NEWS OF THE WEEK.

BELFAST has been in insurrection all the week, Orange and Catholic mobs traversing the streets armed with bludgeons, stones, and muskets, firing regular volleys at each other, stoning the police, beating individuals to death, wrecking houses, maiming peaceful passengers at the railway station, kicking mill-girls till they were borne to hospital, stoning the girls in a national school, and shooting down labourers struggling to save themselves from the mud of the Lough. The last two infamous acts were per- petrated by the Catholic and Orange parties respectively, and though the Orangemen began the rioting there has not been a pin to choose between the two factions. Both have behaved like savages, and were the authorities of Belfast not stricken with imbecility both would have been impartially shot down. As it is the magis- trates and the Government have collected 4,000 troops who have done nothing, 2,000 police who have fired with blank cartridge as if in order to convince the mobs that firing would not hurt them, and 5,000 special constables who have not prevented any one out- rage, not even an attack on a railway station. The Government has sent down a superintendent of police, but he appears unwilling to act, and up to Thursday the only proclamation threatened mur- derers with " arrest " instead of grape-shot. Under these circum- stances of course the Catholics of Dundalk have risen, and a rumour on Friday night affirmed that the cities of the north were all rising upon the Catholics. A little more of this armed inertia and we shall have a religious civil war raging throughout Ulster.

We have commented on these riots elsewhere, but we must give here a single incident which epitomizes the struggle. At three o'clock on Wednesday a body of navvies were rioting on the bank of the Lough when they were charged by the Orange shipwrights, and a battle royal ensued with cleavers, stones, and guns. The ship-carpenters at last won the day, and the navvies fled into the mud banks it) the Lough, where they found themselves in danger of suffocation. While struggling painfully with the water and the ooze their adversaries amused themselves by calmly shooting at them—an act almost without a parallel. The Hussars at last came up, but instead of arresting the whole gang under pain of being immediately cut down they contented themselves with " clearing the ground." The feeling of the ruling men in Belfast, it would seem, is that to cut down people who are committing murder would be " harsh," and that the proper thing to do is to send them to commit murder somewhere else.

Tile latest news from New York is to the 10th of August. General.Grant's attempt to carry Petersburg on the 30th July by springing a mine under the fort on Cemetery Hill, which we have described at length in another column, had completely failed, chiefly in consequence of the delay both in firing the mine and afterwards in the charge of the troops who were to carry the crest of the hill, and who could only have succeeded in the moment of surprise. General Grant lost 5,600 men and the long and-skilful labours of his miners by the repulse, the Confederates 3,000 in repulsing them. So Petersburg is still to take, and it is not likely General Grant will take any more active measures till the struggle at Atlanta is decided.

From Georgia the news is not much later than we had last week. The Confederate Commander Hood, (who succeeded Johnstone) had lavished his men in a third furious attempt to drive off the invading army on the 27th July, and had failed with very heavy loss,

—the Federals having buried no less than 660 Confederates within their own lines without much loss to their own men.

The raid into Maryland and Pennsylvania has been once again renewed, and it is to be feared that General Lee finding how strong is hispositionat Petersburg will yet further strengthen theforce there. On the 5th August the Confederates crossed the Potomac in three) columns,—with about 20,000 men in all,—at Hancock, Shepherds- town, and Williamsport. They were reported to have reached Mid- dleburg, eleven miles north of Hagerstown, but afterwards retired and were defeated at Moorefield, Virginia, by General Averill, with the loss of 600 prisoners and four guns.

The only other item of news favourable to the Federals is that Admiral Farragut with a large fleet of gunboats and iron-clads had forced the entrance into Mobile Bay, passing Fort Gaines and Fort Morgan, which command the entrance. The bay, however, is twenty miles long, and the town of Mobile at the top of it pro- bably has by this time heavy defences of its own. He was approaching Mobile on the 5th inst. In any case, however, if he can hold his present position the blockade of Mobile will be com- plete and most embarrassing to the South.

The news of the week from Germany is very unimportant, Herr von Bismark and Count Rechberg are at last agreed upon a temporary plan for the government of the Duchies, namely, a pro. visional government by a committee of three, of whom one will be named by the Diet and will find himself in a perpetual minority. Lauenburg is still occupied by the troops of the Diet, but Rends- burg has not been restored, and Hanover has apologized for the use made of its troops in the little duchy. One wonders what the Lauenburgers say to it all. They are a " nation " if the Schles- wigers are, and have a clear right on Prussian principles to con- sider themselves grievously oppressed by the presence of Hano- verians.

