Star. — 1824-01-26 (London, England)

CAST-IRON CHURCH.  St. George's Church, Liverpool, is an object of considerable architectural interest for its taste, and as having been neatly the first cast-iron church erected in the kingdom. The whale of the frame-work of the windows, doors, pillars, groins, roofs, pulpit, and ornamental enrichments, ate of cast-i:on. The length is 119 feet the breadth 4.7. It is ornamented by a splendid cast window of stained glass. The tower, raised to the height of 96 feet, and standing on a hill, the site of an ancient sea-beacon, is elevated 34.5 feet above high water-mat k, and commands one of the finest views of the kingdom, comprehending the town and shipping of Liverpool, the estuary• of the Mersey, the level surface of Lancashire, as far as the eye can trace the pi nspect, with die craggy hills of \Vales towards the west, and towards the north-east the distant mountains ot Cumberland aad We:tworland.—lbid.  ALPHABETICAL Ctrntost•rtes.—ln the Nine Monthly Magazine, the scholiasts upon that ode of Anacreon which describes Cupid's being stung by a bee, state him to have been at that moment learning his letters ; and that, in perpetual remembrance of the pain inflicted by his winged asailant, he decreed that the alphabet should ever afterwards commence with A B. The precedence of B to C has been explained upon the principles that a man must be befo:c he can see. But for the ingenuity of recent investigators, we should never have known that the letter S was of most essential service at the siege of Gibraltar, by making hot shot ; that the letter N is like a little pig, because N makes a sty, nasty ; that the letters U and V can never go out to dinner, because they must always come after T; that the letters co, a, s, T, are like toast without tea (1.); and that a barber may be said to fetter the alphabet because he ties up q q (queues), and puts two p's (toupees) in irons ! These most important additions to our philological science ate a happy foretaste of what may be accomplished by a chartered company, expressly instituted for the encouragement of letters." Friday se'nnight, a melancholy accident occurred on the banks of the Forth and Clyde Canal. While Captain Reid, of the sloop Lord Bruce, of Lime-kilns, was getting his vessel out of NVyn.tham-lock, at the moment the horses straightened the lin; Mr. Reid unfortunately came in contact with it, and was thrown up several feet, and, lighting on his head, hi, skull was so severely t►nctured, that lie lingered in great pain till Saturday, at five o'clock in the morning, when lie expired. A person in the town of Maidstone has a lobster three feet three inches long, with the claws extended. It has been brought from Hudson's River, Noah America.— ' The same person has also two violet crabs, brought from the Caribbec Islands, the singular habits of which are detailed by Goldsmith and other naturalists. Wednesday, as some men were digging stones in a field in the parish of Cumnor, near Oxford, they discovered a, human skeleton, about five feet ten inches in height, lying on its face, only a foot below the'surface of the earth. Close to it was the blade of a case-knife, corroded with rust, and apparently of the manufacture of fifty or sixty years ago. From the position of the skeleton, the head having been forced forward that the hole might contain the body, and from the knife being with it, we may naturally conjecture that the unfortunate person was murdered. Friday se'nnight, a fire broke- out in a stable belonging to Mr. Charles Saunders, of East Donyland, near Colchester, which was burnt to the ground, and a valuable horse destroyed. 4 fire took place in October last, in the Illinois Primes, United Stiles, which burnt some days, destroying the grass, Com, and other produce Ihich remiined in the fields.  MR.