GENERAL.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3928, 1 August 1881, Page 2

GENERAL.

For considerably more than three centuries there has been a total cessation of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Government of England. Henry VJII.'s conduct brought about'the rupture which continued so long, and only healed for the brief period that Mary wielded the sceptre. Under some of the Stuarts there were secret negotiations, or it is generally believed there were, but no avowed official communications. How the two Powers have managed to exist under such distressing circumstances passes comprehension. Now the subject of the renewal of diplomatic relation is being anxiously discussed at Rome, and the likelihood appears to be that before long the Pope will be represented at the Court of St James by a properly-ac-credited Nuncio. A correspondent of the Fraucais says this happy result would have been reached some time ago but for Lord Beaoonsfield's objection to receiving an ecclesiastical envoy from the Vatican, though he was quite williag to the recep« tion of a lay representative. On Thursday, June 9, the centenary of George Stephenson, the father of railways, was celebrated not only in the city of his birfch, Newoastleon-Tyne, but in half-a-dozen other great towns of the United Kingdom, at the Crystal Palace, and at several Continental capitals, amongst them Homo and Vienna. One of the most interesting features in the Newcastle celebration was the exhibition of locomotives, contributed by the various great railway companies in the kingdom, and. of the railway engines which were employed when steam locomotion was in its infancy. George Stephenson's memory is to be perpetuated at Newcastle by founding a physical science college to be named the M Stephenson Memorial College."

A very remarkable case in connection with fire insurance has recently been. decided in the Queen's Bench Division. An Insurance Company (the plaintiffs) agreed, by a policy dated June 26th, 1880 granted to the defendant, that if certain property in a specified dwelling-house should be destroyed by fire they would make good the loss. The property insured was destroyed by fire whilst in jare of the defeudant's wife 3 aod the Company charged*-4 her with setting fire to it maliciously, and with the intention of injuring them and raising a claim under the policy. The Company brought an action against the husband fap damage done to them by the apt of the wife, and they asserted that they had a right to an indemnity from the husband, as being responsible for the act qf the wife. The case was argued at great length, and Mr Justice Watkin Williams decided:—First, that the Company, at the time the injury was. done, had no such interest in the goods as to entitle them to sue for damage done to them; secondly, that they could maintain an action, for indemnity in their own name, or in the defendant's name either, as a man cannot sue his own wife $ and finally, as the act of the wife was a felony, and the plaintiff's were bound in the first instance to prosecute her, and not having dons so, and having given no reasons for their neglect, they were not entitled to proceed for damages. Mrs Partingtcm wag recently induced to make a trip from Chelsea to Boston, and her nerves were so agitated by the' excitement of the trip that as she jumped ashore she esc'aimed, "Thank heaven, I'm again on vice versa." The practice of duelling, so common in prance, cannot be too severely condemned. , One of the participants in a recent affair caught such a cold that h^ ljfe i 3 despaired 01j