NEWS OF THE WEEK.

THE trial of Miiller, the German accused of the murder of 11r. Briggs on the North London Railway, commenced on Thursday morning at the Old Bailey. The judges are the Chief Justice and Baron Martin, and the prosecutor the Solicitor-General ; Serjeant Parry is retained for the defence, and the prisoner has elected to be tried by a jury of Englishmen alone. The first two days have been occupied by the witnesses for the prosecution, and little as yet indicates clearly the line of defence to be adopted beyond a hint of an alibi. Great stress is laid upon Mitller's lameness, and a strong effort is of course made to break down the testi- mony of the cabman Matthews as to the identity of the hat left in the railway carriage—an effort only partly successful. Matthews identified the hat completely, though he showed himself very careless in other assertions. The interest excited by the trial is remark- able, reporters are present for New York papers, and the offices of the penny journals are besieged for latest editions. THE trial of Miiller, the German accused of the murder of 11r. Briggs on the North London Railway, commenced on Thursday morning at the Old Bailey. The judges are the Chief Justice and Baron Martin, and the prosecutor the Solicitor-General ; Serjeant Parry is retained for the defence, and the prisoner has elected to be tried by a jury of Englishmen alone. The first two days have been occupied by the witnesses for the prosecution, and little as yet indicates clearly the line of defence to be adopted beyond a hint of an alibi. Great stress is laid upon Mitller's lameness, and a strong effort is of course made to break down the testi- mony of the cabman Matthews as to the identity of the hat left in the railway carriage—an effort only partly successful. Matthews identified the hat completely, though he showed himself very careless in other assertions. The interest excited by the trial is remark- able, reporters are present for New York papers, and the offices of the penny journals are besieged for latest editions.

Contradictory rumours have been prevailing throughout the week as to the signature of peace in Northern Europe. A very con- fident statement appeared on Wednesday that the treaty would be immediately signed, and that the Danish frontier would be drawn from Christiansend to Sanderup, so leaving an infinitesimal morsel of North Schleswig to Denmark. On Friday, however, it was announced that Prussia had invented a new demand, viz., that Danmark should compensate all sufferers by her blockade of German ports. It is suspected with apparent reason that the Cabinet of Berlin is unwilling to recommence paying the troops who are now living on the plunder of Jutland, and that they will not sign peace until assured that there is no food left in the Peninsula. It has not yet been clearly ascertained that they will first eat the inhabitants.

The military news from America is almost nil. A rumour from Confederate sources, made much of by the" Copperheads," states that Sherman had been obliged by the operations in his rear—the loss of Rome in Georgia, which has really been recaptured by the Confederates—to evacuate Atlanta again, and that four corps had been taken prisoners. It seems, however, to be a mere canard. Sherman's last despatches stated that the Confederates were about to attack Rome, but that he hod plenty of stores in Atlanta, and was not in the least apprehensive of the result of the desultory operations in his rear. General Sheridan had not attempted to leave the Shenandoah Valley, but after rendering all the lower part of it untenable by destroying the crops and stores of wheat,—a military " barbarity " surely much lees barbarous than a battle,— had returned to Strasburg, followed by Confederate cavalry, on whom his own cavalry turned suddenly, beat them thoroughly, and captured eleven guns. The situation at Petersburg was un• changed.

The political news is nearly as unintelligible. Reuter affirms that the Pennsylvanian vote shows a majority for the Democrats which tho vote of the Pennsylvanian soldiers will not be sufficient to destroy. The Times correspondent does not mention the Penn- sylvanian victory, over which he would have exulted, and the reference to the soldiers' vote seems a mere device to excite pre- judice. The importance of the incident is, however, in any case exaggerated. As we have shown in another column, if Mr. Lincoln carries the West he may lose the whole of the Pennsylvanian and New York votes without being beaten, and Ohio and Indiana have

returned Republican Legislatures. A statement that the anti- slavery constitution of Maryland has been rejected is more pro- bable, and the manifesto ascribed to 3.1. Auguste Belmont is of course correct. That person—Rothschilds' American agent and a German by birth—threatens revolution if the elections are inter- fered with, showing that the last hope of the Democrats is in securing the undivided vote of the occupied States.

