mitted to the law officers of the Crown. On the 24th August an opinion was presented that the trade was not illegal.

16.-Indian Mutiny. The Governor-General of India issues a proclamation warning the army of Bengal that the tales by which the men of certain regiments have been led to suspect that offence to their religion, or injury to their caste, is meditated by the Government of India, are malicious falsehoods. 66 The Government

of India has invariably treated the religious feelings of all its subjects with careful respect. The Governor-General in Council has declared that it will never cease to do so. He now repeats that declaration, and he emphatically proclaims that the Government of India entertains no desire to interfere with their religion or caste, and that nothing has been, or will be, done by the Government to affect the free exercise of the observances of religion or caste by every class of the people."

The first official intimation given in the Staats Anzeiger (the Prussian Gazette), of the intended marriage of H. R. H. Prince Frederick William of Prussia to the Princess Royal of England.

19. Addresses in answer to her Majesty's message are moved in both Houses of Parliament with reference to the approaching marriage of the Princess Royal. The House of Commons afterwards voted her Royal Highness a marriage portion of 40,000/., and an annuity of 4,000l. a year.

It was

In the House of Commons, the second reading of the Ministers' Money (Ireland) Bill carried by a majority of 313 to 174. afterwards carried through the House of Lords, and received the Royal Assent.

25.-The Hon. John Russell Colvin, Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces of India, issues a proclamation to the rebel Sepoys which gave rise to much hostile criticism on account of its mistimed leniency: --"Soldiers engaged in the late disturbances, who are desirous of going to their own homes, and who give up their arms at the nearest Government civil or military post, and retire quietly, shall be permitted to do so unmolested. Many faithful soldiers have been driven into resistance to Government only because they were in the ranks, and could not escape from them, and because they really thought their feelings of religion and honour injured by the measures of Government. This feeling was wholly a mistake, but it acted on men's minds. A proclamation of the Governor-General now issued is perfectly explicit, and will remove all doubts on these points. Every evil-minded instigator in the disturbance, and those guilty of heinous crimes against private persons, shall be punished. All those who appear in arms against the Government after this notification is known shall be treated as open enemies."

17.--The Morning Advertiser amuses the town as the victim of a wicked correspondent, who sought to support certain editorial remarks

on the "Westerton" judgment, identifying the Cross with the Pagan phallus, by the testimony of "a very ancient MS. discovered some years since in a cellar belonging to the Monastery of Apati, a Carthusian establishment," in the Levant. "The MS., wrote the audacious "G. Allan Saunders," "is in possession of my friend, Signor P. Montomini, an authority of great weight in these matters, now engaged on a new edition of the Auctores Priapici.' As the contents of this curious MS. will be discussed in an elaborate note to this work, I will now merely state that it is therein related that a certain monk, Amphilius by name, who lived at Edessa in the latter part of the fourth century, noticing the great popularity which Priapus enjoyed among the Dii minores' of these parts, conceived the audacious idea of supplanting his worship by that of the Cross." The joke was capped by the mythical Pietro Montomini writing next day from the Craven Hotel :-"I have read the letter of Mr. Allan Saunders on the subject of the emblem which has been put forth as that of the Christian religion; and I have also read the leading article on the same subject in your impression of yesterday, in which you refer to a certain Israelitish monarch,' and to the image which he adored, and which you rightly conjecture to have represented the aforesaid emblem. That your

view, sir, was perfectly correct, I am happy to be able to bring forward, out of the work I am at present editing, the following passage to

prove:

Φέρουσι δὴ οἱ Ἰῶνες, ὅτι ὁ βασιλεὺς ὁ μέγας τῶν Ἰουδαίων, τὸν Θεὸν, τῆς φύσεως προσκυνῶν, καὶ φιλήμασι τὴν εἴκονα εμπλεκόμενος, ἐχεζητία, καὶ τὸν κόπρον ἐν ταῖς ἀναξύρισι, κ. τ. λ.

The above has been erroneously attributed to Athenæus, but I am in a position to prove that it is of a much later period. I will not take up your space with further remarks on the resemblance between Popish and Pagan ceremonies. Their name, sir, is Legion; and you are probably as well acquainted with them as myself."

28.-Epsom races: the Derby Stakes, and on the 30th the Oaks, won by Blink Bonny.

