ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 778, 15 January 1853, Page 3

ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

From an experiment just mtde, it appears tbat telegraphic despatches can be transmitted from Paris to "Vienna, via the Suasborg railway, in about an honr. A letter from Mentz states that the public crier had announced through the streets of thit town that copies of the petition demanding the Empire were deposited at the Mairie for signature. The largest caf£ in Europa has long been opened at Vienna. Not less than fourteen billiard tables are to be found there, and there are 150 gas lights. Fountains of water play in each .oom. The sale of the Chateau of Bitremont, belongi ing to the Bocarm6 family, which was to have taken place on the 30th ult., has been postponed to the 28, h inst., as only one offer of 80,000fr. was made for it. Very few foreigners, and not a single Englishman, attended, and the majority of the persons there appeared to be more attracted by curiosity to see Madame de Bocarme, who was present, than by any intention to bid for the property. The Courrier dcs Alpes states that consider1 able damage has been done in Savoy by the late rains. The road of the Simplon has suffered much damage, and for 24 hours was in parts impassable. The Springfield Illinois Register relates the following : — " In March last three men in this city agreed to drink themselves to death. The first died in April, the second in Mmy. Tfae survivor, on the happening of the last event, nhowed •igni of breaking the compact, and he kept sober two or three days afterwards, but honour revived, and he died in June. This is literally true." A Breslau journal announces tbe arrival there of a freight of bibles, all under seal, which bad been seized by the Austrian Government at tbe Missionary Society's depot, and sent out of tbe country. Tbe property of the late Mr. Dyce Sombre is likely to afford ample fees for the happy family in Doctors' Commons. The validity of the will of the lion, gentleman has been disputed by parties who expected ro share in the immense wealth which the gentleman possessed, but who, if tbe will is considered valid, will be disappointed, and the whole matter, will, therefore, have to be discussed in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. The property in dispute is said to amount to £750,000. The watering places on the coast have seldom been so much crowded at during the present season. Ramsgate, where tbe usual population does not exceed 11,000, is now accommodating no less than 30,000. Tbe piers, foundation!, and fastenings of the new Battersea Park Suspension Bridge, leading from Cbeliea to tbe proposed park at Battersea, are now nearly completed, and *be bridge itself will be finished with every possible rapidity. Peel statues are rising on their pedestals in many of the country towns. A noble bronze • ratue, sculptured by Baily, was unveiled with | public solemnities in the market-place of Bury on tbe Btb instant. The principal persons present met on the lawn ot a house called ChamberHall, where Sir Robert was born, and from thence, accompt'iied by a large and well-ordered procession, went to the market-place. Tbe ciowd that witnessed and ratified the ceremony amounted to 20,000. Recruiting for the militia proceeds actively in the provinces. It is not thought at present th,at the ballot will be needed to make up the quota in most districts. The men in the iron-works throughout the kingdom have recently demanded an increase of wages, labour being now less abundant than employment. The iron-masters have consented to the demand. They can afford to do so, for recent orders ftom America and elsewhere have been so extensive that there has been an advance of 10s. upon Staffordshire pig iron, and 20s. upon all descriptions of manufactured irou. Some practical steps have been taken to avert the accident* tbat have hitherto attended tbe workiog of coal mines. The coal-owners and engineers of Northumberland and Durham have established a society called " Tbe North of England Institute and Mining Engineers," having for its object not only improvements in mining, but especially the prevention of'acctdents. The wet season, by destroying the broods, has seriously affected the supply of birds. The poulterers cannot get a tenth of tbe supply they require, and what they do get are small and dear. A large staff is now in training in this country to work the electric telegraphs about to be constructed in India. A report of the Railway Passengers Assurance Company shows that, although a great number of persons have assured their lives, the number is insignificant in comparison with those who have not. The gross number of tickets issued by tbe company in 1851 amounted to 122,202, divided as follows : — periodical tickets, 2365 ; double journey tickets, 1844; single journey tickets, 117,993. In 1852 the gross number had increased to 127.615, divided as follows: — periodical tickets, 2398; double journey tickets, 7063; single journey tickets, 118,144. Tbe total receipts during tbe half year amount to £3065 Bs. Id, and this with the balance brought forward shows a total of £4384 Bs. 9d. to the credit of revenue account, out of which the amounts estimated as payable at tbe close of last year, the claims adjusted, aad the working expenses, amounting in all to £3354 ss. 7d. have been paid, leaving a surplus of £1030 3s. 2d. A dividend of 4 per cent, is announced on the paid-up capital. The Mining Journal speaks of a " startling project" devised by Mr. D. S. Browo, who proposes to build a steam ship which shall reach America in 48 hours ; and go to India and back In a fortnight ; bis ship will not go through but on the water. The murder of Mr. O'Callaghan Ryan, on tbe 3d inst., at Wbitesford, county of Water ford, a lew miles from tbe boundary of Tippernry, it ihe first evidence for tome years past of a revival of the aanguioary system of agrarian outrage which

