ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 931, 5 July 1854, Page 4

ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

The Daily News, March 7, has the subjoined paragraph :—: — " The directors of the chartered Bank of India, Australia, and China, having made a call of £2 per share, a meeting of the scripholders has been invited for the 16th inst., with a view to endeavouring to put a stop to the undertaking, and to obtain a return of the deposits." The British Navy. — At this period it will be interesting to our readers to know the full strength of the British Navy; and we have therefore compiled from the latest Navy List the subjoined lists of " effective ships." Tbe total number, including those of all sizes and those building is 545. Of ships of the line there are 76, of which 13 are screw ships. There are 73 frigates and other vessels from 40 to 70 guns each, of which nine are screw ; and 35 ships from 20 to 40 guns each, of which seven are screw and two steam paddle ships. In course of building there are 14 ships of the line, of which seven are screw ; j 12 ships from 40 to 70 guns, of which five are screw ; and four ships from 20 to 40 guns, all of which are screw. Besides these large ships, there are se?pral hundred of steam frigates, sloops, brigs, &c, below 20 guns, but many of which are armed with guns of a very great calibre and long range. — English Paper. Convict Prisons. — Convict prisons on a large scale, to contain several hundred each, are about to be erected at Chatham and Woolwich, with the view of finally abolishing tbe bulk system, and providing for tbe execution of labour required in connexion with public works. At Portsmouth j the hulks are abolished, and a well-arranged i prison on shore erected in their stead. At Woolwich some bulks are still in use, but they will be superseded, by the new prison to be erected there. At Chatham there are no hulks, but the new prison will be for tbe reception ol convicts, who, tinder the new system of abolishing, to a great extent, transportation to foreign parts, will be employed in the government works, which are about to be greatly extended in tbe dockyard and its entrances at Chatham. — Observer. Facts in Human Life. — The number of languages spoken in the world amounts to about 3,064. Tbe inhabitants of the globe profess more than a 1,000 different religions. The number of men is about equal to the number of women. The average of human life is about 33 years. One quarter die previous to tbe age of seven years; one half before reaching 17; and those who pass this age enjoy a felicity refused to one-half the human species. To every 1,000 persons only one reaches 100 years of life ; to every 100 only six reach tbe age of sixty-five; and not more than one in 500 lives to eighty years of age. There are on earth 1,000,000,000 inhabitants ; and of these < 333,333,333 die every year, 91,824 everyday, 3,730 every hour, and GO every minute, or one every second. These losses are about balanced by an equal number of births. Tbe married are longer liTed than the single, and above all, those who observe a sober and industrious conduct. Tall men live longer than short ones. Women have more chances of life in their favour previous to being 50 years of age than men, but fewer afterwards. The number of marriages is in proportion of 75 to every 1,000 individuals. Marriages are more frequent after the equinoxes ; that is, during the months of June and December. Those born in spring are generally more robust than others. Births and deaths are more frequent by night than by day. Tbe number of men capable of bear'ng arms is calculated at one-fourth of tbe population. — English Quarterly. ' Silvio Phllico. — On the Ist of February this well-known Italian died at Montcaglieru, j near Turin, in bis C6th year. His sufferings had long since exhausted both bis mind and j body, and for mauy years past he had been affect- ■ ed by a pulmonary complaint. In early life he J devoted himself much to poetry, and wrote a tragedy called Francesca di Rimini, which enjoys a considerable reputation in Italy. In 1820 he was tutor in the family of Count Parro, at Milan, and the following year was arrested as a carionaro, and condemned to death at tbe same time as Count Gonfaloniere and many others, which sentence was commuted to imprisonment, and he remained in the fortress of Spielberg until the amnesty of 1830. On bis release be sought shelter in Turin, and has been almost ever since employed as librarian in the house of tbe Marchesa Barolo, where he died, having completely separated himself from all political connection after his arrival in this country ; indeed, bis health was so shattered by bis severe privations during ten years of imprisonment as to incapacitate him for any very active employment subsequently. During bis residence in Piedmont, however, be had tbe satisfaction of receiving two tokens of homage to bis sufferings which could not fail to be extremely grateful to a mau so capable of

valuing tbe sources whence they came— the first, was the dedication to him by GiobeTti of bis work on Italy, as " tbe first of Italian Patriots," and tbe other, the decoration of St. Maurice, from the hands of a constitutional Sovereign. Fellico leaves a brother and a sister, who will, says the Armonia, of Turin, render the best possible bomage to his memory, by publishing hi? manuscript works, which are voluminous, and among which is one entitled, "My Life before and after my imprisonment."

