ENGLISH AND FOREIGN NEWS.

Evening Star, Issue 3287, 2 September 1873, Page 3

ENGLISH AND FOREIGN NEWS.

Eminent chemists and physicians in Europe contemplate forming a pharmacopeia adopted for general use in all European nations. Steps are being taken to have an exhibition of leather at Northampton, the principal place where the boot and shoe trade of England is carried on. American machinery will form part of the display. That girls spell better than boys the annual spelling-matches at Washington prove. In. some of the schools the perfect spellers among the boys were last year two to four among the girls. Brigham Young’s 117 children have been learning to sing, “Father, dear father, come home,” one. singing the solo while the other 116 join in the chorus, until each has successively given a tug at their father’s domestic affections. The chorus tears Brigham’s tender vitals to flinders, —American paper. The following extract from the minutes of a General Synod of the Presbyterian body, held at Antrim on the sth June, 1700, shows in an amusing light the ecclesiastical discipline of Ulster Protestants at the beginning of the last century :—“Overture—that there are some ministers, their wives, and children, who are too gaudy and vain in their apparel, and some too sordid—therefore, that it be recommended to the several presbyteries to reform these faults in themselves and theirs, and study decency and gravity in their apparel and wigs, avoiding powderings, vain cravats, half-shirts, and the like.” In his forthcoming “History of Crime in England,” Mr L. Owen Pike will, we are told, try to show that not only have crimes of violence and rapine diminished with the progress of civilisation, but also the meaner and more crafty crimes, such as theft, forgery, and poisoning. Our chivalrous ancestors were not all straighforward men, but were guilty often of conduct that would disgrace that lowest specimen of his calling, the ‘ ‘ area sneak. ” Mr Pike’s first volume comes down to the end of the fifteenth century, and the reign of Henry the Seventh.