The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-26 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 26, IRE

dians right and left from the overland mail and
telegraph routes to California. The wires are again
working and stages running. The Indians are in
heavy force, however, at various points on the wes-
tern border, and fully 50,000 Federal troops are
required to watch them.
Over 400 miles of the Russian-American telegraph
have been completed on the Pacific coast of Rus-
sian America. The work is progressing rapidly,
and bids fair to be completed before a cable can be
laid across the Atlantic. There are many tele-
graphic enterprises on the tapis in America. Be-
sides a proposed line connecting South America,
Cuba, and Porto Rico with Florida, and another
between Cuba and Vera Cruz, an American com-
pany has procured from Maximilian the exclusive
right to construct various lines in Mexico. They
are to have 15 years' monopoly of the business, pro-
vided they construct 125 miles in eight months.
There is very little news reported from Mexico.
The French troops on the Rio Grande are to be with-
drawn, and their places supplied by native Mexicans.
Baron de Bruan, a Mexican officer, who recently
wrote an insulting letter to the Federal General
Brown, whereby the peaceful relations of the two
countries were endangered, has been dismissed. As
another peace-offering to the North, it is announced
that Maximilian will not receive any Confederate
officers in his service.

The delegation of English financiers who are
visiting America are at present in the oil region of
Pennsylvania. On Saturday, September 9, they
were entertained at a grand banquet at Meadville,
Pennsylvania, by the directors of the Atlantic and
Great Western Railroad. Sir S. Morton Peto spoke
on behalf of the delegation in reply to the speeches
of welcome, and after partaking of an elegant re-
past the company broke up--the guests well pleased
with the hospitality extended them by the people of
America. They will spend the greater part of the
present week in closely examing the oil region.

RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE.

EAST GLOUCESTERSHIRE.

The report of the directors adverted to the defeat
of the bill brought before Parliament last session
for enabling the Midland Company to subscribe
£lOO,OOO towards the capital of the East Glouces-
tershire Company. The rejection of this bill had
placed the directors in a position of considerable
difficulty, preventing the signing of the contract for
the construction of the line. Subsequent commu-
nication took place with the Midland Company,
which resulted in a resolution of the Midland Board
authorising an agreement by which they were to
work the East Gloucestershire Railway when com-
pleted, upon terms which would secure payment of 5
percent. per annum upon £300,000 of A or preferred
stock, and £200,000 of debentures, and the applica-
tion of the additional earnings (aft. payment of the
working expenses) to the payment of dividend on
the deferred capital. The Great 'Western Railway
Company, however, disputed the right of the Mid-
land Company even to enter into an agreement for
that purpose, and the question had accordingly been
referred to the arbitration of Capt. Galton, the re-
feree appointed by the Board of Trade. In this
state of things an arrangement had been made with
the contractors to continue the works upon terms
which the directors, under the circumstances, con-
sidered desirable for the interests of the company.
The call payable in May last had been well responded
to, and a large part of the Parliamentary expenses
in obtaining the act, as well as the purchase money
for land taken, had been paid.
The report of Mr. Liddell, the engineer, stated
that the works of the line commenced in the spring
had been limited to that part which required the
greatest length of time for its completion—viz., the
Sandywell tunnel and excavations—and in which
considerable progress had been made.

partly due to a reduction of fares, litit the directors
believed that the reduction would ultimately have
a beneficial effect. Under the clauses inserted in
" The Highland Railway Act" of last session the
Great North of Scotland Company were now en-
titled to equal gross through faro and rates between
Inverness and other stations on the Highland Rail-
way and stations in the south via Aberdeen and
via Dunkeld, thus affording a choice of routes to the
public on equal terms. Under the same clauses a
large reduction would take place on the goods rates
between Aberdeen and stations on the Inverness
lines, in the benefit arising from which the public,
as well as the company, would largely participate.
The Act authorising a junction of the Strathspey
and Highland lines at Abernethy passed last ses-
sion, and the contracts for the works were adver-
tised. The junction was two miles in length, and
would be ready for traffic next spring. The direc-
tors had, in compliance with the recommendation
of the Committee of Investigation, disposed of the
£12,000 stock held by the company in the Mon-
trose and Bervie Railway to that company at par,
payable in debenture bonds of that company, in
equal instalments, three, five, and eight years hence,
with interest at the rate of 3 per ceit. per annum.
The capital account showed that £1,847,610 had
been expended, including £704,958 in subscriptions
to and disbursements for 12 other railway companies,
leaving a balance of £30,964 against the company.

