It is well known that King Louis Philippe has promised

to pay her Majesty a visit this autumn. It is now understood that his Majesty will embark at Treport, in the month of September, for this country. His Majesty will be accompanied by two ships of 74 guns and four or five steamers, and will land at Portsmouth, whence he will proceed by railway to the station nearest to Windsor. His Majesty will remain -eight days at Windsor, and will not visit London.—Morning Herald, It is announced that Prince Frederic William Louis of Prussia, brother of the King and heir-apparent to the Prussian throne, is expected on a visit to Queen Victoria in the early part of next week.

The King of Saxony has been visiting the Lakes. On Saturday, he was at Carlisle ; whence be set out on Sunday for Hamilton Palace. On Monday afternoon be arrived in Glasgow ; took a hasty view of the city, and then set out for the Highlands.

The Honourable Harriet Lister, one of the Queen's Maids of Honour, who was married on the 10th, received from her Majesty, as a wedding- present, a magnificent locket containing the donor's hair and a donation of 1,000/. Lord John Russell, whose first wife was Miss Lister's sister, also presented the lady with 500/.

Civil List pensions have been granted, during the year ending 20th June, to the following persons—Dame Maria Bell, 1001. a-year, in con- sideration of the services rendered to science by her late husband, Sir Charles Bell; Miss Ann Drummond, in consideration of the public ser- vices of her brother, Edward Drummond, Esq., (assassinated by Mac- naghten,) 2001. a-year ; Robert Brown, Esq., the botanist, 2001. a-year ; Dame Florentia Sale, (wife of the hero ofJellalabad,) 500/. a-year ; and Sir William Rowan Hamilton, the Astronomer Royal for Ireland, 2001. a-year.

It is expected that the regular business of Parliament will have been disposed of by the end of the first week in August. The Parliament will not, however, be then prorogued ; but the session will be continued by adjournment to the 25th of August. The purpose of this arrange- ment is to afford time for receiving the reports of the Judges, and making up the judgment of the House of Lords, upon the writ of error brought by Mr. O'Connell and his fellow-prisoners.—Morning Herald. [The Morning Post sneeringly remarks on Ministers' appointing the 25th of August for the last day of the session, that being Sunday.] The Times announces, that a treaty has at length been concluded and signed in London between the Ministers Plenipotentiary of the Queen of Great Britain and the King of Hanover, for the adjustment of the protracted and embarrassing discussions arising out of the Stade dues. The convention will establish a uniform and moderate tariff of dues : a re- duction of not less than one-third has been effected in the duties on the most important articles ; and the settlement of the Stade fees and charges has been embodied in a general treaty of commerce and navigation with the kingdom of Hanover.

The negotiations between Baron Bulow and Lord Aberdeen, says the Morning Post, have terminated is a Royal decree increasing the duty on bar-iron 50 per cent.

" By this decree, dated the 14th June, the duties on raw iron, from the 1st September next, are fixed at ten silver groschen the centner. On bar-iron the duty is to be one thaler fifteen silver groschen, or if it be in bars less than half an inch thick, two thalers fifteen groschen. The duty on raw-iron thus re- mains at 11. a ton ; that on bar-iron is augmented from 31. to 41. 10s. a ton; on bar-iron in small rods, not half an inch thick, there is a reduction of from 9s. to 7s. M. per hundredweight—of little importance to English trade, which does not furnish iron in this state. By another decree, dated the 1st July, an excise-duty of 3a the hundredweight is imposed on beet-root sugar."