Mr. Bernal Osborne addressed his constituents at Liskeard last Friday week, and strove to keep up that reputation of Jester-in- Chief to Parliament which he is rapidly acquiring. It is a dan- gerous sort of character to be obliged to live up to, and if Mr.

Bernal Osborne is open at all to the sense of intellectual shame he must read in the reports of his speech with many uncomfortable emotions such forced jocularity as this :—" Letting in the Tories ! Poor innocent individuals ! I want to know where they are. If that great Pagan philosopher Diogenes were to descend into the impure and inflammable atmosphere of the House of Commons provided with a patent Sir Humphrey Davy's lamp he might find three pure Tories, all excellent, honest, energetic men. Diogenea would say,' I think the member for North Warwickshire, Mr.New- degate, is one.'—He would say, How are you, Newdegate ?' &c ," at which imbecility of course the Liskeard people laughed, as they would have done,—with equal reason,—if Mr. Osborne had made faces or stood on his head. His only real hit was the resuscitation of some lines written in 1742 by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, the famous Whig squibber, who addressed an ode to the first Viscount Palmerston, then Chief Remembrancer for Ireland, and likely to remain so :—

" One stanza more, and I have done.

May Heaven preserve Lord Palmerston ! And since for life he's in, We must like others stay Till Death—or his or ours—shall pay The wages of our sin."

We need scarcely add that Mr. Osborne assailed Lord Palmer- ston bitterly and applauded Mr. Gladstone. The latter is certainly worthy of all admiration, but we doubt whether the adhesion of Mr. Osborne with his cap and bells to his grave and earnest party will be found to add materially to his strength. Yet Wamba once rendered material assistance to the Black Knight.

The Bishop of Rochester's charge against the "Essayists and Reviewers" and Dr. Colenso, was, strange to say, much the most moderate and least hysterical of the recent charges. Of course the Bishop treats doubts about Deuteronomy and criticisms on Numbers as grave sins, but he is at least candid enough to admit that they are no graver than the "worldliness and indifference" of people who never express their doubts coherently at all. If he would but go a little further, and discover that precisely the same worldliness and indifference are often at the root of the most ostenta- tious orthodoxy, we might have Dr. Wigram, in spite of his petty formalisms and aversion to clerical agriculturists, amongst the reformers yet. It is something to get a bishop to treat heresy as no worse than worldliness. The usual impression they give is that if a heretic would but combine worldliness with his heresy—that is, hint his doubts in learned ambiguous words, or, as they phrase it, "take care not to be a stumbling-block to weak orethren,"—there might be "a good deal" in what he says.

it is announced by telegram from Montreal that the delegates of the British American Colonies have unanimously accepted the principle of a Confederation, and agreed to invite the people of the Pacific Colonies to join in the plan. They have, moreover, passed a vote which, though absurdly reported in the bulletin, obviously means that the Crown shall appoint the Governors of the Provinces as well as the Governor-General. Reuter's agent has evidently cut down "as well as" into "and," thus making it appear that the conference had discussed the question of continued connection with England, which was assumed from the first. No other details are given, but it is known that the new Constitution will be embodied in an Act of the Imperial Parliament, that the Con-

federacy will either call itself Acadia or Canada, and that it will solemnly arrange the terms of its union with Great Britain.

It is said that M. Bismark's newest idea is to allow the election of the Prince of Augustenburg as Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, on condition that the construction and control of the Eider Canal are left to Prussia. This arrangement will, he thinks, leave Prussia master of the German fleet of the future, and give her besides the control of trade between the German Ocean and the Baltic. The plan will be unacceptable to Russia, who finds herself thus with only one outlet from the Baltic,-while her enemies have two in- lets into it. The canal, however, is not yet cut, nor is it by any means clear that it can be cut so as to carry an iron-clad from sea to sea. It will not either be south of the line of the ice which chokes the Elbe for two months in every year.

