treasure concealed under ground, but first of all made two citizens pay him 700 and 300 florins. Finding they were deceived, they brought an action, and the Franciscan has been arrested. People abroad would be much mistaken if they fancied that the people of this country took much interest in the advance of knowledge which distinguishes the nineteenth century. The erection of convents of mendicant friars does not seem likely to promote it. [The increase of monasteries in England is more surprising!]

BRUSSELS.-In consequence of the violence of the late storm, a part of the wall of the city of Brussels (about 100 yards) fell down, between the Namur and Hal gates.

The plan of erecting a bridge between Weymouth and the Isle of Portland having been pronounced practicable, the work will be commenced as soon as the sanction of Parliament for the purpose has been obtained.

THAMES WATER.-The number of common sewers which empty themselves into the Thames between Chelsea-bridge and the Tower is 88, exclusive of innumerable drains from streets, manufactories, and houses. Hence the necessity of boring the earth for pure water, on the certain improved plan, which Thames water companies conclude to be, in semi-demi-fashionable phrase, a great bore. So it is: we know none of greater utility.

The spring flowers began to appear with March, the shrubberies were beautiful, and have long been rendered so by the delicate white cymes of the lauristinus, and the lovely azure of the dwarf perriwinkle (vinca menor), and now the mezereon has suddenly burst into bloom. Evergreens have sustained no injury whatever, and, what may appear strange to some readers, the nerium oleander flore pleno has endured the utmost degree of cold (18 degrees), without a change of tint in the verdure of its foliage. double camellia may safely be added to our list of hardy evergreens, and will soon decorate the shrubbery.-Horticultural Rep.

The

Wall fruit promises to be productive; in training and pruning the trees it is a practice of wisdom rather to twist and contort any secondary branch so as to fill every blank space, than to aim at undeviating symmetry, and straight lines; it is good gardener's ambition to be "green close home, and to the very surface." Fruit trees are very effectually secured by bunting screens, or old flags placed on rollers, and let down nightly, when the bloom is expanded; much more so than by any netting that we have seen used.

It is believed that one of the proposed church reforms, as relating to the principality, will be to fill up the bishoprics as they become vacant with clergy known to the eminent Welsh scholars. This will be indeed an important measure, that would

be happily extended to Ireland.-Merthyr Guardian.

AN AWFUL FACT.-From a return made for the city and liberty of Westminster, it appears that during the last year no less than about 100 children have been burnt to death, chiefly owing to their parents leaving them alone in a room with a fire in it. Of this number about four-fifths were girls and the remainder boys. This arises from the difference of the clothing between boys and girls. Where the boys have been burnt to death, it has been chiefly owing to wearing pinafores. In a great many of the cases the accidents have occurred from the children getting on a chair to reach something off the mantel-piece when their clothes easily ignite.

NEW COLLEGIATE INSTITUTION IN AMERICA. "The Manual Labour Academy" of Maury county, Kentucky, which was opened four years ago with only seven pupils, has been formed into a college, under the title of Jackson College. The trustees own 310 acres of land, with substantial buildings for the accommodation of seventy-two students, and they are now erecting other buildings. One hundred and sixty applications for admission were made during the last year. Two hours labour a-day are required from each student, and 16. in addition to this will pay for his board and tuition. Donations are now solicited for the purchase of a library, philosophical apparatus, and the endowment of a professorship.

At the society called Encyclopedique, in Paris, General Davereux, lately pronounced a glowing eulogium, on the recently deceased Mr. Robert Oliver, of Baltimore; in which, among other things, he said, "He had rendered himself illustrious by the acquirement, through the exertion of powerful intellect, unwearied industry, unimpeached probity and integrity, of a fortune of more than a million sterling; yet, with the concurrent practice of splendid hospitality and unbounded charity." What a splendid specimen of the commercial character! This simple citizen was assuredly the glory of an iron age.

PRESENT STATE OF ELGIN CATHEDRAL.About eight or nine years since, the person who had for thirty or forty years been the keeper of the churchyard and cathedral died, and John Shanks was appointed his successor. This man's veneration for the cathedral, and his enthusiasm for its antiquities, are altogether boundless. He soon furnished a most striking proof of this. Before he had been two years installed in the office, he cleared away from the area of the building, by his own unaided exertions, 2,832 cubic yards of rubbish. The entrance to the cathedral and the area of the building have been, by his good taste and indefatigable labours, very greatly beautified. John's taste, zeal, and labours are really extraor

dinary, when it is considered that he is upwards of seventy years of age. He is a great favourite with the visiters, from the extent of his information respecting every thing connected with the building, and his extreme readiness to communicate information to strangers. Not long since, the inhabitants of Elgin presented him with a handsome silver snuff-box, with a suitable inscription, in testimony of their sense of what he has done to beautify the ground plot of the cathedral.

EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTER.-Mr. John Biss, who rents an estate of, and acts as gamekeeper for, L. St. Albyn, Esq., Alfoxton, near Stowey, in this county, although now in the eightieth year of his age, has the reputation of being the "best shot" within many miles of his neighbourhood. On the 1st of September last, accompanied by Mr. St. Albyn, jun., he brought down eight birds out of nine; and on Friday last, several experienced sportsmen having assembled on a trial of skill, they proceeded with their dogs into the park and adjacent woods, where this ardent old sportsman kept up a brisk and successful fire among the rabbits, to the astonishment of all present. Biss occupies a snug cottage in a sweetly sylvan and sequestered spot, and has no ambition to relinquish it, being much attached to his habitation, from the circumstance that his grandfather came to dwell therein when he was eighteen years of age, and married and brought up on the spot a large family, and died at the age of eighty. Biss's father also lived in the same dwelling all his life, and died at the age of ninety; and Biss him-elf, as above stated, now eighty, has never lived in any other place. Biss is cheerful and hearty, and speaks of his landlord in terms of devoted gratitude, averring that as he could never meet with a more generous master, no consideration whatever should tempt him to relinquish his present station. Biss has a son, who has always lived with his father, and who, the old man hopes, when he dies, will succeed him in the employment and protection of his benevolent landlord. The owner of property whose estate exhibits such an attestation to his honour as that we have above described, enjoys a more estimable heir-loom than any which mere extent of acres can transmit.Taunton Courier.

A young lady in the last stages of consumption was lately restored to her health by the following extraordinary and accidental remedy:-She had long been attended by the faculty, but derived no benefit from their prescriptions, and considered herself verging to the end of her existence, when she retired during the summer to a vale in the country, with the intention to wait in solitude the hour of her approaching dissolution. While in that situation it was her custom to rise as early as her malady

would permit, and contemplate the beauties of nature and the wonderful works of God from her chamber window, from which she observed a dog belonging to the house, with scarcely any flesh on his bones, constantly go and lick the dew off a camomilebed in the garden; in doing which the animal was noticed to alter in appearance, to recover strength, and, finally, to look plump and well. The singularity of the circumstance was impressed strongly on the lady's mind, and induced her to try what effect might be produced from following the dog's example. She accordingly procured the dew from the same bed of camomile, drank a small quantity each morning, and after continuing it some time experienced some relief; her appetite became regular, and she found a return of spirits, and in the end was completely cured.-Caledonian Mercury.

A correspondent of the Cambridge Press writes as follows:-" Having just arrived from Home Lacy, in Hertfordshire, I take the opportunity of sending this account of a curious occurrence that happened there on Monday last. A pond, in my uncle's grounds, all at once rose to an immense height, so as to completely overflow a great part of the garden and meadow. The gardener said he heard a rumbling noise. The butler and gamekeeper said the same thing; but I did not hear it. The fish were driven out of the pond, which, on putting my hand into, I found to my utter astonishinent to be quite warm. While I was wondering on such a strange appearance, the housekeeper exclaimed that the water in the tank had sunk away, which proved to be the case. In the course of the afternoon the pond returned to its usual state, but is five feet deeper than it was before, clearly proving that the bottom of the pond has sunk."

THE PLAGUE NON-CONTAGIOUS.-In order to dispel the prejudice which attributes contagious power to clothes and goods ar riving from an infected country, a medical man, in France, M. Chersin, has addressed a letter to the Minister of Commerce, in which he offers to submit himself to the following experiment:-The Sanitary Board of Marseilles are to obtain in the Levant the clothes of a person who has died of the plague; they are to be enclosed and sealed up in a chest, and sent to Marseilles, when M. Chersin will put them on in the Lazaretto. The courageous doctor hoped to find more than one medical man in Marseilles to follow his example.

