'ht alarming.

Irregular indications of policy have been made by the heads of both the two great Parliamentary parties,—by Lord John Russell to a sum- moned meeting of three hundred of his supporters ; and by Lord Stanley and Mr. Disraeli to certain Protectionist deputies, who under the leading of Mr. George Frederick Young conveyed the recently resolved thanks of the National Association for the Protection of British Industry. The gathering of Whig-Liberals was summoned by Lord John Russell to his official residence in Downing Street. The organs privileged with the report say that the Premier " depicted in glowing language" the position in which the Government is placed; making " a special refer- ence" to the " powerful and compact Protectionist Opposition," and put- ting before the Ministerial party the dilemma of " two evils "—" either protection would be restored, or the country would be thrown into a disastrous state of agitation to repel the efforts" of the Pro- tectionists. Under these circumstances, " would they forego all dif- ferences on minor questions, in order to seal the success of the commer- cial policy which they advocated in common ? give him a continuance of generous support, for the sake of the welfare and prosperity of the country ? " Only a brief allusion was made to the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. Mr. Greene of Kilkenny and Mr. Ouseley Higgins were stout to resist the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill "even at the risk of the noble Lord's Government" ; and Mr. Sharman Crawford, the 0' Gorraan Mahon, and Dr. Power of Cork, "held a similar strain." Mr. Bernal Osborne would support Government, but he prayed that Ireland be left out of the bill ; and other Members "spoke in a similar spirit." All the rest, of course, who spoke at all, spoke in a spirit of "strong attachment to the principles of the noble Lord and the Government."

The deputation to Lord Stanley did not get so much a new policy, as sundry corrections of points on which Lord Stanley's recent declarations have been "misapprehended."

Lord Stanley said, he has not abandoned protection, nor yet maintained that import-duties on corn will effect no rise in the price of corn ; his mode- rate duty would operate as a " slight protection," and as a "alight re- lief from the burden of taxation." Though he would not suddenly re- verse Sir Robert Peel's policy, he would immediately modify it; and in so doing, would extend the principle of protection to our Colonial interests. The admission of general prosperity was only hypothetical ; and Lord Stan- ley is convinced that a great portion of that prosperity is only temporary. Mr. Disraeli made a declaration of more comprehensive range. He condensed in a popular form of conversational explanation, suited to the comprehension of his hearers, the main features of the policy which he has enounced in recent Parliamentary debates.

The system of protection is "now abrogated" ; whilst what is popularly i

termed the agricultural interest i left with the burden imposed by a system invented in times of protection. So with other interests. They must face public opinion, and force it to admit that "here is a great injustice." "If, as a Minister, he were placed in the position of having to recommend that settlement which he should consider to be most for the advantage of the country, and not for the advantage of a particular interest, he should not say, "You had better take off the burden of local taxation upon the land, or the tax upon malt.' On the contrary, he should say, 'One is the source of a large amount of revenue, and the other the source of an excellent local government. I wish to have these advantages ; but I cannot recommend the continuance of these advantages at the cost of the land' : and therefore he must come forward with some scheme—to the details of which he could not pledge himself—which would secure to the laud a suf- ficient compensation for the abrogration of protection. He had now ex- pressed himself without the slightest reserve, and he trusted that his views had met with their concurrence. That was the system to which they should adhere. A demand for justice,. accompanied by the expression of their wil- lingness to settle the question in a conciliatory spirit ; that they were pre- pared—as all great questions in England must be so arranged—to meet the opposite party in a spiiit of conciliation and compromise, but always keeping before the public, simultaneously with their distress and depression the great question of the burden of taxation—that was the mode by which they would ultimately succeed."

•

The Metropolitan objectoro to "taxes on knowledge" have been agi- tating their subject, in hopes of securing the substantial attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his revised Budget. A very crowded meeting assembled in St. Martin's Hall on Wednesday, to hear speeches from Mr. Cobden, Mr. Milner Gibson, Mr. W. G. Hickson, Mr. Edward Miall, Mr. G. H. Lewes, and others' and passed resolutions in promotion of their object—which in particular was the removal of the newspaper- tax.

