Iflistellantous.

The death of Mr. Charles Buller, President of the Poor-law Board, was known in town on Wednesday, and produced a general shock. Mr. Buller died at an early hour that morning, at his house in Chester Place, Belgrave Square. A few days previously, he had undergone a sur- gical operation, for a most painful disorder; the operation succeeded, but Mr. Buller had never been robust, and the debility consequent on the opera- tion terminated fatally in fever.

The following particulars of Mr. Buller's career are gleaned from several sources, but chiefly from the Morning Chronicle, corrected on some points by our own knowledge.

The deceased was the son of Mr. Charles Buller, a younger son of Mr. Buller of Morval. Mr. Charles Buller senior distinguished himself in the civil service of the East India Company: the family had great Parliamentary interest in Corn- wall, and members of it had long represented West Looe, a nomination borough, which was swept away by the Reform Bill. Mr.-Buller, the subject of this no- tice, represented it at the time, and voted for the bill. In 1832, he was returned for Liskeard; which he continued to represent until his death; and we have, con- sequently, no fluctuations of political fortune to record in his case, such as are to be found in the public lives of most other prominent men in the House of Com- mons. By the good understanding between himself and his intelligent con- stituents, Mr. Charles Buller was always relieved from anxiety with respect to his seat in Parliament: he was therefore the more at liberty to pursue his intellectual bent, and to fix upon the public mind the true impress of his character. Mr. Charles Boller was born at Calcutta, in August 1806. He received his education at Harrow School, Edinburgh University, and Trinity College Cam- bridge. At Cambridge, he was a distinguished member of the Union Club; and even there he was remarkable for the qualities which afterwards distinguished him in the House of Commons—for his pioneering in the nnattempted or forbidden regions of discussion, and for his vivacity and wit. At college he made the acquaintance of Thomas Carlyle, with whom he studied for some time. He took a bachelor's degree, we beheve, in 1828; but we are not aware that he aimed at or achieved higher University honours.

" Mr. Charles Buller became a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, but not till a year after he had been returned to Parliament. His maiden speech was made in 1830, on Mr. Davenport's motion on the Currency. It is not necessary to enter very minutely into his Parliamentary acts, because his reputation does not rest so much upon his votes, or upon any specific course of political action, as upon his peculiar talents as a speaker, and latterly as an administrative officer. Mr. Buller was always theoretically in advance even of that liberal section of the Liberal party to which he might be said to belong. His votes counted as one upon each question, but his speeches were worth mach more. He was a steady opponent of the Corn- laws long before those who have since given him office took up' that question. He was against property qualification for Members; in favour of triennial Parlia- ments; in favour of removing the Bishops from the House of Lords; and on al- most every question of that class he was always ready to support the Radicals, even down to questions which were almost beneath the calibre of his mind. But, on the other hand, he was always a steady supporter of the Poor-law Amend- meat Act, and voted and spoke in favour of National Education. In 1833 he stood forward to move an adverse amendment to the Irish Coercion Bill; and on several other occasions, too numerous to require mention here, he ap- reared far in advance of the then opinions of the party who afterwards adopted him as an ally and an administrative assistant. The first decisive step he made on his own account in Parliament, which can be said to have established him in the high opinion of his contemporaries, was his speech on the Public Records; a lu- Mmons and brilliant effort, full of knowledge most lucidly conveyed, and preg- nant with valuable suggestions, which were afterwards adopted more or less in

But that speech, like almost all Mr. Charles Buller's speeches in the

ouse of Commons, was weakened by an unfortunate propensity to indulge in a habit of joking for joking's sake; so that, for many years, the real sterling talent of his Parliamentary displays was obscured by. what appeared a triviality of mind

I

not to be corrected or overcome. Still it was impossible even for him to destroy the effect from time to time produced upon his hearers by his intellectual power, and by his minute practical acquaintance with the details of any subject he touched upon. Steadily, and in spite of himself, he made his way with the 11°11sei and although the Whigs could scarcely count upon him as a supporter

during the greater portion of his Parliamentary life, yet when their policy bad approximated somewhat nearer to that which in theory he had always advocated, the transition on his part from a state of independence to the acceptance of office was almost natural and inevitable."

