The Sun.
London, England, 1846-11-04 00:00:00

do,so. He had a general authority to sell these shares,
when tl.e market was in a favourable state ; and there
was also an understaeding that in those transactions
there should always be a margin in Gardner's favour,
in order that he might thus be protected against what-
ever fluctuations might take place in the value of the
shares. On the 30th of September fierce wanted s.-a-ne
money, and in order to obtsin it he gave Gardner bills
of exchange to the amount of 2,5001., in the name of
Pierce and Howman, and scrip in the North Staff :rdshire
Railway, and received 1,900/. on account of them.
He gave an acknowledgement to the effect that he had
received 420 scrip shares in the North Staffordshire as
a security for the payments at maturity of Messrs. Pierce
and Howman's acceptances, at sixty days from this date,
the 30th September, for 2,5001., and agreeing to-return
the scrip when the acceptances were paid, or sell them at
Pierce's request, with power to hold sufficient of the
proceeds to indemnify himself any loss on the bills
which he might continue to hold. It was urged at the
trial that these transaction did not go into the general
account, and that Mr. Gardner had not the power to soli
them to protect himself against ar y deficiency
in the general account, and that they were only
placed in his hands to corer the sum of 2,5001.,
if so, 4221. was due on them, that being the difference
between the price at the time they were deposited and
the time they were sold, as they fell in the market. The
hills were paid, and the shares, it was contended, became
the property of Pierce. Shares in the Glasgow and
Dumtries Railway were also deposited with Gardner on
27th of October, 1845, under a similar agreement,
Gardner advancing 2,0001. upon them. The agreement
by which he was to advance 3,000/. more on these
shares, in No. 1772, was dated the 22d of October, and
stated ,that the money should be paid in sums cf 1,000/.
each, the last instalment to be paid on the 18th of No-
vember. The shares fell in value, and 1,0001. remained
unpaid. The plaintiff sought to recover the money for
which they were sold, but the defendant contended that
the transaction was carried to the general account.
The Learned Counsel held that the defendant was
liable for the difference. A fiat was issued against
Pierce and Howman on the 27th of December, and
Gardner satisfied all the claims which Pierce could make
upon him. Evidence was given at the trial that, at the
time of these negotiations, the firm was in an insolvent
state. Arrangements were made with the firm of Messrs.
Gardner, in New York, by which a settlement of their
accounts was brought about. Therefore, he contended
that, on the 22d of December, before the fiat was issued,
a complete settlement of the goods account between the
parties was brought about, and that a settlement of their
share account was also made. The Learned Judge at
the trial stated that this wonld be an answer to the
action, provided the transaction was a bona fide one, and
provided Gardner had no notice of the acts of bank-
ruptcy. The jury after being out several hours, re-
turned into Court, when the foreman said that there was
no direct evidence of the defendant having had any
knowledge of the act of bankruptcy, and inquired if
they were therefore bound to find for the defendant.
Mr. Justice Cresswell said they were not, but they must
look at the surrounding circumstances. They found for
the plaintiff. He grounded his application first on the
misdirection on the part of the Learned Judge, in reply-
ing to the question, and that on the evidence the jury '
ought to have found for the defendant.
Lord DENMAN granted a general rule.
THE BUSINESS OF THE COURT.

woman of the house, that_ her mother had sent her there
with the book-slates, and that she was to give her 7s. 6d.
for them. The daughter, believing the statement, ac-
cordingly gave the money, and the went away ; when,
however, the mother returned it was found the slateswere nearly valueless. The prisoner was subsequently
found drinking in a public-house, and give Onto custody.
She pleaded that she was in great distress, and had seven
fatherless children. She was committed for trial.

Lord DENMAN intimated that the special paper would
not be taken until after term, but that the Crown cases
would be proceeded with in .their natural course.
The new trial paper will be taken on Tuesdays and
Fridays.

BAIL COURT.-(THIS DAY.)

(Sitting 3 iu Banco, before Mr. Justice PATTESON.)

