NEWS OF TIIE WEEK.

THE result of General Hooker's advance has been a retreat. By manceuvres pronounced by competent judges bold and -skilful, he in five days crossed the Rappahannock-, and on the -2nd of May found himself in rear of General Lee. The Con- federate chief, alarmed for his communication with Rich- mond, withdrew most of his force from Fredericksburg, and -endeavoured to outflank Hooker on the right. He nearly succeeded, the ,eleventh division flying in panic, but was -stopped by General Hooker's own, commanded by General Terry, who was killed on the field. Meanwhile, General -Sedgwick, with 15,000 men, attacked the weakened force at Fredericksburg, and carried the heights. The Confede- rates were now placed betweentwo fires, and had General Stoneman, despatched for that purpose, succeeded in cutting the railway to Richmond, Lee might have been crushed. By that railway however, General Longstreet arrived with 45,000 men, and drove Sedgwick back over the river, the bridges over which were commanded by the Confederate guns. The Con- federates, therefore, commanded Hooker's line of retreat, and that General felt himself compelled to retire across the river. He accordingly crossed on the 5th, and only the rearguard was attacked. The total extent of loss during the three days' fighting is unknown ; but it is believed that General Hooker -will be superseded—a hasty and apparently unjust measure.

The week has been spent in the City in looking out for a -suitable candidate to replace Mr. Western Wood. Mr. Kirkman Hodgson, who would have been universally accept- - able, is unable, from his many occupations, to offer himself. Mr. Morley would please the Dissenting interest, but his name would lose his party two thousand votes among Churchmen, on a moderate estimate. Mr. Moore has the advantage of wealth, but it is not one that ought to weigh heavily in London. Of those seriously mentioned the most promising name hitherto has been Mr. Goschen's, who was on the Bank Direction, and is a member of one of the most solid City firms. Mr. Goschen was a first-class man at Oxford, and highly distinguished as a speaker at the Union, which has trained so many Parliamentary orators, from Gladstone downwards. The Egyptian loan, which he introduced last year, was a marked success. He is well known to have proved himself not only a sound, but an original economist. Practical men. are common enough, but a.practscaI man who can think clearly and express himself Vigorously is the true type of the commercial statesman who is wanted to represent the City in Parliament.

The Drawing-room held on Saturday by the Princess of Wales, as representative of the Queen, was attended by nearly two thousand ladies, the carriages stretching in one direction from Harley street to St. James's. The reception occupied nearly four hours ; ninny ladies were cooped up in their car- riages for six hours, and many more wasted three in the effort to get away after the presentation. The same complaint is heard after every drawing-room, and all the arrangements seem out of keeping with the age. The number of persons desiring to be presented has increased with the national wealth, while the habits of the Court have become more and more secluded. The Stuarts received always, and even the present family, though their etiquette has always been more rigorous, once received every week. Could not the number of drawing-rooms to be held in the season be fixed, and a reception suite erected of something like adequate size To recommend the adoption of the dress of the century, instead of the preposterous footman's livery now called a Court dress, would, we suppose, be heresy.

The Derby was the wettest known for years, the Prince of Wales not apparently enjoying his mother's prerogative of ordering the sun to shine. The crowd was enormous, and very miserable; the race slow, and the favourite, beaten apparently by the mu, did not win, leaving the blue ribbon of the turf to Mr. Naylor, the owner of Macaroni. By the way, the Derby, the first of English races, is the only one in which the winner obtains no memento of his victory which can be kept and handed down. Why not make the stakes guineas, and employ the odd shillings in a plain but massive gold cup ?

The complications in Prussia increase. The vote of the Chamber refusing the unconstitutional demand of Ministers to be exempt from the discipline of the Chamber was carried last Friday, by 29,5 to 20 votes. Nothing, indeed, could be more inconsistent, as the offending Minister von Boon had, as lately as the 19th of September, submitted himself dutifully to the discipline of the President, who warned him that it was unparliamentary to call any deputy's language " senseless" (widersinnig); and he withdrew the remark. Now, however, they persist, and have even managed to impli- cate the King in the quarrel. On Thursday last, Herr von Bismark read a message from the King, reproving the House for supporting the unconstitutional conduct of its President, stating that "such a position for the Ministers does not cor- respond with the dignity of the Crown," and advising the Chamber "to terminate such a state of things in order that the business of the House may continue." The Minister then left the House, and Herr Virchow moved that the royal message be referred to the committee on the address, " as the Ministers had misinformed the King." This course was unanimously adopted. In diplomacy, as in chess, the game usually approaches a termination when the player moves his king. The check-mate must come soon, or the board be violently overthrown.

