The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-11 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, JANUARY 11, 1864.

WHERE CAN EVE MEET Al? I'ER THE
PANTOMI3I ES ? My dear I'dlow, Gentlenum sup
at EVANS', Covent-garden.

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at

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THE best TROUSERS for gentlemen to wear
are those made by ELSTOB, of 60, New Bond-street.
They are neither so low in price as to necessitate their being
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ELSTOB'S TROUSERS, TWENTY-ONE SHILLINGS

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

SATURDAY REVIEW.—There were points which
might well have lifted the murder affigwell Lodge
out of the annals of vulgar crime and given it an
ideal character. The heroine filled her part well.
Beautiful, attractive, self-reliant, and fearless, as it
seems, of that temper which by the murderer's own
showing had betrayed itself to her as dangerous—
bent on softening the blow she must inflict, and not
shrinking from scenes that cannot but have been
highly wrought and harrowing—there is no short-
cowing here. The hero, too, had some of the qua-
lities we look for in romance. Tall, handsome, of
good bearing, gifted with many of the qualities that
ladies love, and capable of a fixed purpose for which
he is ready to sacrifice his life—at least we should
have expected violence from him to harmonise with
our poetical conceptions of crime to which passion,
and no directly sordid aim, is the instigator. Yet
what a strange revelation the whole scene is of the
predominance of habit, of the mastery of the com-
moner influences over the obvious claims of the
occasion, of that slowness to apprehend the bearing
and consequences of anything terrible or startling
which characterises ordinary men so long as cir-

