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Cabinet Councils were held at the Foreign Office on Saturday, Monday, and Thursday. A deputation of thirty gentlemen, including some Members of Parlia- ment, who are interested in promoting railways in India, waited on the Board of Control on Thursday, and were received by Sir John Hobhouse and Mr. James Wilson. The impression of the deputation is said to be, that the feeling of the Government is in favour of affording an amount of guarantee sufficient to induce the public to subscribe the required capital. A letter received in Paris from M. Gaizot announces his intended arrival there in March. It is added that he will retire to the department of the Calvados, and will not reenter into public affairs.

It is understood that Sir Edmund Lyons, lately Minister at Athens, will be appointed British Minister in Switzerland.

The statement that Mr. Charles Villiers has been appointed Lord High Commissioner of the. Ionian Islands is contradicted.

The Right Honourable Sir H. L. Bnlwer, K.C.B., who lately represented her Majesty in Spain, has been appointed to succeed Sir R. Pakenham as

li British Minister in the United States. Sir R. Pakenham, who has long

been a diplomatic servant of the Crown, will retire upon a well-earn pension. It is understood that the differences with Spain which have to a suspension of diplomatic relations are in process of amicable adjust. _ _

We understand that the command of the forces in India is to be offered to Sir George Napier, who is now at Nice.—Times. The appointment of the Earl of Hardwicke to the command of a man- Of-war on a foreign station has been made the subject of critical remark. in the House of Lords, on Thursday, replying to an observation from Lord Brougham, directed to some unknown censor who had attacked the Earl, Lord Lansdowne stated that Lord Hardwicke had expressed a desire for a ship in the event of war; and the First Lord of the Admiralty had thought it his duty to offer him a command. The Standard, however, insists that the offer was made as a command, which the etiquette of the service renders peremptory, and was intended to get rid of the most skilful Protectionist member of the Navigation-laws Committee; which now falls to the ground. A correspondent of the Times supplies information that Lieutenant Edwardes of the Fifteenth Regiment of Native Bengal Infantry, whose death was announced by the last mail, from a fall off his horse, was the brother of him -who has won for himself so great a reputation in India. "The deceased was riding down to camp the night before we left Ferozepore, when his horse, coming in contact with the park-train ropes in the dark, came down with him, and threw him heavily. He was picked up by a Sepoy, and never spoke again. He was struck on the head, it is supposed, by his horse, which blow fractured his skull. We were obliged to leave his body to be buried by strangers; when all the Staff in Ferozepore, from the General in command to ills Junior Ensign, attended his funeraL His poor brother, Herbert, is sadly dis- tressed."

We have authority to state that there is no foundation for the report that the Eighth Hussars are under orders to proceed to India.—Times.

Orders have been received at the different head-quarters of the Royal Marines for the immediate recall of the whole of the recruiting parties.

Mr. Charles Blackstone, a scholar of Corpus Christi College, has accidentally shot himself with a pistol. He had bought the pistol to shoot a rat that annoyed him; he was very incautious in handling it when loaded; and it would seem that he was watching for the rat at night, holding the pistol without sufficient care, when it went off, the contents entering his side. A friend found him lying on a sofa, dead, at midnight. Mr. Blackstone, the son of the Vicar of Ileckfield in Hants, was in his twenty-third year, and was a very promising young man.

Some miscreant placed an iron bar across the railway near Sudbury station, with the intention of upsetting an express-train which did not stop at the station. The guarding iron in front of the wheels of the locomotive pushed the bar forward till the train was stopped.

A young man has been committed for trial at Sheffield for stealing a pair of shoes by the instrumentality of his dog. The dog took the shoes from a shop- door and castled them to the prisoner, who had trained it to perform such feats.

It was mentioned the other day, at a Coroner's inquest, that an Irishman had perished in University College Hospital from ignorant obstinacy. A bone had stuck in his throat; at the hospital, tracheotomy was recommended as the only but certain method of saving the man's life. To encourage him, a patient was brought before him who had just undergone the operation. The sufferer said that he should consult his relatives before he gave an answer. His relatives, all Irish, were sent for to advise with him; and with one voice they cried out, "Don't let yourself be cut up, but die like a Christian! " " I will die like a Christian ! " ex- claimed the simple Celt: and he died, for all the arguments of the medical a- ims could not induce him to submit to the operation.

