Miscellaneous.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VIII, Issue 505, 5 September 1857, Page 5

Miscellaneous.

At a late meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, Sir Roderick Murchison announced that the Government had agreed to propose to Parliament a vote for the North-west American exploring expedition ; and that the expedition would proceed in about a fortnight, under Mr. Palliser, to its starting-point to the west of Lake Superior, for the purpose of surveying vast tracts of British North America, particularly the country watered by the affluents of the Saskatchewyan, and with the view of examining the Southern portion of the Rocky Mountains m our own territories, and possibly of discovering a new practical passage to Nancouver Island. Sir Roderick further stated, that the expedition would be accompanied by Dr. Hector, who had been recommended by him as a geologst,, naturalist, and surgeon; by Lieutenant lakistop, R.A., F.R.G.S., U take inagnetical observations; and by a botanist. The burgomaster bf Saaz in Bohemia has cruelly ordered sixty Jewish families to quit the town in a fortnight; but as the Austrian Government/since 1848, has allowed any Hebrew that pleases to settle in Vienna, it is thought that his ukase will not be allowed to take effect. The Bishop and^^ ;r'^'" "religious

meeting held a short time back in Islington (says a correspondent), when the chair was taken by the Bishop of London, the crowd that assembled to see and hear his Lordship was so great that it was found necessary to station two or three police at the doors to prevent the ingress of any more people. In the course of the evening, however, a carriage drew up at the doors, and a lady alighted, and, on perceiving the great crush, said to one of those important public functionaries, "I am the bishop's lady." "No, no," replied he, " that dodge don't pay." " I I assure you that I am Mrs. Tait," reiterated the lady. " There I've got you," replied the unecclesiastical "Bobby," "for his Lordship's name just happens to be Archibald Campbell!" At length some gentlemen came forward, and immediately escorted her Ladyship to a becoming place on the platform. The Bishop seemed highly entertained at the joke.— Essex Herald. A Considerate Parent.—" Always be prepared for death." This was the admonition of a Missouri elder, as he placed in his son's belt two bowie knives and a pair of revolvers. Two IN a bed. —Ned and Charley were room - mates, but they occupied different beds. Ned's bed was so situated that he could get into it either side—that is to say, it was placed in the centre of the room—which Ned found very convenient on certain occasions. One night Ned and Charley had been out, and on returning, which they did at early morning, both were considerably elevated. However, they walked up to the room with an air which seemed to say, "Not so very dam'd drunk after all,"and sought long and patiently for matches and lamp. After knocking two pitchers off the wash-stand and smashing the looking-glass, they finally gave up the search and went to bed—yes ; yes, that's the word, but owing to the darkness and the confusion of their senses, they made a slight mistake. _• In short, Ned's bed had the honour of receiving the two friends—Charley getting in on one side, and. his companion on the other. " I say, Ned," cried Charley y touching somebody's! calf, "there's a fellow in my Jbed." "Wonderful coincidence," exclaimed Ned, feeling a strange elbow in the region of his ribs, "there's somebody in my bed too". "Is there, though"? said Charley, "let's kick 'em out." "Agreed," said Ned. . And accordingly the two friends began to kick. In about a minute and a half Ned was sprawling on the floor, and Charley was left in possession of the bed. For a moment after the fall all was silent. "I say Ned," cried Charley. "What ?" said Ned, sulkily.. "I've kicked my fellow out." "You are luckier than I am, said Ned, " for mine has kicked me clean on to the floor." . '-■ Me. Gladstone catching a Taetae.-—Mr. Gladstone went down into Flintshire during the late general elections to give the weight of his prestige and talents to the side of his relative Sir Stephen Glynn, who was nevertheless defeated. On the occasion of one of his speeches on the Chinese Question, in which he displayed his maudlin and impractical peace-at-all-price views on the subject, he received the following eloquent castigation from a Mr. James Hall, a local manufacturer:—" Gentlemen,—This is the Eight Hon. Mr. Gladstone, who sat in the Cabinet, and consented to the policy that led us into the Russian war. (Cheers). You recollect the state of alarm into which the nation was thrown by the graphic and heart-rending details of the suffering, starvation, and death of our brave troops, which proceeded from the immortal Russell of ' The Times.' (Great cheering). You recollect when Mr. Roebuck moved for a committee to inquire why the people's brave army were dying of hunger and cold, while the people's ships were laden with clothes and provisions within seven miles of the scene of their disasters. (Cheers). Now, what do you think was the conduct of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone and his associates ? Under a pretended offence at Lord Palmerston's acceding to the appointment of this committee, they left office and fled. (Shame). Yes, Sir (turning to Mr. Gladstone), while the honour of England, and', for aught we know, her liberties, her freedom, and domestic firesides, upon which you have been so eloquently descanting, were trembling in the balance (immense