POLICE OF LONDON. PARISH APPRENTICES...—The Magistrates at Unionhall' were engaged,

on Tuesday, in investigating the conduct of a man named Myers, and his wife, towards a number of poor and destitute female children, who have been placed under their protection to learn a sedentary trade called tambour work, by the United Parishes of St. Giles, Bloomsbury-, and Lambeth. Myers and his wife keep a large house at Brixton, and for some years past the officers of these Parishes have been in the habit of sending out the female children belonging to the workhouses to those persons. The result-of the inquiry shows, that the children were kept in a very miserable state. • They were treated, said one witness, "more like brutes than beings of the human species," while they had to work front seven o'clock in the morning till nine or ten at night. The Magistrates ordered that all the children should be taken to their respective workhouses; and that the indentures of such as were apprenticed should he cancelled.

ROBBERIes.—William Forsett was on Tuesday committed from Bow-street, for robbery. This fellow was snatched in infancy from wretchedness by a Mr. Tidmarsh, stay-maker, Southwark ; whose wife, after having lived with him for seventeen years, deserted her home for the society of Forsett. For his sake she had also robbed her husband of considerable property.

J. C. Eustace, charged with stealing some of Colonel Gordon's property, front Melina Cottage, was on Tuesday committed from Marylebone office for trial. The Colonel lodged with the prisoner's mother, who occupies the cot.. tage. There are other charges against him.

At Marylebone office, on Wednesday, a person complained that a young man, his bedfellow, hail robbed hitn of his watch and clothes during the night. One of the officers, after looking at the complainant, immediately took hint

into custody, on the charge of having robbed his master at Oxford of silver plate. The complainant confessed that the charge was true, anti was himself sent to prison to abide his trial.

Thomas Hodgetts wa.s charged, at the tfansion-house, on Monday, with a crime committed on the 27th of last month, and menticned in the SPECTATOR at the time, but, we beiieve, in no other puper. itir. f'reldield, Secretary to the Committee fur time Relief of the Spanish Refugees, stated, that the pri.

soner had been in the habit of conveying the several pecuniary allowances to Guildhall for the use of the refugees. On the 27th of January the prisoner was ordered to take a check for 156/. 13s. to Messrs. Smith, Payne, and Smith's, to be cashed, and to convey the gold and silver to the Committee at Guildhall. The Committee waited in vain for the cash—no messenger came. The prisoner, in company with a loose female, was traced to Birmingham, and there apprehended in the house of a relation. Of the money, 125/. was found upon him. He was committed for trial.

Assnum—A woman was committed from Worship-street office, on Tuesday, for having cut off the greater part of a man's nose by a blow from an

earthen vessel.

SEDITIOUS PLACARDS.—TWO half-starved miserable-looking men were on Thursday brought before Sir Richard Birnie, at Bow-street, charged with posting up an inflammatory placard, entitled "The Last Warning," and exhorting the " people of England" to bestir themselves against Popery. The rhapsody summed up in these fine phrases " Your churches, your Bible, your laws, and your liberties, freeborn Englishmen, will become the willing slaves of a corrupt religion and a foreign prince. Speak out, then, speak out now, or ever after hold your peace and hog your igaonzinious chains ! I! Again, I say, Britons, s PEAK our! In compassion to yourselves—in compassion to your cbildren—in compassion to your country—wrestle manfully against popery and its daring demands for the transfer of political power from the Protestants of England to the popish rabble of Ireland. Now oit NEVER."

These bills were stuck up in Pall-Mall, at Westminster Abbey, the Treasury, and the Horse Guards. The puor men said that they had received them from another bill-sticker to put up. The bill is without the proper name or address of the printer, and this of itself made them liable to a fine of 201.: but the Magistrates, considering that they had been made the dupes of more designing persons, discharged them on their promise not to offend in future. A letter, enclosing one of the bills, came from the Home Office in the course of the day, addressed to the Chief Magistrate.

