XIII.-PASSING EVENTS.

PUBLIC AND POLITICAL.

THE Queen remains in strict retirement at Osborne.

THE Prince of Wales left England, en route for Syria and the Holy Land, on the 10th of February.

THE Princess Royal arrived on a visit to the Queen at Osborne on the 15th ult.

THE treaty between Her Majesty and the grand Duke of Hesse, relative to the marriage of the Princess Alice, has been issued. We would particu larly call attention to the following clause :-Her Britannic Majesty promises to secure to her Royal Highness the Princess Alice Maud Mary, from the time of her marriage to her Royal Highness's decease, the annual sum of £6000 sterling, to be paid quarterly to Commissioners named for that purpose by Her Britannic Majesty, to be by them received for the sole and separate use of the said Princess, notwithstanding her married state, and which annual sum of £6000 sterling, so payable quarterly, the said Princess shall not have power, either separately or conjointly with his Grand-Ducal Highness the Prince, to alienate, mortgage, or receive or direct to be paid by way of anticipation; but the same shall from time to time, as the same shall become due, be paid and payable into the proper hands of the said Princess alone, upon her own sole receipt, or to such person or persons to whom she shall, by writing signed by herself alone from time to time, as the same shall become due, direct and order the same to be paid, or whom she shall otherwise authorize to receive the same on her sole behalf.

MESSRS. MASON AND SLIDELL arrived in England in the last week of January.

THE Emperor of Russia has voluntarily taken a most important step in the progress of constitutional government; by an imperial decree he has published the Russian Budget for the current year.

Ir is reported by the Paris correspondent of the Morning Post that henceforth English journals will enter the imperial dominions without undergoing official examinations.

NOTHING decisive has occurred in America; Canadian trade is said to be benefiting by the disturbed state of public affairs across the frontier.

SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL.

THE birth of 900 boys, and 901 girls, were registered in London during the last week of January, showing how exact is the proportion between the sexes when not disturbed by war or emigration. In the ensuing week the boys number 1,007, the girls 1,013.

THE case of Miss Shedden, which has been so often before the public, has been finally adjudicated in the Probate Court. This lady, who with so much ability, and even eloquence, pleaded her own and her father's cause, concluded her address on the 23rd of January, applying for a rchearing of the case, which a short time ago was decided against her. The Court, without calling on the other side, pronounced the judgment; the unanimous opinion of the judges on the bench being, that there was no ground for a new trial. She will, however, carry an appeal before the House of Lords. THE Postmasters in England and Wales, at whose offices money-order business is transacted, are now permitted to purchase postage stamps from the public at a charge of 21 per cent.

THE Third Annual Meeting of the Brockham Industrial Home for Female Workhouse Orphans, was held in the parochial schoolhouse of Brockham, near Reigate, on the 1st of February. The report read to the meeting showed that marked success had attended the institution. Five-sixths of the girls placed in domestic service had done well; most of them had placed a portion of their wages in the school savings' bank; and few, if any of those trained in the institution, were ever likely to become a burden to the ratepayers. Several members of Parliament were present, and various speakers expressed their approval of the system followed at Brockham, of removing the girls at the age of twelve from the contamination of the workhouse.

THE annual prizes given to the girls of the Masonic Female Orphan School, Burlington Road, Dublin, took place on the 29th of January. His Grace the Duke of Leinster, Grand Master, took his seat on the throne and distributed the prizes.

AMONG the official announcements just made in Paris, are some appointments of ladies to the heads of charitable posts. The number, eight or nine, are selected by the Empress, who is the legal head of all the charitable institutions in France. It has a novel sound (says the Illustrated News) to hear of the official paper gazetting some lady to the post of President of the society for the aid of orphan children and distressed married women, with as much ceremony as the appointments are gazetted to the knighthood of the Legion of Honor.

THE Hon. Mrs. Dyce Sombre has contributed £1,500 towards the erection of a new town hall and covered market at Stone, Staffordshire.

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LORD LEIGH of Stoneleigh is appealing to the public for the distressed operatives of Coventry his Lordship says there are 25,000 people there out of employment, and a committee has been formed to assist some of them to emigrate.

A MEETING of the members of the Frederick-William-Victoria National Institution took place at Berlin on the 8th of February, when hymn-books, the gift of the Crown-Princess, were delivered to the five couples married on the 28th of January, the anniversary of her own wedding day. Fifty thalers were also awarded to each newly married pair from the funds of the institution; since the foundation of which, four years ago, forty couples have been endowed with similar sums.

