MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 461, 2 January 1850, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

The Queen's Visit to Ireland. — The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland has received a i letter from Sir George Grey, written by comI rnand of the Queen, to express her heartfelt satisfaction at her reception in Ireland, and at the gratifying evidence " which universally presented itself, from the time of her Majesty's arrival at Cork to that of her departure 'from Belfast, of warm and devoted loyalty and attachment to her throne and person, and of affection for every branch of her family," Sir George says :—": — " The circumstances which have attended this visitcannot fail to strengthenahe deep interest which, your Excellency is aware, has long been felt by her Majesty in all that concerns the happiness and welfare of her Irish people. Her Majesty rejoiced to observe among the multitudes who enthusiastically greeted her appearance, the absence of all distinction of class and party ; and she indulges the hope, that the feelings elicited i on this occasion may tend to promote among all her faithful subjects in Ireland that union of heart and affection which is essential to the prosperity of their common country. lam further commanded to assure you of the satisfaction with which her Majesty remarked the general regard and esteem entertained for your Excellency ; which have been so justly earned by your able, judicious, and impartial' discharge of the high trust confided to you." ; — Atlas, Aug. 18,

The Irish Visit. — It is said that the Earl of Clarendon is to be raised in the peerage to the dignity of a marquis ; and in addition to the other honours to be conferred consequent upon the Queen's visit to Ireland, Sir William Somemlle will be raised to the peer-age, and is to be succeeded in the office of Chief Secretary for Ireland by Mr. Reddington, the present Under Secretary. — Bell's Life in London, Aug. 19. Another Visit to Ireland. — We have

much pleasure in announcing that the Queen is so strongly and agreeably impressed with the universal heartiness and loyalty of her reception by the entire body of her Irish subjects, that her Majesty has expressed her intention, on the first convenient opportunity, to repeat her royal visit to Ireland. — Observer.

Immense Cheese. — Mr. James Elgar, cheesemonger, Peterborough, has exhibited an immense cheese, which, has attracted the admiration of the inhabitants. The weight is 1,474 lbs., its circumference 13 feet, and thickness 18 inches. This, it may be remarked, exceeds in size and weight the one sent as a present to the Queen from Somersetshire, in 1841, which measured 9 feet round, and was 22 inches deep. Mr. Elgar's cheese was made from upwards of 20 hogsheads of milk, of one meal, from 737 cows. — Northampton Herald.

i A Baronbt turned Bridewell Guard. — A Cork journal has the following singular paragraph : — " Sir Richard Moore has, we are informed, just been appointed one of our city Bridewell guard by the high sheriff. This is indeed a strange position for the representative of one of our oldest baronetcies to occupy. What makes it the more distressing is, that his poverty has not come of his own folly, but has been entailed on him by the indiscretion of others."

Explosion and Loss of Seventy Lives at Aberdale. — Yesterday week a dreadful explosion of fire-damp, that dread and destructive agent, occurred at Mr. William Thomas's colliery, situated about two miles from the village of Aberdare. The shock was felt for miles round. Soon after the fatal event a most melancholy scene took place — mothers hurrying in search of sons, wives in search of their husbands, their cries rending the air as corpse after corpse, blackened and mutilated, was brought to sight, Soon sixty disfigured corpses were brought from the pit ; and then, it having become fatal to descend to the pit, the brave men who had, in such 'a praiseworthy manner rescued the few that escaped, gave over, though it was believed that there were a great many others down, living or dead. 105 men and boys were in the pit at the tjme of the explosion, very few of* who,ra

