A little girl of 13 was placed in the dock at Penzance on a charge of mur dering her seven-year-old brother in February last. So many pilgrims were sleeping on the floor of the upper storey of a Rus sian monastery that is gave way. In the panic which ensued a cry of fire was raised. A rush for the only exit follow ed, and four men and 36 women were crushed to death.' The Marquis of Bute, who died last month, will go down to history as "the man who made Cardiff," and by his munificent charity, public and private, left more permanent memorials than most of his ancestors carved with their swords. The Passion Play at Oberammergau has just been closed. There have been 48 performances, and the receipts were £60,000. The spectators numbered 200,000. According to a Board of Trad© return, the upward tendency of wages resulted in £6,000,000 more being earned in 1899 than in 1898, while, during the eight months of the present year, the increase has been at the rate of £8,000,000 per annum. At the Peace Conference in Paris Mr W. T. Stead apologised "for being an Englishman." England will to-day ac cept Mr Stead's nationality as her origin al misfortune and his continuing fault. The many-sided Kaiser now figures as an art connoisseur, a Milan telegram crediting him with having offered £200,000 to a small landed proprietor living under the shadow of Vesuvius for a number of frescoes of great size and beauty which have been discovered in the course of some excavations. That modern city Ufe does not tend to improve the sight is well known, yet the new that 79 children out of every 100 attending the. London Board schools have defective vision will come as a painful surprise. This result was arrived at af ter 338,920 children had been subjected to the text. In Lambeth the number of children so affected was highest, and poverty and insanitary surroundings are blamed. The bachelor girls of London are to have a hotel built for them. They are to have a home where every comfort of the Carlton can be had at the price they now pay for dark, damp, insanitary rooms in lodgings, and for the evil meals that are served in the ordinary pension. 