g4r Vrradurro.

Colonel Boyle, who has resigned his Crown appointment, was reelect- 'ed, at Frome, on Monday. There was something like an unpremeditated "coalition" between the Liberals and Conservatives on the hustings. The latter rejoiced that Colonel Boyle was going to support a Ministry comprising men like Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone. "Yes," re- joined the Colonel, "but then I also support a Ministry comprising men like Sir William Molesworth and Mr. Osborne."

Mr. Bennett of Frome intends to substitute Sunday morning col- lections, and a monthly evening collection, in his church, in lieu of church-rates. He thus hopes to raise a fund sufficient for church pur- poses, as well as schools and a library.

The fifteen marten° towers on the Sussex coast are to be put into an efficient state, and temporary barracks and stabling for 100 men and 100 horses are to be carried up in the vicinity of Seaford. Altogether the sum of 60,000/. is to be expended for defences on this coast.—Brighton

• Guardian.

An investigation has been held at the "Victualling Yard at Deptford respecting the condition of the canisters of" Goldner's preparation" stored there ; and only 81 per cent of the whole was found eatable. Bones, putrid kidnies, bits of heart, and masses like badly-made putty or chalky mud, were found in greater or less abundance.

At Winchester Assizes, last week, Dumper and Wearn were tried for the murder of Joseph Bann at Hythe, on the West side of the Southampton Water. Dumper had made admissions, that W earn and Bonn had been fighting, and the latter had been left senseless ; he finished killing Bonn, to prevent discovery. These admissions had been obtained by a policeman's wife in an irregular but not unfair manner. The Jury found Dumper --guilty of "aggravated manslaughter," but acquitted Wearn. Sentence, transportation for life.

The prosecution of Kinch, the railway-guard who was charged with the manslaughter of seven persons by causing the collision on the railway near Oxford, was stopped by the Grand Jury, who ignored the bill.

At Durham Assizes, on Saturday, George Wellborn, an engine-driver, was tried for the manslaughter of Mr. Thomas Grainger, the Edinburgh engineer, at Stockton. Mr. Grainger died of the hurts inflicted by a collision at the junction of the Clarence and Leeds Northern Railway on the 21st July last. He was seated in a passenger-train ; as it was passing some points at the junction, a goods-train, under the charge of Wellborn, ran into it, destroying .a number of the vehicles and cutting the train in half. There could be no doubt that Wellborn had been negligent in shunting his train. The pas- senger-train was thirteen minutes behind time. The prisoner's counsel urged that he had not been so grossly negligent as to warrant a conviction for manslaughter. The Jury returned a verdict of "Guilty," but added a recommendation to mercy. The sentence was six months' imprisonment.

An inquest has been held at Brighton into the murder of a child. The body was found in a field strangled with a handkerchief. The result of in- quiries has shown that the child was the daughter of a female servant named Sherwood. Before her arrest, and after the murder was known, Sherwood actually attended a public ball. In prison she tried to strangle herself. The Coroner's Jury found a verdict of " Wilful murder."

The Coroner's Jury have pronounced a verdict of "Accidental death" in the case of two of the men drowned by the upsetting of the barque Irene at Liverpool ; but expressed an opinion that the steam-tugs Uncle Sam and Queen might have rendered more aid in saving the crew.

An audacious robbery was perpetrated on Monday last in the very heart of Manchester, in the middle of the day, as thousands of persons were passing to and from their meals. Two men entered a shop, occupied by a jeweller named Howard, in Market Street, at half-past one o'clock, forced the girl who was in attendance into an inner room, cleared the place of every article of value excepting a case of diamond ring., and bolted off in a cab : they have not since been heard of.

The premises of Messrs. 011ivant, jewellers at Manchester, who were re- cently robbed of some bank-notes in a very dashing manner, have been plunder- ed of a very large amount of gold watches, chains, and other jewellery. The burglary was committed during Tuesday, night. Only servants reside in the house, occupying the upper part. The circumstances pointed to collusion by some person within the house, or familiar with its arrangements.

By great skill and diligence, the police, in a few hours, recaptured the property, in the possession of one Strounaeh ; but he seemed innocent of the crime, and has been liberated. Maxwell; his brother-in-law, who brought the plunder to Strounach's house, is in custody. He was formerly in the employ of Messrs. 011ivants. One of their plate-cleaners is also under arrest.

The accident near Manchester, on the Lancashire and Yorkshire rail- way, briefly noticed in our Postscript last week, was the worst that has oc- curred since the grand slaughter at Oxford ; but it has since been rivalled on the Midland line.

