SCOTLAND.

The election of the sixteen Representative Peers of Scotland took place in the Picture-gallery, Holyrood House, on Thursday week. The attendance of ladies was, as usual, very great. The following Peers answered to their names, on the roll being called over— The Duke of Bucelench and Queensberry ; the Marquises of Queensberry and Tweeddale ; the Earls of Morton, Lauderdale, Dalhousie, Airlie, Findlater and Seafield, Carnwath, Leven and Melville, Selkirk, Orkney, Rosebery, Hope- toun ; Viscounts Arbuthnot, Strathallan; Lords Saltoun, Blantyre, Colville of Culross, Belhaven, Rollo.

Ten Peers voted by proxy, and twenty-three by printed lists.

On the clerk's reading the title of the Earl of Crawfurd, which stands first on the Union Roll, Lord Belhaven, as proxy for the Earl of Sutherland, protested against any Earl being called before him, con- formably to the decision of the House of Peers in 1771, when his mother proved herself heir to the Earl of Sutherland, who lived in 1275, which was long prior to the creation of the Earl of Crawfurd or any other Earl on the roll.

On the name of the Earl of Marchmont being read, Lord Rosebery, though lie felt the very reverse of any desire to prejudice the case of the individual claiming to he Earl of Marchmont, considered it irregular in him to come forward to vote at the time his claim was before a Com- mittee of Privileges, and not yet proved. Lord Rosebery recorded a minute on the subject.

The votes were then taken ; when the following Peers were elected—

Votes. Votes.

Marquis of Tweeddale 52 Viscount Arbuthnot 49 Earl of Morton 53 Viscount Strathallan 50 Earl of Elgin 51 Lord Forbes 52 Earl of Airlie 51 Lord Saltoun 52 Earl of Leven and Melville .... 52 Lord Sinclair 49 Earl of Selkirk 50 Lord Colville of Culross 51 Earl of Orkney 51 Lord Reay 48

Earl of Seafield 51 Lord Rollo 49

The Marquis of Queensberry had 10 votes. The Earl of Carnwath said, that, differing widely in politics from most of the noble lords, he voted for them from respect to their characters, knowing that it would be futile to offer any thing like opposition to the list previously agreed upon.

The only change in the body of Representative Peers is, that the Earl of Home and Lord Gray, who retire on account of indifferent health, are replaced by the Earl of Seafield and Lord Rollo.

After the election, the Peers gave a dinner to a numerous party of friends ; the Marquis of Tweeddale presiding.

About a hundred and thirty gentlemen of Kirkaldy and its neigh- bourhood entertained Colonel Ferguson of Raith, the Member for the district, at a public dinner in the Town-hall of Kirkaldy on Friday last. The chairman was Mr. T. G. Dundas, of Rosend Castle, Provost qf Burntisland ; on whose left, the Colonel being on his right, sat Mr. William Gibson Craig. the Member for Edinburgh. The meeting was as much a friendly demonstration of personal esteem for a neighbour

as a political affair ; for among the company were men of all parties. The chairman said that they were met together, "not merely to do honour to Colonel Ferguson as their representative, but to hold out the right hand of welcome and friendship to the son and nephew of their tried, revered, and trusted friends who were now gone "—Mr. Ferguson of Raith and General Ferguson. Colonel Ferguson rather avoided politics ; almost confining himself, when he touched upon them, to a general vindication of the singleness of purpose in the course which conviction had dictated to him. He took the opportunity of expressing his satisfaction that he should now be going hand-in-hand with his late opponent, Dr. Bowring.

The town of Peebles has been the scene of an interesting tribute to literary and more than literary merit. On Wednesday week, a public- dinner was given to Messrs. William and Robert Chambers, the editors and publishers of Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, at which the freedom of the ancient burgh was presented to them, natives of the place. The chair was filled by Provost Patteson : the company, which included several guests from Edinburgh, and Mr. Orr, the London publisher of the Journal, numbered upwards of a hundred. When the Chairman proposed the health of the two chief guests, he handed to each his burgess-ticket, enclosed in a box, with the following inscription, the Christian name only being different-