have been brought out alive. . Seven horses also were killed. It is confidently asserted that the cause of this most awful catastrophe was the negligence of one of the colliers in going to a dangerous heading without a safety lamp. It is scarce three years ago since twenty- eight human lives were destroyed by an explosion of the same nature, and near the same pit. — Atlas, Aug. 18. A Novel Match. —The dead-alive remnant of fashion which yet remains in Paris wu aroused to as much interest as could be compatible with the state of the thermometer, by a singular wager which had been concocted by two of our most fashionable lionnes. This was no other than a swimming match between the renowned Madame de C , and the bold Marquise de B , who undertook to accomplish the, distance between the Pont Neuf and the Pont Notre Dame in a given time, being allowed the use of the left hand only, the other to be occupied in holding a green parasol, to screen the visage of the fair swimmer from the rays of the sun, which darted down upon the waters like a- furnace. Notwithstanding the secrecy which had attended all the circumstances of the expedition, some bird of the air had evidently carried tbe matter ; for long before the appointed hour for starting, the usually quiet naked river was crowded with the little boats belonging to the various canotiers of Paris, while the various bathing machines were all alive with spectators, in their rather romantic and picturesque attire generally imitated from the old masters (the very oldest master*, indeed), who lined the edges of .the huge arks wherein the Parisian ' gentlemen and ladies love on sultry summer days to cool and disport themselves. Theysay that it was Count de C himself who sat at the head of the boat in which the fair rivala had been conveyed to the midst of the river, , snd who gave the signal for starting by' hoisting a little blue flag. • At the summons 1 the fair Naiades plunged most resolutely over either side of the boat, and were soon beheld gliding along rapidly as the stream. The ladies were both attired in loose wide trowsers of fine cachmere, white striped with blue, the waist bound with a scarlet belt, a shirt of the finest cambric, with short sleeves. The Marquise de B is of a dark Moorish complexion, and her jet black tresses were confined by a net of scarlet silk, adorned with braid and tassels, while the golden locks of her companion were secured upon a roller, and shortened round her neck 4 la gamin de Paris. Neither of the fair champions wa*e<T~ faint or weary for a single moment, but conducted themselves most bravely — the winner being the*dark-eyed Marquise, who won the victory but by an arm's length. After the motch, the company interested therein, and. winch consisted of all the notabilities of fashion * and literature yet spared to us, adjourned ?lo? lo a magnificent entertainment given at the ladies* swimming bath at the Hotel Lambert, where dancing and lansquenet were kept up till a late hour. — Atlas.

Tyranny of Pajitx in the United States. — It is difficult in this country , to conceive the force and influence of this unmitigated tyranny. With us party influences are weakened by local distribution. In America they are concentrated into one inflexible despotism, which every member of the party implicitly obeys. In this respect the party- ■ man in America is entirely divested of his individualism, tie acts and thinks \fith his pa:ty; its will is his supreme law. The mischief is that his strict obedience is alike - required through good and through evil report. The policy of the day must be upheld, whatever it may be. It is thus that the flagitious war vrith Mexico was espousediby the whole Democratic party, aud that no Democrat who has any favours to expect, or who would escape annoyance, dared utter a syllable againit the conduct of the Administration. It is not only the rank and file that yield to this terrible influence — the party leaders bow to it with a fatal submission. There are hundred* around them who, for their own purposes are constantly taking the measure of their political stature, and who are ever ready to report any questionable act, incautious sentiment, or inapt expression, to their common roaster. Nay, more, a rival is frequently got rid of by first entrapping and theri denouncing him. This intellectual subjugation — this utter absorption of the individual in the party, is^ perhaps, the worst achievement of American Democracy. It is felt to be a galling tyranny by more than dare confess it so ; and establishes this curious anomaly, that in the freest country in the world a man may have less in"dividual freedom of political action or thought than under any of the mixed governments of Europe.— Mackvy's Western World.

