17 MARCH 1849, Page 6

SCOTLAND.

A preliminary meeting has been held in Edinburgh for the purpose of considering the best means to be adopted for obtaining suitable house accommodation for the lower classes. The Lord Provost mentioned, that such was the scarcity, of dwellings at a low rent, that he had received forty applications for a house rented at 71. It was thought that a joint- stock company would be the best instrument for carrying out the design; and a sub-committee was appointed to report on details.

At a meeting of the promoters of the Dumfries Ragged Schools, re- ported in the IVigtonshi”e Free Press, some remarkable statistics on the effects of ragged schools on crime were adduced by Mr. M'Neel Caird, the Procurator-fiscal of Wigtonshire. He found that the returns con- cerning the United Kingdom, and the details of those returns concerning individual counties and cities in England, Ireland, and Scotland, con- curred in exhibiting an advance in the numerical proportion of crimes to population from the year 1836 to 1847. But from this advance there were most surprising exceptions in Aberdeen alone, the parent city of Ragged Schools. The offenders there were 360 in 1836, and only 140 in 1847—a decrease of 220 per cent. The returns for 1848 are not complete, but tables that have appeared show that there was a similar receding of the current occurred last year in Edinburgh after the establishment of Ragged Schools there. A published statement by the Governor of the Edinburgh Prison shows that "the number of commitments to prison of boys thirteen years old and under was about 50 per cent less in the three months ending March 1848 than in the corresponding three months of the previous year." The Superintendent of Police now reports, that a great diminution of commitments in Dumfriesshire has resulted from the efforts of the Dum- fries Raggea Schools.

The portrait of Charles the First, alleged to be the work of Velasquez, which was seized in an exhibition-room at Edinburgh some time back, by the trustees of the Esrl of Fife, has been restored to the exhibitor, Mr. Snare, by a decision of Sheriff Gordon ; who considered that at present the trustees bad made out no sort of claim to the picture. An interdict was afterwards obtained from Lord Robert- son to prevent Mr. Snare's conveying the painting out of the country; but when the matter was argued before the Judge, he fully agreed with the Sheriff's deci- sion, removed the interdict, and ordered that the picture should be restored to Mr. Snare.

There was a great fall of snow in the Perthshire Highlands last week : many of the roads were so blocked up that mails were detained for a long time. In the low country, not above a couple of inches of snow fell.