t4t alttruputio.
The promenade in the Crystal Palace on Saturday afternoon was quite a monster demonstration. The estimate of the number of visitors ranges from 40,000 to 70,000; some 2000 carriages thronged the approaches. Of course the seven Military bands, stationed in different parts of the building, and the giant organ of Messrs. Willis, which remains to this time, did their best to please. The national anthem, played by all the bands combined in the centre of the transept as a finale at five o'clock, went with a voluminous unity and grandeur spoken of as "sublime." No doubt, Messrs. Fox and Henderson would be glad to renew more than once the beautiful and very profitable scene ; but it seems that even the gathering of Saturday last took place under an official prohibition. At the time the public were enjoying themselves, Messrs. Fox and Hen- derson held in their hands a double protest in the shape of a note from the Royal Commission, enclosing this announcement from Lord John Manners as head of the Office of Works- " Lord John Manners feels it to be his duty to take the earliest opportunity of apprizing the Commissioners for the Exhibition that he cannot in any way countenance the appropriation of the building to any purposes other than those which are specified in the royal warrant of the 26th of Sep- tember."
A meeting to uphold the Crystal Palace was held at the Mansionhouse, under the Lord Mayor, on Wednesday. The proceedings were not una- nimous. A resolution in harmony with the object of the meeting was carried by a great majority ; but an amendment was also moved, and re-
spectably supported. •
A very interesting meeting was seen, and not heard, in the chapel o the Scottish Hospital, Fetter Lane, on Wednesday evening—that of one hundred deaf and dumb persons, who have been taught communications by signs in the Deaf and Dumb Asylum of London.
In the perennial contest between Oxford and Cambridge for aquatic renown on the London water, the Oxonians were again victorious this year, and with more ease than on any former occasion. The trial was on Saturday last, at Putney.
The ecclesiastical appeal by Mr. Winston, he dismissed master of Roches- ter Grammar School, from the Bishop of iochester to the Bishop of Roches- ter—from the Bishop as Dean of Rochester Cathedral, and head of the Chapter whose proceedings Mr. Whiston has impugned in his pamphlet on Cathedral Trusts, to the same Bishop as visitor of the Chapter—was begun in the Court of Arches on Monday.. The Bishop is assisted by Baron Parke and Dr. Lushington as assessors. Mr. Whiston conducts his own case ; and Dr. Addams and Mr. Cowling appeared for the Chapter. Mr. Whiston occupied three days in his opening : he has marshalled successive points extending from A in the alphabet unto 0, and has shown enormous learning and legal erudi- tion great eloquence of oratory, and a respectful but unflinching bearing to Bishop and Court. The case is adjourned till after Easter.
At Bow Street Police Office, on Saturday, eight men were summoned for non-compliance with the provisions of the Common Lodginghouses Act. They rent rooms at No. 21 Church Lane, St. Giles's : the proceedings were for the sake of the lodgers, whose health and lives must be endangered by the present state of things. Charles Reeves, a surveyor under the act, gave this evidence. On the night of the 8th March, he went to the house in order to inspect it. In the room No. I, belonging to the defendant Collins, the size of which was 15 feet 6 inches by 14 feet 6 inches, which ought to have contained only nine persons, he found five families. In one bed, a man, his wife, and three children ; in a second, a boy and a girl ; in a third, a man and his wife ; in a fourth, a man, his wife, and three children ; and the same in a fifth, making in all twenty. There were no partitions, nor was the act in any way complied with. In the second room belonging to Cal- nen, there were ten people, the regulations allowing three; 111 the third room, in which T.sary was the landlord, there were twelve persons, the pro- per number being eight. In the fourth room, 11 feet 8 inches by 10 feet 8 inches, there were fourteen occupants, the regulation number being four. In the fifth room, there were eight lodgers instead of three ; in the sixth room, which ought to have contained only seven, there were twenty-two men, women, and children ; in the seventh room, there were twelve, six being the authorized number; in the eighth room, there were nine, instead of seven ; making altogether, one hundred and seven people sleeping in a house which was adapted to accommodate only forty-seven. The whole of the rooms were in a most filthy and pestilential condition. There were very few bedsteads, and the occupants slept all together without any regard to decency. There was no water laid on, nor was there any means by which these unfortunate creatures could cleanse their persons. The defendants, several of whom could only speak Irish, pleaded ignorance of the act, and promised to do all that was requisite. Mr. Henry remarked upon the miser- able condition of the unhappy creatures, who were obliged to resort to such filthy abodes • and said the evil was attributable in a great measure to the owners of the houses, who let them to such persona as the defendants, and extorted from them rents so high that they were obliged to overcrowd their rooms in order to pay them, or even to get their own living. The summons was ultimately adjourned until the let of May.
There was a remarkable trial at the Central Criminal Court, on Wed- nesday. Some time since, Thomas Robert Mellish and James Douglas were convicted of forging a receipt, to defraud their employer, Mr. Thompson. Mellish managed a glass-silvering business for Mr. Thompson ; Douglas was a clerk appointed by Mellish. There was no doubt that many work- men's receipts had the figures altered, whereby Mr. Thompson was defrauded of the difference, as the larger amount was charged in the books. At the trial, the Jury thought both prisoners had been engaged in the crime. After sentence of transportation had been passed, Douglas told the Ordinary of Newgate that Mellish was innocent ; he alone was guilty. Representations were made to the Home Office, and a trial on another in- dictment was thought advisable. On Wednesday, Douglas pleaded guilty to the case of forgery then brought before the Jury. He was examined as a witness ; and stated that he was the culprit, while Mellish had not at all participated in or known of his frauds. On the other hand, cross-ex- amination, and witnesses for the prosecution, cast some suspicion on this testimony. Mellish seems to have been a good friend to Douglas : he had known him fourteen years. The Jury consulted for half an hour, and then gave a verdict of " Not Guilty ' ; the Foreman adding, that they gave the prisoner " the benefit of a very great doubt." So one supposes that the first sentence on the first trial will probably be carried out.
James Phineas Davis and his brother appeared at the Middlesex Sessions on Monday, to receive judgment for the assault on Mr. O'Brien. The in- tention of the Court was to have fined each 601. ; but the counsel for the prosecution stated that explanations had been made to Mr. O'Brien, which induced him to ask for some remission of the penalty ; and Mr. Parry, for the defendants, admitted that they now believed that some of the instructions given to counsel at the trial, reflecting by implication on Mr. O'Brien, were without foundation : the Judge thereupon imposed fines of only. 20s. each.
Mr. Charles Washbourrie, a gentleman living in Cloudesley Square, has been the victim of a daring street robbery. On Sunday night, a woman ac- costed him near the Angel at Islington, and would not leave him ; presently another woman and a man came up ; the man knocked Mr. Washbourne down, and the three then robbed him of his watch. The Police apprehended the two women ; and stated at Clerkenwell Police Office, on Monday, that the man was known to them : the women were remanded, to allow tune for his apprehension.
As the Propontis mail-steamer, just arrived from the Cape of Good Hope with the news of the wreck of the Birkenhead, was coming up the Thames on Wednesday night, she struck the Dutch merchant-ship Ann Rebecca, and sent her to the bottom. The crew were all picked up by the boats of the Propontis. The collision arose out of the mistake or the Dutchmen, who took the lights of the Propontis for those of the Start light, and put their helm to starboard instead of to port. The lost ship was freighted with a cargo of sugar front a Syrian port : she was insured.
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