cumstances will allow! Even the very proper.
ties and surroundings, the images brought before
our eyes by the narrative, excite a sense of indigna-
tion at the deference to instincts of the very com-
monest every day life in that supremest moment.
That sweet girl, for such she was—pretty, graceful,
animated, courted, beloved—who had, less than
an hour before, left her drawing-room, her own
proper domain, in all the pride of youth and bloom,
is carried dead into the kitchen by her lover, and
laid on its hard, rude floor. Then, to be sure, fol-
lows a melodramatic flourish of heroics. The old
grandfather asks, " What ever made you do it ?"
and there is the reply, "The woman that deceives
me dies." But hero begins and ends the only fea-
ture of the scene in common with the romance of
fiction. No remorse, no apostrophizing I—how
should there be in the kitchen ? It would seem as
if the poor old gentleman, in a vague sense of dis-
comfort and bewilderment, wanted that great con-
soler of old age—his tea. The murderer had been
his guest. For different reasons he must not leave
him in the kitchen ; and the way that suggested
itself out of the dilemma was to propose that they
should have a cup of tea together, and " talk it
over." Townley accordingly gees upstair to Wash
his hands, and sits down with his' Bessie'e" grand-
father to tea ann brandy and water. How far,
we wonder, did the scene strike the family doctor
as natural when, having taken his necessary survey
of the murdered girl he had known so well, stretched
cold and stff on the kitchen floor, be wee introduced
into the library to find the pair at tea together ?
There was, he says, little conversation dining the
quarter of an hour of waiting for the policeman.
The prisoner, however, was perfectly self-possessed,
and alive to little personal inconveniences. "Look
here," he says, showing his hand, "I have cut my-
self too; can you do something for it ? "fhen
arrives the constable. The prisoner gives himselt
up, asks to see his victim, is taken once more to the
kitchen, looks at her, and pronounces himself far
happier than he was before. Now this apathy, this
unimpassioned look of things, this routine of every
day in such an unspeakable contrast of circumstance,
does not, we know, mean all that it appears to do,
but it does mean something. We see a sort of stolid
habit prevailing among the main actors. The poor
old grandfather might think afterwards that he
had acted with a set purpose of detaining the pri-
soner; but in fact, when utterly bewildered, especi-
ally at his age, people do follow habit, and the
idea " of talking it over at tea" implied, no doubt,
a very indistinct notion of what the thing to be
talked over was. But how sit down to tea with
bloody hands ?—therefore his guest must be asked
to wash them. And that poor girl on the kitchen
floor ! It is not in ordinary human nature—in no
nature that is not carried out of itself—to bring
dropping blood, even life-blood of the dearest
upon carpets and furniture and front etairs.
It belongs to a universal instinct, strengthened by,
nurses and servants till it becomes part of us; there-
fore the victim must be laid where blood will leave
no stain. We resent it all, but the true vulgarity
of the scene rests with the murderer himself—with
that dull low nature which felt no remorse, which
could be sensitive to the pain of a scratch, and still
feel a relish for his tea after he had eatisfied his
revenge—which could look upon her he professed
to have loved, and realise that recent act of brutal
vengeance, and " feel happier," and seep a good
appetite, and be composed and well-behaved, and
never for a moment sorry, never stung by memory,
never oppressed by that " insupportable and heavy
hour" when a soul made for better things wakes to
the sense of an irrevocable crime. A restless desire
to be comfortable seems to lie at the bottom of this
state of mind—a craving for satisfaction and an
immediate relief when this is attained. Selfishness
of this magnitude cannot regard things for a
moment out of their relation to self, so as to be ob-
jects of disinterested pity or sorrow. Remorse
does not know how to find its way into such minds.
They feel so strongly the right and duty to make
themselves comfortable that no other consideration
can find an entrance. A very similar case, tried in
the same court, occurred, it may be remembered,
two years ago. The man Thorley was a pugilist,
a low sort of fellow, but not without friends and
sympathisers, He saw his sweetheart two
or three times in company with a soldier cousin,
" and didn't like it ;" and so he cut her throat,
and told the policeman to whom he gave him-
self in charge that he felt a deal more comfortable
after it. He had but two requests to make after
this relief to his feelings—the first to the constable,
that he would allow him to smoke his pipe out, for
perhaps he should never have another—the second
to the magistrates, that his mother might bring
him his Sunday dinner. Education does not uni-
formly make a differenee. At the bottom of all may
lurk the savage, lulled for the moment and smoothed
over by a little outside polish, but only waiting for
his occasion. There was a moment when Othello
felt a touch of this mood, and he knew it—when he
felt the rising demon turning that into murder
which was sacrifice. But he did not rest an instant
in the comfortable stage. Nor did he murder his
wife for the sake of his own ease, but on some blind
notion of' injured honour. He felt for his victim
throughout—" the pity of it, lago, the pity of it"—
and remorse rushed in with the first knowledge that
he had accomplished his purpose, not waiting to be
undeceived. With him it was—" My wife, my
wife! What wife ? I have no wife" instead of
pipes, and tea, and brandy and water.
LONDON REVIEW.—The curious stress laid on the fact
that Townley justified openly in his cell the deed for which
he was condemned, reminds us not a little of a similar scene
depicted by that master hand which, within the last few
weeks, has been laid cold in death. Everybody knows Sir
Bulwer Lytton's "Eugene Aram." Everybody knows Mr.
Thackeray's amusing and witty parody of it in his comic
imitation novel, entitled " George de Barnewell." Seated
in the condemned cell, George de Barnewell conversed with
his excellent chaplain upon metaphysics in general—the
soul---exi3tence—Plato—and the Ideal and the Beautiful.
Where there is no remorse, said George de Barnewell,
there can be no crime. I am not sorry—therefore I am
innocent. Is my reasoning correct? And the venerable
chaplain admitted that the argument could not be con-
futed. We cannot help thinking that some similar
scene must have taken place in the gaol, when Mr. Gordon
a. tempting to prove to George Victor Townley that murder
was sinful, George Victor Townley rolled his eyes, and told
the gentleMr.Gordon that, upon all moral and philosophical
grounds, Mr. Gordon's reasoning was unsound. Lastly,
the public have before them at some length, in the Derby.
shire Advertiser, a history of the vacillati. ns which Sir
George Grey's mind has undergone on the subject. The new
material on which the prisoner's sentence was changed is set
forth at length. First and foremost, having brought Dr.
Winslow to swear that the prisoner's conversation contained
symptoms of moral insanity, the friends of the prisoner now
con fonsir4 W deep's t it tho vrimar'is ettrly lib go

opinions were irreproachable. It so, so much the worse for
Dr.Wimdow's thew y. If Townley had always been mad,
it would have been one thing. If he was only mad since
the murder, and while conversing with Lis doctor and his
chaplain, the affair alters its complexion. Ni. Dolan, a
friend of Townley's—who was not called at the trial—next

made statement on oath that in London on One occasion

Townley had purchased seven white hats and three um•

)rellas, and had cut holes in the hats to distinguish them
from one another. On another occasion Townley had jumped

into the water with his clothes on, in apparent ignorance

ihat he was not undressed. The evidence looks strangely

suspicious. It given, it was given on an affidavit without
cross-examination, and ex parte statements of this kind—we
mean no disrespect to Mr. Do!an—are worth as a rule about
as much as the paper on which they are written. But where
was Mr. Dolan at the trial ? Explanations, we are informed
have been given to the Home Secretary as to his absence.
We shall be very glad to see them. As Townley's friends

had got three months's notice of his trial, it is rather strange
so important a witness was not present, though he is
able to turn up a fortnight after, when the judge and the
cross-examining counsel have gone back to their Christmas
fireside, But even if Mr Dolan's evidence were all irre

fragable, to what a ludicrous nothing does it amount ?
Townley is absent in mind. Townley is eccentric in the
way he treats his hats. Therefore Townley, when he cut
Miss Goodwin's throat, did not know what he was doing.

