the Bank; the money was duly transferred to Horton's account, and then a further device was resorted to for the purpose of obliterating traces of the transaction. Notes were obtained from the Continental Bank; these were then taken by one of the conspirators to the Bank of England and exchanged for gold, and then, in the course of the same day, another of the conspirators took the gold back to the Bank and obtained other notes for it. The proceeds were then invested in various American securities, and large sums were actually sent to New York. Success seemed complete, when one day two bills were handed to the Bank on which the date of acceptance had, by an oversight of the forger, been omitted. The Bank, still suspecting nothing wrong, sent to the acceptor that the omission might be supplied; the forgery was discovered, and the whole scheme collapsed.

The Times understands that the prosecution are in possession of the following facts :-Macdonnell, who has Irish connexions, in company with Austin Bidwell, visited Ireland in the autumn of 1871. On that occasion they altered a cheque on the Bank of Ireland from 31. to 30007., and obtained money on it from a bank at Belfast. They subsequently went to Manchester, where by similarly altered cheques, and a forged letter of introduction from one of the leading mercantile houses in London, they obtained a large sum from Messrs. Heywood. They then left England. In April, 1872, Macdonnell, with the two Bidwells, arrived in England from America, and went to lodgings at Enfield-road, Kingsland. After being fitted out by the tailors, they left at the end of the month, Austin Bidwell and Macdonnell proceeding to Berlin and Dresden, George Bidwell to Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Lyons, taking with them forged letters of introduction of the manager of the Union Bank of London, and forged letters of credit of the Bank of North and South Wales, Liverpool. By means of these letters, and bills drawn under the forged letter of credit, they obtained 80007. in cash, and with this they returned to London, but not to their old lodgings. In the following month the three sailed by the "Lusitania" from Liverpool for Buenos Ayres. There they obtained from one firm-whose name it is unnecessary to mention --10,0007. under forged letters of credit and of introduction of the London and Westminster Bank. The three then separated, but again met in London in August of last year, and it is probable, as stated by Macdonnell, that the scheme was at that time settled of forging bills for discount at the Bank of England. Communication was then entered into with Noyes, alias Hills. With regard to him it appears that he had been recently released from the State prison of New Jersey, having been sentenced, in January, 1869, to seven years' imprisonment for uttering a forged cheque on a bank. On the urgent appeals of his friends and relations a pardon was granted to him in March, 1872. He arrived in England in December, and the forgeries were then in preparation. It is further stated that the forgers were all well known to each other in America.

II.

THE TICHBORNE CASE.

In the month of April this portentous case was once more brought before the long-suffering public, in the form of the "trial at bar" of the "claimant" for perjury, before the Lord Chief Justice Cockburn and Justices Mellor and Lush. Mr. Hawkins, Q.C., Mr. Serjeant Parry, and Mr. Bowen, were for the prosecution; Dr. Kenealy, Q.C., and Mr. McMahon for the accused. As it is absolutely impossible in the compass of a work like this to give anything like a detailed, if even an intelligible, account of this extraordinary trial, we can only throw ourselves on the indulgence of our readers, and refer those desirous of fuller information to the voluminous reports which fill every newspaper of the period. In the year 1874, the fourth, and it is devoutly to be hoped the last, year over which the history of these proceedings will extend, we trust to be able to give some résumé of the whole story, which may be of reasonable length and perspicuity. The narrowness of the issues involved is, as is well known, ludicrously out of proportion to the fabulous expense and more fabulous waste of time involved. The claimant was charged with perjury in stating himself to be Sir Roger Tichborne-perjury in denying himself to be Arthur Orton-and perjury in stating that he had seduced his cousin, Lady Radcliffe. Mr. Hawkins, in his opening speech, told the oft-told tale of Roger's early life, his life at Stonyhurst and at home, his love for his cousin, his departure from England, and followed it from his arrival at Valparaiso, on June 19, 1853, until April 20, 1854, when the " Bella," with Roger on board, sailed from Rio for New York, and from that day no more was seen of her, nor of any soul on board of her. The learned counsel then presented the jury with an elaborate sketch of the career of Arthur Orton, with whom he endeavoured to identify the defendant. He gave a graphic narrative of the defendant's second visit to Wapping, on the day after his arrival in England, to see the sisters of Arthur Orton, when he represented himself to be Mr. W. H. Stevens, a reporter for an Australian paper, who knew Orton well. The correspondence which passed between the parties resulted in the two sisters recognizing the defendant, from his letters, as their long-absent brother. A detailed account was next given of the claimant's first visits to Alresford, of his interviews with Mr. Gosford and Mr. Hopkins, with Lady Tichborne in Paris, and with Mr. and Mrs. Radcliffe and Mrs. Towneley at Croydon. Step by step the history of the case was revealed to the jury; how the claimant acquired his information regarding the Tichborne family, and by what means it was sought to prove him to be the real Sir Roger. After referring to the examination which took place at the Law Institution, the learned counsel again referred to the defendant's proceedings with the Orton family, and stated that Charles Orton was allowed by the claimant 57. per month up to August, 1868; and that the two sisters, Mrs. Tredgett and Mrs. Jewry, people he had refused to see, were also in the habit of receiving money from him under various names.