A portrait of Charles the First, which was recently exhibited in London as the work of Velasquez, has been seized by a sheriff's-officer at Edinburgh, at the in- stance of the trustees of the Earl of Fife. It was rumoured that the ground of seizure was an allegation that it had been stolen or at least surreptitiously oh.. tallied from the Earl's collection. Mr. Snare, of Reading, who had possession of the picture, states in a pamphlet that he bought it some years ago at a sale, for el: but he also states that it was once in the collection of the Earl of Fife, and cites evidence from the catalogue of that collection to show the genuineness of the painting.

At the sale of the Stowe library by Messrs. Sotheby, last week, the first three volumes of " Prynne's Records," a very scarce work, sold for 1401. The fourth volume of the same book, supposed to be unique, having been the only one that escaped the great fire of London, brought 3351.: it was bought for the library of Lincoln's Inn, which possessed Prynne's own copy of the other volumes.

The " floating railway," a strongly-built iron steam-vessel which is tabs used for ferrying trains over the Frith of Forth, was launched at Glasgow on Tuesday afternoon. It is 170 feet long on deck, 34 feet wide between the paddles, and 10 feet deep; and there is space on the deck for three railway-trucks abreast.

It is said that there are numbers of Mormonites in Camden Town and Somers Town, and that they are increasing. They intend to emigrate to California in the spring as colonists.

Ten puncheons of whisky have been shipped from a Tipperary distillery for California.

The New Orleans Courier of the 3d January contains an article professing to describe "a monumental canal" through the Isthmus of Panama, lately dis- covered by a French physician at Vera Paz, while fishing in a secluded bay. The canal is of Cyclopean masonry, 240 feet wide ; it forms a tunnel through the foot of the mountain where the volume of Fuego is now inactivity, and after eighteen hours' length opens into the Pacific between Guatemala and San Salvador, in an immense natural grotto, called by the fishermen the Devil's Mouth, and from su- perstitions dread never entered by them.

The cholera returns of the week give these results. London--cases, 50; deaths, 19. Provinces—cases, 65; deaths, 29. Scotland—cases, 812; deaths, 297.

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

Number of Winter

Deaths. Average. Emetic Diseases 346 .... 221

Dropsy, Cancer, and other diseases of uncertain or variable seat

Tubercular Diseases 169 .... 209 Diseases of the Brain, Spinal Marrow, Nerves, and Sense.. 110 .... 141 Diseases of the Heart and Blood-vessels 41 .... 40 Diseases of the Lungs, and of the other Organs of Respiration 203 .... 243 Diseases of the Stomach, Liver, and other Organs of Digestion 43 .... 67

Diseases of the Kidneys, Sc 10 .... 13 Childbirth, diseases of the Uterus, ne. P.beumatism, diseases of the Bones, Joints, Sc Diseases of the Skin, Cellular Tissue, Sc Malformations Premature Birth Atrophy Age Sudden :Violence, Privation, Cold, and Intemperance Total (including unspecified causes) 1137 1169 The temperature of the thermometer ranged from 5&7° in the sun to 1&5° in the shade • the mean temperature by day being warmer than the average mean temperattire by 4.8°. The direction of the wind for the week was variable.

20 .... 13 62 ....73. 20 .... 14 31 .... 37 At Inverness, the effects of the flood upon the poorer class of people have beta very calamitous. Forced to forsake their homes in the low-lying parts of tie town by the water, they have taken reftifie in churches and empty buildings, ie 4 destitute condition. It is feared that infectious diseases may spring up among them. The local authorities have done all they could to relieve the distresses of the poor people; and the Provost has applied for aid from the Highland Destitu- tion Fund, and to the Government. The Edinburgh Evening Post appeals te Scotchmen and Englishmen alike to assist Inverness in her affliction.

Later accounts add to the amount of damage by the floods in the North of Scotland reported last week. The Spey laid a large extent of country under water. At Ardverikie a great deal of mischief was done. Many bridges were destroyed. There was a heavy snow-storm in Troutbeek on Sunday. The drifts were several yards deep, covering the sheep that were at pasture. On one spot twenty- seven out of thirty sheep were suffocated.