" The freedom of the ancient and royal burgh of Peebles having been this day conferred by the Magistrates and Town-Council upon William and Ro- bert Chambers, Esquires, their fellow-townsmen, in testimony and approbation of their eminent services in literature, education, and popular improvement, which have rendered them famous throughout the civilized world ; the admirers of these gentlemen resident in their native town and county invited them to a public entertainment on the occasion, and presented Mr. William Chambers with this box, formed out of oak taken from the foundation of the Old Tweed Bridge at Peebles, of the age of which there is no record; and in which box his burgess-ticket was placed.-4th August 1841." Mr. William Chambers acknowledged the toast. He is by no means the first of his race who has been burgess of Peebles, as appears by the sketch which be gave of his family's history- " I am called upon particularly to notice the locality of this compliment. It has been said that prophets are not apt to be honoured in their own country: we can say, however, that the first remarkable honour paid to us has been paid in not only our own country, but in the very spot of our birth. Here, where, twenty-eight years ago, we were sent forth upon the world to use the faculties which nature had given us—here, after doing our best in the interval to im- prove and use those faculties, are we received back to the open hearts of a hundred honourable men, mostly our school-companions, and told that the place of our nativity is glad to claim us as her children. There is something peculiarly striking in this recognition. We are the descendants of a long line of burgesses of Peebles. Our ancestors have lived here with your ancestors from time immemoriaL If you will search your records, if they go back so far, you will find that a person of the name which I now bear, and probably my ancestor, was chief magistrate of Peebles at the conclusion of the thirteenth century, or about forty years before the town was made a royal burgh by King David the Second. We can trace our family here, from father to son, for two hundred years. Good reason have we then to feel pride in having our names enrolled in the list of your citizens. The transactions of this day indissolubly connect us with a place in which our family has lived for at least ten genera- tions—perhaps since it was first settled by an Anglo-Saxon people."

This was afterwards followed by a brief autobiographical sketch- " Owing to certain family misfortunes, our parents found it advisable to re- move to Edinburgh in 1813, when I was thirteen years of age. There I was in a short time introduced to scenes of active industry. What were the priva- tions 1 endured while an apprentice, it would be out of place to say ; and it would be equally irrelevant to trouble you with the history of my early career. It will be reckoned enough when I say, that at nineteen years of age I found myself my own master, and five shillings in my pocket. With that mighty sum, a handful of old books, and no friends either to encourage or to embarrass me, I launched into business on my account—determined to get on. Adopting Franklin as a model, and keeping in mind your own burghal motto, ' Contra Nando Incrementum,' I toiled early and late ; learned to set types at my own hand ; printed small volumes and tracts, almost leaf by leaf, and finally bound and disposed of them. No species of labour did I deem too hard or degrading, provided it was honest ; persevered through all sorts of difficulties, and, trusting to a kind Providence, never despaired."

Then a history of their journal-

" But I pass over twelve years of ordinary pursuits, partly relieved by lite- rary occupation, and come at once to the period when my brother and I com- menced the business of preparing and editing a cheap and popular kind of lite- rature. The idea of attempting something of that nature occurred to me in the early part of the year 1832. At that time there was a .growing taste for reading; and I resolved to take advantage of it, and lead it into new and im- proving channels. With that end in view, and assisted by my brother, whose pursuits had been more of a literary character than my own, Chambers's Edin- burgh Journal was started in February 1832. The success of this cheap peri- odical was altogether amazing. Of the first number thirty thousand copies were sold in a few days. The circulation rose rapidly from that point, and has been for some years about seventy thousand copies weekly. I wish you to un- derstand, gentlemen, that there were cheap sheets prior to the publication of Chambers 'a Journal; and therefore, the only claim of originality 'which we put forward, is that of imparting to that humble order of publica- tions some degree of originality and a perfectly sound moral tone. Our design was to furnish at the smallest charge a weekly store of harmless amusement and really useful instruction to those classes of the .people who had hitherto been in a great measure excluded from a participation in the pleasures and advantages of literature. I wish you also to remark, that in carrying the object into execution, we took especial care to avoid all topics of a controversial nature. We wrote not, and do not now write, for any sect, party, or class. We would not even wound the conscientious convictions of a Mahommedan we would attempt to instruct and amuse him, and by that means dispel the mist of error in which be was involved, but never run counter to his prejudices. By thus keeping aloof from prejudices and prepossessions, and in an especial manner writing in the cause of the poor and the helpless, we have gained a universal auditory ; and I believe no men who ever wielded the same mighty engine had reason to say that they had made fewer enemies." His brother, Mr. Chambers said, had written most of the original essays on men and manners ; he himself edited, arranged, and wrote articles of general instruction. The statistics of the paper used in the various publications of the brothers- " At present we are distributing 160,000 sheets weekly, or at the rate of 8,000,000 per annum ; a large portion of which passes through the hands of a gentleman now present, Mr. Orr. The establishment at Edinburgh, at which the greater part of this literary material is prepared, I may describe as a kind of mill, in which cart-loads of paper go in blank at one end and come out at the other in the form of printed and bound volumes. All our works are printed

