MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 597, 23 April 1851, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

Norfolk Estuary.—The contract for carrying into effect this great work has been taken by Messrs. Peto & Bett. under the direction of the engineers in chief, Sir John Rennie and Mr. Stephenson ; it will therefore be immediately commenced. The objects of the work are, improvement of the drainage and of the navigation, and the acquisition of land. The great district of the feus, called the Bedford Level, and the adjacent lowlands, comprising nearly half a million of acres, will be so effectually drained by this work as to be enabled almost entirely to get rid of the present very expensive system of artificial drainage by wind and steam. The fen proprietors have voluntarily contributed the sum of £60,000, by way of free gift to the company for this purpose. The navigation of the Ouse from the sea to Lynn and upwards will be greatly improved. The corporation of Lynn have made a present of a like sum of £60,000 to the company, making together £120,000. The ultimate object of the company is simultaneously to reclaim from the sea a valuable tract of land amounting to about 32,000 acres, which will form a valuable investment. A Roman Assassination. —The son of Gennaraccio, of Ripa Grande, the Papalino partisan, who rendered himself so famous in the spring of the present year by filling the Corso with his masquerading satellites during the carnival, had lately made himself very obnoxious to the Trasteverini by his overbearing manners, and had brought upon himself the special hatred of a young man whose brother be had struck in an osteria. Hearing that this young man had threatened to kill him, the son of Gennaraccio went to his residence, with a posse of followers, and ironically invited him to go and drink, saying, “ I want to see whether you aim straight.” The otner, who bad his dagger already prepared in his sleeve, replied coolly, “ This is the way I strike,” and, suiting the action to the word, laid his adversarry dead at his feet, an occurrence which so took the other men by surprise that they fled and left the murderer time to escape.— Roman correspondence of the Daily News. The Bushmen Brigand’s Cave. —Between Koning and Daniel’s-kuil occur two interesting caves, long famous as affording a residence and protection to hordes of marauding Bushmen. The larger of these caves is situated on the west side of the waggon track; it is of great size, and contains a perpetual fountain of delicious water, and its sides have been adorned by its Lilliputian inhabitants with correct likenesses of most of the game quadrupeds of Africa, as also unicorns, which of course they never saw, and must, therefore, have heard spoken of by other men. From this cave the bushmen were wont to sally

forth not very long since and lift fat cattle from tbs sleek herds of their more industrious neighbours, the Griquas and Bechuanas. Returning with these cattle, their custom was to drive them all into the cave, whence, being well supplied with water, they did not again proceed until the flesh was either rotten or consumed. It was in vain that the exasperated owners of the cattle followed on their traces to the Bushman-cave, for here they well knew it was madness to follow farther, as death would be the result, by the poisoned arrows of their subtle foes within. At length the Bushmen became so frequent and daring in their attacks, that a number of the Bechuanas held “ a great talk” on the subject (as they say in America), and ended by resolving to attack the Bushmen, and accomplish their destruction at whatever cost. Accordingly, when the next robbery was committed, the Bechuanas marched upon the Bushman-cave, armed with ■large oval shields, while the Bushmen’s arrows rattled thick upon them like a storm of

hail. The Bechuanas thus continued to advance till they came to close quarters, when they cut them down with their battle axes. The other cave is situated to the eastward of

the waggon track.; here, on a similar occasion, fire was made use of to smoke out the Bushmen, when those who escaped death by suffocation fell by the battle-axes and asssagais of their foes without.— Cumming's adventures in South Africa. The Doom of English Wills. —Up a narrow stair, under the guidance of a grumpy

clerk, ourper severing Middle Templar wends. In a long room, over the arches of the gateway, he sees parallel rows of shelves laden with wills; not tied up in bundles, not docketed, not protected in any way from dust or spiders by the flimsiest covering. Only the modern wills are bound up; but —not to encroach upon the Registrar’s hard earnings—•the backings of the -binding are composed ofsuch original wills as were written on parchiment. These are regularly cut up—that is. wilfully destroyed—for bookbinding purposes? * * Wherever he turns his eyes, he sees black, barbarous Ruin. In one corner, he observes decayed boxes filled with rotten wills ; in another stands a basket, containing several lumps of mediaeval mortar and a few-

brick-bats of the early pointed style-—the edges, possibly, of some hole in the wdll too large for even poor seven thousand a/year to shirk the stopping of. Despite the hints of the clerk that his time is valuable, Mr. Wai-' lace is contemplating these relics with the eager gaze of an-F.S.A., when he descries hanging over the edge of the basket some-; thing like an ancient seal. He scrutinizes it’ intensely—there is a document attached to it. He rescues it from the rubbish. “ What can? this be?” asks Mr. Wallace, with glistening eye. " Oh’l” answers the clerk, with listless indifference, “nothing of any consequence

