tht aittrovutio.

A deputation, headed by the Lord Mayor, carried up to Lord Derby on Wednesday the memorial adopted at the City neutrality meeting. The spokesmen were Lord Mayor Wire, Mr. Gilpin, and Mr. Samuel Morley. They approved of neutrality, and earnestly trusted "that neither by overt act nor by the supposed claims of entangling treaties or alliances will that position of neutrality be abandoned." Lord Derby- said he was glad to find his views approved. In answer to an allusion from Mr. Morley re- specting the Russo-Gallic treaty, Lord Derby said that with reference to the rumour of a treaty between France and Russia the Government had received repeated and positive assurances from Prince Gortachakoff that no such treaty existed, and that the written memorandum which had been exchanged between the Russian and French Governments in no way affected the interests of this country. He could assure the deputation that her Majesty's Government, having fully declared their views with re- spect to English non-intervention, had no intention or desire in any way to alter that policy.

The committee of the Clergy of the City of London appointed to con- sider the best means of rearranging the city parishes, and consisting of the Reverend W. Scott, Dr. Stebbing, Dr. Worthington, and the Reverend Michael Gibbs have made a report to the Bishop of London in which they recommend the demolition of twenty churches, and the extension of churches in Clerkenwell and other densely peopled quarters. Dr. Croly has addressed a letter to Dr. Tait in opposition to the plan.

Sir Roderick Murchison presided over the annual meeting and annual dinner of the Royal Geographical Society on Monday. Since the last anniversary, 132 fellows have been elected, and there are now 1180 Fel- lows and 57 honorary and corresponding members. The maps number 2174, and 600 volumes have been added to the library. The Founder's medal has been given to Captain Burton of Mecca and Central African renown ; the Victoria medal to Captain John Palliser, who has explored the Rocky Mountains and shown the way from Canada to British Co- lumbia; and a gold watch has been presented to Mr. M`Dougal Stuart, for researches in Australia. Captain Burton was present. The Earl of Ripon, Lord Colchester, and Lord Ceenarvon, took part in the pro- ceedings.

At the dinner in the evening, Sir Roderick Murchison fulfilled his duties as chairman with his usual good taste ; and several distinguished persons, Sir John Pakington included, spoke after dinner.

The Newsvenders Benevolent Institution kept its twenty-first birth- day at the Freemason's Tavern on Tuesday, Mr. Mark Lemon in the chair. There are in London 500 newsvenders and 2000 assistants, but few subscribe to the society. Yet its advantages are not slight. For 5d. a week, a member receives 16/. a year at and after fifty years of age.

The Society of Friends of Foreigners in Distress held their fifty-third dinner on Wednesday ; Lord Carlisle in the chair. The society has dur- ing the year relieved 1837 persons. The funds subscribed at the dinner amounted to 1800/. -

The fifteenth annual dinner of the Asylum for Fatherless Children was held on Tuesday at the ,London Tavern the Lord Mayor in the chair. During the last fifteen years 1394 children of both sexes have been edu- cated and eared for by the society. They have spent 20,000/. upon a house at Reedham near Croydon, and are 10,000/. in debt. The sum

subscribed at the dinner was 600g.

Miss Burdett Coutta will, on Monday, lay the foundation stone of the New Cancer Hospital which it is intended shall be built at Brompton, nearly opposite the Consumption Hospital.

About two thousand coalwhippers of the port of London turned out on strike, for an advance of wages, on Wednesday. Bodies paraded the Eastern river suburbs, and called upon their fellow labourers not to work for the starvation price which the middlemen had been paying them since the establishment of the truck system. The Court of Queen's Bench has again been occupied with the case of the abduction of the child Mary Ann Ef'Dowell by the Roman Catholics. The Court granted a habeas corpus directing the Reverend William Walter Roberts, and a Mrs. M.Carthy, schoolmistress, to bring up the body. The return made was that the girl had left the school, and was not detained by, or in the custody, power, or possession, Or under the care, control, or au- thority of Roberts or M.Carthy. Mr. Justice Erie said these two persons should, be directed to say where the child was. They declared they knew nothing about it. Mr. Justice Erie declared the return insufficient, and gave orders that Roberts should be brought before the Court. From the 5th April the girl has been missing. On the 28th, a letter purporting to come from her reached her father, in which she said "it was not-Father Roberts who took me away," saying that she was at a "nice school," that she de- sired to be brought up In the true religion ; and that above all things her father should not go to law. For the defence Sergeant Shoe alleged cruel treatment of the child at home, and insisted that the return was sufficient. Lord Campbell said that by the law of England a parent is entitled to the custody of the child during the age of nurture, which does not expire till the age of fourteen. In the ease of Alicia Race, the Court directed that a child should be taken from a Protestant school and given to a Roman Ca- tholic mother, although the child desired to remain at the school. In this ease the answer of Mr. Roberts is evasive, illegal, and untrue. Mr. Roberts clearly knew where the child was. The whole Court concurred in ordering, as Mr. Roberts would not restore the child to her father, that an attach- ment should issue, and bound Roberts over to answer the interrogatories.

The Court of Divorce, sitting on Monday, decreed one judical separations. and the dissolution of seven marriages. The details are not interesting, but the social standing of the parties to the suits are worth remark, in one ease, where the wife sued, the husband was a surgeon. In another the husband, a stock broker, was the petitioner. In two others the parties' were a factory operative, a hawker, a fruiterer. In other cases the petitioners were a gunner in the Royal Navy, a country gentlemen, and a butcher in Tottenham Court Road. Some of the cases were very gross. Lord Camp- bell, from the bench, said that a dissolution of marriage is no longer the exclusive privilege of the aristocratic and wealthy classes, for in the ease under consideration the husband was a grocer and the paramour was a hawker.