29.- Argued in the Court of Queen's Bench, at sittings in banco, the case of the AttorneyGeneral, the Provost and College of Eton, and Clark (clerk)-an action of quare impedit, involving the right of the Crown to presentation to benefices vacated by the appointment of colonial bishops. To the declaration on behalf of the Crown, the Provost and College of Eton pleaded that they were seised in fee of the advowson of the living of Stratford-Mortimer, under a charter and letters patent of King Henry VI., confirmed by Parliament, and that on the avoidance of the benefice by the consecration of the former incumbent as Bishop of Christchurch, in New Zealand, they presented the other defendant Clark to the living, and he was duly admitted, instituted, and inducted, as perpetual vicar and incumbent.

For himself, Clark pleaded that the Queen ought not to sue him, because, though it was true that the former incumbent had been consecrated to a bishopric, yet such bishopric was situated wholly in parts beyond the seas, and not within any part of the United Kingdom. To these pleas the Crown demurred, and thus raised the two questions before the court: (1) Whether on the avoidance of a living by the consecration of the incumbent as a colonial bishop, the Crown had the power to present to the living so vacated; and (2) Whether in this particular case the claim was not inconsistent with the original grant of the advowson to the College.

29.-A party of eight young men, who had been attending the Lancashire hirings, drowned while crossing Ulverstone Sands at night in

a cart.

30. The Grand Duke Constantine, of Russia, visits her Majesty at Osborne. On the following day the Queen took her guest for a cruise among the fleet at Spithead.

Indian Mutiny. At Lucknow the mutiny broke out in cantonments amongst the lines of the 71st N.I., and soon became general. The Sepoys burnt down some of the buildings, and fired into the mess-room of the officers of the 71st. One or two officers were afterwards shot dead; and it was not until a part of the 32d had charged the rebels, and the artillery opened upon them, under the personal direction of Sir Henry Lawrence, that they gave way and quitted the cantonments. They retired to Moodripore, where they were joined by the 7th Light Cavalry, who murdered one of their officers on the spot. The state of Lucknow now became threatening in the extreme; but Sir Henry Lawrence hoped by vigorous measures of repression to strike terror into the minds of the inhabitants, and prevent a general rising. Numbers of men convicted of tampering with the troops were hanged on a gallows erected in front of the Mutchee Bhawn, and two members of the royal family at Delhi, and a brother of the ex-King of Oude, were arrested and imprisoned there. The Residency itself was crowded with women and children, and every house and outhouse was occupied. Preparations for defence were continued, and thousands of Coolies employed at the batteries, stockades and trenches, which were everywhere being constructed. The treasure and ammunition, of which fortunately there was a large supply, were buried, and as many guns as could be collected brought together. The Residency and Mutchee Bhawn presented most animated scenes. There were soldiers, Sepoys, prisoners in irons, men, women, and children, hundreds of servants, respectable natives in their carriages, Coolies carrying weights, heavy cannons, field-pieces, carts, elephants, camels, bullocks, horses, all moving about hither and thither, and continual bustle and noise was kept up from morning to night. There was scarcely a corner which

6. Indian Mutiny. At Allahabad, while the English officers were at mess, utterly unsuspicious of danger, the alarm bugle suddenly sounded, the Sepoy mutineers fired and afterwards attacked them with sword and bayonet. Out of 17 officers at mess 14 were butchered on the spot, some of them mere youths who had just joined the regiment. The treasury was plundered, the gaol broken open, and the station set on fire and destroyed. It was reported that not less than 50 Europeans were murdered at Allahabad the first night. By the end of this month the Sepoy troops had mutinied at twentytwo stations throughout the Bengal Presidency. On the 14th, at Gwalior, they shot down the officers at their lines, and afterwards set fire to the houses occupied by Europeans. Maharajah here behaved with loyalty and firmness. He temporised with the rebels, in order to give the Europeans the opportunity of escaping, and had carriages and palkis prepared to convey some of them on the road to Agra.

The

The morning newspapers publish telegrams from India, announcing that the 3d Bengal Cavalry at Meerut were in open mutiny.

7. Sixty-two people killed at Leghorn, through a panic caused by an alarm of fire in the Teatro degli Acquedotti, during the performance of a piece entitled "The Taking of Sebastopol,"

8.-Died at his residence, Kilburn Priory, aged 54, Douglas Jerrold, wit, dramatist, and satirist.

Discussion in the House of Lords in the case of W. P. R. Sheddon, occasioned by Earl Grey presenting a petition complaining that, by a decision of the Court of Session in Scotland in 1803, confirmed by the House of Lords in

1808, Sheddon had been wrongfully deprived of his status as a natural-born subject, and stigmatized as illegitimate. On a division, the motion for inquiry was rejected by 19 to 11.