PEACOCK V. SWINDLE.

Mr. TEMPLE applied for a rule to show cause why the
verdict given for the defendant in this case should not be
set aside, Ist, on the ground that the verdict was against
the evidence, and the personal misconduct of the jury,
2ndly, that the deputy-sheriff' had refused evidence on
the part of the plaintiff, and 3dly, on the ground that
the deputy-sheriff bad permitted the case to be con-
ducted in an improper manner.
The action was tried at Middleham, in Yorkshire.
The account was for 5/. ss. for sacks which had been
delivered containing flour. The defendant pleaded, Ist,
numquam indebitatus, 2dly, payment, and 3dly, that
sacks had been delivered in exchange. The cause was
tried at a public house, and both before and after the
trial the defendant's attorney treated the jury to spirits,
&c., and although not a word of the evidence went to
support the defendant's pleas, the verdict was given in
his favour.—Rule granted.

THE SUN,
,LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 4, Iv4C.

that were undermined and shaking, propped by great
beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts, overthrown
and jumbled together, lay topsy turvy at the bottom of
a steep unnatural hill ; there, confused treasures of iron
soaked and rusted in something that had acsidentall)
become a pond. Everywhere were bridges that led no
where ; thoroughfares that were wholly impassable ;
Bable towers of chimneys, wanting half their height ;
temporary wooden houses and enclosures, in the most
unlikely situations ; carcases of ragged tenements and
fraginents of unfinished walls and arches, and piles of
scaffolding, and wildernesses of bricks, and giant forms
of cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing. There
were a hundred thousand shapes and substances of in-
completeness, wildly mingled out of their places, upside
down, burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the air, moul-
dering in the water, and unintelligible as any dream.
Hot springs and fiery eruptions, the usual attendants
upon earthquakes, lent their contributions of confusion
to the scene. Boiling water hissed and heaved within
dilapidated walls ; whence, also, the glare and roar of
flames came issuing forth ; and mounds of ashes blocked
up rights of way, and wholly changed the law and cuss
tom of the neighbourhood.
"In short, the yet unfinished and unopened railroad
was in progress ; and, from the very core of all this dire
disorder, trailed smoothly away, upon its mighty course
of civilisation and improvement.
" But as yet the neighbourhood was shy to own the
railroad. One or two bold speculators had projected
streets ; and one had built a little, but had stopped
among the mud and ashes to consider further of it. A
bran-new tavern, redolent of fresh mortar and size, and
fronting nothing at all, had taken for its sign The Rail-
way Arms ; but that might be rash enterprise—and then
it hoped to sell drink to the workmen. So, the Exca-
vators' House of Call had sprung up from a beer shop ;
and the old-established Ham and Beet Shop had become
The Railway Eating House, with a roast leg of pork
daily, throu . h interested motives of a similar, imme-
diate and popular description. Lodging-house keepers
were favourable in like manner ; and for the like reasons
were not to be trusted. The general belief was very
slow. There were frowzy fields and cowhouses, and
dunghills, and dustheaps, and ditches, and gardens, and
summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds, at the very
door of the railway. Little tumuli of oyster shells in the
oyster season, and of lobster shells in the lobster season,
and of broken crokery and faded cabbage leaves in all
seasons, encroached upon its high places. Posts, and
rails, and old cautions to trespassers, and backs of mean
houses, and patches of wretched vegetation, stared it out
of countenance. Nothing was the better for it, or
thought of being so. If the miserable waste ground lying
near it could have laughed, it would have laughed it to
scorn, like many of the miserable neighbours.
"Staggs's-gardens are uncommonly incredulous. It was
a little row of houses, with little squalid patches of ground
before them, fenced off with old doors, barrel staves,
scraps of tarpaulin, and dead bushes ; with bottomless
tin kettles and exausted iron fenders, thrust into the
gaps. Here the Staggs's Gardeners trained scarlet
beans, kept fowls and rabbits, erected rotten summer
houses (one was an old boat), dried clothes, and smoked
pipes.' Some were of opinion that Staggs's Gardens
derived its name from a deceased capatilist, one Mr.
Staggs, who had built it for his delectation. Others,
who had a natural taste for the country, held that it
dated from those rural times when the antlered herd,
under the familiar denomination of Staggses, had re-
sorted to its shady precincts. Be this as it may, Staggs's
Gardens was regarded by its population as a sacred
grove not to be withered by railroads ; and so confident
were they generally of its outliving any such ridiculous
inventions, that the master chimney-sweeper at the
corner, who was understood to take the lead in the local
politics of the Gardens, had publicly declared that
,on
the occasion of the railroad opening, if it ever did open,
two of his boys should ascend the flues of his dwelling,
with instructions to hail the failure with derisive jeers
from the chimney pots.