Mr. Buller was first prominently brought forward in public business, however, by the zeal and ability with which he promoted a better know- ledge and practice of colonization. In that pursuit he was a cordial though not a servile disciple of Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield; and he made himself very useful as an active and intelligent advocate of the new views in Parliament. When the Earl of Durham was sent as Governor- General to Canada, after the first rebellion, Mr. Buller accompained him as Chief Secretary. At the same time, Mr. Wakefield proceeded to Ca- nada, and was deeply engaged in the investigations which resulted in the celebrated " Report " on the state of the colony, presented to the Queen by Lord Durham after his return. The Report had the benefit of that noble- man's signature and sanction, and he unquestionably took a real share in framing it: Mr. Bailer's name appears to Appendix B, and besides his official responsibility for that portion, he contributed largely to the com- position of the main document. He has, however, publicly acknowledged Mr. Wakefield's participation, in terms which indicate that he regarded that gentleman as at least his own coequal in the authorship of those re- markable state papers.

On his return from Canada, Mr. Buller commenced the practice of the law in Colonial and Indian appeals before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. His treatment of Colonial affairs was distinguished by ex- tensive and accurate information, and also by great tact in selecting the sources for extending his information on special branches. These acquire- ments, with his powers as a debater, pointed him out as a desirable ac- quisition for the Whig Ministry; and shortly before their expulsion from office in 1841, he received a more regular appointment from Lord Mel- bourne as Secretary to the Board of Control. When Lord John Russell took office as Premier in 1846, Mr. Buller became Judge-Advocate- General, with the understanding (so the semi-official programme of the reconstructed Government announced) that he was to be a sort of ex- traneous Colonial Minister,—though unattached to the Department which had so severely felt the lash of his censure as a speaker and a writer. This supposed arrangement proved to be a delusion, and Mr. Buller found himself in a false position. Even as Judge-Advocate- General, however, his genuine reforming impulses found some vent: if he failed to increase his repute as a Colonial politician, he did not fail to leave behind him beneficial traces in the legal part of his functions by a remodelling of the Mutiny Act. The circumstances under which he held the office explain his willingness in accepting one with duties more ardu- ous, less cognate to his previous pursuits, and remunerated by a smaller salary: not, indeed, that Mr. Buller was impelled either by necessity or disposition to make serious account of the pecuniary part of the business. His final appointment to the office of President of the Poor-law Board was at once received with approbation by the public; and so far as ho had the opportunity of developing his aptitude for the discharge of its functions, that approbation has been confirmed. Mr. Buller was a ready and felicitous extemporaneous speaker; but he was accustomed to prepare for important occasions by the composition of his intended speech, which he reduced in extenzo to manuscript. He was also a practised writer for the public: at one time he contributed largely to an evening newspaper; and whenever journalism was assailed in his presence in society, never hesitated to declare himself a member of the " press-gang " and a " gentleman of the press." He wrote occasionally for the leading reviews. There is no reason to conceal that he was the writer of those papers on Responsible Government for Colonies—first published in the Colonial Gazette, and afterwards republished by Mr. Ridgway as a little volume—in which he unearthed " Mr. Mothercountry."

The Times supplies an interesting biographical sketch of Count Rossi the late Prime Minister of the Pope. "Born at Carrara, in 1787, he became an advocate and professor of laws in the University of Bologna as early as 1809. In 1815 he acted as Civil Commissioner during the occupation of the Legations by Murat, and was in consequence pro- scribed. He escaped to Geneva; where the rights of a citizen were conferred upon him in time to rescue him from the persecution of the Austrian Government. He occupied for nearly twenty years the chair of Roman Law in the Academy of Ge- neva, the honoured colleague of those six men who have very recently been ejected from their respective professorships in the same Academy by the present Radical Government of that Republic; so that of these men, so long engaged in scien- tific or literary pursuits in the peaceful obscurity of a Swiss Canton, all have suf- fered for the cause of constitutional freedom, and the greatest has now laid down his life. In Switzerland, M. Rossi was the principal author of the scheme for the reform of the Federal Pact, which was intended to effect by pacific means a change in favour of the Federal authority somewhat analogous to that which has resulted from the late civil war. At that time, however, M. Rossi's scheme was defeated; and, wearied with the minute and untractable elements of Swiss politics, he was induced by M. Guizot to remove to Paris. A chair of Constitutional Law_ was at once placed at his disposal; and upon his naturalization in France he rose to fill several important offices, and was eventually called to the Chamber of Peers. Although he never held a Ministerial office in France, be lived in the closest intimacy with the Government, and enjoyed the unreserved confidence of the King. This circumstance caused him to be selected for the important post of French Ambassador at Rome; and, after an absence of thirty years, he returned to his native country as the plenipotentiary of a foreign Sovereign. In that capa- city he probably contributed in a remarkable degree to place l'io None on the Papal throne. " With the highest intellectual cultivation of the French school, united to strong political principles formed principally on English constitutional models, M. Rossi- combined all the rarest qualities of the Italian mind. His vast and unclouded judgment illuminated whatever he contemplated, and his singularly descriptive eloquence ornamented whatever he touched. His voice and the gravity of his presence had in them something of the grandeur of the statesmen and scholars of the best ages of Italy; and nothing was more utterly at variance with that chat- tering declamation and those disordered conceptions which form the staple of what is now termed Italian patriotism. Between him and his political antagonists in his native country there was this difference—that lie had inherited the lofty faculties worthy of an earlier period in the annals of that degenerate race." In harmony with this reminiscence of ancient times is a remark of an- other writer-

