THE WEEK AT HOME.

POLITICAL.—The political events of the week out of Parliament have been only two in number—the election for the North Riding, which took place on Thursday, and terminated, as we apprehended last week that it would, in the victory of the Tory candidate ; and the election for High Wycombe, on Tuesday, which terminated in the return of the Liberal, Mr. Remington Mills. In the latter election the con- test was one between Mr. D. Cameron, a Conservative-Liberal, or Liberal-Conservative, who promised an independent support to Lord Palmerston personally, but not to his party, and Mr. Remington Mills, who contested Finsbury unsuccessfully a few months ago. Church rates and the political interests of Dissent were the chief topics of discussion on the hustings—Mr. Mills being taunted with his " sec- tarianism," and Mr. Cameron with latent bigotry. The poll was de- cisive, being reported thus :

Mills 220 Cameron 158 Camden 1 Majority . . 62

The one vote given for an imaginary candidate of the name of Cam- den is the source of some anguish of mind to Mr. Cameron, though lie does not impute it to any deliberately hostile bias on the part of the recording officers. It is obvious that the vote was intended for him by some elector who made an unsuccessful shot at his name, and was not set right by the recording official. Mr. Cameron, writing to the Times, suggests that such carelessness on the part of recording officers, if of common occurrence, would give a large and permanent advantage to candidates with easy names. Mr. Mills might, perhaps, even win a contest in future on the strength of his easy five-letter name, if his antagonist, for instance, should happen to be of Polish or even Welsh origin. Against such dangers to the Republic one cannot well be too watchful ! The poll for the North Riding terminated thus :

Morritt (Conservative) . . 5514 Milbank (Liberal) 5037 Majority 477 Minix/inv.—Sir James Yorke Scarlett, Adjutant-General of the Forces, has promulgated a general order dated the 6th March, con- taining the revised regulations for the Staff College, in the place of those issued on the 24th April last year. The following is the sub- stance of the new regulations : The College consists at present of thirty students, and is open to officers of all arms of the service—the admission to be determined by a competitive examination. Only one officer can be admitted at any one time from a battalion of infantry or a regiment of cavalry, and only four at a time from the corps of Royal Artillery. The qualifications are (1) previous service of not less than 3 years (exclusive of leave of absence); (2) a certificate of competency for a staff career from his commanding officer, given after examination in his regimental duties; (3) either a captaincy or proof of having passed the proper examination for a troop or com- pany ; (4) a medical certificate of good health and physical fitness for stall-duties. The competitive examination for entrance is as fol- lows, the number of marks showing the relative importance of the

Maximum Mininum for qualification.

(400 being allowed 250 for very elementary mathematics.) 150 Alternative subjects. 10 10 No absolute minimum required.

Candidates may be examined on service abroad by a board of com- mission. The students, when admitted, are not required to pay an

to the funds of the College. The course of instruction in the College embraces two years, each year consisting of two terms : from 1st February to 15th June, and from 15th July to 15th of December. A probationary examinatiqn is held at the end of the first year of study, and any student who fails to obtain a given level of merit is then required to withdraw. The final examination at the end of the College course for staff appointments will be also open to officers who have not passed through the Col- lege, and may be entered by members of it who have completed only the first year of their course, if they so choose.

TEE COURT.—On Saturday last (this day week) the Queen went through a trying scene—laying the first stone, in Frogmore garden, of the new mausoleum where she intends to deposit the remains of the late Prince Consort, and ultimately to lie beside him. The ceremony was of course strictly private, as far as such a word can apply to a Court ceremonial at all. Besides herself, and all her children now in England, and the Dean of Windsor, who said the prayer for the oc- casion, there were present some thirty of the ladies and gentlemen in waiting, court physicians, &c. The intention of her Majesty had been to lay the first stone on the first anniversary of her mother's

subjects :

Mathematics . . . . marks.

1200 French ") . . . . 800 German . . . . 800 Hindustani j . . . . 300 Military history . . . . 600 „ geography . . 800 Fortification 600 Military drawing . . . . 800 Mineralogy and geology 800 Chemistry, heat, electricity, magnetism I 800

death; but as that day (16th March) would have been Sunday, the eve of the anniversary was chosen. Upon the stone is the following inscription : " The foundation stone of this building, erected by Queen Victoria, in pious remembrance of her great and good hus- band, was laid by her the 15th day of March, A.D. 1862. Blessed are they that sleep in the Lord." The building is to be erected under the superintendence of A. I. Humbert, Esq., architect, and the reclining statue of the Prince will be executed by Baron Marochetti.

