judge told the jury that there was an end of the case, and to acquit the prisoner ; but the jury, notwithstanding, brought in .a verdict of guilty, one of them assigning as a reason for doing so, that the prisoner at the bar had killed a horse of his, which was a murder in his estimation, but he had no other way of getting at him."

Influence of thb Jews. — In Mr. D'lsraeli's new novel, " Coningsby, or the New Generation," we have the following picture of the influence of the Jews in various European nations : — " ' I resolved to go myself to St. Petersburg. I had, on my airival, an interview with the Russian Minister of Finance, Count Cancrin ; I beheld the son of a Lithuanian Jew. The loan was connected with the affairs of Spain; I resolved on repairing to Spain from Russia. I travelled without intermission. I had an audience immediately on my arrival with the Spanish Minister, Senor Mendizabel; I beheld one like myself, the son of a Novo Christiano, a Jew of Aragon. In consequence of what transpired at Madrid, I went straight to Paris to consult the President of the French Council. I beheld the son of a French Jew, a hero, an Imperial Marshal, and very properly so, for who should be military if not those who worship the Lord of Hosts?' ' And is Soult a Hebrew?' ' Yes, and several of the French marshals, and the most famous — Massena, for example; his real name was Manasseh. But to my anecdote. The consequence of our consultation was that some northern power should be applied to in a friendly and mediative capacity. We fixed on Prussia, and the President of the Council made an application to the Prussian Minister, who attended a few days after our conference. Count Arnim entered the cabinet, and I beheld a Prussian Jew.' "

New Light to supersede Gas. — A letter from Paris, dated October 21, gives the following interesting account of the first public trial of an experiment which has been more than four years in preparation, for fixing at a given point the electric fluid, and making it applicable to the purpose of lighting the streets and private houses : — " On one of the bases of the statues called the Pavilion de Lille, on the Place de la Concorde, a glass globe of apparently twelve or thirteen inches diameter, with a moveable reflector, was fixed in connexion with a voltaic battery, and a little before nine o'clock the electric fluid was thrown into it by a conductor. At this time all the gas lights of the place, about 100 in number, were burning. As soon as the electric light appeared, the nearest gas lights had the same dull, thick, and heavy appearance as oil lamps have by the side of gas. Soon afterwards, the gas lights were extinguished, and the electric light shone forth in all its brilliancy. Within 100 yards of the light it was easy to read the smallest print : it was, in fact, as light as day. The astonishment of the assembled multitude was very great, and their delight as strong as their astonishment. The estimate made by scientific persons who were present was, that the electric light was equal to twenty of the gas lamps, and consequently that five of these lamps would suffice to light the whole Place most brilliantly. As regards the expense of production, nothing positive has transpired, but I think I may safely assume that it would be considerably less than that of the generation of gas, whilst the first outlay for machinery and conductors would not amount to a twentieth part of that required for gas-works. There would also be another great advantage in the electric light. It gives out no bad smell. It emits none of those elements which, in the burning of gas, are so injurious to health ; and explosion would be impossible. The only danger that would arise would be at the battery itself, but that would be under the control of competent persons ; and even in this respect there would be no danger, even to unskilful persons, with an apparatus of moderate size. Internal lighting would be as practicable as external lighting, for by conductors the fluid would be conveyed to every part of the house. The experiment performed last night was with a voltaic battery of two hundred pairs, composed

as follows : — Ist, an outer globe of glass ; 2dly, in this globe a cylinder of charcoal, open at both ends, and plunged in the nitric acid contained in the outer globe; 3dly, in" the cylinder of charcoal a porous porcelain vase, containing acidulated water (with sulphuric acid). This replaces the cloth in the common battery ; 4thly, on the porcelain vase a cylinder of amalgam of zinc plunged in acidulated water. The pile was on the Pavilion de Lille; two copper conductors from_ the two poles, and pointed with charcoal, lead to an empty globe, from which the air has been exhausted. The two fluids, on meeting, produce a soft but intense light. I understand that the experiment was considered highly successful by the authorities who were present, and thai it is to be repeated on a larger scale. Should the thing work as well in a general way as it did last night, and the cost be lew thin that of the gat, which it must be, there

will be a dreadful revolution in gas works. I have heard it asserted by persons who are acquainted with M. Achereau, the gentleman who performed the experiment last night, that a company for the supply of the electric light would realize a handsome profit on charging only a sixth of what is now paid for gas. The strength of the electric fluid did not appear to me to exceed that of hydro-oxygen; but it is much more simple in the apparatus required, and much less costly in the expense of production. The hydro-oxygen light requires a double and most expensive apparatus, and is only applicable to a few localities. The electric light may be applied externally and internally, in any place.