9.-Fire at the premises of Messrs. Pickford, at the Camden-town railway-station. A large quantity of merchandise was consumed, but the large stud of draught horses-with one exception, known as "The Man-hater," who refused to allow any one to approach him— was got out in safety, and galloped off in the direction of Hampstead.

was

11.-In committee on the Divorce and Matrimonial .Causes Bill, a clause proposed by the Bishop of Oxford to the effect that it will be lawful to pass on the guilty parties, or either of them, sentence of fine or imprisonment, as though such parties had been guilty of a misdemeanour at common law, carried by 43 to 33. This was omitted on the third reading, by 49 to 29, An amendment proposed by the Lord Chancellor, permitting the woman to marry after divorce, was carried by 46 to 24. An addition proposed by Lord Wensleydale, providing that the adulterer and adulteress should not marry with each other, was rejected by 37 to 28.

Died, aged 77, Moritz Retszch, German illustrator of Shakspeare, Goethe, and Schiller. 14.-Indian Mutiny. Sir Hugh Wheeler writes from Cawnpore to Mr. Gubbins, at Lucknow, the letter being cunningly secreted on the person of a Hindoo messenger, who contrived to elude the manifold perils which beset the road :-"We have been besieged since the 6th by the Nana Sahib, joined by the whole of the native troops, who broke out on the morning of the 4th. The enemy have two 24-pounders, and several other guns. We have only eight 9-pounders. The whole Christian population is with us in a temporary intrenchment, and our defence has been noble and wonderful; our loss heavy and cruel. We want aid, aid, aid! Regards to Lawrence." It being thought impossible to send aid from Lucknow at this time, Captain Moore, of the 32nd, writes on the 18th, that "Sir Hugh regrets you cannot send him the 200 men, as he believes with their assistance we could drive the insurgents from Cawnpore and capture their guns." While expressing an intention of holding out to the last, Captain Moore closed his epistle with the touching declaration, Any news of relief will cheer us."

66

15, 17, 19.-Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, preparatory to the commemoration of his death in 1859.

16. Decided in the Court of Exchequer, the great revenue case of the Attorney-General v. Allen, the defendant being charged under 30 counts with incurring penalties to the extent of 375,000l., for infractions of the excise laws, committed in his malting works at Worthing, Moulsey, and Horsham. Having had their attention directed to the first-mentioned place, the Excise officers made a strict search, and

found a trap-door opening into an underground passage, at the end of which were two vaults completely fitted up with malting cisterns and couch-frames of a capacity nearly equal to those above which had been regularly entered. At the other works similar contrivances were discovered. All the malt and barley found were seized, and proceedings instituted to recover penalties for using unentered premises and irregularly working those which had been entered, as well as to recover treble value of the malt seized, and to cause its condemnation. Verdict entered for the Crown for the sum of 100,000/.

17. Oxford Statutes affecting professors settled in Congregation. They were all passed with the exception of one, allowing professors to hold prælectorships, if permitted by decree of Convocation. This was put to the vote in connexion with six different professors, and rejected by majorities varying from 32 to 62. The Craven statute was rejected by 54 votes to 31, the main objection being the assignment The of these scholarships to physical science. statute altering the Bampton Lecture Trust, was rejected by 49 votes to 38. The form of statute establishing an examination for the middle classes, was read and submitted to the vote. The main provisions of the statute were carried by 81 votes to 16, and the title of Associate in Arts by 62 to 38.

22.-In bringing up the report on the Oaths Bill, Mr. S. Fitzgerald proposed a clause, providing that no Jew should hold the office of Regent of the Kingdom, Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, or Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The clause was adopted by Government.

Heard in the Court of Queen's Bench, the case of Sidebottom v. Adkins-a claim made by a Manchester millowner to recover from a professional gambler the sum of 6, 5251., lost through the use of false dice. Verdict for the amount claimed.

In the Court of Common Pleas, the jury give a verdict for 100/. damages, against the Honourable James William Macdonald for crim. con. with Mrs. Armitage, who had for years been living separate from her husband, the plaintiff.

23. The Marriage and Divorce Bill read a third time in the House of Lords. In the debate on the second reading in the House of Commons, Mr. Walpole supported the Government, affirming that the measure had been misunderstood and misinterpreted. The relations of marriage, he said, were in no degree loosened by it, the only object being to substitute one good tribunal for three tribunals, in one of which the proceedings were a scandal and a disgrace to the country. The second reading was carried by a majority of 208 to 97. The third reading was carried without a division. The amendments made in committee were afterwards discussed in the House of

Lords and approved of, with the exception of one introduced by Lord J. Manners against the wish of the Government.

