The Sun.
London, England, 1841-10-28 00:00:00

EXPERIMENTAL TRW WITH

THE GEYSER STEAM-FRIGATE, --
WOOLWICH, 26.—This elegantly-constructed
vessi I, of 1,060 tons burden. built at Sheerness this
season from a design of Sir William Symonds, and one
of the five vessels of the same class and mould fitted
by Messrs. John and Samuel Seaward and Capel, of
Limehouse, arrived opposite Woolwich Dockyard at
eleven o'clock this forenoon, when Captain Boyes and
Lieutenant Browne, and Mr. Ewart, master engineer of
the dockyard, and several gentlemen went on board.
The Geyser, not being commissioned, was manned by
Lieutenant Lowe and thirty of the crew of the Devas-
tation, and amongst. others the following naval officers
and gentlemen accompanied her from Limehouse :
Captains Price, Jones, Johnson, Otway, Plunket, Sir
P. Daniell, Burton, and Stopford ; Captain Northcotte
and Mr. Green, the eminent shipowners; Mr. Mason,
of the Marine Department, East India House ; and a
number of scientific gentlemen.

On leaving Woolwich the vessel proceeded down the
river in fine style, the tide being in her favour ; and
when opposite the marked ground at Long Reach the
full steam-power was applied, and she accomplished on
the average ten and a half miles per hour, equal to eleven,
if she had been coppered. The engines are substan-
tially constructed, and appeared to work with the
greatest ease at the rate of twenty and a quarter strokes
per micute, and are of 140-horse power each, upon the
same principle as those introduced in tl:e Gorgon.
These engines effect a saving in weight of one-fourth
over the ordinary bcam•engines, and a third in space.
The engine-room is only fifty feet long, within which
space she has nine furnaces for her boilers, her engines,
and storeroom for three hundred tons, or fifteen days'
consumption of fuel at her full power. There is
accommodation on her troop-deck for three hundred
soldiers, with their officers, baggage, and equipments,
besides complete accommodation for her own officers
and crew. When ready for sea her armament will
consist of two ten-inch guns for carrying hollow shot of
98Ibs. weight, and four eight-inch guns carrying carry-
ing 68-pound shot. _

_ .
The experiment made to-day was highly satisfactory,
'and everything wentiff on board as well as could be
expected, until her return opposite Erith, wheals Scotch
brig, the Glasgow packet, of Glasgow, in coming, down
the river with tie tide, with apparently only one person
on deck, notwithstanding the repeated warnings of the
pilot, who endeavoured, as'much as possible, to avoid
her, .came across the bow of the Geyser, drove off the
keeper; and let go the anchor, bringing both vessels to
a standstill. The Scotch brag was terribly shattered,
and had all her sails torn, and the ropes on one side
nearly all broken, and one of the planks of the Geyser
appeared so much injured that it is probable it will have
to be replaced. The Scotch brig, on being extricated,
cast anchor near to where the accident occurred, and
the Geyser proceeded to Woolwich, where she bas been
moored, and will proceed to Sheerness in a few days,
to be coppered and made ready for sea.
Messrs. Seaward and Co. entertained their guests to
a cold collation on their return up the river.
Captain Boycs, of the Vixen, already appointed, and
several other naval officers, who expect to be appointed
to vessels on the same construction, and fitted by the
same engineers, appeared to take a more than ordinary
interest in the experiment.
It is satisfactory to know that although the Styx,
fitted out with great haste to receive on board the Go-
vernor-General of Canada, encountered the late gales in
the English Channel, she worked beautifully, and ac-
complished her voyage when scarcely any other vessel
could remain at sea.

