The Brighton Hotel, on Coney Island, has been successfully moved one hundred and twenty feet further inland, in order to escape the encroachments of the sea. The building was raised in one mass and rested on trucks made to run on rails. Six locomotives were then attached to the cars, and dragged the hotel for the distance named. It is intended to move it still further.
A Spanish Protestant clergyman, Senor Vila, has been condemned to imprisonment for two years four months and one day, and to a fine of two hundred and fifty francs and the costs, by the Criminal Court at Malaga, for having discussed and condemned the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church in a pamphlet which he published in answer to the attacks of a Catholic priest from Paris, who came to Malaga, and published a pamphlet against the Protestant religion.
The Oldest and Youngest.—The oldest Cabinet Minister is Viscount Cranbrook, Lord President of the Council, aged seventy-three; the youngest is Mr. Balfour, Chief Secretary for Ireland, aged thirty-nine. The oldest member of the Privy Council is Viscount Eversley, aged ninety-three, who is also the oldest peer of the realm; the youngest member is the Duke of Portland, aged thirty. The youngest duke is H.R.H. the Duke of Albany, aged three. The Right Hon. C. P. Villiers (South Wolverhampton), aged eighty-six, is the oldest member of the House of Commons; and the youngest is Lord H. Cavendish-Bentinck, aged twenty-four. Mr. Justice Manisty, aged seventy-eight, is the oldest English judge; and Mr. Justice Charles, aged forty-nine, is the youngest. The oldest bishop is Dr. Durnford, of Chichester, aged eighty-five; and the youngest is Dr. John Wordsworth, of Salisbury, aged forty-four.
A Military Heroine.—A handsome marble memorial has been erected in the cemetery at Southsea in honour of the late Mrs. Fox, whose death was, by special order of the Duke of Cambridge, signalized by a military funeral. The inscription on the memorial is as follows:—"Sacred to the memory of Mrs. George Fox, wife of Quartermaster George Fox, 2nd Connaught Rangers (94th Regiment), who died at Cambridge Barracks, Portsmouth, on January 22nd, 1888, from the effects of wounds received in the action of Bronker's Sprint, Transvaal. For her heroic and unselfish conduct on that occasion in nursing the wounded—desperately wounded though she was herself—she was decorated by Her Majesty with the Order of the Royal Cross. This monument is erected to her memory as a token of affection and esteem by the officers (past and present), non-commissioned officers, and men of the 2nd Connaught Rangers. 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant' (Matt. xxv. 21)." The inscription is surmounted by the regimental crest—a crown, an elephant, the word "Seringapatam"—and "2nd Battalion the Connaught Rangers."
A return, just prepared at the War Office, of the religious profession of non-commissioned officers and men of the British European troops and Colonial Corps (exclusive of Indian troops), shows that, at the beginning of the present year, there were 158,414 Protestants of various denominations on the roll books, of whom 132,537 belonged to the Church of England, 15,072 were Presbyterians, 9,437 Wesleyans, and 1,369 belonged to one or other of the smaller Protestant bodies. The total number of Roman Catholics was 40,775; and there were 274 who were either Mahometans, Hindoos, or Jews; while the religion of 1,044 was not reported. The proportion of Church of England soldiers per thousand (not reckoning the Colonial corps) was 668; of Roman Catholics, 205; of Presbyterians, 76; of Wesleyans, 46; of men of the smaller Protestant denominations, 5; there being thus in all 795 Protestants per 1,000, to 205 Roman Catholics. The inquiry has not been so complete in the line cavalry as in other branches of the service, there being 675 men out of 17,354 whose religious profession has not been reported; whilst amongst the 129,599 men of the line infantry, only 272 were not reported.
Watch Glasses.—Of watch glasses, 50,000 gross, or 7,200,000, are sold annually in the United States. Most of these are imported from England.