23. The 100th Anniversary of the Battle of Plassey, celebrated by a meeting of noblemen and gentlemen to organize measures for raising a monument to Lord Clive on a conspicuous spot near Shrewsbury, the chief town of his native county. The meeting was presided over by Lord Hill.

24.-South Kensington Museum opened.

25.- The Bribery Election Committees commence their inquiries. In Mayo county it was shown in evidence that the priests were the ringleaders of the mob, and had cursed Colonel Higgins and his supporters from the altar.

Lord Campbell's Bill for suppressing the sale of obscene prints and publications, giving the police power to enter premises and search under a magistrate's warrant, read a second time in the House of Lords. Lord Lyndhurst withdrew an amendment rejecting the bill on the understanding that it would be amended in Committee, so as to exclude from its operation the possession of ancient works of art, or literary treasures.

In Hyde Park this forenoon, her Majesty, attended by a brilliant circle, makes the first distribution of the Victoria Cross for signal acts of valour in the presence of the enemy. The recipients of the much-prized honour were sixty-two in number, and as each passed up to get the cross pinned on his breast by the Queen, the cheering from the immense assembly of spectators was loud and general.

27.-Indian Mutiny. News arrives that Delhi is in possession of the mutineers; that the Europeans had been massacred without regard to age or sex; that the bank had been plundered; and the son of the late Mogul Emperor proclaimed as king. The intelligence caused the greatest anxiety in official, commercial, and private circles. On the 24th, Consols opened at 93 to; and on the 30th had fallen to 924 to §.

28. At the Lewisham station on the North Kent Railway, the 9'30 train runs into another stopped there by an exhibition of the danger signal. The break-van and next open passenger carriage of the stationary train were smashed to pieces, and II persons either killed on the instant or injured, so that they died before removal. Besides these, 163 passengers were more or less injured. The stoker and

driver of the train were committed for trial, but acquitted. The shareholders were heavily mulcted in a series of actions for compensation by those injured, and by the relatives of the killed.

29. The alarming position of the British Government in India, as indicated by the intelligence received from that country, forms the subject of inquiry in both Houses of Parliament, by Lord Ellenborough and Mr. Disraeli. The President of the Board of Control (Mr. Vernon Smith) said that 14,000 additional men would be in India by the middle of next month. "He could not concur," he said, 66 'with some members who had spoken as to our Indian Empire being imperilled by the present disaster. On the contrary, he was sanguine that it would be effectually suppressed by the force already in the country. He also defended Lord Canning, who, he considered, had behaved in the emergency with all the vigour and judgment which was to be expected from so distinguished a servant of the Crown."

The Cagliari, a Sardinian mail boat, which had been taken possession of by an armed party on board, and directed to Ponza, where the Neapolitan prison was broken open, is now seized by a Neapolitan squadron, and, though not within the jurisdiction of Naples, all hands are taken into custody. The case of two English engineers, Watt and Park, gave rise to much correspondence between the Governments, and also to several debates in Parliament.

30.-Commenced before the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh, the trial of Madeleine Hamilton Smith, for poisoning Pierre Emile L'Angelier, by administering prussic acid in food given him on three separate occasions between the 19th of February and the 23d of March last. The case excited considerable interest throughout the kingdom from the social position of the accused, and the purely circumstantial character of the evidence by which the Crown sought to connect her with the crime. The Lord Advocate (Moncrieff) conducted the case for the Crown, and the Dean of Faculty (Inglis) defended the panel. Evidence was led at great length to show the relation in which the accused stood to the deceased-a relation illustrated by the production of above 100 letters, prints, portraits, and books, showing that a guilty intercourse had been carried on for months between them, in the prospect of an early marriage. It was also shown that the deceased died from the effects of prussic acid; that the prisoner was known to have purchased and kept poison of that kind in her possession; that though there was no witness of any interview, he was seen proceeding in the direction of prisoner's house on the night when poison was last administered; that she had opportunities for administering it; and that she had a motive for his removal in the fact that she was at the time of his decease

about to contract marriage with a person of higher social standing. The evidence for the prosecution was continued over five days and a portion of the sixth; exculpatory evidence completed the sixth day. The seventh was taken up by the speech of the Lord Advocate, marked throughout by a rare spirit of moderation and feeling. On the ninth day the Dean of Faculty addressed the Court for the prisoner in a speech