The inference is absurd, even if were not overwhelmed and

destroyed by the mass of plain testimony to the contrary
given in court at Derby. Next we arrive at the Lunacy
Commission sent down by Sir G. Grey to visit Townley in

prison. We are told that Townley was never made aware
of the object of their visit. Very possibly. But did Town-
ley not know it as well as if governor, turnkeys, and chap.
lain had all thundered it in his cars? Credat Judceus, we
say. Three Commissioners are hard at work probing the
state of George Victor Townley's mental faculties, three
days before the day of exccution,and Dlr.Townley converses
as innocently and ignorantly of it all as a babe. If Townley
did in truth remain unconscious of all this kindly inquisi-

Lion, it says far more for his imbecility than has ever
yet- been said for his insanity. 'Lae Commissioners
then examine witnesses. Was there anybody to
cross-examine them ? Why were not these witnesses forth-
coming when the prisoner stood befJre the judge and jury
on his deliverance ? We really do not know. Let us hope
that Sir George Grey at least knows, and that he will vouch-
safe to give this valuable information to the country.
Finally, has there been the faintest shadow of fact to rebut
the proof given at the assizes--a proof so unequivocal that
after five minutes' deliberation the jury came to the conclu-

sion that at the moment of doing the deed Townley knew

what ho was about ? Mental derangement of a certain sort
will not do. Moral blindness is not enough. Blind pas-

sions and uncontrollable impulses are besides the question.
What else has appeared to modify the former indestructible
evidence we are left for the present to guess, hopelessly in
the dark; but as two out of the three Commissioners sent

down by the Home Office were doctors, the third being a
solicitor, we cannot help our suspicions. Upon the report
of the Commission, or of a majority of the Commission, Sir
George Grey has acted. George Victor Townley passes by
a happy transition from the scaffold to Bethlehem Hospi-
tal. The country may congratulate itself if the arrange-
ment does not issue in a vast increase of bloodshed through•
out the length and breadth of England. Those things sow
their seed, and the seed is unhappily the seed of blood.

In the interest of human life this cue must not pass
over without explanation. It is bccause humane men
hate hanging and regard it as a sad necessity, that
they ask that if mercy is to be shown it should not

be shown in cases where to show mercy is to encourage
mad passion and crime. The law is clear, and made
for the protection of human life. Life becomes insecure
when the law comes down from its high seat and makes
way for a commission of doctors. Some step must be taken,
for the sake of society, to come to a clear understanding on
the question both of insanity and of the present exercise of
the royal prerogative by the Home Office. As at present
advised we are inclinedto believe with much dissatisfaction

that Townley owes a justly-forfeited life to the illegal
theories of a few doctors, to the weakness of Sir George
Grey, and to the great activity of Townley's many

_ •
friends. So far we are of ono mind with "S. U. 0,"
Let there be one law for rich and poor. Townley has had
advantages which men less fallourably circumstanced
never would have possessed; and, on the very doubtful

