The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-10 00:00:00

FRANCE.

BOURSE, Sept. 9.—The market has been rather
weak, and the business done shows a slight decline.
Threes, for the Account, are now at 66f. 65c., and
Mobilier at 1,006 f. 25c, Railway Market also
heavy, and some of the lines are quoted lower. The
market became rather rirmer towards the close, and
left off as follows
41 per Cents 92 70
Do. end month
3 per Cents 66 50
Do. end month 66 70
Credit Mobilier 1007 50
Do. end month 1008 75
Bank Shares 3400
Credit Fonder 1215
Roman

Italian Loan 67 20
Do. end month G7 40
Ditto Threes..." —
New Alemican
Russian
Austrian
Spanish Threes 49 50
Home Debt .. 47 75
Deferred

RAILWAYS.
Cash. Account.
Orleans.... 893 75 .. 895
Northern .. ..
Lyons and Neditorranean 920 .. 922 50
Southern 630 .. 635
Western ......
Eastern .. ..
Sardinian 346 25 .. 346 25
Austrian
Lombard
North of Spain
Saragossa .. 482 50 .. 481 25
Ditto to BareQlona .... 210 .. 210

suppose, we ought to believe that ellarles Edward
was the last of his line, boause Mr. Fullom, stand-

ing at his tomb, felt and thought that he was.
The spirit in which the author went about Rome
is evidently that of a man full of the vulgarest
notions about Romanism, and resolutely determined
to find support for them. He at once knows a
young Jesuit on the Pincian hill Ly " his eye and
look before we note his shovel hat.'' "Craft and
knavery are spread over his cheek like its bloom,
and make the bloom a blight—a blight that
seems to shrivel his frame. His very man-
ner is treacherous, " for he is lurking rather
than standing, and looks down." Then—still, with
a bland disregard of rule about the verb being in the
plural when its nominative is plural—" a few yards
further brings to light one of his brethren peering
at him through the trees, and pretending abstrac9
I tion, so thorough is their system of trickery and
deception." The priests at Rome may be an unr
worthy crew, but any body can see that Mr. Fullom's
talk about craft and knavery and shrivelled frames
is simply the result of an over-excited Protestant
inagination. Any weak-minded English traveller
comes home with just the same story. A Roman
clenched his fist when Mr. Fullom asked his opinion
of the confessional, and the questioner understood
the gesture, " for the Roman was a husband and a
father." Then, on another occasion, ho saw a lady
enter a church by the Farnesi Gardens :
It was unfrequented at that hour, and I followed her in,
thinking she was one of my friends whom I know to be ex-
ploring. I found she had been met by a priest half-way
up the church, and they were walking on together, but
heard me enter, and turned with a startled look. The
lady had coma to confession, and I perceived she was not
the person I thought, and withdrew, leaving her and the
priest alone.

We do not for a moment doubt that Mr Fullom is
honestly describing his own notions, but there is a
dramatic tone about the incident which very pro-
bably produces a wholly untrue impression of what
really took place. The " startled look" has rather
the appearance of being an artistic touch. And
how does Mr Fullom know that the lady had come
to confession ? She might be the priest's sister, or
his aunt, or his mother; at all events, it would only
have been consistent with the charity which hopeth
all things to give them the benefit of the doubt.
This scene recalled to the author another incident
of the confessional which he saw at St. Peter's :
The penitent there was standing with her lips at the
auricle, and pouring her soul into the priest's ear, She
spoke low, but with passionate 'vehemence, and her voice
was broken by sobs which could be heard around. The fall
of her bonnet looped, and I caught a glimpse oT her face,
which was wet with tears, while the burning cheek told a
story of shame. This was in the glare of St. Peter's, and
how might it be with the lady in the sequestered church,
stripped in the same and protected by no observer ?
" After such manifestations," Mr Fullom deci•
sively concludes, "I believed the shocking stories
afloat." That is to say, he visits a Roman Catholic
country, sees a woman sobbing in the confessional,
and another woman, whom he knows nothing
about, in a church talking to a priest, and thinks
these two facts sufficient reason for believing all the
dreadful stories which make the capital of polemical
divines, fanatical newspapers, and itinerant lee-
tutees. What did he expect to find, in the very
centre of the Roman Catholic religion except
the Roman Catholic discipline ? The followers
of that religion hold the necessity of confes
sion to a priest as a fundamental doctrine of their
belief, and yet Mr Futlom seems quite horrified be-
cause he saw one woman at confession, and thought
he saw another. One need have no sort of
admiration for the particular institution to
see how laughable the author's argument is.
Suppose an Italian traveller in England were to
write in the same style, anybody would detect the
absurdity. The traveller might describe with pious
or prurient horror how, on being ushered into a
drawing, room, he found the curate and the daugh-
ter of the house sitting together, and that, on the
door being opened, they "turned with a startled
look." To him this freedom would be an incom-
prehensible abomination, and, if he were like Mr
Fullom, he would rush home and declare in his
book that all the shocking stories of the Haymarket
and the Divorce Court fail to give any idea of the
gross immorality which pervades English life. Yet
we know that after all, the curate and his beloved
were only engaged in the mildest lovemaking.
Then, again, one cannot imagine anything more
childish than to wind up a very fairly written ac-
count of a great illumination of St, Peter's and the
Vatican by the complacent exclamation, " Yet all
was darkness ! These pious ejaculations are simply
impertinent when the business in hand is descrip-
tion, not piety. Neither can we admire the taste
of the stupid generalization that, among foreigners,
" politeness is seen to be gained at the coat of sin-
cerity, and a want of good feeling is apparent
through the show of kindness." Has Mr. Fullom
passed so many years abroad as will justify him in
this calm assumption ? From the whole tone of
his work we should suspect that ho has had pecu-
liarly slender means of forming any judgment in
the matter, and that here, as throughout his book,
he has simply made it his business to echo the igno-
rant national prejudices of which all sensible Eng-
lishmen are thoroughly ashamed. It is quite
possible distinctly to prefer an Englishman to a
Frenchman and Protestantism to Popery, without
calling all foreigners hypocrites, and denouncing
all Roman Catholics as poor benighted idolators.

