Misecllanea.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXI, Issue 30, 9 April 1862, Page 3

Misecllanea.

The Queen. — Since her bereavement the Queen hag lived in the greatest retirement. Her Majesty | only has one of her children as a companion at dinner, i Even the King of the Belgians, near as he is in blood, and intimate as he has been with her Majesty from her childhood, has not been executed from this privacy. All the members of the Iloyal Family dine together with those relatives or connections who may be staying on a visit at Osborne, and one i 3 in turn selected to bear her Majesty company in her private apartments.— Court Journal. The Chinese Murders. — The Chinese have compensated the families of the men murdered in the Chinese war as follows : — To the legal representatives of Messrs. De Norman, Rrabazon, and Anderson, the sum of £15,000 each. To the leg'il representative of Mr. Bowly, TJie Times correspondent, tho sum of £15,000. To the legal representatives of Private ) Phipps, Ist Dragoon Guards, £2,400. To the families of the eight Sikhs who were murdered, £12,000. To Messrs. Parkcs and Loch, £8,000 each. — Observer. Poison in Confectionery. — A young man named John George Gilbert, lately in the employment of a confectioner at Stepney, has lost his life through the inhalation and taste of benzole, a substance which has recently come into use for the flavouring of confectionery. Another Novel by Dickens. — Mr. Charles Dickens ia said to be engaged on a new novel, the first chapters of which will Bpeedily be published. It will appear, not in tho pages of All the Tear Mound, but in old familiar monthly serial shape with the green cover, with illustrations by Phiz. The Weather in Fhance. — The Paris correspondent of the Morning Herald, writes: — "The weather is bitterly cold, and the distress and suffering among tlie poorer classes are such that municipal collectors go about from house to house to solicit alms on their behalf." Occupation or Rome.— The Turin Opinione of January 21, says : — " There is a question of substituting Italian for Pontifical troops in the patrimony of St. Peter, or at least of establishing mixed garrisons of French and Italian troops, in order to ensure tranquillity in the interior, and deprive the brigands of all refuge. Rome would continue to be occup-ed by the French. The Pontifical government would thus be enabled to dismiss almost all its troops, and be relieved from a heavy burden." The Opinione also states that the Emperor of the French is inking steps with Russia for the recognition of the kingdom of Italy by that power. China and France.— Franco is on the best of terms with China. Besides the Chinese Embassy, it is said that a cousin of his Celestial Majesty is about to be brought up a la Francaise. The Manufacturing- Districts. — From the information gathered by tho Manchester* Examiner, wo learn that throughout the manufacturing districts os the North, there are at this moment 27,000 operativej entirely out of employment, and 161,000 working short time. The Troops in Canada. — We are glad to state that the War Office has sanctioned an advance of six months' extraordinary field allowance to the troops lately ordered to Canada. — Army and Navy Gazette. Revenue prom: Patents. — The Commissioners of Patents have recently issued their annual report. By this it appears that the surplus income over expenditure is estimated at £20,000 per annum. The commissioners are of opinion that this surplus, or a portion of it, should bo devoted to building a suitable patent office and museum, and further recommend that a library should be formed. Mb. Smith O'Beien and his Former Allie3. —Mr. Smith O'Brien has been soundly rated by Colonel O'Reilly, one of the numerous dupes of 1818, whose eyes have been since opened to the folly of the ridiculous "national" movement which some obscure persons in Ireland are seeking to revive. Colonel O'Reilly, who is now in the Turkish service, strongly denounces Ins former chief's letter to Mr. Seward, and the melancholy pro-American demonstration recently made afc the Rotunda by the humiliated O'Donoghue and a number of men who are living examples of the merciful character of the Government under which they lived. He asked Mr. O'Brien how he " dares " to assert that our Irish soldiers would desert to the American side in the event of a war between England and the Federal States. "While they serve, their corps is their country, is their family ; and its honour, its fortune, its weal, and its woe, is [ their owu ; they have proved this on a hundred fields of battle, and will yet. prove it again and again, please j God." Colonel O'Reilly avows" himself a convert to what he calls tho universal faith of " the German philosopher and student, and the Polish, Hungarian, and Italian patriot soldier," that " England is the ark