MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 640, 20 September 1851, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

Dr. Johnson.—The churchwardens of St. Clement Danes, having satisfactorily ascertained that a seat in the pew numbered 18, in the north gallery of that church, was regularly occupied for many years by the great moralist, have caused a neat brass tablet, recording the fact to be affixed in a conspicuous position to the pillar against which the doctor must have often reclined. The inscription on the tablet is from the pen of Dr. Croly. Rector of St. Stephen’s Walbrook, and is as follows :—“ In this pew, and beside this pillar, for many years attended divine service the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson, the philosopher, the poet, the great lexicographer, the profound moralist, and chief writer of his time. Born 1709; died 1784. In remembrance and honour of noble faculties, nobly employed, some inhabitants of the parish of St. Clement Danes have placed this slioht memorial, A. D., 1851.” Two of the best newspapers in the British V. est Indies—the Morning Journal in Jamaica, and the West Indian, in Barbadoes—are owned and edited by gentlemen of colour. The proprietors and editors of these journals are, moreover, distinguished members of the legislatures of their respective colonies. ‘ : Singular Chinese Sentence.— Mr. Linton lately made a communication to the Asiatic Society of London, descriptive of a mode of punishment peculiar to the criminal code of the Celestial Empire. A Chinese merchant, accused and convicted of having killed his wife, was sentenced to die by the total deprivation of sleep. The execution took place at Amoy in the month of June last. The condemned was placed in prison, under three guardians, who relieved each other every alternate hour, and who prevented him from taking sleep night or day. He lived thug for 19 days without having slept for a single minute. At the commencement of the eighth day his sufferings were so cruel, that he begged, as a great favor, that they would kill him by strangulation. Mr. Charles Knight expended the sum of forty-two thousand pounds on the publication of the Penny Cyclopaedia ; yet with all his intelligence, resources, and enterprise as a publisher, it has not been remunerative. He paid to government for paper duty no less than sixteen thousand five hundred pounds directly, and indirectly the enormous amount of twenty nine thousand pounds ! According to the Doncaster Gazette, vast quantities of fish have been destroyed in the rivers Dearne and Don, by the emptying of ine gas water from the Barnsley gasworks into the former river. Many persons, too, at Doncaster had their tea spoiled and were otherwise annoyed and injured by the water of ihe town obiaiueu from the River Don being impregnated with deleterious water which had gone into the Dearne and then into the Don.