of great power. "The charge against the prisoner," he began, "is murder, and the punishment of murder is death; and that simple statement is sufficient to suggest to us the awful solemnity of the occasion which brings you and me face to face. But, gentlemen, there are peculiarities in the present case of so singular a kind-there is such an air of romance and mystery investing it from beginning to end-there is something so touching and exciting in the age, and the sex, and the social position of the accused-ay, and I must add, the public attention is so directed to the trial, that they watch our proceedings, and hang on our very accents, with such an anxiety and eagerness of expectation, that I feel almost bowed down and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task that is imposed on me. You are invited and encouraged by the prosecutor to snap the thread of that young life, and to consign to an ignominious death on the scaffold one who, within a few short months, was known only as a gentle, confiding, and affectionate girl, the ornament and pride of her happy home. Gentlemen, the tone in which my learned friend, the Lord Advocate, addressed you yesterday, could not fail to strike you as most remarkable. It was characterised by great moderation-by such moderation as I think must have convinced you that he could hardly expect a verdict at your hands; and in the course of that address, for which I give him the highest credit, he could not resist the expression of his own deep feeling of commiseration for the position in which the prisoner is placed-an involuntary homage paid by the official prosecutor to the kind and generous nature of the man. But, gentlemen, I am going to ask you for something very different from commiseration; I am going to ask you for that which I will not condescend to beg, but which I will loudly and importunately demand-that to which every person is entitled, whether she be the lowest of her sex or the maiden whose purity is as the unsunned snow. I ask you for justice; and if you will kindly lend me your attention for the requisite period, and if Heaven grant me patience and strength for the task, I shall tear to tatters that web of sophistry in which the prosecutor has striven to involve this poor girl and her sad strange story." After a most careful examination of the evidence, and the degree in which it bore on the prisoner, the Dean concluded his speech, of four hours' duration, by an expression of unwillingness to part with the jury "Never did I feel as if I had said so little as I feel now after this long address. cannot explain it myself except by a strong

I

and overwhelming conviction of what your verdict ought to be. I am deeply conscious of a personal interest in your verdict, for if there should be any failure of justice, I could attribute it to no other cause than my own inability to conduct the defence; and I am persuaded that, if it were so, the recollection of this day, and this prisoner, would haunt me as a dismal and blighting spectre to the end of life. May the Spirit of all Truth guide you to an honest, a just, and a true verdict ! But no verdict will be either honest, or just, or true, unless it at once satisfy the reasonable scruples of the severest judgment, and yet leave undisturbed, and unvexed, the tenderest conscience among you." The Lord Justice Clerk proceeded to sum up the evidence, resuming when the Court opened next morning (the tenth day of trial), and continuing till one o'clock. The jury then retired to consider their verdict, and were absent about half an hour. On returning, their chancellor gave in the following:-"The jury find the panel not guilty of the first charge in the indictment by a majority; of the second charge, not proven, by a majority; and of the third charge, also, not proven, by a majority." The verdict was received with great applause, which the officers of Court attempted in vain to suppress.

July 1. The Fox screw-steamer, fitted out by Lady Franklin, and commanded by Captain M'Clintock, sails in search of the Franklin Expedition.

2.-The new statutes for the regulation of Oxford Colleges published in the Gazette.

Sir Henry Lawrence wounded by a shell, which burst in the room occupied by him in the Residency, Lucknow. He lingered in great agony till the morning of the 4th, when this wise ruler and gallant soldier expired.

3.-Ten persons drowned at Shrewsbury, when leaving M. Jullien's musical fête, held on the Island of Poplars. During the rush of spectators to reach the shore at the close of the performance, the bridge of boats gave way, and about 150 were thrown into the river. The majority were speedily rescued by persons who thronged the bank, but those swamped beneath the centre punt, which had been maliciously upset, being unable to extricate themselves, were drowned.

20. The Transit, Government steamship, ends a long series of disasters by running ashore at Banca. The failure of this and two sister ships, the Urgent and Perseverance, was the subject of frequent discussion in Parliament. The Transit had been selected to convey the House of Lords to the memorable Naval Review at Spithead, in 1855, and, as many anticipated, duly failed. When she now struck she was engaged in conveying troops to China. left Spithead with 700 on board, on April 7, but on the following night, while anchored near the Needles, swung on to her anchors and knocked a hole in her bottom. This

She