Ritottllautuu.g.

The Master-General of the Ordnance has desired that the Isle of Wight shall be put in a proper state of defence, and strongly fortified : there- fore, a large number of guns of heavy calibre will be sent from Woolwich for ;1st purpose. This undertaking will cost the country at least sixty thousand pounds.—Zetstish Mercury.

Mini& rifles to the number of 600, and rifled muskets to the number of 1200; have been supplied to the Marines at Chatham, Woolwich, Ply- mouth, and Portsmouth. An order from the Horse Guards gives instruc- tions for their distribution, and directs their frequent use.

The Queen has appointed Sir William Yardley, the Second Judge of the Supreme Court at Bombay, to be Chief Justice, in the room of Sir Erskine Perry, who retires.

We have reason to believe that the statement of some of the Canad'i'an and American papers, that Lord Elgin has been recalled from the Governor- Generalship of British North America, and that be is succeeded by Lord Harris in that office, is unfounded, or at least premature.-77mes.

It is stated that Sir Emerson Tennent is to be appointed to the office of Joint Secretary to the Board of Trade, vacant by the- decease of Mr- G. R. Porter.

Mr. Joseph Ingersoll, the newly-accredited Minister from Washing- ton to the Court of St. James's, arrived in England by the Arctic, on Wednesday.

A letter from Vienna says that Mr. leCurdy, the American Envoy, has been recalled by his Government, and will leave Vienna in a Aw weeks.

The Queen has granted a pension of 2001: a year trr Mrs. Caroline Southey, "in consideration of her late husband's eminent literary merits?'

A pension of 751. a year has been granted to Miss Louisa Sfuart Cos- tello; in consideration of her merits as an authoress, and' her inability, from the state of her health, to continue her exertions for a livelihood: The Queen has granted a pension of 1001, a year to the- widow of Mr. Pugin the architect. Mr. Pugin had contributed greatly to the deco- ration of the New Palace at Westminster.

Dr. Anderson, chemist to the Highland Society, has-been appointed by the Crown to the Chemical Chair in Glasgow University.

Some of the-morning papers have continued to print all aorta of gossip respecting the Duke of Wellington, but adding nothing now to the facts already before the public. We have to record, however, that Manchester

has resolved to erect a memorial to the Duke. A. meeting, over which. Sir John Potter presided, and which was attended by the Earl of Elles- mere, the Earl of Wilton, the Bishop. of Manchester, and Mr. Thomas. Bailey, was held on Tuesday ; resolutions were agreeed to, and 24601. was subscribed on the spot. The London Court of Aldermen, following in the wake of the- Common Council, have appointed a Committee to con- sider how they may best testify their respect for the Duke's memory.

Lord Aberdeen left Balmoral on Thursday, last week.

Mr. John. Bright had arrived at Galway on the 30th. September.

Mr. Glyn is temporarily succeeded by Mr_ Smith as Chairman of the

North-western Railway ; Mr. Glyn retaining his seat as a Director. General Hastings Fraser, an old Indian officer, who had fought against Tippoo Sultan, died this week, in his eighty-first year.

Major M'Allister, late of the Thirteenth. Dragoons, a distinguished veteran of the Peninsular war, died on the 17th September. He had

fought at Albuera, Orthes, Vittoria, Pyrenees, Nivelle, and finally at Waterloo, where he was wounded in the last charge made by his regi- ment.

General Castaiios, Duke of Baylen, died at Madrid on the 24th Sep- tember, in his ninety-fifth year. The sole military feat of the aged Ge- neral was the capture of Dupont an& a French army, at Baylen in 1808, with a body of regulars and patriot levies. For this service, which. roused the despairing insurrection, he was made a duke.

The Emperor of Austria, who has been assisting at grand manmavrea of avast army collected around Pesth, was expected at Vienna clothe 27th.

The King of Prussia dined with the King of Hanover on the 24th Sep- tember, and went afterwards through Oldenburgh to Potsdam; where he arrived on the 27th. He immediately set out on another journey to meet the Queen.

The Archbishop of Paris has returned from his German tour.

The Count and Countess de Chambord arrived at Vienna, from Upper Austria, on the 26th September. " Prince and Princess Murat"—such is the style adopted by the Ger- man papers—are travelling in Germany. They were at Dusseldorf on the 26th.

The latest accounts from Switzerland state that the Duchess of Orleans is entirely out of danger. The accident from which she suffered. so painfully was more serious than at first reported ; the Duchess having been literally submerged in the overturned carriage, and in danger of drowning. The Countess of Neuilly (Queen Amelia) has gone to nurse her.

