MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 580, 22 February 1851, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

Sunday Postal Question. — Of the 400,000 respectable well-meaning persons who have affixed their signatures to this extraordinary prayer for summarily destroying a piece of mechanism as scientifically planned and as carefully put together as one of Arnold’s chronometers, what proportion, it may he asked, have a clear idea, or any idea at fell, of the general acquirements of the British postal system —of its political, fiscal, Bod commercial importance, of the arterial and venous circulation by which it breathes, |r of the innumerable organized moving particles or animalcule of which it is composed ? glave the majority of the petitioners—some of may possibly belong to that large class jf the community who, to say the least, have |eldom occasion to write or read letters—a |uperficial idea, or any idea at all, of the deep peaning of “ the correspondence” of, for instance, our Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, f r London merchants ? Are they aware of pie heavy losses that even the revenue of the fingdom might sustain by great mercantile Ind manufacturing houses being unable on |londay, previous to the sailing of steamlackets, or of their own vessels, to receive lhe latest possible communications from all garts of the country ? Have they considered Bie confusion that would be created in rival fowns of the same trade from the contents of fast or West India mails being communicafd to some, and on the striking of the clock |n Saturday night cut oft’ from the rest ? In of an extensive robbery of bank notes or S' in cases or forgery, or even of bankin cases involving life and death, and II an infinity of other private business of eximportance, have they reflected on the and cruel consequences that might from Parliament irrationally ordaining ' \ that it is illegal to send letters other®lse than by post ; and, 2ndly, that by post a e y s ‘ la 'l not be transmitted ? Again, have ® e y considered the inconvenience the inhag’ants of say, the whe 1 --- -'C t?j u K a . er >- rora forcibly restrained from deg C . L etters °n Saturday on account of K 0,1 s Sabbath, and on the following day Ik;seq Se ’ S t^. e ' r own • Again of the ■ ‘ ailt * vexations which upwards of

2,000,000 of persons congregated, principally lor the transaction of business, in Londoj), the shops ol which have been closed the whole would sustain from op Monday morning debarred receiving letters from beyond a given radius, although some of them may have been posted on Friday ? In short, have they calculated the sum total of the results of a decree from Parliament ordaining that in almost every city, town, village, hamlet, and habitation throughout the kingdom there should be two or more blank postal days per week, the one for the Sabbath of the locality, and the other for those of places more or less remote? — Quarterly Review. A curious example of the unfitness of the present locality for the preservation of the collection of the national pictures may be found on lhe threshold of the building itself. It is only seven years since there was placed in the hall of the National Gaiiery the subscription statue of the late Sir David Wilkie. It was executed by the late Mr. Samuel Joseph out of a block of the purest white marble,—but the colour is already strangely changed. By its rapid discolouration a test is supplied of the amount of injuiy to which the surfaces of the pictures in the same building have been subjected during the same short interval. The statue has become a sort of dirt-omettr. There is scarcely any ancient statute in lhe Townley, Elgin or other collections in the British Museum of a deeper or a dirtier tone than it has in so short a time acquited.

The Terrors of the Thames.—lt is alarming to contemplate how many inhamtanls of London are annually drinking themselves to death by imbibing the water of the j. names. We have given to a certain spirit the name of aqua vita, and in distinction we should bestow on the river the title of aqua mortis, for not even aqua Jort is is of a more destructive nature than the stuff which flows through our cisterns into our urns, which might properly be termed funereal urns, from their devotion to deadly purposes. There are many more who find a watery grave than those who come to their end by drowning. We have heard that water will always find its level, but if the Thames water found its proper level it would be banished from all decent society. Let any one who delights in Rambles by Rivers, take a stroll along the banks of the Thames between Limehouse and Battersea. He would, after going a yard or two, find himself up to his knees in slush—the sort of Black Death which we are daily drinking and though every step would add mud, there would be nothing to ad-mire. * * If we did not happen to know the source of the Thames, we should imagine it was an arm of the Black Sea, or a leg of the Niger, or a black eye of old father Neptune. It is said that every one, on an average, eats in his lifetime a peck of dirt, but we are convinced that every one who drinks Thames water consumes his peck of dirt in a week or two. * * Now tnat the eyes of the public are opened to the state of the Thames, we wonder that their mouths are not peremptorily shut against it. —Punch °