"The expense of postage of letters through the medium of the Twopenny Post Office by Alderman Thompson's Committee, when he first announced himself as one of the candidates for the presentation of the City, amounted to no less a sum than £128." "_Industry and Talent._--It is a notorious fact that Sir Walter Scott unites drudgery with lofty genius, and has put his hand to almost every department of literay (_sic_) labour, without being scared by occasional want of success." Farther on we find this heading, in large type, under "Intelligence received, by the _Bayard_, from Havre"-- "SPEECH OF THE KING OF FRANCE, "Delivered at the opening of the Chambers, January 31st." Then follows a full report of the address which Charles X. had given eight weeks before. Next we come to a piece of geographical discovery:-- "The operations of the British armies against the Burmese enable us to correct many errors and to add to our limited knowledge of the geography of the East. A short time since, we announced the important fact that a branch of the Irrawaddy had been discovered to discharge into the Bay of Bengal. This discovery has been fully confirmed, various stragglers from Sir Archibald Campbell's army at Prome having found their way to the coast in that direction, and there got on board English vessels." The last quotation which I will make from the issue of that date refers to the "Seizure of a slave vessel in England." In it we read how "The French vessel was boarded and subsequently seized by Lieutenant Rye of the coastguard service. She was found well fitted out with all the ordinary furniture of a slave-trader, her hold adapted in the usual way to the reception of slaves. Among her other stores there were, of course, found manacles and shackles in great abundance: a long chain to confine the unfortunate creatures in gangs, with all the usual implements of negro torture that would not be understood by their names, we are happy to say, by most of our readers." These, then, were the special plums of "Latest Intelligence" from Europe, which the twenty-year-old Manuel no doubt devoured with keenest relish on that morning eighty odd years ago. I should like to make one more quotation from the same paper, two months later, for it gives us a glimpse of both the artistic and military doings of Europe at this time. The article in question is an appreciation of the President of the Royal Academy.