The Sun.
London, England, 1847-03-18 00:00:00

LIGHT DUTIES.

The Corporation of Trinity House have not reduced
their light duties since the report of the Select Committee
of the Honourable the House of Commons on Light-
houses of 1845. The subject has, nevertheless, received
due attention on their part ; and although they are per-
susded that the expectation that relief would be afforded
to the shipowner by the reduction of those dues would
not be realised, the Elder Brethren admit the principle,
that it is desirable that the charges on shipping should
not be unnecessarily large; and they trust that the state
of the Corporation's finances will justify them in submit-
ting propositions for the reduction or modification of their
ligchtouarnidcil, buoyagenthe cdouuerss,ef:
Jrtheh
psanctiony
eof her Majesty
in HERBERT, Secretary.
House, London, Jan. 26, 1847.

Trinit,

MR. ADAMS, THE ASTRONOMER. The traveller
who has come into Cornwall by the north road mast re-
member a long moorland tract between Launceston and
Bodmin. If his journey was performed on the roof of the
coach, against a sleety, biting south-wester, his memory will
not need any refresher. The recollections of such an excur-
sion are not to be effaced even by the consolations of the
Jamaica Inn. A more desolate spot can scarcely be found.
Yet nature sometimes grows men where she grows nothing
else; and on this bleak moor she has produced at least one
such man as, with all her tropical magnificence, she never
produced within ten degrees of the equator. A few years
ago a small farmer, named Adams, resident on the moor,
had a boy, if we are correctly informed, who dis-
appointed his father's hopes of making a good
agriculturist of him. His fits of abstraction and
dreamy reverie were held to be very unpropitious.
He somehow got a taste for mathematics, and mtllll
passion so grew upon him that he was at length abandoned
to its impulses, and allowed to take hi' own way, in de-
spair of a better. It was clear that hel\i't,d_ntehvaetr
tphieckloutild
prizes at a ploughing match or a cattle.
of the manor or 'squire of the parish would never have to
stand up and make a solemn oration over him, showing hint
to wondering spectators as the man who had improved the
breed of rams or fattened bullocks to a distressing obesity.
Yet as the path to such fame was closed, there were still
smallsome a
he ht St. John's
honours awaiting
awnaitin him. After a school training,
entered
raduatesliip
College,
he Cambridge,
became
seniwheresenior
,ranatglehre
end of his underg.
He is now one of the mathematical tutors at that college,
and the
iagridiscovererati, i o
(Rhone), of the planet Neptune.—West Briton.
AM. a wealthy manufacturer of Tarare
has given orders to a house at Marseilles to lay
out 50,000 in the purchase of corn, which is to be sold to the
poor of Tarare at cost price. In the meantime, he sends
weekly to Lyons fur 2,000 kilogrammes of corn, which he
sells in like manner at prime cost, without any additional
charge fur the carriage.
FREEMASONRY.—We regret to state that the mo-
tion for a grant of One Thousand Pounds to the famishing
poor in Ir.-Lind and Scotland, by the Grand Lodge of Esg..
tan I, could not be brought, on at the Grand Lodge, held on
the 3d inst., at Freemasons' Call, by reason that the hour
for entertaining new motions had elapsed. Surely in a case
like this, where lives of millions are at stake, a standing
order might have been suspended. The meeting was most
numerous (upwards of four hundred), and success was cer-
tain. We presume it will be brought under consideration
at the nest Grand Lodge.