The Sun.
London, England, 1838-09-29 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1838.

POST-OFFICE REGULATIONS.

LONDON AND BIRMINGHAM

RAILWAY.

EDINBURGH.--.We are informed by Sir Edward Lees, Secre-
tary of the Post-office in Scotland, that on the 3d of October
the London mail will arrive in Edinburgh at four minutes be-
fore six o'clock in the morning, and that the north mail will ba
despatched from our Post-office at a quarter before seven
o'clock.—Scotsman.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
SIR,—You will render a material service not only to the
public but to the proprietors of the establishment to which this
letter refers, if you will notice in your popular Journal the
abuses and irregularities of which lam about to complain. I
have had occasion lately to travel more than once by the Lon-
don and Birmingham Railroad ; and never did I witness before
such scenes of confusion, irregularity, and inattention, in tra-
velling, as came under my observation on those occasions.
Take one instance :

GLASGOW. —The London mail will arrive in Glasgow on
the 3d of October at 5. 24 A.M. The mails to Greenock and
the Highlands will be sent as soon as possible after its arrival.
The mail to London will be despatched on the 30th of Septem-
ber at 7. 10. P.m. The mails to and from Ireland, Perth, and
Edinburgh will not be altered, Letters to the north by the
line through Perth, Inverness, Thurso, &c., wIl be in time till
10 p.m. The mail to and from Liverpool and Manchester
will not be altered.—Glasgow Chromed!.
BRISTOL. —We have been favoured with the following noti-
fication from the Post-office :—On and after the Ist of Octo-
ber next, the Birmingham mail will lee dispatched from
Bristol at 58 minutes past 4 r. M. ; and will arrive at Bristol,
on and after the 2d of October, at three minutes past 9 A.M.
On and from the 2d of October next, the Exeter mail will be
despatched from Bristol at 30 minutes past 9 A. M. , and will
arrive at Bristol at five minutes past 6F. M. On and from the
2d of October next the Southampton mail will be despatched
from Bristol at 40 minutes past 9 A.M., and will arrive 'at
Bristol at two minutes past 4 P.M. On and from the 2d `of
October next the Shepton Mallet and Wells mail will be de-
spatched from Bristol at 30 minutes past 9A. :11., and will ar-
rive at Bristol at 30 minutes past 4 e. se—Bristol Gazette.
THE MAlLS.—October 1.--The London mail to this town
will arrive at 7 in the morning, and the Irish mail will imme-
diately be forwarded on to Holyhead, so as to land passengers
in Dublin about midnight, instead of 3 or 4 o'clock in the
morning, as at present. The mail from this town to London
will leave about 7 o'clock in the evening. Arrangements
are in progress for carrying the mail to Aberystwith through
this town, by which letters will be delivered in AberystwitVat
3in the afternoon instead of 10 at night, as at present. The
Pool and Newtown mail will then be merged into the Aberyst-
with ; and will leave Shrewsbury on the arrival of the London
mail in the morning, returning in time to send all Welsh let-
ters by mail to London the same evening. The mail to Wem
and Whitehurch will leave Shrewsbury at half-past 7 o'clock
in the morning, and return in time foe the London mail at
night.—Skrewsbursl Chronicle.