The Arctic Expedition.—E xtract of * letter from Dr. R,ichanl»on : — "Fort Confidence, Great Bear Lake, September 16th, 1848. Sir — I have the honour tp acquaint you, for tbe information of My Lords Com-i tiqi?sioners of tbe Admiralty, that with the boats a.nd party under my charge I reached ihja sea coast at the outlet of the eastern.

branch of the Mackenzie on the 3rd of August, and, having examined the coast line thence to the Coppermine River, including almost every interveni% bay, found no traces of any party of Europeans having passed, nor any indications whatever of shipwrecked vessels. We had interviews with numerous parties of Esquimaux, who uniformly declared that they had seen no ships nor any white men, and from the friendly way in which these people met us, I have no doubt of their kindness to any party of Europeans they might see in distress. The way in which the drift ice was packed into Coronation Gulf and Dolphin and Union Straits, so late in the season as the 3rd of September, and glued together by new ice, rendered it very improbable that it would be open again this season to afford a passage for ships ; and I have therefore no expectation that the discovery ships can have made their way in that direction this summer, and hope that they have either found a channel in a higher latitude more directly westward to the open sea off -Cape Bathurst, or that they have effected a passage homewards by Lancaster Sound." Lord Grey's Cape Policy. — Bnt it is 'from the Cape of Good Hope that the most sombre intelligence arrives. We have accounts of the transactions in the Legislative Council, including despatches which had been communicated by Sir Harry Smith, from Lord Grey to the Governor and from the Governor to Lord Grey. From theie documents it now appears, that the same arguments which were employed in our columns, and subsequently in Parliament by Mr. Adderley in particular, against the transmission of convicts — representations to which Ministers promised to defer — had already been urged upon Lord Grey by the colonists, and by him overruled. With a supercilious disregard of persons " below " him, Lord Grey had not scrupled to place his only too faithful servant, Sir Harry Smith, in a position the most humiliating to him as an officer and a gentleman — had first made him party to a breach of faith, and then, in spite of his remonstrances, had taken advantage of his high military sense of discipline to use him as the instrument for enforcing an odious measure against the universal feeling of the colony^ the advice of all the official class to a man, and his own upright conscience ! Lord Grey first intimated that the colonists might have the " exiles " if they pleased — he seems to think that by calling convicts "exiles" he evades part of the solid objections to the introducing of a criminal population ; he sends the convicts without waiting for the invited acceptance ; and when the colonists remonstrate, he sets them at nought. The order in Council directing the Governor to receive the convicts was accompanied by a draft of a new "free constitution" for the colony ; but it seems to be of a kind that is not at all unworthy of its accompaniment. The colonists are exasperated to the last pitch of endurance, and we notice a trait of a highly dangerous kind; while many exhibit positive disaffection, the most discreet imply, through their manner, that the feeling is justified by the provocation. There is a conviction that the colony is entirely at the mercy of Lord Grey; that it is not treated thus by the English nation, nor by Parliament, nor by Queen Victoria, but wholly and solely by that one man Lord Grey — a Strafford without a Charles the First to instigate him. It is in the literal sense of the word tyranny, and tyranny of the most hopeless kind — that which originates in obstinate feebleness. Lord Grey exhibits precisely the same kind of morbid pertinacity that was displayed by the sickly Charles the First, by the sickly George the Third in the American war. And the English nation leaves the colony, its justice and its fealty, in the hands of Lord Grey ! — Spectator, August 18th.

Hint to Attorneys. — In a cause tried before Mr. Justice Patteson, in the Nisi Prius Couit, at York, the other day, it was sought to impugn the character of a. witness by a question put to him, suggesting that he had been before a magistrates on some charge that had been preferred against him. It turned out that there was no foundation for such an imputation, the party having been before the magistrates certainly, but in the capacity of a witness, and not as a party accused. His lordship strongly condemned the practice of attorneys, instructing counsel to attack witnesses in this way. It was wrong, they had no business to do so, it was a practice which should never have his countenance, and he cautioned the attorneys adopting this mode of getting up a case in the present instance, not to repeat it, lest they should get themselves into, trouble. — Liverpool Albion, July 23.

Fashionable Movements. — • George Hudson, Esq., for St. Helena, having purchased of Government the ruins of Logwood, the late residence of the late Napoleon. The Admiralty have kindly offered the honorable gentleman the passage out in H. M. brig Stag. — Punch.