Pending the decision as to the government of the Duchies, the Prussians are pushing on the surveys for the Schleswig-Holstein Canal, which is to connect the Elbe directly with the Baltic. It is calculated that if this canal can be cut the Sound will cease to be of any importance, that the route to the Baltic will be through German possessions, and that Copenhagen, now the entrepot of the trade which passes the Sound, will be entirely ruined. Theie con- siderations have secured to the project enthusiastic support in Germany, but the practicability of the canal is not yet settled. All things are possible to engineers, but a ship canal capable of carrying men-of-war, forty miles long, and with a harbour at each end, is an enterprise which has not yet been undertaken in the world.

Mr. Roebuck made a very Conservative speech at a Cutlers' Feast at Sheffield on Wednesday, in answer to a very excellent speech from Mr. Thomas Dunn, who regretted that Mr. Roebuck would sit on the Conservative side of the House, though he did not always vote with it. Mr. Roebuck's speech appeared intended to justify his geographical situation in the House of Commons. It amounted to "I believe in Lord Palmerston," for even when the Pre- mier differs from Mr. Roebuck in opinion Mr. Roebuck says that he defers meekly to his better wisdom, —just as when we are crossed in life we defer to Providence. Mr. Roebuck wished to acknow- ledge the South, but " Lord Palmerston is a much (?) older man than I am, and though I cannot accord with his opinion, I cannot deny the prudence of his conduct." Again, Mr. Roebuck would have gone to war for Denmark, but Lord Palmerston thought otherwise, and Lord Palmerston's thought is the thought of the people of England. On the third subject to which he alluded, the reform of Parliament, Mr. Roebuck significantly refrained from saying that he differed from Lord Palmerston. There again, he remarked, Lord Palmerston agreed with the country, and he added, that England is so happy and prosperous that every wise man should feel a superstitious awe before he asks for any change whatever, lest it be the beginning of decay. " Doing nothing," says Mr. Roebuck, involves as much resolve and as distinct a reason as doing something ; in abstaining from action

Parliament acts, for to reject a comae of action is itself a course of action,—an ingenious Conservative creed, according to which indolence is the climax of activity, and it becomes as energetic a proceeding not to place confidence in Air. Roebuck as to confide in him,--a kind of energy likely, we apprehend, to grow upon his Constituents.

On Monday evening Mr. Lindsay confided at much length his hatred of slavery to his constituents at Sunderland. If he thought the North were sincere in opposing it, he would support them, he said, " because then there would be no Fugitive Slave Law." Of course Mr. Lindsay is ignorant that there is now no Fugitive Slave Law, that it has been abolished by the North, and of course he is unaware that his own allies in the North and New York—the Peace Democrats, are the very party which resisted to the last the abolition of the Fugitive Slave Law, and voted against its repeal in both Houses of Congress. Mr. Lindsay's constituents appear to have succeeded in passing a vote of confidence in him, but his audience received his views on the subject of slavery with a derisive uproar which did not seem to indicate much confidence,— at least in that part of his speech.

Sir George Grey, taught by his many defeats in the House of Commons, seems at last to have adopted frankly the policy advised by Lord Carnarvon and Sir Walter Crofton with respect to penal servitude. In an admirable letter to the Judges, Sir George Grey states that though the sentences of penal servitude are now to be longer, and five years the minimum sentence, there will be no re- mission of the sentence for mere " good conduct," i. e., compliance with routine rules,—but every remission will be earned only by really strenuous industry, and even then one-fourth of the sentence remaining after the first nine months of solitary confinement is to be the maximum that will even in the best case be remitted,—a five years' sentence, for example, being thus at best diminishable by -one-fourth of four years and three months, or by one year and three weeks. The convict must obtain the maximum number of marks for industry in order to gain this the maximum remission, and if his marks be below this maximum the remission gained will be proportionally less. On sentences for life Sir George Grey does not propose to grant any remissions, but to retain the punishment as one of exceptional severity for criminals who can never again be safely returned upon society. Licence-holders who are convicted of a fresh offence must suffer not only the whole of the new sentence, but the remainder of the old one from which they had been exempted by the licence. The gratuities to prisoners on release are also to be reduced, and the prison fare to be slightly more penal.