A deputation of the "British Organization," headed by Lord Calthorpe, waited on Earl Russell on Wednesday to present a memorial praying that his Lordship would exert his influence to prevent any interference with missionary operations in Turkey. The memorialists stated that their agents did not preach in public places but in chambers, that the dread of public disturbance was a mere plea which, if stretched, would atop public preaching alto- gether, and that to forbid converts to preach, as the Seraglio had done, was equivalent to prohibiting missionary operations in Turkey. Earl Russell of course promised nothing, but he gave the deputa- tion to understand that in his opinion the Hatti-Hamayoon justified attempts to proselytize both by natives and foreigners, provided no disturbance were raised, and only urged on all Protestant societies the necessity of tact and forbearance. As a rule Moslems, we believe, are not irritated by preaching in favour of Christianity, but only by attacks on Mohammedanism, which in controversy it is difficult to avoid. The mail from China informs us that the Taeping rebellion is over and a new war commencing in Japan. A fleet of seventeen war vessels, English, French, Dutch, and one American, was to start on 28th September for Simonosaki, to destroy the batteries there erected by the Prince of Nagato. These batteries guard the western channel into the Inland Sea, the vast natural lake or arm of the ocean which divides Niphon from Kiusiu and Sikoke. This sea, which is 350 miles long by about fifty wide, not only washes the richest portions of the islands, but is the nearest route through Japan into the Pacific, and Europe therefore wants both ends kept open. The eastern entrance cannot be closed, and the west is open by treaty, which treaty the aforesaid Prince chooses to break. He is therefore to be punished, but it will probably be necessary to occupy his Gibraltar for some time. The general result will be known probably on some day next week by telegram from Suez.

The Emperor of the French left Paris on Wednesday to meet the Czar at Nice. It is reported in Belgium that King Leopold is to join the two monarchs, but no crowned head can now take a railway trip without affecting the Bourse. Napoleon and the Czar have not previously met.

Mr. Cobden has replied to the Scotsman in a letter explaining his speech at Holmfirth upon which the Scotsman had relied to prove his original charge, viz., that Mr. Cobden wished for news- papers without comments. He shows that he spoke, to a mechanics' institute, of the Press as it then was, and not with reference to what it might become, that his remark was in fact a mere de- scription of the comparative popularity of the two departments of a newspaper. The Scotsman admits that the passage will bear this interpretation, but asks why, as the charge had been so often made, particularly by himself in the Edinburgh Review, it bad not been answered before. That is not the question at issue, but this,— Is it fair to give a mere deduction from the drift of a public man's speech as something which he actually said ? We think it is not, even when an accurate deduction, if only because the practice deprives the speaker of the whole benefit of purposed caution in weighing words.

The Government of Western Australia recently sent an expedi- tion to explore the country beyond Sharks' Bay, in the north-west angle of the colony. The expedition has returned, and reports the discovery of some five millions of acres of splendid land, well grassed and timbered. with plenty of wild fruit, grapes in particu- lar, and good vegetables. This country stretches round Breckuock harbour—twenty square mil ea of water landlocked and studded with magnificent islands—Camden Sound, and Roebuck Bay. An association has been formed to "open up" the new country, and as it is "eminently" suited for sheep the land monopolists will very speedily be at work. All that is needed, says Mr. H. R. Grellet, is labour and capital, to which we may add freedom from the con- victs who deter emigrants from settling.

