SCOTLAND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 292, 26 November 1862, Page 5

SCOTLAND.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

EDINBURGH,

September 25th, 1562,

For some time, throughout the length and breadth of Scotland,, the Sandyford Place murder has been the almost absorbing topic of the day. In vain did Hoe's cylinders rumble and rapidly revolve nearly without intermission in the Glasgow printing offices duriug the trial—enough editions could not be struck off to meet the ever-growing popular demand for fresh tidings of this most mysterious case. Under the gas lamps gathered knots of people, peering over the shoulders of those who had been fortunate enough to obtain p?pers, and were too impatient to get at the latest news ofthe trial, to wait until they reached home before they unfolded their moist sheets. Even in Edinburgh the sale ofthe papers was greatly stimulated, the circulation of the Scotsman amounting on one day to 70,000 (which, by the bye,° and not the 120,000 bragged of, is said to be the average circulation of the London Daily Telegraph). The extraordinary statement made on the part of the prisoner just before she was condemned, has produced a deep impression. If her agents' word may be taken, and this declaration regarded as a bena-fide one, drawn up before they were aware of the nature of the evidence that would be adduced against her, the document is entitled to grave consideration. With a Defoe-like accumulation o truth-like minutiae it strives to fasten the guilt of the murder on the old man Fleming, who, at any rate, was in the house when the murder was committed, and whose strange conduct after the murder, and hesitating, contradictory replies under cross-examination, certainly expose him to serious suspicion. The Crown will be petitioned to grant a respite to the prisoner, and to order an investigation o her final declaratftm.

ihe G-lasgowegians, however, have not been so entirely taken up with their city's tragedy as to have no sympathy to spare for a meeting in behalf of their fallen favorite hero, Garibaidi, whose defeat by Italians — Italians, who instigated by savage orders, fired on him whilst, he was endeavouring to prevent the fratricidal shedding of Italian blood—is the saddest news this mail will carry out. Cialdini's language Garibaldi-wards really seems to have sprunofrom tiie great hate of little envy. There il something touching in the letters which tlie composer of " Garibaldi's Hymn " latterly addressed to the man in whose honor it was composed, praying that music which had been consecrated by the blood of so many brothers fighting against an alien foe, might not be used m a strife betwixt brothers. How far Garibaldi is responsible for that strife it is difficult to decide. It is very plainly hinted that he was egged on to undertake his last expedition by those who meant to gatherits fruits should it prove successful, but who were obliged by French interference to give up° their double-dealing game, and hunt and wound, and imprison the man to whom, more than to any other man, inchoate United Italy is indebted for her existence. To the United State*, to fake service as a Federal General, Garibaldi talks of proceeding, as soon as the English surgeon whom British sympathisers have sent out to him, shall have healed his wound, if he can then obtain release from prison. Garibaldi na.s persuaded himself thafc the Federal side is that of freedom—how, it is hard to say. At any rate, unless Federal soldiers fight far better under him, than they have fought under any of the American Generals, in consequence of whose incompetency Ajnerica has to incur the disgrace of begging and praying " effete old Europe" to send her a leader—Garibaldi in one sense, will find the Federal side any'tbmg but that of freedom—will discover that p v merel^ made an exchange of prisons. 1 erchance, the circumstance, that ever since the Orleanist princes enlisted for their short, and as to its conclusion, not very creditable term of service in the Federal army, Louis .Napoleon's leanings have become more and more Confederate, may have something to do with Garibaldi's wish to return to the New World, He hates Louis A apoleon, considering him the obstacle to the extraction of the "jagged stone" which prevents the lips of Italy's wound from closing and accordingly, takes a delight (for even Garibaldi is not morally all-great) in annoying him to the utmost of his power. Our receipt of news from America is now so nicely timed that heavy bets were actually laid a short time ago that the Persia would beat the Great Eastern by a length in the race across the Atlantic.

Deerfoot has-been beaten at last, ruunhv third in a race with two Englishmen. ° England has gained another victory over America. Acricketmatch came off in New-York last July, between eleven English and sixteen American players. The Britishers licked in one innings. A very interesting article on cricket has appeared in London Society. The writer declares old Lilly-white's ronnd-arm bowling to have been, and Willsher's round-arm bowling to be down-right throwing. Oddly enough, at the recent unprecedented match on the Kennington Oval, at which more than five hundred were scored in one innings, Lilly white's son- was the umpire whose objection to Willsher's style of delivery made hini take the harmoniously high-handed course of leaving the ground in " a devil of a temper"—-an outbreak most rare amongst the generally jolly knights of the willow. Singularly again the female Blondins of Paris and London both came to the ground and serious grief on the same day. A successor to their firm-footed fame has accordingly been advertised for in the "".Era—a not very creditable sign of the era. Another public posture-maker has had a fall. Dr. Guthrie of the Free Church, chose to select in one of his speeches, as his " frightful example" for teetotal purposes °the quarrying village of Ballachulish. This he made out to be about the dirtiest, ra°-o- e dest, drunkenest place in the United Kingdom. Every fourth or fifth house in it he declared was a public-house. It has been proved by the resident clergymen of different denomina tions, and other persons acquainted with the locality, that there is not a public-house or drinking-place of any kind in the whole of Ballachulish, and that the Doctor's general description of that place is impudently false. Even his Free Church brother turns against him, and stands up for the morality of Ballachulish stoutly The entire body of Ballachuhshites are justly most angry with their defamer. He will not venture, I will be bound to sa}', for many a year, if ever again, within T reach of the Ballachulish quarries. Lynch law and lapidation might suggest themselves to some of .the hottest tempered of the slandered Celts. Meanwhile, the doctor has had to en- ? ™the '^gradation' of seeing the dead walls of Edinburgh still speaking, in the form of: newspaper placards, to the effect that he i& "fc leem.' fcody^ and of reading demons^