Lord Palmerston has promised to inaugurate the bronze statue to the late Sir G. C. Lewis at Hereford on the 3rd of September next. It is a somewhat odd selection, for though there is much in political creed that is common to the two men, there is little of common ground between them either morally, intellectually, or socially. Sir G. C. Lewis used to say playfully to one of his col- leagues that he was himself vegetable though his friend was animal. Lord Palmerston was not the friend we refer to, but it is certainly no less true of him, and he is a social animal too, while Sir G. C. Lewis was something of a recluse. We do not much believe that Lord Palmerston ever looked into the treatise on the " Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion," to say nothing of the " Early Roman History " or the "Astronomy of the Ancients." Perhaps, however, he admires his old colleague the more for this very reason. If like needed to be estimated by like, a triumvirate of the Bishop of St. David's, Mr. J. S. Mill, and the noble Premier would perhaps come nearest to the task of composing a fitting 'doge on the great man whom we have lost.

Sir Charles Cooper, late Chief Justice of South Australia, writes a long letter to the Times with a cogent summary of the case against the continuance of transportation to Western Australia. The convicts whose time has expired always repair to the eastern settlements,-000 arrived in Adelaide in three years,—and crime in those settlements has been visibly increased by their presence. This is especially the case with crimes of violence, and Sir Charles Cooper believes the fears of the respectable Australians sufficiently well founded. The difficulty of disposing of time-expired men is, he says, as great in Australia as in England, and England would not endure the freedmen of another land.

The Emperor's fete went off in Paris on the 15th inst. even better than usual. There were public games, and open-air theatricals, and gratis admissions to the regular houses, and illu- minations paid for by Government, and pardons for hundreds of prisoners, and fine weather, and everything in which the soul of Paris delights. The people, too, had invented a new amusement, which consisted in asking their friends, and the passengers, and everybody at all conspicuous, "As-tu vu Lambert?" The word was repeated everywhere, the Emperor himself being saluted with " Vive Lambert, vive Madame Lambert, vire le petit Lambert ! " the populace applying the name with a pertinacity which proved that they saw a joke somewhere. The police were beginning to think of Cayenne or the necessity for calling out the military, when it was discovered that a farmer's wife losing her husband had been going about asking for " Lambert." The Parisians, struck with the idea of a woman imagining that everybody must know her particular lord, took up the cry, and as the Emperor is the only man known to everybody applied the name to him with appreciative unanimity. The mindsof the police gradually calmed down, and in consideration of the file nobody was so much as arrested.

Miss Longworth has brought an action in Scotland against the Saturday Review for libel, laying her damages at 3,0001., and has seized all funds belonging to the paper which happen to be in the hands of advertisers in Edinburgh. The comments of the Review upon her conduct and especially her letters were undoubtedly severe, but they were feeble compared with those of the opposite counsel, and the utter unfairness of commencing the action in Scotland will deprive the lady of all public sympathy. She is, we fear, infected with the cacoethes litigandi, which, like the taste for building, once indulged becomes insatiable.

Lord Stanley made a speech on Wednesday to the Ormskirk and Southport Agricultural Association which as a whole was for him unusually prosy, but contained one valuable remark. He ques- tioned whether the tendency of the day was to aggregate great masses of land in very few hands. There were such instances, but the change going on everywhere was, he thought, of a different kind. The ownership of land was in England " a luxury ; " the manufacturer or tradesman who had made a fortune always wanted an estate, even if he took capital out of a business yielding 10 per cent. to buy land yielding 2t, and the tendency therefore was for such men to buy out the impoverished small freeholders and throw their properties together into moderate-sized estates. He did not regret the change. Probably not, for of all consistent thorough-going Tories this new class is in the remoter districts the most determined. -

Mr. Sutherland Edwards writes to the Times acknowledging that the Russian Colonel Traugott, executed last week by the Russian Government in Warsaw, was the head of the National Govern- ment. He states that the insurrection was planned and carried out by the revolutionary party, and that it was never countenanced by the " moderates " until they had imbibed hopes of assistance from the French and English Governments. This statement con- firms Mr. Bullock's, and that made by most disinterested observers, but it may be doubted whether the " moderates" ever actively joined the movement at all. They wanted to play the part of mediators between the people and the Government, and they were rejected with insult. Another recent traveller affirms that at the present rate of deportation the Czar can depopulate Poland in three years ; but he only _reckons the Poles of the kingdom, and forgets that St. Petersburg has no spare millions with which to re- populate the country.