MR. O'CONNELL IN A NEW CHARACTER.--
(FROM A CORRESPoNDENT.)—The result of the Dublin
Municipal elections holds out prospects
of remarkable
changes in the management of civic affairs in that capital.
The prime agitator will next week be Lord Mayor, he
will be surrounded in the Court of Aldermen. by func-
tionaries nearly all of his political opinions, and at the
civic banquets the " glorious memory, the " Kentish
fire," and all the venerable toasts that were wont to make
the Mansion house ring with unextinguishable cheers,
will be thrown aside like old almanacs. It is certainly a
mournful change for the wild Orangemen. There will
be no more Orange addresses to King Ernest, though the
New Lord Mayor will doubtless take the first opportu-
nity of announcing to his Majesty the improved state of
affairs in Dublin City, and probably invite him to a grand
entertainment. The very change will reform the Lord
Mayor himself. With the gold chain, not curtailed of
even one link, and all the splendid insignia of office around
him, he will hold repeal meetings with that dignity, good
order, and mild language befitting a Chief Magistrate.
The Reformers of Blackburn have achieved a
gain in the Borough Registration Court of 79 new votes.

, • THE COTTAGES IN NOR.HAIII,
NORTHUMBERLAND.
Norham is divided into eleven townships, and con-
tains 174 cottages, which are held on the binding sys-
tem, (I am not including the free cottages, or those
which are hired at their own discretion by daytal la-
bourers): 83 of these, or nearly one half, have changed
inmates within the last two years, 145 within the last
seven years, and 156 within the last ten years. That
it.: to say, out of 174 families occupying the cottages
which are reserved for hinds, seventeen only have re-
mained stationary for more than ten years—seventeen
families only are to be found• on the hearths, around
which they were sitting in the beginning of the year
1821. This is only a sample of the "flitting" which is
I going on elsewhere. . . . . . .
I Of the eighty-three tenements in Norham which have
changed inhabitants within the last two years, fifty-four
are buildings deficient in all that is necessary to conve-
nience and cleanliness, and yet the greater part are oc-
cupied by families, who have done all they can to give
them a decent and comfortable appearance. Some of
them are mere hovels, absolutely unfit for the peasantry
of a civilized country, and threatening to tumble down
about their ears. In many, human beings and cows are
littered together under the same roof. Of the whole
number, 174, which I am discussing, there are but 27
whichi have two rooms each, and which are supplied
th that convenience which is indispensably necessary
to c'elnliness and decency.—Extract from an unpub-
lished Pamphlet of Dr. Gully, in the Berwick.Advertiser.

SUNDAY NEWS-ROOMS AND
SUNDAY RAILWAYS, &c.
Smarting under their disappointment in not getting
the Tontine Coffee-room shut. up on the Sabbath-day,
though it has been open and frequented beyond the
memory of man, our wonderfully godly folks in Glas-
gow, who wish to palm themselves off as holier than
their neighbours, have resolved, we see, to desert the
Tontine, and to open up some new one in another di.
reetion. They are, of course, quite welcome to do so.
But we wonder if these holy people on the Monday
will refuse to read the papers printed and published on
the Sunday. For example, will they throw aside the
Glasgow Herald ? Will they avert their eyes from
the John Bull ? Will they kick out the London
Standard, the Globe, the Sun, the Times, the Morn-
ing Chronicle, and all other newspapers whatever,
Whig, Tory and Radical, not published on the Sun-
day, but which travel to Glasgow on that day ? To be
consistent they ought to do so. And, to be still more
consistent, we ask them, will they desist from shaving
their own beards on Sunday morning ?—or refuse to cat
the bread presented to them on that day, which was
made from the corn or the wheat that grew upon the
fields and was nurtured by the air and the dews of
heaven as much upon the Sunday as any other day of
the week ? Or will they refuse to eat the fish that
swam in the sea on Sunday—or the good roast beef
taken out of the sirloins of the cattle that grazed upon
the green pastures, in our beautiful valleys, and on the
mountain tops, on that day ?----Scotchileforniers'Gazette.