The train was an express, and consisted of eight carriages. It left Bolton Junction with passengers from Liverpool and Edinburgh a little before six on Friday evening, for Manchester. When it entered the cutting at Dixon Fold, it is said to have rocked a good deal in passing along the curves, which are shaped like the letter S ; and shortly after the engine went off the rails, turned partly round, and fell across the line. Three of the carriages were hurled off the rails, smashed to pieces, and scattered some on one embank.. ment and some on the other. One of the driving-wheels of the engine had been broken short off, and the engine itself was a complete wreck. Creston, the engine-driver, was found beneath the locomotive, dead. One of the arms of Wood, the atoker, was broken. Simmons, a coke-man, who was on the engine, was killed. lfr. Barbour, of Edinburgh, was in one of the car- riages, with his wife, three children, and two female servants : they suffered fearfully : the second child was killed ; Mr. Barbour received a alight con- cussion of the brain ; the collar-bone of Mrs. Barbour was fractured, and she was badly bruised; the eldest child was much scalded, and died on Sun- day ; the youngest, an infant, was taken out of a deep. drain, alive -, one servant suffered a compound dislocation of the ankle-ionits, necessitating amputation of the foot ; the other was bruised on the spine. Mrs. Barbour was thrown from the carriage, and after remaining insensible for a time, finding herself on recovering consciousness lying across the rails,.and fearing that in the darkness some train might run over her, she succeeded in crawl-

ing to one of the banks ; here she lay upon the damp cold earth, perfectly sensible, but unable to rise, for nearly a couple of hours, before any assistance could-be rendered her : by her side lay the corpse of her second child. She did not know that her infant had been saved till late at night, as it had been. conveyed to a neighbouring cottage.

Mr. Caratti, a Greek merchant from Glasgow, compound fractures of both legs: a very bad ease. Mr. Martin, a traveller, from Cornwall, an arm and two ribs fractured : his state was pronounced dangerous. Mr. Fitton, a cot- ton-spinner of Oldham, a leg broken. Mrs. Horrocks's foot amputated, in consequence of a compound dislocation of the ankle. Mr. Kay, of Prestwich, a thigh broken. Pugh, a shoemaker of Salford, both bones of the left leg fractured. Several other passengers were hurt, but not so seriously. To add to the horrors, nearly three hours elapsed before the sufferers were conveyed to Manchester : both lines of rails being blocked up, trains coming from Bolton could not pass forward ; a guard, who was himself hurt, had to walk a distance, of more than six miles, to give notice ; and then some little delay occurred before surgeons, officers, and workmen, could be despatched from Manchester in a train : thus the poor wounded people were sitting or lying on the wet banks for a long time.

Complaints are made, that just as " wreckers " on the sea-coast take advan- tage of misfortune to plunder the shipwrecked mariner, so country-people, flocking to the railways after these terrible misfortunes, avail themselves of the confusion and distress to walk off with carpet-bags and articles of-value belonging to the passengers. In this case it is said that a good deal of pro- perty was afterwards missed.

An inquest was commenced on Monday. Livesey, the guard, noticed no- thing particular until the engine went off the rails : there was a little oscil- lation; they were going at about thirty or thirty-two miles an hour. The road was in bad order. Bateson, the second guard,said the speed was about thirty miles an hour. He had not noticed any unusual oscillation. But Mr. Gregg, a passenger, was "convinced the speed was not leas than forty miles an hour?' The oscillation was much greater than usual. "I travel by that line once a week on an average : there is more oscillation, unsteadiness, and irregularity of speed, upon it, than upon any other line I travel by. Before the accident occurred, my impression was that we were extremely unsafe— rather more so than usual." Mr. Belshaw, another passenger, corroborated this statement as to speed and oscillation. He remarked to a gentleman, "Good gracious ! this is very dreadful—we shall be off the line!" The gentleman, who turned out to be Mr. Badge, the storekeeper of the railway, replied, "There is no danger—we are only going a little quick." Mr. Badge gave similar evidence on the inquest. The train was going about twenty- five or thirty miles an hour. He apprehended nothing. Mr. Blackmore, an officer of the Company, stated that the speed of express-trains is limited to thirty miles an hour ; drivers are not to make up for lost time, but merely to account for it. Mr. Hurst, superintendent of the locomotive department at Manchester, stated that the locomotive No. 13 had been repaired three weeks ago. "No. 13 was a four-wheeled engine, which was considered quite as safe as a six-wheeled one. The engines varied in weight from ten to twenty-four tons; No. 13 weighed fourteen tons. He had examined the engine since the accident, and he found that the axle had been broken with- in the axle-box. The fracture was on the left as the train approached Man- chester. His opinion was that the axle broke before the engine went off the line. His reason for this opinion was, that he had found an impression upon the road, showing that the wheel had run inside the off-rail (or right) for a distance of twenty-seven yards before any wheel appeared to have got off the inside rail, and the wheel at the broken side of the axle had ploughed up the ground for a distance of twenty-seven yards. When the axle broke, the wheel at the broken part would incline inwards under the body of the engine. The axle was five and a half inches in diameter, of the usual thick- ness, and the metal was perfectly good and sound. A violent blow on the flange of the wheel, or a violent oscillation, might cause the axle to break ; or a train going at a quick rate over a curve might tend to break it. The wheel could not get away from the engine after the axle broke, and he be- lieved a separation first took place when the engine fell over upon its side. He had known a wheel to run a mile after the fracture of the axle. He never had any representation made to him about the oscillation of this en- gine, or any objection to its general character."