On Sunday last I was at Watford, and, wishing to get to
town early that evening, I inquired at the station there what
trains were to pass through, and was informed that an up train
from Birmingham would arrive there at half-past six o'clock,
and would reach London soon after eight o'clock. I accord-
ingly, with many others who acted upon similar information,
hastened from the inn where I dined to the station, a distance
of nearly a mile, and arrived there at the hour named; bur,
so far from the train making its appearance at that time, it did
not arrive until more than half-past seven o'clock; and thus
fan- emr
,ed
cupwards of n
respectability)
oe hundred persons
u detained
ineerds t s
above (many
ao
an hour,
hof
rt 1,1 emm a
stdelicate
unne-
cessarily and improperly—huddled together in a cold stone-
paved t
yard,e rain. wire
on asvciet,darse, had theyarynigh beent,aiid but
properlypart istr
ialnlysuhaeltateir ed
from has
to the hour, they might have remained comfortably at Watford
during that time. When at length the train did arrive, the
conduct of the policemen belonging to the establishment, who
were placed at the gate leading to the train from the yard in
which the passengers stood, was most culpably partial. It was
stated that the number of passengers already occupying tl.e
carriages of the train from Birmingham, &c., was so large that
it was doubtful if many of those waiting at Watford could be
accommodated at all; and this suspense led to a severe
pressure towards the gate, which was kept locked-_
each person anxious to have the first chance for a seat.
In this emergency what was the conduct of the police ?
Why, instead of opening the gate freely and impartially
for all alike.—or if there was to be any favouritism on such
an occasion, admitting first those ladies in the crowd who
were suffering severely from the pressure, and of which pre-
ference no one would complain—instead of pursuing either
of these proper courses, they adopted the very unfair one of
selecting from the crowd certain persons (all men) known to
themselves, and admitted them through the gate to the exclu-
sion of those who stood before them, in order that they might
have an undue priority in obtaining seats—and amongst this
privileged few was the parson of the parish. The gate, at last
opened after a further delay of about twenty minutes from the
arrival of the train, each person was left to scramble along by
the side of the carriages, and seek for a seat as he or she could
in the dark. I say in the dark, for the only guide was the
wretched glimmering of a miserable lamp carried before by a
man, who led us through a mass of mire in the unfinished
road, and who at every step gave the agreeable caution to
take care we did not tumble into a slough or get entangled in
the train, by the side of which we had to pass for more than a
quarter of a mile in that dismal state. How many succeeded
in procuring seats ultimately, or how many did not, I cannot
say, but I know that, although I was myself successful, I
would rather have paid double the amount of fare, which by
the Ivey is most exorbitant (4s. 6d. for seventeen miles), to
have stopped where I was at Watford, than have encountered
the horrors of such a conveyance, which, with all my anxiety
to reach town early, did not enable me to get home until past
ten o'clock, instead of eight o'clock as I had been informed.
Arrived at the Station at Euston-square, the scene of confu
sion amongst about 400 passengers, as I understood the num-
ber to be, is not to be described in scrambling for their lug-
igssat
the confusion
ncsoTnwhfhueesrireoet:ieaetm passerße dirgrateoirusbgehhataol:system, arrangement, or regu-
larity, aue
mrqc
heut
seuudsl
cp()lnal aobsal
little
t toioti
aelt ntnacaeblbirstiveei any n y
succeed a s s e n
ing e r
doingt findso his. Similar,o anal
to
too,
is
comfortst
'tl'skdid any one ever experie*rtioac
engdestuact
out. a h
al l
miscalculationNt
Now, Sir,
tst ei rr,m leedti
ma ',:)eef
all
interests,systematic
tae a
convenience,l-rangem ent,
andand
inattention
passengers in ho: se coach travelling ? I venture to
say not. I therefore confidently assert, that unless those evils,
and many others that I could name, wore I not anxious to cur-
tail this letter, be corrected, so far from the establishment of
railroads being a great public convenience, they will become a
great public nuisance' and will give cause for regret that the
generation of horses has given way to the generation of steam.
Sept. 26, 1838. W. B. B.

