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The Compter in Giltspur Street is about to be taken down ; and the Governors of Christ's Hospital are desirous of purchasing the site for the erection of additional school-rooms. Exclusively of the building, they offer 15,0004 The City Lands Committee, however, have reported to the Court of Common Council, that, in their opinion, it is not expedient to accept the offer. The recent election of the Duke of Cambridge instead of the Lord Mayor, it is conjectured, very much helped them in coming to their decision.
The question of the validity of the will of the late Duchess of Manchester is to be tried over again. On Tuesday, Vice-Chancellor Page Wood de- livered judgment on the motion for a new trial ; going minutely into the whole case, and deciding for a new trial, on the ground that he could not hold that the will was so definitively established as that the Court could carry' it into execution. The instructions of Baron Parke to the Jury were not so explicit as could be wished. The Vice-Chancellor entirely absolved the Duke of Manchester from the charges of fraud set out in the bill, and hoped that in the new trial the irrelevant matter introduced before would not be again imported into the case. The new trial will take place on the question of the capacity of the Duchess of Manchester to make the will.
Dr. Peithman, formerly of Bonn and fifteen vases ago a professor of the German language in Ireland, has been sent to a lunatic asylum by order of the Bow Street Magistrate; two medical men having certified that he is of unsound mind, and unfit to be at large. The proceedings before the Magis- trate were conducted in an unusually private manner ; but it would seem that Dr. Peithman was found in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace during service on Sunday last. According to his own statement, he has been an inmate of Bedlam for fourteen years; having been sent thither in con- sequence of his endeavours to obtain an audience of Prince Albert, in order to get professional employment. Mr. Otway M.P., a friend of Dr. Peith- I= protested against the ex-parte method of proceeding before the Magis- trate; and Mr. Lewis, the Doctor's solicitor, threatened ulterior proceedings.
A number of the inhabitants of Allhallows Staining have been summoned before the Lord Mayor for non-payment of tithes due to the Rector under a statute of Henry the Eighth. It would seem that tithes have not been de- manded for twenty years; some of the parishioners demur to paying them now ; others plead poverty. The Rector says it is only justice-to himself and hia successors that his legal claim should be acknowledged ; he is willing to treat with any poor persons in a liberal spirit, but the wealthy ought to pay the legal amount. There was a discussion as to legal points and jurisdiction. The Lord Mayor thought he should have to condemn any recusant to im- prisonment for life under the ruthless law of Henry the Eighth ; but the Chief Clerk considered that a recent act had modified that law. Eventually, it was arranged that the parishioners should have an interview with the Rector.
Alderman Sir Robert Carden, assisted in the elucidation of the ease by Captain Lean' the emigration-agent, has adjudged Messrs. Griffith and Co., charterers of emigrant-ships, to return certain passage-money, with com- pensation, to Charles Miller and John Either, who had taken passages for themselves and families in a ship chartered by Griffith and Co., but which was not ready to sail at the time of the complaint, a good while after the appointed day. Sir Robert intimated that the defendants were liable to be imprisoned if they did not pay : the poor emigrants received their money. Miller and Either warmly thanked the active Alderman for the zeal and humanity he had exhibited in their ease.
The thousands who thronged the Crystal Palace on Monday received a painful shock. A glazier was engaged in repairing the semicircular roof of the great transept ; he had neglected to secure himself by a rope; and, slip- ping, he fell upon a ledge which runs at the base of the arch, and was killed. In his fall he broke but one pane of glass, and none of the iron-work: had he rebounded from the ledge to the roof of the nave, his body might have fallen on the people in the building.
The intended parachute descent at Tottenham, on the 27th ultimo, was not only. a failure, but it ended fatally : on the 28th it was reported to have been successful, but last week the unfortunate Frenchman, Latour, died at an inn at Tottenham. It appeared at the inquest, on Monday, that there were two persons in the car of the balloon ; Latour was suspended beneath it, seated on a parachute in the shape of a winged horse. When Mr. Adams, who managed the balloon, intended to liberate the parachute at Tottenham' he found that the ropes had got entangled with the wings of the horse ; so he was obliged to attempt a descent of balloon and parachute together. Latour was dashed against a tree, and dragged along the ground; three of his rile were broken, and his spine was fractured. The Jury pronounced the death "accidental," Latour hub left a wife and family in France, in indigent circumstances: his motive for periling his life seems to have been to earn money.
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