BRANCH’S SENTENCE.—Quite unexpectedly the trial of Stephen H. Branch, for libel against Mayor Tiemann, Simeon Draper and Isaac Bell, was brought up and dispatched, during the past week, with a velocity which would make the most wholesome impression, were the rest of the District Attorney’s calendar put through with equal promptness and exemplary effect. Branch was found guilty, and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment on Blackwell’s Island, and two hundred and fifty dollars fine. The _Tribune_, in alluding to this sentence of Branch by Recorder Barnard, says: “Considering that the libel, however groundless essentially, appears to have had a real foundation in statements made to Branch by persons whom he undoubtedly believed, and whom his counsel had ready to produce (but their testimony was not allowed), we must consider this sentence a severe one. We believe it will excite for him a sympathy which it is unwise to provoke. Branch, we believe, has been trying pretty hard to libel _us_ in his abusive little sheet; but we have never considered his slanders worth any sort of notice. It may be well to stop his career, but not to make him a martyr. And we say most decidedly, that considering the libel for which he was indicted was really based on information furnished him by persons whom he had reason to believe, we deem his sentence a harsh one, and trust it may be mitigated by pardon.” By the press generally, the matter is regarded pretty much in the same temper, excepting the anomalous instance of the _Herald_! That immaculate sheet takes occasion to give utterance to any extent of wrath and indignation against Branch and his _Alligator_, and characteristically against such of its cotemporaries, present and past, as it would desire to denounce and stigmatise, with an odor which has by no means been washed from its own bedraggled garments. Indeed, as the direct object of the _Herald_ would appear to be a malicious fling at the _Spirit of the Times_ in view of another case on the Recorder’s docket—that of Judge Russell’s indictment—so the _Herald_ lays itself liable to another indictment, which has been duly entered against Bennett for no less than twenty-five thousand dollars.