BURKE THE MURDERER.-111iS miscreant's body was partially dissected, and exposed to public view for seven hours, in the hall of the College of

Edinburgh, on Thursday. The Scotch papers say, that at least twenty-four thousand people pressed in to look at the disgusting spectacle of the dead body as it-lay stretched naked on the dissecting-table. The phrenologists, of

course, are at work : they find out that he possessed the organs of destructiveness, secretiveness, and acquisitiveness, rgrtc. The organ of benevolence also is fairly developed. The victims of Burke and his fellows in crime, were at first magnified to scores; but the amount has now settled down to sixteen, which is alleged to be the "precise number."

The Scotch Lords of Justiciary have decided that Hare cannot be brought to trial on any of the charges contained in the indictment on which Burke was convicted, either by the Lord Advocate, or by any private party. The Lord Advocate stated, that without admitting Hare as King's evidence, he could not have obtained a verdict against Burke, as the woman Macdougall had peremptorily refused to give hint any information. Four of their Lordships considered the public faith pledged to hold Hare scaithless, steeped in guilt though he be. Two of the Judges, however, were of opinion that the pledge of the public prosecutor left the right of the private party to prosecute untouched. The Court ordered that Hare should be set at liberty. Notwithstanding the decision of the Judges, the friends of "Daft Jamie " have found means to get Hare detained in prison on a _Agra warrant,—a summary process available in Scotland against those who meditate flight. They now claim pecuniary compensation for the murder.

Attempts to murder people after Burke's fashion, are, if we might credit the country papers, becoming quite common. The other night, four men assailed an individual in Birmingham and attempted to throw a sack over him ; but his cries brought relief before their purpose was effected. He "thought" that it was the intention of the party to murder him by suffocation. One evening, a female in the same town had a pitch plaster stuck upon her face—of course with no other intent. A similar trick has been practised oftener than once in Glasgow. In the same city, some fools have nearly driven a shopkeeper out of trade, by spreading a report that he sold his customers slices of human flesh for finely-cured Irish bacon. In Nottingham, a female child had been decoyed away by a man : a mob assembled under the impression that it had been snatched by a murderer ; the child was found in safety, but the delinquent had escaped; and, supposing that a quack doctor in the place was connected with him, the mob broke his windows, and would have made short work with the poor doctor himself, if the police had not saved him. The Magistrates found it necessary to issue an official notice of what had taken place with the child, to allay the popular ferment.

MURDERS.-0I1 Saturday, Jane Jameson was committed for trial at Newcastle, for the murder of her mother. She thrtist the small point of a poker through her breast-bone; and the poor woman died of the wound in a few days. On Sunday, three pedlars went to slide upon a pond in the parish of Sandford, near Creditom One of them had a dog, which offended Sir Humphry Davy's gamekeeper ; and some angry words arose between him and the pedlar. As the latter was getting over a wall, for the purpose of leaving the ground, the gamekeeper struck him with the barrel of a gun behind the ear. The pedlar's skull was fractured, the brains protruded, and he fell dead upon the ground. The gamekeeper has been committed to prison on a coroner's verdict of manslaughter.

Suicioes.—On Thursday week, James Taylor, aged twenty-six, hanged himself in his mother's house at Hampstead. Some years since, his father was killed by being thrown from a gig ; and the young man at that time received an injury in the head, from the effects of which he never recovered.

Mr. John Stringer, of Doncaster, attorney-at;law, last week deliberately poured a quantity of laudanum into a glass of brandy and water, at one of the inns in that place, and drunk it off; in the presence of the company. Medical aid failed to counteract the effect of the fatal draught.

ROBREMES--On Saturday morning, a gang of thieves entered from the Regent's-park into the rear of the gardens on the north side of Park-street Camden-town, and robbed almost every house on that side of the street of the lead-pipes and brass-cocks, together with the good things contained in the larders, as well as all the linen and clothes which happened to be banging out at the rear of two or three of the houses.