1 m sure. By this time, Mr. Wallace has found out that this "“nothing of any conse-. quence” is a Charter of King William the Conqueror— the identical instrument 'by which the see of Dorchester was transferred to Lincoln—that’s all! The broken seal is not of “ much consequence” either. Ob, no ! Now it happens that .there is only one impression of the great seal of the Great Norman extant, and that is in the British Museum, broken in half, this, being a counterpart, supplies the entire seal! Such is the priceless historical relic found in the year 1850, by chance, in a lime-basket,<in the very place where it ought to have been as zealously preserved as if it had been the jewel of a diadem! * * As Mr. Wallace follows his surly guide up the stairs of the Gatehouse, the lain .patters sharply against the casements, and a fusty, damp odour emerges from the upper story. -Under a broken roof, and a ceiling being-unplastered ■in huge patches by time and rain, in the top iroom iie—or, more correctly, rot —the wills of the Archdeaconry of Blowe, a “ Peculiar” of the diocese. The papers below stairs are merely worm-eaten, spider-woven, dusty, iff•arranged ; but, compared with those which Mr. Wallace now sees—and smells—are in fastidious glass-case order. After dodging the rain-drops which filter through the ceiling, down among the solemn injunctions of the dead, Mr. Wallace is able to examine one or two bundles. Mildew and rot are so omnipotent in this damn renositorv. that the

have in some places broken and crumbled away. A moment’s comparison between the •relative powers of wood and paper in resisting water, will give a vivid idea of the condition of the wills in this Archidiaconal showerbath. The corners -of most of the piles are as thoroughly rounded off as if a populous colony of water-rats (the ordinary species could not have existed there) had been dining off them since the days of King Stephen. Others are testamentary agglomerations, soddened into pulp— totally illegible and inseparable, having been converted by age, much rain, and inordinate neglect, into post mortem papier mache.— -Household Words, Lean and Fat.—At the theatre of the varieties there is an actress, one of the best

in Paris, who has the misfortune to be ex ceedingly, deplorably thin—we might almost say, skinny. A few months ago she heard of a doctor who, it was said, had succeeded in manufacturing a mineral water which had the power of making people grow fat. She went to him instanter. “ Doctor,” said she, “ what must Ido to get fat ?”—“ Take my waters.” “ And I shall get fat ?” —“ Immediately.” That thin actress plunged into the doctor’s baths, and drank the water early and late. Three months passed away, but she grew no fatter. At last she called the doctor, and said, “ Doctor, I don’t grow fat.” —“ Wait a little while,” replied the doctor. “ Will it be long ?”- ■“ Fifteen days at the farthest. You see that big fat woman walking in the garden? When she first came here, she was perhaps

thinner than you.”—“ Whatl I may hope.” “ Fifteen days at most,” said the doctor. Two or three months passed ; the actress grew thinner and thinner. -One day, as she was taking her warm mineral bath, she heard a dispute going on in the bathing-room next her own. “ Decidedly, Doctor,” said the big, fat woman above introduced —“ decidedly, doctor, I don’t get a bit thinner.”—•“ Have

patience, Madame,” said the doctor ; you see that very thin lady who sometimes walks in the garden ?” Yes.” “ Well, she is an actress from the Varietds, whose excessive fat forced her to absent herself from the stage ; she came to me, you see the result. Before fifteen days I promise you shall be thinner than she is.” At these words the thin actress rose from her warm bath, dressed herself, and, with a heart divided by grief and indignation, silently left the house, hoping, however, to keep her misfortunes a secret, but in Paris a secret is an impossibility, and somehow or other the story got out. A Gift beyond Price. —They tell a new anecdote of Mademoiselle Rachel, the tragedian, in the French Journals, A certain Lord H , an English nobleman, is mentioned as having a remarkable collection of dramatic relics. He has the piano of Malibran, the sofa of Sophie Arnould, the umbrella of Garrick, the fan of Mademoiselle Mars, the watch of Talma, and the last bottle of Madeira which' Kean drank from, and which fell from his 'hand, half-emptied, as death seized him. But Lord H wished to have a souvenir of Rachel. He had seen, in calling upon her, the famous guitar which she used, when a poor child, singing for bread in the streets of Paris. Without this relic of her poverty, Mademoiselle Rachel never travels. It is enclosed in a velvet case, and, wherever she stays, it is taken out and suspended in honourable .conspicuousness. Of course it was an object specially worthy of a place in the collection of Lord H , and his Lordship offered to purchase it at any price which the gifted Jewess would set upon it. She assured him, however, that it was not for sale. “ But if I should offer you a thousand guineas for it ?” asked the collector. “ I should refuse, she replied. Lord H- 1 thought, however, that he would try another temptation, and, on his return home, sent her two diamonds, each worth twenty thousand francs, in exchange for her guitar. Mademoiselle Rachel relumed the diamonds, with a little note, stating that she would not give her guitar “ for all the jewels in the cown of Victoria.”

A New Colour fora Cardinal.—The odd conduct of the Pope of Rome towards the Queen and Legislature of England, in creating an Archbishop of Westminster, has made a deal of noise, wherein the groans preponderate largely over the plaudits. Now if his Holiness wishes to constitute an extraordinary Archbishop, with the approbation of the whole civilized world, Mr.' Punch will put him in the way of doing so. What the pontifical arrangements are, in the Southern States of America, Mr. Punch does not know; but he conceives they do not include what he proposes they should. What does his Holiness say to a negro metropolitan—say a black Archbishop of Charlestown, with jurisdiction over South Carolina particularly, and in general over the whole Southern States of America ? Make the black man a Cardinal as •well ; give him a scarlet hat, carefully engaging him, of course, not to go to a hop in it. Here would be a fine opportunity of reading ■the Yankees a lesson of humility,-— of proclaiming the.great Catholic dogma of the esaL — t « U 7 IUMI vkjuantj U 4. i, uc uuuißu race,- —ana, withal, of dealing a heavy blow at slavery. Will the only answer to this suggestion be, that the idea of making a nigger a Prince of the Church, is too ridiculous ?— Punch.