A memorial window is to be placed in the Bristol Royal Infirmary to commemorate the heroic deed of a young surgeon, William Conner, medical officer, who lost his life in a noble and daring effort to save a poor patient who had undergone the operation of tracheotomy while suffering from diphtheria. A false membrane having formed in the throat, and the patient being in imminent danger of his life, young Conner applied his lips to the throat tube, and succeeded in removing the obstruction. The window is in three panels, representing incidents from the parable of the Good Samaritan, and healing the sick, and it will be inscribed, "To the glory of God, and in affectionate remembrance of William Conner, who was born May 7th, 1851, and died July 4th, 1887."
A Great Log Raft.—Not satisfied with the former experiment and catastrophe, the Nova Scotians are putting together another huge log raft, to be floated to New York in July or August of this year. This raft will be 650 feet long, and will have six masts, and a great spread of sail. Confidence seems to be placed in the usual fine weather of July and August; but storms are by no means unknown over the course that the raft will traverse; and should this huge area of floating timber encounter a storm, the chains which will hold the logs together will snap like packing-cord, and leave the crew to shift for their lives in their boats, or by endeavouring to cling to their logs. These experiments, like attempts to swim the rapids of Niagara, should be prevented by some law or regulations, since the common sense of those concerned is conspicuous by its absence. It is quite possible that the raft may be favoured by fine weather, and reach its destination successfully; but it is true, nevertheless, that the enterprise is hare-brained, and undertaken at great risk of life and property.
Great Storm at Madagascar.—Particulars have been received, viá the Cape of Good Hope, of a terrific hurricane which raged at Tamatave on February 22nd, which will long be remembered by the inhabitants as one of the most disastrous storms that have visited the island during this century. Eleven vessels at anchor in the harbour were totally wrecked. Some of them foundered at their anchors, others parted their cables, and were driven on the reefs. The damage done to the town was very great. Not a house escaped more or less destruction, numbers of them being utterly swept away. The British Consulate, a large new building, only erected some months ago by the British Government, was almost totally destroyed. Large fragments of this building were carried by the wind for hundreds of yards, and for acres around the ground presented an extraordinary and melancholy spectacle, being strewn with doors, windows, beams, and other pieces of twisted wood and iron, besides clothes and furniture. The Consul's wife, Mrs. Haggard (the Consul himself was at Mauritius), and those in the Consulate had a narrow escape with their lives. Most of the trees were blown down, and all were smashed to pieces. Several lives were lost on shore in addition to those drowned, but their numbers were few in comparison to the almost incredible damage done in so short a time, the hurricane only lasting seven hours. A remarkable circumstance in connection with the hurricane is, that it was not felt forty miles to the northward of Tamatave, nor its full strength sixty miles south.
The Chinese Almanack.—The great value which the Chinese attach to their almanack is shown in many ways. Recently the Chinese residents at Lhassa, in Thibet, implored the Emperor to cause arrangements to be made which would enable them to receive their copies of the almanack at the earliest possible date in each year. A writer in a recent issue of the Chinese Recorder says that the most important book to the Chinese is the almanack. Its space is far too important to be occupied with the matter which fills Western almanacks. It contains astronomical information, which is useful; but its great mission is to give full and accurate information for selecting lucky places for performing all the acts, great and small, of every-day life. "And as every act of life, however trivial, depends for its success on the time in which, and the direction (i.e., the point of the compass) towards which it is done, it is of the utmost importance that every one should have correct information available at all times, to enable him to so order his life as to avoid bad luck and calamity, and secure good luck and prosperity. Consequently, the almanack is perhaps the most universally circulated book in China." The writer speaks of it as a terrible yoke of bondage. It is issued by the Government, and the sale of all almanacks but the authorized one is prohibited. Quite recently the new Chinese Minister to Germany refused to sail for his post on a day which the almanack declared to be unlucky, and the departure of the German mail steamer was consequently deferred at the request of the German minister to Pekin.—[What a pity but these poor deluded creatures were blessed with Bible truth and Jesus' grace!—Ed.]