"NEW YORK TRIBUNE," 28th JAN., 1862.-" A private letter from Col. Leasure of the Pennsylvania Roundhead Regiment, (now at Port Royal,) pays the following tribute to a relative of the Secretary of the Treasury:-' -'Miss Chase, a cousin of the Secretary of State, is our matron, and I am well satisfied that her devotion to the welfare of the private soldiers, sick in my hospital, has saved the lives of more than fifty of my best men. She also saved the lives of Mr. Browne, my Chaplain, and Lieut. Gilliland, by her timely and assiduous attention. Miss Chase is a sort of Florence Nightingale, who has devoted the energies of a life that was darkened in its early days by a great sorrow, to the nursing of sick soldiers in the army of the Union; and in spite of every misrepresentation, and the thousand trials that beset her dangerous position, she has steadily persevered against the obstacles which intimidated all others. When sickness fell upon us, so that from two to four of our men died daily, she alone of our nurses stood calmly in the hospital, ministering to the sick and dying, as only a devoted woman can minister, and that, too, when the dreaded coast fever seized upon her, and she felt assured, and so assured us, that she would not survive it. But she made a determined effort to make the soul master the disease of the body, and succeeded, and straightway she was at her post again. I believe she expects and wishes to die at her post, sooner or later, to the end that she may lay down a life in the service of her country which has been a burthen to her.'

THE Annuaire Encyclopédique gives the following statistics relating to

suicides in France:-" The number in the course of last year was 3,899, averaging more than ten a day. Of these, 842 were females, and 3,057 males; 16 were children under 15 years of age; 38 men and 11 women were 90 and upwards. The majority were between 40 and 60 years of age. Suicides are most frequent in April, May, June, and July. The means of death were— hanging and drowning, in 2,833 cases; suffocation with charcoal, 271; shooting with guns, 206; with pistols, 189; cutting instruments, 153; jumping from high buildings, 110; poison, 93. In 44 cases the mode of death is not specified."

PROTESTANT DEACONESSES.-After a long discussion in the Upper House of Convocation, the following Resolution, moved by the Bishop of Oxford, was agreed to:-"That this house has read and considered the address of the Lower House as to the devotion of themselves by Christian women within the Church of England to works of piety and charity. That this house agrees with the Lower House in believing that such efforts deserve all the encouragement which the Church can give them, and such guidance as may help those who are making them to live as dutiful members of the Church of England. That they deem it most expedient that this guidance should be sought directly from the parochial clergy and the Bishops of the districts in which such devoted women labor; and they commend them and their work to the prayers of the Church, that all so laboring may be upheld and directed in their life of charity and labor of love by the blessed Spirit of the God of peace and love." We hope to enter at length upon this subject in our

next.

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

MISS ROBERTINE HENDERSON has been elected Westmoreland Scholar at he Royal Academy of Music.

A CORRESPONDENT of the Athenæum says, that "in October last a deputation of ladies, consisting of Mesdames E. Dear Thomson, Attwood, Hay, and Alfred Roberts, presented Mrs. Pittard, widow of the late curator of the Sydney Museum, with £531 in Australian sovereigns. This tribute of sympathy was raised by a committee of ladies, who are now foremost in performance of those good offices that reflect such lustre upon woman's tenderness. The present was enclosed in a handsome case, upon which were appropriately inscribed these words, " A tribute of sympathy from Australia." WE have to record the death of Miss Woodfall, the daughter of Henry Sampson Woodfall, the first publisher of Junius' Letters. She was of great age, 94; born, therefore, before Junius had made his first appearance, and long before the United States of America had existence. As she resided with her father until his death in 1805, she may be considered as the last direct authority on the subject of these letters. Though not unwilling to converse about Junius, and a good test of an anecdote, she really knew but little; and, as we believe, for the best of all reasons, that her father knew but little that was not known to all. She resided for many years in Dean's Yard, Westminster, where she was universally respected. Miss Woodfall's house was literally part of the old Monastery of Westminster, truly one of the antiquities of London, with a sunk pavement, and walls of immense thickness, just as its aged inhabitant was a relic of a past time. The dean and chapter have, we hear, kindly acceded to her known wish to be buried in the cloisters, and Dean Trench volunteered to read the funeral service. What a link in tradition is thus lost! The Woodfalls have been more or less connected with literature and literary men for two centuries; before the days of Pope certainly, who gave half-a-crown to Henry Sampson when a child, for reading a page of "Homer."

