int Vniniurts.

Lord Ward attended and addressed a public meeting held at Chelten- ham on the 16th, to adopt preliminary steps for establishing a School of Art in that town. The Reverend Mr. Bellairs presided. Lord Ward strongly urged the necessity of giving the artisan class sound instruction in elementary drawing.

Distmints for church-rates have lately been extensively made on mem- bers of the Society of Friends at North Shields ; but it has been remarked that the only Quaker who voted for the Derbyite candidate at the last election has not been distrained upon, while every one who voted for the Liberal has.

The Orinoco arrived on Sunday at Southampton from the West Indies. Yellow fever prevailed at her departure from Barbados on the 28th No- vember, and St. Thomas's on the 3d December. Eight of the crew and one passenger had died of the yellow fever since the 28th November; and seven hours after her arrival at Southampton a boy died on board. The mails were landed, but the passengers and the ship were detained in quarantine until Thursday. It appears that three of the crew were left ill at Jamaica, and that there had been forty-one cases of fever during the voyage.

Her Majesty's steam-ship Dauntless was at Barbados on the 28th. She came from Jamaica, and had thirty-three cases of yellow fever on board. The first and third lieutenants, two mates, the second master, the chief and three assistant engineers, and twenty-five men, died. There were on shore, at the Military Hospital, the master, the chaplain, the officer of Marines, two midshipmen, one clerk, and the remaining engineer, besides thirty-eight men.

Mr. Pollock, Judge of the Liverpool County Court, delivered judgment on Monday on a case arising out of the practice of sending several small parcels in one package by railway ; it being a question whether the railway com- pany have a right to charge for each parcel. Mr. Ximpton, the proprietor of an establishment for the conveyance of small parcels from Liverpool to London' sued the North-western Railway Company for the sum of 2/. 128. 8d., overcharge upon parcels forwarded. To check the practice of forwarding many small parcels in one, the Railway Company had given notice to Mr. Kimpton, among others, that all such packages in future should be charged double for carriage. Payment at this rate had been made under protest, and the claim made in the County Court was to recover the difference. It was admitted that one parcel charged for as a packed parcel turned out not to have been so ; and on that one the Judge gave a decision for Mr. Kimpton. Upon all the other parcels he allowed, in addition to the single charge which would have been made for them if not coming originally from or intended eventually for different persons, 10 per cent over the single rate of charge, as a reasonable charge for the extra risk and responsibility, whatever that may be, incurred by the company in carrying such packages. "The allowance of 10 per cent must not be taken as a precedent for any future decision." As the verdict satisfied neither party, it is expected that a ease will be agreed upon for the superior courts.

At York Assizes, last week, Samuel Morrell was tried for the manslaughter of Sarah Firth, at Burley. Morrell was the driver of an omnibus employed to convey passengers from the Arthington station of the Leeds Northern Railway to Ilkley. On the 1st August, two omnibuses belonging to the railway left the station; they were shamefully overcrowded ; Morrell's had fourteen persons inside, and thirty-three outside ; one of the linch-pins of the vehicle was not secured with a nut. On the Journey, MorrelPs omnibus, in attempting to pass the other, swerved a good deal ; the insecure lunch-pin came out, and the overloaded omnibus fell over with a frightful crush; the other omnibus unavoidably driving over some of the people who lay scat- tered about the road. Many suffered badly, and Mrs. Firth was fatally crushed. It appeared from the evidence, that the station-muter super- intended the loading of the omnibuses; that attending to the wheels was not the prisoner's special duty ; and that there was no racing between the omnibuses. The Judge thought it would have been better to have indicted the station-master or the directors. The case was not pressed against the Prisoner, and the Jury gave a verdict of "Not guilty" ; at the same time expressing an opinion that there had been gross negligence on the part of the directors and the station-master : sufficient vehicles ought to have been supplied for the passengers, and they should have been in an efficient con- dition.

On Tuesday, John Snipe, John Smith, and Ann Smith, were put on their trial for the murder of William Francis Maplethorpe, at Hull; and Mary Ann Robinson was charged with harbouring the men, knowing them to be putty. Maplethorpe was a clerk at Hull ; he was found during the night dead in the road before his house ; there were marks on his body, and about the place, of a deadly- struggle--the young man seemed to have been suffocated by pressure round his throat; he had been robbea of money. and a watch. 3hplethorpe lived in Prospect Place—a row of -houses having a road in front, and a ditch, used as a sewer, separating it from a field. The evidence against the prisoners was circumstantial; they were not seen to commit the Murder, nor was the stolen property traced to them. But many circum- stances, some very minute, and their own false statements and their admis-

sions and exclamations to companions, told strongly against them. The most singular and telling part of the evidence consisted of an account of a chemical analysis of the mud adhering to the clothes of Snipe. He said that he was in Paragon Street on the night of the murder ; but, while the mud of Prospect Place was identical with that on his boots, the mud of Paragon Street was very unlike it. The defenee was grounded on the purely circum- stantial nature of the evidence, which was alleged to be insufficient for a conviction.

