ENGLISH MAIL NEWS.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1085, 19 January 1872, Page 3

ENGLISH MAIL NEWS.

A free public library has been opened at A young whale has been captured in the Severn. Thirty lay readers are employed in the diocese of London. A Forfarshire gamekeeper lately killed 14 grouse at one shot. A project is afloat for starting another Conservative paper in London. „ . . A tax of 60 francs yearly on 1 every billiard table has been imposed in 'France. A fund is being raised in London for the holding of Gaelic services in that city. Eight and a-half millions of herrings were landed at Lowestoft in one day lately. A project for an underground railway has been laid laid before the Muncipal Council of Paris. Considerable damage has been done by a waterspout which burst on Snafell, Isle of Man. A Madrid astronomer has discovered a new planet, which he has designated " Conception." Seven thousand have been obtained in Paris for the foundation of an Imperialist Club. The cholera has been decreasing so rapidly in Russia as to give hopes of its speedy extinction. The London Guilds, According to one of the liverymen, " are sunk in the slough of gluttony." The total number of visitors to the late International Exhibition in London was 1,142,164. The collectors in the employ of the Bank of France have been forbidden to grow beards of moustaches. Since the war broke out, 100,000 workmen have been lost to Paris through death, arrest, andemigration. The Duke of Sutherland has resolved to construct the Sutherland and Caithness railway on his own account. At Lowestoft, the mate of a schooner has been sentenced to two months' imprisonment for roasting a cat to death. The British Government have been considering a scheme for the appointment of female Poor-La w Inspectors. . The new pier at Anstruther, over which L 60,000 has been spent, has been smashed by the sea for the third time. A newly-erected four-storey house in Dundee fell in with a crash the other day. Fortunately no, one was hurt. . The Emperor of Germany has accepted a pair of golden Bpurs of exquisite work* manship from a Bavarian peasant. Mdlle. Schneider has been presented by an unknown admirer with a magmfioent gold and diamond comb worth LBOOO. An Indian Bajah is about to make a tour, in the course of which he will marry the daughters of three different Brians. Fifty-nine vessels were paid off at Liverpool' in two days lately. On the following days the police and magistrates wdre fully employed. The giving of port wine to racehorses, both during training and before running in races, is becoming common in England. , There are nineteen " free and easies " within five minutes' walk of the Cross, Glasgow, and each is thronged on Saturday nights. The centenary of Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, which occurs on 25th January, is to be celebrated at Glasgow by a public dinner. : The Royal National Lifeboat Institution has now 230 boats, and has saved 20,000 lives since it began operations, or about 800 a year. A woman was recently committed for trial in London for begging, who had already been 76 times in custody for the same offence. A single .' firm of furniture manufacturers in Vienna employs over 4000 workmen, and produces annually about 460,000 pieces of furniture. The number of paupers in London is nearly 120,000. Large though this number is, it is 14,000 below the figures for the same period of 1870. The Queen is reported to have said lately, "Laughter has so long been a stranger to my lips that it seems almost a new sensation." The oldest son of one of the wealthiest princes in India, the Maharajah of Lahore, has died in Paris of starvation. His father had disowned him. The late Grand Vizier of Turkey left debts exceeding LBO,OOO, He was fob much occupied with State business to look after his private affairs. Many of the Parisians wh6 took refuge in Brussels during the war, have taken up their abode there permanently, owing to the cheapness of living. A carriage containing three ladies was lately fired on by brigands near Rome. On reaching home, one of the ladies found a bullet in her chignon. According to Miss Emily Davies, female education in America is greatly over-rated, and is in no way superior to taut imparted in France and England. The London Echo says : — " It has been calculated that something like 37,000 girls are seduced annually in England under the age of Id, and 13,000 at a later period." During the last session of Parliament, Messrs G. and .0. Bentinck, Newdegate, and Beresford Hope delivered 357 speeches among them, Mr Hope alone making 116. Notwithstanding the strike of engineers at Newcastle, the exports of steam-engines from England in August show an increase as compared with the same month last year. Bronze 0-pounder guns, for mountain service ; are being cast at the Royal Gun Factories in England. Those guns weigh only 2cwt each, are 3ft long, and of 3in bore. A man died at Waterford the other day, and at the wake which followed his son killed himself by drinking nearly a quart of whisky. Father and son were buried together. The PallMaU Gazette says that "secret drinking is, without donbt, an increasing vice amongst women of all classes, and especially amongst those who rank as • gentlewomen.'* >.'■:■ : The Birmingham Gas Company was lately swindled by an employe* of L 25,000. It afterwards came out that for 50 years the Company's business had been carried on without a cash book. The weight of the War Office correspondence is 4,000,000 ounces a -year, and the letters issued daily amount to 14,000, ,the cost of the postage on these letters being about L 50,000 a-year. The North British Mail mentions a proposal to construct a tunnel, with suit-

