The Sun.
London, England, 1869-03-20 00:00:00

VIRGINIA.

The account of a week's visit to Virginia by a recent
traveller, given by the New York Round Table, does not
convey a very favourable impression of the state of the
country. The search for gold has been the ruin of the
place, and the new men coming in from the North find it
almost impossible to improve the land. Many of the com-
panies recently established have acted in so improvident a
manner that confidence is well-nigh destroyed, and negroes
and whites agree in looking upon Northern promises with
suspicion. Almost every trace of war has disappeared
near Fredericksburg, and the old Southern homes
are being replaced by Yankee-looking houses. In
Fredericksburg itself little change can be seen ;
but business is not in a thriving condition. Some Northern
men have been on the look-out for land, but the land-
owners are exorbitant in their prices, and at times unwill-
ing to sell at all. At Richmond great dissatisfaction is
expressed that the North does not send more capital to
reinstate the place. The men are quite willing, it is said,
to meet the Northern men and do business with them, but
the woman keep back, influenced by a kind of social
league, which is hardly likely to last much longer. It is
the opinion of one who holds an important place near the
general in command that the Virginians are the Chinese of
America. They regard every change as most injurious,
and discourage all efforts to educate the negroes. The

houses in Richmond are not in a flourishing condition,
and Virginia carries out the idea of having been the
martyr of the war, both in the appearance she presents and
in the attitude she assumes. A week's visit to the Old
Dominion will be sufficient to spew the traveller the chief
points of interest, and will convince him that Northern
men cannot get the South reconstructed by staying at
home ; they must examine the question on the ground,
and answer it if they cal.

It was rumoured in Liverpool on Thursday that a
young clerk in the employ of A cotton-broking firm in that
town had abszondcd with a large amount of money. The
young man, who has been missing since Tuesday last, is
respectably connected. On Tuesday ho was sent with
£l,OOO to pay an account, and ho has not since been heard of.
We learn from Aberdeen that Mr. Fronde was
on Friday installed as Rector of St. Andrew's University.
Principal Tulloch presided, and in the name of the
Senatus conferred on the eminent historian the degree of
LL.D. Mr. Froude delivered a suitable address to the
students.

A WOMAN CAPTAIN.--The ship Chieftain has
arrived at New York from Calcutta. When five weeks
out the captain (Maguire) was prostrated by fever, and
his wife taking command brought the vessel safelyto port.
r
Mrs. Maguire, it is said, has sailed with her husband for
Several
vyeeraarls
y,
eaa nrsd knowsago,
h
w everyilei
n opeand spar aboard
commandship. of a brig, Captain
Maguire with his crew were taken sick, and Mrs.
Maguire navigated the vessel to port with scarcely any
assistance.

Professor Fawcett addressed his constituents
the other night at Brighton, and, taking up the subject
cf the Irish Church, he said: " Supposing the Lords threw
out the bill, which he believed they would, he would recom-
mend Mr. Gladstone to advise the Queen to dissolve the
House. If the Commons again passed it, and the Lords
still p:osed it, if be were Mr. Gla Istone he would have
another election. This course would increase the majority
in the Commons and the country in its favour, and the
Lords would see that they were pursuing an unconstitu-
tional course, and their resistance would be as futile and
feeble as that of the weakest child attempting to stem the
flow of a mountain torrent."

THE RENTING OF PEWS IN HOUSES OP WORSHIP.

—The Bishop of North Carolina recently spoke at-New
York on the subject as follows :---"Whatever tends to
erect barriers between class and class, and to hinder the
diffusion of religious truth among men, is opposite to the
purposes of God and hinders the salvation of mankind;
and these serious consequences seem to flow very certainly
from the practice so prevalent among us of dividing the
house of God into compartments, and then renting these
to him who will pay most for them, and thereby
making Mammon the porter to stand at the the door
of the temple of God to open and shut as he is or is
not propitiated by those who desire to come in ; for this
is incontrovertibly the effect of the pew system. It
gives the right of entrance into the sanctuary of God
to the man with a purse ; but to him who, like the
Apostles, is constrained to say `Silver and gold have I
none,' its reply is, then 'I know you not ;
depart from
me.' If you have no money, you have no place in this
house of God. For You there are no sacraments, no
ministry, no worship. What,
then, is its effect? That
the gospel becomes one of the luxuries of the rich, and
not the bread of life to hungry souls. What, then,
follows ? That a Church—by which I mean a society of
Christians—consistently acting on this system must
estrange itself from the mass of the people and abandon
them to religious ignorance and insensibility."
REMARKABLE CASE OF SOMNOLENCE.—It is
reported from Paris that a young man is now sleeping in
the madhouse at Bicetre, and has slept soundly on for six
months without waking. He was first admitted as an
insane patient, seven months ago ; he had been a careful,
bores'. painstaking clerk, and had saved up EGO by con-
stant thrift. Ile sallied forth with his money one day,
and threw it into a mud-cart. He was then removed to
Bi é e, fell asleep shortly after his admission, and
has never since woke up. They have stripped
him, flogged him with nettles, tickled the soles
of his feet, administered medicines still stronger
than their flagellations, but still he sleeps on, in
a persistent somnolency, which the editor of the Gaulois,
who has seen and shaken the sleeper, maintains he has
never known to have been produced by the perusal of the
Pat, t or of any other official journal. Nutriment is
administered to the sleeper by means of a tube inserted in
the nostrils. The doctors believe the sleep to be feigned,
that it is all part and parcel of his insanity, and that he is
a very wide-awake Young fellow ; but if his torpor be
feigned, he must indeed be a most accomplished and per-
wicring actor, _