After the Jury had been locked up, one was seized with an epileptic fit, and it was necessary to discharge the Jury. Next day, a new juryman was added, and the prisoners retried with the usual forms. The verdict was "Not guilty."

Richard Price, aged twenty-one, has been convicted of killing his father. During a family squabble, at Sheffield, the prisoner, his sister, and the father got into a scuffle ; in the heat of the contest, Richard seized a piece of iron which was used as a poker, and struck his father on the side of the head: the blow was fatal. Mr. Justice Talfourd said he had no reason to think that the culprit intended to kill his father ; but the violent act must be severely punished, and he passed a sentence of twelve months' imprisonment.

James Barbour, aged twenty-one, was convicted of the murder of Alexan- der Robison, at Sheffield, on the 2d September. The particulars of this ease were narrated at the time. Barbour and Robison were friends, and both were travelling drapers. Barbour led Robison into a lonely place, shot him, took his pack and watch, and left the body in a ditch. There was no doubt as to his guilt, and he was sentenced to be hanged.

Peter Lebire, owner of a Jersey smack, has been committed for trial by the Plymouth Magistrates for attempting to murder Emma liellyer and kill him- self. He offered to marry the young woman at Plymouth ; she discovered that he had a wife in Jersey, and dismissed him ; he went to her lodgings with two loaded pistols, fired one at her, and discharged the other at him- self, but neither took effect. The woman ran away after the first shot, and Lebire left the place when he had failed in his attempt on his own life. He was arrested next day.

The first "garotte " robbery in the vicinity of Nottingham is reported. The victim was Mr. Dearden, a bookseller, who was returning home at night to his residence in the suburbs. The ruffians got clear off.

A fatal accident occurred on the railway, near Harrow, to an up express- train, on Wednesday night. When some little distance to the South of the station, the tire of the near leading wheel of the engine became detached, and left the rails. "The speed at which the train was travelling had the effect of keeping the carriages on the line, and the engine ran along the ballast in a parallel line with and about six inches from the rails, for nearly a quarter of a mile. At this point the line suddenly curves, and there being no flange to keep the engine on the rails, it ran down the embankment, a distance of six or seven feet, and buried itself deeply in the earth. At the same instant, the coupling-chain between the tender and the guard's break snapped, and the carriage; taking an opposite direction from the engine, ran across the down-line of rails. The guard's break caught the end of the tender as it left the line, and, after turning completely over, was literally crushed by the carriages which followed. Bar- tholomew, the guard, was frightfully mutilated, and killed on the spot. This disaster had scarcely taken place when the down goods-train, leaving Camden at eleven p. m., arrived at the spot, and, in the absence of any warning signal, ran directly into the debris ; striking a composite carriage with such force as to cut it completely in half, throwing the engine and se- veral trucks off the rails, and creating a frightful scene of destruction and confusion. The driver of the express was thrown completely over the hedge into an adjoining field, where the wet soil protected him from serious injury. The fireman fell between the rails, and escaped most miraculously—several of the carriages having passed over him without inflicting any personal injury. The driver and stoker of the goods-train were much shaken, but not otherwise hurt." The passengers seem to have escaped with little more than a fright. The disaster caused great delay in the passage of trains.

A young man who had been recently stationed at a level crossing on the Gloucester and Dean Forest line of railway, in the pariah of Westbury- upon-Severn, has been dashed to pieces by a train. He stood between the two lines of rails to signal a down-train that the line was "all right" ; as he stepped back upon the up-line a fast train struck him.

Nine miners have perished, and others have been badly hurt, by an ex- plosion in Elaecar Low Pit, the property of Earl Fitzwilliam. The pit is a " fiery " one. A " hurrier" left a trap-door open ; ventilation was thus stopped in a portion of the mine for some time ; when a miner closed the door, the reestablished current drove gas which had been accumulating to a place where a number of colliers were at work ; audit exploded at the flame of their safety-lamps, some having had the tope removed.

The Coroner's Jury that sat on the bodies of the two men who were killed in Shortwood coal-pit, near Bristol, by the rushing in of water from an old mine, has returned a verdict of "Accidental death." The Government In- spector condemned the manner in which the mine was worked, especially the carrying the new so close to the old workings. He also said that sufficient precautions for the safety of the men in ascending the shaft had not been taken. One of the proprietors replied, that alterations were about to be made in the mode of working ; as to the precautions for the safety of the men, the miners would set them at naught. The Coroner testified to the truth of the latter statement: the unfortunate men probably perished by their own reckless attempts to escape from the flow of water.

Robert Watson, a man employed to brew for a hotel at Blackpool, fell into a copper of boiling water ; he was pulled out immediately, but, after suffer- ing great agony, he died next day.

The recent wet weather has caused large falls of cliff at Dover and Hast- ings. At the former place, some forty or fifty tons of chalk fell upon the back part of a house in Snargate Street, crushing several of the rooms: no person was hurt. Other parts of the cliff extending along the rear of Snar- gate Street are pronounced to be in a dangerous state. At Hastings, a large mass of the sandstone cliffs to the Eastward of the town fell upon the beach : a man and a woman had passed a few seconds before, and the woman fainted on perceiving her narrow escape.