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NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENT 3.

OUR SUPPLIES OF CLOTHING MATERIALS.

ITHE POSITION OF AUSTRIA AND…

---THE MERLIN'S NOTES OF THE…

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THE MERLIN'S NOTES OF THE WEEK. ERE this, the decisive blow must have been struck in Crim Tartary, and the allied arnay is master of its position, or has suffered a temporary check. If a check—which, in God's mercy, we trust not to have been the case—it must and can be only temporary, because England and France are engaged in a struggle from which there can be no recall, except through the broad and laurelled path of honour. For Russia to be pre-eminent, is for England to be small—for Russia to be a great military power, is for France to ab- dicate the high position she fills "s the military arbitress of Western Europe. The Times may, from day to day, talk in high-sounding phrases of the nobleness and gene- rosity of our ranging ourselves on the side of the weak against the strong—of our seeking no territorial aggran- disement—and of the high influences that pervade our minds and regulate our actions. All this may be well— may gratify the national pride, and swell the national enthusiasm but the politician knows otherwise, and is ready to demonstrate that the WAR in which we are en- gaged is a British and not a Turkish contest—that we ready to demonstrate that the WAR in which wo are en- gaged is a British and not a Turkish contest—that we have flung open our troa3ury, and unsheathed our swords for our own individual interests, and not from chivalrous and romantic promptings. Would we have sent our small but gallant army to the Danubian swamps, or have ex- posed them to the perhaps murderous discharges of Su- bastopol, to save the Turk from the Russian bayonet or knout, but that we felt the possession of the former's land would give to the latter a greatness and a majesty in the presence of nations, that would sink us from a first to a second-rate power ? We fight therefore for the in- terests of our great and glorious empire and it is right that we should do so; and it is pcrfectly idle to be talk- ing of our great sacrifices in the cause of an oppressed people, or in vindication of the outraged and public law of Europe. Wo saw Poland sacrificed, in violation of a treaty to which we were parties, and not a battalion of the Guards loss was seen on the parade ground of St. James. Cracow was incorporated, and we quietly remon- strated. Hungary was immolated but certainly a Palmer- ston protested—but a Schwarzenburg smiled- and the Magyar nation was permitted to go out. But truly Lord Dudley Stuart was prepared to hold the strings of the pall, and the Borough of Marylebone framed resolutions enough to set the parish of St. Pancras in a flame. But, alas little came of them. Eike the friend of humanity's commiseration in Canning's Sapphics, they only ended in a transport of democratic enthusiasm and universal phi- lanthropy." Nations to be great, we fear, must be selfish -and when we are destroying Seb:lst0pol, we may be only preserving a Calcutta; and in burning the Russia ships, preserving to ourselves the proud mastery of the seas- which, more than our Constitution, makes us the envy of surrounding nations. If we suffer, then, in the war—the terrible phases of which we are soon to see-we suffer for ourselves; and, therefore, the war is English and national, and not wildly and recklessly entered on, for interests like the last—not exclusively our own. This will nerve the arms of our troops, and make the tax-payer ungrudgingly meet the burthens imposed upon him. Of ultimate suc- cess, we have before said, there cannot be permitted a doubt to cross the public mind. England and France must put forth their full and giant strength and, as the great Napoleon once saitl, 1( /I i ted they might defy and conquer the worM. Surely they will be found a match for Russia alone-a.ye, and even shoulcl Prussia come to the aid of the Autocrat, and test her fortunes on the Rhine. The greatest armament that ever quitted a harbour of ren- dezvous, to carry war into an enemy's country, and to give the sure and certain hope of victory, sailed from Varna on the 8th inst., rallied off the Isle of Serpents on the 10th, and proceeded on its voyage on the 11th and it was thought that two days more would bring it to its place of destina- tion. How many hearts are now beating with dread, or buoyant with hope, in the three kingdoms. Few families in the land, from the highest to the lowest, but have some dear relatives at the seat of war; and how anxiously they now await the pulsation of those wires that are to bring the abbreviated intelligence, but to them, the full words of joy, or the terrible truths of losses, that, alas can never be re- paired. Every precaution to ensure success has been taken, —all the troops embarked in the highest spirits—and all were prepared to maintain, by the side of their French brethren, the high character cf the army, and to show with what majesty an English soldier can fight in face of the enemy." The instructions issued by Lord Raglan have been extolled by the highest military critics at home, ard show that that veteran officer has not forgotten the lessons of his great chief, nor those first taught in the admirable school of the Peninsula. It is always vain apd presump- tuous to boast—it may be wrong to be too sanguine of suc- eesll-still we think that ere many days, perhaps hours, will have elapsed, the guns of our forts, and the flags floating from the towers of our churches, will announce to her people that God has blessed her Majesty's arms with a signal victory! Austria's course is taken, and she will not swerve or de- part from it, unless our triumph is so complete that it would bo folly on her part not to go hand in hand with us in driv- ing Nicholas back to his miserable and dreary deserts—and thus obtaining for herself some important provinces in the remodelling of the map of Europe—for remodelled it as- suredly will be, if the war now waged become general, and if bivouac fires be seen on the banks of the Vistula as well as on those of the Rhine and the Danube-on the steppes of Tartary, as well as on the glorious plains smiled upon by the blue sky of Northern Italy. Belgium will never again be the battle-field of Europe, nor never again will another Marlborough or Wellington be found united with a Prince Eugene or a Blucher, humbling or conquer- ing