Political Economy of French Literate. — Madame George Sand, who of all French writers most turns her attentions and sympathies to the condition of the lower classes, has made the singular discovery that nothing but cow-beef is eaten in the French provinces, and cow-beef of a very bad kind, whilst all the good meat goes to Paris. It is a, great pity that Madame Sand should have stopped short in this path of discovery. By venturing a little farther she would have ascertained th»t twothirds of France, instead of being obliged to put up with cow-beef, were compelled to be contented with no beef at all, nay, that onethird of the population was unable to obtain the luxury of wheaten bread, being forced to iive on chesnuts, on potatoes, and on other substitutes for the real staff of life. Madame Sand has, however, limited her sympathies and researches to the matter of cow-beef, and she has discovered that the great cause of this provincial misery is centralization, or, in other words, the undue attraction of fat cattle to the metropolis. One way of remedying this would certainly be the destruction of the capital, or to treat its population as that gathered about Babel was treated, in being scattered in a provincial direction to the four winds of heaven. We doubt much, however, if this amiable measure would tend to the consumption of their fat cattle, or even to the production of such, by the worthy provincials. The soil and clime of France, with trifling exceptions of region, are dry and unfavourable to pasture. The division of the soil in minute portions, amongst proprietors without capital, without the admixture of any commercial spirit in their plans of agriculture, renders the feeding of fat oxen a difficult and rare occupation. Each farmer, indeed, wants a cow or cows, and cow-flesh, such as it is, may always be had ; but the produce of stall-feeding or even of the fat pasture is foreign to the wants, the habits, or the genius of the French provincial. Free trade, had Madame Sand condescended to use a word or an idea so unpopular in France, would have afforded a remedy more effectual than any castigation inflicted on the metropolis. The Teutonic race are the true cattle tenders and beef producers ; and South Germany, from the Rhine to the Drave, is one immense pasture field, which would supply France with beef and take from France the value in a hundred com- - modifies. But French romance has not yet discovered the sentiment of free trade. The subject of the cattle duty was discussed some two years ago in the French House of Peers, from amidst which a noble landed proprietor arose and declared that every Frenchman who had a spark of patriotism should be contented with cow-beef for his dinner, and look for no better than what France could with ease produce. Yet we will be bound to say that the patriot peer partook of the very best filet he could get, that very day, at the Club dcs Proprietaires. — Examiner.

A Female Horticulturist. — Mrs. Gardiner speaks the true "Language of Flowers," not using their buds and blossoms as symbols of her own passions and sentiments, according to the Greek fashion, but lending words to the wants and affections of her plants. Thus, when she says that she is " dreadful dry," and longs for a good soaking, it refers not to a defect of moisture in her own clay, but to the parched condition of the soil in her parterres : or if she wishes for a regular smoking, it is not from any unfeminine partiality to tobacco, but in behalf of her blighted geraniums. In like manner she sometimes confesses herself a little backward, without allusion to any particular branch, or twig, of her education, or admits herself to be rather forward, quite irrelevantly to her behaviour with the other sex. Without this key, her expressions would be often unintelligible to the hearer, and sometimes indecorous, as when she told her neighbour, the bachelor at Number Eight, apropos of a plumtree, that "she was growing quite wild, and ! should come some day over his wall." Others again, unaware of her peculiar phraseology, would give her credit, or discredit, for an undue ■hare of female vanity, at well as the most extraordinary notions of personal beauty. " Well," she said one day, " what do you think of Mrs. Mapleson?" meaning that lady's hydrangea. " Her head's the biggest, but I look the bluest." In a similar style she delivered herself as to certain other subjects of the rivalry that is universal amongst the suburban votaries of Flora : converting common blowing and growing substantives into horticultural verbs, as thus : " Miss Sharp crocussed before me, bat I snowdropped sooner than any one in the Row." But this identification of herself with the objects of her love was not confined to her plants. It extended to everything that was connected with her hobby — her gardening implements, her gardenrails, and her garden-wall. For example, she complained once that she could not rake, she had lost so many of bar teeth — she told the carpenter the boys climbed o~er her so, that he should stick her alf over tenter-hooks — and sent, word to her landlord, a builder, the snails bred so between her bricks, that he must positively come and new point her. — Hood.