The great experiment with Captain Warner's destructive power took place at Brighton, on Saturday evening. Some time since, officers were appointed by Government to arrange with Captain Warner's friends for defraying the cost of an experiment : it appeared that 2,0001. would be necessary : Government, however, only offered 5001. ; and the present experiment was made entirely at the expense of the inventor and his friends ; Mr. Somes, the eminent shipowner, bestowing a ship for the purpose. An immense concourse of persons repaired to the scene, from London and from all parts round Brighton ; so that the strand, the pier, the cliffs, the buildings, the sea, were crowded with spectators, to the number of thirty or forty thousand. Among the more noted were, Lord Brougham, Lord Ingestre, the Marquis of Exeter, the Marquis of Southampton, Captain Boldero, Mr. William Peel, Mr. Sheppard, (Chairman of the East India Company,) the Chevalier Benkhausen, and many Peers, Members of Parliament, and officers Naval and Mili- tary. After various inevitable delays, the John o' Gaunt, a barque of three hundred tons burden in measurement, was towed by the Sir William Wallace steamer to its station, about a mile and a half from the shore, opposite the battery. Two men remained on board the barque till the last, to regulate its steering ; and they left it in a boat just before the final operation. Captain Warner was on board the Sir William Wallace ; and when he was about to use his destructive, the crew of the steamer were all sent below. The problem to be solved by the experiment was, whether those on board a ship in chase could use the explosive power to destroy the pursuing ship. The delays in- creased the doubts which many entertained ; and among the most out- spoken of the sceptics was Lord Brougham, who is described as lying prone on the battery occupied by the principal party ashore, with a long telescope resting on his white hat before him. A union•jack was hoisted at the mast-head of the steamer, in token that the inventor was ready : it was answered by the preconcerted signal of a similar flag hoisted on the battery, as a signal that he might proceed ; but the lowering of the steamer's flag half-mast high intimated that some obstacle presented itself. It proved to be a cutter, in which some fool-hardy persons went alongside of the doomed ship ; replying to Captain Warner's remonstrance, that the sea was as free to them as to him ! At length they obeyed his warning, and made off, leaving the scene clear. The union-jack was then hauled down entirely—an- nouncing that the blow was to be struck. The steamer was now about a quarter of a mile from the ship. Every eye was fixed upon the barque. Captain Warner lowered something into the sea, and both the vessels made onwards : the ship came over the spot where its destruction lay ; a burst of smoke-like vapour—water sent upwards from the sea, higher than the masts —enveloped the ship ; the mist cleared off, and the vessel was seen to have been struck amid-ships, the water showing through its timbers, its mizen gone by the board, its mainmast shot away " like a rocket"; it heeled over, its head went down, and in two minutes and a half from the explosion, it sank, leaving nothing but the still standing foremast-head above water, and all was over. The multitude were wonder-stricken at the utter destruction caused by the something which Captain Warner " in the deep bosom of the ocean baried," The Earl of

Haddington and Mr. Sidney Herbert, from the Admiralty, arrived soon after the explosion, too late to witness it.

Several doubts as to the genuine nature of the experiment and the composition of the explosive materials were hazarded. In some respects the affair was badly managed ; as the presence of the two sailors in the ship so soon before the explosion made it possible that they might have deposited on board some of the ordinary destructive im- plements. But reasons occurred on the face of the matter why the vessel must have been destroyed by an external agency : the lower timbers were destroyed while the decks remained entire ; and the re- port was dull, as if under water—not loud, as if above the water in the air. But why should the thing explode just as the ship passed over it ? A writer in the Morning Post conjectures how that miglet be brought about ; and of course it might be done in other ways—" The shells are made of polished steel ; they may, therefore, be magnetic. Were such a shell rendered buoyant by cork, it might by means of a rope and weight be moored at any required depth under water. Such a floating magnet would be attracted by the iron of a ship approaching within the range of its attraction, and the force of contact and friction would be sufficient to explode many known detonating compositions."

The following certificate was made on the occasion ; and it was read by Lord Ingestre in the House of Commons on Monday—

"21st July.

" We, the undersigned, hereby certify that the operations against the John o'Gaunt, of 300 tons, conducted by Captain Warner, off Brighton, on Saturday the 20th instant, were under our management and control. We further cer- tify, that the explosion did not take place from any combustible matter either on board or alongside the ship, but was caused by Captain Warner, who was on board the William Wallace steamer, having the ship in tow at a distance of about 300 yards ; and that the explosion took place in consequence of a signal made by us from the shore, the time of which was not previously known by Captain Warner. We further declare our belief that Captain Warner has never been on board the ship since she left Gravesend. INGESTRE, Captain, R.N., C.B.

