ENGLISH EXTRACTS. [From the Southern Cross.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume V, Issue 367, 7 February 1849, Page 4

ENGLISH EXTRACTS. [From the Southern Cross.]

Th« Duke of Portland has not brought any English intelligence of an important character, of later date than we have already received via Sydney. Trade was improving when she ■ left, and the harvest had been more abundant than might have beeu expected from the unfa- \ vdrable state of the weather during part of the month of August. Turnips were so plentiful in Northumberland and the Tweedside, that the farmers not only allowed sheep to eat them off the land free of charge, but found the shepherd and his dog with provisions and lodgings. A destructive fire had occurred at Ipswich, entirely consuming an extensive paper mill, usually employing 200 hands. At the Hanerchymeed petty sessions, Agrres Williams, aged 84, preferred a charge of assault against two persons. She was attended by her father, a man qf 106 years of age, who called the old dame his " girl," and said she should not be put upon. The sale of th^ estates of the Duke of Buckingham, in Bucks, Oxon, and Northamptonshire, realized £262.990. Dr. "Wardlaw's chapel was sold to the Edinburgh Railway Company, and realized £12,000.

Lobd Rosse a Mechanic. — On one occa- j sion when he was but a youth, he went to an exhibition at the Adelaide Gallery, where some kind of London steam-engine was being exhibited. By some means or other the exhibiter could not set his engine going ; all his efforts to effect it were in vain, and he was about to give it np in despair, when Lord Ro&se stepped forward, and said he thought he could make it wotk. No sooner said than done. He put hit hand to the work, discovered by an instant's look where the machinery was out of order, and made a few turns, put all to rightsy^nd -then the machine, to the admiration of the company, worked beautifully; Lord Oxmantown (for that was then his only title) was dressed rather roughly, and not in drawing-room habiliments, so that he might be mistaken for what he was not — a pool mechanic. He had already, however, proved himself to be a first-rate one. Led by his rather rude appearance to suppose that he was a -workman who would be gltd of a job, a gentleman accosted him, and, saying he was in want of* man like him, offered to employ. Mm at a liberal salary. Lord Rosse, of course, politely declined the offer, which, however, was, perhaps, as honourable to him who made it as to him to whom it was made. — BeWs Messenger*

-Tasking Powers of the House of Commons. — We owe an apology to- parliament for a lapsus pennce in our fi^st leader of yesterday^through which its verbal fertility is scandalously understated. It is there made to appear that the parliamentary Speeches for the session fill only 1,200 columns of Hansard. The truth is that the speechel deli- i vered from the 23rd Nov. to the 9th June (inclusive) fill no less than 6420 columns of that meritorious publication, measuring about 1,432 yards', or nearly one mile of speeches. The aggregate speeches' of the session cannot have added lesstban amile&nd ahalf to theoral eloquence of England. Whatever defects may be attributed to parliament* its capacity for talking cannot be denied.-— Daily News. | A House of Historical Interest.-— j The Free Church of Scotland has purchased Regent Murray's home in the Cauongate for a normal school. This, with John Knot's

house to be converted into ft church, gives that body possession of two interesting edifices. The Regent's house is pregnant with historic recollections, apart altogether from having been the residence of the official whose, name it bears. A tree behind it was planted; by Mary Queen of Scots ; over the balcony, | in front, the niece of the' Marquis of Argyle; spat on Montrose, as he was drawn past on a' hurdle to execution, her uncle and aunt soon followed him to the same spot. The house itself afterwards became the lodging of Oliver CromI well ; and in later times, the treaty of union > was signed in an arbour at the bottom of the garden. Leeds Mercury.

The Premature Use of Mind. — A lesson might be derived from noticing the damaged health of many a boy and girl in their teens ; supposing them to have escaped from all the perils of an earlier cachexia : tracing the ailings of a period, that should be marked by peculiar health, and peculiar physical capability, to the unwise diversion of nervous .powers in the intellectual exertions, from the no less important business of building up firm and strong systems, fit to encounter the wear and tear of existence. Much of the dyspepsia, the biliousness, the headaches, the palpitations, the sensitiveness to cold, the shortness of breath, the incapability of sustained exertion, and the eventual hysteria, chlorosis, spinal curvature, and final disease of heart, lungs, or brain, that occurs between puberty and the age of forty years, may be directly referred to the premature and undue use of the faculties of the mind, without reference to the development and condition of the nervous organism, or to the powers and requirements of the system at large. It has been well noticed, in illustration of the effects of an unwise or a premature exercise of the intellect, that Tasso, at the age of twenty-two, was the author of the greatest epic poem of modern i times, hut was always melancholy, or else de- j voured by passion, and died at the age of fifty- I one ; that Pascal, who also enjoyed a premamature celebrity as an author, was always hypochondriacal, ever imagining that he saw a gulf open at his side, and died at the age of thirty-nine ; that Byron, who T/rote so early, and so much, and so greatly as to originality and high desert, and in part so unhealthily and unwholesomely, was the victim of dyspepsia and hypochondriasis, and died, of diseased brain, in his thirty-seventh year ; that Pope, who notoriously began to write poetry at twelve years old, and became famous at sixteen, was the victim of extreme feebleness, morbid sensitiveness to cold, dyspepsia^ head-ache, and eventual dropsy, whose life is well characterized as having been one long disease, and that he died in his fifty-eighth year. And an early precocity if no necessary condition of genius or intellectual eminence in the after life ; for the youth of Sheridan was pronounced to be " dull," and that of Goldsmith " unpromising." In his boyhood, Sir Isaac Newton was " inattentive to study, and ranked very low in ichool until the age of twelve ;" in his boyhood, Napoleon was in no way distinguished from other boys ; in his boyhood, Sir Walter Scott gave no indications of his future eminence ; in their boyhoods, neither Shakspeare, nor Gibbon, nor Davy, appear to have exhibited even the common elements of future success. Such lists may be easily extended, by reference to the biographies of eminent i men ; and it will be found, that, to restrain | precocity instead of encouraging it, should be i the continual endeavour ; that the more feeble, delicate, and cachetic the child's constitution, i the longer should the intellectual or scholastic education be deferred ; and that the mere circumstance of a slow and tardy development of the intellectual powers, affords no certain indication of the future capabilities of the mind. During the last- year or two of the school time, more is often gained, as to progress and capability, than during, all the preceding years of life. — Dr. Robertson on.Diet.,