" It is singular enough that the spot of this murder of the Ides of November is not a hundred yards from the site of Pompey's Curia, where Cesar fell [on the Ides of March]; indeed, the Cancellaria stands within the precincts of the origi- nal Hecaton-Stylon, which encompassed that structure."

The Contemporaneo gives an anecdote which throws some further light on the Minister's extreme unpopularity- "Prince Barberini having been named member of a commission created by Baud, conceived himself obliged to go and thank him for it. He was no sooner announced from the antechamber than the Minister said, Give me the gazette,' and began to read it. After some time the servant returned to inform him that Prince Barberini wished to speak with him. I am now reading the gazette,' replied he; when I have finished the Prince may enter.' The Prince was kept in the antechamber accordingly, and an hour passed before he obtained an an- thence. Was there ever a more aristocratic Minister than Rossi?"

The Queen Dowager has given instructions to Mr. Moore, the house- agent at Cowes, to distribute the whole of the coals remaining in the houses which were engaged by him for her Majesty to aged widows and the poor and distressed inhabitants of the place. It will be remembered that her Majesty and suite only remained a day at Cowes, although the houses were taken tor two months, and the necessary supplies were accordingly fur- nished for that period.—Hampshire Advertiser.

We have reason to believe that Mr. Barkly, M.P. for Leominster, has been appointed to succeed Sir H. Light as Governor of British Guiana. Mr. Barkly is, we believe, a West India proprietor, and has obtained, during his short experience in Parliament, considerable distinction by the know- ledge he has displayed on commercial and colonial subjects. Mr. Barkly was not a supporter of the present Government; and his appointment can- not therefore be attributed to political favouritism.—Times.

It is rumoured that Jacob Omnittm, Eeq., a gentleman well known in the city, has been appointed to the Governorship of Sierra Leone and its de- pendencies. Mr. Omnium is, we understand, extensively connected with the Colonies; and during the last session rendered important services to the Government, by correcting various errors of fact into which they had inadvertently been betrayed. Whatever credit is due for making so just and judicious a selection belongs to Lord Grey. There was no family con- lexion in the case—not even, we are informed, personal acquaintance. The appointment was wholly unsolicited, and was made solely on public grounds. It cannot be attributed to political favouritism.—Morning Chro- nic*.

A newspaper lately received at Barbados from Toronto in Canada men- tions, that the Earl of Elgin, Governor-General, was in such ill health that it was said he intended to resign the government; and that Sir Charles Grey would in all probability be his successor.—Barbadian.

Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer will, it is said, shortly lead to the hymeneal altar the Honourable Georgiana Wellesley, youngest daughter of the late and sister of the present Lord Cowley. The ceremony is to be performed at Hatfield House, the seat of the Marquis of Salisbury, uncle of the fair fiande.—Morning Post.

Several papers publish an authorized statement with reference to certain animadversions upon Lord Cardigan, originating in the John Bull news- paper of the 11th instant, and copied into some of the other papers- ' No officer under his f immand was ever placed under arrest by him after hav- ing been late for stables and having expressed his regret for it; no officer was ever placed under arrest who, being a Member of Parliament, was absent from the regiment during the Easter recess; nor was any officer ever released from arrest by any general officer in disapproval of such arrest. With regard to the other matters referred to in the John Bull, they had been finally disposed of by the or- der and with the approbation of the Commander-in-chief of the Army several days prior to the appearance of the statement in that paper."

