abe _Metropolis.

"%ere was a very full attendance in the Vestry at Marylebone Court- illistiie*s.Saterday, to witbess,the conclusion of the adjourned debate on the charge against Dr. Penfold, the Reeterci Trinity Chmth. The motion before the Vestry was, that the minute of a resolution censuring Dr. Pen- fold, passed on the 11th January, be net confirmed ; and, after a few remarks that motion was agreed to nnanimonsly. The 25i note in dispute ha been paid into the fluids of the Girls Charity School.

The parishioners of St. Anne's, Westminster' met in Vestry on Thurs- day, and unanimously adapted a petition for repeal of the Window-tax.

The Lancet contradicts the rumoured changes in the Royal College of Surgeons. It states, that there has not been any correspondence between the Council and Sir James Graham on the subject of a supplemental char- ter; no propositions relative to a new charter have been adopted by the Council; no provision relative to the principles of any such document have been sanctioned by the Council; and no details on the subject have been arranged. The Medical Times, however, avers that the Council of the Col- lege met again on the 22d, to consider the provisions of the intended new charter.

A meeting of the medical profession was held in the Committee-room of the General Medical Protection Assembly, in Exeter Hall, on Monday evening, to consider a motion of which Mr. Wakley had given notice. He moved a petition to the Queen, praying that her Majesty would not sane don any alteration in the existing charter of the Royal College of Surgeons, until the members of the College, amounting to more than 10,000 persons, had had an opportunity of stating their rights and grievances. The motion was carried unanimously.

Another meeting of members of the medical profession was held at the Charlotte Street School of Medicine, Bloomsbury, on Monday ; Dr. Col lier presiding. Mr. Dermott, a consulting surgeon and teacher of anatomy of twenty-two years standing, had been refused a fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons; and his case had been submitted to Mr. Fitzroy Kelly, for a legal opinion as to the power of the College to refuse admission. 'ltr. Kelly declared that the power of the College could not be impeached, nor was there any remedy for the grievance at law ; and he therefore recom- mended a petition to the Crown and Legislature. Petitions were adopted, and were signed by Mr. Dermott and the gentlemen present ; and a depu- tation was appointed to wait on Sir James Graham with the petition for the Queen.

A meeting of general practitioners was held at Radley's Hotel, Bridge Street, Blackfriars, on Tuesday evening, to take the Medical Reform 'Bill into consideration. Mr. J. S. Smith was called to the chair. It was con- tended that the bill, instead of elevating the character of the profession, would destroy its respectability; that it would let loose upon the public assistants half-educated; and that the power of making appointments to he vested in the Council of Health is very objectionable. Resolutions against the measure passed unanimously; and among them was one constituting a society of City practitioners, to assist in the opposition, and to aid in ch- taining a charter of incorporation for general practitioners.

The New Zealand Company met on Thursday, by adjournment. Mr. Somes, the Governor, had applied to know definitively the intentions of Government. In reply, Lord Stanley said that he proposed to present to Parliament, at the opening of the session, the instructions issued by hint to the Governor of New Zealand subsequently to the report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons. The meeting was therefore again adjourned for a fortnight.

The Governors of the Refuge for the Destitute held their annual meet- ing on Thursday, at the London Tavern. The report stated that a com- munication from the Home Secretary had been received, proposing the union of the Refuge for the Destitute with the Philanthropic Society; that the Committee would take the subject into consideration. On th 1st January 1844, the number of males in the establishment at Heaton was 113; and since that time 92 had been received, (many of them from the va - rious prisons, under orders from the Secretary of State,) and provided with the means of earning their own living. The asylum now contained 122. Including the Government grant of 3,000E, the receipts amounted to 6 131., and the expenditure to 5,749/.

In a letter to the Times, dated" 7 Silver Street, Wood Street., City, Fri- day, 24th January," Mr. Thomas Freeston Kirby recounts a painful in- stance of strictly enforcing the Rubric. "About five years since, we buried a child, two years old, at Cripplegate Church, City. No question was then raised in reference to the baptism of that child. Providence has now called another child from us, eighteen months old: we were desirous of having his remains deposited with the other child's; particularly was it the wish of the mother, who is a member of the Church of England. Appli- cation was made to the sexton, the fees were paid, the time appointed for banal; and at four o'clock on Thursday afternoon, the corpse and mourners entered the church; when I, the father, was requested to walk into the Vestry. The Curate, Mr. Robert Lynam, there stated, that he had just ascertained that the child had not been baptized, and that I was an Unitarian; therefore he could not bury the child. I urged the impropriety of making the objection when the corpse arid mourners were in the church; that it should have been made at the time when the ground was taken and the fees paid, and the feelings of the parents thus spared. The Curate evidently was anxious to be as kind to us as possible under the circumstances, and went for advice to theVicar, Dr. Blomberg; who positively requested him not to bury the child. I therefore with difficulty led my famtied wife out of the church, and the mourners and corpse proceeded home. The psanlul sensation your readers may imagine."

