The Sun.
London, England, 1841-12-24 00:00:00

anti put on his hat ; whilst his officers, and occasionally
foreign Princes, ranged themselves behind him with
their heads uncovered, and kept a profound silence.
I was present at the famous sitting which took place
atter his rCturn from the battle of Hanau..

The Emperor, pale and pensive, and not yet re.
covered from the fatigues of his journey-, made us enter
his cabinet. He then, without sitting down or making
any preparation, called loudly for M. Jaubert, the Go-
vernor of the Bank of France, who had been so impru-
dent (observed the Emperor) as to discount bills with
too great a degree of precipitation. Napoleon unrolled
the regulations of the Bank, and explained their nature
with the clearness of a censor or of a professor. It was
a strange thing to hear a soldier discoursing on the or-
ganisation of banks, and upon the theories of discount.
M. Jaubert, who was a mild and timid man, lisped
forth a few words in excuse, which we were unable to
hear. The doors of the grand hall were re-opened; every
one sat down, and the Council proceeded to business.
The Emperor made a long pause. He appeared ab-
sorbed by his reflections ; his head involuntarily fell
upon his bosom, and he mechanically cut to pieces with
his penknife pens, paper, and tablecloth. At length
he exclaimed, as if waking from a dream, " The Bava-
rians ! the Bavarians! I have passed over their bodies.
I have killed Wrede.* Invasion threatens ! Time pres-
ses ! Well, gentlemen, what will you do ; what have you
got to say ?"

" Sire," replied Regnault de Sr, Jean d'Angley, "rely
upon the valour of the Dutch."

" The Dutch! It is ant blood that runs in their
veins, it is only coloured water."

•' But, Sire, addresses arc already pouring in from all
parts of the empire„ and all the various bodies in the
state are making protestations of their fidelity and devo-
tion."

" Do not talk to me in this way, Monsieur Renault.
Do you think that I am ignorant of the manner in which
these addresses arc got up? What do they amount to?
Can I believe in their sincerity ? It is money and men
that we want, and not empty phrases : and you, gen.
tlemen, who are all eminent citizens, fathers of families,
and fathers of the State as well, it is 3 our duty to rc-ani-
mate the public mind by the eloquence of your exhorta-
tions. Proclaim at once the shame and the miseries of
the invasion with which the empire is menaced."
But these words were spoken to late. The empire
hourly approached its downfal and ultimate ruin!

* Napoleon thought as much.

WEST INDIA ROYAL MAIL
STEAM-PACKETS.
SOUTHAMPTON, DEC. 22.—The following account of
the trial of those vessels that have left will no doubt be
read with interest, as it will show that the speed of
these ships is greater than that of any vessel of the same
class. The distance was rather more than 15 2.3 sta-
tute miles, and was performed as under :
The Clyde, in 1 hour 11 minutes, being at the rate of
13 miles per hour ; the Tweed 1 hour 13 minutes,
being at the rate of 12 1-35th miles per hour; the Sol-
way, 1 hour 17 minutes, being at the rate of 12 miles
per hour ; the Tay, 1 hour 9 minutes, being at the rate
of 13i miles per hour.
These trials may be considered interesting to the
nautical world, as three of these ships have precisely
the same rate of engines—viz., the Tay, the Tweed,
and the Clyde, and the difference is to attributed to
the forms of the ships themselves. The chief peculiarity
of the Tay is in consequence of the wave-principle of
the bow.
The difference of these ships in coming round from
tt.)e north to Southampton loaded is equally interesting.
The same distance of 15 2-3 miles was performed as
follows :—The Clyde, with 425 tons of coals, in 1 hour
17 min., or 12 miles per hour ; the Tweed, 265 tons,
in 1 hour 16 min., or 12 1-sth miles ; the Solway, 250
tons, in 1 hour 24 min., or 11 1-6th miles.
The Clyde, from the river Clyde, completed her pas-
sage to the Needles in 65 hours, the Tweed in 56, and
the Solway in 73, being a distance of 650 miles, and
that in boisterous weather.

►SCENT OF THE JUNGFRAU.

