litistellaneous.

The birthday of the Queen of England was celebrated by the King of Prussia on the 24th May by a grand dinner given at Charlottenburg to Lord Westmoreland, the members of the English Embassy, and some of our countrymen resident in Berlin. The intelligence of the late out- rage on her Majesty in the Park gave an additional interest to the pro- ceedings. After dinner, the King gave the toast, " The Queen of England, God bless her"; which was drunk with enthusiasm, the Royal band play- ing the English National Anthem.

The Times has declared itself able to state, that " the Count do Monte- molin has offered his hand to Miss de Horsey, the accomplished daughter of Spencer de Horsey, Esq.; and the marriage will shortly be solemnized in this country. It is understood that a negotiation has been opened by the Prince with the Government of the Queen of Spain, which has consented to make an adequate provision for his Royal Highness and his bride, in consideration of the renunciation of the claims to the throne of the male line, of which the Count de Montemolin is the representative." The 3forningr Post, while bluntly withholding its opinion on the " truth or false- hood " of this " article," declares itself " in a position to state that none of the Prince's advisers in London have the slightest knowledge of the ru- moured alliance, or of the present residence of the Prince."

Tuesday's Gazette notifies the passing of letters-patent under the great seal, granting the office and place of Advocate-General, or Judge-Martial of her Majesty's Forces, to Sir David Dundee.

The obituary includes the deaths of two Peers of Parliament, and of a Baronet not many years retired from prominent political life—the Duke of St. Alban's, the Earl of Mayo, and Sir Edward Knatchbull. The death of the Duke of St. Alban's was premature and unexpected, the con sequence of a fall received some months since in hunting. He was born in 1801; succeeded his father as ninth Duke in 1823; married, in 1827, the rich Mra. Courts —who died in 1837, and left him some thousands a year for life; in 1839, he was married a second time, to Elizabeth the daughter of General Gubbina of Stone- ham, Hants; by whom he leaves a eon and a daughter. His son, William Arthur de Vere, Earl of Burford, born in 1840, succeeds to the Dukedom, with the honour of Hereditary Grand Falconer of England and the office of Hereditary Registrar of the Court of Chancery.

The death of the Earl of Mayo makes a vacancy in the Irish Representative Peerage, and places a Guelphic Order and the Colonelcy of the Kildare Militia at the disposal of Government.

Sir Edward Knatchbull, who was in his sixty-eighth year, had been ill for some time. He was born in 1781, and succeeded to his father's title and estates in 1819; when he entered Parliament as one of the Members for Kent. Sir Edward's long identification with the agricultural interest, and his adherence to Protection- ist principles till his retirement from public life some four or five years ago, are in the recollection of our political readers. He held the office of Pay- master-General during Sir Robert Peel's last Ministry ; and resigned on the an- nouncement of Sir Robert's intention to relinquish the Corn-laws. Sir Edward was twice married, and he has left thirteen children. He is succeeded by his eld- est son, Norton Joseph, born in 1806. The family of the Knatchbulls have been settled in Kent since the reign of Henry the Second. Lord Wallscourt died at Paris, of cholera, on Tuesday morning, after a few hours' illness. M. Keratry, the Provisional President of the French Legislative Assembly, was born in 1769. Although belonging to a noble family of Brittany, he warmly embraced the cause of the Revolution. Elected Deputy in 1818, he ever since, both as member of the Chamber and as editor of the Courtier Franrais, ener- getically combated the Government of the Restoration. He was one of the small minority of whom Casimir Perrier said, "We are only sixteen in this hall, but we are thirty millions out of doors"; a fact verified a few years afterwards by the Revolution of July. M. Keratry was appointed by Louis Philippe Peer of France and Councillor of State, and remained to the last one of the moat devoted friends of that Monarch.—Times. Mademoiselle Jenny Lind is at this moment in Paris. This very day she has taken our her .passports for Sweden, her native country ; and it appears certain that the marriage, about which there has been so much idle talk in England, is definitively broken off.—.Tournal des Debate, May 29. [Of course, Punch is ready to "moralize the song"; which he does pleasantly as follows.

"Dear Jenny Lind has changed her mind, And run away to Paris:

So Betsey Prigg was right, we find— There is sto Mrs. Harris! "] William H. Mitchel, brother of the Irish patriot and exile John Mitchel, has been appointed by Secretary Ewing a clerk in the Home Department at Washing- ton, and has left the city to enter upon the duties of his office.—New York Tribune.

Emily Sandford left England on the 223 May, in the Caspar, bound for Adelaide and Port Phillip. She had assumed another name. A patented machine has been put in operation at Birmingham for making up

letter-envelopes. It is calculated that if worked by manual labour, one man and three or four boys would be able to turn out from 30,000 to 35,000 envelopes in a day, the paper being supplied to the machine ready cut. An expert workman can only make up 2,000 envelopes by hand in a day.

