NEWS OF THE WEEK.

EXCEPT time, the rate of discount, and the Briggs murder, nothing appears to have made any progress this week. The Danish negotiation at Vienna appears to be as completely at a stand-still as if its only object were delay, which perhaps it is ; Germany has begun to talk of who will absorb Brunswick when the present Duke dies, which is the last resort of the Germans in moments of extreme dejection ; and even in America Muller divided the interest with M'Clellan. In the City, matters still look very threatening for the always delicate period which is ap- proaching. Nine or ten per cent. would no doubt bring us plenty of money from Germany, if the Germans have any confidence in English bills at the present moment,—but the Germans are a somewhat over-cautious people in business, and their fears for the unsoundness of our trade are just now extravagant. No doubt there are unsound bills about, and the failure of any large bank might be a great disaster. But on the whole the business of England has been good and profitable for some time past. But if a high rate of discount faits in bringing us money from the Continent, and has to operate on the money market by the painful and cumbrous process of raising general prices, and so discouraging imports and encouraging exports,—no doubt much suffering must precede an effectual cure.

The American news of the week is not unimportant. General Grant's position on the Weldon Railroad is solidly established and fortified, and his cavalry is proceeding thence to destroy the Dan- ville Railroad, the only other Southern road of communication with Richmond. The Times calls these " unintelligible operations," but they are intelligible enough to the inhabitants of Richmond, whose organs are in considerable alarm on the subject. Their supplies come entirely from the South, and can come only thence, and if these railroads are once firmly held it would probably cause the evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond. It is the great expedition up the Shenandoah Valley which has so drained the army of General Lee as to render the bloody opposition offered by the Confederates to this movement ineffectual, though the loss on both sides was equal to that of a great engagement. From Atlanta there is no fresh news, except that, on the taking of a line of rifle pits by General Sherman's army, two hundred Con- federates deserted and came over to the Federals under the fire of their comrades. In Mobile, Fort Morgan had been invested, but was resisting stoutly. The invasion of Maryland by General Early, who is said to be supported by General Lee in person with a heavy detachment from the garrisons of Richmond and Petersburg, had not yet begun. The Federal General Sheridan with a very con- siderable army held the fords of the Potomac at the last advices, and it would require more than 30,000 or 40,000 men to cross in his face.

The latest news of the Chicago meeting of Democrats, which was to assemble on the 29th ult., renders the nomination of General Al'Clellan as the Democratic candidate exceedingly likely. His latest speeches, and manifestoes in the papers were strongly for the war and union, and even on the anti-slavery question, in which it is known that he is opposed to the policy of Mr. Lincoln, he had been playing for doubtful votes by saying that it could not be denied that slavery was the cause of the war. The only substantial difference between his policy and that of the President is that he would bribe the South to return by guaran-

teeing them as much slavery—as much of the root of the quarrel— as is now left them,—in order, we suppose, that the war may spring up again as soon as it is ended. Ile also denounces the suspension of habeas corpus and the other " unconstitutional " acts of the Administration. It seems that the Northerners everywhere,—of all but the New England shade of politics,—are still all but indifferent to the slavery question as compared with the Union question. Our own able correspondent says as much for himself in another column, in a paragraph which we do not hesitate to pronounce as unatates- manlike as it seems to ua unjust. It seems it takes more than four years of civil war to teach our Northern cousins, as Mr. Lowell says, " the bravery "

"To b'lieve ez hard, come weal, come woe, In freedom ez Jeff does in slavery."

It is most unjust to say the 'tepees have done nothing for them- selves when the black troops have behaved as they have in a hundred engagements. The Americans have never seriously believed in their declaration of independence, and they do not believe in it yet.

Muller is again the hero of the day. The cook, who slept near him on his passage out, had paid particular attention, to the fitful sleep of that unhappy German, and the New York reporters writer word how he used to start in his sleep on the voyage, and cry " Hands off !" The steerage .passengers, however, had been " favour- ably impressed" by him. The people in New York feared that the Victoria might fall a victim to the Confederate cruiser Tallahassee, as did the Adriatic belonging to the same line and owners ; but there was no such escape in store for Muller. On the 24th of August the Victoria entered the bay, and• some excursionists, anxious, we suppose, to give Muller a chance of jumping overboard, called out, " How are you Muller the murderer ?" but without catching his ear. When the American police-officers boarded the Victoria and captured Muller he merely turned pale and denied the murder. Mr. Death identified him at once from amongst a considerable group as the man who had exchanged the chain in his shop, and packed up in his box was found Mr. Briggs' watch, and strange to say, Mr. Briggs hat also, with " Digance, hatter," inside. Miller said he had had the hat twelve months and the watch two years. He maintained his composure through hiss examination, which had not concluded when the last mail left. The evidence is ample to commit him, and there can be no doubt that he will be banded over to the English officers of justice, and re-appear in this country, to the great delight of our newspapers,. probably by the next mail.