The Naval authorities in New Zealand have, it would seem, declared war on the freedom of the press. The New Zealander stated on 1st June that Captain Hamilton, of the Esk, had been deserted by his men, whereupon sixty of the men threatened, under the alleged authority of their officers, to pull down the office of the paper in Auckland. The Commodore, Sir William Wiseman, was appealed to in vain, and the proprietors to save their house were compelled to publish a second edition, stating that the retreat was owing to a mistake of the 68th Regiment. No remonstrance had previously been made to the editor, and the police were defied by the seamen to interfere. The Admiralty we may imagine, would see a few editors tarred and feathered with the hearty pleasure with which authors would witness the flaying of critics, but we would just remind the First Lord that for sailors to attack the civil power with impunity is a precedent slightly subversive of Naval discipline, which he probably wishes to maintain.

An inquest was held at Reading on Monday upon Emma Legge, a woman who was found with her three children dead in the Thames. The evidence showed that her husband, or as his brother affirmed her paramour, John Legge, had deserted her, that she

believed he had gone to America, that she was wretched in con- sequence, that she had hired a perambulator and gone to the river, en route kissing the children earnestly, and was a few hours after- wards found with her children drowned. The inference that she threw the children into the river and then herself was almost irre- sistible; but the Coroner did not like the idea of a verdict of fele de as on a woman probably wild with misery, and made a regular advocate's speech to the jury in favour of a theory of accident. The children had tumbled over the bank and the mother had died while rescuing them. The jury, disliking the law on suicides as much as everybody else, were very grateful for the suggestion, and brought in a verdict of " Found drowned."

The Australians have hit upon an oddly clever device for cor- recting universal suffrage. The law arranges that when a man comes up to vote, " if not on the municipal roll," he must pay one shilling, and it is found that the list of voters is thereby often reduced one-half. A shilling fee on voting would not be a bad test of earnestness, but in England the candidate would be very apt to pay the money for his own following. The result in Australia certainly indicates that the democracy does not feel its grievances very acutely.

The Roman Catholic priests are horrified, it appears, with the view taken by the English press of the massacre of Santiago. That view was that the priests behaved infamously, but it is more convenient to accuse us all of " blaspheming the Virgin." Ac- cordingly an altar has been put up in the Catholic Chapel in Ogle Street as a " reparation" to Mary for the blasphemies of the press, and Dr. Manning on Monday preached a sermon in which he said he prayed for the blasphemers ; but " nothing could offend a man more deeply than an insult directed against his mother, and it was reasonable to believe that when our Divine Lord was spit upon during His lifetime here upon earth He suffered the indignity with a greater calm than He had borne the insults lately poured out upon the memory of His mother." When a priest cannot burn his foe he always as the next best torture prays for him, but Dr. Manning's notion of blasphemy is a little novel. We certainly should not have ventured to state as he has done that the Virgin required compensation for an insult like a litigant in a court of justice.

A correspondent of the Times who signs himself " A County Member " declares that the Duke of Northumberland has spent a million and a half sterling in rebuilding cottages and improving his castle, founding new churches and generally improving the position of all around him. According to the Daily News the Duke has rebuilt a thousand cottages, while the Duke of Bedford entertains no less a plan than the reconstruction of all the cottages on his enormous estate. The facts in both cases are, we believe, correct, though the expense may be exaggerated, and are most creditable to individuals ; but we fear the position of the labourers would be better if such acts came a little less like a grace from above. Twenty years hence, when emigration has done its work, a " good cottage " will be one of the terms of hiring, without which the proprietor will not get labour, and the people will be well lodged not as a grace, but in payment for independent toil.

A woman was tried in the Central Criminal Court on Wednes- day for the murder of her child. She had recently been in the workhouse of the Clerkenwell Union, and among the evidence the following extraordinary letter was produced, addressed by her to a friend :—" I shall be obliged to ride up by the Underground, so that if you are up on Sunday I hope you will call ; and pray don't forget the gin, for I am in a very delicate state of health at present, and after living on the fat of the land in the workhouse for a fortnight I shall turn up my nose at anything common." She had just killed her child.