THAT the realities of life equal and surpass any imaginary trials which the pen of the novelist can portray, requires but little experience of human nature to verify. Yet such is the mind of society, that tears are oftener shed over the highly-painted scenes of fiction than over the living representatives of misfortune and oppression. What pathetic tales, what touching romances, however, are daily enacted in the busy world around us! What a field is open on every side to the student of character in a personal contact with practical life! Again, how much we ourselves lose in progression, by dealing with the shadow instead of the substance. In the former case, the sympathetic chords expand only to contract again so soon as the impression of the moment is passed; in the latter, feeling is kept alive, sympathy enlarges, and the germ of love fructifies by contact with reality.

A few years since, circumstances led me to take a deep interest in a large class of our poor sisterhood, known as the "needlewomen of London ;" and an investigation into the trials of many of their order whom I wished to relieve, naturally left upon my hands records of patient endurance and prolonged sufferings which could not fail to excite my warmest sympathy. Acting upon the request of the Editors of the ENGLISH WOMAN'S JOURNAL, I have consented to note down a few of the many cases brought to my notice, and to publish them from time to time in this magazine, under the head of “ the Annals of Needlewomen." Knowing, however, what ignorance and unbelief exist respecting that which we do not ourselves witness, I would, at the commencement, assure my readers that far from having per

mitted my pen to dress up any tale of sorrow I record, I dare not allow it to portray the depths of destitution I myself have witnessed lest I should be accused of exaggeration. I might, perhaps, think myself scarcely justified in raising the curtain of misery over individual sufferers thus far, were it not for the hope that in so doing fresh: germs of sympathy may spring up, so that individual exertion may, in some measure, arrest the number of future victims to like trials.

VOL. IX.

G

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One morning a very faint tap at the door of my room, an apartment appropriated to business connected with the Institution for Needlewomen in Hinde Street, being responded to, a poor woman presented herself in a state of great agitation, her tears not allowing her to speak; before she could recover her composure, she was followed by an official carrying an armful of soldiers' shirts, who begged to know "If I would tell her what was to be done with Mrs. M- she had brought back all her shirts made up with the fronts behind,' and they could not pass inspection." This was indeed a serious offence, causing much trouble. Turning to reprove the woman for her carelessness, I saw she was trembling so much, and looked so ill, that I was convinced some great trouble lay behind the work in question, and, dismissing the inspector, I addressed a few kind words to her, inquiring if she were not accustomed to such work; she replied, as well as her sobs permitted, "Yes, she had lived for years by her needle, but somehow the shirt pieces had got mismatched, and she had not, till too late, discovered the mistake."

Her great fear was lest she should not be allowed to receive any more work, and, clasping her hands in distress, she exclaimed, "If you'll only forgive me, ma'am, this once, I'll sit up all night to alter them-only pray, ma'am, pay me something in advance, my children are starving at home-they had no food all yesterday." The poor woman's whole appearance bespoke such respectability, and her address and manner were so above the common, that I felt at once this was no tale of imposition; and relieving her present need, I smoothed the difficulty of the shirts. As we became better acquainted, little by little I drew from her the history of the gradual decline of her humble fortunes. Her mother had died when she was an infant, but her father, being well to do in the world, was careful to have her sent to school and trained in good habits.

At the age of fourteen, however, she was left an orphan, and then entered service, where, giving satisfaction, she gradually rose in her employer's favor and secured good wages; after nine years' service, "a good chance," as she imagined, combined with love, induced her to change her condition, and she married. There seemed every reason for her friends to deem her selection a wise one; her husband was a steady artisan, employed in the making of iron houses, -a business which brought him from £3 to £4 a week: no rashness could therefore be laid to the charge of the young couple in their union. During the next few years of her life, Mrs. M.enjoyed as much happiness as falls to the lot of most human beings, for, as she said, "while her husband lived, she never knew either sorrow or want;" they had comfortably furnished rooms, and not only paid their way, but laid by a few pounds every year in the savings bank. They had been married seven years, three children had increased their circle, and Mrs. M- was again near her confinement, yet no debts were incurred, when one evening Mr.