LAW.—A curious case was heard before the Vice-Chancellor, Sir W. P. Wood, on Wednesday, bearing on the same question of the re- ligious education of orphans which was raised in the case of Davis v. Davis, reported in our columns of 8th February. The testator, Mr. Hill, had been himself brought up a Roman Catholic, and re- tained to the close of his life a certain fascination for the symbolism of the Roman Church, bid admitted towards its close and after his union with a Unitarian lady, that intellectually he should be disposed to join in the worship of his wife's "unadorned, charitable, and philb- sophical temple." Still he retained, in a wavering way, his hankering after the Roman faith for bis children—two daughters. Both of them were baptized by a Roman Catholic priest, as well as elsewhere. In 1858 he made a secret will appointing three Roman Catholic guardians for his children. Just before his death in 1860 he executed a new will, leaving his wife (still a strong Protestant, though inclining more towards the English Church than her former faith) sole guardian of the children, but directing them to be brought up as Roman Ca- tholics, and appointing a Roman Catholic, William Procter, emext- cutor, with his wife, of the will. Ample evidence was produced of the testator's somewhat indifferent state of religions conviction, of his wavering policy in providing for the education of his children, and of an asserted verbal agreement before marriage that the daughters of the marriage should be brought up in their mother's faith, (the sons, if any, in his own). The-Vice-Chancellor ingiving his decision, set aside altogether the bargain referred to as not proved, and even if proved not over-riding a subsequent change of purpose in the father. But having regard to the entire absence of any care on the father's part to in- struct his daughters during his own lifetime in the Roman Catholic faith, nay, to the clear evidence that he had left their education entirely to the care of the Protestant mother, to the change of his original purpose as to the Roman Catholic guardians, and the very strong measure of appointing the mother (a firm Protestant) sole guardian at the last moment, and the impossibility therefore of carry- ing out a coherent Roman Catholic education under the sole guar- dianship of a reluctant Protestant mother, the Vice-Chancellor held that the only way of carrying out the will without introducing conflicting elements into the children's education, would be to re- lease the mother from the direction to educate them in the Roman Catholic faith. The instructions, therefore, as to religious education, which he proposed to give in Chambers, would not include any direc- tion to teach Roman Catholic tenets to the children.

There have been two trials at York this week of men accused- of trade outrages, and one at least of the verdicts appears to have been worthy of an Irish jury. In both cases alike the defence wo princi- pally founded on an alibi, and in one at least the evidence for the alibi seems to have been overwhelming. Yet it was in that case that the jury convicted ; in the other where the evidence for the alibi was much less adequate the prisoner was acquitted. The murder case where the outrage had resulted in one person's death occurred at Sheffield. Joseph Thompson was indicted for the wilful murder of Bridget O'Rourke, on the 23rd November last, which was accom- plished by the explosion of an infernal machine in her room, thrown into it by three men, of whom it was said that the prisoner was one. The evidence for the prisoner simply tended to invalidate, not to disprove his presence on the night of the murder, the case for an alibi being only brought forward with respect to the occasions on which it was stated that the prisoner had bought the fusees and gunpowder. The evi- dence was certainly conflicting, but the prisoner, by his own admis- sion, had been mixed up in the conspiracy from which the murder resulted. He was acquitted. The other case occurred at Thorpe Hesley, near Rotherham. James Watson, Isaac Watson, and Joseph Tomlinson, were indicted for placing gunpowder in the shop of one Hattersley, a nailmaker, at Thorpe, near Rotherham, with intent to damage and destroy it. The evidence for the prosecution rested on that of two witnesses, who swore to the prisoners as they passed them in the dark—some corroborative evidence given by a policeman being com- pletely broken down. On the other hand, it was sworn positively by the police of Chesterfield (which is thirty-six miles off), that on the night and at the time of the explosion, they had seen and spoken with Tomlinson, who was drunk, in the streets of Chesterfield. Isaac Watson was iiroved to have been drinking with him by very strong evidence, and the third prisoner, James Watson, was proved by the evidence of fifteen persons to have been at market at Helper at the time of the explosion. The judge, Mr. Justice Mellor, thought the case so clear, that he asked the jury if it was necessary to proceed with the trial. The jury insisted, heard it through, listened to a very strong charge on behalf of the prisoners from the judge, and found all three prisoners guilty, to the infinite astonishment, it is said, of the Court. Mr. Justice Mellor passed sentence of 14 years' penal servitude. The sentence can scarcely be executed if the report of the case given is in any degree trustworthy.