As a companion piece of topographical portraiture,
here is an account of Princess s. place, West-end :
" Miss Tox inhabited a dark little:house that had been
squeezed, at some remote period of English history, into a
fashionable neighbourhood at the west end of the town,
whore it stood in the shade like a poor relation of the
great street round the corner, coldly looked down upon
by mighty mansions. It was not exactly in a court, and
it was not exactly in a yard ; but it was in 'the dullest
of No-Thoroughfares, rendered anxious and haggard by
distant double knocks. The name of this retirement,
where grass grew between the chinks in the stone pave-
ment, was Princess's-place ; and in Princess's-place was
Princess's Chapel, with a tinkling bell, where sometimes
as many as five-and-twenty people attended service on a
Sunday. The Princess's Arms was also there, and much
resorted to by splendid footmen. A sedan chair was
kept inside the railing before the Princess's Arms,
but it had never come out within the memory of
man ; and on fine mornings, the top of every rail (there
were eight-and.forty, as Miss Tox had often counted)
was decorated with a pewter pot.
" There was another private house besides Miss Tox's
in Princess's-place ; and not to mention an immense pair
of gates, with an immense pair of lion headed knockers
on them, which were never opened by any chance, and
were supposed to constitute a disused entrance to some

body's stables. Indeed, there was a smack of stabling
in the air of Princess's•place ; and Miss Tox's bedroom
(which was at the back) commanded a vista of Mews,
where hostlers, at whatever sort of work engaged, were
continually accompanying themselves with effervesct.nt
noises ; and where the u.o3t domestic and confidential
garments of coachmen and their wives and families,
usually hung, like Macbeth's banners, on the outward
walls.

"'At this' other private house in Prineeis's-place,
tenanted by a retired butler who had married a house-
keeper, apartments were let furnished, to a single gen-
tleman ; to wit, a wooden featured, blue-faced, Major,
with hip eyes starting out of his head, in whom
Miss Tox ric)gnised, as she herself expressed it, some-
thing so truly inilitary,' and between whom and herself,
an occasional interchange of newspapers and Pamphlets,
and such platonic dalliance, was • Meted through the
medium of a dark servant of the Mejor's, whom Miss
Tox was quite content to classify as a " native," without
connecting him with any geographical idea whatever.
" Perhaps there never was a smaller entry and stair-
case, than the entry and staircase of Miss Tox's house.

Perhaps, taken altogether, from top to bottom, it was the
most inconvenient little house in England, and the
crookedest ; but then, Miss Tox said, what a situation !
There was very little daylight to be got there in the
winter ; no sun at the best of times ; air was out of the
question, and traffic was walled out. Still Miss Tox
said, think of the situation ; so said the blue-faced
Major, whose eyes were starting out of his head ; who
gloried inPrincess's-place; and who delighted to turn the
conversation at his club, whenever he could, to some-

