became very high and dangerous; the bowsprit soon broke short off, the boats being occasionally towed to windward by the steamer, which kept burning blue-lights.

Towards nine o'clock the masts went one by one; the people in the tops were heard cheering and encouraging each other as they fell. The passengers in the "Wonga-Wonga" speak of this as a most heart-rending scene, for the ship seemed at the time to break thoroughly up. Fragments of spars and large masses of wreck could be seen (it was a beautifully clear, bright moonlight night) passing in shore with the tide, clinging to which a number of poor fellows were picked up, most of them in the last state of exhaustion. The boats kept on the spot until all had disappeared. Nothing could be heard or seen during the remainder of the night. At daylight the wind had subsided; the sea was a perfect calm. The "Wonga-Wonga" steamed close to the reef, but nothing was visible but the stump of one mast and a few bare ribs. It was difficult to realize, even to a person on the spot, and after a night of painful anxiety, that such a dreadful calamity had happened-that of that noble ship, and of her complement of gallant fellows, so lately full of hope and life, nothing now remained but the few half-naked sailors that stood around us.

Numerous instances occurred of personal courage and endurance of the very highest order. One case, that of a young seaman named Johnson, who, at the risk of his own life, on four different occasions saved the lives of drowning men, deserves especial notice; whilst the pilot's boat's crew-four marines-were among the first and foremost.

A despatch from the senior officer on the New Zealand station to the Admiralty, gave an account of the efforts made to recover the bodies of the brave men who perished on board the "Orpheus," and to give them Christian burial. The natives on the coast were most friendly, and rendered the parties every assistance. They had buried several of the bodies which had been cast up on the beach before the arrival of the English party, and among others the body of Commodore Burnett, which was, however, disinterred, removed to Auckland, and there buried with military honours. Above fifty bodies altogether had been found and buried by the natives and the party sent in search. Very few articles connected with the ship had been washed ashore, and nothing of the wreck appeared above water but the stump of one of her masts.

7. A SINGULAR action for breach of promise of marriage was tried in the Court of Exchequer. A Miss Russell sued Mr. Adams, an eminent surgeon, with whom she said she had formed an acquaintance while taking a deformed child to be examined by him. The case rested entirely on the testimony of the young lady and her mother. There were no letters nor confirmatory statements from other quarters, while the landlady of the house in which the plaintiff and her mother lived went far to contradict their statements.

Some of the jury were for closing the case, but as others

were in favour of hearing the whole evidence, the action was adjourned. The case for the defence was fully gone into, and left no doubt that the plaintiff's story was a fabrication. The jury, however, returned their verdict in the following rather singular terms:"As the plaintiff has not made out her case to our entire satisfaction, we of necessity find a verdict for the defendant."

9. CONVICTION FOR MURDER AT EDINBURGH.-The High Court of Justiciary sat for the trial of Alexander Milne, accused of the murder of James Paterson. Milne was a jeweller and artist in hair, in South Frederick-street, Edinburgh, and Paterson was a working jeweller, who was frequently employed by Milne. On the morning of Wednesday, January 7, Paterson sent Graham, one of his workmen, to Milne to make inquiry as to the execution of an order Paterson had received from him. Milne asked Paterson to come himself. Paterson entered his shop about eleven o'clock, and a few minutes afterwards he was seen to come out at the area door, climb over the railings, and enter an adjoining shop, where he fell down, and in a few minutes expired, having been stabbed to the heart. There were no witnesses to the blow, but Milne was found with a dagger in his possession, which he had bought only that morning. At the trial Milne pleaded "Not Guilty," but also put in the special defence of insanity. After the evidence for the Crown, which occupied the greater part of the day, evidence was given at considerable length in support of this special defence. The facts brought out presented a case of no little difficulty. It appeared that for some days before the murder, Milne (who had for the last few years led a very dissipated life) had been drinking heavily, and had reduced himself to a state which bordered on, if it had not become, actual insanity. On Christmas night he had had a party of friends at his house, whom he horrified by the display of a drawn sword, with which he performed numerous vagaries, and shocked by a very profanelyexpressed blessing, and generally alarmed by his excited and strange conduct. On the 5th of January he was in bed, and called in a doctor, who prescribed some medicine, and censured him for his debauchery. Paterson happened to call, and took up the bottle to smell it; and Milne afterwards refused to take any, saying that Paterson had poisoned it. At night he told the porter, who put on the shutters, that robbers were watching to break into his shop; and some noises at the door that night appear to have confirmed his suspicions. Next morning, he got a smith to put on an additional bar; and Paterson happening to call, he pointed him out to the smith as one of the blackguards who had been trying to break into his shop. The same day he went to an auctioneer to ask him to take charge of some of his most valuable stock, in consequence of the suspected robbery; and to several persons he also expressed his belief that Paterson had designs upon his life, so as to get his wife and take the business. On the morning of the 7th he went out about ten o'clock, and bought the dagger-whether prior or subsequent to Graham's visit the evidence did not distinctly show.