HORSE EREEDING.—The annual show of the
Wigton Agricultural Society, the first of the more impor-
tant of the autumnal shows in Cumberland—was held at
Wigton on Wednesday. At the dinner held in the evening
the Hon. P. Wyndham, M.P., was one of the spoakers.
In
responding to the toast of his health, he referred to the sub-
ject of breeding horses as one in whifth he took great inte-

rest, and urged the farmers of Cumberland to pay more al

tention to it. In breeding horses,as in many other matters
one success brought another. The:county of York and other
counties had gained a name for horses, and the farmers of
Cumberland might depend upon it that if they produced
three or four very high-class horses and sold them, they
would not only get a very great deal for them, but the fame
of their horses would go abroad, and before many years
they would have the London dealers coming and buying
good horses at an age when it was most advantageous to
part with them—when they were two or three years old.
Many parts of that county were extremely well fitted for
the purpose. True, it was very wet, but that was counter-
balanced by warmth of climate. The farmers had been
blamed fel not sending their mares to the best horses. No
doubt they had not the command of good stallions at a price
at which they ought to have them. They could get their
stock served by the best short-horn bulls for two or three
guineas, but if they wished to employ really a first-class
stallion they had to pay £lO 10s. The reason was that they
were employed for racing. That had been the means of tak-
ing out of the way of farmers the services of the best horses,
because the value of their produce wes fictitious, from being
employed in a purely fictitious and gambling pursuit. What
was felt was that the turf, with its income of £200,000 a-
year,did not want the small subsidy of £5,000 given in the
shape of Queen's plates, which was given originally for the
improvement of the breed of horses, not to help the amuself
-
of the people, although that was a good object.
that sum were given into the hands of proper persons,
who were ready to take it, to create a branch establish-
ment so the Royal stud at Hampton Court, where the
soundest and stoutest mares should breed stallions to
be sent through the country, covering mares at not more
than 405., it would give a great stimulus to horse-breeding
in the country. If they produced a good horse and he got
to be known• he would be bought up at once ; and if this
county got the start of the rest of England in horse-breed-
ing it would be very much to its benefit in every point of
view. Mr W. Lawson, M.P., said he had not been able to
pay as much attention to this subject:of horse-breeding as
ho ought to have done, but he was sure, from the remarks
his hon. friend (Mr Wyndham) had made, that it was in
very good hands. And it was in other hands besides his.
Some time ago he went one evening into the House of
Lords, and took his stand in the position allotted to mem-
bers of the House of Commons. The house was uncom-
monly full, and he heard a very interesting and lively de-
bate upon this very question—whether it is desirable that
the system of light weights should be encouraged by Go-
vernment. He observed upon that occasion that the bench
of bishops was crowded. Therefore he was quite content to
leave the light weights in the hands of the bishop and his
friend Mr Percy Wyndham.
" SEE THE CONQUERING HERO COMES:'—At the
late annual meeting of the Ohio State Medical Society Pro-
fessor Webber offered the following ream 'ution, which was
adopted amid tremendous applause :—" Resolved, that the
thanks of this society, as well as the good wishes of all the
good citizens in the land, are eminently due to our venerable
fellow member, J. G. Rogers, M.D., of New Richmond,
Ohio, for the skilful manner in which, on the morning of
the 2d of April, 1822, he assisted into this world Ulysses
Simpson Grant, the commander of the American armies,
the hero of Vicksburg, and the predestined destroyer.of the
great rebeiliou.".. Qtfq plant terrible I—Lancet.