Great care

In the fourth daily instalment of his opening speech Mr. Hawkins passed under review the claimant's proceedings in preparing his case. was bestowed on elucidating the motives of the correspondence opened, in

1867, with Don Castro, of Melapilla; on exposing the inconsistency of dates therein mentioned with those of the real Roger Tichborne's visit to Chili; and on examining the claimant's various excuses for not continuing his journey to Melapilla. The twenty-five days' cross-examination which he underwent last year at the hands of the Attorney-General suggested to Mr. Hawkins instances innumerable of incredible lapses of memory on the claimant's part. He had been hopelessly wrong as to where he spent his childhood in Paris, as to all his early friends and associates, in all his recollections of Stonyhurst, and also as to every incident in his military life.

Mr. Hawkins then went fully into the history of the sealed packet left by Roger Tichborne with Mr. Gosford before he took his departure from England in 1853, and a copy of which had been given by Roger to Miss Doughty, now Lady Radcliffe. This document was in the following terms :-" Tichborne Park. I make on this day a promise that if I marry my cousin, Kate Doughty, this year, or before three years are over, at the latest, to build a church or chapel at Tichborne to the Holy Virgin, in thanksgiving for the protection which she will have shown us in praying God that our wishes might be fulfilled.-R. C. TICHBORNE." It was in connexion with this packet that the defendant had made a deliberate accusation against the honour of Lady Radcliffe-one which the learned counsel characterized in the strongest terms, adding that Lady Radcliffe would state on her oath that the assertion was absolutely without foundation. In commenting at length upon what he termed the improbability of the defendant's account of the wreck of the "Bella," Mr. Hawkins drew especial attention to the fact that two of the names mentioned by the defendant as those of men on board the ship which picked him up at sea actually belonged to men on board the "Middleton," in which Arthur Orton had made the voyage from London to Hobart Town. The learned counsel afterwards referred to various incidents in the defendant's Australian life.

In concluding his opening speech Mr. Hawkins informed the jury that they would have ample data supplied to them for testing the handwriting of Sir Roger and of the claimant. In the latter he pointed out marked peculiarities of spelling, which occur frequently. He wound up by charging the defendant with perjury "the most daring and detestable."-Dr. Kenealy raised a number of technical objections to the form of the indictment and the venue of the trial, which were overruled.-Abbé Salis then took his place in the witness-box, and deposed to his long acquaintance with Sir Roger and his parents while they were in Paris. In contradiction of the claimant's evidence at Westminster, he positively denied that the Louvre was visible from Sir James Tichborne's house in the Rue St. Honoré. In the last interview, before the South American expedition, Roger had shown to the Abbé the tattoo marks on his forearm. His reverence, when questioned about the claimant's identity, replied with emphasis, "He is not Roger Charles Tichborne. There is no resemblance to him."

The Abbé Salis was cross-examined with reference to his knowledge of Sir Roger and Lady Tichborne; and Père Lefèvre, a Jesuit priest, who had been Sir Roger's confessor in France before he went to Stonyhurst, gave evidence regarding his education and character at that period. In his opinion the defendant was not the Roger Tichborne whom he knew in Paris.-M. Adrian Chatillon, the first tutor of Roger, also declared that

defendant was not Roger Tichborne, saying with emphasis, "No, no; he never was a Tichborne, never."

During his re-examination the Lord Chief Justice and the foreman of the jury asked several questions about the claimant's alleged lake at Pornick; the connubial relations of Sir James and Lady Tichborne; and the moral habits of Roger Tichborne when a lad.-Madame Chatillon was closely interrogated by Dr. Kenealy about the occasion on which Roger showed his tattoo mark. She again repudiated the sketch of it drawn by her husband, in which the heart and the anchor are attached to the cross, declaring positively for another sketch, in which all three are separate.-M. d'Aranza, a Spaniard, who was a friend of the Tichborne family in Paris, and had known Roger from his birth, answered the usual questions about the defendant's identity with a "Non, non, non!" He made a few important allegations— one, that Roger's English had been very bad, though not vulgar, to the last; another, that his colloquial tongue was always French.-M. Gossin, the maitre d'hôtel of Mr. James Tichborne, deposed, on the strength of a fourteen years' intimate knowledge of Roger, that he had no marks on his body, and nothing remarkable about his feet. It was positively denied by M. Gossin that the Louvre could be seen from the Tichbornes' house in the Rue St. Honoré.-The evidence of the French witnesses having been exhausted, the Court and jury were regaled with Tichborne readings on a large scale. Some of the voluminous depositions made in Chancery and at Nisi Prius were read, and this interesting process continued for several days.