The Ragged Schools erected in Lambeth at the cost of Mr. Beaufoy, as a monument to the memory of his wife, who lived a life of active good deeds among the poor, were opened on 'Wednesday, in the presence of a large assembly over which Lord Ashley presided, and at which many clergymen were present. The schools have cost 10,0001., and a sum of 4000/. has been invested by Mr. Beaufoy in perpetual trust to maintain them in good repair. The building is of modern architecture, of two stories, with extensive wings, and so arranged that the boys and .girls occupy opposite sides of the range : there is room for one thousand chil- dren.

Lord Ashley besought the inhabitants of the neighbourhood to relax their

charitable efforts in no degree because of the noble completeness of the work which Mr. Beaufoy had accomplished, but rather to redouble them, that the teaching appliances may be on a scale worthy of the schoolhouse accommo- dation. Indicating the direction in which he wished his stimulants to ope- rate, he declared, as the result of all his personal researches into the misery of the poor, that his hearers must especially attack the physical sanatory rela- tions of the poor. If they would examine into all these matters, they would come to the conclusion to which he had long come, owing to the inquiry he had been necessitated to institute—namely, that a very great part of the pauper- ism, misery, and vice of large towns, arose from the sanatory condition of the people, from exposure to sickness, from depression of health and spirits, from all the evil influendes of intemperance, and from a thousand similar causes. He maintained that a 'large portion of those miseries arise from

these causes—causes which, if not removed, will drag the people down until our large towns become one living mass of unwieldy pauperism. On the same day, Lord Ashley presided at the annual meeting, in the Store Street Music-hall, of the supporters of the Ragged Schools in Phil- lips's Gardens, Upper Tottenham Place. Lord Ashley stated, that when he first undertook the advocacy of these schools, there were only five in the Metropolis ; there are now one hundred schools, at which twenty thousand children are taught.