The Poor-Law Board has odd duties to perform. It has consti- tuted itself just now an Ecclesiastical Court, and is inquiring through Sir John Wadsham into the orthodoxy of the Rev. E. Hill- paid, Chaplain of the Norwich Workhouse. That gentleman is accused by the Board of Guardians of neglecting his duties and " identifying " himself with Mr. Lyne, alias Brother Ignatius. A great mass of evidence has been taken, the drift of which seems to be that Mr. Hillyard administered the communion daily to the " Beneclictines," that the Bishop ordered him to cease, that he " re- spectfully " "declined to comply with -his Lordship's request," that he neglected the workhouse a good deal, and that he sent as a substitute one Mr. Ouseley, whose "name is not in the Clergy List," and who appears to be a "monk." A further quantity of evidence was taken to show that Mr. Hillyard indulged in "high" practices at his own parish church, and in particular had had the Ten Commandments hung up printed on a bit of paper "like a newspaper," a statement which created "great laughter." What on earth the Poor-Law Board had to do with all that nobody at- tempted to explain. If this sort of thing goes on we shall have the Trinity Board trying pilots accused of Sabe,llianism.

The Emperor Napoleon so far from "crowning the edifice" appears to be plunging deeper into absolutism, and what is worse, to be degra- ding his autocracyfrom its scientific French form into a mereRussian tyranny. The Nain Inane is a chzap journal, and the Government instead of subjecting it to the Press Law, severe as that is, has chosen to apply to it the law applicable to colportage, which requires that the book or tract circulated should be previously submitted to Government. This is simply the Russian censorship, and destroys literature instead of controlling it. On Sunday some political article thus submitted for revision was omitted by decree, but the proprietors instead of filling their columns with more acceptable matter left them blank—a truly French sarcasm. A joke of the same kind was played during the brief reign of terror over the press established in India by Lord Canning. The law forbade any attack on the religion or customs of the natives, whereupon one editor republished the Ten Commandments with the second left out as directly insulting to idolators, the fourth as injurious to people with no Sabbath, and the seventh and ninth as actually prohibiting the most valued of the native customs.

The Italian Parliament met on the 25th inst., and the tone of the Deputies is described on all hands as calm and moderate. The Convention has been carefully explained, and it is expected that it will be accepted by a large majority. The self-restraint of the members is the more remarkable, as it seems clear that the Conven- tion has cost the King his popularity in Turin. He has been even hissed, and obliged for a short time to go out accompanied by a guard. In the rest of Italy, however, there is no dissent, and the Neapolitans will, it is believed, vote unanimously for the transfer of the capital. Part of this readiness arises from a dislike of Piedmontese influence, but more from a conviction that Rome without French bayonets will be more easily taken than Rome with them.

On Tuesday evening an association called the National Reform Union held a meeting at Manchester, the President of the old Anti-Corn Law League, Mr. George Wilson, presiding over its violent and rather foolish deliberations. We fear the great case of the working-classes will be sadly injured by such advocacy as it received at Manchester. One speaker, Mr. Robert Cooper, talked of extorting reform from an arrogant and selfish aristocracy." "All talk of the apathy of the people was only a cloak under which a treacherous Prime Minister and a truculent House of Com- mons wished to conceal their own indifference and bad faith." The conduct of the Cabinet or Parliament had been one of "unparalleled mendacity." Mr. S. Pope said the wish of the people for a share in the suffrage had no connection whatever with the question of the duty of giving it them ; and Mr. Alderman Goadsby said that "the taxes that were now complained of" would all be removed if the people would not flatter men in high places " by adoring them too much when they came here,"—intended, we suppose, for a backstroke at Mr. Gladstone. No principle for a Reform Bill was proposed or even discussed. One speaker advocated "manhood suffrage," but the business of the meeting appeared to be a feeble attempt to excite the strong passions of the first Refoim period by the use of inflated and exaggerated invective against the present Parliament and Ministry.