Crown, but we do not scruple to express the hope
that, in the event of its arising, it may be answered
in the affirmative.

HERALD.-It is not very often that the patient
and protracted investigation of a criminal charge
OAS in a thannet so tinsatisfactoky as Madanie
Valentin's recent trial for perjury. Three times
within as many months have the relations of this
unhappy woman with her former protector, M.
Donfion, formed the subject of judicial inquiry
before the tribunals of this country. The Court of
Exchequer spent five days in establishing her title
to property of which it was said she had obtained
unlawful possession, and at the August session of
the Central Criminal Court a man named Lafour-

carde was convicted of having given false testimony,
adverse to Madame Valentin, for a pecuniary con-

sideration. On that occasion the jury emphatically
affirmed their belief in her truthfulness ; the judge

expressed his strong reprobation of the manner in
which the proceedings against her had been con-
ducted, and the sentence passed upon the prisoner
was one of considerable severity. After these two
decisions in her favour, it might have been supposed
that her troubles were over. But her adversaries
were not to be so easily beaten. They .charged her
with having herself committed perjury, and to
answer this accusation the defendant was on Thurs-

day last arraigned. The prosecution had, rather
indecorously, originally included in the indictment
a charge of perjury at the trial of " Bouillon v.
Valentin" in the Court of Exchequer, but this was
not proceeded with, as a new trial having been
moved for, the case is still pending. The inquiry
last week was, therefore, confined to certain state-
ments Madame Valentin had made on oath when
examined as a witness at the trial of Lafourcarde.
The charge against that person related to certain
allegations made by him in an affidavit relative to
Madame Valentin's expressed intention of leaving
this country for America, which were sworn to by
him in order to procure her arrest and incarceration
in Whitecross-street prison until her claim to M.
Donflon's property could be disposed of. The ques-
tion at Lafourcarde's trial was whether these state-
ments were true, in his knowledge or belief ; and
as Madame Valentin positively denied that she had
ever formed or expressed the intention of going
to America, his convictioritbee,ame inevitable. At
this trial, however, she made, in addition, certain
statements as to the days in last September on
which she was in London, and as to a conversation
she had with Lafourcarde during her imprison-
ment. The whole of these statements were denied
on the part of the prosecution, and for perjury in
respect to them Madame Valentin now stands con-
victed. Of the three charges we have mentioned
probably the second only can be said to come within
the legal definition of the offence of which the de-
fendant was accused. The date of her arrival in
London, and the fact of her not having had a con-
versation with Lafourcarde at a particular time and
place, were matters on which accuracy or inaccuracy
were scarcely " material" in the legal sense, so as
to make any deviation from the truth with respect
to them the subject of an indictment. That a witness
incorrectly answered questions bearing on these
points might be good ground for receiving her testi-
mony with caution, but not for sending her to a
criminal prison. The second assignment, however,
was.. more important, and with respect to it the credi-
bility of the witnesses against her became an all-im-
portant question. Those on whose testimony the
prosecution were compelled to rely were certainly
not of an order to command respect or to compel
credence from any resonable men. Apart from the
formal evidence given by shorthand writers, the case
rested upon the oaths of Lafourcarde and his daugh-
ters. Of these the first was brought from the pri-
son to which he was only last month sent to undergo
a term of 18 months' imprisonment for the very
offence he sought to impute to Madame Valentin.
And the justice of his conviction was proved by his
own admissions. He had said to more than one
witness that he had sworn to a lie, and that he was
to get 12,000 francs for giving evidence on behalf
of M. Bouillon. Further, he had owned, on cross-
examination by Mr. Bovill, that his religion induced
him to believe that there was no crime in such false-
hoods, and that his charge for speaking the truth was
£l,OOO down. Though he had profited greatly by the
bounty of the woman against whom he spoke, he had
soon after her arrest taken part in the breaking open
and rifling of the bag in which the shares and coupons
given her by Donflon were deposited. Nor did the
evidence of his daughters go for very much. They
simply repeated their father's story. Their antece-
dents were not the most reputable, and to them, as
to their father, Madame Valentin had acted with
considerable generosity. M. Richard, an inde-
pendent witness, was also called, but he had only
heard the defendant say that she would not remain
in London, and his evidence went to some extent to
contradict the case for the prosecution, as she said
nothing to him about going to America or any
other foreign country. The case, therefore, rests
