The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-04 00:00:00

Commence at 7.

ADELPHI, NEW THEATRE-ROYAL.
Sole Proprietor and Manager, Mr. Benj. Webster.
Last nights of the popular Adelphi Drama of Janet Pride.
THIS EVENING, JANET PRIDE. Messrs. B. Webster.
J. L. Toole, P. Bedford, Stuart, C. Selby; Miss Woolgar and
Miss LaidlaW.
After which, THAT BLESSED BABY. Mr. Billington,
Mr. J.
L. Toole, and Miss K. Kelly.
Doors open at half-past 6--Commence at 7.
Box-office open from 10 till 5.
No charge for booking.
Private boxes, A 2 2s. ; Family Boxes, 11-
Orchestra Stalls, ss. ; Balcony, 4s. ; Front Circle Stalls, Ss. ;
Pit Stalls, 25.; Pit, ls. Bd. ; Amphitheatre, is Gallery, 6d.
Acting Manager—Mr. Wm. Smith.

A STLEY'S ROYAL AMPHITHEATRE.-
Proprietor and Manages, Mr. Wm. BATTY.
Crowded Houses.—Re-engagement of the celebrated Dela-
vantl Troupe, Mr. George Hutchingson, and the Wonder of
the World, the Great Little Menonii,
A. Grand MID-DAY PERFORMANCE will take place on
SATURDAY next, Sept 8, commencing at Two o'clock.
This Evening, Lord Byron's splendid Hippo-drama of
MAZEPPA AND THE WILD HORSE, with entirely new
and beautiful scenery, costly costumes, and appointments,
introducing the largest stud of highly-trained Horses, Po-
nies, Buffaloes, and Camels in the World.
To be followed by Scenes in the Arena by the Star Riders
of the day, including the greatest Equestrienne in the world,
Madlle. de Berg, and the Wonder of Wonders, Little Menoni.
Doors open at half-past 8, performance commence at 7.
Box-ofnoe open daily from 11 till 4.
Stage Manager--Mr. W. WEM!.
Director of the Arena—M. Felix Revolt'.

CANTERBURY HALL CONCERTS.—
EVERY EVENING,
A Grand Selection from
MARTHA,
And Selections from
DINORAH, TROVATORE, MACBETH,
And numerous other Entertainments.
Balcony, 11 ...Hall, 6d.
Comic Vocalists —Messrs. George Hodson (the Irish Come-
dian and Mimic), and C. Marshall.
The ETHIOPIANS, consisting of 17 performers (organised
expressly for this Establishment), for the performance of
Vocal and Instrumental Music, Comic and Sentimental, with
iieg,ro delineations, anecdotes, tc., in addition to the usual
entertainments.
The Fine Arts Gallery is open from 5 till 11 on Sunday
Evening.

THE WEATHER.—Bux OFrica, SEPT. 4, 1660.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
64—highest since noon yesterday.
49—lowest this morning and during the night.
63—this day at noon.

BAROMETER-30.26 ; still rising.
WlND—Northerly ; light, with very fine dry, sunshiny
weather.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
This DAY.—Morning, 3h. 58m.—Afternoon, 4h. 12m
To-monnow.-Morning, 4h. 26m.—Afternoon, 4h. 40m

THE SUN.

LONDON, TUESDAY, SEPT. 4, 1860.

