Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-09-20 00:00:00

for ever

The French Admiral commanding in

Cochin China has, it appears, concluded a treaty
with the Anamise, and will probably start with

his fleet for China

, The calamitous disaster which occurred on
board the Great Eastern is meeting, as must have

been expected, with a searching investigation

Mr. John Scott Russell and his chief engineer

distinctly deny that they were in charge of the

-engines, or had any responsibility--in connection
with them at the time of the accident. This is as
strictly denied by the chief engineer to the com-
pany, and Mr. J. H. Dillon writes a letter to the
Times impugning the testimony of Mr. Russell
and Mr. Dickson.

THERE is a very amusing and instructive article

in the current number of the Saturday Review,
entitled " The Geography of Dirt." The writer

admits that it is certainly an unsavoury subject ;
.but still it is " one that at this season of the year
"is deeply interesting to vast numbers of her

Majesty's subjects." Our able contemporary,

however,—true, we admit, to the title of his
article,—makes it so thoroughly and generally
geographical, that although very interesting to
those who travel about on the Continent, and
visit those popular places of resort to which his
remarks more especially apply, yet has not that

direct importance to us here at home, as a na-

tional subject, which it might otherwise have

possessed. Of course, we must change the word
geography to something more special, and more
local, if we would point the moral of such a sub-
ject to a more patriotic purpose. It must be the
Topography of Dirt, rather than its geography.
At the same time, the subject is treated, in the
article we refer to, in a manner which may be
.easily adapted to the case of many of our own
localities, . here in England,—to most of our
crowded towns, indeed, in too many districts of
which there is quite as much dirt mid stench as,
we will be bound to say, there is to be met
with in the whole range of the geographical
limits which the article we speak of
takes in. Yor instance, when it is observed that

".to the investigator of cahn mind and stoical
"nostrils, who enters upon his subject without any
"undue predisposition to nausea, the geography of
" dirt is really a curious scientific problem. Its
" distribution appears to depend on no other single
" concomitant, and to vary by no fixed rule. The
" only approach to a law which the most diligent
"inquiry can detect is, that the race of sight-seers
" are doomed to be stink-smellers ; and wherever

"it is desirable to take an opera-glass, it is also
"generally desirable to take a pocket-handker-
chief. It is odd enough that the nuisance, to
" such an extent, should exist at all. It has not
" the same hold on existence which is possessed
" by many of the modern plagues of human kind.
" It is not, unhappily, like pocket-picking, diffi-
" cult to detect ; for nature has in this matter
" made each man his own detective, with a fore-
" sight for which it is some times difficult to be as

grateful as we ought. Nor is it a desagrement,
"like chattering or tobacco smoke, about which
'"there might be a difference of opinion ; for in
"ma known language is the epithet of filthy'