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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 17, Issue 926, 25 January 1871, Page 3

It is said that the United States Government intend taking prompt action about the protection of the Fiji group, and will very shortly have a man-ofwar stationed there and institute a court, to which people of all nationalities may appeal. We are all of us more or less excited by the news from France, but even amidst the horrors of war, the ladies will doubtless feel a special interest in an item of news which arrived " by balloon " from Paris. If is about the fashions — yes, the fashions, for ladies in the bfii, aguered city, harassed though they may be bv thoughts of possible bombardment or starvation, or both..have not ceased to study the fashions, or load them, we may perhaps say. We read that the ' ; Parisian ladies have restored to liberty their own locks, so long hidden under the despotic, ariilkial chignon. Brown plaits, carefully smoothed down, light ringlets, at once graceful and natural, have alone adorned for some days the delicate and pretty heads of our young ladies, who are delighted to have their most beautiful adornment restored to them. It is quite refreshing to hear this. The chignon has been perhaps, one of the most hideous monstrosities of fashion, and still is so, but it is to be hoped our fair sisters, now that the example has been set in Paris, will soon show their good sense by abolishing that monstrous appendage which almost makes oue doubt sometimes which is the head and which is the chignon. Air Thomas Carlylo is in oxtacios with the German successess. The Weimar Gazette publishes some extracts from one of his recent J tiers, in which he writes:—"So far as my reading goes, never was such a war, never such a collapse of shameless human vanity, of menacing, long-continued arrogance, into Contemptible nothingness. Blow has followed blow as if from the hammer of Thor. till it lies like a shapeless heap of ruins, whining to itself 'in the name of a 1 the gods and all the devils, what is to become of us?' All Germany may now look forwards to happier days in a political sense than it has seen since the Emperor Barabarossa left. My individual satisfaction in all that is great, and all England, I can say all the intelligent in Engl-ind, heartly wish good fortune to brave old Germany in what it has accomplished —a real transformation into one nation, no longer the chaotic jumble which invited the intrusion of every illdisposed neighbor, especially of that illdisposed France which has inflicted on it such interminable mischief during the last 400 years—wars heaped upon wars without- real cause except insatiable French ambition. All that, through God's grace, is now at an end. I have, in my time, seen nothing in Europe which lias so much delighted me. ' A brave people,' as your Goethe calls them, and as I believe, a peaceful and a virtuous one. I only hope that heaven will send them the wisdom, patience, and pious discretion to turn to a right tide all thu« has been achieved."

FEARFUL COLLISION ON THE LONDON AND SOUTH-WESTERN RAILWAY. A collision of a very serious character occurred at an early hour on the morning of October 24, at the Bishopstoke Junction of the London and South Western Railway. The Hampshire Independent states that a special cattle train from Exeter, and booked for Chichester, arrived at the Bishopstoke Station about 1.30 a.m., and having run by the distance and stop danger signals, came into contact with a number of waggons, some of them laden with coal, and the others empty. The cattle train consisted of 32 waggons full of cattle, and the result was a frightful collision. Thirteen waggons, two vans, engine, and tender, were thrown off the line. Clements, the driver, was found under the tender "all of a heap" not quite dead, but he expired almost immediately. He leaves a widow and three or four children, resideut in Exeter, to mourn his loss. His companion, Edward Bist, an unmarried man, aged 28 years, living in Stanford street, Southampton, was found upon the tender fearfully hurt about the legs. The engine (Mazeppa) parted from the tender, turned completely round, and falling over on its side became a complete wreck. The cattle suffered dreadful injury, some having their horns knocked off, others their legs broken, and no fewer than 37 were killed. Three waggons ran one on top of another ; the whole of the beasts in the two lower ones were killed, but, strange to say, every one of those in the upper one, eleven in number, were brought down without a scar. Pol ice-serjeant Fox, of the county constabulary, was on duty near the Junction Hotel, and hearing a tremendous smash hastened into the station, where he met a porter named Blake running out for medical assistance. He asked what was the matter, but Blake said he could not tell yet, and seeing something was wrong Fox run up, and saw Clements and Bist lying near the rails. Bist said " Halloa, policeman," and Fox then ran on to Clements, who was still alive. He came back to Bist and told him to keep his pluck up, and his reply was, *' Aiut I doing so, policeman?" and the serjeant then returned to the other man, but he was then dead. It, was thought advisable to take Bist to Winchester, but on his expressing a wish to he taken to the infirmary at Southampton, he was conveyed there upon a stretcher by the company's servants, assisted by the police, and was admitted about four o'clock in the morning. He was in a very weak state, and suffering considerably from loss of blood. Upon examination it was found that both his legs had been smashed above the knee. Immediate amputation was necessary, and both his limbs were taken off, Dr. Langstaffe performing the operation in the presence of several other medical officers. Tne terrible accident was iu reality a providential occurrence, for the up mail from South-* autpton was standing at the passenger platform at Bishopstoke at the time of the collision, and but for the coal waggons stopping the cattle train, it would have been run into with consequences to life and limb which can hardly be estimated. As it was the mail train itself ran over some cattle which had escaped from the trucks up the line and killed two of them. Edward Bist, the stoker of the train in the collision at Bishopstoke Junction, died on Wednesday, at the Southampton Infirmary.