Mr. Paget, whose case we mentioned last week, has not had his docu- ments and books, which were captured by the Saxon Police, returned to him. According to the Leicestershire Chronicle, the seizure was made upon the pretext that Mr. Paget was "a medium of communication be- tween Kossuth and the malcontents of Hungary, and that he had had in- terviews with Kossuth." But Mr. Paget has been living quietly at Dresden. In a letter dated September 13th, addressed to Mr. Arthur Paget, he says, "It must have been known from his letters, which had been opened, that he held no communication with Kossuth or the malcon- tents of Hungary" ; and besides, he was no admirer of Kossuth.

The King of Naples has officially directed that a great national exhibition " shall take place on the 30th of May 1853, in the edifice of Monte Oli- veto at Naples." It is to last a week, unless further prolonged by royal decree. Besides manufactured articles, raw materials produced in the country, and all the implements used in mining, agriculture, and other pursuits of the kind, will be admitted.

Emigration still sets with a strong current to Australia. At Liverpool it is reported to be " proceeding as rapidly as ever." The first of four large vessels set sail from Leith on Saturday, "for the land of golden dreams," says an Edinburgh paper, with a full complement of passengers. The effect of the movement is telling upon Scotland ; where a rise in wages has visited even the hand-loom weavers. In Ireland, native prints are astounded at the constant exodus ; which " has assumed so regular a course that its increase is looked to as rather an inevitable result than otherwise." The Waterford Chronicle notices that many of the most in- dustrious citizens were making arrangements to depart; and the editor asserts, on his own knowledge, "that a vast proportion of the class of small capitalists within our city and county will, are the year come to a close, be on their way to the regions of gold."

Her Majesty's brigantine Dolphin did good service in the Congo river on the 19th and 20th June. An American brig got aground going up the river ; and the natives came down in great numbers on the following day. The Dolphin, being fortunately near, had instantly run in to assist ; and as the natives seemed determined to plunder the brig, firing on her from their canoes, the Dolphin interposed, with shot and shell. At this the natives ran away. They returned twice, however, on succeeding days ; showing themselves only amenable to the great guns of the Dolphin. The brig was not got off until she had been lightened of everything, the car- go being taken on board the Dolphin ; but at seven o'clock on the 22d she swung clear.

The great floods, mentioned in our last number, which made such havoc on the Rhine and other rivers, were terrible at Chamouni. The Arve rose to a great height, and poured along with awful force ; sweeping away chalets, stock, crops, bridges, mills, and trees. The peasants were in despair. Report speaks of many lives lost ; which is but too probable.

A correspondent of the Times at Chamouni furnishes a graphic picture of the plisenomena.

"On Friday morning the 17th, the aspect of the Arve, as it tore through the village, hurrying forest-trees, planks, and fragments of wooden bridges on its turbid waters, and momentarily rushing higher and higher up against its banks, was enough to excite the gravest apprehensions. All the people in the v llrge turned out by beat of drum to help each other in the approach- ing calamity. Ere nine o'clock a.m. the river had burst its banks, and flooded the whole of the lower part of the valley, sweeping away the flax- crepe of the poor cottagers left out to dry, and covering their scanty supplies of food and corn with thick layers of white mud composed of the debns of granite and shale rocks, which will take years to remove. The increasing force and power of the torrent was marked every minute by the greater size of the trees and timber it bore along ; and, by-and-by, the most painful feelings were excited by the appearance of the planks and roofs of chalets whirling down in its waves, which boiled and chafed in huge masses of water resembling liquid mortar." " The sound of the huge boulders which it forced along, as they struck the rocky bottom, literally shook the ground, and filled the air like growling thunder ; and the long reverberations of the avalanches mingling with this horrid tumult, the crash of trees and timber, and the hissing of the toppling waters of river and cataract, formed an awful chorus. The anxious faces of the villagers but too well revealed the amount of the destruction that was taking place, as, surrounding their priest, who stood with uncovered head beneath the teeming clouds, they gazed from the bridges in hopeless des- pair at the torrent below." "At the Hotel de Londres, strenuous efforts were made to preserve the bridge which led from the garden across the river to the road ascending towards the Cascade des Pelerins ; and large beams of wood, trees stripped of their branches, were conveyed with great labour, and placed so that one end was fixed under the bridge, and the other, weighed down by large stones and balks of timber, rested on the ground : but, in spite of this eccentric engineering, it was plain to those who watched the progress of the flood that the erection could not long withstand the furious tide that beat against its buttresses. Before eleven o'clock the waters had

rushed into the hotel garden, and in a few moments after the stone but- tresses and foundations were sapped and overthrown ; and with a tremen- dous crash down came the bridge into the Arve, which, whirling it round and round like a straw, speedily hurried it out of sight." " On walking by the mountain-side, above the valley, the appearance of the torrent was frightful. Enormous pine-trees, ash, and beeches of great bulk, were to be seen struggling to rise out of the race, and lifting their dark roots and branches for an instant, but to be whelmed again by the stream,