We are glad to note that Lord Be Grey has triumphed over the Horse Guards in the first serious encounter,—the question of the New Zealand corninand. General Cameron, an able soldier, and one who commands the full confidence of the colonista, is to be continued in the command. Every new mail, however, brings evidence that New Zealand wants some- thing more than a good soldier—an able governor, such a man as we might choose for India, if the troubles of the colony are not to smoulder on for ever. At New Plymouth, the land of the settlers has never been restored by the natives ; though two years have elapsed since the war, the settlers are still huddled together in the town of New Plymouth. The mail roads are closed against the Queen's mails,— British wrecks are pillaged, the mail boxes seized, and the settlers forbidden to aid the passengers and crew,—and Englishmen are prohibited from going near their own land except on the insulting and treasonable condition of swearing allegiance to the Maori King! Clearly Sir • George Grey is not up to his work, and the sooner a strong ruler is sent there the better for the peace of the colony. The MonitPur de Aroule, which is as official as its civil namesake, affirms that the Regent of China has resolved to organize the whole Chinese Army, including the guard, under European officers and native lads trained in a military school to be established at Pekin. As lie has already an Anglo- Chinese marine, this resolution will place the whole fighting strength of the country under European control. The French are trying hard to obtain the direction of the new force, and, with a Zouare army and a semi-English navy, the position of the Imperial Government is likely to be a pleasant one. The facts are expected to convince the Japanese of the inex- pediency of their policy of isolation !

Mr. Dillwyn, member for Swansea, on Tuesday night raised a debate on the Irish Church, by a motion for a Select Committee to inquire how far the distribution of endowments for religious purposes in Ireland may be amended so as to benefit all classes of Her Majesty's subjects, and how far certain Parliamentary resolutions in the matter have been carried out. Mr. H. Seymour moved, as an amendment, for a Royal Commission to inquire into the proportions of revenue and population, and the possibility of redistribution within the Church itself. Mr. Whiteside, in a speech analyzed in another column, opposed both motion and amendment, and Mr. Bernal Osborne moved the adjournment of the debate, and gave notice that on going into Committee of Supply after Whitsuntide, he should move a resolution on the Irish Church.

Convocation has met again, and Archdeacon Denison has obtained a modified synodic condemnation of Dr. Colenso's book—that the book does in the judgment of the Upper House, "involve errors Of the most dangerous character, subversive of faith in the Bible as the Word of God"—a judgment protested against by the Bishop of London on Tuesday, and both protested and voted against on Wednesday by the Bishop of St. David's, who said that the propositions selected for condemnation by the Committee of the Lower House were "dangerous," and "required very much explanation, which they did not appear to have received, but, as far as he could judge of them, they were propositions which involved a variety of large, difficult, abstruse, theological questions, on which it would be very unadvisable for that Con- vocation to form a judgment." The Bishop of Salisbury only regretted that a stronger sentence had not been passed, and was totally unable to see that the possibility of judicial duties devolving on the Archbishop and Bishops affected the policy of prejudging the ease. He thought they might condemn vehemently as heretical what they might afterwards cheer- fully admit to be not illegal teaching; that is, apparently, they might set up a Court of Ecclesiastical Equity to determine what is the inner faith of the Church of England when the Court of Arches is at fault. We would rather not trust the Bishops with the administration of mere law, but to give them jurisdiction in equity would be a public scandal.

