NEWS IN" BRIEF.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 85, 12 December 1874, Page 7

NEWS IN" BRIEF.

++ The Church of St. Peter is the largest and most magnificent structure ever yet erected for religious purposes. It is 780 feet long and 520 feet wide. The height of the interior pillars is 180 feet, and the hight of the top of the cross is 518 feet. Its erection occupied 111 years, and its cost £12,000,000. The Vatican contains, it is said, no less than 12,000 apartments, and a library which exceeds, in the richness of its books and manuscripts, any other in the world. It is stated that the photograph of the Princess of Wales, in which she is carrying one of her children on her back, is so great a favourite that mo fewer than 300,000 copies of it have been sold.

No fewer than seventy expeditions nave been sent from Europe to observe the transit of Venus. This is owing to the fact that the transit will not be visible at home. The next transit will occur on the 6th Dec, 1882. " While in Jerusalem," writes a lady traveller, "we paid our respects to the Princess de la Tour d'Auvergene, who resides there, and who has purchased the Mount of Olives for the Catholics for 100,000 dollars, ceding it to the French Government. For seven centuries it was lost to the Catholics, ever since the Crusaders were driven out of Jerusalem. She is now erecting a convent on the very spot where Christ prayed. The prayer is inscribed in thirtytwo languages around the enclosure of the courtyard." Among the pocket handkerchiefs in the trousseau of the Duchess of Edinburgh there is one that was exhibited in the Italian department of the Paris Exhibition of 1867. It was purchased last year in Italy for 12,000 francs by the Czarina, and is said to have cost the embroiderer seven of the best years of her life, and her eyes into the bargain. The ' Messenger de Paris* says that an employe in the Bavarian Telegraph Department has discovered a way of reproducing exactly signatures, letters, and pictures, at no matter what distance, by electricity. The portrait of an absconding cashier has already been sent along the wires. Alfred Sampson, landlord of the Trinity Arms, Brixton, died from injuries received by a blow from a cricket-ball. The unfortunate man was watching a single-wicket cricket match at Clapham Common, and was violently struck by a ball hit by the batsman, which produced concussion of bhe brain, and from the effect of which he expired.

A Festh journal states that a female patient, just admitted into the Saint-Boch Hospital of that city, has declared herself to be the Princess Anne Miggislaw Weronieczky, widow of the Commander of the Houveds, and to whom the nation has erected a statue. She Btates that she has lately been gaining her livelihood as a washerwoman.

A paper is to be started in London, to be published daily, in French. A capital of £25,000 has already been subscribed towards $he project.