The inquest was adjourned, that witnesses unconnected with the Company might be examined on engineering points, and that the Government In- spector might attend.

Another fatal railway disaster ! The scene on this occasion was the MI- land Railway branch between Gloucester and Bristol. On Wednesday morning, the mail-train from Birmingham, due at Bristol at six a. em., had proceeded till within five miles of the end of its journey, when on account of some accident to the engine or boiler-tube, near the Margotskeld station, it gave sumptoms of coming to a stand-still. The engineman and stoker got off to ascertain the cause, and, if possible, to repair the damage ; and the engine and thin were thoroughly stopped for this purpose. Ile morning was foggy ; and a returning engine came up towards Bristol. No signal being given of a stoppage, the dnver did not see the disabled train until he was turning a curve near the Margotsfield station. He used all the efforts in his power to stop his engine, but without .effect; for the engine ran with great violence into the train, and smashed the last two carriages all to pieces. Terrible consequences ensued. Two persona were killed—Mr. Thomas Jones, and Mr. William Antill,. both. of Gloucester ; Mr. Henry Thomp- son suffered the fracture of an arm, and several other persons were badly cut and bruised.

A locomotive engine has exploded at Longsight, near Manchester, with terrible results. The North-western Company have a large engine-shed at Longsight ; on Tuesday morning, an old engine, which had been recently repaired, was standing m the shed, with the steam up ; on it was Heffern

the driver, and in the ash-pit beneath was the stoker. The boiler exploded with extraordinary violence ; some of the pillars of the shed were broken, and a large part of the roof fell. Heffern's skull and leg were fractured, and the stoker was badly scalded. At the time of the disaster some eighty work- men were at breakfast: a large sheet of iron, forming one aide of the boiler, fell upon four of them, and they were killed on the spot. Nearly a dozen others were more or less hurt by the flying fragments or the fall of the roof; and several limbs were fractured.

The driver died on Wednesday morning. An inquest was commenced that day. Itigge, the out-door foreman, said he had examined the engine after the explosion, and found that the dome-valve was screwed down to the bottom of the slot, in which state no steam could blow off. The fire-box valve was blown away. His opinion was that excessive pressure was the cause of the explosion. On Friday, Mr. W. Fairbairn, the civil engineer, gave evidence. He pro.' nounced the engine, though an old one, in good condition, and able to bear an ordinary amount of pressure ; but when the explosion occurred he be- lieved the pressure was from 300 to 400 pounds on the square inch : he found the undamaged safety-valve on the engine-dome "tightly screwed home," and thus rendered inoperative : but a short interval would occur be- fore the steam would inevitably rend the boiler to pieces.

The recent snow-storms were of extraordinary severity in the outlying districts of the wild moors running from North Yorkshire across to West. moreland, and thence along the Western part of the county of Durham- Several lives were lost. The people who went to the market at Richmond on Saturday fortnight were caught in the storm which commenced before noon. A man, his wife, and an infant, were on their way to Leyburn; the woman sank exhausted in the snow; the man hurried to the nearest house. A farmer came to his aid ; but before they had proceeded far, the farmer found his own wife, who had been to the market, lying dead. The other woman was a corpse; but the infant was alive, attempting to suck its dead mother's breast. A third woman perished two miles from Richmond ; a tramp died on Stanhope Fell ; and another man in a straw-house at Hart- bushes Farm. A number of men who drove carts from Middleton to coal- pits were stopped altogether from returning, or in attempting to get back perilled their lives.

A portion of the celebrated Soho Works, near Birmingham, having been sold, men were engaged in pulling down brick-work, when a wall fell upon a number of them ; two were killed, and three very seriously hurt.

A child has died-at Birkenhead from hydrophobia : there was a singular circumstance in the ease—she did not exhibit dread of water, and drank brandy and water at the very climax of the disorder.

It appeared at the inquiry into the origin of the fire that destroyed Don- caster Church, that the flues had been in a bad and unsafe state for some time past.

Tardbury House, the residence of Mr. Clifford Sheniff, near Colyton, Devonshire, has been entirely destroyed by fire. It was one of the most ancient buildings in the county, and was at one time the seat of the Drake family.