Sir G. Bowyer does not take much by worrying Lord Palmer- ston. In answer to the hon. baronet's importunities for his authority concerning the Brigand Committee in Rome, Lord Palmerston replied that if he were to give up his private autho- rities, he should soon be as ignorant of foreign affairs as the hon. baronet; but that the information, which it would be impos- sible for the Prime Minister of England to give, might be supplied in this particular case by communicating with a certain Jesuit Father Curce, who, on the 3rd May, preached in the Church of Santo Spirits dei Neapolitani a sermon to the ex-Bing of Naples, and a large Bourbonite audi- ence, reproaching them that by promises of money and inflammatory writing they kept hounding on the ignorant masses of Southern Italy to pillage and slaughter, and that while they could not afford a bajocco to their suffering fel- low-countrymen, who, but for Roman charity, would die of starvation, they were ready to pay for the outfit of these brigands. After this reply, much enjoyed by the House, Sir George Bowyer subsided.

Lord Ebury brought forward on Tuesday the second reading of his Bill to abolish the exceedingly objectionable subscription which beneficed clergymen give to the contents of the Prayer Book,—in the form of their "unfeigned assent and consent to anything contained in the Book of Common Prayer." He was supported by a very able and convincing speech from the Bishop of London, and a few masterly words from Lord Grey. He was opposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Oxford, who could not under- stand why a statement, which is habitually explained away, should excite scruples in any one, and thought, somewhat paradoxically, that to remove the necessity for such forced explanations would be to encourage insincerity in the clergy. To repeal this obsolete subscription now, said the Bishop of Oxford, "would leave some free as they supposed, no longer to believe with their hearts what they spoke with their tongues ;"—so that a measure whose only purpose it is to adapt the language of a declaration to its admitted meaning is opposed by dignitaries on the ground that it will tend to encourage the habit of not meaning what you say. You must say with your tongue a good deal more than you mean, in order that you may believe what you do mean with your heart, says the episcopal logic. Surely this is the form of thought of men who habitually say more than they feel ?

Mr. Consul Petherick, who was believed dead, has effected a junction with Captains Speke and Grant, on the Bahr-el- Abiad, or White Nile, and Captain Speke reports that he has at length discovered the source of the White Nile in the Lake of Victoria Nyanza, at least four degrees south of the equator, which must give a length to the Nile up to the end of this branchof at least 3,000 miles. The eastern bank is a vast gold-field. It seems to be determined that the region about the equator is a huge plateau of enormous swamps, from which rivers emerge in various directions, some flowing northward, like the Nile, and some east or west, like the Zambezi and the Benoit.

The aspect of Polish affairs remains almost unchanged, the severity of the Russians and the extent of the insurrection. alike increasing slowly. Volhynia, the Ukraine, and portions of Little Russia are announced this week as in open revolt, and the Finns are strangely disturbed. The municipalities of Abo and Helsingfors have both refused to sign addresses of devotion to the Emperor, and a rising is reported as imminent. On the other hand, the Czar seems to have made- up his mind to recede no farther. Ile has ordered two con- scriptions within three months, which will, it is calculated, leave him 200,000 disposable men, and his brother the Archduke Constantine has informed the higher military officers in Poland that the future is gloomy and a European war at hand. Poland has been divided into districts and the people forbidden to move from one to the other without passes, and great efforts are making in Russia to stir up a religious war. A proclamation is even circulated, ordering the extirpation of Catholics ; but this is, we suspect, an. invention intended to rouse the peasants.

On Monday the American prize courts were vehemently attacked by Lord Clanricarde in the House of Lords, and Lord Russell in reply showed that there was no substantial case against them. The American and English nation, he said, are now very much in the position of the friends who garotted each other in the excessive excitement of mind pro- duced by the garotte panic. England accuses America, with little or no cause, of wishing to prey on English commerce ; America accuses England, with equally little or less cause (if we except a few mischievous shipbuilders), of wishing to prey on American commerce ; and the only danger is that they will fly at each other under a false impression that each is a brigand at heart. The law officers of the Crown had found no fault with the judgments of the American prize courts, so far as they had as yet had authentic reports of the pro- ceedings.