France, for the benefit of ungrateful nations, that are now—after all our subsidies to, and triumphs for them—our bitter and all but proclaimed enemies. Prussia is against us—and may another Jena reward her treachery, if she openly take part with the Czar. Austria still sees no OWlS bel i but, as it has been well observed, is prepared, at the due moment, to come in, fox-like, to seize the plunder the nobler animals have fought for. Verily, she will have her reward. The cholera, we rejoice to find, is abating in London. The terrible outbreak in St. James's parish was enough to appal the stoutest heart. Whole families have been swept away, and for a time the scourge could not be stayed. All traffic was interrupted in many of the streets, and if, as in the time of the plague, red marks were to be resorted to, there would have been few doors without the terrible and significant cross upon them. Many reasons have been assigned for the fearful visitation. The sewerage, they say, was not bad, but the state of the houses was abominable and the" viJIanous odours" unbearable. Besides too, it was said that Broad-street had been an old burial-ground, in which many of the "plague-dead had been flung;"—and many considered that this had produced the cholera. But, on the other hand, it was considered too far. fetched a cause; but, wonderful as it may appaar, we find, on the authority of Miss Seward, given in one of her admirable letters, that —" In 1666 the plague visited the village of Eyam, in Derby- shire; the churchyard being speedily-filled, a plot of ground was fixed on in the immediate neighbourhood. In 1757, this plague-ground was dug over by five men they came to something which had the appearance of having been linen; fearful of consequences, they buried it again but in a few days they all sickened of a putrid fever, and three out of the five died, and the disease proved mortal to 70 persons at Eyam. Thus, after the period of 91 years, the subtle, un- extinguished, though abated power of this superlatively dreadful disease, awakened fro:n the dust. Who does not remember the" Rebecca riots" of Wales, some years ago, when toll-gates were attacked—keepers beat j —pikes overturned—and the Queen's troops called out to aid in the collection of the pence. Scotland is Oll the move, and bids fair to rival Wales in its bar-like emefttes. We are told that— A few days since, the toll-gate at Kelso-bridge was for- cibly removed, for the fifth time, by a large crowd of peo- ple, belonging to the town and immediate neighbourhood, in defiance of a proclamation by the sheriff. The next day the gates were re-erected, and a party of Dragoons dispersed the crowd, but on their retiring to their quarters the mob re-assembled, and about eleven o'clock, the gates were com- pletely levelled for the sixth time. Upwards of one hun- dred special constables were sworn in. Having been formed into divisions they awaited further orders. A detachment of the 82nd Regiment, under the command of Major Hale, arrived by train; from Edinburgh, for the purpose of en- forcing the resolution of the Kelso-bridge trustees in main- taining the pontage. A meeting of the lieutenancy, justices of the peace, and magistrates was held, attended by the Duke of Buccleugh, lord-lieutenant of the county the Duke of Ruxburghe Lord Polworth, &c., &c. It was re- solved to swear in a number of special constables for the protection of the peace, and in the meantime the workmen at the bridge were for the present ordered to desist from the erection of the gates." A crime unexampled for its atrocious, indeed, for its fiend-like character, has been upon the point of being com- mitted in Ireland—the very contemplation of which makes the blood run cold. The monsters that planned it could have no personal ill-will to many of the men they wculd have mangled into eternity—and the hellish hate that urged them on was roused within them, by the fell spirit of party, which has for centuries been the curse and bane of unfor- tunate Ireland. Lord Enniskillen, from whose character of mildness and gentlemanly feeling, we should have ex- pected better things, permitted himself to head a party of frantic Orangemen, to celebrate some anniversary in Derry, and to make tom-fools of themselves, by toasting the pious and immortal memory of William the Third, giving rounds of Kentish fire—getting drunk and shouting no surrender," as if any one wished to take possession of such precious specimens of humanity as they had made of themselves. But, as well observed by a contemporary, 's every man who is a buzzard in politics, or an enthusiast in historical tradition, therefore to be visited with the penalty of death." But the demonstration, like everything else, had its end, and the party prepared to return to Enniskillen and when the train that conveyed them arrived within six miles of that town, it encountered an obstacle that made it run off the line Horrible and sickening to relate, the obsta- cle consisted of large fragments of rock placed upon the rails, and just, too, where the road passed over an em- 'leneS bankment It was a merciful interposition of Prfhe uJI' that a single passenger escaped; as it was, two of IId VFO fortunate servants of the company lost their lives, n i] regret to state that Lord Enniskillen, and several o did not escape without serious injury. We trust tbe^a of this foul and unexampled crime will soon be in the, Qe of justice. To say they belonged to this or that cr< 0{ (J. sect, would be a libel on the glorious and benign In religion itself. Such wretches had no r-eligion-the "P alike aliens to their God as enemies to their kind. e trust they will pay the penalty of their dreadful CrI drn a, The following advertisement, which we take y *ei French paper, shows that other ladies besides would have no objection to read their husband's visa?" th his mind — uJl9 1*1 DEMANDE EN MARRIAGE.—On desire trouver poj* jfi) veuve, de l'age de trente ans, ayant une dot de 60,0t>J 1 un NEGRE, de l'age de quarante a, quarante-cinq ans, »y v 1 recu une bonne education. S'adresser, pour les renseJS wj mcnt, a M. Des, Rue d'Etretat, 87." Which, being translated into English, would read • MATRIMONIAL.—-A widow, thirty years of age,$^ possessed of a fortune of 60,000 francs, wishes to NEGRO, between forty and forty-five years of age, WW 41 received a good education. For further particulars, ad M. Dess, Rue d'Etretat, No. 87." })1J

SOUTH WALES RAILWAY. "'^

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