On Tuesday evening, nearly the whole of the instruments belonging to the band at Covent-garden Theatre were stolen. The thieves effected an entrance into the interior of the theatre, by cutting away one of the panes of glass of the

room in which they were deposited. About six weeks ago, a valuable Cremona, worth forty guineas, belonging to Mr. Bowden, was stolen from the theatre, and afterwards discovered at Mr. Jones's, a pawnbroker in Drury. lane. The violin then recovered has been again stolen.

NEW COVENT GARDEN MARKET.—One side of the quadrangle is sufficiently advanced to enable the spectator to form an opinion of the effect of the whole ;—which is, that if the other three are to be similar, a finer range of apple-stalls cannot be met with in Europe ; but to dignify these cupboard closets with the name of shop, is a complete burlesque. The avarice of some one has lost to his Grace of Bedford the only opportunity afforded of rivalling the Market of the Innocents—at Paris ; and if, as it is currently reported, the Duke's solicitor is also his architect, we would in the kindliest manner hint to that gentleman, that it might be as well for him to leave bricks and mortar to more competent hands, and confine himself to his professional wherefores and whereases, in which line he has but few equals. MISTAKES 11 Y THE WAY.—The office of Messrs. Drummonds the bankers, at Charing-cross, has often, by the passengers of the Greenwich stages which unload at their door, been mistaken for a wine.vault, and entered as such ; but a sight of the sterling article in which those gentlemen deal, immediately convinced the applicants that they must apply somewhere else to have their claims liquidated.

The inhabitants of Minerva-terrace, Brixton-road, have for some time been troubled by reason of the sudden disappearance of a lady named Norton, who lived in a house opposite to Holland Chapel. The lady seemed recluse in her habits, and was not on familiar terms with her immediate neighbours. About seven weeks ago, she discharged her only servant ; and from that time the house has been locked up, seemingly deserted, and no trace of the lady could be found. The neighbours at last became seriously alarmed, and dreading that she had been murdered in the house, they wrote to the landlord. He applied on Wednesday to the Magistrate at Union-Hall; who sent two officers to force an entrance into the house. They gained admittance by the back parlour window, and went into the different rooms on the ground floor. In one of them they found the carcasses of a dog and cat, " that of the latter (we quote from the Times) was nearly demolished, with the exception of the head, and it is conjectured that the dog, while in a state of starvation, had killed and devoured it, and then died itself of hunger. On the officers proceeding up stairs to the attics, in the back one, lying in lied, they discovered the unfortunate lady, who appeared to be almost in a dying state. On hearing the noise produced by their entrance into the room, she feebly turned round in the bed, and, in a scream of terror, exclaimed, You are come to poison me.' The officers (lid every thing in their power to allay the state of alarm and agitation into which their presence had at first thrown her ; and after a little time she became more composed, but from her manner and behaviour it was evident that she was labouring under insanity. She raved about her sister, and talked in an incoherent strain during the time the officers remained in the room. On going over the house, no provision of any descriptiun was found in it, with the exception of a few mouldy pieces of bread in one of the cupboards; and from the state to which she was reduced, the bones being nearly ready to start through the skin there is every reason to believe that she has not tasted a morsel of food from the day on which the house was first shut up, seven weeks ago, until that time. The chief constable and the landlord immediately sent for a medical man, and some slight refreshment having been administered to her, after her long abstinence, it seemed to revive her considerably. In the room, with the unfortuuate lady, were two cages containing two dead canary birds which died front starvation, their stock of seed and water being exhausted. Miss Norton, it is said has a' comfortable independence ; but her relatives are unknown to any of the neighbours, owing to the secluded manner in which she has-lived ever since she came to reside there. She appears to he about thirty2four years of age ; and although now almost reduced to a skeleton, still her features denote her to have been a handsome woman when in health." Exertions are made to trace her friends ; and in the mean time every attention is shown to the unhappy lady. RELICS OP PEROUSE.—The relics of the expedition of this unfortunate navigator, lately brought front the South Sea by Captain Dillon, have been presented by the East India Company to the French Government, through the medium of the Foreign Office. His Most Christian Majesty has expressed a wish to see Captain Dillon, by whom they were discovered; and he has accordingly started for Paris, in order to accompany these memorials of the French voyage of discovery with the necessary explanations. DEATH OF BARRAS.—Barras, the Chief of the Executive Directory, so celebrated in the annals of the French Revolution, died on Thursday week at Paris in the seventy-second year of his age. Having attained the maturity of life