A new species of fire-arms is coming into use in the Prussian service. The in-

vention is described by the Berlin correspondent of the Daily Nears—" The greater part of the Prussian infantry are armed with a heavy long-barrelled musket, which is loaded at the breech, and which they call Zundnadel-Gewebr. With this arm half-a-dozen shots may be fired in the same time as one with a common musket. It kills as far and carries with the same precision as a rifle; as the re- cent practice at Potsdam, witnessed by the King and General Wrangel, proves. Military men herepretend that light batteries will not be usable in the face of in- fantry so armed, for the Zandnadel-Gewehr men will be able to pick down the gunners at their cannon within common range. I have heard Prussian officers express the wish that, if there is to be a war, it may come on as soon as possible, while the Prussians are the only infantry armed with the Ziindnadel-Gewehr."

Chloroform has been used with success as a motive power in several steam- engines now working in Paris. The vapour acts exactly like steam ; and while it exerts its power on one side of the piston, is condensed on the other. The al- ternate vaporization and condensation can be continued with very little waste of the chloroform, and a much less quantity of fuel is necessary than in an ordinary engine. Marine engines on this principle are now being constructed in Paris. Should these succeed in working, it is expected that the plan will be tried on locomotives—to the economizing of fuel, and the consequent reduction of dead- weight in the bulk of engine and tender and quantity of coke to be carried. Holloway, a labouring man of Southampton, and a drunken bad character, has killed his son, a boy often, by beating him with a strap, and kicking him, for some trifling fault.

Tidings have arrived by the American Mail .of the wreck of an Irish emigrant ship, with a great sacrifice of life, The big Hannah left Newry on the 3d April, for Quebec, with nearly two hunred-passengers. All went well till the 27th, when heavy winds and floating ice were encountered; and early on the morning of the 29th, the vessel struck on a reef of ice, carrying away part of her bottom. The emigrants were in their berths at the time. The water entered the hold very rapidly. What immediate steps were taken to endeavour to save the ship and people the accounts do not distinctly state ; but it seems clear that the master, the two mates, and some of the seamen, soon got into the life-boat and left the emigrants to their fate. The lower deck was speedily under water; but the sea- men who had been left in the vessel discovered that the ice was firm under the bows, and they urged the emigrants to get upon it. The attempt was made; and, though many of the poor creatures slipp.d between the chasms in the ice and were either crushed or drowned, the majority got on to the mass, the sailors being the last to leave the ship, and bringing with them a little spirits and a few blankets. The ship went down soon after, forty minutes subsequently to her striking. During the whole day, men, women, and children, were huddled to- gether on the ice, half naked, without food, exposed to a freezing gale. At five o'clock in the afternoon, the bark Nicarague, bound for Quebec, gained the field of ice, attracted by a signal of distress. The ship was laid alongside one portion of the ice, and about fifty people were rescued. The remainder were on another part of the ice, where they could not be reached from the ship; but Mr. Marshal, the master of the Nicaragua, by means of a rope and the long-boat, took all the poor creatures off. The passengers and seamen thus rescued numbered 129—cut, bruised, and frost-bitten, many quite insensible. Between fifty and sixty had perished. Mr. Marshal did all that his means would allow to alleviate the suffer- ings of the crowd that filled his ship. Next day, he put a portion into another vessel; and on the following day, three other ships took each a number on board. The Nicaragua reached Quebec on the 10th May. Nothing has been heard of the master and that portion of the crew who abandoned the Hannah.

The Liver Foundry, an extensive establishment in Liverpool, was destroyed by fire on Wednesday night, with a loss of property estimated at 5,0001.

Newport has been deluged with wretched Irish brought by sea. One vessel brought forty more passengers than the number allowed by its licence; and the Mayor has fined the master 2001.

There has been a shock of an earthquake at Poulton-le-Fylde, which made the walls shake, rattled crockery, and dislodged some bricks.

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

Number of Spring Deaths. Average.

lymode Disease* 233 .... 196

Dropsy, Cancer, and other diseases of uncertain or 'variable seat 47 .... 48 Tubercular Diseases 155 .... 200 Diseases of the Brain, Spinal Marrow, Nerves, and Senses . 122 .... 123

Diseases of the Heart and Blood-vessels 20 .... St Diseases of the Lungs, and of the other Organs of Respiration— . 139 .... 131

ID-Leases of the Stomach, Liver, and other Organs of Digestion .... 61 .... 52

Disease of the Kidneys, ete... 12 .... 11

Childbirth, diseases of the Uterus, &c. Rheumatism, diseases of the Bones, Joints, dic. 6 .... 8 Diseases of the Skin, Cellular Tissue, &c Malformations Premature Birth 38 .... 21 Atrophy 19 .... 17 Age 27 .... 30 Sudden 0 .... 11 Violence, Privation, Cold, and Intemperance 27 .... 33

Total (including unspecified (muses) 897 563 The temperature of the thermometer ranged from 97.2° in the sun to 38.0° in the shade; the mean temperature by day being warmer than the average mean temperature by 1.9°. The direction of the wind for the week was variable.