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LONDON CORRESPONDENCE.

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LONDON CORRESPONDENCE. Rather than serve as a juryman on an inquest to be held on a man who had committed suicide, a Lon- don shoemaker declared that he himself would commit Euicide. This threat, made to the coroner's officer, was no idle one, for on Saturday morning he was found dead, suspended from the bedpost. The duty of serving on a coroner's jury, it must be admitted, is often a most revolting one, but it is not often that persons summoned to give their assistance are so sen- sitive that they prefer to be the subjects of an enquiry to serving as jurors. I understand that there is every probability of the claims for the Victoria Cross of Lieutenant W. R. J. Hamilton, of the Corps of Guides, for services ren- dered during the Afghan campaign, not being enter- tained, on the pica that the officer did nothing more than his duty on the occasion of Major Battye's death, when his conduct was brought specially under notice. The authorities of the Horse Guards are most anxious not to lower the decoration in the public estimation, and it is felt it would be lowered were it granted for every case of personal gallantry. < • One of the Society journals says that Mr. Joseph Patterson, of Philadelphia, is regarded by the best informed Americans now in London as the probable successor to Mr. Welsh at the American Legation. lIr., Patterson is an opulent citizen of the Republic, of refined tastes, and of good position. He is known t. many English travellers in the. States, and its aris- tocracy. Mr. Gladstone met Mr. Patterson at a dinner party at Sir Thomas Dyke Acland's, and teemed much impressed by the variety of his informa- tion and the breadth of his views. < What singular coincidences one occasionally hears of. No wonder imaginative people sometimes see in such events sequences of fate or destiny. I hear that the steamer City of Edinburgh, which in 1840 conveyed the late Emperor Napoleon III. when he made the Boulogne landing fiasco, was hired from Donald Currie, and was therefore sister ship of the present steamer Edinburgh Castle that conveyed the late Prince Imperial to Zululand. Apropos of Currie and Co.'s line, I lately heard from one of their cap- tains that he took Sir Garnet Wolseley to Coomassie, brought home news of the fall of that place, and si- tently took Sir Garnet to Zululand. This sort of gossip leads one on, and I am tempted to give a little chapter of Camden House, Chislehurst, history. Sixty. six years ago, this very month, a valet named Joseph Nichols, in the employ of the then owner of that place, Mr. Bonar, banker, be- lieving that money had been willed to him by his master, murdered that aged man and Mrs. Bonar in the very chamber in which Napoleon III. subse- quently died. Nichols gave himself up, and was evented at Maidstone and husband and wife sleep together in the pretty churchyard at Chislehurst. Mr. Newman Hall's church was crowded to excess on Sunday morning by sensation seekers. But the rev. gentleman did not preach, to the sore disappoint- ment of the strangers who had assembled in the hope of hearing Mr. Hall refer to the trial through which he has recently passed. The papers of Saturday usually give the church arrangements of the following day, yet, although Ur. Hall was not announced to preach, It was hoped that through some unforseen accident he might have to do so. I am informed that the rev. gentleman contemplates taking a long rest in Switzerland. < Victor Hugo is the greatest dramatist of the age, and, despite his eccentricities, the only great poet that France ever possessed. Yet his dramas, with the exception of Ruy Bias," do not take" in Eng- land. There was another failure the other night. Miss Genevievo Ward has, in Mr. Irving's absence, opened the Lyceum Theatre, and a week ago gave the public a melodrama which had in it many elements of the ridiculous. She presented Lucrezia Borgia." It is a magnificent play in the original. As presented it is stilted and poor. Miss Ward struggled against her audience as best she could, but a poor company and lack of sympathy were too much for her. We may perhaps one day listen to Hugo, but we seem not to be ready yet. The Chinese form of oath, as administered at the Central Criminal Court the other day, in the trial of a charge of theft brought by a Chinaman against two fellow counrtymen, is very curious. When the pro- secutor, who calls himself Ah Sam, was called upon to give evidence against Ah Fow and Ah Wa, a Saucer was handed to him which he threw to the ground with great force, it being smashed, whilst at the same time the interpreter said, "The saucer is cracked, and if you do not speak the truth your body will be cracked the same way as that saucer." It is fortunate that the Heathen Chinee does not very often make his appearance in the English law courts, other- wise it would be necessary to open small crockery stores in the courts, with a good supply of saucers to be smashed by the witnesses. Each year the Academie Francaise meets at Paris to distribute rewards to virtuous and deserving people. At the recent meeting a truly noble women, named runier, was awarded a prize in recognition of the Services she rendered during the Paris insurrection. At the risk of her life she carried letters between the capital and Versailles, and, although arrested more than once, she managed to secrete her correspondence and deliver it to the proper persons. She was de- nounced by the Commune, and on the 22nd of May, when a part of Paris was already in the possession of the Versailles troops, she was arrested, placed against a wall, and shot. She was not mortally wounded, and when picked up was carried off to the hospital, where she remained eight months, losing her left leg and the use of her right arm. After all a prize of £40 is a poor reward for such heroic services. The fearful conflagration at Serajevo, following so closely as it does the flooding of Szegedin, is a great Misfortune for Austria. Difficulties of no slight a character were experienced in bringing about the occupation by Austria, but these had been sur- rounded, and governors and governed were settling down to the quiet adjustment of their affairs, when the work of progress was seriously impeded by this disaster. And a most grave disaster it is too. Sera- jevo was known as the" Pearl of Bosnia," and was not only the seat of government, but also the centre of commerce with the adjoining countries. This is the fifth time it has been destroyed by fire. That the flames spread with rapidity and destructive power is not to be wondered at, for the streets were extremely narrow and closely built, and all attempts to stay the progress of the fire were useless. The tpwn will be rebuilt on a better plan, so that if fire should break out at any future time there will be more chance of preventing the recurrence of another such disaster as that of Friday. In the meantime, however, there are about twenty thousand homeless people. Mr. Tracy Turnerelli has written a great deal of Comic copy, but his last is the best. It is a screamer. Jrom beginning to end it is a prime joke. Its very quotations, the expressions of sympathy which he deceived from the Daily News, the scathing irony of the Saturday Review, and the grandiose fun of the Times, are produced with a simplicity quite too ridiculous." His letter to the Prince and Princess of Wales, in which he anticipates matters by (I hope) many years in calling himself their "dutiful and Obedient subject," seems to lay him open to a charge of high treason. His declaration that he is not a Jew, but a Christian, leads one to wonder why he over for one instant got up a people's tribute to the Premier. He declares that Benjamin Disraeli is "intoxicated with the exuberance of his own arro- gance. He boasts that the Earl sent his brother, the clerk to the House of Lords, to see the wreath. He adds that the Prince of Wales wondered at the beauty Of that same golden ornament. He concludes by Saving that he has tried to write to the Queen, but her secretary will not let him approach her. Having thus lost hia right of petition, he appeals to the country to explain why Lord Beaconsfield would not take the wreath from Tracy Turnerelli's hand. Wouldst thou know the secret ? It is because Tracy Turnerelli called the Premier one of the new-fangled mighties inferior to himself. Lord Beaconsfield was right. To call a man inferior to Tracy Turnerelli is surely as deadly an insult as could be devised.

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COUNTY COURT.

)'TREVETHIN SCHOOL BOARD.

VOLUNTEER PRELIMINARY INSPECTION.

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