upon the linalippnri-.1 .na u.oorroborattXl testimony
of Lafourcarde, a confessed and convicted perjurer,
and his three daughters, over whom both their
father's past training and present position must
have exerted an influence sufficiently great to lessen
the value of their evidence. The jury, however,
must have thought differently. They evidently
thought they could safely act upon the allegations
of persons lying under these grave imputations,
and, accordingly, they returned a verdict which in-
flicts an irreparable injury upon the defendant, and
affords at least a temporary triumph to her adver-
saries. To say that this result was unexpected
would be but faintly to express the sentiments with
which the verdict was received by every one who
heard or read the proceedings at the trial. As was
stated by the prisoner in her address to the Court,when called up for judgment, the verdict surprised
everybody, including the presiding judge and the
counsel on both sides. And the Recorder, while
passing sentence, carefully avoided a single word
that could be construed into an approval of the
verdict. On the contrary, he laid stress on the
fact that it was for the jury and not for him to
determine the fact of the prisoner's guilt orin-
nocence, and that all he had to do was to act upon
the conclusion at which they had arrived. We
have no wish to make the verdict in this case the
text for adverse comment upon the manner in
which jurors generally discharge their important
duties. Nor have we any intention to comment
severely upon the particular jury by whom Madame
Valentin was tried. Observers of these things
may think they discover the indications of a com-
promise, and may conclude that a verdict of guilty
with a recommendation to mercy, given at a few
minutes before seven, and after forty minutes' de-
liberation, looks very much as if a fear of being
locked up for the night had overborne the deliberate
judgment of some at least among the twelve wise
men who for the time garrisoned the palladium of
English liberty. Still we greatly regret that such a
case should have had such an ending. We are ac-
customed to pride ourselves upon the fairness of our
tribunals, and in the main our pride is fully justified
by the manner in which justice is there administered.
But no one who reads the proceedings at the trial,
and the verdict in which it resulted, can help being
reminded of the Welshman who found the prisoner
not guilty, but hoped he would not do it again, and
of their north country compeers, who recommended
to mercy because they were not sure the prisoner
was the man. It is unfortunate when any jury gives
a decision whose absurdity would be comic, if its
consequences were not almost tragic. But such a
decision is especially to be lamented when the per-
son who suffers by it is a foreigner, of whose inno-
cence there is an unusually strong presumption, and
whose previous misfortunes have established a strong
claim upon our sympathy and commiseration. It
may be that the sentence upon Madame Valentin
can hardly remain unreversed, but we greatly regret
that the verdict which preceded that sentence should
ever have been pronounced.
THE " SATURDAY REVIEW " ON Two AMERICAN
COMEDIANS.—Within the last few weeks we have
been favoured with visits from two American actors
of what is called " character." Both of them have
earned a high reputation in those cities of the United
States which can alone confer theatrical honours on
the other side of the Atlantic. At home, we under-
stand; they distinguished themselves in what is com-
monly termed legitimate business ; that is to say, they
acted in the old stock comedies, without relying on
pieces written for the sole purpose of suiting their
own peculiarities. Here, however, they have repre-
sented certain exceptional types of humanity sup-
posed to be among the offshoots of American soil.
Mr. John E. Owens, who has lately left us, repre-
sented an exceedingly stolid and uncultivated far-
mer, the inhabitant of some Eastern State. Mr.
Jefferson, who has very recently made his appear-
ance among us, portrays the Dutch settler of the
early period of New York civilisation, as exhibited
by Washington Irving in his story of " Rip van
Winkle." The theatre for both has been the
Adeiphi. Distinct as these two actors are from
each other in look, manner, and style, as well as in
the description of character selected for representa-
tion, they both apparently proceed on the common
principle of taking in hand, perhaps inventing, a
marked idiosyncrasy, and working out its details to
the highest possible degree of finish. For this rea-
son they may be classed with Mr. Sothern, since with
him also minuteness of detail is the grand con-
sideration. Broad sketches do not, as it seems, be-
long to the notions of histrionic art entertained by
these three proficients. As the old Dutch painter
is said to have boasted of the number of touches
which he bestowed on the elaboration of one shirt-
collar, so may these new actors, trained on the other
Endo of the Atlantic, glory in the quantity of minute
action which they employ in order to realise their
conception of a character which they have thought
worthy of study. How the old conventional...fop of