Hungary and Austria. — The details of the warfare between the Austro-Russian armies and the Hungarians are voluminous. The numerous battle fields have exhibited the' varied fortunes of war, but there is reason to believe that the balance of success has been in favour of the brave Hungarians, whose heroism has enlisted the sympathies of Europe, and even awakened the apprehensions of the Czar. It is alleged that Nicholas, alarmed by the recent discomfiture of his troops in the Caucasus, by the several defeats of his armies in Hungary, and toy the unpopularity of the Hungarian war of intervention among his Russian subjects, would willingly withdraw from the contest in which he is so unfortunately engaged. The anti-Russian policy of the Turks has been again exemplified in the refusal of a passage for Russian troops through a portion of the territories of the Sublime Porte. Throughout Turkey, the warmest sympathy is felt for the Hungarians, whilst the cruelties of the Austrians and Russions have met with universal reprobation. Advices from Vienna of the 11th August, stated that the communication between Vienna and Pesth, on (he right bank of the Danube, was entirely interrupted, and the friends of Hungary in Vienna protested that Pesth itself had been occupied by the Hungarians. It was even confidently asserted that the Austrian government had been seriously advised to negotiate with the insurgent Hungarians. In Paris it had been asserted, on the faith of private letters worthy of confidence, that the great Russian army had been completely defeated by the Magyars. It was added that the Russsian army of reserve was marching night and day towards Podolia and Volhynia, which were uncove r ed by the dofeat, and which provinces the Emperor Nicho- ' las feared would be invaded by the victorious J Hungarians. (

Baden. — In the Grand Duchy of Baden the insurrection has been summarily put down by the Prussian army of intervention. The Karlsruker Zeitung has announced the execution of the insurgent chief, Major Heilig, who vras tried by a court-martial 'on the 10th August, and shot (at Rastadt) on the llth of that month. A letter from Rastadt announced that Tiedeman, the insurgent governor of that fortress, was also executed on the llth.

Louis Philippe, Duchess of Orleans, and Count de Paris. — A correspondent who witnessed the meeting of Louis Philippe and his Consort Amelie, with the Duchess of Orleans and her young sons, at Lewes, on the evening of Thursday se'ennight, describes it as a very touching scene. There was a considerable number of people assembled at the station, and, on the Queen of the Belgians and the Duchess of Orleans alighting from their carriage, it was with no little difficulty that way was made for the royal ladiesjo the room which had been given up to Louis Philippe, and who, advancing eagerly from it, exclaimed to those arround him, "Oil? ou? n ("Where, where?") as though searching for the new comers. These now advanced — the Duchess first, with the Comte de Paris in her hand, who, directly he saw the aged Queen, ran up to her, and placing his hand affectionately on her arm, exclaimed, looking up at her, " Ma bonne Maman / Ma bonne Maman/" Louis Philippe took the Duchess in his arms with every sign of joy and affection ; it was the first time he had seen her since the fatal day when they were separated at the Tuileries — the King to escape to England, the Duchess and her son to remain, and try the chance of a Regency. The Duchess has a firm, almost martial carriage ; her step is that of a heroine ; but the deep marks round her eyes show that her woman's spirit has deeply mourned her own calamities and those of her husband's house. The king, who never looked better, led her to the carriage ; the aged Queen, (who, however* is as tall and erect as ever) followed with the young Count de Paris — a fine boy, whose height and bearing make him look much older than he really is — 10 years. The Queen of the Belgians followed with the young Duke de Chartres, a beautiful boy, the second son of the Duchess d'Orleans, and after her the other members of the Orleans family in England ; and thus they entered the large carriage which had been prepared for them to proceed to St. Leonard's. As the old King entered the carriage with his young grandson, the people round about raised a " Hip, hip, hurrah," which seemed to sound not unpleasing to the ears of Louis Philippe, for he turned round upon the step and bowed, and said something, but what our correspondent did not hear. And, then, the "fortunes" of the Orleans family were whirled away. — Brighton Herald.