According to the .Daily News, one of the prisoners shot at Vienna was Mr. Becher, a native of Manchester and a British subject; and it is said that Lord Ponsonby's protest against the capital punishment was evaded hi Prince Windischgratz, who pretended to be asleep when it arrived.

The grand scheme of amalgamating the Great Western, the North-west- ern, and the South-western Railways, has come to nought. The preliminary meetings issued in the adoption of a series of resolutions concluding with one enjoining immediate notice of application for Parliamentary powers to amalgamate: but these meetings left " open' one or two po nta of debate. Vise of these points was the question, whether or not the South-western should push its line into Windsor, beyond its present station, which stops a mile or so short of the town. This was a bone of contention which the Great Western could not yield. But the cardinal point of difference was the mode of representation in the new governing body to be established Under the amalgamation act. The North-western contended that their capital entitled them to a preponderant voice in the directory; but the two other companies "could not consent to less than an equal representation in the united board." The negotiations have been abandoned, and the meetings formally convened formally countermanded.

Some malignant person advertised in the papers of Saturday last that the Ho nourable Adolphus Capel had died on the preceding Wednesday: the statement was utterly false, and means will be taken to endeavour to trace the unworthy fabricator of the lie.

Edwards, a farm-labourer near Brecon, has murdered a fellow labourer named Williams. The two young men rose one morning before daylight, and left the house for the fold-yard; there Edwards smashed in the other's skull with an axe, and buried his victim in a dung-heap. A servant-girl heard a moaning, and asked Edwards what it was: he said it was only her fancy, and led her in a di- rection contrary to where Williams was lying. The villain returned to the house, packed up his clothes, took a new suit of Williams's, and made off. The girl aroused the farmer, and the two made a search; they soon discovered Williams; he was alive, and surgical aid was obtained; but he died in the evening. The assassin has not been taken. No motive for the murder is mentioned.

The death of two children at Manchester illustrates the mischievous tendencies of burial-clubs. An inquest was held; and as nothing could brought home to the mother of the children, the verdict was "Accidental death": but the facts were suspicious. One of the sufferers was burnt to death by its clothes having taught fire while it was left untended by the mother; and the other had been taken to a house where a child was lying dead of scarlet fever, and it took the disease. A Juryman suggested that it might have been held to kiss the corpse. The Coroner mentioned a recent case where a child died from exposure to cold: the father got a large sum from burial-clubs.

Thomas Greenwood, the foreman at the Railway Wharf at Sunderland, has been shot in the head by a French sailor. The French ship Pacquebot had been im- properly moored at the wharf; Greenwood was directed to loose the ropes; while doing so, Peyre, the mate of the vessel, discharged a gun at him, frightfully Wounding him in the forehead. The gun was double-barrelled; and when officers attempted to take the offender, he threatened to discharge the second barrel at them: Mat, the master of the ship, also interfered to protect him. Eventually, both were seized and put in prison.

An early morning train from Brighton to Arundel, on Monday, ran into a goods-train which was standing at the Kingston station: though several of the carriages were broken, the passengers—butchers of Brighton on their way to the Arundel market—escaped with a few bruises. The driver of the passenger- train was taken before the Magistrates; and it having been proved to their sett's- !faction that he had not been sufficiently cautious in approaching the station, he was fined 51., and in default of payment sent to prison for a month. Mr. Cummings, an innkeeper and grocer at Sherbnrn Hill, near Durham, has died from hydrophobia, nine weeks after he had been bitten in the nose by a dog. The dog afterwards ran away; and little notice was taken of the wound, as the animal was not supposed to be mad.

A melancholy accident occurred on Friday sennight, at the Orgrave Iron Foun- dry, belonging to Messrs. Davis and Company, Dalton-in-Furness. A youth about fifteen years of age, whilst employed in oiling some part of the machinery near the rollers, was caught by his smock-frock, drawn through the complicated piece of workmanship, and instantly killed; his legs and thighs being smashed to stoma. The deceased was a fine promising youth, and for the last few months had been the principal support of an aged grandmother.—Cumberland Pacquet.