before the Revolution began to display all its darker colours, he became an actor in its most sanguinary scenes, and ascended through dangers and crimes to its highest honours awl power. Though of a noble family, he had urged on the earliest enterprises against the ancient order of things. He had voted for the death of his sovereign; he had committed excesses as a Commissioner of the Convention in the South; and had been devoted to death by Robes pierre, when that monster was himself overpowered by a combination in which Barras took part. On the overthrow of the Convention, on the 10th of October 1795, (or what is called the 13th Vendemiare) he was appointed to the Directory. He continued to occupy this high office till fortune and the course of events placed supreme power, on the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9, 1799), in the hands of a man whom he had contributed to raise, and who afterwards eclipsed all his predecessors and contemporaries. Barras, both during the reign of Buonaparte and since the return of the Bourbons, re mained unmolested; and so far as private acts of beneficence can atone for a life of turbulence and crime, has died regretted. Very few of the actors who entered with him on the political stage more than half a century ago, have re

mained to witness the end of his career. Though he rose to eminent rank, and maintained his ascendency in perilous times, he was never considered a man of very distinguished talents, and never porformed any signal act of courage or patriotism.—Times.

TUE WEATHEa,—The frost has completely cut of all communication in the North of Europe. At Hamburg, seven English oraik were due on the 30th of January going back to the 2d. The Great Belt, a!',1. as the eye can reach, at Nyborg, was covered with solid and driftirrhleg, which impede:I even the ice-boats. The Dutch papers to the 4th, inUnm us that in the island of Schouwcn the cold was so intense that wild geese were actually taken with the hand. At Odessa, on New Year's Day, (old style), the thermometer was thirteen degrees below the freezing point. Tea Hiso's Tnzazaa.—The season of the Italian Opera commenced on Saturday, with Donna del Lago ; in which Fisaroni, Monticelli, and Donzelli made their curtsies and bows. An attempt was made to get up a riot, in sympathy with the seceding musicians. The new orchestra had no sooner begun their labours, than they were assailed with cries of" Off," " Off;" but the overpowering plaudits of an immense majority rendered the efforts of the malcontents ineffectual.

CCFENT GARDEN.—Two new pieces have been produced at this theatre during the week. The first is the Widow Bewiteheil,—an amplification, by Mr.Lunn it is said, of a short French piece. Mr. Charles Kemble, in a haracer compounded of his own Petruehio and Leon, sustained the chief burdm of this "Comedy ;"—which passed patiently to a close, and has been repeated—but that is all.

The second novelty, a musical piece, called Yelva, or the Orphan of Russia, was not so lucky,—since, before its conclusion, sentence of condemnation was unanimously passed.

Miss Smithson has been engaged at this house, and is to appear soon. FUNERAL OF MR. Stust.n.—The remains of this distinguished composer and musician were on Wednesday consigned to the grave, in the cloisters on the southern side of Westminster Abbey. The funeral, which was private, was attended by several eminent theatrical and musical chrracters.

THE LAST of THE BR UCES.—Death has stricken, after a short illness, the Countess de Bruce (a descendant of Robert and David Bruce, Kings of Scotland, and daughter of James Bruce, who was General in Chief in the Russian service); but still more remarkable for her noble sentiments and rare virtues than for her illustrious birth.—Journal des Debate.