The Enfans Trouves at Pakis. — I followed my attendant, who was evidently in a great burry, into a very large, long apartment, called the • Creche. 1 Before me, but rather to the left, I saw, as might be expected, the head of a baby noddling in the arms of a woman, and walking up to her, I found seated with her, on sixteen chairs-wbich touched each other, sixteen countrylooking women, each in a peasant's? dress, every one of them with a baby's head resting or noddling on her left arm ; and the reason of its noddling was, that the whole of the rest of its person was swaddled as tight as if it had been a portion of the limb of a tree. As several of these women appeared to me to be old enough to be grandmothers, I was not 8t all astonished at hearing several of the infants,, as I walked in front of them, cry ; the noise, however, was altogether greater — the chorus infinitely louder — than I could account for, and I was alike stunned and astonishe3 by it, when, on reaching the end , of the line, I saw, to my utter astonishment lyI ing in one tray, jammed c'oser to each other than the notes of *a pianoforte, in little black-edged j caps, twelve babies, apparently born at the same minute, rather less than -a week ago. Such a series of brown, red, yellow, pimpled, ugly, little faces I never beheld. Every one of them were not only squalling, but with every conceivable, as well as inconceivable grimace, were twisting their little lips from one ear towards the other, as if their mouths had been filled with rhubarb, jalap, aloes, mustard ; in short with anything out of the pharmacopoeia cf this world but what they wanted. There appeared to be no chance of their ever becoming quiet ; for one squalled because its tiny neighbour on each side squalled, and that set them all a squalling ; and indeed, when the chorus, like a gale of wind, for the reason explained in Colonel Reids history of hurricanes, to a slight degree occasionally subsided, their little countenances evinced such real discomfort, that if they had had no voices, end for want of them had made no noise at all, it would have been impossible to have helped pitying them. Nobody, however, but myself, took the slightest notice of them. The nurses walked about the room ; the sixteen women, leaning their bodies sometimes a little backwards, and sometimes a little forwards, seemed to be thinking only of lulling to rest their own new charge. For some time my attendant had been trying to hurry me away to what she considered more important scenes, but, without attending to her repeated solicitations, I stood for some minutes rivetted to | tbe ground ; and afterwards, in turning round to take a last lingering farewell of the trayful of j babies, I observed, pinned at the back of each of j their caps a piece of paper, which my attendant { told me was the infant's number, which, in the register, records the day or night and Lour at i which it was received — but too often that is all that is kuown on earth of its unfortunate history. As I was walking through this lofty and welllighted room, tbe floor of which I was astonished to find so polished and so slippery that, even without an infant in my' arms, I could scaicely keep on my lec;s, I perceived on looking arouDd me, that I was in a little world of babies, in fact, there were no less than 120 iron cradle-, full ot them. In different places I observed several women feeding them with flat glass bottles, intended to represent their mothers. At the end of the room stood the statue of oar Saviour. My attendant now led me into a hall full of babies' cradles on one side, and beds for matrons on the other. Then to another room, containing thirtyeight cradles ; but as soon as on the threshold of the door, she informed me they were full of infants with all sorts of diseases in their eyes, I whisked round, and, without givingher my reasons, told her I would rather not enter it. I, however, followed her through a long room full of cradles, surrounded by blue curtains, within every one of which was a sick infant, many afflicted wilh the measles; and such a variety of little coughing*, sneeziDgs, cryings, and here and there violent squallirigs, as loud as if the child had some cutaneous disorder, and they were skinning it, it would be very difficult to describe. There were two rows of buildings, which I had observed from the windows, and which my attendant told me were full of great children, whom the public are not allowed to see. She, however with evident pride, showed me a large laundry, two stories high, and a drying ground ? a farm-yard for cows and pigs ; some large gardens ; and an establishment of thirty yellow 'buses, with a cabriolet on the (op, for transporting sixteen country nurses at a time (the very number I had seen sitting in a row waiting for their 'bus) with their sixteen babies, to the various termini of the railways on which they were to be injected into tbe country. — A Faggot of French Sticks, by Sir Francis Head.

The Railway to Moscow. — Only one train starts daily ; and the hour at which this most important event takes place is, or ought to be, eleven a.m. Travellers are commanded by the Government to be at the station at ten precisely ; and even then they are liable to be told the train is full — as it is quite an unheard of thing to pat on an extra carriage for any number of passeugers. Having arrived, therefore, at ten minutes before ten, to be quite sure of being in lime, our luggage was seized by a soldier policeman, or railway porter (for they all wear somewhat the same uniform), and carried in one direction, while we rushed in another to shew our passport for Moscow, to procure which we had been to three different offices the day before. Here the description of our* persons and onr reasons for travelling, which it contained, being copied at full length, we were hurried to another counter, where we got it stamped ; whence catching sight of our baggage enpassant, we speed on to the ticket office, 0 and then, returning to our portmanteux, went through the formalities which ended in receiving a ticket to add to the number of those with which our pockets were now pretty well filled. The anxiety of mind which such a variety of documents causes is not to be wondered at, when the consequences which tbe loss of any of them would ' entail are considered. Ladies in Russia do not j

think of carrying their tickets in their gloves. We now betook ourselves to tbe waiting: room, which we should have thought handsome, had we not been detained in it so long that we got tired of admiring it. For an hour did the destined occupants of the train sit patipntly on the benches, every man with head uncovered — for even a skull cap is an ahomi ation to a Russian under a roof. Every one in military garb seemed to have the entree to the platform, while the doors were rigorously shut against us unhappy civilians, At a quarter before eleven, however, they are opened — a general rush follows, and we are hurried through a barrier, tbe doors of which close behind us. Soon the whole barrier becomes thronged with people, waving their adieux as ardently as if they were booked for Australia. A bell, a whistle, and a sort of dull 3tlernpt 0t a scream, are, as in more civilised parts of the 'world, the signals for starting ; we leave the weeping eyes and waving ! pocket handkerchiefs behind us, and, in the course of ten minutes, find, to our satisfaction, that we have increased our speed to fifteen miles an hour. We have hardly done so ere we arrive at a station. Every one rushes out and lights a cigarette. We are to stop here ten minutes, and the people during that lime walk up and down the platform and smoke : then we huddle into our old places, and have time to look about us. The enrriages are large. Nobody seems to go in the first class, A :<econd chss carriage accommodates about fifty people. They are built as in Austria and America, with a passage in the centre, perambulated by a man in uniform, who occasionally asks people for their tickets. He seems to make the enquiry the first time to satisfy himself that you have got one, and afterwards as an amusement, which be apparently enjoys the more if be fancies you are going to sleep. The men are bearded and dirty, and relate stories in a loud tone of voice, for the benefit of the whole company., most of whom have evidently never been in a railway before. At every station the same scene ensues. The unsmoked ends of the last station's cigars, having been carefully preserved, and lighted afresh, and vehemently smoked on the plaiform during five or ten minutes, as the case may be. — Oliphant.