had been operation in that part of the country when Protection and the potato flourished, and the competition for land had been • constant source of alienation between landlord and tenant. It appears by the statements in the local journals that Mr. Ryan was the owner of a small estate near Newcastle, and that he bad been rather popular in the districts as an old and devoted sportsman. For some time, however, he had been in litigation with a portion of his tenants ; and, on the day of the murder, he left his residence nt Clonmel, on horseLnck, to have some ejectments served on those persons. On his return in the afternoon, when passing a wood at Whitesford, he was fired at by some miscreants who lay in wait, and was mortally wounded in the abdomen. An inquest was subsequently held, and a verdict of " wilful murder" returned. A local paper con. tains the following particulars of the affair : It appears that the unfortunate gentleman had som,e refractory tenants on his property, in the county of Tipperary, not far from Kilmanshan, and that he had taken all the legal steps towards their eviction. In the meantime, cot dreading any evil results to himself personally, he proceeded to the property in question, with the view of averting the threatened evictions, if the tenants could be brought to terms ; but whether this plan was ■uccessful or the reverse we have not learned. On bis return in the afternoon towards Clonmel he passed t policeman on the road near Wbitesfort, and had not proceeded more than 500 yards when he was fired at by an assassin from behind i the ditch of a plantation at the road-side. The policeman, hearing the report of tbe sbot, immediately hastened forward, and on passing a turn of the road be saw Mr. Ryan's grey borse standing on the road, without its rider, and two greyhounds close by. He also saw tbe hat which bad been worn by the deceased lying on tbe road. He then saw the marks of persons struggling in the ditch, and following the traces through the plantation found tbe murdered body of tbe illfated gentleman, whom he had but * few moments befor« saluted in the full possession of health and life. The deceased had been dragged towards , tbe brink of a lime-kiln in the plantation, into which the ruffians intended to throw him, when they were disturbed by the policeman., He was shot in the abdomen ; but tbe inhuman wretches could not be satisfied, nor their vengeance appeased without making assurance doubly sure by .battering his head to a mummy both with stones and also with a sharp instrument (such as ahatchet,) with which they inflicted some fiightful wounds. Instant alarm waa given; the police were on the alert ; the country was scoured in all directions, but we are sorry to say without effect. Such hat been tbe miserable fate of poor Mr. Ryan, tban whom a more amiable man never breathed. He was not robbed, as his watch and v aome change remained.

What I- saw at the Diggings. — (By one who has mentally visited them.) — I s«w tbingt, which, ms gentleman of England, living at home at ease, I should hare dreamed myself perhaps . tlectro-biologiied to dream of : — I saw bachelors of rcisogynic aspect sedulously rocking the cradle. I aaw several members of the Meddler .family diligently minding their own business instead of everybody else's. I saw many t social bore — boring, literally, to some purpose here. I aaw lots of London loungers enjoying the utter reverse of " otium cum dig." I saw several of my "used up" friends experiencing quite a new sensation in the pickaxe, I saw that gourmand Guttler pitching contentedly into a kangaroo chop. I saw that ex-fop, S Wellington, dressed in corduroys and high-lows, arid most complacently inlent upon his last week's shirt. (For I mentally italicised that emphatic singular.) I saw many an emigrated pauper picking up a decent living for himself, here, merely with his pickaxe. I saw many an expatriated Mawworm, who, deeming gold to be the " root of all evil," certainly proved himself roost zealous in assisting to eradicate it, and finally, I saw on all sides abundant evidence to show that ooe of the richest fields for enterprise was now — the gold field. — Punch.

The Weathee in England. — For many years past there has not been experienced in this country such severe heat as within the last three weeks. The thermometer reached at one time to 90° in the shide. This extraordinary state of the atmosphere has uot been confined to England ; we have similar accounts from Madrid, Parif, and other placeiion the continent ; and we letrn that the cholera has broken out in Poland, on the borders of Prussia, and at the mouths of the Vistula in Russia. Numerous cases of death from excessive heat are reported in different pans ,of the country*^ At Cold Aston an old man dropped dowiignptd while whetting his scythe ; and near NortlfflSch a shepherd died in the fields. Several men bad to be carried from the fields near Newport Pagnell, and one subsequently died. Three fatal cases are reported in Berkshire, Several cases of coup desoleil occurred in London. In one of them, a Mr. Moore was struck while riding on the top of an omnibus, and when he got home, became so violent that it required five men to hold him down. In the other, a labourer, working in a nursery ground, suddenly dropptd down, and was found senseless. He was immediately bled in the temples, but he died in two hours. Another occurred at Harrow, where a labourer, aged forty, was struck while haymaking, and died in four hours. The same day a nursery-maid, aged fourteen, who had been ont wheeling children, complained of headache, and laid herself outside the bed, from which she 4ell to the floor in a few hours afterwards a lifeless corpse and quite black. A cheesemonger, in Tottenham-court-road, while standing in bis shop, was visited by a friend, who said to him, " It's a very hot day." To which deceased replied, "very" and instantly dropped down dead. Mr. Derbyshire made tpost mortem examination, and found in the right ventricle of the heart a rent produced by the heat of the weather, and which caused an effusion into the pericardium, and that produced death. The same day a foreman, or store-keeper, in the service of the London Dock Company, was at his usual occupation when he complained of the excessive heat, and exclaimed " Ob, my head is very bad." He then atked the men around him to procure medical assistance, but before the surgeon conld get to the deceased be was quite dead. In New Ox-ford-street several females fainted, and were carlied into shops for assistance. A youth in the employ of Mr. Suggett, camphint lamp-mauu-factorer, Coldbath-square, fainted from the ex. cess of beat ; aud it was some time before he recovered consciousness, — Home News, Aug. 2.

