Swmos, LAY AND CunucAr..—It appears the High Sheriff for the

county of Nottingham has received several letters bearing the signature of the celebrated "Swing." Every exertion was made to discover the writer, and at last some traces were found so as to implicate the Rev. Mr. iowerbank, Master of the Grammar School at Mansfield. The investigation took place on Saturday ; it occupied the whole of the day from eleven o'clock until seven, and terminated by the full committal of the reverend gentleman for trial at the assizes.—Newark Times. On Friday, four threatening and incendiary letters, signed "Swing," were received by respectable individuals of Inverness, written, it was said, in consequence of the scarcity of meal caused by extensive export- ation from the North. A general rising, it was reported, would take place on the Tuesday followiter, if the scarcity were not removed. • On Sunday a bill or placard, headed "Meal Mob," and calling upon the people to turn out on Tuesday night, was found affixed to the wall of the parish church. Several anonymous notices of the same import were also clandestinely introduced into several houses and workshops ; and it was confidently asserted and believed that a general rising would take place on Tuesday. Monday night, however, passed off without any riot. "A rigid investigation," says the Inverness paper, "is now going on, to discover the desperate or heartless authors of the alarm."

PAUPER PEDIGREES.—On the 25th of November last, Elias Marriott and Thomas Peck, paupers in the workhouse of Monk Soham Cam- bridgeshire, quarrelled about their pedigrees! Peck pushed Marriott on his bed ; and Marriott struck Peck on the left thigh with a bill- hook, making a wound about two inches long, penetrating to the bone. Of this wound Peck languished till the 26th of January, on which day he died. An inquest was held on the body, and a verdict of Man- slaughter returned against Marriott. He is seventy-five years of age, and a cripple.

Coxvrcrs.—Oakley and Darling, condemned along with Winter- bourne, have been removed, along with several other convicts, from Reading to Gosport. Oakley had a plan of escape from gaol, which was only discovered on the day of Winterbourne's execution. It is said that -while on the road to Gosport, he was very earnest with the rest of the convicts to overturn the caravan by swaying it to one side. THE WEATHER.—The severity of the storms of wind and of snow last week, has been exceedingly great. The accounts that are now pouring in from all quarters afford most melancholy evidence of the effects of the wind ; and when the roads are again opened in the more distant dis- tricts, we fear that not a few instances will be found to have occurred of disaster from the snow also.

Letters from Liverpool, received on Monday, mentioned that the mail between Glasgow and Liverpool had wholly disappeared —that the bodies of the guard and coachman had been found on the road, but no traces of the coach, the horses, or the passengers. Some parts of the road travelled by the mail are wild enough, but a storm that would envelop a coach, four horses, and a party of passengers, so as to render the discovery even of the spot where they lay a matter of difficulty, seemed to be unprecedented in its violence. Other accounts narrated a somewhat similar story of the Edinburgh and Carlisle mail,—with this difference, that the mail-bags had been found, and two of the horses, by the passengers, who had procured a post- chaise in which to prosecute their journey ; but the guard and coach- man, who had gone forward with the mail-bags, were nowhere discover- able. Accounts from Scotland of a later date have, we regret, confirmed. the worst part of this apparently strange news. The mail in question was that which runs from Dumfries to Edinburgh. On Tuesday last week, the guard and driver (there were no passengers) left Moffat on their way to Edinburgh, with the coach drawn by six horses. From Moffat the road sweeps up the mountainous ridge in which the Tweed and Clyde have their sources, called Erickstane; and for many miles it is. particularly exposed and desolate. When about four miles on the north side of Moffat, finding the snow becoming heavier, and the road less practicable, the two men unharnessed three of the horses, and under guidance of a roadman proceeded onward with the mail-bags, leaving the coach behind them. They had not proceeded far when it was found equally impossible to travel on horseback as with the coach. They dis- mounted, and ordered the guide to return to Moffitt with the horses, while they made an attempt to fight their way through the snow on foot, with the mail-bags strapped on their backs. The bags were afterwards found tied to a road-post, and on Saturday the bodies of the two men were discovered near a place called Tweed Shaws, about one hundred yards apart, and nearly half a mile distant from the place where they had aban- doned the bags. Their names were M'George and Goodfellow; they were men of middle age, and highly respectable character.

A second mishap from the snow is of a lighter character. Mr. Carnaby, to whom the petition against Lord Advocate Jeffrey's return was intrusted, and who was travelling by the mail to be in town on the 3rd, stuck fast near Berwick: after great exertions, and after riding not less than forty miles on a coach-horse, he reached London on the 8th, with the comfortable assurance that the fourteen days allowed for presenting the petition had elapsed. A statement setting forth his hair- breadth 'scapes in the imminently deadly drifts, has been presented to the House of Commons; and the House has, by its vote, prolonged the time for petitioning, so that his labours will not be altogether thrown away. Mr. Jeffrey did not anticipate, among all his friends, that General Frost would effect so powerful a diversion for him.

In the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, the snow seems to have been very deep : the London mail, which goes by Berwick, could not be dragged more than five miles of its journey; and the light cart which conveys letters across the country by Soltra Hill and Wooler to Mor- peth, and whose road-destroying powers excited some time ago so much alarm in Sir Matthew White Ridley, was stopped at the fourth mile, The snow seems to have extended as far north as Inverness, and as far south as Brighton.