T. DICKENSON, Captain, R.N. W. H. HENDERSON, Captain, R.N., C.B."

The " Quarterly Table of the Mortality in a Hundred-and-fifteen of the Districts of England," just published by authority of the Registrar- General, (being the second number for 1844,) contains a great body of

interesting facts on disease and weather ; the results of which are stated in the following general remarks.

" The quarterly returns are obtained from 115 districts, subdivided into 576 sub-districts ; 34 districts are placed under the Metropolis; and the remaining 81 districts comprise, with some agricultural districts, the principal towns and cities of England. The population was 6,578,912 in 1841. " The deaths registered in the last quarter (ending 30th June) amounted to 38,925; which is less by 7,116 than the deaths in the previous quarter, and 1,283 less than the average of the corresponding spring quarter in the five years (1838-42.) Allowing for the increase of the town-population, the mortality was 10 per cent below the average of the season. " The reduction in the mortality has been unequally distributed over the kingdom ; but as a general rule, it has been moat remarkable in the large ma- nufacturing districts. Averageof Five Deaths in the

ptevious Spring Quarter ending Quarters. 18.38-42. 30th June1844.

Manchester 1,543 1,260

Salford 519 1,377 417 Ashton and Oldham 1,107 993 Leeds 936 Sheffield 577 464 Stockport 630 418 Liverpool 1,744 1,547 Birmingham remained the same ; and in a few of the other manufacturing districts the mortality was above their average.

" Small-pox and scarlatina have been epidemic in the Metropolis ; and to- wards the end of the quarter 51 persons (chiefly children) died of the former, 78 of the latter disease, in one week. The deaths in the quarter from small- pox were 42.5. 107 of the number were reported by the informants to have been vaccinated ; but the evidence of this would necessarily be, in many cases, uncertain and imperfect. Influenza has declined ; and since the mean tem- perature has risen above 60 degrees, bowel complaints have become more pre- valent.

" The epidemics most frequently mentioned in the country districts are scarlatina, measles, small-pox, hooping-cough, and typhus. " The Quarterly Meteorological Table has been compiled from the Weekly Tables supplied by the Astronomer Royal. The mean temperature (55° 0) was 1° 9 above the average of the season ; the highest temperature of the air (observed) was 83° 3, the lowest 340 0; the thermometer once rose in the sun to 111° 7, and fell on the grass so low as 21° 6. The mean dew-point was 47° 2. The quarter has been remarkable for the small quantity of rain which fell. The rain collected in thirteen weeks was only 2.31 inches ; and of this, 1.55 inches fell upon the last week of June."

General and Lady Sale, with their daughter Mrs. Sturt, and a nume- rous party of fellow-passengers, landed on Monday at Lyme Regis, in a Cowes boat, from the True Briton East Indiaman, and proceeded for London on Tuesday morning. A body of soldiers, consisting of the wounded men from the army of Gwalior, disembarked from the ship Windsor, on the morning of the 22d instant, and proceeded forthwith to Chatham, in medical charge of Surgeon Wood, Ninth Royal Lancers, and Assistant-surgeon Mapleton, Fortieth Foot. Only one death had occurred on the voyage. At a numerous meeting of the London Protection Society's Commit- tee, resolutions have been adopted, expressing " horror and indignation at the foul insinuations which have been levelled at Mr. Wakley in the Commons House of Parliament,"—meaning Mr. Wodehouse's " incen- diary " allusions ; acknowledging the high-minded conduct of Mr. Wakley's defenders, of all political sides, in Parliament and the press ; and also acknowledging Mr. Wakley's able exertions, as projector and editor of the Lancet, in the promotion of medical reforms and improve- ments.

At an annual meeting of proprietors of Drury Lane Theatre, on Monday, it was stated that Mr. Bunn would continue to be lessee of the theatre for a further term of three years.

The accounts of the harvest from all parts of the United Kingdom are, on the whole, exceedingly favourable. The weather during the week has been very clear, hot, and ripening. Harvest has commenced in Essex and some other quarters, and is expected to become general in a fortnight.