up and down zig-zag stairs cut in the rock, we sauntered alone, and the noise of our iron-shod heels on the pavement, was the only sound we heard.  The rich abbey, it was evident, had formerly fed the town clustering round it, the inhabitants of which cultivated its vast domains under a paternal administration.  These domains, it was also evident, had passed into the hands of upstart speculators, strangers to the people, and indifferent to their welfare, who did not even know how to make their wealth productive to themselves.—­Simond’s Tour.

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ENGLISH AND FRENCH MURDERS.

When will the French nation be able to afford a Thurtell—­a man who could turn his pistol round in his friend’s brains; not in any insane paroxysm of jealousy, or hatred, or revenge, but merely to ascertain satisfactorily that he had completely effected his business—­who could then walk in to his supper of pork chops, with the same composure as if he had come from giving a feed of oats to his horse—­a clever and acute man, too, without any stupid insensibility of mind—­a man who, when seized and put on his trial, gets off by heart a long and eloquent speech, full of the most solemn and false asseverations of his innocence; not that he clung with desperate eagerness to the hope of escaping, but that, as there was a chance, it was prudent not to throw it away—­who, when condemned displayed neither terror nor indifference, neither exquisite sensibility nor sullen brutality, and at the last swung out of life from the gallows with the settled air of a man who feels he has lost the game at which he played, and that he may as well pay the stake calmly?  There was a true British composure about the unutterable atrocity of this villain—­murderer he was, and a most detestable murderer too—­but his character belongs to our country as fully as that of our heroes.  Hunt and Probert were pitiful wretches, fit for the Bicetre.  Doubtless the agony of Hunt’s feelings until his reprieve came, would, if properly divided into chapters, make a good romance.—­Blackwood’s Mag.

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PETROLEUM.

Petroleum wells supply the whole Burman empire with oil for lamps, and also for smearing timber, to protect it against insects, and particularly the white ant.  Its consumption for burning is stated to be universal, until its price reaches that of sesamum oil, the only other kind used for lamps.  The wells, which occupy a space of about sixteen square miles, vary in depth from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet; the shaft is square, not more than four feet each side, and is formed by sinking a frame of wood.  The oil, on coming up, is about the temperature of ninety degrees of Fahrenheit.  It is thrown into a large cistern, in the bottom of which are small apertures