The Express.
London, England, 1866-01-20 00:00:00

EXTRAORDINARY ESCAPE.-011 yeaterday, as one
of the men of Henry King Daly, Esq., was driving home a
charge of bleating powder in a rock on his farm at Castle-
town (after placing broken brick over the powder), the
powder in some unaccountable manner exploded, shattering
the rock the man was sitting on in pieces. The hammer
and tamping iron which he held in his hand was thrown a
considerable distance, but, strange to say, the man escaped
with a alight wound on one of his hands.—Dublia Evening
Mail.

Tag AMERICAN " UNDZSGROIIND RJJLLB.O.I.D."
Not far from Fanny Wright's peaceful grave was that I
mysterious. and metaphorical " Underground Railroad,"
which has borne so many thousands to that liberty which
the flag of England alone afforded. If all the midnight I
flights fer freedom, all the deepest* escapee, encounters, I
and ruses on those plains between the Ohio and Detroit I
were related, the novels of Cooper would be dull la com-
parison with them. How often has the muter, with his ;
fellow man and woman hunters, oome back with his waggon '
load of fugitives, only to find at day-dawn that he has gut
an impudent set of blackened decoy whites, whose loud
lamentations at being seized had lost him his game How ,
often has the science of war been invented again by the ,
fugitives' necessity ; and • rope drawn (rem tree to tree
across the road stopped the pursuing horses loog enough to
gain time I know • single hone, where three thousand
negro, have found • few hours of rest in the daytime,
awaiting the protecting night, with her pas-star.
But then again, I have seen them again and again borne
back over their Jordan, bound and bleeding. Rarely did •
negro surrender without • desperate resistance ; and when
they could not resist, they put • wide* stream than the
Ohio, • deeper chasm than Niagara, between themselves
and their pursuers. Poor Margaret Garner, overtaken and
arrested at Cincinnati tee years ago, kissed her three
children and cut their throats from ear to ear ; and as she
herself was going down to her master's plantation on •
steamer, managed to leap from the boat and find her free-
, dom and womanly honour in the ooze of the Ohio. Slavery
recovered some slaves by these means at the time to lose
them all eventually. On these hills overhanging the city
some young boys and girls were trained who did not get all
of their education in Lane Seminary. Amongst others
there were trained amidst such scenes, Henry Ward
Beecher and Mrs. Stowe,. whose memory of those early
scenes would easily hum& more Georges and Elites fur
her novels than she could desire.—Frater's Magazine foe
January.
BALZA° AND THS BOMIGIOIS.—You it was, 0
most untiring artist, who, shutting yourself up for weeks of
feverish energy, created Eugenie Grandet, the timid pro-
vincial heiress of herd-saved thousands, and Ursula Mironet,
whose gallant betrothed sat outside her window-sill with
his legs dangling into the street, that all the village might
testify to his irreproachable courtship. Yon gave us
wretched Pere Goriot, and unpleasant Cousins 130'..:44 and
many another more. It is true, Rowse de Balza% that you
were fond of occasional excursions into the society of the
ancienne nob/ease; but methinks your aristocracy was ever
somewhat *Key. It was with la bonne bourgeoisie, he
ideas, hopes, fears, and especially its pecuniary aspirations,
that your pea was ever most truly at horns. The way in
which you would turn the Preach middle-class man inside
out and upside down had in it something really terrible.
Not • cranny of him was left nossarehed, not a sou could
be keep in has old stocking but you knew it was there.
Madame's little plies for marrying her pretty daughters,
and her little cheateriss to adorn her darling boy for
courting the heiress, were all known to you. You took
inventories of people's motives just as you took inventories
(and such sontrate ones!) of *air household furniture ;
and that not exactly in ea nakindly spirit, but because you
saw the majority as they were, and could not choose but
paint them in their own true 'solemn. And as you were
by far the greatest lite painter of the French people—less
romantic, le n ideal than the only other writers who can by
say possibility be compered to you—George Seed sad
Victor Hugo—eo, great Reece* de Basso I you sleep
amidst the (seemliest which you proartrayee. Yon rest
upon that hill of Piro la Chaise overlooking Paris
from the east ; below you lies the grey 'shy. of the
metropolis, its long mass broken by assessed towers
sad spires • around you are the seelptarsegue, die
floral alleys, peopled by their countless dead—the met of
the days of Louis Philippe, of whom so many have been
gathered in rips or in middle age to the chaos of the
grave ; of whom the remain's( veteran@ yet Hwy like
leave epos the trim in November, about to !dibasic, the
blast.—The Argosy for January.