The Reverend Dr.13lomberg has written to the Times, to contradict the charge against himself— The knowledge that the child had not been baptized was the result of no spool taneous or officious inquiry. "Just before entering upon the service, the fact that the child had not been baptized was brought under the notice of my Curate, Mr. Lynam, in a manner which could not hedisregarded; and the truth of what bad been stated was admitted when the father was spoken to on the subject. Mr. Lynam considered himself bound by the Rubric, and informed the parties of the difficulty in which he was placed. Re came to me, at the Vicarage, to-ask what he ought to do. I could not give any directions in opposition to the Rubric: 'but it conveys a very erroneous impression of my advice to say that I positively re- quested Mr. Lynam not to bury the child.' Anything so unfeeling could Bot escape my lips. Mr. Lynam, the officiating minister, thought the Rubric binding, and I had no power to relieve him from the painful necessity of acting according to its plain directions. This was the substance of our interview." "The farthest thing from my thoughts was needlessly to give pain to any one."

Mr. Platt took the usual oaths before the Lord Chancellor, as one of the Barons of the Court of Exchequer, on Tuesday. Subsequently, he was

-vadmitted as a Sergeant-at-law in the Court of Common Pleas, with the Waal ceremonies; took the customary oaths in the Court of Queen's Bench, and his seat in his own court.

Mr. Henry John Shepherd, Queen's Counsel, was sworn in as a Com- missioner in Bankruptcy, in the room of Sir Charles Frederick Williams, on Tuesday.

• Mr. Shepherd was entitled to compensation exceeding 1,2001. per annum as Clerk of the Custodies, upon the abolition of that office in 1842; and this gam will therefore be saved by his new appointment. Mr. Shepherd is the son of the late Sir Samuel Shepherd, formerly Attorney-General, and afterwards Chief Baron of Scotland.

In the Court of Queen's Bench, on Tuesday, Mr. C. Evans applied to the Court for a peremptory mandamus to compel the Reverend Mr. Chapman, Vicar of Ba- singbourne, to bury the body of a child which has lain unburied since the 17th February 1840. He had refused to do the duty, on the ground that the child had been baptized by a Dissenting minister. Similar proceedings bad been instituted against Mr. Chapman in the .Arches Court ; but they failed because the Court held that sufficient notice of the burial had not been given to the clergyman. Some conversation arose as to the jurisdiction of the Queen's Bench ; but it was main- tained by Mr. Evans. Lord Denman having remarked that a case which had been lying over for five years could not have been considered very pressing by the parties, Mr. Evans observed, that the body was lying in a double coffin in a room occupied by six persons. Lord Denman said that counsel had better in the first instance havers rule to show cause. In the course of some further conversation, it came out, that though the clergyman had repeatedly declared that he never would bury the child, no formal application had been made to him since May 1841, or since the decision of the Ecclesiastical Court. The Court thought that the mere declaration' without an express and recent demand and refusal was insuf- ficient to entitle the applicant to the rule; which was accordingly refused.

In the same Court, yesterday, Lord Denman gave judgment on a rule to set aside the habeas corpus granted by Mr. Baron Rolfe, to bring Mr. Charles Caries Wilson from his prison in Jersey. The Court held that a writ of habeas corpus runs in Jersey, and must be obeyed by the local authorities; and that the informali- ties alleged against the present writ were not sufficient to set it aside. Mr. Wilson will be brouhgt up in ten days.

In the Arches Court, yesterday, Sir Herbert Jenner Fust delivered judgment in the ease of Faulkner versus Litchfield and others In the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Cambridge, the Camden Society and the parishioners, without the knowledge of the incumbent, the Reverend Mr. Faulkner, had erected a stone altar and a credence-table in place of the communion-table. The Churchwardens applied to the Chancellor of the diocese of Ely, for a faculty confirming these and several other alterations in the church; but Mr. Faulkner opposed its issue, on the ground that the communion-table alone could legally be put up in the church. The Chancellor decided against the objection. Sir Herbert Fast's judgment occupied five hours in the delivery; for he reviewed the whole history of the subject, beginning before the time of the Reformation. He showed that in the reign of Edward the Sixth, it was expressly directed by an order in Council, that the stone altar should be discontinued, and a moveable wooden table substitu- ted; and that such was uniformly the purport of regulations issued in the Reformed Church at subsequent periods; the object being, to discountenance the supersti- tious uses of Popery. When the altar was abolished, it was never intended to continue the use of the credence-table. He therefore reversed the judgment of the Chancellor, amending the faculty in respect to the objectionable alterations; the respondents to bear the costs of the appeal.