cheering)—in the hour of your country's peril—in the hour of the nation's need—you exemplified a total want of that leading characteristic of a great statesman —true courage. (Great cheering). I tell you, Sir, the nation trusted you, and you have deceived her (cheers); and I hope and believe the time is far distant when you will have another opportunity. (Great cheering). One grain of true patriotic courage will outweigh, in the estimation of the people of England, all your commanding talents, plausibility, and powers of persuasion. (Loud cheers). I tell you, Sir, and and in doing so I disclaim all feelings of personal disrespect, that you are a)gi*eat political coward. (Great cheering). I should think when you meet a man in a red coat, who has maintained the honour of his country, you will blush in his presence. (Cheers). The humblest soldier who wears a Crimean medal on his manly breast is a patriot far above your mark. (Loud cheers)." " Eminent Engineering."—Not one of the least interesting facts mentioned *by Mr. Lowe, in his speech on Friday night, was that a harbour had been constructed at Ramsgate as a Harbour of Refuge* at an expense of £2,000,000, in which there is only_ eight feet of water at low tide. So that, in point of fact, it is not a Harbour of Refuge at all, except for small craft. There is, however, another Harbour of Refuge, nearer toTis, which promises to cost the country another £2,000,000, which is not only a Harbour of Refuge, but is a Harbour of ; Destruction. Some years ago we called publio ' attention to this monstrous job; but no one then, ajid no one now, is found with courage sufficient to inquire into its origin, progress, and

danger; and so Holyhead Mountain continues to be tumbled into the sea at a vast expense. It was got up a 8 a delusion. It was a sop thrown to the Irish members as being a more convenient packet station than Liverpool. It was helped on by the promoters of the Chester and Holyhead Railway, who promised to pay £200,000 towards its erection, but not one penny of which did they ever contribute. It has been altered and realtered in its size and ■ shape. First, it was so ingeniously planned, that not only was there great difficulty in getting a vessel into it, but so that when in she could never be got out again. A straight embankment has therefore been brought round in a curve; but all to no purpose, the ability of the " eminent engineers" employed, and whole sackfulls of public money, and unlimited supply of mountain, all failing to render a harbour of refuge of the least possible value on a promontory. So we said when the scheme was first broached, and in doing so we only echoed the sentiments of every nautical man of common experience ; but" eminent" engineers and " great contractors" knew better; and so the works proceed.— Liverpool Albion. Liquor Law in New York.— The New York State Legislature has passed an Act to regulate the Sale of Intoxicating Liquors, of a stringent character. It contains the following clauses :—■" No inn, tavern, or hotel keeper who shall trust any person other than those who may be lodgers in his house for any sort of steong or spirituous liquors or wines shall be capable of recovering the same by any suit. Licenses that may be granted (excepting to inn, tavern, or hotel keepers) to sell strong or spirituous liqu; n or wines in quantities less than live gallons shall not be deemed to authorize the sale of any strong or sprituous liquor or wine to be drunk in the house or shop, outhouse yard or garden." [The sale of liquors "to be drunk on the premises" is therefore entirely prohibited.] Another section says :—" It shall not be lawful to sell intoxicating liquors to any person guilty of habitual drunkenness, nor to any person against whom the seller may have been notified by parent, guardian,, husband, or wife from selling intoxicating liquors. It shall be the duty of Magistrates and overseers of the poor in any town or city, on complaint and satisfactory proof by a wife that her husband "is an habitual drinker of intoxicating liquors, to issue written notices to all dealers in intoxicating liquors forbidding the sale or giving of such liquor to such husband for the term of six months from the' date of the notice, under a penalty of $50.'* A Circuit Joke upon Boswell. — The worst circuit joke played upon him arose out of his Bis inebriety. The story is told in Lord Eldon's anecdote-book:—At an assizes atl Lancaster we found Dr. Johnson's friend, Jemmy Boswell, lying upon the pavement, inebriated. We subscribed at supper a guinea for him, and half-a-crown for his clerk, and sent him, when he waked next morning, a brief, with instructions to move for what we denominated the writ of " Quare adhsesit pavimento," with observations duly calculated to induce him to think that it required great learning to explain the necessity of granting it to the judge before whom he was to move. Boswell sent all round the town to attorneys, for books that might enable him to distinguish himself, but in vain. He moved, however, for the writ, making the best use he could of the observations in the brief. The judge was perfectly astonished, and the audience amazed. The judge said—"l never heard of such a writ; what can it be that adheres ' pavimento ?' Are any of you, gentlemen at the bar, able to explain this ?" The bar laughed. At last one of them said—" My lord, Mr. Boswell last night ' adhsesit pavimento.' There was no moving him for some time. At last he was carried to bed, and he has been dreaming about himself and the pavement." We suspect that Lord Eldon set down this anecdote from hearsay, and added or coloured some of the details, for it is difficult to suppose that the bar would have suffered the joke to be carried such lengths, or have permitted such a ruinous self-exposure had the victim been ever so willing.