After his farewell to the stage on Wednesday last weak, Mr. Macready received, on Saturday, the valedictory compliment of a public dinner, at which was grouped a striking assemblage of literary, artistic, and scienti- fic eminence, and social dignity. About six hundred, not half the number of the actual applicants forticket3, were accommodated in the spacious Hall of Commerce. At the principal table, writers, artists, ambassadors, nobles, and Members of the House of Commons, were blended ; and Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton presided. Sir Edward introduced the toast of the evening with a speech of graceful and varied compliment. Referring to some remarks he had only that morning read, qualifying the degree of Mr. Macready's genius, he asked the crowd of artists and critics before him, if it be not the true doctrine that the proper measure of the genius of an artist is the degree of excellence to which he brings the art he cultivates ? "Try Mr. Macready by this test, and how great is the genius that will delight us no more I" "There is a word often applied to artists and authors, and I think always applied improperly, when we speak of superior intellect—the word versatile. I think the proper word is comprehensive. A man of genius does not vary and change, which is the meaning of the word versatility ; but he has a mind sufficiently comprehensive to embrace all variety and changes. If I seek to circumscribe a circle, I can then draw as many lines as I please straight from the centre to the circumference ; but the mathematical law, is, that all these lines must be equal mete the other, or it is not a circle. I don't say that our guest is versatile, but I say that he is comprehensive; and the proof that he is most comprehensive in his ca- pacity is, that all the lines he has created within the range of his art are equal one to the other. And that, gentlemen, explains to you that origi- nality which even his detractors have conceded to him. Every great actor has his manner, as every great writer has his style. But the originality of our guest does not consist in his manner alone, but in his singular depth of thought. He is not only comprehensive in his essentials of the actor, in look, in gesture, intonation, stage-play, but he has applied his study far deeper—he has sought to penetrate into the subtlest intentions of the poet, and made poetry itself the golden key to the secrets of the human heart. He is original because he has never sought to be original, but true; because, in a word, he is conscientious in art as in his actions. Gentlemen, there is one merit in our guest as an actor, on which I would indeed be ungrateful if I were silent Many a great performer may attain to high reputation if he restrain his talents to the acting of Shakspere and the great writers of the past, but it is clear that in so doing he does not advance an inch the lite- rature of his time. It has been the merit of our guest to recognize the truth that the actor has it in his power to assist in creating the writer. He has identified himself with the living drama of his period, and by so doing he has half created it. Who does not recollect the rough and manly vigour of Tell, the Roman heroism of Virginius, and the exquisite sweetness and pathos which invested the sacrifice of Ion ? Who does not feel that, but for him those great plays would never have obtained a hold upon the stage, or have ranked among the masterpieces which will go down to the latest posterity ? And what charm and grace—not the author's own—he has given to the lesser works of an inferior writer, is not for me to say. [The delicate allusion to Sir Edward Lytton's own dramatic works was cordially recognized.] But, gentlemen, all this, in which he has sought to rally round him all the dra- matic writers of his time—this brings me at once from the merits of the actor to those of the manager. You recall that brief but glorious time when the drama of England appeared suddenly to revive, and promise that the fu- ture would be worthy of the past, when by the union of all the kindred arts, and the exercise of taste at once gorgeous and severe, we saw the thoughts of Shakspere properly embodied on the stage, because the ornament was never superior to the work. Just remember the manner in which the su- pernatural agency of the weird sisters was made appear to the eye—or the magic isle of Prospero rose in its mysterious solitude—or how the knightly character of Henry of Agincourt received its true interpretation from the pomp of the feudal age—and you will own that you could not strip the stage of those scenic effects without stripping Shakspere of half the depth and richness of his descriptions. But that was only half the merit of his ma- nagement. He not only enriched, but he purified the audience, so that, for the first time since the reign of Charles the Second, a father might have taken his daughter to the public :theatre with as much safety and as little fear of any shock to decorum as if he had taken her to the house of a friend: and for this reason, the late lamented Bishop of Norwich made it a point to form the personal acquaintance of Mr. Macready, that he might thank him as a Prelate of the Church for the good he had done to society. Gentlemen, I cannot recall that period without a sharp pang of indignant regret ; for if that management had lasted some ten or twelve years, we should have esta- blished a permanent school for actors, and a fresh and enduring field of dra- matic poetry ; and we might, while we educated the audience up to it, feel that dramatic performances of the highest point of excellence had become an intellectual want, which could be dispensed with no more than we can now dispense with our newspapers." In the course of his modest speech of thanks, Mr. Macready made some judicious remarks on the proper course of an actor ; and spoke out plainly on a point connected with his own management of the Great London Theatres to which Sir Edward Lytton had alluded- " The preamble of their patents recite, as a condition of their grants, that the theatre should be for the promotion of virtue and instruction to the hu- man race. I think these are the words. I can only say it was my determi- nation to the best of my ability to obey that injunction ; and, believing in the doctrine that property has its duties as well as its rights, I conceived that the proprietors should have cooperated with me. They thought other- wise, and I was reluctantly compelled to relinquish, on disadvantageous terms, my half-achieved enterprise. Others will take up the uncompleted work ; and if inquiry were set on foot for one best qualified toundertake the task, I should seek him in a theatre which, by eight years' labour, he has, from the most degraded condition, raised high in public estimation, not only as regards the intelligence and respectability of his audience, but in the learned and tasteful spirit of his productions." [The allusion, it will be perceived, was to Mr. .Phelps and Sadler's Wells.)

It fell to the lot of Mr. Charles Dickens to propose the toast of the Chairman. This he did con amore-

