ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 801, 6 April 1853, Page 3

ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

The Liverpool Albion says ; — «* Out of fifteen vessels from Liverpool recorded in the Underwriters%rooms this week, as wrecked or patting into port with dijmtge, only three are British. A fund has been raised for placing a memorial window to the poet Wordsworth in the tthnrch now rebuilding at Cockermouth, his Birth-place. ¥ Mr. Penny, late commander of the Lady Franklin and Sophia, has been honoured by the Duke of Northumberland with an interview, and has received a gratifying acknowledgment of his own services and of those under his command from the present Board of Admiralty. Workmen are at present employed in restoring the statues and marble vases in the garden of the Tuileries. On Saturday, 13th November, a fire broke out on the premises of Messrs. Paton & Charles, the extensive soap-boilers, Wapping, which destroyed property to the amount of several thousand pounds. • Mr. Disraeli promised to produce his Budget on the 22nd of November — if no hostile movements of a factious character should be made in the mean time. The shipping interest, or mercantile marine, is in a state of efficiency and progress never approached before since the Navigation Laws were enacted. And this improvement has been steady and constant, since " recent legislation " began to relax those laws, while an unprecedented start was taken at their

final abolition. "We are building ships," says a writer in the Times, " incredibly better, larger, and more serviceable than were dreamed of twenty years ago. Every week brings notification of some vessel being laid down or launched, on a scale hitherto unattempted. Within these few days we chronicled the construction of the fastest clippers and the largest iron merchantmen in the world. Less than a week ago we announced that the British-built traders that had started from China for this country on a trial of speed with the American-built traders had arrived before their opponents were heard of, leaving the palm incontestably with ourselves." An efficient line of steam communication with Australia, by means of large and powerful vessels, is about to be commenced by the General Screw Steam Shipping Company. The increase of trade between England and the Australian colonies renders the establishment of steam communication absolutely necessary in these days of rapid progress, and there can be [ no doubt of the success attending this and other I undertakings of a like kind. ! Mr. Thomas Carlyle is at present at Berlin, I where he is understood to be collecting mate- ' rials for a life of Frederick the Great- What other materials he may collect and publish res- ! pecting the present state -of Atfcgtria&nd -Germany we shall probably know when he returps. A revolt has broken out at Syria, and Mesopotamia. The Arab tribes are pursuing a system of pillage on the largest scale. Caravn s are robbed, and one English vessel was stop c d at Bussora, but given up at the remonstrance of the British Consul. The advices from Jamaica' were to the middle of October. Floods of great force had done much damage there ; and in the islands of Martinique and Guadaloupe a great number of people had died from a species of malignant African fever that baffled all medical skill. Two thousand dollars is stated to be the sum Mr. Thackeray will receive from the American Mercantile Library Association, for his lectures before that body. The Hon. Abbott Lawrence, in a letter to the corresponding secretary of the Mercantile Library Association, thus speaks of Mr. Ttlackeray : — " With i his distinguished literary attainments you are acquainted, but of his social and domestic character you are probably not so well in- | formed ; and I therefore have much pleasure in stating that in all relations of life Mr. Thackeray is a man who is entitled to the consideration, kindness, and confidence of the best people of the United States." A very extraordinary accidept occurred a week ago on board the Swedish steamer, the Lennart, as it was proceeding from Stockholm to Ystad. ; In the night a violent tempest arose, and a large vessel containing sulphuric acid, placed on the de&k, was broken. A portion of the j corrosive liquor passed through the crevices of the planks, end fell on to a bed in a cabin be- [ neath. In this bed the Count Eric Chretien de Pontin, Chamberlain to the King of Sweden and Norway, was sleeping. *The acid soon burnt through two blankets, and reached the abdomen of the unfortunate gentleman, burning it dreadfully. The gas which escaped made it impossible for him to cry for, help, and senseless. Isext/nii^rwig; Ms servant, on going into the cabin, found that the lower part of bis bowels was entirely eaten away. The unfortunate gentleman was unable to speak a word. The steamer immediately proceeded to a port near at hand, The unfortunate gentleman was conveyed to the hospital where- he received every possible attention, but expired after a few hours of intense suffering. The Count was only 26 years of age, A New York paper says, the first locomotive used on the American continent was imported from Liverpool, and i& still in existence; it has recently been repaired, and is now running on the Little Schuylkill railroad. Its antiquity and the singular arrangement of its machinery make it a great curiosity. • An Irishman who seemed to die suddenly on the railway was buried at Wheeling, Virginia, on Tuesday. Those who attended the funeral, after lowering the coffin into the grave, returned to their home, leaving a man to fill up the grave. It appears that, after throwing in a few shovelsful of earth, he was alarmed by a singular noise as of kicking and struggling in the coffin, so that he ran away. Coming up with Mr. Fitzsimmons, he told what he had heard ; and both immediately returned, raised and opened the coffin, and found the man turned on his face, and his person warm. It is said that if the coffin had been opened when the commotion was first heard the man might have been saved, and that he died solely from suffocation. — New York Paper.