machinery, band-labour being to us entirely out of the question. In one room of the establishment there are five machines which turn out 20,000 sheets every day, from one year's end to the other ; and in London Mr. Orr has two machines which execute rather more than 40,000 per week of our sheets for English circulation. Altogether, seven machines are engaged upon our works, each machine doing the work of twelve men. The paper which we consume amounts to about 1,500 reams in the month, or 17,000 reams in the year ; and all is made on the Esk, near Penicuick. To give you a better idea of the quantity of the paper consumed in a year, if it were all spread out in a line, sheet by sheet, it would extend upwards of 3,000 miles." Mr. Chambers described himself and his brother as only obeying the general condition of things, in the general demand for instruction. This was afterwards touched upon by Mr. Simpson, the " educational agitator," as he called himself-

" The masses must be educated, said Mr. William Chambers, else nothing is -done. This is now universally acknowledged, and no distinction made in the quality of their education. My own humble efforts have been chiefly in the field of the masses, in carrying to them those enlightened views of which I was only the promulgator, not the author—the grateful disciple of abler men. I have met working-men in thousands, and of nearly all the varieties known in this working land. I marvelled not to find feelings dormant which had never been rightly approached. I was told they are a mob: I never found them so; yet I. have met the excitable masses of Birmingham, Liverpool, Man- chester, Sheffield. Leeds, and Glasgow—nay, of Bristol, on the very spot where,

few years before, that city was wrapt in flames; and never could I wish more decorous, intelligent, feeling hearers, hearers more easily softened by a moral truth or touch of nature, more promptly roused by a lofty rhyme from Shak- apere's or Milton's page, simply and plainly recited, or more easily brought into harmony with all the best sympathies of our common humanity." Mr. Chambers made a friendly mention of a coadjutor, Mr. Smibert, also a native of Peebles. Mr. Robert Chambers, in a shorter speech than his brother's, proposed "The Provost, Magistrates, and Council, and prosperity to the burgh of Peebles." In the evening, not to be deprived of the countenance of the ladies in their public triumph, the two journalists invited the ladies of Peebles to a ball ; and dancing began at about half-past nine o'clock.

The shock of an earthquake was felt throughout the western parts of Stirling and Perth counties on Friday the 30th July. A person writes from the neighbourhood of Dunkeld-

" The shock was sensibly felt here, as well as at Logierait and neighbour- hood. A hollow growling sound, somewhat like distant thunder, was heard some minutes after two p. m., as if proceeding from nearly north-west to south-east. The houses shook, the windows rattled, and the chairs, &c. in some instances, danced in their places. I myself felt as if the chair I sat on and the floor had suddenly sunk some inches ; and there was an undulatory motion for about four or six seconds, which 1 cannot describe. The sound continued some seconds longer. The barometer was about 284 at the time."

At Crieff two shocks of the earthquake were felt in quick success

" It was attended with a grave hollow sound. The motion of the earth was from east to west. Every house in town was made to shake severely, and furniture heard to crack. Nearly the whole inhabitants, in the greatest alarm, rushed to the streets. It is thought that one of these shocks was as powerful SO the one felt here on the 23d October 1839."

Comrie, the grand depot of Scottish earthquake, was more severely

-visited— - " We have been much alarmed during the whole of last week by earth- quakes. No fewer than thirty shocks were felt ; but on Friday, between two and three o'ciock in the afternoon, a tremendous one took place, which brought the whole of the inhabitants of the village to the street, and put a stop to all work for some time. A few stones fell from the gable of a house ; part of a *tone dike in the ne;g1.Lourhouti anne dawa Amu. T4 IT12.. Int?. hl-tr.t/Ir.g hard at the time; the day dark and gloomy, and even cold."

Another account says that a man was knocked down in his own room qty the falling of the ceiling.

An accident of a serious-nature happened on the 30th, to a millwright, while engaged in repairing some of the machinery at Balgonie Mill Bleachfield. While at work, a part of his outer garment, which was banging loosely, caught hold of a nut on one of the shafts which was revolving for the purpose of plashing the yarn, and carried him round with it. Before the water could be let off the wheel, he was drawn so tight to the shaft that his body was mangled in a frightful manner, and the blood streaming out from various parts of his body. He was cut off and carried to a house, without any signs of life remaining, but in a little symptoms of life began to appear. Although medical aid was speedily procured and every thing done to alleviate his sufferings, his recovery is yet doubtful.—Perth Chronicle.