" In the path we both tread, I have uniformly found him from the first the most generous of men; quick to encourage, slow to disparage, ever anxious to assert the order of which he is so great an ornament ; never con- descending to shuffle it off, and leave it outside state-rooms, as a Mussulman might leave his slippers outside a mosque There is a popular preju- dice, a kind of superstition, to the effect that authors arc not a particularly united body ; that they are not invariably and inseparably attached to each other. (Cheers and laugh(er.) I am afraid I must concede half a grain or so of truth to that superstition : but this I know, that there hardly can be—that there hardly can have been—among the followers of literature, a man of more high standing, or farce above these little grudging jealousies which do sometimes disparage its brightness, than Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. And I have the strong- est reason just at present to bear my testimony to his great considera- tion for those evils which are sometimes unfortunately attendant upon it though not on him. For, in conjunction with some other gentlemen now present, I have just embarked in a design with Sir Edward Lytton, to smooth the rugged way of young labourers, both in literature and the fine arts, and to soften by no eleemosynary means the declining years of meritorious age. And if that project prosper, as I hope it will, and as I know it ought, it will be one day an honour to England where there is now a reproach; originating iu his sympathies, brought into operation by his intellect, and endowed from its very cradle by his munificent generosity." The toast of "the Artists" was intrusted to M. Van der Weyer, the Belgian Minister. He made an artistic reference pleasant to Mr. Ma- cready, and humorously praised the architecture of our paintings at the expense of the architecture of our streets- " Assembled as we are here, to pay our tribute of admiration to a great dramatic artist—a man whose genius has recently received the highest ho- mage from the greatest living French writer, George Sand—perhaps he is not aware of it himself, that the great prose writer, George Sand, has placed (and I use her own expressions) under the protection of his great name and his friendship her own views on dramatic art. In this assemblage it must be to me, as to you, a source of extreme gratification to see around me the most eminent representatives of art in all its various branches—Academicians and non-Academicians—your Eastlakes, your Landscers, your Maclises, your Barrys, your Tophams, and your Creswicks. It would be too long a list to enumerate all the talent before me. But we all know how linked together are all the arts ; and when dramatic poetry unites to painting, sculpture, architecture, and music it conduces to the most ennobling pleasure that the mind can enjoy. Alluding to the relations of art with the stage, allow me to make one incidental remark. It is impossible for the foreigner who visits your theatres not to be struck with the extraordinary:talent, the real genius, displayed by your artists in scenic decoration; the richness of the imagina- tion, the colouring, and the beauty of the architecture—the last of which qualifications I have often wished to see transferred from your stage to your streets, where I must confess there are some architectural enormities, which doubtless weigh as heavily upon your soil as I dare say they do upon the consciences of the mistaken artists who perpetrated them." Mr. John Forster, who gave the toast of "Dramatic Literature," had the privilege to bear a poetic message to Mr. Macready from the first of living poets. Mr. Alfred Tennyson, the Poet Laureate, had intrusted to him some lines, with a permission to read them. "Farewell, Macready, since tonight we part! Full-handed thunders often have contested Thy power, well-used to move the public breast.

We thank thee with one voice' and from the heart.

Farewell, Macready, since this night we part ! Go, take thine honours home : rank with the best, Garrick, and statelier Kemble, and the rest, Who made a nation purer through their art.

Thine is it that our Drama did not die, Nor flicker down to brainless Pantomime, And those gilt gauds men-children swarm to see.

Farewell, Macready ! moral, grave, sublime, Our Shakspere's bland and universal eye Dwells pleased, through twice a hundred years, on thee." The Chevalier Bunsen returned thanks for the toast to the "German Exponents of Shakspere," in a most genial and hearty speech, embodying a broad criticism of Shakspere as the genius which presided at the birth and watched over the cradle of modern German literature.

Tracing the German worship of Shakspere from Lessing, through Goethe, the two Schlegels, to the more recent instance of Ludwig 'Fick, he declared that the language of these men is the organ and echo of the universal voice of love and admiration with which the Anglo-Saxon mind in its native abode reverently hails the great kindred genius of England as the poetical hero of the Germanic race. The Chevalier added a point of personal interest. "When Ludwig Tick was in London, in 1817, he was struck by a young actor then only beginning to appear before the public. He did not see him in a Shaksperum play—the particular object of his devoted attention—but in a now forgotten drama of the day, in a character neither attractive nor deeply poetical. But, nevertheless, he was struck by that young actor in the midst of the splendid constellations which then shone on the English stage. If this young man,' Tick says, in his Dramaturgic Letters of 1817, goes on as he has begun, he will become one of the most eminent actors of the age.' The young man's name was William Macready." Mr. W. J. Fox, M.P., delivered an elaborate oration on "the Stage " ; with which toast the names of Mr. Charles Kemble and Mr. Phelps were connected. Mr. Kemble inspired interest by his appearance and the earnest delivery of a few simple words. Mr. Phelps had departed. The toast of " Mrs. Macready" was proposed by Mr. Thackeray with blended touches of feeling and droll humour ; and the last toast, of "The La- dies," was proposed with suitable gallantry of phrase by Lord Dufferin.