The Lord Mayor, who is a Unitarian, gave a rather special and extra-routine dinner to the Archbishops and Bishops last Tuesday at the Mansion House, as the ordinary entertainment in June had been postponed owing to the sudden illness and death of the Lord Mayor's brother. Only the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of Oxford and Peterborough were able to be present. The dinner was as usual gorgeous, but the speaking afterwards was perhaps a little embarrassed by the evident consciousness of the great dignitaries that they were, in the eyes of their host, rather useful national institutions than spiritual guides. In pro- posing the health of the bishops the Lord Mayor dilated on the grave responsibilities of an office to which all the doubts and diffi- culties brought by the laity to the clergy, swelled by the special doubts and difficulties of the clergy themselves, came ultimately for confession and solution,—and the Bishop of Oxford in compli- anentary reply remarked, his face twinkling all over with humour, that the Lord Mayor divined the anxieties of episcopal duties with a sympathy so delicate and perfect, that he could not but suspect him of having at some time in his own career partly prepared himself for episcopal offices and duties!

The Italian despatches on the subject of the Convention have been printed, and show conclusively enough that the Italian Government have reserved jealously their right to Rome, and only pledged themselves not to use, or permit the use of, any violent means to attain that end. They have agreed to the strictest application .of the principle of non-intervention to the Roman territory. The choice of a new capital was only a moral assurance to the Emperor that the Italians are willing and prepared to wait patiently till the question of their relations with the Pope is solved without the use of violent means. "We accept, then, seriously and loyally the engagement not to apply those violent means which cannot solve questions of this class, but we cannot give up our reliance on the force of civilization and progress to assist us to arrive at the union of Italy and the Papacy." "A free Church in a free State" is still announced by the Ministry as the goal of their efforts.

In the meantime Garibaldi, with his usual unfortunate political instinct, has declared himself, after some hesitation, in violent language against the Convention. In a reply to General Avez- zana's letter against the Convention, he "grieves to see our country so badly and so shamefully governed," and in one still more explicit and much more violent published by the Opinion Nationale Garibaldi is stated to have said, "that guilty men should wish to find accomplices is quite natural, but that any- body should endeavour to plunge me into the mire of the men who defiled Italy by the Convention of the 15th of September is what I did not expect. The only Convention to be concluded with Bonaparte is this—to purify our country of his presence, not in two years, but in two hours." It is idle to look for practical poli- tics from a dreaming idealist like Garibaldi.

The Augustinian nuns of Loretto, near Ancona, have brought down upon themselves the interference of the secular power by a shocking act of falsehood and torture. A daughter of an Italian Liberal had been confided to the care of the twelve French and four Italian nuns who constitute the nunnery aforesaid. This girl, Left the convent in April of the present year. A rumour was then circulated that a girl three years older had been bewitched by her. The accused with two of her relatives went to the convent on the afternoon of the 14th in answer to a summons. She was taken alone into the parlour, the door closed, and she was confronted with the chaplain, physician, and lady superior, who declared that a girl in the convent was in danger of losing her life in consequence of this young lady's spells, and thereupon they all set upon her to make her render up her contract with the demon. The priest sprinkled her with holy water, twisted his stole round her neck, exorcized her, made signs of the cross on her mouth and forehead ; the physician and chaplain stripped her to her shift, and felt under her armpits for the contract with the devil, till at last the girl fainted. When she recovered they renewed the attack, threatening her even with death, and the lady superior exhibited a box full of pins and needles which had issued, she said, from the body of the enchanted girl, and showed an indecent note found upon the same girl with the words "Death to the Pope !" At last the mother found her way to the persecuted child, and got her away from the convent. It appears that the whole affair was a plot, not a super- stition. The girl said to be " charmed " was in excellent health,— and the nunnery has for a time been very properly closed by order of the Government, and the chaplain and physician arrested.

The late Lord Lyndhurst has been recently charged with belief in spiritualism. No assertion could look more improbable, for his intellect was cold, calm, sceptical ; and Mr. G. V. Hastings, the

Secretary to the Social Science Association, has written to some of the London papers to state, on the authority of a letter written by Lord Lyndhurst himself, that this is false. Lord Lyndhurst, like most other men, looked at the matter, was present at one or two seances, and rejected the spiritualistic hypothesis as the result.