After the murder, he waited in his shop till he was apprehended, though he had both opportunity and money to escape. To the police officials he avowed the act, stating that Paterson, only two days before, had come in and diffused vapours through the room, and, while he was blinded and overpowered by them, taken liberties with his wife, and had also attempted to poison his children. Next morning, the statement which he made in a declaration before the magistrate was that he was playing with the dagger when Paterson came in, that he told him to stand back, but that Paterson ran forward upon it, and so was killed by accident. In the first night of his imprisonment he awoke in great terror, and called out that his wife and children were being murdered. The turnkey feared delirium tremens, and took him to the padded room, but no such fit came on. Two other prisoners, incarcerated in the cell with him, testified to Milne having spoken and acted throughout his imprisonment under delusions similar to those he exhibited before the murder, and stated that sometimes he had justified his conduct in putting Paterson to death, and at other times expressed great regret for his death, which he attributed to accident. The medical gentlemen called for the defence (including Professor Christison) thought the prisoner while in gaol was insane, and acted under insane delusions; and they had detected no symptoms of feigning. They could not, however, account, by reference to any known case of monomania, for the contradiction in the prisoner's statements as to the cause of Paterson's death. The Solicitor-General (Mr. Young) addressed the jury for the Crown, and contended that the prisoner's aberrations were solely by drinking; that he had never lost consciousness of right and wrong, and that his declaration and conduct the day after the murder showed not insanity, but the result of cool reflection. Mr. Scott, for the defence, maintained that the prisoner was insane at the time of the act, and that the insanity still continued. The Lord Justice Clerk, in his charge to the jury, went carefully over the evidence, and especially pointed out all those parts of it which bore on the question of insanity, and supported the prisoner's plea. He also instructed the jury that they might, if they found the prisoner sane, return a verdict of culpable homicide, should they think, from the absence of witnesses to the deed, that there was doubt as to its being an act of murder. The jury, after an hour's absence, found the prisoner guilty of murder, but recommended him to mercy. The Lord Justice Clerk pronounced sentence of death, and appointed the execution to take place on the 4th of March, at the same time stating that the recommendation of the jury would be forwarded to the proper quarter.

FIRE AT THE BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S PALACE.-About eight o'clock a.m., a fire broke out in the Bishop of Lincoln's palace, at Riseholme, about three miles from Lincoln. Smoke was first seen issuing from the floor of the bed-room immediately over the servants' hall, and an alarm was at once given. His lordship

was at home, having arrived on the previous evening; and Archdeacon Kaye, his lordship's son-in-law, was also at home. The latter at once undertook the direction of the domestics. Their attention was first directed to the floor from which smoke was seen issuing, and a large quantity of water was poured upon it; but, notwithstanding the efforts to prevent it, the flames broke out with great fury, and ascended to the ceiling. Their exertions were then directed to the room above, and large quantities of water were poured upon that floor. The flames, however, gained the mastery; and soon that room was burning too. The doors were then shut, to prevent the ingress of air, and thus confine the fire to the portion of the mansion (the right wing) of which it had obtained possession. By this time the cathedral and city engines, with their respective brigades, arrived, and soon a very copious supply of water was poured upon the burning mass; and the flames were subdued about two hours after the fire had been discovered, but not before a portion of the roof had fallen in. Fortunately, there was not a breath of wind stirring at the time, and an abundant supply of water at hand from the lake in front of the palace, or the whole of this beautiful and extensive mansion might have been a blackened ruin. The fire was said to have commenced in the chimney of the servants' hall, where a fire had just previously been kindled. A wooden beam in the ceiling of the hall projects into the chimney, and it was conjectured that it had ignited.