We have had this week a dreary story from Glasgow. Two sisters, Catherine and Marian Stewart, living for the last four or five years at 116 South Portland Street, falling into melancholy due to the death of a brother some two years ago, shut themselves up so long in the utmost retirement that they at length persuaded themselves into believing that the outward world was annihilated, and they the only remnants of the human race. The police alarmed for their safety,—they would not answer raps, which they com- pletely ignored,—at length got a warrant to break in, when they found the sisters locked up together in a single room, the blind drawn down, sheets of linen stretched across it, and a thick screen of cloth over that, shutting out the light. The sisters were in black merino, without shoes or stockings, their hair was matted with dirt, the ashes of the grate formed a large heap extending far into

the room, the paper in tatters, the walls begrimed, and the floor deep in filth—said to be cartfuls. The younger sister, who had a sort of control over the elder, addressed the officers, saying they had come from hell, and had no right to disturb them, as the seal of the Apostle Peter was on the house. They regarded the constables as disembodied constables, and believed themselves to be the only survivors of earth except apparently one starved and miserable cat, which escaped with delight from the company of the spiritual lunatics. The curious part of the story is the evidence that these sole survivors of earth had one of them left the house as recently as the last Saturday night to purchase bread, or had at all events commissioned children of the outer world to do it,—a fact which, taken with the anxiety to exclude the daylight, looks as if there remained beneath the delusion a knowledge that it was a delusion, and required careful keeping up. The sisters were removed to an asylum. It is not the first attempt—indeed, it is common enough among the sane as well as the insane (even the ostrich is said to practise it)—to annihilate, by ignoring, the miseries which assail us.

On Thursday week Mr. F. Robson, the most original if not the greatest of our modern actors, died at his residence in London, and on Wednesday last he was buried in the Norwood Cemetery. His great power consisted in the wonderful intensity with which he threw himself into the mood of the instant, and the swift humour with which he would nevertheless suddenly flash over the edge, as it were, of any such mood into its opposite, with a sort of voluntary control of that passion which, when it is involuntary, we call hysteric. Robson seemed to hold in the same vice-like grasp the strings which unloose laughter and tears, and sometimes to hesitate for a moment which of the two he should make use of. We have often wished to see him not only in those fantastic characters which, like the " Yellow Dwarf" or "Medea," gave him the free range of both passion and humour, but in parts of graver passion, in " Shylock," for instance, or " Lear." Perhaps he might have failed, though " Daddy Hardacre," which had few or no flashes of humour in it, was one of his most successful parts. Still no doubt his greatest and most original power was in passing to and fro between hate or despair and the exquisitely ludicrous touches which true humour always binds up so closely with the deadliest gloom,—in giving 0,41 range to a passion which in a moment topples over from the sublime to the ridiculous. There can be no successor to Mr. Robson.

Mr. Arthur Arnold writes to us to say he did not Bay " His Eboraceous Lordship." Well, he didn't. He said "His Eboracean Lordship" (page 97), and we trust the correction may do him good.

The annual general meeting of the Eagle Insurance Company was held on the 12th inst. The Directors' report stated that the total income of the year ending June 30 last was 410,6421., and the total charge 310,8341. The difference, which amounted last year to 50,8751., is 99,8071., and the surplus fund is thereby increased to 628,0761.

The Bank return is more favourable. The stock of bullion has increased to 12,725,7591., and in the reserve of notes and coin an augmentation of 438,9791. has taken place. The minimum rate of discount remains, however, at 8 per cent., but in the open market the lowest rate for the best short-dated paper is 7/ per cent.

On Saturday last Consols closed at 89/, f, for money, and 89/,$. for account. Yesterday they left off at 89 to 89/ for transfer, and 891, /, for account.

The following table shows the closing prices of the leading Foreign Securities yesterday and on Friday week :—

The leading British Railways yesterday and on Friday week left off at the following prices

Greek Do. Coupons .. Friday, August 12. Friday, Aug. 19.

.• .. 23f 281 Mexican .. • • 281

Spanish Passive • • .. .. 84 .. 30 1)o. Certificates 12 32 Turkish 6 per Cents., 1858.. .. 72 281 .. 72 1882..

.. 69a

69 ConsoRdes.. 60 ,, 10 Caledonian Great Eastern Great Northern

Great Western.. ..

Lancashire and Yorkshire London and Brighton .. London and North-Western London and South-Western London, Chatham, and Dover Midland North-Easteru, Berwick .. Do. York .. West Midland, oxford

• •

••

Friday, August 1.2.

.. ... 124 ..

471 ..

I34f ... 89 1201 .. 108 ..

1171 ..

49 .•

131 108 .• . Friday, Aug. 19.

128

117 47

89 103

1171 98i

41 127 108 931

42 ss

42