When this was concluded, a series of witnesses swore to the identity of the claimant with Arthur Orton. Mr. Gibbes, the Australian attorney, gave the history of his communications with the defendant at Wagga-Wagga and elsewhere, and, on retiring from the witness-box, was complimented by the Lord Chief Justice on his scrupulous impartiality and anxious desire to speak the strict truth between the two sides. The witnesses who followed were Captain Thomas Oates, of the merchant service, who saw Roger Tichborne go on board the "Bella" in 1854, and declared that the defendant was not the same person; Mr. Hawkes, who swore to the defendant as a butcher in Hobart Town, and to his having stated, in reference to a remark on the great improvement in the cutting up of the meat, that he had cut up meat for Newgate Market; Mr. Edward Petit Smith, who identified him as a man he had known at Wagga-Wagga under the name of Tom Castro; and Mr. Frederick Cubitt, who had acted as clerk to his brother, the advertising agent at Sydney, and who testified that the defendant, when questioned as to his military career, stated that he had been in that remarkable corps the 66th Dragoons (Blue). When it was shown to the defendant that no such regiment existed, he replied, "How should I know? I was only ten days in the regiment." On his arrival in England, Mr. Cubitt had called on Lady Tichborne and asked her if she recognized her son. She answered evasively, and implied by her manner that she did not recognize him.

At this stage of the trial the Lord Chief Justice stated, in answer to inquiries which had been made to the judges by letter, that so long as nothing was done to prejudice the verdict of the jury, there could be no objection to any assistance being rendered to the claimant for the purposes of his defence. The claimant then asked their lordships whether it would be considered a contempt of Court if he appeared during the ensuing Whitsun holidays at

several theatres, the managers of which had agreed to give him large sums of money merely to read the answer to his petition to the Lords of the Treasury for granting the expenses of his witnesses. The Bench, however, declined to express any opinion upon this application.-The principal witness now called was Miss Mary Ann Loder, with whom Arthur Orton had kept company twenty years ago. She stated that the defendant was the same man who was accustomed to walk with her. She denied that he had worn earrings or that he was pock-marked, but she had not noticed the size of his hand and foot. Several of the letters she had received from him while he was on his voyage to Hobart Town she identified-even to the peculiar hieroglyphic at the end. When asked by Dr. Kenealy if she had any doubt about defendant being the man, she answered that if she had she would have given him the full benefit of it.-Ann Cockburn, who had been a playmate of the Ortons, and lived directly opposite to them, corroborated Miss Loder's account of Arthur's physical peculiarities. Other witnesses from Wapping swore to the defendant being Arthur Orton.

The witnesses next examined were chiefly residents of Wapping, some of whom swore positively, and others less decidedly, that the defendant was Arthur Orton.

Henry Allen, who had been cook on board the "Middleton" during her voyage to Hobart Town, swore positively to the defendant having been his shipmate. He stood a severe cross-examination as to his remembrance of the defendant's physical peculiarities.-William Wallace, who before 1852 had frequently called upon George Orton as a saddler's agent, gave it as his conscientious conviction that the defendant was the same person whom he had known as George's youngest son Arthur.-John Collins, after premising that he had prayed for grace to tell the truth, affirmed that the man before him was Arthur Orton.-George Winn, baker, had known Arthur from his being a baby in long clothes, and was familiar with the twitching of his face as a family movement.-Walter Lever had been apprenticed to a smith, next door to Orton's shop, in Lower East Smithfield. Arthur was his daily playmate for four years, and he remembered weighing him in the scales, when he turned 13 st. He had recognized the defendant at Croydon.-Charles Lawrence, a gentleman who was waited upon by a committee of the claimant's friends at Southampton, detailed that dramatic interview, at the close of which he had politely to remind one of his visitors that the "door was down-stairs."-William Syrett, horse-healer, described certain funny games which young Wapping had been accustomed to play upon Arthur. One of them was to tie him up in a hamper and roll him over and over.Mrs. Syrett, the wife of last witness, addressed an ad hominem appeal to the defendant, asking him, "Could you stand alone here before me and my husband and say you are not Arthur Orton ?"-Thomas Ward, a master lighterman, discovered a new mark of identification; "Arther Orton laughed all over his face, just as the claimant does."-William Willoughby, oilman, of 26, High-street, told the claimant the first time he met him, "You are the image of your sister Margaret." He added in Court, that his voice was not to be distinguished from his father's.

Several of the witnesses examined at this stage hailed from Wapping or Poplar. Mr. Thomas Halstead, an old resident of Wapping, said he was certain the defendant was Arthur Orton.-Mrs. Fairhead deposed to the