tions of his having said the "thing which is not m any newspaper he may chance to openl The only reply he has attempted is a miser, .able shuffle about lapsus lin^ncv, and pharisa-c advice to his reverend brethren in the Highlands to sweeten their stomachs and tempers by becoming teetotallers like his immaculate self. However clean his stomach may be he has certainly proved that he has a very foul tongue. Dr Guthrie denounces intemperance mtemperately. a boiler-maker similarly denounces Louis Napoleon and the Pope ever? Sunday evening on Glasgow Green : a brick 3 maker similarly defends them ; a row ensues, Scotch and Irish in tiie gathered crowd taking opposite sides-" faos sweet the Sabbath thus to spend !" l? Qr some days past Belfast, notwithstanding the presence of a large body of military, has tirougii the blunderer, the partisanship, or Jie timidity, of its magistrates, been the scene oi -no Popery" riots, as idotic as any ot the doings of Barnaby Rudge, as brutal almost as any ot the deeds of Hugh ofthe Maypole or Dennis the hangman. The Protestants do'not have it all their own way in Belfast, howeve'--the Romanists vie with them in villany Pitched battles come off between the rival mobs. Houses are " wrecked," and people wiio taue neither side are set upon and beaten withm an mch of their lives with most impartial cowardice by both parties. The Nortiltein Whig has always preached the truly Catholic doctrine of mutual forbearance in religious matters. Consequently one of the mobs made an attack on the office ol the Northern. Whig, tlie other on its proprietor's house. Another sample of these indecent pseudo-religious squabbles has recently been reported from Canada, where Cattiohc driest and Protestant Clergyman bid as a at an auction, for the dying belief of Sir Alan M^ao, and quarrelled over his corpse. In jyJmDiirgii lately Aye have hal a specimen ot the proneness of the Church to become militant internally, when her external chances are cut oh, m a dispute as to who ou^ht to be appointed co-adjuior to the Protestant Bishop ot tne diocese. One of the candidates coolly declared that he believed thai lie stood hi-fi in tiie estimation of all his br-nhi^n ° Ltgenuas, efc-The -quotation* is 'somewhat fusty, andiar too flattering. " Artistic" people ot ah kinds, are, so iar as I have observed, oiten as rancorous as rival eostermoiigers! llaii mournful, hall' mirthful to look upon are the little tricks, the little spites in which the literary, the artistic-aye, and sometimes the scienlinc—- worlds indulge— e.g. a secondrate life-dramatic poet writes the* Edinburgh correspondence of a weedy Glasgow newspaper. To enliven bis letter one week he gives loud praise to an article of liis own in a current rmuib;-r of a quarterly review—,-, article good m its criticism of by-gone British Essayists, but fulsomeiy flattering to sundry hying ones belonging to the reviewer's own clique, and altogether silent as to the merits ol Ur. John Brown, who, although nerhaps himself in some quarters foolishly overpraised professes minutely more originality than the eribbing-poet reviewer and ail the friends he flatters. The poet, I fear, envies the doctor the popularity aud publisher-paying character of Ins works. Mr. M'Culloch, the political economist, whose bust brawnily adorns the | lobby ofthe handsome new ofiice of the Sco-s----man (of which he once was editor) has recently distributed amongst his friends an annotated catalogue of his library. "These are the dishes withm my reach, and I'll tell you how i like or loathe them," says the not unamiable ■ egotist by this action. Mr Thackeray will begin to contribute regularly again to the magazine whose reputation hc*h&s°made, from which his contributions, (whether "roundabout," or as straightforward as he wiil condescend to let tlie very uncanal-like current of his stories run,) are always sorely missed in January next. The workmanship of Mis ' Lvan's Italian story in the Coruhill is admirable, but the skilful chasing is a poor substitute for the hedge-flower-like spontaneity of her English tastes. Mr Anthony Troilope's new English story, had it, as finas at. present disclosed, been turned out by an unknown " hand," would have been dammed as "twaddle." Mr Sala, it is said, is about to bring out in lempleßar, a story entitled "Doctor Forster.' May it heal and foster its author's fame —sadly imperilled by "Captain Dangerous." Mr Wilide Collins would have made no name had he written nothing but "No Name" which latterly has become one of the most stupidly wearisome of fictions. For the copywright ofthe same, however, Mr Collins claims " a sum that has not been equalled since Scott's best prices." That clever, selfcomplacent woman, Mrs Gaskell, whose comfortably conceited, plump, red-petticoated, " poged-up" Balmoralied portrait in Trafalgarsquare in 1859 gave, I should fancy, a very truthful idea of the subject's character, is aboui to publish a novel to be called " Sylvia's Lovers."— Au revoir.