The effect of the suspense and delay in apprehending Miiller on the imagination of our lower class is remarkable. For the third time last Wednesday a drunken man accused himself,—probably in delirium tremens,—of having been Muller's accomplice and given Mr. Briggs some of the blows which killed him. George Augustus King, apparently as innocent as Mr. Briggs himself of the crime, after drinking some four " drops" of brandy, confided to Mr. Buckley, of the Ranelagh Arms Tavern; Old Ford, thit he wished to have a "load like 50 lbs. taken off his shoulders,"—the weight of guilt in this mates mind, we may observe, was not extra- vagant,—and further made a detailed confession of the plot and its execution, he having struck Mr. Briggs twice, and Muller three times,—his imagination taking two-fifths of the guilt and modestly leaving the more distinguished criminal the majority. A police-icspector gave evidence that the whole thing was a drunken delusion, but Mr. Ellison remanded him for a week, we suppose as a mild warning. It is clear that somewhere deep down in the murky fancy of many of our labouring men is a flickering ambition to have been Mailer's mythical comrade, and the influence of alcohol precipitates the wish into the belief ; or, as Strauss would say, crystallizes the myth.

The Czarewitch is said to be betrothed, or on the eve of betrothal, to the Princess Dagmar of Denmark. Whether the Russian alliance will do more for Denmark than the British remains to be seen. Congresses are the new occupation of the long vacation. Instead of all the people " running together into one place " as they do in the season, they all run together into many places, there to discuss un- ripe questions, and, by discussing, ripen them. There has just been an International Congress at Geneva about neutral hospitalein time of war ; a Roman Catholic Congress is now going on at Matinee; two Church Congresses (opposition) are to meet soon in England, —the High Church one at Bristol, the Evangelical at Ipswich ; and the Social Science Congress is now maturing its last preparations for its meeting at York on the 22nd.

The Roman Catholic Congress at Malines has been very Roman Catholic indeed. They began by voting an address to the Pope, in which they say, " The more the pontifical royalty is attacked and misunderstood the more ardently we apply ourselves to its defence, the more we condemn the sacrilegious usurpations of which it is the object, the more closely we rally ourselves around the Holy See- the fruitful and inexhaustible source of truth and of justice— against which the league of the unbelieving and the impious has for ages used its efforts." The asylum granted to Crocco and his brigand friends in Rome was, we suppose, in the mind of the declarants when they spoke thus of the secular power of the Pope. It is stated that after an address from a Jesuit Father Felix, who endeavoured to reconcile the Roman Church with liberty of con- science,—the meeting being still red-hot with the fire of his enthusiastic eloquence,—he was moved in the impulse of the moment to conclude with, " I propose to you to terminate this sitting by a cheer in honour of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour," -which was responded to in a tumult of excitement by loud cries of 4' Vice Jesus-Christ 1"—cries which were followed by loud excla- mations of " Vive le pore Felix 1" " Vivent lea Jesuites !" We have heard of " Vive In Mort !" and could conceive a " Vive In Vie!" —but when one hears of the crack-brained enthusiasts praying for life for the eternal Fountain of life, it is not easy to believe tthtt the dancing little bubbles of this ebbing and flowing hot spring can come from the depths of that eternal ocean to which they trace it,—or anywhence indeed but from the shallow and muddy fountain of a sort of religions spa.

The Social Science meeting at York on the 22nd promises very well. The Railway Companies, Great Northern, London and North-Western, Midland, Great Western, and others, have pro- mised return tickets for single fares during the week of its session to all bolding members' tickets ; the Archbishop of York is to preach before the Congress in the Minster, and Lord Brougham as usual is to preside at a Working Men's Meeting. The condi- tion of the real-property laws in all three divisions of the kingdom, so much discussed about a year ago after Mr. Bright's speech at Rochdale and Mr. Cobden's controversy with Mr. De- lane, is to be canvassed thoroughly. Sir Walter Crofton is to inquire into the assimilation of penal discipline in our county gaols, Dr. Vaughan, the former Head Master of Harrow, and Dr. Kennedy, the Masterof Shrewsbury School, are to join in the discussion on our public-school education; and the mode of mating our gram- mar-schools of more real use to the working-classes is to be dis- cussed by men who have long been devoting much time to the subject. A good discussion, including representatives of the working-classes, is looked for on the subject of their provident societies, and on their co-operative schemes, and altogether we hope for a meeting of a more than usually practical character, if those who know little will only listen, and those who know much speak.