Last month, pursuant to the sentence of the Ecclesiastical Court, a respectable woman, named Campling, living in the parish of St. Augustine's, Norwich, had to appear in that parish church to do penance, for having used certain expressions of a defamatory kind towards a female, named Bathia Doughty, alias Hubbard, as sworn by the witnesses on the part of the prosecution

Mrs. Campling had, it seems, suspected an intimacy between her husband and Doughty; and when the servant of the latter went one day to ask him to walk up to her mistress's, Mrs. Campling was represented to have used the alleged improper language, but which she positively denies. Mrs. Campling, however, had not defended the action, and no attempt was made to show the merits of the case on her part, until it was pronounced by the Chancellor Yonge to be too late. We must do the officers in the Ecclesiastical Court the justice of saying, that every thing in their power was done to spare the feelings of the poor woman. She was allowed to choose her own time for the ceremony, that it might not be done in the time of service; and she, on Monday, gave the prosecutrix notice that she would appear in the church on Friday to do penance, but none of the party accusing her appeared. The Rev. Mr. Stone, and Mr. Fromow, the churchwarden, seemed to be fully aware that it was a case of great hardship, and therefore allowed the ceremony to be performed in the vestry, and not in the body of the church, into which many had pressed from the crowd in the churchyard, who were anxious to witness the exhibition, but were loud in their execrations of the persons concerned in such a truly disgraceful procedure. The poor woman having gone through the ceremony, repeated the necessary words after the clergyman, and having said the Lord's Prayer, exclaiming that she was an injured wife, the prosecutor, her husband, had turned her out of doors. She solemnly declared to Heaven that the witnesses were false witnesses, for she had been too careful, knowing they sought such an opportunity.

A POLITE HACKNEY COACHMAN.—It is fitting that ladies who occasionally use these vehicles, as the "Friends" call them, of leathern convenience, should be made aware of the existence of such a gentleman; though we know not what trophy, by way of number, he bears, and only learn that his name is Dixon, from the rude utterances of a police report of what took place at the Mansionhouse, London, whither he was very disobligingly summoned, in consequence of having politely, but too long solicited the patience of a number of coachmen, cab and Carmen, waggoners, &c. while he obstructed their passage through the city, only from politeness to his own passenger. To the ford mayor, who lost the poise of suavity in a degree, he declared his own conviction that he had on this occasion, he feared, caused obstruction, but that on his word it should not occur again; that he drove Alderman Birch ("poet, colonel, pastry-cook," so said a song, we think of George Colman's, that did honour to city industry), and that if the alde man could not get him, he would not go into the city; that he had also the honour to have driven his lordship himself, and

felt proud to drive 'any member of the ho nourable court through the worshipful city; "for Dixon," said all," is the only man for us." The lord mayor-O stern lord of Finsbury!-fined the polished Dixon 10s. "I'll pay it with pleasure, my lord," said Dixon; "but perhaps your lordship will give me a little time." "No," was the imperturbed reply. The fine was paid; and Dixon, the beloved of aldermen, the annoyer of other carriages, street-keepers, &c., after having made the bow of a master of the cere monies, retired, declaring he would pay twice as much for such another conversation with the lord mayor.

We know not that we ought to bring the following case, which occurred at the Policeoffice of the Eastern district, before our readers; yet it exhibits such a view of the factitious state of society, when grave magistrates can permit such gross absurdities to be practised before them, that it ought to be holden up every where to reprehension. "A theatrical gentleman," named Wynne, who has lost a hand by the bursting of a blunderbuss on some stage, is stated, on calling for the police, to have been found on the ground in Whitechapel-road, at two in the morning, bleeding at the nose, with, we suppose, another gentleman, named Pell, standing over him. The latter was taken into custody, and the former called on to sustain a charge against him. The policeman having stated the facts, the supposed prosecutor sprang forward to the policeman, and exclaimed::

"Thou liest! or else saw double, I suppose, 1 knows there was no blood upon my nose." Asked to state his case; with folded arms he enunciated

"Puzzle not me with quips and cranks of law; And you, unbleached blue devil, hold your jaw!”

A magistrate asked, whether the complainant was what the Scotch call fou? "Phoo! said the policeman, "he is almost suffocated with snuff;" upon which the gentleman added

There was once a time when I would not brook Such wrong, but would have cried,' Come on, Macduff,'" &c.

The magistrate dismissed the prisoner, on which his supposed prosecutor bowed, and retired, exclaiming