The brig Sea Witch, from Sierra Leone to London, has been dabbed to pieces, in Portinfex Bay on the coast of Guernsey. Cloudy weather had caused the master to lose his reckoning; and when the people thought they were in mid Channel, the vessel struck on the rocks. It parted in two: the master and seven men had gone to the after part of the brig, and they perished in the waves; but three of the crew who remained in the forecastle escaped, as that portion of the wreck remained firm on the rocks, and when the tide went down they got to land.

The National Gallery in the patent office at Washington has been broken open, and the United States jewels stolen. The jewels consist of the presents made by Foreign Governments to the Ministers or other officers of the States at Foreign Courts; which the law does not allow such Ministers to retain individually, but which must be deposited in some office of the Federal Government. The various articles do not form a very rich catalogue, and the Commissioner of Patents is content to offer a reward of 1,500 dollars for the recovery of the whole.

The Egyptian Government has issued an extraordinary document, forbidding the wailing of women at funerals, and their congregating at the cemeteries. Amongst other things, it says—"Any woman who has met with a misfortune, and on that account beats her face and rends her garment, will surely tare as the wife of Lot, and be deprived of all hope of good; and any woman mourning the death of any man, except her husband, more than three days, God will certainly cause her good deeds to perish, and she will be for ever in the fire; and any woman making lamentations for a dead person belonging to her, God will certainly make her tongue the length of seventy cubits, ana she will be raised from amongst the dead to the last judgment-seat with a black face, blue eyes, and the locks of her hair stretched out to her feet. The lifting of voices at funerals is to be abhorred, even if it be the enunciation of the name of God or reciting the Koran. The visiting of tombs by women is unlawful, because it is for the pur- pose of reviving grief; weeping, and lamentation. Every woman who visits tombs is cursed by every green thing and every dry thing which she passes; she will be subject to the anger and remit), of God until the same time on the following morning; and if she dies immediately, she will be one of the people of the fire. It is better for women to sit at home than to go and pray at the mosque."

Messrs. Bull, silk-throwaters, having bought a large silk-factory at Congleton, found it necessary, from the instability of the upper portion of the brick-work, to reduce it from a four-story to a three-story building. To pull the roof to pieces, reduce the walls, and then reconstruct the roof, would have been very dpi naive. Thomas Shepley, an ingenious mechanic who had long worked for Messrs. Bull, offered to lower the roof without taking it to pieces. After preliminary prepara- tions for conveying the bricks to the ground, he" lifted with long levers, alternate- ly, the beams which supported the roof, and supported them with small blocks of wood, whilst he lowered the walls one course of bricks at a time, so that the roof was gradually and imperceptibly lowered about eight feet to the top of the third story, without the least accident occurring, or without the breakage of a single tile or crack in the roof."

The cases of cholera have so diminished in the Metropolis that daily reports were discontinued on Wednesday last. The returns for the period from the 26th of November to the 1st December, both inclusive, give 10 fatal cases for London, 15 for the provinces,'and 86 for Scotland; total 61: the whole number of attacks was 153.

Results of the Registrar-General's return of mortality in the Metropolis for the week ending on Saturday last—

Number of Autumn _Deaths. Average.

Zymotic Diseases 8b7 .... 270

Dropsy, Cancer, and other diseases of uncertain or variable seas 67 .... 62

Tubercular Diseases.

Diseases of the Brain, Spinal Marrow, Nerves, and Senses . 117 .... 127 Diseases of the Heart and Blood-vessels ............. . ... • 42 .... 88 Diseases-of the Lungs, and of the other Organs of Respiration 222 223 Diseases of the Stomach, Liver, and other Organs of Digestion 81 67 Diseases of the Kidneys, &c 7 12 Childbirth, diSeallee of the Meru., &c. 6 14

Rheumatism, diseases of the Bones, Joints, die -7 8 Di-eases of the Skin, Cellular tissue, &c 1 -51 Malformations 6 '8 Premature Rath 24 se

Atrophy 15 19

Age 62 et

Sudden 6 11 Violence, PrIvation;Oold, and Intemperance 27 32 — — Total (including unspecified causes) 1207 1154

The temperature of the thermometer ranged from 64:7° in the sun to'24.5° in the shade; the mean temperature by day being warmer than the mean average temperature by 2.0°. The direction of the wind for the week was variable.