The Federal Council of the Swiss Cantons has declared M. Cheneviere's election valid,—as was of course to have been expected, and is now engaged in investigating who were the instigators of the wretches who fired and prepared to fire on an unarmed crowd. M. James Fazy himself has, it is said, fled across the frontier, assert. ing that he fears assassination. But he has addressed a letter to the Feleral Commissioners exculpating himself from any part or share in the violence, " although I consider the taking up of arms at St. Gervais fully justified by what had occurred at the Hotel de Ville." M. Fazy has extraordinary notions of what justifies a mob in taking up arms. The Conservatives, astounded at the per- fectly illegal decision of the Electoral Bureau, approached the Grand Council in the H6tel de Ville in a great procession entreating them to cancel the decree of the Electoral Bureau, and when the Grand Council said that it would be a second breach of the law to annul arbitrarily a decision given, on however bad grounds, by the legal tribunal,—the prowd remained till they had obtained a promise that the Council of State would re-assemble the Electoral Bureau, and get them to reconsider, and if possible to revoke, the illegal decision arrived at. This was all that was going on at the Hotel de Ville—which M. James Fazy thinks warranted the taking up of arms by a mob. If an orderly crowd goes to Westminster with a petition the prayer of which is unpleasant to St. Giles's,- St. Giles's is justified in a call to arms M. Fazy feels that he fired the magazine though he did not order the explosion, and does not quite like to leave his creatures and tools to bear the blame alone.

This day week Baron Marochetti's bronze statue of Sir G. C. Lewis was uncovered at Hereford by Lord Palmerston. The Rev. Archer Clive, speaking on behalf of the Committee, made a simple and sensible speech, truly claiming that what they had done and written in commemoration of Sir G. C. Lewis was " like him whom it commemorates, simple and un- pretending." " We have not to ask your Lordship," con- tinued ?I r. Clive, " to sanction the exaggerated praise of a lying epitaph,"—nor had they ; for the only words descriptive of Sir G. C. Lewis on the pedestal of the statue were, " A wise and honest statesman, a profound scholir, a kind and firm friend,"—. words quite within the truth they were intended to express. The statue is in bronze, 1 feet 6 inches high, and is placed on a block of unpolished Penrhyn granite, upon which rests a moulded polished pedestal, the total height being 14 feet. The dress is the plain frock. coat and trousers, and the likeness is said to be good. Lord Palmerston's speech, of which we have spoken elsewhere, was cordial but dull, and a little too full of the idea that every one who sees a statue to a great man is inspired to noble and beneficent actions in the vague hope he may so gain a statue too. It is not a very powerful or living motive with ordinary mortals. We have never heard that the people of Russell Square are remarkable for high ambitions in consequence of the stony Duke of Bedford who presides there.

A correspondent in Tuesday's Times gives an acconnt of a wonderful engineering feat in Brazil. The railway from the port of Santos to San Paulo has to cross, eight miles from the former place, the mountain range of Sierra do Mar, and to accomplish this an ascent of 2,600 feet has to be made in the course of five miles. To effect this Mr. Brunlees, the engineer, has devised a scheme by which the ascent is made in four divisions of a mile and a quarter each, with stationary engines at their summits, the gradient throughout being one in ten. The first division is already iu operation, and rapid progress is being made with the third, the most arduous of all. The line has there to cross a gloomy ravine 900 feet in breadth, known as the " Bocce do In- ferno," and rests on iron columns bedded ou stone piers 200 feet below. The steel wire rope used for drawing up the trains is 1* inch diameter. All this engineering skill has not been ex- hibited to no purpose, as the line will open up a most important coffee district at present almost inaccessible.