two cen-tiiiieS4 entitling was sublimated into the
unique Lord Dundreary, by Mr. Seitherni has now
been known to every playgoer for the last two
years ; and Brother Sam, who at present reigns
in Dundreary's place—for he is expected back in
London after, Christmas—is another illustration of
the successful akplitation of the same method of
proceeding. In addressing himself to the London
public, Mr. Sothern was remarkably forttinate in
the character which had made his fortune in the
United States, and which perhaps owed part of its
American popularity to a desire of the Yankees to
laugh at a Britisher who was a lord into the bar-
gain. While the details of Dundreary were entirely
fresh, the basis from which they sprang was per-
fectly familiar to the Haymarket audience, which
could therefore understand the moral and intel-
lectual status which he was intended to represent.
From the days of Charles 11. we have had our Fop-
pingtons and Flutters, who stood apart from the D ori-
mants and the Mirabels, libertines of a more robust
sort, as cultivators of effeminate dialect and extreme
indolence of manner. These fops were sometimes
supposed to ape the fashions of France and Italy, as
even at the present day fops on the German stage
are very fond of the verbs in " iren," but they were
not half so foreign as they looked. The military
swell, who is allied to the old fop by an outward
semblance of effeminacy and indolence, but differs
from him in the retention of his soldierlike courage,
would seem to be of a later growth. He was made
perhaps more prominent than he had been before,
about 40 years since, when the Hussars of the 10th
regiment rendered themselves unpopular by certain
strange affectations, and were satirised not only by
the caricaturists of the day, but by the Rev. George
Croly in his comedy, " Pride shall have a Fall."
Since that time he has not been allowed wholly to
disappear, and he still lives in Mr. Leech's drawings
of fashionableguardsmen. Dundreary grasped within
himself the peculiarities of many varieties of the
genus fop, and each of these could be perfectly ap-
preciated by every London playgoer, though the
compound result was entirely novel. Mr. John E.
Owens, on the other hand, was less fortunate. No
character could have been more elaborately wrought
than that of the ungainly boor whom he presented
to the Adelphi audience, and who, we are told by
competent judges, more strongly resembled a
rustic inhabitant of New Jersey than any other mem-
ber of the human family. The actor was compara-
tively young; but, by a strange manipulation of his
head and face, by a low shambling gait, by the adop-
tion of a voice seemingly affected both by years and
drink, he produced a perfect picture of dirty disre-
putable senility, in which not a relic of youth could
be traced. The state of mental fog in a low-bred
perversely cunning old man, who perpetually mixes
up one subject with another, and occasionally asto-
nishes by an outburst of shrewdness, could nut have
been more completely embodied. His " Just so"—
a deperate attempt to conceal utter ignorance of the
purport of a proposition by the use of an affirmative
form of reply—was a marvellous indication of an
intellectual blank ; and he had a certain manner of
seating himself in a chair with great difficulty, care-
fully adjusting the tails of a very shabby coat, and
concluding the difficult performance with a little
shriek of triumph, which, often repeated in the
course of one evening, never failed to awaken a
roar. But, with all his acknowledged merits, Mr.
John E. Owens was so far unfortunately placed that
he had selected a character which had nothing in
common with English associations, and the aspect
of which was rather repulsive than attractive. The
dialect and manner of Solon Shingle, as the farmer
was called, had little in common with those which
are popularly attributed to Yankees ; and though
we could perceive that his details were consistent
with each other, it was difficult to surmise to what
sort of actuality they referred. Dundreary him-
self was a creation of the fancy, and those
matter-of-fact critics who complained that they
had not seen his, prototype in society ignored the
peculiar talent of Mr. Sothern. But every one knew
the sort of entity to which he pointed, whereas the
very elements of which Solon Shingle is composed
are strange to Englishmen. Moreover, although
" Our American Cousin" was a notoriously bad
piece, it was not so utterly effete and contemptible
as the wretched compound of farce and domestic
drama which introduced Solon Shingle to the British
public. The Dundreary scenes at any rate answered
the purpose of developing the principal personage,
and the principal personage was an agreeable object
to behold. But dirty, sleepy Solon Shingle, always
chewing and spitting, and always losing the thread
of the discourse, had been just as fully exhibited at
the end of the first scene about his talents as a most