The snow in Ireland has been unprecedentedly heavy : indeed, the honourable member for Clare represented it in the House of Commons, on Tuesday, to have buried the whole of the people of Mayo. An Irish burying, it ought to be observed, does not suppose loss of breath, any more than an Irish killing supposes loss of blood. Round about Dublin, the snow on Monday lay so deep as to render access to the metropolis almost impossible. During last week, only one mail, that from Belfast, arrived ; and it did not reach Dublin but with great difficulty. The meat-markets have rapidly advanced in price, and, what is of more con- sequence the potato-market. The thaw, which set in here on Monday night, and which still continues, will ere this have made itself felt, we trust, among our neighbours.

Of the shipwrecks that have taken place during the last ten days, the number is exceedingly great, and the loss of lives also very great. On Tuesday sennight, during the violence of the gale, the Dwina, a coal-vessel, heavily laden, struck off the Pier-end, at Bridlington. Every possible effort was made to reach the vessel by means of the life-boat ; but, from the violence of the wind and waves, notwithstanding three fresh crews in succession made the attempt, it was found impossible. While the boat was engaged in the last attempt, the Dwina's masts went overboard ; and with the masts, the unfortunate crew, seven in number, and one passenger ; they were all drowned. The distance was too great from the shore to the vessel for Captain Manby's apparatus to reach.

At Dunbar, on Friday, the smack Czar, an uncommonly fine ves- sel, with a valuable cargo, went on shore on Sconghall ; when the master—an active and intelligent man, well known to many persons who have passed on business or pleasure from London to Leith—three sailors, and eleven passengers, were drowned. Another vessel went ashore at nearly the same spot, but her crew were saved. The only passengers of the Czar, whose names were entered in the vessel's mani, fest, were a Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, a Mr. Mavell, and a Miss Graham. Eleven bodies have been found, and five, if not seven, are supposed to be still missing. One of the passengers Wore a great coat with a deal of braiding and fur on it, and belonged apparently to the army. On Monday sennight five fishing-boats were swamped off the Isle - Bank, near Lough Foyle ; and the whole of their crews, twenty-one in number, drowned. The joint families of the men who were drowned amount to seventy-three persons. On Tuesday sennight, an equally melancholy event occurred in a very different part of the island. On that day, a brig (which proved to be the Fame, of London, Sharman, master), while attempting to follow the track of a schooner steering in for Rye harbour, unfortunately lost sight of her guide in a heavy shower of snow; and in its clearing away,

the ill-fated vessel was discovered ashore, and the sea making a fair breach over leer, about a quarter of a mile to the eastward. of the har- bour-mouth. In about two hours after, the brig went to pieces, and the crew perished. At Dundee, on Tuesday, the storm raged with such violence, that vessels were wrecked almost in the harbour.

DROWNING.—Five young boys were drowned on Sunday afternoon, in a pond near the Artillery-ground, 'Woolwich. The immediate cause of 'the accident affords one of the most extraordinary instances of callous in- difference to the safety of others, that we have met fora long time. Two young fellows, named Bell and Moseley, had gone to the pond for the purpose of skating ; but they were somewhat apprehensive of the ice, and how did they proceed to try it ? Moseley, quite coolly and deli- berately, procured change for some silver, and tossed it on the ice, in order, by means of the scramble, to ascertain whether it was in a safe state or not. He was remonstrated with on the probable consequence, but he persisted notwithstanding. Seventeen boys fell into the water, which was about twelve feet deep; and five out of the seventeen perished. Had it not been for the exertions of a private in the Sappers and Miners, named Scrafield, who seems to have acted with equal courage and pre- sence of mind, several more of the boys would have perished. Nothing has been done to Moseley ; indeed, no law can touch him.

DEATH BY DROWNING.—On the night of the 27th, a Mr. Sherriff, of Dungannon, was drowned at Banufool, in attempting to swim the ferry on horseback, on his way to Belfast. The horse escaped, galloped to the nearest cottage, and pushing open the door, gave, by the condition in which it appeared, the first information of the fate of its unfortunate rider. The body was found next day. Mr. Sherriff was twenty-three years of age, and on the eve of his marriage.

DEATH BY A Percu-roax.—On Saturday, a labourer named Bull, while in the act of unloading hay from a cart, at New Farm, near Brad- lag, was thrown, by a spring of the horse, on the prongs of the hay- fork, one of which pierced his side, and killed him instantly, the prong haring penetrated the heart.

LOVE AND JEALOUSY.—A young man, named Joseph Betts, hanged himself at Sutton, in Ashfield, the week before last, because of the pre- ference which a young woman of that town, to whom he was attached, had shown to his brother.

FULMINATING SiLvEn.—On Wednesday morning, as Mr. Potter, of Old Compton Street, was putting a piece of bladder on the mouth of a bottle containing fulminating silver, from friction or some other cause, the bottle burst ; and besides blowing the whole of the glass of the win- dow out, and setting fire to the shop, seriously injured Mr. Potter and his assistant. Nearly all the phials and jars in the shop were destroyed, and the counter was broken in several places.

EntEss—The entire stock of a valuable farm, on the estate belonging to Mr. Alexander Baring in Hampshire, was destroyed accidentally by fire on Monday.

On Friday evening last week, a fire broke out in a shed at South Wood farm, between Writtle and Margaretting, Essex, which was luckily got under, without extending beyond the shed in which it was kindled. The proprietor, Mr. Addy, was severely burnt in endeavouring to extinguish the fire. A boy about sixteen years of age has been arrested on suspicion of being the incendiary.