Qbe IfirtrupaliO.
Meetings have been held, during the week, in several of the prin- cipal Metropolitan parishes, to petition the House of Commons to reject the Lords' alterations in the Municipal Bill. Among them are the parishes of St. Alarylebone, St. Andrew Holborn, St. Alatthew Bethnal Green, St. Ann, St. Luke, St. Giles. and St. George Blooms- bury. The Alarylebone petition received 3051 signatures of house- holders in twelve hours.
A splendid specimen of the great American aloe, the stem of which is twenty feet high; may now be seen in full flower at Bute House, Old Brompton. There are upwards of nine hundred flowers on the plant. Viscountess Dillon, to whom the plant belongs, has given her gardener permission to show it to the public for his own benefit.
The plan which has lately been adopted by the Metropolitan Magis- trates, to prevent prisoners under sentence from holding conversation with each other,' is likely to prove abortive, so far as communication is concerned. Papers have lately been circulated at Id. each, to instruct pers'ons in the system of conversation by signs, as at the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb ; and some of the more expert thieves have thoroughly learned it, and become schoolmasters to their brethren of the craft. As the restriction does not extend to prisoners committed for trial, an excellent opportunity is afforded of their becoming profi- cients in the art, so as to enable them to converse with each other when undergoing the punishment which awaits them on conviction ; and they might thereby form the most diabolical plots without chance of detection. The system has begun to work already ; for prisoners who never see each other except at chapel, embrace that opportunity of making their wishes and determinations known.—Evening Paper.
On Saturday, the furze on Clapham Common was set fire to by an incendiary; being the third time during the last few weeks. T
in he in- habitants n the neighbourhood, aided by the Police, extinguished the
fire, after about two acres of brushwood and furze had been destroyed. A hid named Billet was examined before the Magistrates, on a charge of being the incendiary; but the evidence against him was insufficient, and he was discharged.
Mr. Riddle, the son of a gentleman residing near Lambeth Palace, was thrown from his horse, when riding on Monday evening in the Regent's Park, with so much violence, as to fracture the back of his head; and in about two hours he died, after suffering extreme pain.
Robert Swan, a private in the Scotch Fusileers, was committed from Bow Street on Tuesday, on a charge of extorting a watch and money from a gentleman residing at Carshalton, Surry, under a threat - of imputing to him a disgraceful offence.
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