Mr. Justice Byrne has taken ample time to consider his judgment in the action brought by Mr. Cavendish against Major and Mrs. Strutt and Dr. Ranger, but ho is justified by the closely reasoned and carefully "worded judgment which he delivered on Wednesday. There was very little doubt from the first that the judgment would be in Mr. Cavendish's favour; but there was a great deal to be considered in regard to the degree of blame which was to be attributed to the defendants, and in regard to other matters, and Sir E. W. Byrne's judgment will considerably enhance his reputation. This, will be remembered, is the famous Planchette" case, It was partly by means of the planchette and other devices of so-called spiritualism that Major and Mrs. Strutt obtained or strengthened their influence over Mr. Cavendish and induced him to muke a deed of settlement of his property under which the Strutts and their children greatly benefited. There is this to be said for the Struts, that Mr. Cavendish hud been and was making ducks and drakes of his property, and if some such settlement hal not been made the remnants would almost certainly have been dissipated long before this. If the Strutts had been content with a reasonable recompense for their trouble in saving the lainti®? from his own extravagance and ancial incapacity no one would have complained, and the case would never have been heard of but but they were not. Mr. Cavendish did a happy stroke of business for himself when he induced Miss Isnbel Jay, the actress, to marry him. He no doubt owes it mainly to her that.he has recovered the remnant of his property, and we may reasonably hope that she will be able to keep him from flinging it away.
Clifford's Inn, of the old inns of Chancery, fell under the Clifford's Ian, Practically the last survivor auctioneer's hammer at Tokenhouse Yard fnndred thousand pounds—and for this sum yesterday. There was only one bid—of a
it was sold—or "given away" as the auctioneer preferred to call it. Some efforts were made by the antiquaries to induce the Government to step in and save it, but they wore unavailing, as they were bound to be. Everybody must regret that the few remaining bits of Old London should be so fast disappearing; but it is inevitable. The antiquaries themselves cannot raise the money to buy, them up for the nation, and it is only the most interesting, historical, and artistically, that the nation or the municipality can fairly be asked to buy up. One of the old houses has some fine carving attributed—as is all wood carving of his time—to Grinling Giblons; and this, it was expressly stated, was not included in the sale, having been reserved with a view to its acquirement by the nation. Iv will, it is to be hoped, find a place in the Victoria and Albert
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.