On Tuesday the Court decreed the dissolution of four marriages. The pe- titioners were a journeyman watchmaker; the wife of a Captain Gwyn, who alleged adultery and cruelty ; a tailor, and a person employed in an iron-foundry. In two cases the seducers were intimate acquaintances of the. husband. The Court dismissed one petition. A cornmeter of London City mar- ried a woman with whom he had previously lived. After marriage a child was born, but the wife confessed it was not the child of her husband. Disgusted, the husband went on a whaling expedition, leaving his wife without sup- port. She was guilty of adultery under these circumstances. The Court held that transactions before marriage are no ground for divorces, and that the husband had, by leaving the wife without subsistence, deprived himself of a remedy.

On Wednesday the Court decreed for a dissolution in eight cases and dis- missed one petition. One petitioner was a half-pay captain, the co-respond- ent his former brother officer. The others were a commission agent, a trades- man, an articled clerk to an attorney, a wine merchant, and a surgeon. One petition was from a wife, a small needle manufacturer at Birmingham, whose husband was a drunkard, a brute, and an adulterer. The petition dismissed was from a late sergeant of the Rifle Brigade. The Court held that he had no remedy, because knowing that his wife was the mistress of a married man he executed a deed in 1805, granting her an allowance, and appointing her paramour trustee.

The profits of forging seem likely to make a more decided impression on the criminal mind than the punishment which follows it. John Groves, a

youth of seventeen,' clerk in the National Provincial Bank at Long Stratton, had a fortnight's leave of absence. He made great misuse of it. Forging a letter of advice for 1000/. upon the National Provincial Bank at Peter- borough, in the name of John Large, he disguised himself by putting on a false beard and whiskers and obtained 990/ in notes and a cheek, and 10/. in gold. Ile came to LOndon and going to the Bank of England endea- voured to get his notes cashed in gold. The clerk of the issue Department suspected him, and a detective was set on his track. The result was that he was arrested in his false hair, and :has been remanded by the sitting Magistrate at the Mansionhouse.

Alfred Burrows, a young man of many aliases, has been committed by the- magistrate at Guildhall for forging an order upon a druggist, with intent to defraud.

Mr. Louis Artus, charged with having stolen fifty pounds weight of cigar* from his employers, has been dischargd by the Lord Mayor. This was really a complicated case of account between employer and employed, and there seems to have been no ground for a charge of theft.

A man and woman, well "got up" to disarm suspicion, have been com- mitted by the Lord Efayor for a daring robbery upon a warehouseman in St.

Mary Axe. The victim imprudently stopped to hear what the woman had to say ; she snatched his watch and gave a signal, which brought male as- sistance. A combat, followed by a flight of the two prisoners and others en- gaged, took place, but the pursuit was sharp and eflective. The plundered man captured one of the thieves and a potman the other.

Margaret Welsh has been sent to prison for two months on a charge of assaulting Lord William Paulet. She followed him, insolently demanding money, from Waterloo Place to Regent's Circus, and then assaulted him. As she had repeatedly done so he gave her into custody. It was shown that Welsh had been frequently in prison for drunkenness, assaults, and felony. The woman's excuse was that Lord William had seduced her when she was "a very little girl," but he said she had no claim whatever upon him.

Seven men have died of injuries received by the fall of the scaffolding at the Westminster Palace Hotel : five were killed on the spot, two died of wounds. The coroner's inquiry sat again on Monday and- Thursday, and a great number of witnesses were examined. The evidence shows that the removal of the lower stages had nothing to do with the accident. It rather seems that too great a quantity of material, bricks, and mortar, had been placed upon the stage by the order of Mr. J. Myers, one of the building con- tractors, and that the beams supporting the floor had broken at the point. where a huge mass of bricks, some 1500, had been deposited. Sonic of the workmen had remarked that the load upon the stage rendered it unsafe, and one had further strengthened it by putting up an extra beam.

At the sitting on Thursday, Mr. Ainslie, an:architect, condemned the con- struction and meterial of the stage. Five transoms were not sufficient for a span of twenty feet. The stage should have been supported by "struts " from beneath. As the stage was built it was not adequate to bear the load placed upon it. A bricklayer said that Mr. Myers senior gave orders in _his mesence for the removal of the lower stage, but Mr. Myers denies this. He said he told O'Neal who built the scaflbld to put in six cross beams : that he gave difections to place uprights upon one stage and under another ; that

he did not know the lower stage had been removed ; that the timber was good—the latter opinion was supported by Alderman Gabriel, a timber merchant. Young Mr. Myers said it was contrary to his orders that ma- terial had been sent up to that stage. He had ordered a new one to be put up. He gave no orders about the lower stage. He imputed the accident to the men, who when the clock struck would jump, sometimes forty or fifty at a time, upon the stage in order to be first out of the building. Both the Myers's said that the stage wouldibear a weight of thirty tons. Inquiry ad- journed.

A serious fire on the premises of an oil and colour merchant's in Lime Street, last week, created considerable alarm in the neighbourhood, the common belief being that naphtha was stored in the warehouse. An appeal has been made to the Lord Mayor to institute a full inquiry into the facts, with the view of preventing similar accidents in future. The neighbours desire that inflammable materials shall not again be stored in the premises when they are rebuilt. The head of the firm, Mr. Ilubbuck, denies that he had any naphtha on the premises. The chief combustible was turpentine. There is therefore to be a "solemn inquiry."

A destructive fire occurred in Sloane Street, on Thursday, whereby three houses were burned down. At one moment, the wind being brisk, the fronts of six houses on the opposite side were in flames, but the rapid and skilful exertions of the fire brigade, and the abundant supply of water, proved ef- feetive in limiting the fire to the premises where it originated. Several houses on the same side of the street were damaged by fire and water.