There is still a hitch in the matter of the Greek throne. The Envoys despatched to Copenhagen a telegram that all will be settled, but all is not settled, and they are threatening to depart. It is believed that the obstacle is Prince Chris- tian, who holds out as if he were granting a favour, instead of receiving one. The interregnum is deplorable, as the Greek troops are losing all discipline. Thirty of them recently seized a young Austrian girl, a circus rider, in the streets of Athens, took her into the fields, and subjected her to the cruellest outrages. So hopeless did redress appear, hat Mr. Searlett, the British Minister, threatened, unless ustice were done, to quit the capital, and the Assembly passed a vote severely censuring the Ministry, which has ince been remodelled.

The Emperor has published portions of General Forey's iary in the Monsieur. From these it appears that the French army was three weeks marching from Orizaba to Puebla, a distance of eighty miles, and nineteen days attacking the city, which, on 2nd of April, had not been captured yet. The slow arch was due to the necessity of guarding communi- cations, and the slow siege to the determination of the Mexi- can, who have shown the old Spanish capacity for defending stone walls, and are making of Puebla a Saragossa. When Puebla is occupied, General Forey has still to march on Mexico, distant a hundred miles, and capture a city only to be approached through a lake, and which will be defended with the same desperate tenacity. No Mexicans, except the brigands commanded by Marquez, have yet joined the French, and General Forey reports that he has found it impossible to form an Indian division. The idea of doing so while the President of the Republic is an Indian suggests ignorance in high quarters in Paris.

The Panic rate of discount was raised last Saturday to 31 per cent., and again on Thursday to 4 per cent. ; the cause is an apprehension, rather than a clear indication, of a new drain of silver to the East. There is much Indian cotton to be paid for, and if Sir Charles Wood were to stop his drafts on the Indian Government, which at present give our merchants the means of meeting their engagements there, without the actual export of bullion, a considerable balance in silver would stream out to the East.

On the 28th March a human jaw was discovered among the stone implements in the gravel pit of Moulin-Quignon, near Abbeville, which gives rise to a curious inquiry. The con- troversy had long raged whether the flint axes and other rude implements discovered in these gravel pits in such large quantities really point to a pre-metallic age of human civil- ization or not,—and one hypothesis strove to establish that they might have been churned in some curious way inde- pendently of human art out of a great geological crisis. The only point in favour of so wild a supposition was that no human bones had ever yet been discovered amongst these relics of human agency, till this jaw was discovered in March last. It was deeply imbedded in " black seam flinty gravel." A single detached molar tooth was found at the same time. But the question immediately arose whether or not the jaw had been placed there by the cunning of the workmen, in order to be extracted. The evidence against this hypothesis seems now to be complete, and to have satis- fied even the English sceptics, but it is still doubted whether the jaw itself is really so ancient, or whether recent accidental disturbances may not somehow have placed it there. The physiology of the jaw appears to be in favour of its more modern origin. Its peculiar characteristics are all separately matched in several dug out of an old London churchyard, though none of them contain all these characteristics in com- bination. It is not found to resemble ancient jaws more than modern. When sawn, it gave a distinct odour of sawn bone, the cells were free from any incrustation, the enamel was white and brilliant, and all the ana- lysts held that it looked like a recent jaw, but that it was unquestionably found among the old stone axes. So, whether the owner of the jaw was limited in his cutting powers by the very limited acuteness of which flint is capable, or whether some geological catastrophe submerged his jaw in the stratum of blunt civilization, is not yet known, and those who hold that nature at one time churned axe-beads for her own amusement may hold so still.

A case, curious in its historical associations, was decided by the House of Lords on 21st May. Lord Clive gave five lakhs of rupees of his own, and three more of Jaffier Ali Khan's, to the Company, to establish a pension fund for European soldiers in the service of the Company. There are now no such soldiers, and Sir I. B. Walsh, as representative of Clive, claims the money. The Lower Courts all held that the trusteeship had passed to the Crown, but the Lords decide that the trust was a "common personal contract" to repay in certain con- tingencies five lakhs of rupees. The contingency, described by Clive as "the Company ceasing to employ European soldiers," has occurred, and the Court therefore decree the money. All annuities or pensions granted before 1858 must continue to be paid, but subject to them the property rests with Lord Olive's representatives. The pensions being to old men, the fund will in a few years be worth having, parti- cularly if the sieca rupee be calculated, as it ought to be, at half-a-crown.