For the last two Saturdays, Mr. Forbes, Professor of
of Natural Philosophy-in the University of Edinburgh,
delivered two lectures in his class-room, to a crowded
audience, on an excursion whichhe undertook last sum-
mer, in company with Professor Agassiz and others,
through part of the glacier region of Switzerland, and
the ascent of the Jungfrau. The object of the lectures
is to explain the theory of 'glaciers, with some of the
more peculiar phenomena which that interesting region
exhibits. A glacier he described to be a mass of ice
descending from the higher regions to the lower. The
descent was greater at one time than another, and the
laws of its progress were not yet determined ; but it was
always more or less in motion, so that a glacier might
more properly be described as a frozen torrent than as
a frozen sea. The progress of the glaciers was evi-
denced in two ways—first, by the continued wasting
away of the glacier at its inferior part, and its being fed
from above ; and the other was, the ascertained
removal of blocks of stone and other objects froin
higher to a lower level. Of this last instance
~he
quoted an interesting extract from Agassiz, who, on
ascending the glacier in a former year,_ was surprised to
find a hut which had been erected about ten or twelve
years before, now moved upwards of a mile from the
site on which it was built, though still standing ; and I
on visiting it again this year, he (Professor Forbes)
found it several hundred yards farther down. He then'
referred to the ice cones, which abound in these regions,
and of which he exhibited drawings. They are regu-
larly formed, and rise sometimes to the height of 20 or
30 feet. What is most remarkable, they have all a thin
coating of brown mould or gravel, which presents a sin-
gular appearance in the midst of this frozen scenery.
The explanation of this phenomenon Professor Forbes
considered to be, that the water courses, which abound
in all directions through the glaciers, occasionally bring
down detritus from the mountain cliffs, which they de-
posit in a hollow basin. These water courses are con-
tinually changing their direction, leaving, of course, the
detritus deposited on the ice. The surface of the
glacier is continually melting away, under the influence
of the sun's rays, except that part of it which is shel-
tered from the sun by the protection of the mould.
As the surrounding ice melts away the gravel, of course,
falls down gradually to a level, sheltering the ice where-
ever it falls, till it forms the cone already described.
The lecturer was confirmed in this opinion by seeing
cones in all stages of formation, where the gravel
was falling down as the ice melted. Another illus-
tration of the same fact was exhibited in an inte-
resting drawing, where an enormous boulder, which
originally had fallen upon the frozen surface, was
now suspended at a considerable distance from the
level ice, resting upon a pillar of ice, which it overlapped
like an umbrella, protecting it from the sun's rays. Oa
the other hand, any substance which absorbed heat
caused the ice to melt in an accelerated proportion ; anti
the shape of that substance, whether it were a withered
leaf or a bit of slate, was faithfully and accurately pre-
served in the hole which it produced. The lecturer de-
scribed a glacier to consist properly of three parts—the
first being that icy portion which is properly called a
glacier ; the second the region of snow which accumu-
lates in the basins between the hills, and which feed the
glacier proper ; and the third portion is the ice, in the
most elevated regions of the whole, which descend into
the region of snow. The learned Professor then gave
a personal narrative of his journey, describing with much
graphic power the perils of travelling over these fields
of ice, whose enormous fissures, effectually concealed
from travellers by a thin coating of ice or snow, yawn
beneath their tread, and where a single false step
would precipitate the heedless traveller beyond the reach
of human help. To avoid this, the travellers marched
in single file, each planting his feet in the foot marks of
the guide, who, on his pelt, took no step without first
sounding with his staff to ascertain its solidity : and, as
a still farther precaution, the whole party were tied to-
gether, that if one should by accident stumble on one of
these fissures, the others might he able to drag him out.
The ascent of the Jungfrau was singularly interesting.
After a long and toilsome march over hills and plains of
perpetual ice or snow; the trai•elfers came at last to the
peak of the mountain, all the sides of which but 0110
were so precipitous that neither snow nor ice would ad-
here to them, and were, of course, altogether inacces-
sible. The only other side was very steep, and coveted
with what the travellers sanguinely trusted would prove
to be snow ; in this, however, they were mistaken ; as
even in that elevated region, occasional thaws took place,
which freezing again, rendered the steep one macs of
solid ice. There was, therefore, no alternative but to cut
steps in the ice, 700 of which were required before they
could reach the top. The travellers were tied toge-
ther as before, that if one missed his footing, the others,
though apt to be dragged down by hiat, were yet more
likely to be able to drag him back to his place again.
The summit of the peak was reached without accident,
and the view from the top was described as sufficient to
repay them for all their toils. By this time, however,
the sun was setting, and the more perilous descent was
still to be accomplished. They came down tied toge-
ther as before, with their faces to the ice, holding on by
their ice-poles, arid on moving one foot from the hewn
step, taking care to find out the next by scraping along
the side before they moved the other. In this way the
peak was descended ; and the rest oldie journey across
the extensive ice-fields, was accomplished by moonlight.
The travellers safely reached the place from which they
set out about midnight, having been more than seventeen
hours on the excursion. Other two lectures on this in-
teresting subject remain yet to be delivered ; but in con-
sequence of the intervention of the Christmas holidays,
the next is
postponed till Saturday, the Bth of January.

AN ODDITY.— On Friday week, Johnnie
Turner, an eccentric character in the parish of Irongra),
was buried on one of the wildest of the hills of the
Parish, in a grave which, under the permission of the
late Mr. Lennox, of Dalskairth, he had dug fur himself
out of the rock, with the most patient care. lie was
about sixty years of ago when he died. With all his
eccentricities and somewhat miser-like habits, Johnnie
was generally considered a man of worthy principles,
and ate putilic.readily indulged his whim in burying him
in his chosen sell-made.graxo,77-4.yr Observer.