The last case on the list of appeals from the Revising Barristers Courts, one of little interest, was disposed of in the Court of Common Pleas on Monday. With very few exceptions, the original decisions have been affirmed.

In the Bail Court, on Wednesday, Mr. John W. Smith applied for a writ of cer- tiorari to remove certain recognizances, in order that they might be disallowed. Lord Gifford had a dispute with a Mr. Moreland, about the right to use a fox- cover called Buscott, in Berkshire' Mr. Moreland, apprehending personal violence, caused Lord Gifford to be arrested on a warrant granted by Lord Radnor and Mr. Cleaver, Magistrates of the county ; and he was bound over to keep the peace. Counsel now objected, that a Peer cannot be bound over in any other place than in the Queen's Bench or the Court of Chancery, and that the warrant was granted on insufficient informations. As it appeared, however, that Lord Gifford was not in custody, Mr. Justice Williams held that the Court could not interfere, At the Mansionhonse on Tuesday, Mr. Robert Forbes junior, a ship and in- surance broker in Broad Street, was charged with publishing shameful libels against the firm of Rickards, Little, Rate, and Little East India merchants, and especially against Mr. Rate. It was stated, that Mr:Forbes had an ill-feeling to- wards Mr. Rate, and to vent this he had written a letter to prevent the marriage of that gentleman with the daughter of Mr. Andrew Spottiswoode, to whom he was paying his addresses; the attacks on the firm being subservient to that project. The first letter purported to be written by "A. S. Cust" for Messrs. Trueman and Cook, colonial brokers of Mincing Lane, and was sent to Messrs. Tagore and Company of Calcutta, announcing the insolvency of Messrs. Rickards and Corn- pony, when they in fact were in a most prosperous state. Messrs. Trueman and Cook never authorized such a letter to be written; and knew no Mr. Cast. Ano- ther letter was sent to Mr. Spottiswood_e, insinuating that the firm of Rickards was insolvent, and disparaging Mr. Rate's character and personal attractions. This letter was anonymous, and was dated "Aberdeen." A third, sent to the young lady's mother, asserted the insolvency of Rickards and Company, denounced Mr. Rate as a profligate man, and declared that he had been guilty of a trans- portable offence. Advertisements were also put into the papers last week falsely announcing Mr. Rate's marriage as having taken place. Evidence was given that the handwriting of the letters resembled that of Mr. Forbes, and that the state- ments in them were false. Mr. Forbes denied that he was the author of the letters • but the Lord Mayor held him to bail to answer any eilarge that may he brought against him in the Central Criminal Court.

Emma Whiter, a young woman in her twenty-first year, the daughter of a silk weaver, was murdered shortly after midnight on Tuesday, in Cross Street, Beth- nal Green. James Tapping, a young man of bad character, is in custody for the crime. He was "keeping company" with the girl, and was seen with her a few minutes before she was found dying from a pistol-shot in the head. There were also spots of blood on an apron which he wore when arrested shortly after the mur- der. When charged with the crime at the Bethnal Green Police-office, he made no defence, and he was remanded for a week.

An inquest has commenced. Evidence was given, that shortly after the mur- der Tapping went to a public-house and made use of strange expressions; one acclamation being—" The deed is done, and it cannot be undone." A gunmaker

• proved that he repaired a pistol for Tapping, and gave him four bullets: the pistol was found by the woman's body, and two bullets have been taken out of her head which fit the ganmaker's mould. The inquiry has been adjourned till Monday. A miserable murder and suicide have been committed in Finsbury:.,,rieseph Barry, a suigical-instruinent-maker, cut his wife's throat as she slept on Thurs:day night; and then cutting his own, spired by her side. Both of them were aged. lo reason is assigned for the crina2; but Mr. Barry appears to have shawls symptoms of a disordered mind.

A tward en the Great Wettern Railway has had his skull fractured, at. the West London Junction, by having his head 'rimmed between the buffers oft goods-trail and a stationary truck: his life is in