they disregarded previous decisions of the Privy Council on matters of ritual. In the proceed ings on appeal, the bishop does not appear; he refuses, of course, in any way to recognize a civil tribunal in matters spiritual. The result of the case is awaited with no little anxiety. Hith erto the decisions of the Privy Council on ritual questions have been a dead letter; all efforts have utterly failed to restrain the spread of the Catholic ceremonies. The Lord Mayor has not received much eulogy for his most recent exertions as a public peace maker. After the settlement of the recent omni bus strike, Lord Mayor Savory addressed a letter to the Directors of the General Omnibus Com pany, suggesting that they should drop all legal proceedings which had been commenced against workmen in respect of acts of violence and in timidation committed during the strike, in view of the pacification arrived at. To this appeal the directors somewhat forcibly replied that they re gretted the Lord Mayor should wish so much fa vor shown to men who had broken the law; and only a few days since, Sir Peter Edlin, in passing smart sentences on the men proved to have been guilty of improper conduct, commented unfavor ably on outside efforts to interfere with the opera
tion of the law. Of course the Lord Mayor was actuated only by the most good-natured motives; no man is less likely to smile upon law-breaking even in its mildest form. One of the defects of the High Court of Justice is that the court accommodation is insufficient if all the judges happened to sit at once. We had an illustration of this the other day. Two judges could find no court-rooms; so for one a tribunal was fitted up in a sort of consulting-room, while the other was ensconced in the old Hall at Lincoln's Inn, now in disuse, but once the scene of the pomp and ceremony of the High Court of Chancery. Miss Wiedeman, the German governess, has on the third trial at last succeeded in getting a verdict in the action she brought against the Hon. Robert Walpole for breach of promise of marriage. The jury gave her ^300, which she regards as a very inadequate solatium. Of course this sum will be quite insufficient to meet legal expenses; moreover the verdict is subject to the decision of a question of law, the judge at the trial having admitted some very vague evidence as corroboration of the promise to marry. Breach of promise actions appear in every succeeding Cause list in un diminished numbers.
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