Tb .a.-3
lately The Convent
de de ASteC. llCllLaiDre,KaltLDLoEmpbesitfes.AEaCux.A2
theatre of a
catastrophe
which has plunged a highly respect-
able family into the deepest grief by the loss of a beloved
child, and created a deep sympathy among the inhabitants of
that part of the country—as much, indeed, from the melan-
choly nature of the circumstance itself as from the unexam-
',led canner in which it took place. Monsieur and Madame
B— had placed their only child, a beautiful girl of ten years
of age, in the above-mentioned convent, conducted by Ursa-
line nuns, during several years, and enjoying a high reputa-
tion as an establishment for female education. The unfortu-
nate child, Louise 13-____, it appears,had incurred the punish-
ment of the cachot, or prison—the usual mode of correction
adopted in Fre:Tit schools, and was in consequence shut up in
the pl ice used for that purpose. It was observed that the
moment the door was closed upon the child
heightened to a remarkable degree, but no particular import-
ance was attached to the circumstance,
and she was left in the
cachot, situated at the bottom of the garden, and at such a
distance
from the house that her cries were inaudible to the
inmates. About an hour after the had been
child shut up a
violent knocking was heard at the outer gate of the convent,
which being opened, a labouring man, who happened to be
conducting a cart along the road, which passes near the pre-
mises, presented himself, and in an authoritative tone deman-
ded " whom they were murdering in the convent ?" adding
that he had distinctly heard the sighs and groans of a dying
person proceeding from the premises at the bottom of the
garden, and insisted on knowing the cause. The nuns imme-
diately explained to the man the fact of the child's imprison-
ment, and assured him that his imagination had attached more
importance to the matter than was necessary. The man never-
theless insisted upon seeing the child, and the nuns were ulti-
mately compelled by his positive and determined air to accede
to his request, and they had no sooner arrived at the spot
where the child was confined than the convulsive sobs and faint
sighs which struck their ears excited apprehensions for her
safety. The door was immediately opened, when a spectacle
of incliscribable horror presented itself. The unhappy child
lying
was on the ground in a state of the most agonising con-
vulsions, and a cat employed in tearing away the flesh from her
neck and face I Every effort was had recourse to in order to
save the life of the child, but such was the nature of the wounds
inflicted on the neck and face of the unhappy sufferer that she
expired three days after the event, in a state of the most horrid
delirium. It is supposed that the cat, which happened to be
shut up with the child, became in the
.first instance frightened
by its screams, and subsequently infur:ated.—Bon Sens.
THE BABOON SHEPHERD.--The Narnaquas said
that, not long man el
ago, a l •brought. up a young baboon,
and had made it his shepherd. It remained by the flock all
day in the field, and at night drove it home to the kraal,
,riding
on the back of one of the goats, which brought up the rear.
The baboon had the milk of one goat allowed to it, and it
sucked that one only, and guarded the milk of the others from
the children. It also got a little meat from its master. It
held the office of shepherd for twelve moons, and then was
unfortunately killed in a tree by a leopard.—Sir James Alex-
ander's Expedition of Discover? into Africa.
As the eldest daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Mey-•
rick, of Auberies, near Sudbury, was riding a spirited pony on
Sunday se'nnight, she was by some accident thrown from her
seat, and her foot becoming entangled, the young lady was
d a considerable distance before she 1-
dragge could be released
from her perilous situation. Medical aid was promptly pro-
cured, and no serious injury has been sustained.—Bury Herald.
THE RUSSIAN NA VY.—licturnlng to Sebastopol,
we visited the harbour, reputed to be one of the largest and
most commodious in the world. Six first-rate men-of-war,
and some smaller ones, were reposing on the calm surface of
the water, while others were engaged in performing the
duties of a quarantine and smuggling cordon. Everything be-
spoke action and enterprise. On one side numerous labourers
were engaged in levelling the solid rock, the natural . fortifica-
tion of the country ; on the ether, engineers were erecting
artificial defences, of colossal magnitude ; and, on a third, theg
diligent construction of " wooden walls," rivalliur, Britannia's
boast, seemed to intimate that thisnorthern 'b
dinland power, as
if anxious to cutstcp the bounds '
assigned to her by Providence,
had resolved to acquire a dominion over the sea, co-extensive
with the vast expanse of her
territory on land. —Elliott's Travels.
APPALLING INCIDENT IN SWITZERLAND —A
in
party of eleven travellers fio B h.
Berne, belonging to e most
distinguished families
there, arrived at Arth on the 2d of Sep-
tember, and set off cn fee' for the Right few •
i, a minutes before
the catastrophe• Sevens 4
of them had got about 200 yards a
Lead—the other four saw them entering the village of Golden,
and one of the latter, 1.11 1 r. R. Jenner, pointing out to the rest
the summit of the Rossberg (full four miles off in a straight
line), where some
strange commotion seemed taking place,
which they themselves (the four behind) were observing with
a telescope, and had entered into conversation on the subject
with some strangerske
f just come up ; when, all at once, a
flight of stones, cannon-balls,li traversed their air above
their heads ; a cloud o dust obscured the valley, a frightful
noise was heard. They fled ! As soon an the obscurity was so
far dissipated as to make objects discernible, they sought
their friends, but the • -
village of Goldau had under
a heap of stones
and rubbish 100 feet in height, and the whole
valley presented nothing bat a perfect chaos !--hand .Book
for Switzerland.

LADY BI had on Tuesday last a most
formidable invasion of this beautiful insect—they were here,
there, and everywhere; indeed, so much so, that the parish
engines as well as private ones were called in requisition with
tobacco-fumigated water, to attack and disperse them. The
clothes of the magistrates and others attending the Town Hall,
at Farringdon, were completely covered with them, as well as
the walls of the houses. —Reading .illercury.—[Surely the
parish engines did not play upon their worships the Magistrates.]
On Monday night a lengthened inquiry took place
in King William.street, Strand; before the Coroner for West-
minster, relative to the death of a bookbinder, named Kelly,
aged 23. It appeared from the evidence that, about three
weeks ago, deceased had been bitten severely in the finger by
a strange terrier dog, the tail of which lie, being at the time
sornewl.at intoxicat, d, bad pinched as he passed it in the
street. He had merely poniticea the wound, and thought
little morn of the mAtter. On Thursday night symptoms of
hydrophobia appeared, and increased till Sunday night, when
he died.—Verdict accordingly.