hypothesis that Sir George Grey is right in remitting
his sentence, every poor man has the right to ask that the
law and procedure in cases of murderous insanity shuuld be
carefully reformed.
SrEcrATor.,—Every incident of Clio week has made war
itself more probable, and almost every ono has drawn
England deeper into the fray. Before our next number
issues hostilities may have commenced between Denmark
and the Diet, with the full understanding that England is
about to become one of the active belligerents. The events
which have led to this situation, so dangerous and so en•
noying, are all tolerably clear, though our Government,
considering the imminence of the danger is more reticent
than its wont. The British Ministry, it seems evident,
though deeply offended at the conditions foisted into the
treaty of 1852, resolved not to fight simply to prevent the
execution in Holstein. Whoever was Duke, the province
was German, and Germany in her collective capacity had
a right to march troops into the duchy on grounds of whose
validity she alone was the legal judge. Lord Wodehouse
was, therefore, instructed to advise the Danes to retire, and
they did retire, yielding up even the military work which
protects the passage of the Eider. So completely was
this concession at variance with Danish feeling, and so
eager were the invaders, that at the very last moment
hostilities were on the point of breaking out, and a Danish
captain chased a Saxon regiment which had advanced too
far on the bridge back at the point of the bayonet. Still
the concession was made, and was rewarded by the imme-
diate loss of Holstein to the Danish Crown. Everywhere as
the Danes retired the people proclaimed Duke Frederick
and all the force of a popular election is now added to all
the strength he derives from hereditary descent. This con-
cesion made the Germans advance a step further. The
smaller governments resolved thatSchleswig should also be
occupied, and the resolve met with a cordial response from
the mass of the German people. The two great Courts,
afraid at once of a general war and of provoking a revolu-
tion, proposed in the Diet that Schleswig should be "occu-
pied" unless the common constitution were withdrawn.
The condition is an impossible one, because the withdrawal
demands a vote King Christian cannot get; but we are
bound to say it was not of necessity dishonestly made.
The Austrian, if not the Prussian, idea was, no doubt, to
occupy Schleswig, instead of invading it, and then refer
the question, as being an international one, to a conference,
of the Powers. To make this plan successful, however, the
consent of Denmark was necessary, and Denmark refused
to consent. Schleswig—whatever its individual rights—
was still a fief of Denmark, and not of Germany, and for
the Danes to give up their dependencies under menace—
even if legally as little their property as the Septinsular
Republic was the property of Great Britain—was to sign
their w v
as an independent people. Great
Britain forn
o lextinction
the
e allsame reason could not advise a step which
would
the results of defeat before the struggle
oinvsme
had been begun. Moreover, she was bound by every
feeling of honour to give the ally who had accepted her
advice to her own hurt some protection in return for
her previous docility. The object, also, of the treaty of
1852 was to protect the integrity and independence cf Den-
mark; to yield up Schleswig was to yield that indepen-
dence, and, therefore, to abolish a treaty prepared by the
very Minister now responsible for the councils of Great
Britain. Finally, there was no proof, or not sufficient
proof, that the people of Schleswig, even if entitled to the
rights of nationality—an impossible admission, unless
Wales and Brittany are nationalities—have ever rejected the
Danish connection. On the contrary, it is believed that the
Danish and Frisian vote would be thrown in favour of
• Denmark, and that together they would outnumber the re-
luctant German minority. Moved by all these considera-
tions, and others of which we may know nothing, Earl
Russell addressed to the Diet a note, which the Germans
describe as " blustering," but which apparently amounts to
this—if the troops of the Diet cross the Eider England will
be unable any longer to refuse Denmark her assistance. In
other words, the British Government will, if the Germans
persist, declare war on so mush of Germany as shall help
g.
Will, then, the Germans
persist,in t e
fionrviats invasion of
withof tShcolawml Schleswig.
and not with England or Den-
mark, that the issues now rest ? yC e greatly fear that they
will. It is possible that Austria, not being wholly depen-
dent on Germany, and terrified by risings in Venetia and
Hungary, may have the nerve to retire ; but that will not
very seriously alter the situation. Germany would be
still too powerful for Denmark, still ready to brave Great
Britain rather than surrender the coveted province. The
remaining German States are urged on by one of those
fits of enthusiasm which sometimes seizes great
nations, which, in Teutonic racez, burn very slowly out,
and which at any moment may produce a movement or a
vote terminating all discussion. It is said, with apparent
truth, that France has consented to the English proposal of
a conference on the matter ; but this consent, even if given,
does not settle the difficulty. Tho Diet may not consent,
and probably will not, for the Diet has throughout the
affair pressed two immovable points—Holstein is German,
and its occupation a matter of internal concern ; Schleswig
is inseperably united with Holstein, and must share its fate.
If the Diet, therefore, consents to put Schleswig into the
crucible it is beaten without a fight, and can henceforward
make no pretensions to lead the German race. It is diffi-
cult to believe that the Diet, well aware that submission
may lead to immediate revolution, will consent to submit,
unless pressed by a coalition of which there seems no
chance. This conference is the last hope—but near as we
seem to :war, there is nothing in the proceedings of the
Driti4 Ci9vep,r49l!t r94§oiAly be Nfigled• Zt

was certainly their duty as interpreters of English opinion
to advise the Danes to surrender :Holstein rather than light
—and as they did advise they were bound to see that the
advice once taken did not involve utter ruin to those who

took it. If Holstein were used a stepping-stone by which
Germany might cross the Eider, then British advice would
have ruined the nationality which looked to Britain for
help. Such a result could not be endured by a power
with any sense of self-respect, and !rightful as the collision
may be, it is on the invaders that the consequences and the
responsibility must rest. The Government is bound to
relax no effort to preserve the nation front a war which is
not one of self-defence ; but that duty fairly performed, it
is right that, as the Admiralty announce, " the Channel
Fleet has been ordered to repair to a port in the British
Isles."