— Edinburgh Hevietv. The most Useful Letters of the Alphabet. —To those who have never considered the subject, it might appear that each letter of the alphabet is of equal importance with the others in the formation of words ; but the relative proportions required in the English language have been pretty accurately settled by long expei'ience to be these:—a, 85 ; b, 16 •c, 30; d, 44 ; c, 12.0; f, 25; g, 17; h, 64; i, 80; j, 4; k, 8; 1,40; m,30; n,80; 0, 80 ; p, 17; q, 5 ; r, 62; S, 80; t, 90; U, 34; V. 12; W, 20; X, 4,; y, 20 ; z, 1. Hence the letter c is used sixty times oftener than, z, and about thirty times offceuer than j, x, or q.— Amateur Printer's Handbook. The French Press and its Government. —One of the aims of this Government is, in one way or the other, to possess tho Parisian press. Its first step was to refuse any further " privileges," namely, to oppose the creation of any new papers. This done, the old journals have of course, become a real and serious property. They are worth solid sums to their owners, and form a monopoly. Little by little, the Government hopes to buy. them up, under different names, and has already done so in the case of ' the Constitutionnel, Pays, Patrie, Revue, Contemporaine, Bfc, and now comes the case of the Presse. In fact, but three journals remain here in which an independent-minded man can express his opinions, namely the j Journal de Debats, Revu dcs JDeux Mondes, j and Assemble Nationale ; for, as to the Union j and G-azette de JTrance,they are for any public opinion they may command, asgood as non-exist-ent. The Siecle is bound, through its directors, to ! the present regime, the Universe belongs to it.

through the ultramontist part of the clergy • ' and, out of these journals, there are only such as the Figaro, or Charivari. — Paris Cor. of the Manchester Guardian. Notice.—lf the young ladies at No. 10 do not within tbur-nnd-tweiit.y hours from the publication of this Notice Remove their Piano from the wall it now stands against, the old bacheolor at No. 9 will have an extra-sized Brass Knocker fixed on his side of the partition and will engage a retired postman to perform a , regular accompaniment to their music. Homely Worth.—Many flowers are expressive of the most delicate sentiment, hut which of them has the heart of a cabbage ? Our Great Times.—As the greatest men have their occasional fits of smallness, in which ! they descend to the low, if not the miry flats of ; human nature, and prove their part in the common clay, so the most vulgar-minded people at times rise superior to themselves, and for the . instant reach the level of a nobler Ufa. Under i that passing influence the dull become brilliant, , the narrow-minded liberal, and the selfish man j generous, as if the soul suddenly recollected its | higher destiny, and looked out like the fabled ' sleeper of centuries to ask if the hour was come. Rare in occurrence, and brief in dura- ; tion, are those ascending moments with the I best of us, but if they only lasted when they j did come, this world would be a place worth living in. A Whetch.—Old Mr, Singlestick mystified a tea-party, by remarking that women were I facts. When pressed to explain his meaning he ; said, " Pacts are stubborn things." A Safe "Rule.—When a young man confidently tells you that such a young lady " has no ! heart," you may be sure that he has been try- ! j ing it on, and has failed in making a favourable j impression. ! The Use of Adulteration.—Little Girl. j—" If you please sir, mother says, will you let | her have a quarter of a pound of your best tea | ;. to kill the rats with, and a ounce of chocolate as ! would get rid of the black beadles ?" Mr. Robert Owen who is eighty-six years of age, has published an address to the electors of Great Britain and Ireland, in which he states i that if any constituency will elect him to a seat in the House of Commons, free of expense, and without trouble to himself, he will accept the Office and explain how a social change can be immediately commenced which shall produce universal and perpetual harmony over the earth. Parliamentary Oratory.—Lord Palrnerston is an excellent speaker; he says what he wants to say, and conveys the idea he wants to convey; he makes a statement with all the shades and qualifications it may want, with a perfect command over all the flexibilities and ' aptness of good sterling English; but Lord Palmerston is not an orator. Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone are orators, but they are no, men to lead public opinion in this country Why is this ? Is it not because there is something in oratory, as distinguished from good speaking, which is apt to mislead the judgment, and upset the balance of mind of the possessor of the gift ? Oratory is defined somewhere as being the art of making little things great. But this is a very dangerous power to possess, i —dangerous to the judgment of the man himself, because, when he is conscious of the power, he naturally begins immediately to make his own estimate of things, not as they are, but as he can make them. He knows he can, by the amplification of language, by illustration and sentiment, swell out a particular point in a case till it assumes a most formidable size; he knows he has the proportions of things at his command in this way, and the very next and perfectly natural