of the liberty of the world." In a similar strain, j writes Mr. "David Buchanan," formerly a "captain" in the rebel army of 1818, who found it convenient to change his name, but now a prosperous gentleman of "Finn Valley, Melbourne." Mr. S. O'Brien has resigned the chairmanship of the Newcastle (Limerick) Board of Guardians, and in bidding his colleagues farewell a few days ago, he stated that if the Court of Chancery refused to sanction his proposal for the settlement of his property he would "seek a premature death in some honourable adventure in a foreign land." Turin, January 23. — Monsignor Carli, an agent of Cardinal Antonelli, has been arrested at Leghorn. He was staying at the Capucin Convent. Suttee. — A correspondent of the Oudh Gazette describes a case of suttee which occurred at the village of Basa, in the Hurdui district. The woman who siicrified herself was a Koormin by caste, and about fifty years of age. Her husband had been dead ten years. When she expressed her desire to perform suttee none of the people dissuaded her from it. The pile was prepared in front of her house during the day, and in the afternoon, about five o'clock, when she had bathed and dressed, she was brought out of her house. At this time some 500 people were collected ; here some Brahmins of Basa, and a neighbouring village, called Menjgaon tried to prevent it, but were overpowered by numbers. They warned them that they would surely come to grief, but they were all evidently bent on having the suttee performed at any price. The woman ascended the pile, and a large pan of ghee was brought her by a Koormee. With this she anointed her arms and legs, and poured what remained over the pile. Then distributing the "actral" to the people around, and blessing and praying for their welfare, she gave the word, and a Koormee woman set fire to the pile. No force was used. The district superintendent has arrested thirty-five of the persons implicated, including the woman who lighted the pile. An old Collier.— During the recent gales the collier brig Brotherly Love, of Whitby, aged ninetyseven years, was lost. The Obituary op the Past Year.— Death has made great havoc this year within the limits both of our political inteVe3ts and sympathies, and of our own realm. Besides four Sovereigns there have been deaths in several royal houses since that of the Duchess of Kent was mourned in this country. The royal family of Portugal has beeu sorely smitten ; an infant of the Queen of Spain has died; and the Count and Countess of Montemoliu in the other branch of the family. The mournful record closes with our own great loss, by which our Queen is widowed, and millions of us became mourners in an hour. The world's great calamity by death was when Cavour departed in June, just alter he had seen the gathering of the first Italian Parliament. Poland lost her aged representative, Prince Czartoryski ; and Russia her well-known spokesman, Prince Gortehakoff. We have to mourn our best War Minister in Lord Herbert ; and in Sir James Graham statesman whose place in Parliament cannot be filled. Several members of both Houses have disappeared, of whom Lord Campbell, the Dukes of Bedford, Buckingham, and Sutherland, and the Earls Fortescue and Eglinton, have been and will be missed in the one, and Mr. Duncombe and Mr. Sharman Crawford in the other. Lord Campbell's death, moreovor, removed the ablest lawyer we have from one House to the other, converting Sir Richard Bethell into Lord West bury. An aged General and Admiral were taken from us in Sir Howard Douglas and Admiral Dundas. The Bishops ot Durham and Killaloo died here, and tho Biihop of

Madras in India; and others have gone from the clerical ranks, as Dr. Cunningham, eminent in the Free Church movement in Scotland ; and another Cunningham, of Harrow, a lender of the Evangelical movement in its early days. We might add the name of the Rev. Patrick Bronte, the father of that melancholy group of doomed geniuses whose works and fate have interested all the world. Literature ha 9 n mournful year, if it were only by the loss of Mrs. Browning ;" but there is also Thomas Flower Ellison (Macuulaj's uid and friend), and Mrs. Gore, and Agnes Baillie, the sister of Joanna ; and Sir Francis Palgrave, whose position as Keeper of the Public Records was both cause and effect of his value as a literary antiquarian. The Russian traveller, T. W. Atkinson, is gone ; and from the company of savans Professor Henslow, Bishop, the astronomer, and Professor Quekett, the n icroscopist. Of physicians, Sir John Forbes and Dr. Southwood Smith died fall of years ; and the lamented Dr. Baly was snatched away untimely. Among our engineers and architects (here has been a great sweep. We have lost Joseph Maudslay, and Sir Peter Fairbairn, and Sir C. W. Pasley, and Sir William Cubitt, and Richard Grainger, the pride of