SCOTLAND,

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 223, 9 December 1859, Page 3

SCOTLAND,

The Priuce of Wales continued tb; reside at Holyrood till the 10th of September, when he joined his royal parents in.the Highlands. He has, on the whole, pursued his studies as diligently as he could, consistently with having plenty of amusement. In addition to his private lessons with Dr. Sclimitz, he attended Professor Playfair's chemistry class at the university, as a student in which lie ha«J been regularly matricu'ated. He appears to have made himself very popular in Edinburgh. The town-council has taken rather a clumsy way of expressing this fact by the adoption of a set of resolutions thanking the Prince for the honour he has conferred upon the capital of Scotland by residing in it. A bust of his royal highness. is to be executed by Mr. Steele, and to be placed in the hall of the High Scho >1. Disclosures, says the Scotsman, are about to be made before the Court of Session of an enormous system of fraud alleged 4o have been formerly practised by managers ;of .the Carron > Company; ' There are reasuns for"beli^Vuig that" the-foots wlir it fully disclosed will form one of most extraordinary and gigantic cases of fraud iv the history of tradfi The North British Mail gives an account of an accident of iliy iSouih-Western Railway, near Glasgow, caused by the train running off the rails at a spot whf re they were undergoing repairs. A passenger by the train says:— " The engine, tender, and van, and a first-class carriage remained 0:i the mi's : three third-class carriages, immediately following, were completely upset; and oilier two third and two first-class carriages ran over the ejnbankraent into the adjoining field, a distance of 10 yards. Two third-class carriages and a van were thrown across the rails, a considerable portion of wliicli were torn up." A number of the pa?sengei'ri were more or less severely injured. We read in the Montrose Review: —" The arrival of the Lord Chief Justice of England at the Clova gathering was heralded by a buzz of conversation. Doubts were expressed by the young laddies whether he would come with a mace or a sceptre; and they were apparently much surprised to see a pleasant.faced elderly gentleman, mounted on a Highland pony, with a tweed suit of quiet check and a fast-looking little cap, instead of that ideal Chief Justice, with a robe and a wig, and all the insignia of office, which they had pictured to themselves.'' A party of gentlemen lately performed the ascent of the peak of Goatfell. The decent, which they accomplished by a different path, was rendered memorable by the following adventure :—One of the party, a stout spectacled gentleman, of 19 stone (Dr. William Smith, Classical Examiner in the London University), rubicund, noisy, and short-sighted, started off down the south-west side among the loose debris. This steep incline terminates on the top of a fearful precipice, over which a traveller fell two years ago and was killed^ Efown, down, went our friend in a gully made by a mountain torrent, till his eyes caught the fearful gulf below, and in desperation he clung to a jutting rock, by which his progress downwards was checked. He shouted to his friends for aid, but they had already got down to Glenrosa, and did not concern themselves much about their friend, whom they observed resting from his labours, as they thought, on bis lofty chair. After shouting to him to oome along, they wended their way to Inverclpy, consoling themselves with the remark that their friend would not fail to be at the inn in time for dinner. But dinner passed, nightfall came, and still no word of the lost gentleman. All the available bands about the inn were now called out, waiters and coachmen were collected, and off they set, provided with rope 3, &c. The whole night long the search was continued, but not until 9 o'clock on the following morning was any trace of the lo3t traveller discovered. There, at the identical spot where he first caught the jutting rock, still hung the adventurous traveller, and there for 18 hours had he held on without being able to effect an advance or retreat. By the aid of ropes he was got out of his perilous position, and by the help of a little mountain dew his speeoh was restored. The Forbes Mackenzie commission terminated its sittings at Dumfries on the 2nd of September. " The Braemar Gathering" was held in front of the old Castle of Mar, Deeside, on the Ist of September. The Queen was prevented by the fatigue of her journey of the previous day from being present. Though the Highlanders did not muster in quite their usual" strength, the meeting seems to have been a very interesting one. Here and there, says the Banff Journal, potato disease is making way, though we are happy to say it is as yet, at any rate, much more partial this year than it has' ever before been. In Fyvie, a correspondent says, " there are a few patches going fast," and at Monymusk, on the Don, the tops are quite decayed. In some cases tubers, too, have been found a good deal affected. At a meeting held on the 2nd of September at Dumbarton, for the formation of a volunteer rifle corps, Sir J. Colquhoun, lord-lieutenant of the county, presiding, the Duke of Montrose said:—" We know, as the lord-lieutenant has said, that we are now more liable to invasion than formerly; that is to say, that an invasion might more readily take place now than in former years, as the navies now-a-days are difi ferent from those of past times, so that there is no doubt it .would be easier to land a large body iof troops here than formerly. We must feel ! that, notwithstanding the great amity that is professed by a neighboring country towards us which we reciprocate and are anxious to maintain, yet we cannot feel so safe as if there was, a constitutional, government in that country, when the whole is dependent on the single will: of one individual. (Cheers.) We must feel that there is no check upon him, if be should think it to be to bis advantage—but I think he won't find that—to attack this country. He has not'the check of * Parliament, or of the representatives* of'the nation, or the more mild influence of the country through the public presi; and therefore we cannot possess all the security which we should have without being armed for all. contingencies. This feeling has Bpread all over the coubtry,,' and has been spoken of in Parliament, and the expressions

there given forth have been endorsed by the

I people at large; and therefore I think we ought I to adopt a line of conduct pursued by a large portion of the people of England y and also by many in various parts of Scotland—-a course which I consider extremely desirable." ; Glasgow Town Council have agreed to request the Lord Provost and Magistrates of the city to ask the National Association for the promotion of Social Science to hold their meeting of 1860 in Glasgow. , !•' . A good deal of noise continues to be made at , Edinburgh about the opposition to the annuity tax. The collector of the tax.has just obtained processes against 16 merchants I and tradesmen who are endeavoring to hold out against the system. j . At a meeting of the Town Council, at Edinburgh, on September 13, it was resolved to elect Sir David Brewster to the cbair of Principal of the University, vacant by the death of the late Principal Lee. A disruption of the,conjugal relations has just caused some excitement at the Bridge of Allan. It appears that on the night of September 9 a special dancing assembly was held in the new music hall, Bridge of Allan, which was attended by between 80 and 90 ladies and gentlemen. Among the company were Captain Gordon, ofthe 42nd (who only returned from India a few days ago), his lady, and Captain Calleu, ofthe 71st, the depots of both these regiments being stationed at Sliding. We may mention that during Captain-Gordons absence in India his lady, with two"...young children, resided in Stirling and neighborhood, and it is alleged that slie was frequently iv the company of Captain Callen. Certain is that, after spsnding a very merry evening the party retired,' between 12 and 1 o'clock, for supper to Philp's Hotel, and shortly after Captain Callen and Mrs. Gordon were missed. This was not generally known to the compauy at the time ; but the painful fact oozed out in the course of the following day. It appears that about the [time indicated, the captain and Mrs. Gordon bad a carriage and pair awaiting in the outskirts of the village, which they entered, when they drove rapidly to Auchterarder, a station on the Scottisa Central Railway, about 18 miles distant. From this point the fugitives could easily reach any part of the kingdom. Nothing further has been heard as yet ofthe adventurous pair. [So the story is told in the papers. But it appears that it contain a gross mis-statement. A correspondent of the ' Times' who signs himself " E. M.," and who is a near relative of Mrs. Gordon, asserts that the lady is at present residing with her husband at Benares and that her only child is under his care. m