[Illustration: THE QUEEN’S FIRST COUNCIL--KENSINGTON PALACE, JUNE 20, 1837. (From the Picture by Sir David Wilkie, R.A., at Windsor Castle.)] [Illustration: PEELER] There was also, this year, an extremely scandalous action in the High Court of Justice. It was a libel case brought by Lord de Ros, and arose out of a gambling quarrel, in which his lordship was accused of cheating at cards. It was said that, under pretence of a bad cough and asthma, he kept diving under the table and fishing up kings and aces, a thing which seems of elementary simplicity, and capable of clear denial. His lordship, in fact, did deny it, stoutly and on oath. Yet the witnesses as stoutly swore that he did do this thing, and the jury found that he did. Whereupon his lordship retired to the Continent, and shortly afterwards died, _s.p._, without offspring to lament his errors. [Illustration: A SHOW OF TWELFTH CAKES.] There was a terrible earthquake this year in the Holy Land. The town of Safed was laid in ruins, and more than four thousand of the people were killed. There was a project against the life of Louis-Philippe, by one Champion, who was arrested. He was base enough to hang himself in prison, so that no one ever knew if he had any accomplices. The news arrived also of a dreadful massacre in New Zealand. There was only one English settlement in the country; it was at a place called Makuta, in the North Island, where a Mr. Jones, of Sydney, had a flax establishment, consisting of 120 people, men, women, and children. They were attacked by a party of 800 natives, and were all barbarously murdered. A fatal duel was fought on Hampstead Heath, near the Spaniards Tavern. The combatants were a Colonel Haring, of the Polish army, and another Polish officer, who was shot. The seconds carried him to the Middlesex Hospital, where he died, and nothing more was said about it. [Illustration: THE SPANIARDS TAVERN, HAMPSTEAD] The dangers of emigration were illustrated by the voyage of the good ship ‘Diamond,’ of Liverpool. She had on board a party of passengers emigrating to New York. In the good old sailing days, the passengers were expected to lay in their own provisions, the ship carrying water for them. Now the ‘Diamond’ met with contrary winds, and was ninety days out, three times as long as was expected. The ship had no more than enough provisions for the crew, and when the passengers had exhausted their store their sufferings were terrible. [Illustration: GREENWICH PARK.]