SPIRIT OF MODERN SURGERY.
Now that the spirit of which we are to speak is
somewhat less truculent than it bas lately been, we
may condemn it more thoroughly without fear of being
deemed personal. It cannot be denied that the sur-
gery of the last few years has been marked by
more rashness than ever before disgraced it.
There has been more of art and less of science,
more of dexterity and less of judgment, more
of zeal and less of discretion, snore of action and
imitation and less of deliberation, than in any period of
the history of surgery to which we can refer.
To prove this let us adduce an example. Dieffen-
bacb, by way of experiment (for the scientific
induction in which the proceeding was said
to be founded was too hollow to bear the
most superficial examination, and could not have led
so reasonable a man as Dieffenbach has proved himself
ou other occasions to be, to undertake the operation)—
by way of experiment, we say, determined to cut a
large slice out of the middle of the tongue for the pur-
pose of curing those who stammer. Long before
the real result of the operation could be known,
the news of its having been performed
spread to France and England ; and in both
countries there were found surgeons who, without
thought (to speak most charitably), imitated the pro-
ceeding, and even claimed credit for their speedy adop-
tion and recommendation of the supposed improvement.
But what has been the result of the invention and
the imitation ? Why, as far as we can learn, that not
a patient has been cured ; that three,onfessedly, have
been killed ; and that one or more have lost the greater
part of the tongue by sloughing. Now things like these
might have been excusable if they had happened in the
performance of an operation which long experience had
proved to be, in general, successful ; or in one which,
though not tested by experience, bad offered a reason-
able prospect of SUMS ; but in a case where expe-
rience had not had time to give its decision, and where
the probabilities, as calculated by many well capable of
judging, were against success, they are utterly disgrace-
ful ; and, as signs of the times, they stamp the cha•
racter of the surgery of the day with an indelible blot.
Nor can we say much more of all the other opera-
tions for the same disorder, multiplied and varied as
they have been with a recklessness and want of calcu-
lation which would have been discreditable had the sub-
jects been dogs instead of men.
Shall we, to show yet more plainly the spirit of our
modern surgery, turn from this to any other subject like
it cast untimely from the womb of rash experiment ?
Shall we look to the few months' history of the opera-
tion for squinting? to see how, before the first patient's
wounds were yet healed, others were submitted to
it ; how, before the result, which of necessity re-
quired months that it might be safely seen,
was yet nearly evident, hundreds more of experiments
were tried ; bow, before the general issue of the plan
was known, all who squinted were stopped in the street
and almost kidnapped to have their recti cut ; how
men disputed who had first invented, who had first im-
ported, the new plan, when the subject of their dispute
might in plainer terms have been, who, on the least
evidence of right, had dared to do the most ; how, in
the end, numbers have bean found uncured, num-
bers damaged, and numbers cured, though no
one knows exactly how or why they fared
better than their neighbours ; and how, at the present
time, the real pathology of strabismus is as obscure as
it was five years ago, before a rectus had been severed.
All this might be dwelt on, perhaps with profit, to
show how the inventions of the surgery of the present
day, though they may be sometimes beneficial, are so
only as the remedies of quacks are, being founded only
on vague surmises, and practised with rashness before
experience has proved why or in what cases they are
applicable.—Medical Gazette.

ROMAN REMAINS AT HEXHAM.—It has
been disputed by some antiquaries whether the Romans,
in their occupation of the northern portion of England,
- availed themselves of the strong natural positions pre-
sented by the site of the town of Hexham, for the en-
campment of their troops. The geographical situation of
the place, however, and the discovery of Roman stones
and inscriptions at .various periods, in the town and
neighbourhood, leave, in the opinion of others, no doubt
on this subject ; and, to establish the fact that the church
and town of Hexham are built upon the locality of st
Roman station, a Roman altar .was found here and an
inscribed tablet, in 1725, besides another tablet, cut by
the mason who altered the crypt to its present form,
and built it up in the vaults, as will--be found related by
Horsley. Within the last few weeks another inscription
has been discovered in the wall of the building which is
raised upon the ruins of the Chapter-house. We arc
indebted to a correspondent for the following copy of
the inscription, which is evidently a fragment
INSTANE