The brigandage in the South Neapolitan provinces is said by our correspondent from Turin to have received a severe blow by the abdication of the greatest brigand chief, Crocco, who dis- banded his men, escaped alone through the mountains to Rome, and there got the protection of a Spanish passport and ship-of-war to Spain. Farina, another brigand chief taken by the French, has been delivered up to the Italian authorities, and leaders are said to be coming in and surrendering themselves in many quarters: In the provinces the influence of the Italian Government gains much more rapidly than in the city of Naples itself, where there is still a savage animosity towards the Government which has degraded Naples from the capital of a kingdom and the residence of a court into a provincial town. When the King recently went to Naples on occasion of opening the South Italian Railway, one of the minor diplomatists who accompanied him, and was present at the banquet given to His Majesty on the occasion, observed to the wife of thepre- feet whom he took down to dinner, in despair of any other conversa- tion, " Madame, vous avez encore ici beaucoup de brigands." "Monsieur," replied the lady, with vicious emphasis, "Toes que vous voyez ici sont brigands, exceptes vous et votes collegue."

M. Dumas has addressed a curious letter to the Emperor on the indignities and injuries which the Parisian censorship has inflicted on his books. There were three persons, he says, at the head of French literature in 1830, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and himself. Although the least worthy of the three he has become the most widely known, for Lamartine is a thinker, Hugo is a dreamer, " but I am a popu- larizer,"—" moije suis vulgarisateur." Lamartine is ruined, Hugo proscribed,—and he himself is being ruined by the censorship. )Twelve hundred volumes have owed their birth to his brain, and of

these there is not one, he says, which could excite a disaffected thought in an ouvrier, or raise a blush on the cheek of the most deli- cate girl. But the censorship has always been victimizing him never- theless. In twelve years it has stifled one work which was sold for 80,500 francs, prohibited a play for seven years after 800 represen- tations, another play for six years after 300 representations, another for six years after 350 representations, and last of all, it has just -stopped the "Mohicans of Paris." In Charles X.'s reign, in Louis Philippe's reign, says M. Dumas, " I never once had a piece either -suspended or arrested." He estimates his losses by the censorship at .500,000 franca, or 20,000/.,—perhaps somewhat extravagantly,— but still the picture this gives of the comparative literary freedom -of the empire is certainly a very dark one.

Mr. Burroughes, late M.P. for East Norfolk, was charged on -Monday with neglect of sanitary arrangements on his property, and the following facts were disclosed :—It appeared in one case that an three cottages of two rooms each belonging to Mr. Burroughes no less than twenty-one men, women, and children, were crowded, —in one cottage lived a man, his wife, and seven children,—that for these twenty-one persons there was no privy accommodation whatever, and that in its stead were " holes, one immediately ‘opposite the cottage door and another within a few feet of the .cottage door." Another case was, if anything, still worse. A man, his wife, a grown-up daughter, her illegitimate child, and two grown-up sons, all lived in a but with the thatch broken away, open to the rain, and absolutely destitute of ‘either drainage or privy accommodation. Mr. Burroughes aggravates matters, if it is possible, by his defence. lie called a witness to prove that " there was no offensive smell," and actually pleaded that the " holes were at some distance -from the .cottages." The Bench ordered an abatement of the nuisance in both cases, and allowed costs against Mr. Burroughes, whereupon that gentleman appealed to Quarter Sessions. There are, we fear, rtoo many landlords in the eastern counties against whom similar .charges might be brought ; but we trust there are few who would .show the cynical contempt for the duties of property and for com- mon humanity involved in Mr. Burroughes' defence.

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel is making fresh .and very earnest appeals for further funds to promote the missions .of the Church under episcopal organization in India, Labuan, Africa, Canada, Columbia, and the Sandwich Islands, on which the Times remarks, not without force, that several of the African Bishops in favour of whom the appeal is made by the society have lately openly disclaimed all connection with the Male Church of England, disclaimed the decision of the Privy Council, and alto- gether rejected the doctrinal authority of her ecclesiastical courts. This is true, and may fairly influence laymen's subscriptions to the missions directed by these recalcitrant Bishops. As regards, how- 'ever, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, it is only fair to note that the Bishop of Natal himself bears his testimony to its temper and moderation. In a letter to last Saturday's 'Times he says, " I am aware that the threat has been used in the case of at least one of the most able missionaries in my own diocese that if he did not comply with the orders of the -metropolitan, and read in his church the so-called 'sentence 'of deposition,' his licence would be withdrawn, and his name would be struck off from the list of the Society for the Propagation -of the Gospel. It is right I should add that this society had ;given no authority to the Bishop of Cape Town to use this kind ef intimidation in the case of any of its missionaries, and had in fact declined to comply with the Bishop's request that no draft -should be honoured from any of the clergy of my diocese which was not countersigned by himself or his commissary." We trust the society will adhere to this wise course of resisting the attempt to turn the English Colonial Churches into free Churches governed by dogmatic bigotry alone. The free missions are always in danger of a little dogmatic fanaticism, and it is only wholesome that there should be at least one mission—the Church mission— governed by the more moderate and liberal spirit which the State has infused into the Anglican Church.

