already passed through the ordeal, no visible impression
is made on the vast mass of business which awaits it,
and the number of sales to come off during the next two
months is as large as those of any former period of equal
length. The entire amount realised by sales ordered
from the commencement to the 20th instant inclusive,
is £10,430,401  5s. 1d. Of this large sum
£6,446,154  15s. is the amount paid out to claimants;
the remainder is made up of amounts allowed to
purchasers, who were also creditors, of purchase-
moneys not yet paid in, and of large sums, partly
invested in the Government funds, which await
adjudication, and will in due course be distributed
among the persons entitled. The first sale of this
session took place on the 20th, and was that of a small
leasehold property in the city of Dublin. On the same
day an application was made to the Chief Commissioner
to dispose of the estates of Mr. William H. Magan, M.P.
by private contract. They are valued at £7000 per
annum, and that the amount of the encumbrances on
them is under £90,000. Mr. Magan has other property,
which is not sought to be sold. The offers now brought
forward were one of £55,000, and another of £6,000, for
portions of the estates; and, it appearing that the fund
was ample to discharge all the demands, the offers were
conditionally accepted, and in all probability no part of
the estates will be submitted to public competition. On
the 25th inst., the extensive estates of Mr. Christopher
St. George were disposed of by public auction. They lie
scattered over the county Galway, and comprise part of
the town of Oughterard, and other localities familiar to
the tourist through Connemara. These estates were
sold in four divisions, and realised £38,160.

The opening of the winter session at Queens' College,
Birmingham, took place on the 4th instant, when Lord
Lyttelton, as principal of the Institution, presided. From
the report read by the Dean of Faculty, it appeared that
the number of pupils in the college is eighty-nine, and
that no fewer than seventy gentlemen now in practice
in Birmingham, received their medical education in
the institution. Large accessions have been made to
the museum and laboratory, and there never was a
period when the objects of the college were more
successfully carried out. A number of prizes and certificates
were distributed by Lord Lyttelton to the successful
students, and the proceedings concluded with an
interesting chemical lecture by Professor Shaw.

The usual Meetings of Agricultural Associations have
been held during this month. The old topic of
protection has been generally abandoned; and the farmers
have been exhorted to improve their condition by
improving their husbandry. At the Surrey meeting, the
principal speaker was Mr. Drummond, who, avoiding
politics, contented himself with rating the Surrey
farmers for their slowness in adopting improvements,
and for "merely scratching the face of the land with a
small tooth-comb, according to the custom that had
prevailed in the country since the days of the Normans,"
instead of ploughing to a greater depth. The practical
application of his remark was, that the prizes for
ploughing should be given for time and depth, especially
the latter. He told the farmers they must go to Caird,
and Mechi, and Huxtable, if they would learn
something; advice which was received with laughter and
cries of "No!" But to this Mr. Drummond retorted—
"It is of no use saying no; and laughter will not snub
those men, or do away with the fact"—The most
remarkable circumstance which attended the Essex
meeting, at Castle Hedingham, was the absence of Sir
John Tyrell and Major Beresford, both of whom sent
letters of apology for non-attendance. Sir John Tyrell
said that he had neither heart, spirit, nor courage to
attend the meeting; that the conservative party is so
completely demolished in the House of Commons that
its moral influence has vanished,—a result which never
would have occurred had Lord Derby remained in office;
that he cannot see his way in this crash of the conservative
party, but will refrain from attending political
meetings till circumstances may render it less disagreeable
to do so.—Major Beresford said;—"Till within a
few weeks, it was my decided resolution to have taken
advantage of their annual meeting to lay before them and
the constituency of North Essex, a full and detailed
statement of the transactions connected with the Derby
election, and the consequent inquiry, and to have
vindicated myself from the unjust and malignant imputations
which I have borne hitherto in silence, awaiting that
opportunity to expose and refute them. A fresh
persecution has been lately commenced against me. The
whole matter has been opened afresh, and is to be
brought to the issue of a trial. Such proceedings
necessarily preclude me from entering into those explanations
which might not only be impolitic as far as I am individually
concerned, but which must be unfair towards
others whose cause has been mixed up with mine upon this
occasion. It would not, therefore, become me to present
myself at Castle Hedingham tongue-tied: neither would
it be justifiable to put forward a one-sided statement to
prejudice the case before it was fairly submitted to the
tribunal by which it is to be investigated. Such is the
reason which induces me, however distasteful it is to my
own inclination, to absent myself to-morrow from the
meeting." The principal speaker was the Rev. J. Cox,
M.A., of Fairstead, who carried his conservatism so far
as to express a preference of universal suffrage to any
partial reform of the present system. "Let them not,"
he said, "go on tinkering and altering the franchise in
that way; but if there were to be a change, let them go
the whole hog and have universal suffrage at once.
That might seem strange from him, but he said that
universal suffrage was conservative compared with a £5
franchise. He spoke only his own views, but he repeated
that there was something imperial in universal suffrage.
Look at France. Universal suffrage was imperial, but
the £5 franchise was downright direct democracy. He
should hold up his hand then for universal suffrage in
preference to any whig-radical tinkering of the franchise."
Mr. Cox sat down amid loud and continued cheering,
and his health was then drunk in a bumper.—The
exhibitions of farm-stock, utensils, &c., at the different
meetings, are described as being of average quality.

The inquiry into the System pursued in Leicester
Gaol was reopened on the 10th inst., by the order of
Lord Palmerston, in accordance with a request from the
visiting justices. Little new matter was added to the
result of the previous investigations. The novelty
consisted in the line of defence taken up by Mr. Reeve, the
deputy clerk of the peace, on behalf of the justices.
He read entries from the warder's book, showing that a
prisoner had done a vast amount of crank labour
on little and sometimes no food; thence he argued
that the entries were inaccurate, as a man could not
work on such small quantities of food. Lord Howe,
Lord Berners, Sir Henry Halford, Mr. C. H. Frewen,
M.P., and other justices, were examined; but their
evidence only showed that they had gone through the
prison on various days and had heard no complaints.
The point was, that the stoppage of food was illegal;
and on this the justices could throw no light. Godfrey,
the warder, was examined and cross-examined, to prove
errors in his book: but in the main the book was proved
to be accurate. Godfrey was praised by the
commissioners for his book-keeping, and the governor,
Mr. Musson, for his humanity. The inquiry then
terminated.

Captain Inglefield, of her Majesty's ship Phœnix, has
arrived at the Admiralty with news of the Arctic
Expeditions under Captain M'Clure, Sir Edward
Belcher, and Captain Inglefield himself. The dispatches
and reports are very long and detailed: the following
are some of the most interesting particulars they
communicate. The intelligence from Captain M'Clure, of
the Investigator, goes back to 1850, when his vessel was
last seen. On the 31st of July he left the Herald off
Cape Lisburne, and proceeded eastward on his own
responsibility. On the 5th August he rounded Point
Barrow in a fog; and on the 14th, ran upon a shoal off
Yarborough Inlet, and narrowly escaped. From that
time the navigation was very dangerous along the coast,
both from the banks and shoals and the driving ice.
Huts were observed on shore near Point Warren on the
24th August, and despatches for the Admiralty were
sent off; but the savage and warlike natives expressed
their hostility to the Hudson's Bay Company for giving
them "water" which killed many of them; and the
dispatches were brought back. On the 1st September,