THE "GEORGE GRISWOLD."-This vessel, laden with a large supply of provisions for the benefit of the Lancashire Relief Fund, was berthed in the Waterloo Dock, Liverpool. She is a very handsome and entirely new vessel of 1180 tons American register, but capable of carrying 1500 tons, and was built by Mr. Thomas, at Quincey, in the State of Massachusetts. As the vessel was being towed up the river, she was saluted by the firing of eighteen guns from the North Fort, the Rock Fort ensign also being "dipped" in courtesy. It was expected-indeed, a sort of semi-authoritative announcement had been made that some public demonstration would take place on the arrival of the ship; but, beyond the courtesies above mentioned, nothing of a public nature occurred. A few days afterwards, however, the Chamber of Commerce met the commander of the vessel and the officers of his crew in St. George's Hall, when the following address was presented :— "To the Commander of the ship 'George Griswold,' as the representative of the American Contributors to the Relief of the Distress in the Cotton Manufacturing Districts.-Sir,-Sixteen years ago, when our countrymen in Ireland were suffering the horrors of famine, your nation, then united and prosperous, sent across the Atlantic offerings of grain and provisions to alleviate their great distress. To-day, with your energies taxed to the utmost by the gigantic struggle through which you are passing, you have not

ceased to be mindful of the misery which this sad contest is inflicting on fully half a million of our industrious workers, and you have a second time generously contributed of the abundance with which God has blessed you to help the necessities of those among us who, through no fault of their own, are reduced to a state of compulsory idleness and destitution. We call to mind that out of the sufferings of that period there arose for us, by this emancipation of our industry, an unspeakable good, which has enriched our country, extended our commerce, banished not a few of our social discontents, and inaugurated a great moral revolution, the blessings of which have not been confined to ourselves, but are gradually working out in other countries the like beneficial results. May we not hope that the trial through which you and we are passing will be the precursor of equally great social ameliorations, and that out of the darkest hour of a nation's existencethat of bloodshed between members of the same family-there may issue for you some signal national deliverance, the benefits of which are to stretch beyond yourselves to the gain of our common humanity? Our country accepts with gratitude this noble gift. We welcome to our port the bearers of this brotherly bountyfreely given, freely stowed, and freely freighted across the seas by a commander who has given his free services to this benevolent work. Our Government and the local authorities have shown their appreciation of the act by removing every impost on the free admission of the ship and her cargo. As representing the mercantile community of Liverpool, this Chamber of Commerce asks you to convey to the donors its sense of the liberal and friendly spirit in which your merchants and agriculturists have united to send forward to our distressed cotton operatives so acceptable a message of goodwill and sympathy; and in many a home, darkened by the shadow of this terrible calamity, the silent thanks and prayers of thousands who are bearing their privations with a patience and a heroism beyond all praise, will be your best reward. Addressing you on behalf of a community among whom it is well known great differences of opinion prevail as to the causes and objects of the contest now unhappily raging among you, it would be evidently unbecoming in us to put forward any statement that would create dissension and mar the general harmony of the occasion; but we think we are warranted in saying that men of all shades of opinion would rejoice to see this war terminated in any way that would not be inconsistent with your honour as a people, and with the great and responsible position which you occupy among the nations. We shall recognize in the return of peace and prosperity among you the best securities for our own continued prosperity. We trust that nothing will arise to interrupt for a moment the friendly relations which have hitherto subsisted between us, and that no harsh judgments or misrepresentations of feelings and motives on either side will lead us to forget that