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The hearing of the charges against Oscar Wilde was continued at the Central Criminal Court to-day. Oscar Wilde, who appeared to be in a very weak condition, was allowed a seat in the witness-box. During his examination he declared that he always understood that Alfred Taylor was a respectable man. Referring to his associates, Oscar Wilde said that his reason for their friendship was that he personally liked praise, and the sensation of lionising was delightful.

Sir Edward Clarke, Q.C., Oscar Wilde's counsel, in his address to the jury, declared that the witnesses for the prosecution were all blackmailers, whose statements it was impossible to believe.

[The foregoing appeared in our Second Edition on Saturday.]

LONDON, May 25.

On the conclusion of the addresses of counsel, Mr. Justice Wills summed up, and the jury retired to consider their verdict. After an absence of two hours the jury returned a verdict against Wilde of guilty on all counts.

Mr. Justice Wills, speaking with great emotion, said it was difficult enough for him to restrain his feelings. He regarded the verdict of the jury as correct beyond the shadow of a doubt, and he felt it would be useless to address the prisoner, who was dead to all sense of shame. The case was the worst he had ever tried and he would pass the most severe sentence that the law permitted, regretting that that sentence was totally inadequate to the enormity of the crime.

Oscar Wilde and Alfred Taylor were then each sentenced to two years imprisonment, with hard labour.

Taylor left the dock with a firm step, but Wilde looked haggard and dazed.

After sentence had been passed, Wilde, with a despairing and horror-stricken expression on his countenance, weakly muttered a request to be permitted to address the bench, but the re- quest was not heeded, and the warders escorted him to the cells immediately.

LONDON, May 26.

The Marquis of Queensberry and Lord Douglas of Hawick witnessed the end of the trial.

The foreman of the jury asked the court whether the Crown intended to order the arrest of Lord Alfred Douglas (second son of the Marquis of Queensberry), and Mr. Justice Wills replied that he was not aware that Lord Alfred Douglas was affected by the present trial. The foreman then suggested that if Oscar Wilde's letters showed him to be guilty, they would apply equally to Lord Alfred Douglas. The judge concurred, and stated further that any suspicion that Lord Alfred Douglas was being allowed to escape because of his family connections was as unfounded as it was impossible.

London, May 27.—During the trial, Wilde, who appeared to be suffering from weakness, was allowed to remain seated in the witness-box while giving evidence on his own behalf. He said he always understood Taylor to be a respectable man, and, referring to his association with him, said the reason for the friendship was because he personally liked praise, and lionising was delightful to him.

Sir Edward Clarke, counsel for the accused, declared that the witnesses for the prosecution were blackmailers, and that it was impossible to believe them.

The jury asked whether it was intended to arrest Lord Alfred Douglas.

The Judge replied that he was not aware of the intention of the police, but in any case it did not affect the present trial.

The jury thought that if Wilde's letter showed him to be guilty the guilt applied equally to Lord Alfred Douglas.

His Honor concurred in this opinion, but added that the suspicion of the jury that the son of the Marquis of Queensberry was being allowed to escape owing to his connections was both unfounded and impossible.

Oscar Wilde, after being sentenced, appeared quite dazed and horror-struck. In his despair he weakly muttered a request to be permitted to address the court, but this was unheeded, and the warders hurried him off to his cell.

Mr Henry W. Lucy, writing to one of the Australian papers on the subject, says:—There is something dismally tragic in its way in the thought of Oscar Wilde in his prison cell whilst two London theatres are crammed with audiences delighted with the clever situations and light persiflage of his plays from his pen, in the full tide of their popularity, when his career was abruptly cut short. The situation was a little awkward for the managers of St. James's Theatre, where "The Importance of Being Earnest" is played, and for Messrs Waller and Morell, who had arranged to continue at the Criterion the successful run of "An Ideal Husband." They have attempted to meet it in a manner that is problematically wise, but indubitably mean. They keep on the plays, but erase the name of the dishonoured author. In the United States, where the "Ideal Husband' has been played to crowded houses, the manager has heroically withdrawn it, a proceeding in which there is at least some sign of logic. To show one's moral indignation by omitting the name of a dishonoured and degraded author, and to continue taking at the door the money he brings in, is quite another thing. It is impossible to feel any regret at the fate that has at length tracked the evil footsteps of Oscar Wilde. But the pity of it is infinite. After long struggling with costly habits and inadequate means Wilde had reached a position in which he found a fortune as well as fame. His plays, running in the United States and simultaneously in two theatres in London, brought him in large revenues. Having outlived the well-considered foolishness of his lily and sunflower days, he had before him a honourable and lucrative career. Then his sin finds him out, and all is blackness and night. The sensation created in London by the criminal proceedings are commensurate with the wideness of the circle to which Wilde was personally known, and that included everybody worth knowing. The last time I met him at dinner was at a small party in a private dining-room at the House of Commons. The host, heir presumptive to a peerage, an ex-Minister, belonged, like the majority of his guests (who included Mr Arthur Balfour), to the most exclusive set in London. Wilde, as usual amid such surroundings, was in brilliant conversational form. In his narrow cell, or hereafter in company with the coarsest of mankind, with nothing in his dress to to distinguish between them and the sybarite, he will doubtless sometimes think of that particular evening, and of many another akin to it. The bitterest part of his punishment will be these crowding memories, for truly "sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things."