able approaches, under the river Clyde, at Finnieston street, Glasgow,- a central point for a large amount of traffic. A correspondent of the Sporting Gazette says it is rumored that Lord Walter Campbell, brother of the Marquis of Lome, is about to marry a wealthy American heiress, the daughter of an extensive hotel proprietor. The Saturday Review, in speaking of costumes at church, says that " dress ever was, and ever will be, as webs Bpread in the way of woman's righteousness : no doubt Eve frilled her apron of fig leaves before she had worn it a day." A "roving correspondent" at Rome declares that the Pope is entirely in the hands of the Jesuits and the Ultvamontranes, who never lose sight of him lest he should make peace with the Government, or, in other words " reconcile himself to the King." Emigration from England to the United States is increasing rapidly. During the last three months for which an official report was made, the departures from Liverpool weie 5000 in excess of the preceding quarter. Among these emigrants are many skilled laborers and mechanics. A London resident, whose name has not transpired, but who is said to be the renowned Professor Holloway, has offered to give half a million for the benefit of the poor in that city when he can see a mode of satisfactorily effecting this without fear of pauperising the classes he seeks to benefit.. An honest farmer of Surrey has written a letter to a relative in Virginia to say that all the talk in the newspapers about a sanguinary engagement between the Germans and the English at Dorking is a stupid hoax — that he lives in the neighborhood of Dorking, and that nothing of the sort has occurred there at all. The landlord of the hotel at the foot of Ben Nevis tells a story of an Englishman stumbling into a bog between the mountain and the inn, and sinking up to his armpits. In danger of his life, he called out to a tall Highlander who was passing by, "How can I get out of this?" To which the Scotchman replied, " I dinna think ye can," and walked on* The law reports of the Berlin journals have been rather rich lately in curious cases before the criminal courts. A shoemaker condemned for a first petty theft to three days' imprisonment, quite seriously begged the judge to let him undergo the punishment on three consecutive Sundays, because he had so much to do, and his customers could not go out without boots ; and a working man had to be taken into custody because in a drunken mood be committed practical jokes on the corpse of his wife in the coffin, adorning her with a pair of spectacles and putting a bottle of gin in her hand ! Wholesale extermination of rats by poison is now taking place in the sewers of Paris. The numbers of these animals had become so considerable of late as to be a subject of real alarm to the inhabitants. Bulldogs in troops were first employed, but were mastered by the immense number of rats against them, and the employment of poison was decided upon. The sewermen are now engaged in bringing out the dead bodies in wheelbarrows. The Bill on Alsace-Lorraine now before the German Parliament provides that the territory shall furnish a contingent of 15,589 men (six regiments of infantry and four of cavalry) for the German array. The proportion of troops to the general population is thus much less than that fixed for Wurtemberg, which, with a population about equal to that of AlsaceLorraine, has to furnish a contingent of 17,784 men. Wurtemburg, however, is more hardly treated in this respect than any other German State. Formerly its army consisted of 13,468 men only, so that the military burden of the Wurtembergers is 25 per cent, more now than it was before the French war, while that of Baden and Hesse, for instance, is only l£ per cent. more. It is said that more than 40,000 decorations of the Iron Cross— which some of our contemporaries have represented as the equivalent of the Victoria Crosshave been distributed among the German armies since the late campaign ended. That this order is given somewhat too liberally would appear from the revelations of the Carlsruhe Gazette as : to the suicide of the late colonel of the Wurtemberg regiment— the 7th Infantry. This unfortunate officer left the battle-field of Champigny, and remained away sick from a wound which the authorities at Stuttgart considered insufficient to justify his absence. Hence, when his name was recently included by the Berlin War Office in the list of those receiving the cross, he had a private message from his own Sovereign to the effect that he was not ex^ pected to present himself at the Court fete just about to take place, the " silver wedding" of the Royal couple, as his health might interfere with his attendance. The unfortunate officer insisted at once on resigning the command of his regiment and applying for a court-martial. .Receiving no reply to his request, he wrote again, a week later, and shortly after destroyed himself in a moment of despondency. Such is the story written to the Baden paper by his family, in correction of a statement made in the official organ of Wurtemborg. The relative who writes adds that he holds in his possession medical certi6cates showing that the colonel was not only seriously hurt, but that he returned to his duty before the date fixed as safe for him by his surgeon.