Misezinannons.--At the fifth ordinary meeting of the ill-starred Atlantic Telegraph Company, the Hon. James Stuart Wortley, who oocupied the chair, gave some striking and interesting facts which augur better things for the future. Having stated that the art of submarine cabling had made great progress since the failure in 185S,

he went on to say that Messrs. Glass, Elliott, and Co., who had laid nearly all the working cables in the world, had put forth an impor- tant report on the subject. They say that they have laid twenty-four cables in all, all of which (with one exception, where a slight injury had occurred to a cable laid in shallow water on the coast of this country) are in working order. The aggregate length of these twenty-four cables is in statute miles 3497, and the length of the in- sulated wire 5902 miles. The cable from Algeria to Toulon, which is 600 miles in length, and at a depth of 1800 fathoms, only 300 fathoms less than the depth of the Atlantic cable, is worked with great success. Messrs. Glass and Elliott, it was said, had offered fair terms for laying the cable, and were willing to risk a large sum upon it. Mr. Cyrus Field told the meeting that President Lincoln was deeply interested in the project. There were, he said, 150,000 miles of telegraph in Europe and America to act as feeders of the Atlantic cable directly it should be successfully laid, a fact which would ensure almost any amount of pecuniary success if once the task were accom- plished. The Company are at present watching their opportunity.

Suffolk proposes to erect a " District Memorial" to the Prince Con. sort, in the shape of a great middle class school, and at a meeting to promote this object held in Ipswich on Tuesday last, nearly 50001. (some of the subscriptions being, however, promised in instalments, spread over 5 years) was raised on the spot.

CommEacw,.—The dividend declared by the Bank of England for the half-year ended 28th February was 11 per cent., when the Rest stood at 3,633,827 18s. The New Alliance Bank of London and Liverpool has been a great success. The allotment will be made oa Monday. The amount applied for has reached 130,000, against 5000 shares to be allotted. An opposition, however, is being or- ' ed to the undertaking, the new one being the Public Bank of Loti-

on and Liverpool. Capital 5,000,0001. It is probable that several will be brought forward on the strength of the successful progress of the first. The East India Government has reduced the interest on Indian Bonds from 44 to 4 per cent., from March, 1863. The Money Market has rather improved in character. There is little demand for money at from 24 per cent. out of doors. The market for the English Funded Securities has been steadily improving all the week, and in consequence of large purchases, Consols have risen to 941 • the New and Reduced Three per Cents are up to 9244; Exchequer Bills ' are steady and quiet at 19s. 22s. prem.; Bank Stock has recovered to 237 40. The Indian Securities are generally better. The New and Five per Cent. Stock has advanced to 1081 ; the Five per Cent. Rupee paper, 108 4 ; the Debentures, 100 1 ; and the Bonds, 25s. 28s. prem. The great feature in the Foreign Market has been a most extensive course of speculative business in Turkish New Six per Cent. Bonds. They advanced to 721, and are now at 711 721; the Old Bonds 86 ; Miris Loan 651 661 ; Mexicans 341 35 ; Venezuela 214 25; Peruvian 98 99. The Railway Share Market is less animated than at the commencement of the week, and there was a slight reaction in prices until the rise in Consols this afternoon, when prices again became buoyant. The only principal change in prices during th week has been a rise of 31. in Caledonians, which are now posted 1121 ex div. Great Northern, are 1171 118 ex. div., A Stock 1151 116 ; Great Western 741 75 ; Lancashire and Yorkshire 1081 109; North Western 914 4; Midland 129 ; North Eastern 981 99, and South Eastern 841 1. The Market for Indian Stocks and Deben- tures has been animated, and prices have experienced an almost „.o.eneral rise. East Indian are 1/. 15s. higher, and Scind 11. Cana- dian shares are worse. Grand Trunk of Canada have receded to 251 264, and Great Western 131 1. Cape Town are up to 1 14 prem. In Foreign Railways Bahia and San Francisco have advanced to 14 1 prem., and San Paulo to 4 1 prem. Colonial Government Bonds are generally higher. American Securities are firm. The great feature in Bank Shares has been a fall of no less than 61. London and Westminster have also fallen 31., and Bank of London 21. Ottoman, on the other hand, have risen 31. In Miscellaneous Shares there has been a rise of 1/. in East and West India Dock and Australian Agri- cUltural.