ENGLISH AND FOREIGN NOTES.

Westport Times, Volume VII, Issue 1067, 29 April 1873, Page 2

ENGLISH AND FOREIGN NOTES.

Her Majesty has been pleased to grant to Mrs Knowles, the widow of the gallant captain of the Northfleet, a pension from the Civil List of £SO We (Pall Mall Gazette) are informed that M. Thiers is preparing a collection at all his principal speeches. Several editors are engaged on the work, which will be a voluminous one. President Thiers' new library embraces one hundred and twenty thousand volumnes. They are all uniformly bound in green cloth, except his own works, which his publishers have preto him bound in the most splendid crimson velvet, with gold rims. At the half-yearly meeting of the Edinburgh Tramways Company, Dr ' Wood stated that a machine would shortly be tried in Edinburgh which would draw the tramway cars without smoke or noise. A writer in Land and water says : " To give some idea of the immense height the rivers have been flooded to this winter, one day last week there were seven salmon killed in the streets of Bandon, some of them in the very houses." The work of the National Lifeboat Institution, in saving life from shipwreck in the year 1872, may thus be briefly summarised:—By lifeboats, 569; by shore boats and other means, for whose services the Institution granted rewards, 170; total, 739 lives saved. A witness recently stated, in answer to a London magistrate, that he was a penman. The magistrate, puzzled at the answer, which did not exactly correspond with the witness's appearance, asked in what class of literature he wielded his pen, when he replied that he penned sheep in the New Cattle Market. Miss Ada Wyndham, a relative of Baron Channell's, died on the 23rd of January, whilst under the influence of nitrous oxide gas, administered for a dental operation. This is the first recorded death by[this new anaesthetic, which it was confidently hoped was entirely free from danger. A verdict of homicide by misadventure was returned at the inquest. The Norwich Mercury says:—■ " Humour says that Archbishop Manning is now organising the Roman Catholic vote throughout England,

Ib a "view to united action at the xt general election. Though in no ice in a majority, if such an organition existed and were well disciplined, %ny a candidate would promise conBsions to Roman Catholics to secure i support, and in this way a very Qsiderable amount of political inience might be exercised. [At a meeting of the Directors of the htional Agricultural Laborers' Union [Leamington, an offer was laid before je meeting to take all the married jen locked out> and set them up in biness as freehold farmers on 100 |res in the State Colonies of Brazil. pro hundred families are going out. I From Toronto it is stated that a impany has been formed for the conruction of the Canadian-Pacific ailway. Sir Hugh Allen has been ipointed president, and the twelve her directors belong to the different rovinces of the Dominion. Sir Hugh ill shortly visit England to make the lancial arrangements required for is enterprise.