It appears that the Commissioners of the International Exhibition will be able to settle their financial affairs more satisfactorily than was supposed. After satisfying every demand, they will, we are told, retain a balance of a few hundreds. The employ4 within the building hope, with some justice, that this sum will be divided among them—the class, of all others connected with the affair, hardest worked and worst paid.

The trunk-line of Italian railway has been opened fromTurin to Pescara, in the Abruzzi, and will next year be opened to Foggia, reaching Naples probably by 1866.

The Italian Premier has replied in a brilliant speech to the charges of Lord Henry Lennox. So far from the press being oppressed, "no public officer in Italy has the courage to seques- trate a public journal." The Perseveranza has never been sequestrated ; the Ea) of Bologna, said to be suppressed, he then held in his hand. The charges of tyranny to individuals were wholly untrue. No women whatever were in prison when Lord Henry Lennox visited them, and the ladies who told him they were confined for exhibiting a Bourbon flag had, therefore, deceived him. He had not been accompanied by any member of the Italian Parliament, but by one Signor Dassi, who had been, indeed, elected, but whose election had been cancelled. That abuses had occurred in the South he did not deny; but brigandage was kept up partly by the "cosmopolitan reaction," which has its seat in the cosmopolitan city of Rome, and partly by the condition of the people, who, having been deliberately segregated in their villages by the Bourbons, felt, when any reverse occurred to their local pursuits, as if "the world were 'slipping away from under their feet." The Govern- ment had treated Mr. Bishop with every leniency, and had only not pardoned him because it could not treat foreigners with a mildness it was obliged to refuse to domestic traitors. The speech, which occupies four columns of the Post, is a model of true Parliamentary debate, full of facts conveyed with grave dignity, under which is visible a slight scorn for Lord Henry Lennox.

A. correspondent of the Tinzes gives a most striking account of the distribution of the holy fire in the Church of the Sepulchre on the 11th April. The church was in a most hor- rible state, thousands of Greeks and Armenians being present during all the previous night, who performed all the offices of nature within the church itself, and were kept in order only by a Turkish colonel with a long whip, which he used merci- lessly. Fights were incessant, one man was stabbed, and the scene when the holy flambeau was lighted beggars descrip- tion. Everybody had 334 candles in a cluster, and everybody lighted them, and in two and a half minutes the blazing light swept from floor to roof, till the building seemed one mass of flame. Everybody wallowed in the divine element. Men bared their arms, and necks, and breasts, and bathed them- selves all over. Women washed their faces and arms in liquid flame, and passed it round and under their children till the children shrieked again. They said the fire would not hurt, though it would burn, and they certainly acted as if their words were true. That it would burn was proved next day by a woman, who produced her child to the authorities with both its eyes out. Only the Chancellor to the Latin Patriarch declared that by the blood of San Januarius it was an imposture.

A terrible catastrophe is reported from Rhodes. The island was visited on the 22nd of April by an earthquake, which destroyed 2,000 houses and some thousands of people, and covered the whole island with ashes. Thousands were left homeless, and the terror and confusion seem to have bereft those left alive of their wits. It is curious how com- pletely the ordinary means of information have in this case broken down. Such an earthquake is of the highest interest to science as well as humanity ; but Rhodes is a little off the line, and consequently the newspapers know nothing whatever about the matter. The very occurrence would have remained unrecorded but for a letter from Mr. Scaramanga, of 13 Westbourne terrace, recommending the victims to English benevolence. Even he gives, and we believe has, no 'details of a calamity which, had it occurred within the European circle, would have filled the papers for days.

Consols are 931 for transfer, and 921, ex. div., for account. The New Three per Cents., 91i. India Five per Cent., 1091,-; ditto, Enlaced, 107k. Turkish Six per Cents., 1862, are 711 71k; ditto, Consolides, 51f 511 ; Greek, 31i 32. Mexican, 35i 36; and Conf. Loan is f to 1 prem. Excitement has been caused during the week by the appearance of another great company on the plan of the Credit Mobilier, called the" General Credit and Finance Company of London." The present capital is 2,500,000/. in 125,000 shares, doing the work now done at immense profit by the great money houses. A similar company in France has declared immense divi- dends.