Birmingham has lost in Sir John Ratcliff a " man of mark," and, what is better far, a man of worth. A self-made man, so far as a man may be so called who rises by honest industry from a middle state to the highest civic position, he always remembered the material and spiritual interests of his fellow-citizens, to which he regularly devoted a large portion of his princely income. Elected three times Mayor of his native city, he was largely instrumental in procuring for his townsmen the demesne of Aston Park, which was publicly opened by Her Majesty in June, 1857, when the Queen accepted the invitation of the civic authorities to visit the park and partake of dinner there, on which occasion she conferred on the Mayor the honour of knighthood. Sir John Rateliff has died with. out issue, and it is expected that the public institutions of Bir- mingham will largely benefit by his will.

The Birmingham Musical Festival has passed off with great éclat; and the benefit to the funds of the General Hospital promises to be considerable. The gathering of visitors was enormous, and quite exceeded all Birmingham capacity of hotel accommodation, and as usual included all the magnates of the district. Costa's new oratorio achieved a great success, and the performances were all excellent.

The International Convention at Geneva to consider the position of the hospitals and wounded in time of war has finished its labours by adopting ten resolutions,—receiving the provisional assent of France, Italy, Prussia, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, and several of the smaller German Powers. The drift of them is that hospitals and ambulances and the materiel of hospitals and the servants of hospitals are to be regarded as neutral in time of war, and also wounded soldiers, but the latter, if capable of bearing arms again, may be treated as prisoners of war unless they engage not to do so ; if incapable of bearing arms again they may be dismissed. It does not seem that England or manyother of the represented Powers have signed the articles ; but probably this is due less to anything intrinsically objectionable in them than to accidental circum- stances. There does not seem to be any article materially quali- fying the advantages of military success,—and this is the sole condition of such humane articles as these being observed.

Profaner Anderson, the well-known conjuror, has returned to London after seven years' absence. His repertory of " magic " is of course more extensive than ever, but the specialty of his present entertainment is that he produces as professed illusions the phe- nomena on which so-called spiritualists rest their claims to credence for their system. In short he does cleverly and with certainty what they do clumsily and only under " favourable circumstances," —1. e., when detection is not impending.

A prospectus has been issued of the Credit Fonder and Mobilier Company of England, with a capital of 2,000,0001. in 100,000 shares of 201. each. This company is about to be formed by the amalgamation of the Credit Fonder and Credit Mobilier Com- panies, both of which, although their operations have only ex- tended over a period of about six months, have declared a dividend and bonus of 21. per share on 51. paid, and have also added 100,0001. to their reserve funds. the number of shares reserved for the general public is 20,000, at a premium of 2/. 13s. Id. per share.

The Directors of the Bank of England have raised the minimum rate of discount to nine per cent. The stock of bullion is now 12,970,4471. During the week the market for home securities has been very dull, and a heavy fall has taken place in prices. On Saturday last Consols left off at 881 1 for money, and 881 1 for account. Yesterday they closed at 871 j for transfer, and 871 for time. The Bank of France has raised its rate to seven per cent.

The following table shows the closing prices of the leading Foreign Securities yesterday and on Friday week :-

Friday, Sept. 2. Friday, Sept. 9,

Greek 24 23f Mexican Spanish Passive •• .• Do. Coupons ..

1)0. Certificates 1314 27f aoi

09

Turkish 6 per Ceuta., 1858.. .. 68

70 1862.. „ ConsolidOs.. 60 50

The leading British Railways yesterday and on Friday week left off at the following prices :—

Caledonian Great Eastern ..

Great Northern ..

Great Western......

Lancashire and Yorkshire London and Brighton .. London and North-Western London and South-Western London, Chatham, and Dover Midland ..

North-Eastern, Berwick .• Do. York ..

West Midland, Oxford -.

•• •• •• ••

••

Friday, Sept 2.

125 .. 464 130 .. 641 1154 1028 112 95 .. 40

131 .. .. 93

1411 051 •

Friday, Sept. 0. 123 45 127 074

114 102 1114 94 32i 729 140