5 SEPTEMBER 1863, Page 3

A curious statement is made concerning the " Derbyshire tragedy,"

as the dreadful newspaper slang very inappropriately calls it,—for it certainly needs art to transmute mere crime and suffering into tragedy. It is said that the murderer, Mr. Townley, after helping to carry his dead victim to the hall, took tea with her grandfather, who, in the absence of the police, " adopted this course for his own personal security and that of his domestics." The motive detracts from the Christian hospitality of the act; but perhaps the conduct of the murderer in accepting this very unusual invitation to tea —asking, perhaps, for another lump of sugar or more milk from the old man whose grandchild he had just destroyed— is the more curious study of the two. Mr. Townley must have enjoyed his tea.