The probable effects of the late gold discoveries on European currency and prices form tbe subject of an elaborate essay by M. Leon Faucber, in the last number of tbe Revue dcs Deux Mondes. M. Faucber believes that tbe great influx of gold will be but temporary, and tbat tbe area on which it will operate is so vast that tbe general level of value will be affected to a very small extent. A quarter of a century must, be says, elapse before, at tbe present rate of production, a sum of gold is accumulated equal to tbe annual income oi England alone. ' One-half, moreover, of the population of Europe is insufficiently provided with metallic money ; and tbe stream of gold const overflow into Spain, Austria, and tbe provinces of tbe Danube, as well as into tbe remoter regions of India and China, before it saturates the circulation of the commercial nations — England, Belgium, Holland and France. The Man who ought not to Emigrate. Tbe man who cannot shave without hot water, or pull off bis boots without a boot-jack ; tbe man who cannot get up without a glass of pale ale in tbe morning, or go to bed without a " basbawed lobster," or devilled bones ; the man who has never carried anything heavier than bis cane, or cut anything stronger than his beard ; tbe man whose only sowing bas been limited to his wild oats, and his only reaping to Eisenberg cutting twice a year his corns ; the man who has never handled any other bill but a tailor's, and only knows what a spade is by seeing it in a pack of cards ; tbe man whose only knowledge of " hedging bas been derived from tbe race course, and of " harrowing" from a Victoria melodrama ; tbe man who only cares for a horse as something to bet upon, and looks upon sbeep as " creatures from the country" that are fleeced at tcarti;- tbe man that imagines that a bull walks on two legs like those he has seen in the Stock Exchange, and whose skill in shooting has been restricted to a few shots at the moon ; the man who merely knows a bank and a rake from what he lias seen at a rouge'Ct'tioir table ; tbe man whose footing in society has always been upon the very best polished leather boots, and whose longest walk in j life bas beeen through tbe Insolvent Debtors' Court ; the man who bas never known what it is to earn a dinner, or to enjoy one without French wines; the man who would think himself degraded if he was seen carrying a parcel ; such a man of all others ought not to emigrate. Better far for him to lounge and 101 l on sofas, and lisp, and smoke, and yawn, in a country that can appreciate him, doing no harder work than digging occasionally in the morning papers, or in the gold districts of his mother's pocket, than to carry those same qualities to a distant land where they would be thrown away, like early purl before Quakers. Such a man, we repeat it, ought to be the very last in England to emigrate ! — Punch.

Lloyd's List a Century Ago. — The oldest published Lloyd's List in existence bears date 1745, and is in possession of the committee of Lloyd's, being somewhat more than a century old. We are thus enabled to draw a tolerably accurate comparison between the shipping operations of the middle of the last century, and the middle of the present century. The old Lloyd's List appears to have been the last that was published oncetn the week. It is printed on a narrow slip of paper about a foot in length : and, besides containing the price of bullion and the stocks, gives the rateß of exchange on foreign countries ; these are on one (tide. On the reverse is wbat was then termed the " Marine List," which gives a list of 23 arrivals and 12 departures at English ports, with 34 ships at anchor in the Downs. There are also notices of four arrivals in Irish and foreign ports, with advice of three British ships taken by the enemy's privateers. Turning from this document which gives a week's news, to one of the year 1800, published daily, we find it contains, on an average, notices of 78 sbips. This was in time of war ; and comparing numbers, we find the abips noticed as ten to one against the previous date. Following up the comparison, we turn to a Lloyd's List for 1850, one of the fullest of these covered 15 pages in tbs arrivals and loss books for one day, giving the names of about 460 vessels — being six times the number of those in 1800, and as numerous as the lists of one entire year in the previous century. — Dickens* Household Wordt. l