finished actor of exceptional idiosyncrasy, but he
also leaves a regret that he was not presented under
more favourable circumstances. We are told that
Mr. Jefferson, whose debut at the Adelphi is the
chief theatrical event of the day, holds in America
about the same rank as his predecessor. But, how-
ever that may be, it is certain that Mr. Jefferson's
rhsnces of obtaining an English popularity are in-
finitely greater than those of M... .Tnhn
The character of Rip van Winkle, though his twenty
years' sleep distinguishes him from the rest of his
fellow-mortals, is one that everybody can understand.
Moreover, Mr. Jefferson's version of the part is not
only intelligible but picturesque, often as inebriety has
been depictd on the stage, he exhibits the vice under
a new form. Rip is as confirmed a drunkard as the
worst man against whom the editor of the British
Workman could direct his pictures or his letter-press
—the modern Helot, at which little dissenting Spar-
tans might be taught to point. He neglects his wife
and child, he wastes his substance, and he tries to
pick up a miserable existence by shooting on the
Catskill Mountains, where he never contrives to hit
anything unless it be some valuable beast belong-
ing to his wife. His debauchery-, too, is of the most
abject sort. If he would only be content to sit at
the head of a party of boon companions, his foible
might be pardoned ; but he is quite as much ad-
dicted to solitary as to convivial drunkenness. He
loves to figure in a roystering clique, but he likes
also to carry a bottle in his pocket, and while, with
his arms round his wife's neck, he is swearing that
he will not take another drop, he is drinking over
her shoulder. Yet, with his immense failings, he
has one quality that compensates for them all—in-
domitable good-nature, and it is in giving its full
value to this quality that Mr. Jefferson chiefly dis-
plays his genius. There is an ease in the move-
ments of Rip denoting a frank, jovial nature ; his
countenance, with many shades of expression, is
good-humoured through them all ; he is never cross
in his cup,,and he is never stupid. The severity
with which his wife punishes:him for his delinquen-
cies—a stout broomstick being the ordinary instru-
ment of castigation— causes him to animadvert
upon her in no measured terms when he
finds himself in the midst of a party of sympathetic
souls ; but there is a strong domestic affection deep
in his heart, and if he somewhat lacks devotion to
his (in every respect) better half he is doatingly
fond of his little daughter, who instinctively appre-
ciates the kindliness hidden from the view of his
wife by his vicious exterior. The dramatic object of
the 20 years' sleep, caused by imbibing the magic
potion proffered by the ghost of Hendrick Hudson,
is to show Rip's character under a new aspect. He
is a completely old man—much older, in fact, than
he could possibly become through a lapse of 20
years ; but this incongruity must be pardoned, on
the ground that it is necessary to produce a suffi-
ciently strong contrast between the first and second
parts of the story. Rip is no longer a picturesque
vagabond, with strong thews and iron constitution;
but his figure, still picturesque, is one that might
have belonged to Symeon Stylites. His desolate
condition on entering among persons to whom he is
an utter stranger, and who regard him as a tramp,
while he feels certain that he is in his native village,
gives rise to a great deal of quiet pathos, which
reaches its climax when the aged wanderer is at last
recognised by his daughter. We have indicated
what Mr. Jefferson has to do rather than described
how he does it ; but if we state that every possible
detail of character that could be produced under the
circumstances supposed is represented with the most
perfect ease—an art that thoroughly conceals art
being aided by a happy union of natural qualities—
we shall have implied that Mr. Jefferson has already
taken a high position among modern theatrical ar-
tists. The present age is not ideal in its tastes, but,
in addition to sensation and spectacle, it is able to
appreciate studies of individual character, and the
more minute the finish the more will such studies be
liked. It is in the elaboration of odd figures,
snatched from out-of-the-way nooks of life, or so
fashioned by the actor as to be completely consistent
with themselves, that the greatest histrionic successes
of late years have been achieved ; and much credit
is to be given to the best American audiences for
training a series of actors whose qualities do not
appeal to the vulgar sense, but can only be fully
appreciated by something like a discriminating
judgment. There is no doubt that Mr. Jefferson
will for, some time to come remain the leading object
in the eyes of the playgoing world i allt`,l for the
meanwhile we may praise Mr. Boucicau or the
e
clever manner in which he has
peculiarities of so
original an actor.

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