A Rival to Niagara. — Among, the cliffs of the Eastern Ghauts, about midway /between Bombay and Cape Comorin, rises the river Shirawati, which falls into the Arabian Sea. The bed of the river is one-fourth of a mile in direct breadth : but'the edge of the fall is elliptical, with a sweep of half a mile. This body of water rushes at first, for 300 feet, over a slope at an angle of 45 degrees, in a sheet of white foam, and is then precipitated to the depth of 850 more into a black abyss, with a thundering, noise. It has, therefore, the depth of 1,150 feet. In the rainy season the river appears to be about thirty feet in depth at the fall ; in the dry season it is lower, and is divided into three cascades of varied beauty and astonishing grandeur. Join our fall of Genessee to that of the St. Law- j rence, and then treble the two united,and we have the distance of the Shirawati cataract. While we allow to Niagara* vast superiority in bulk, yet in respect to distance of descent 1 it is but a mountain rill compared with its Indian rival. — Rochester Dmoctati ;

Birmingham and its Buttons.— ■• Ever since buttons were buttons, Birmingham has been their head quarters, Birmingham* doubt- i

less, would undertake to button up all the world if the . world wished to be buttoned. You must not say you " don't care a button" to a Birmingham man ; for to him a button is a thing of rank and importance ; it is not to be laughed at or treated with disrespect. Buttons give employment, and homes, and sustenance, 1 - to nsabjr thousands of persons in this town;' and any change of fashion in these tiny products involves large commercial consequences in Birmingham. As a proof of the largeness of this apparently trivial trade, it hat been said to cost the manufacturer several' thousand pounds, and many months of thought and labour, before it was introduced into the market. If any one would witness the nimbleness of female fingers, let him enter one of the Birmingham button-factories. Many females are there employed, and' the celerity* with which they cut out the small circular pieces of metal and other material by means of a cutting press, is almost inconceivable. Some of the circular convex discs of copper are stamped out at the rate of thirty in a minute ; each stamp involving "the placing of- a> strip, of metal, the movement of the press, and the removal of the little disc from its cell. — The Land we Live In,

The Rise and Fall. — At a little select party in Edinburgh of "Bien Bodies," there was an ancient' couple present who had made a competency id a small shop in town, and retired from business, leaving their only son a successor to the shop, with a stock free from every encumbrance. But John, after a few, years, had failed in the world, and his misfortunes became the theme of discourse t — " Mrs. A. — 'Dear me, Mrs. H., I wonder how your Johnnee did sac ill in the same shop you did sac well in ?' "Mrs, H. — 'Hoot, woman, il'snae wonder at a. " Mrs. A. — 'Weel, how did it happen?' " Mrs. H. — * I'll tell ye how it happened. Ye mun ken, when Tarn and me began to merchandize, we took paritch night and morning, and kail to our dinner. When things grew better we took tea to our breakfast. And weel, uoman, the age mended, and we sometimes coft a lambkey for a Sunday dinner, and before we gae up, we sometimes coft a chuckie, we were doing sac weel. Naw yd maun ken, when Johnnee begun to merchandize, he begun at the-, chuckie first.' " — See Hone's Book.

A Question o* Conscience and Sugar. — A gentleman named Bull being in great trouble and distress of mind, is anxious to be introduced to some Casuist who will undertake to quiet his conscience. Mr. Bull is the proprietor of certain colonial possessions devoted to the cultivation of sugar. In these he, some years ago, abolished Negro slavery, from a, conviction that it was barbarous and wicked. In justice to his colonists he entered into an agreement to place a prohibitive duty on slave-grown sugar. This arrangement, Mr. Bull, being fond of sugar, and desirous of obtaining, the article cheap, subsequently annulled. Mr. Bull is persuaded by his economical advisers that he did not, by so doing, break faith with' his colonists ; but feeling uncomfortably dubious as to this point, he would be glad to have it settled to his satisfaction. He has renounced slave-holding, believing it to be criminal ; but while he continues to consume slave-grown sugar, it strikes him forcibly that he is in the same position as a receiver of stolen goods. He will feel deeply grateful to any ingenious person who will convince him that he is mistaken in his view. Mr. Bull desires to enjoy cheap sugar, unalloyed by the reflection that he is encouraging slavery. He wants to be enabled to congratulate himself on having abolished slavery without being obliged to reproach himself for admitting the produce of slave labour. He Wishes to revel,' at the same time, in sugar and self-complacency. He seeks, in fact, to be relieved from the disagreeable suspicion that he is acting the part of a humbug ; and any special pleader who trill do him this kindness will be handsomely rewarded.— Punch, ,

Unanswerable. — Why should a teetotaller never have a wife ?—^Because he will not sup-porter.

Experience. — A s y<rang man advertises in the Boston Post for a place as salesman, and says he has had a great deal of experience, having been discharged from seven different store 3 within a year. Beauty is worse than liquor ; it intoxicates both the holder and beholder.