300 give a return of from 6 to 8| per cent, on the capital."

The new hotel in front of the Midland Railway terminus in London, has been opened. The mere fabric will cost the Midland Company the sum of £350,000, while the decoration and furnishing of the interior will require an additional amount of £150,000. It is intended eventually to accommodate about 600 guests. Sir Arthur Helps, in his recently pub lished work, "Animals and their Mas ters," says : — " The great defect of preaching now-a-days is, that the ser- 1 mons appear to be built uopn the suppo sition that the preacher is introducing Christianity for the first time to the no tice of his hearers." Professer Max-Muller has been lectur ing in London on his favourite subject " Language," and has taken up an anti- Darwinian position. He considered that the break which language made in the so called law of evolution was explicable on no other theory than the existence of an impassable gulf between man and the lower animals. Monsignor Capel, in the preface to a manual for priests and converts, recently issued, says that the conversion of Eng- : land to Romanism will come after the J country has first gone over to Infidelity. Then the revulsion caused by the tragic > fate of " freethought," when it shall have { landed men in utter unbelief, will drive them back to the one true Church. It is said that the Modoc massacre was broughtabout by a peculiar religious belief which has recently been adopted by the In dian tribes. They believe that a new god is coming to their rescue ; all the Indians who have died heretofore are to be " resurrected ;" they are then to conquer the whites and regain possession of their j lands, which henceforth they are to enjoy ' unmolested. | Mr Gladstone was a witness before the ', House of Commons' Committee on the project for making a railway from Stafford, via Chester, to tbe tunnel under the Mersey, between Birkenhead and Liver- 1 pool. There was quite a crowd in the I Committee-room to see the novel spec tacle of a Prime Minister being sharply cross-examined by a practised Parliamen tary barrister. The body of a man was found hanging to a tree in the wood of Keuil, France. 