step is that his own judgment sympathises with this power. In fact, your orator gets in a little time so completely to regard the points of a case in the light in which they can be made to tell upon other people, that he hardly distinguishes between what is real in the matter, and what is oratorical, and he adopts a maxim—not unlike " whatever is is right,"—" whatever tells is true." Nor is this process only going on while he is actually speaking, for the truth is your orator is always speaking; if he is not speaking to others he is speaking to himself. He thinks sonorously, he observes in'rounded periods, and he judges with a climax. As your man of learning is a walking dictionary, your orator is a living and acting speech. The external speech is only the occasional and ti'ansient embodiment of a perpetual internal one, which is always going on to an invisible parliament, which is always, sitting within the orator's brain. The machine is always ready to convert, at a touch, any discoyery, fact, or no fact, into a speech, so that he is impeded by his own creative power, and cannot bend his judgment to any fresh turn in the evidence of the case. The perpetual internal speech obstructs him, and he cannot move about easily, with the cumbrous alligatorial appendage. Defend us, then, from being governed by orators! We want men who can think, and men who can speak, but not men who can make things appear different from what they are, by the mere power of language. How completely was the whole Chinese case the creation of oratory. But the nation is not so easily taken in.— Times. notices of insolvency. (Prom " Punch ".) Notice is hereby given that the persons whose names andjdescriptions are hereunder written intend to apply at the next Westminster Sessions to be relieved from all the liabilities they have incurred as traders upon cant, party cries, popular ignorance, former prestige, and faction generally, they being entirely bankrupt in political reputation, and insolvent as regards their engagements to the persons with whom they have had

dealings. Notice of opposition must be entered on the paper of the House of Commons. Disraeli, Benjamin: formerly a revolutionary epicinonger, afterwards a pupil of the late Joseph Hume, Radical, deceased ; then a ToryLiberal and vituperator of the late Daniel O'Connel, Radical, deceased; then for some time a tide-waiter at the door of the late Robert Peel, Bart., Liberal-Conservative, deceased; then a vituperator of the said Robert Peel, and a hanger-on at the stables of the late George Bentinck, Conservative, deceased; also biographer of the said Lord George Bentinck ; then in the service of the Earl of Derby, an exceedingly odd man, and now of no occupation whatsoever; of Maidstone in 1837, of Shrewsbury in 1841, of.Buckinghamshire in 1847; inventor of a successful specific fsr getting rid of proprietors'money, called the Representative; also of a quack mixture called the Asian Mystery, for the cure of social disorders; also of a great variety of more or less adhesive epithets fastened on with a composition of gail and impertinence: also of a new date for the Christian era; also of an Equitable 'Adjustment of taxation, by taking it off the territorial aristocracy and placing it upon the Consolidated Fund; also of a treaty between England and France for the more complete subjugation of Italy; also of a great number of Mare's Nests, for which he has received no considei"ation or credit whatsoever; does not admit that he has ever failed in business or anything else. Attorneys, Thesiger and Napier. Gladstone, William Ewart: formerly holder of a double first-class ticket for [Oxford, which, explains his habit of trying to go two ways at once; then a doctor of civil law, which was a degree too civil for him, aud he has since laid the laws down with irtcivility; afterwards a Conservative; then a Peelite, and since a partner in a Manchester concern, which failed; at various times in business for himself as a platter of hair, and also as an upholder in the Church furniture and ornament line; also a maker of budgets, in which he was successful, but his pi-ospects were destroyed by the war; also as the representative of Nicholas Romanoff, of St. Petersburg, Turkish toweller, deceased; also in partnership with Gordon and Co., Aberdeen softwater merchants, bankrupts ; also a spinner of yarns of unprecedented length and tenuity; and now of no occupation whatsoever, except that which Nicholas the elder habitually provides for idle hands to do; of Newark, in 1832, of Oxford in 1847 ; attributes his failure to the existing prejudice against non-natural views of things. Attorney Roundell Palmer. Cobden, Richard: formerly in successful business in cheap bread,, in connexion with which he obtained an honourable position, and dealt in unadorned eloquence ; then speculated unsuccessfully in crumpling Russia; then partner in a discovery that Russia ought not to crumpled; then in a land scheme for allotting to Russia state lands in Moldavia and Wallachia; then in business as a peace-monger, and embarked in a scheme for paving the streets of St. Petersburg with English flags ; then originator of a proposal for feeding the British Lion with humble pie; then partner with both the above-named insolvents in a scheme for introducing a new bottle-holder of Derby manufacture; of Stockport in 1841, of the West Riding in 1847, and now of no place whatsoever; attributes his failure to the acknowledged fact that the entire nation, with the exception of a few of his own friends, is in a state of insanity. Attorney. Hadfield.