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At Shrewsbury, on Wednesday, Mr. John Whitehall Dod was returned without opposition as Member for Western Shropshire. Mr. Ludlow Bruges has announced to his constituents his intention to resign the representation of Devises, on the ground of continued ill health.

General Caulfield has announced to the electors of Abingdon, that the petition against Sir Frederick Thesiger has been withdrawn, by reason of " unlooked-for events connected with the zeal of both parties." Sir Frederick was returned by a majority of one. We hear that an inspection has been made, by Government authority, of Languerd Fort, and of the Circular Redoubt; both of which are said to he in a very dilapidated state. It is mentioned that the Government have it in contemplation to put both into proper repair, and also to attach a corps of Artillery to each.—Sufolk Chronicle.

The Chertsey branch of the South-western Railway was opened on Monday. It is only three miles and a half long. There is one station be- sides the terminus. The works on the Burnley branch of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway are resumed. The Kitson Wood tunnel, near Tochnonien, is pro- gressing rapidly, and as many hands are now employed as can find room to work.

The gentry of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Berkshire, assembled last week, at the Bishop of Oxford's Palace, Cuddesden, and resolved to establish, in connexion with the Oxford Diocesan Board, an agricultural school for the sons of yeomen and farmers. The number of boys to be limited to 150, and the annual payment to be 251. The right of nomi- nation to be with the contributors. A committee was formed, and up- wards of 1,1001. was subscribed.

The strike. amongst the colliers may be said to be at an end; the men around Dudley, Brierley Hill, the Level, and that neighbourhood, having returned to work at the drop. There are also, we are happy to say, indica- tions of a better understanding between the paddlers and their employers; and in some cases the masters have expressed their disposition to meet their workmen with a view to an amicable arrangement of their differences.--- Birmingham Journal, 12th Feb.

Three men have perished on the works of the Manchester, Lincolnshire, and Sheffield Railway, near Sheffield. through the fall of a scaffolding. The workmen were engaged in the formation of a viaduct; four of them were raising a piece of timber by a crane; the scaffolding gave way, and the crane fell with the workmen. A labourer was crushed to death by the timber, and two of the men who were on the crane died in a short thne, while the other two were much hurt. It is sup- posed that the foundation of the scaffolding had been weakened by an accumula- tion of water which had drained from a river into an excavation.

The inquest held at Woking on Markland the engine-driver closed on Tuesday. No material evidence was added. The Jury returned a verdict of " Manslaugh- ter" against Jones and Fleming. The Foreman then inquired if the Railway Company had carried out the suggestions of the Jury with respect to the improve- ment of the breaks and break-vans of luggage-trains, and the formation of ele-

vated seats for the guards. Mr. i Dalrymple, the solicitor to the Company, replied,

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that the alterations had been made or were progress.

A sculler-boat has been ran down in the dark, by a steamer in the Tyne, and four out of seven men were drowned.

A desperate conflict with two highwaymen took place, near Macclesfield, on Friday aennight. They stopped a tradesman, presented each a pistol at him, and demanded his money; they snatched at his watch, but missing it, they be- came exasperated, knocked him down, threw him into a ditch, and made off, An alarm was raised, the ruffians were pursued, and hunted into a wood. There they made a stand, declaring that they would shoot any one that approached to seize them. The people advanced; the robbers fired two pistols; two brothers named Wyatt were struck down by the bullets, and one, William, was wounded so badly that he died a few days after. The highwaymen were eventually cap- tured. On them were found two more pistols, with a store of powder and bullets An inquest has been held on William Wyatt, and a verdict of " Wilful murder'• returned against Walmsley and Bates. The brother of the deceased is recovering.

Stagbury, the mansion of Lady Mary Walpole, near Woodmansterne in Surrey, has been robbed by a gang of burglars. Lady Mary was away from home, and there were only three servants in the house. The gardener was awakened duripg the night by four men with blackened faces, who prevented him by threats from raising an alarm, and tied him to the bedstead; the robbers then forced open an adjoining closet, and took out the contents of the plate-chest, valued at 5001.; regaled themselves with wine, ale, and the contents of the pantry; and went away leaving the gardener still tied to the bedstead. The robbers had entered the house by cutting a piece out of a door with a centre-bit.

Wood, a farmer of Faweather, near Bradford, has been murdered by a gang of burglars, whom he resisted in their plundering of his house. A verdict of " Wil- ful murder" has been retained against Calvert and Hodgson, two of the burglars.

John Grabb, a farmer and shopkeeper of Littleport, near Ely, has been com- mitted to prison for the murder of his wife. The deceased was sixty years old. She died suddenly; and, for that reason only, an inquest was held; but on a surgical examination of the corpse, it was found that the head had been much mangled by some heavy instrument, from the effect of which she had evidently died.

An extension of the moral lesson afforded by capital punishment! On the day of the execution of Patrick Reid for the murders at Mirfield, Andrew Pur- chase, a showman, bought Reid's clothes and the rope with which he was hanged. He procured a full-length wax figure and likeness of Reid, dressed it in clothes, and placed the hanging-noose in the hands of the figure. This ex- hibition he opened to the public at a low admission-price in Leeds. Such crowds flocked to the sight that free passage of the streets was hindered. A few days since the stream of visiters slackened, on a rumour that the things shown were not genuine! On this check, the showman hired Nathaniel Howard, the hang- man, and brought him express from York to attend his show in person, and dis- play the mode of managing his professional duty. Howard vouches to each new audience for the genuineness of Reid's garments; and by experiments with the waxen figure shows the causes why the noose was partially ineffectual at the execution: each time he attributes the slipping of the rope to the prisoner's curiosity in turning round, and to the rope's having been frozen stiff!

Three-and-twenty years ago, the body of a man, mutilated and decomposed, was found in a sack in the river Avon at Bath; and a Coroner's Jury returned a verdict of " Wilful murder" against persons unknown. It was afterwards sur- mised that the body might have been used for anatomical purposes, and thrown into the stream to be got rid of. But the Bath Herald now states that a report is current that a brewer, who was recently seized with a dangerous illness, has confessed that he and a woman murdered a man some twenty years ago, put the body into a sack, and threw it into the Avon. A singular and most revolting discovery has been made in an unoccupied house in Bloom Street, Manchester. In the coarse of the morning, Mr. Lansdale, of Water Street, who is agent for the house, went to visit and examine the place; when inside the kitchen, he found two large earthenware jars, the mouths of which were covered over with paper, and were marked with the words " For tale.; He kicked one of them over with his foot; when, breaking in pieces as it fell on the floor, the body of a dead child, about three months old, was revealed to Ins sight. Surprised and horrified, he went for a policeman, who on his arrival opened the second jar, when another infant was therein found, evidently of premature birth. The parties who last occupied the house are stated to have been two maiden sisters from Bolton, one of whom died not very long ago, and the other became insane:and was taken away by her friends.—Manchester Courier.