By this time it was almost midnight.

The House of Lords, on Thursday, heard evidence on Heathcote's Divorce Bill, and Maclean's Divorce Bill The adultery of the wife was proved in each instance by letters admitting the fact, and praying forgiveness : in the former case it had taken place with the wife's own brother, who has since become convicted of forgery and been transported for seven years. Both the bills were read a second time.

The adjourned proceedings in the suit already mentioned of Metairie versus Wiseman and others, before Vice-Chancellor Lord Cranworth, were resumed on Wednesday, have continuously occupied the Court to this time, and threaten to be of much further duration. At present the ease of the plaintiffs only has not been completed. Cardinal Wiseman is only a no- minal defendant. The suit is brought to set aside a deed of gift of the late Mathuriu Cerra*, a French refugee of 1797, who by miserly parsimony as a teacher of languages had amassed 10,0001., and disposed of 7,0001. to found a girl's school in connexion with the Roman Cathohc Chapel of St. Aloysius, in Somers Town. The plaintiffs are next of kin of Carre ; and they allege that the gift was obtained by James Holdstock, the priest of the Chapel of St. Aloysius, through the exercise of spiritual terrorism over the mind of Cairt; on his deathbed.

At the Central Criminal Court, on Monday, Coates Fennell was tried for stealing, or feloniously receiving, coffee the property of the London Dock Company. The chief witness was an approver, Compton, who was a delivery-

foreman in the docks in 1849. He arranged that the prisoner should pur- chase four bags of rice, send the order to him, and he would forward from the warehouse coffee in place of the rice. This was done ; Compton re- ceiving sixpence a pound for the coffee as his share of the robbery. The Jury found Fennell guilty of feloniously receiving the coffee. The prosecu- tion was instituted and conducted against this officer of the Dock Company by the Board of Customs; who by this success before a jury seem to have demonstrated the existence of some of those criminal irregularities in the subordinate officials of the Dock Company, which were less successfully called in question in the great revenue case lately tried.

On Wednesday, Edward Smith was tried for setting fire to an oat-rick at Bedfont. Its had behaved so strangely in prison as to create an impression of insanity, and he acted the same part at the bar. But the prison surgeon said he was only counterfeiting madness. He was convicted ; and Mr. Justice Ens.eluite satisfied that the insanity was feigned, sentenced him to be transported for fifteen years.

Charles Wood, one of two men who made a murderous attack on Mr. Wigg at W'alworth, with intent to rob him, was convicted, and sentenced to be transported for life.

On Thursday, Ann Dean, the young woman accused of causing her hus- band', death by striking him on the back of the hand with a fork, was tried for the manslaughter. The case e her was not very strong. Her counsel urged that the wound might have been inflicted by the man him- self during a scuffle : it had been admitted by the witnesses that the woman had shown great affection for her husband. Verdict, "Not guilty."

Barrett, a switch and signal man on the London and Brighton Railway, has been examined at Greenwich Police Office on several charges of stealing goods from the railway, said to amount in total value to 20001.; while Bar- rett's wife, another woman, rind three men, are accused of feloniously re- ceiving the property.

It is said that a Lombard Street bank has been robbed of 10,0007. by some of its clerks. A warrant has been issued against a clerk who absconded ; and his defeleations are rumoured to amount to 50007.

The extensive premises of Mr. Smith, a perfumer in Prince's Street, Ox- ford Street, were entirely destroyed, and neighbouring houses damaged, by a fire which broke out on Wednesaav at mid-day. A bottle containing per- fumery spirits had been placed on the mantelpiece of the counting-house ; the heat bunt it, the spirits ran into the fire, and the whole place was soon in flames.