THE READER.—Those who had taken part in the oppo-
sition to the motion for inviting Mr. Thackeray to a Vice-
Presidency of the Shaksperian Committee have been recently
anxious to explain they had done so on mere grounds of
form, and proposed that the portion of the minutes of the
previous meeting which registered the unfortunate vote
should be erased. The majority, however, were not satis-
fied with this mode of obliterating an act which all now re-
gretted ; and it was at length agreed that the minute of
the unfortunate vote should remain, but that there
should be inserted in the same minute-book a resolution
expressing the participation of the committee in the com-
mon sorrow for Thackeray's premature decease, and their
regret that, owing to circumstances, his name had not been
added before that event to the list of the vice-presidents.
As respects Thackeray or his memory the whole matter is
now of inconceivably small consequence. Little will he
reck, if they let him sleep on. But, from the extreme acer-
bity with which the matter is being commented on in the
public papers and in private talk, it is to be feared
that it will affect the unanimity and success of the
proceedings, already so far advanced, for the
adequate celebration of the coming Sh.akspeare Tercen-
tenary. This would be a great pity. There are but

three months and a half between us and that 23d
of April which, it had been determined, by the consent of
so many who are far enough from any passion for pageants
or popular demonstrations, should be made, as far as our
British and nineteenth-century habits will permit, a great
national festival. The organisation that, under the name
of the National Shakespeare Committee, has been formed
for this object, and especially for making arrangements for
the erection of a monument to Shakespeare in London, is as
complete and suitable, if we may judge from the names it
includes, as any such organisation could be. If it should
collapse or be crippled, we do not see how, in the brief time

that remains, new arrangements can be made for a Shake-
spearian commemoration on the great scale that was con-
templated. There are a good many, we believe, to whom
this would be a matter for no particular regret—who would
not care although on the approaching 23d of April there
should only be such scattered Shakespeare dinners as there
have always been cn that day of the year wherever the
Shakespearian enthusiasm is rife, without any grand de-
vices for the centralisation or inter-connection of them, cr
any attempt to swell the feeling on this anniversary of the
event that has made Stratford-on-Avon dear to the world.
But these perhaps peculiarly constituted persons, who turn
their backs upon everything, or in whom sociability is

deficient; and, recollecting how well the Burns Festival
went off five years ago, most people have been thinking
that it would be, to say the least, no bad thing to make a
still greater experiment, in a Shakespeare Festival, of our
powers, even in these morose days, of giving shape and
simultaneous expression to a joyous national sentiment. It
would be a pity if, while affairs were in train for such an
experiment, there should come unnecessarily an interrup-
tion. And we do not see why an interruption should be
necessary on account of what has recently happened. Why
should not that ungraceful and unfortunate act, which all
now regret, be regarded as simply the act of one scantily at-
tended Committee meeting, rectified, so far as it could be rec-
tified, by a restrospec'ive resolution in another ? And why
should not the National Shakespeare Committee still
carry on the work which they were constituted to pro-
mote—that of collecting funds for the erection of a
Shakespeare monument in London, and at the same time
corresponding with whatever local bodies are preparing for
local celebrations of the Tercentenary, so as to give some
sort of unity and centralisation to the whole design? It
may, indeed, be necessary that more of the General Com-
mittee than have yet taken an active part in the business
should now begin to do so. Were the Johnsons, the Gar-
ricks, and the Burkes of our day to take a little pains in
arranging for this Shakespeare jubilee, and to lend a little
of their personal co-operation as well as their mere names
to the preliminary proceedings. there would be a general
restoration of confidence. \Ve should be glad to see
Mr. Dickens, for example, who is one of the
Vice-Presidents, bringing his great popularity and
his well-known powers of organisation to bear
upon the arrangements. A good deal, it seems,
remains to be done and thought of. In particular there has
been dissatisfaction at Stratford-on-Avon on the ground
that the National Committee, instead of paying due regard
to the pre-eminent claims of the dear little town in any
celebration of the tercentenary that may be arranged, have
been drawing all the elements for the celebration into a Lon •
don vortex. On this ground we see that the Mayor of Strat-
ford has been holding meetings and otherwise stirring up
seal in mid-England for an independent Shakspearian fes-
tival, of which Stratford shall be the centre. For our
part we think that Stratford should be made the centre
of as much of the total national ceremonial of
the celebration as it can bo made to accommodate. On