Mr. Anderson, the great Wizard of the North, gave a sjance on Monday to prove that the rope trick practised by the Brothers Davenport can be done "without the aid of spiritualism." He gave it, as he said, in broad daylight, but after all the gaslight was much stronger than the daylight, and much more important to the audi- ence. He had a cupboard which, in rbference to the Davenport structure: he called repeatedly a stricture,—i. e., criticism,—a joke which told well on the audience. A gentleman of the name of Sutton, who looked rather oppressed by his responsibilities, was bound first and put into the cupboard, but Mr. Wakley and Mr. Friswell had bound him so effectually that he could not get on with his trick at all, and bad to explain that the cord interfered with his circulation. So he was let out for that time, and Mr. Anderson's daughter Lithe, a clever child of about thirteen, who had said to the conjuror in the morning, "Pa! I'll be tied up," was substituted. The cord was more tenderly put on in this case, and she came out of the cupboard triumphantly in about three minutes, and then tied herself up again. Then Mr. Sutton did the trick effectually enough, taking care, however, to be bound "by a sailor," and not by Mr. Wakley. It seems to be a very simple question of the greater or less tightness of the cord which determines the possibility of the trick. The audience cheered Miss Lizzie Anderson vehemently; the conjuror placed his hand on her head, fell into a pose, an called her "my darling;" and the spectators, who had taken a great aversion to the chairman of the Investigating Committee, Mr. Hollings- head, who appeared to have Davenport proclivities, proposed clamorously that " Hollingshead should be tied up next."

A clergyman travelling by express from London to Gloucester met with an unpleasant adventure. He had taken his seat along with two ladies in a second-class carriage, when a half-drunken sailor was put in by the guard, and the train started for Swindon. The man at once proclaimed himself a "Southern privateer, and an enemy to the — English," threatened to "smash the clergy- man's skylights if be did not tell his opinion," tried to make the ladies drink gin, called them "old Jinnies " for refusing, spat three times in the clergyman's face, and suddenly tried to jump out of window. The clergyman and the ladies being unfortunately Christians endeavoured to prevent him, and succeeded, "when he adopted a line of retaliation so indecent that," says the writer, "I dare not describe it." The ladies huddled into a corner, the clergyman stood before them with a stout umbrella, and in this attitude the party remained till the engine stopped to take water at Vantage Road, when the man was secured. We trust that the Southern Association will at once forward the funds to defend this unfortunate victim of English prejudice. The poor man only• thought himself among negroes!

The market for Home Securities has ruled firm this week, and prices have steadily improved. On Saturday last Consols for money left off at 881, ; and for account at 881, 89. Yesterday the closing prices were :—For transfer, 891, ; for time, 891. The return of the Bank of England is favourable, and there is an increase both in the stock of bullion and the reserve of notes and coin, the former is now 13,146,009/., and the latter 6,837,1041. The stock of bullion in the Bank of France has increased to about 10,915,0001.

The leading Foreign Securities left off yesterday and on Friday

week at the following prices : — Friday, Oct. 21. Friday, Oct. 28.

Greek • . .. • .

Do. Coupons Mexican Spanish Passive • • Do. Certificates Turkish 6 per Cents., 1858 1862.. „ Consolides..

• • • •

..

..

..

• • • •

.. .. .. .. 211 9 26 291 121 68 692 491 .• .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 22 9 27 11 14 se 71 5/4

The last transactions in the leading British Railways yesterday and on Friday week were at the annexed quotations :—

Friday. Oct. 21. Friday, Oct. 28.

Caledonian .. .. ..

Great Eastern .. • • . • • •

123.. 441 .. 126 451 Great Northern .. .. . •

129 .. 198 Great Western.. .. • • • • • . •• 791 751 Lancashire and Yorkshire ..

1131 115 London and Brighton .. . •

1031 1031 London and North-Western • •

112t 116 London and South-Western ..

05 961 London, Chatham. and Dover ..

..

39 ... 37 Midland .. .. .. ..

..

188 North-Eastern, Berwick .. ..

.• 13)1 197 lt 81 Do. York .. ..

95 GO West kildland, Osiord — ...

81 03