The last days of Bourbonism in Naples are at
hand. Not only is the great General steadily and
rapidly approaching from the south, but, if we
may credit the correspondent of a morning contem-
porary whose information has generally proved
correct, the north of Italy will meet the south at
Naples—the regular soldiers of VICTOR EMMANUEL
will be there almost as soon as those of GARIBALDI.
It is said that Count CAVOUR has " thrown off the
mask"—or as he himself would doubtless say, has
adapted himself to circumstances or yielded to the
irresistible logic of events. He is according to this
letter, which is dated from Turin, on the 30th of
August, resolved to send a strong body of soldiers
to preserve under any circumstances life, property,
and tranquility in Naples. He intends to
send them, as far as practicable, by sea,
but if not, to demand for them a passage
through the Papal territories. Such a passage
was granted to Austrians in 1821, and to
Neapolitans themselves in 1848, and the Count does
not mean to accept a refusal now.
There is a fair show of reason for such a step,
provided the Sardinians take a course precisely the
reverse of that of the French at Rome. The latter
went there to coerce the Romans into submission
to a rule they hated, and have hated ever since.
The Sardinians will not, we trust, if they go- to
Naples, depart from the strictest political neutrality.
They go to save the city from the dangers to which
it might be exposed, from the fierce antogonism of
factions, from the brutal lazzaroni, from the mer-
cenaries in the KING'S service, and from the exas-
perated Royalists, who have long battened on the
corruption and cruelties of the Government.
It may well be that, the National Guard
is not competent, unaided, to resist all the
classes from whom disturbance is to be
feared; but we should think it as likely as anything
that the letter of LUCIEN MURAT, and the recent
advance into public notice of the NI e.azinists , are
amongst the chief reasons which have induced
Count CAVOUR to take this perfectly abnormal
step. Abnormal, however, only for a Government
which avows the principle of non-intervention.
Austria has intervened often enough. France is
most injuriously intervening at Rome at this
moment ; we trust the Sardinian intervention will
be simply and solely for the civil safety of the
population. Much as we should like to see all
cordially uniting in VICTOR EMMANUEL, we should
deplore his doing a single at.a which constrained
a single Neapolitan to vote in his favour. If he
does but honestly preserve the city from bombard-
ment by the KING (who denies, however, any such
intention), and from the temporary riot of rascality
which abounds there, he may then justify his
departure from neutrality. His bona fide procla-
mation to the Neapolitans must be " Choose
freely your own Government, but choose it without
riot or bloodshed."

If we look at Naples itself, and south of it, all
is most hopeful. Amongst the councillors and even
the generals of the army we have constant rumours
of resignation and defection. It seems quite certain
that General NIINZIANTE has left the KING and
gone on board a Neapolitan ship of war, and that
only one general, the savage Bosco, stands heartily
by the disconsolate Monarch. The KING is said
to Promise that all fighting shall be outside the
city; and the National Guard having intimated
to him that they could be relied on only
to resist civil tumult, he is said to have begged
them not to place his mercenaries between two fires,
by attacking them from behind, while the Gari-

baldians assailed in front ! If not literally true the
story, no doubt, correctly represent his fears. But
what can the poor wretch hope for when the Count
of SYRACUSE himself makes his peace with VICTOR
EMMANUEL. Indeed the correspondent above re-
ferred to from Turin goes so far as to say that in a
second letter the Count has actually recognised
VICTOR EMMANUEL as the King of Italy.
But it is south of Naples that the decisive work
is being done. GARIBALDI there so completely
commands the entire straits, that Messina is com-
pletely isolated. But far more important even than
that—more important than his victories themselves,
considered as strictly military feats, is the temper
he everywhere finds both among the troops and
the population. The latter welcome him even far
more enthusiastically than did the country popula-
tion of Sicily—exerting themselves also to the
utmost to supply his wants when he has had to de-
pend on them. At Reggio, however, he seems to have
formed abundant stores. As •to the troops, their
chief manoeuvre seems to be to yield after pre-
senting the appearance of resistance; presenting it,
however, in such a way as not to endanger their
lives. The capture of the battalions under BRI-
GANTI and MELENDEZ, one of 2,000 and the other
of 1,800 men was effected with wonderful skill, and
humanity; yet it is impossible to feel 'quite sure
that BRIGANTI did not take the position he did, to
give GARIBALDI the opportunity of showing his
skill. Certain it is that after the surrender the
fraternisation was complete. GARIBALDI himself
went down among the Neapolitans, showing how
entire was his confidence, and was almost torn to
pieces by hugging and embracing ; soldier and offi-
cer, including Gen. BRIGANTI himself, fraternised.
And such we may, for humanity's sake, hope
will be the story to the end, One line of
defence after another has been abandoned,
and we are told the way is now un-
obstructed from Reggio to Salerno itself—the
obstructions there and outside Naples—we have
every reason to hope will melt away, much after the
fashion of those at Reggio and Monteleone, and
perhaps in ten days more GARIBALDI may date his
orders from Naples, and the fugitive KING from on
board ship, or a little later, from Vienna. The
Army evidently cannot be trusted, and the
whole country, as fast as it gets clear of
mercenary or Royalist troops, proclaims the Dic-
tatorship of GARIBALDI. He pursues his uniform
course. He longs to avoid bloodshed—his last
proclamation to the Neapolitans of the continent
says :—" I wish to avoid bloodshed among Italians.
I have seen that you are brave, and
don't wish to see it again; our blood we will shed
together on the corpses of the enemies of Italy,
but between us let there be peace—accept that
right hand which has never served a tyrant, but
which has been hardened in the service of the
people." Yes—ltalians will accept it—and should
he ever visit this country, Englishmen of all classes
would be proud to grasp it.