the anniversary, when it comes, most people will dine
at the Shakespeare dinner that chancz:s to be nearest to
them ; but who is there that, if he could choose, would not
a thousand times rather be at the Stratford-on-Avon din-
ner than at any of the others ? It might bo so arranged
that Stratford should have at least a fair proportion on the
occasion of those celebrities whose time is their own. In
matter of monuments agreement between London and Strat-
ford might be more difficult; but even that might be brought
about by judicious management. What seems immediately
essential is, as we have said, that more of the members of
the General Committee shall take part in the business.

Destructive Fire at the Brighton Railway

Station.

Yesterday morning, shortly after five o'clock, a police-
constable, in passing along Tooley-street, Southwark,
noticed smoke hovering over the great terminus of the
Brighton and South Coast Railway at London-bridge.
At first he imagined that a special train had just arrived,
but in the course of a few seconds the crackling of glass
and a lurid glare, which shot up almost instantaneously,
led him to the belief that a fire had broken out
either within or near the station. He therefore sounded
his rattle, which quickly brought to the spot other
officers, and they then found that the Crystal Palace depart-
ment station was in flames. This particular part of the sta-
tion is about 55 feet broad and about 62 feet long. The roof
was formed of thick glass, supported by iron columns and
cross-bars, but none of them were able to withstand the
intense heat of the fire, and the flames extended with un-
usual rapidity to the electric telegraph department, includt•
ing the lobby, and also to another portion of the station 60
feet long and 50 broad. The fire next seized upon four
goods trucks standing on a siding on the line, and also on
the adjoining offices. One or two of Shand and Mason's
powerful engines are always kept at the station in case of a
fire breaking out, in charge of a well-disciplined fireman;
but after the ordinary traffic is over this person leaves, ge-
nerally at 1 a.m. In the present case he had gone home,
and those left behind appear not to have known where the
fire plugs—of which there were plenty in the station to meet
any emergency—were situated ; consequently the men could
render no assistance, except by removing property from
contiguous offices. Mr. Henderson, the foreman of the
London Brigade ; Mr. J. Gerrard, the head of the steam
land engines ; Mr. Swanton, and various other officials,
came up with landsteam and manual-power engines, as did
also another, which was brought from Hodge's Distillery,
at Lambeth. Unfortunately another obstacle then pre-
sented itself, for the inhabitants, by some means, had for-
gotten to send for the turncocks, and the fire being thereby
unrestrained continued to spread, and seizing upon the book
and newspaper depots belonging to Messrs. W. H. Smith
and Son, the whole presented one blaze, and the heat was
co intense that the glass in the roof became molten, and the
, iron rods and supports twisted into a variety of forms.

The turncocks at length arrived, and a splendid supply of
water having been obtained the firemen went to work in
their usual intrepid manner, and happily succeeded in cut-
ting off the further spread of the flames ; but they were

unable to get them extinguished until about sixty or
sixty-five feet of tho roof of the Crystal Palace department
station were destroyed, and another part, GO by 40, almost
riddled by the action of the fire. The telegraph lobby, &c.,
aro almost burned out, and the offices adjoining severely
damaged by fire, and four trucks partially burned. The
total loss will be very considerable, and it is not known
whether the property was insured. The book depot and the
offices of Messrs. Smith are also burned down, and the
patent slate foot path which led to the trains was parted
asunder by the heat of the conflagration and fell below, so
that a temporary wooden platform was obligated to be laid
down yesterday to enable travellers to reach their respec-
tive carriages.

Another fire happened yesterday morning., on the pre-
mises of Messrs. Blumenthal and Co„ horsehair manufac-
turers, No. 11, Grey-street, Commercial-road East. The
engines of the parish and the London Brigade, and the
escapes quickly attended, and a bountiful supply of water
having been procured the fireman went to work, but they
were unable to get the fire subdued until some tons weight of
valuable stock were destroyed. Insured in the Commercial
U lc Ofaco, The gigii; O tb,o Aro io uliPown.