thing connected with some of the great people in the
great street round the corner, that he might have the
satisfaction of saying they were his neighbourF.
" The dingy tenement inhabited by Miss Tox was
her own, having been devised and bequeathed to her by
the deceased owner of the fishey eye in the locket, of
whom a miniature portrait with a powdered head and a
pig. tail, balanced the kettle-holder on opposite sides of
the parlour fire-place. The greater part of the furni•
ture was of the powdered-head and Fig•tail period, com-
prising a plate-warmer, always larguishing and sprawl-
ing its four attenuated bow legs in somebody's way ; and
an obsolete harpsichord, illuminated round the maker's
name with a painted garland of sweet peas."
Several new characters are introduced, as the mys-
terious Mr. Carker, and a fellow of infinite- humour,

called Major Bagstock, who styles himself indis-
criminately Joe Bagstock, Joey Bagstock, J. Bag-
stock, Josb. Bagstock, and even sometimes J. 8., " it
being, as it were, the Major's stronghold and donjon-
keep of light humour to be on the most familiar terms
with his own name." We might, did we list, cull a
number of ludicrous and touching fragments from
this single number, as the account of Miss Nipper
administering a lecture upon moral conduct to
Florence, and "punctuating it with thumps," or Miss
Nipper softening under the deferential behaviour of
Mrs. Richards's sister, insomuch that "she caught up
little Miss Toodle, who was running by, and took her
to Banbury Cross immediately." Miss Nipper indeed
is a triumph. The Marchioness is eclipsed—Miss
Miggs is not entitled to any comparison—Tilly Slow-
boy is altogether superseded.

THE TERRIBLE STEAM-FRIGATE.—We have re-
ceived the most gratifying accounts of the performances
of the Terrible steam-frigate, Captain Ramsay, which
surpass all the expectations we have formed of her im-
mense capabilities. Some time after she joined Sir W.
Parker's fleet she was ordered to take in tow the Hiber-
nia, 104, the flag-ship, and try her powers. She accord-
ingly made fast, and, with a stiff wind abeam and a
heavy sea, she towed the old ship at the rate of 6i- knots
an hour. She afterwards towed her directly against a
head wind and much swell, when she attained a speed of
seven knots, Subsequently she towed the Hibernia right
before the wind, and run away with her with great ease
at the rate of above 10 knots an hour. Comment is un-
necessary; but is it not monstrous to class such a vessel
with that broken-down abortion of the Navy-office, the
Retribution?

A CATHOLIC PRIEST CHARGED WITH FELONY.—
Stafford Swain, an elderly man of respectable appear-
ance, and who was formerly a priest of the Roman
Catholic Church, was charged at the Liverpool police-
office on Friday, with having stolen a sheet, a pillow,
and some towels, from the house of Robert Smith, the
person at whose house he lodged. The prisoner, who
had been in custody several times for obtaining money
under false pretences, said he had given the things to
his wife to pawn, on the condition that sho would re-
deem them. A pawnbroker, with whom some of the
things had been pledged, said they were brought by a
man. Fined sixpence, and twenty shillings; or in de-
fault fourteen days' imprisonment.
ATTEMPTED SUICIDE.-011 Sunday, the Ist inst.,
Captain David Thomas, of the smack Alalpas, of S++ an-
sea, attempted to destroy himself in the cabin of that
vessel, then at anchor in Catwater, Plymouth. The Mal-
pas, which burdens about 50 tons, had delivered a cargo
of stone coal at Southampton, and came in banes: 'to
Plymouth to take copper ore to Wales. While at
Southampton the captain had indulged too freely in in-
toxicating liquor, and suffering severely from its effects.
left that port for Plymouth. During the passage he be-
came deranged, and on Saturday night was confined in
the Plymouth police station. On Sunday morning, he
appeared recovered, and joined his ship. When on board
he armed himself with the pump break, and, imagining
there were strange persons below, paraded the deck,
threatening destruction to any one that should approach
him. The mate concealed the razors and went ashore
for assistance. On returning, the wretched man was
discovered bleeding and insensible on the cabin floor.
He had inflicted a dangerous wound in his neck by
probing it with the chart dividers, and had afterwards
attempted to destroy himself with his pocket clap knife.
Timely surgical aid having been administered, he is now
in a fair way of recovery.