his native Newcastle. In art, music has lost Vincent Novello, and the great Staudigl, and Catherine Hayes ; painting has lost Danby, Lindsay, and Picket-skill ; sculpture, John Francis ; and the drama our old favourites, Farren and Vandenhoff. Old Sir Peter Laurie will be remembered in his own way. — Daily News. Americans in Pabis. — A little unpleasantness has occurred at the French Court in consequence of M. Thouvenel having attempted to limit the host of Americans who attend the Emperor's soirees. Canadian Loyalty. — The Government called out the militia, and 35,000 men have already responded to the call. Officers were there in profusion, and the men were drilled under cover, in buildings provided by the wealthier class. Volunteer companies were instantly formed, and already, it is said, twenty thousand men are ready for ride drill. Arms were supplied from home. The foundries were set to work to rifle the smooth-bore cannon, of which there are plenty in the colonies. The "habitant" joined in the movement as freely as the people of Upper Canada. The coloured men formed themselves into companies, certain, whatever their discipline, to fight with all the ene-gy of despair. The Lake population offered a Volunteer Nnval Reserve. And, finally, the Irish on whom the Federal Government almost relied, declared themselves to a man attached to the Imperial cause, and their most prominent leader solemnly wnrned his compatriots in the Stntes that the day of American sympathies was past, that if, trusting to kinship and creed, they joined the invading force, the Irish of Canada would defend the Government they preferred, and the guilt of "fratricide" would not rest with those who armed to protect their own. And all this was accomplished with as little noise or stump oratory as followed the Volunteer movement in our own country. — Spectator. V otage of the Grenadier Guards. — A SergeantMajor of the Guards (who will doubtless get a "wigging" for his indiscretion) describes the voyage on board the Adriatic, and says : — "The rations were anything but inviting. Tea! God forgive for calling things by their wrong names, for I verily believe it was nothing more nor less than a tar rope suspended in a boiler of water, with a small portion of sugar in it. The chocolate I can say nothing about, for not one in ten drank it. The pea soup, the first day was something awful ; some companies got all peas, a-id the other a kind of liquor. The soldiers on board (like the Persian army, under Darius, which drank the rivers dry) attacked the water barrels immediately after in good force. The Adjutant, after they had emptied one barrel, ordered them away from the Becond; they would not go, but were mutinous enough to cry out 'Throw him overboard.' They then brought "the hose to play 'on them, which soon cleared the ways. They were raging mad with thirst. The cooking, altogether, was abominable; not sufficient boilers. The ' duff,' commonly called pudding, which was supposed to be for dinner, was generally boiled during the night, and issued out before breakfast ; it so stuck to the teeth you could not get them cleaned for an hour after. I was tolerably well up to Christmas Eve, when it commenced to blow a gale. The gale continued the whole of that night and ! Christmas Day, and the day following. A more i miserable Christmas I never passed. Not a particle entered my lips for the three days, although I got a sniff of a goose from the saloon. Then I thought of home, sweet home. The voyage, altogether, was lonely. I thought the other morning, as I lay in bed, that I should like to hear a baby cry, just for novelty's sake." Hint to Sportsmen.— lt is often a subject of remark that the left barrel of a gun bursts so much more frequently than the right, while, as is well known, the right-hand barrel is the most used. This bursting may be prevented by ramming down the charge in the left barrel every time the right is fired, as when the right is used several times in succession, the wadding in the left is separated from the charge and a vacuum ensues between them, which on firing the second barrel, frequently caused an explosion. Buttee. — Butter, which forms so large an artiole of consumption with us, is, comparatively speaking, very little used in many of the Continental States. Bockman tells us that in Germany and among the ancients it was chiefly employed as an unguent, or for inunction at the baths, and as a medicine. It was scarcely ever mentioned as food ; olive and other vegetable oils probably being those chiefly used, as they are still largely, on the shores of the Mediterranean and most tropical countries. At the present day even butter is very little used for fipod in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the south of France ; indeed, dairy occupations do not find favour with the people. — Mark Lane Express.