the course of which was marked everywhere by ruined mills and half- drowned chalets. Women, gathered on the hill-side, stood wringing their hands and weeping as they looked on their submerged homes, their friendly roofs just peeping above the water ; or, with their husbands, fathers, and sons, bore their humble household goods to some securer elevation. All the population agreed in saying they had never heard of or seen such a deluge before. The small millers whose houses stood by the road-side were of course the great sufferers. In every case their dwellings were destroyed, and their pro-

perty carried away ; and it was melancholy, to see some of those great stout fellows crying like children as they beheld the fruits of years of industry, and toil swallowed up in an instant for ever. A more touching subject for a

painter than one of these sad groups perched on a rock over their home, and lamenting over its loss, as they watched the Arve scaling its walls, till it gurgled through the windows and the whole building sank with a crash, could not be imagined."

A subscription had been raised among the visitors to alleviate the suffer- ings of the peasants.

The Lincolnshire Chronicle reports a destructive visitation of the potato disease in that district. According to the Newcastle Journal, the disease has also "made sad ravages " in Northumberland.

The number of miles to be walked by professional pedestrians within a thousand hours seem to be rapidly on the increase. Lately, a man under- took to walk 1500 miles in the time, and succeeded ; and now a young man has began at Nottingham the extraordinary task of walking 2000 miles in that time.

A South-westerly gale this week has caused a large loss of shipping and lives on our coasts. In the Channel much damage was done : two men were washed overboard in the Downs from a ship bound to Petersburg ; and the master of a pleasure-yacht perished in the same way. Two vessels were wrecked near Shoreham : crews saved. Three ships were lost near Beau- mans: the crews of two were drowned. On the Eastern coast there were many casualties.

The Pacha of Egypt's splendid steam-yacht Paid Rabane has sustained so much damage in the Bay of Biscay that she has been compelled to put back to Crookhaven in the South of Ireland. In a heavy gale she leaked con- siderably, and her gorgeous internal embellishments were much damaged. She had been insured in Glasgow for 20,0001.

As an express-train approached a level crossing of the Northern Railway of France, at Montataire, the driver saw that the way was blocked by a cart containing a large stone, some six tons in weight ; at first he tried to stop the train ; but finding there was not time to avoid a collision, he put on all his steam, and drove against the cart with such force that he shivered it and the stone into fragments and still kept on the rails : the locomotive was a good deal damaged. The driver was a Pole.

The dock-dues received at Liverpool amounted in 1752 to 17761. ; in the year ending 25th June 1852, to 246,6861. ; and this with frequent reductions of late years in the rate of charge : in 1848 there was a reduction of 40,000L The number of vessels entering the port in 1800 was 4746, tonnage 450,060; in the year ending 25th June last, ships 21,473, tonnage 3,912,506.

The ship Mai se, of Queenstown, was struck by lightning when off Malta„ on the 3d of August, and the hull was riven in two. The wreck went down with a crew of fourteen and two passengers ; the master got hold of a spar, and kept afloat for seventeen hours, when he was picked up by a Maltese vessel : all the rest were drowned.

The following particulars are published of an American railway. The chief engineer of the Illinois Central Railway has made his report. The road with its branches is to be 699 miles long. Of this, 627 miles will be straight road, 238 miles will be level, on 113 miles the descent will be less than 10 feet to the mile, on 118 from 10 to 20 feet, on 79 from 20 to 30 feet, on 132 from 30 to 40 feet, and on 7/ miles the ascent will be 42 feet to the mile. It extends from Chicago and Galena to Cairo, at the mouth of the Ohio. The amount of land which has been appropriated by the Govern- ment for the benefit of the road is 2,631,160 acres, which now has an esti- mated value of 20,400,900 dollars. The superintendent has advertised for 10,000 men to work on the road.

From a Parliamentary paper just issued, it appears that in out-door and in-door relief there was a decrease of 222,937 persons at the Lady-day quarter of 1861 compared with the Lady-day quarter of 1850. In England, at the Lady-day quarter of 1850, there were 289,960 in-door paupers relieved, and 1,519,348 out-door ; while in the corresponding period of 1851 the numbers were-in-door 276,395, out-door 1 31 934. In Wales, in the first period, there were 8087 in-door, 100,290 out-door ; and in the second period, 808$ in-door, 96,331 out-door. In England and Wales the number in the receipt of in-door relief at Lady-day quarter of 1850 was 298,047, at the like period of 1851 it was 284,483, being a decrease of 13,564; while in out-door relief the number was 1,619,628 in the first, and 4410,265 in the second period, being a decrease of 209,373, and a total in the two classes in the year of 222,937.