It is always, in fact it has become proverbially;
ungracious to look a gift horse in the mouth. Yet
for the life of us we cannot help acting thus, how•

ever perversely, in regard to certain presentations
made to the nation by private individuals. There
are conditions sometimes coupled with those gifts
that tend to render what could otherwise be viewed
only as evidences of munificence and magnanimity
singularly vexatious, crotchetty and irritating. Take
a case in point. There is a commodious dwelling
house on the north side of Lincoln's-inn-fields—No.
13, to wit—which is opened to public inspectipn
during two or three months out of the twelve, and
which contains within it a miscellaneous assortment
of works of art and objects of curiosity bequeathed
to the nation by the collector, the late Sir JOHN
SOANE, and known ever since then as Sir JOHN
SOANE'S Museum. Now this museum might have
been quadrupled in value as a popular benefaction
if it had been left to the country by Sir JOHN
SOANE in an open liberal-handed manner, without
encumbering it with any conditions whatsoever.
Supposing, for example, that it had been so be-
queathed by the donor to the British Government,
it need not have been kept all this while isolated in
No. 13, Lincoln's-inn-fields—it might have been
rendered accessible to the public at large without
the smallest restriction of any kind at all—it might
have been opened to the examination of the
country at large, from year's end to year's end, in-
stead of during one solitary quarter in each twelve-
month. The imposition of these arbitrary condi-
tions can alone be attributed to one motive, and
that a motive of a very petty character, namely
vanity. The donor appears in these instances to
be, above all things, desirous that his name as the
donor should be perpetuated as glaringly as possible.
Therefore—let the museum, the gallery, the collec-
tion, or whatever else it may be, stand apart from
all others, even though its isolation involves the
necessity of its remaining in a comparatively ob-
scure tenement like this No. 13, Lincoln's-inn-fields,
where Sir JOHN SOANE'S Museum has, ever since
Sir JOHN SOANE'S death, been incurring the risk of
destruction by fire through the merest ordinary
casualty, upon either hand, of an accidental conflag-
ration. It is vanity and nothing but vanity which
says—" My gift shall remain apart from all other
gifts to the nation, and shall be called by my own
name exclusively, by way of advertising my
generosity to posterity in perpetuity, and securing
to me thus an inexhaustible flood of posthumous
admiration !"

Compare with this the gift, pure and ',sim-
ple, the unconditional bequest of some museum, or
gallery, or collection, left literally pro bono publico
by the munificent public benefactor. Does such
an unconditional gift redound less, think you, or
more, to the honour of any such benefactor ?
Does not the fact of its being so left enhance the
grace and value of the donation ? And is it less
likely to be cared for by the nation with a view
to its better preservation ? Why, on the contrary,
the treasures so left are far more likely to be kept
by being at once placed in one out of harm's way
of the great fireproof structures devoted to the
purposes of such collective preservation.
A passage occurring incidentally in the Report
of the Select Committee upon the South Kensing-
ton Museum has thrust these foregoing thoughts
upon our consideration. It is that sentence in the
report which says—" The collection of British
pictures at South Kensington was commenced by
Mr. SHEEPSHANKS; who in (living them to the
nation stipulated that his pictures must be kept
either in the immediate neighbourhood of Kensing-
ton in a suitable building, or, jailing this, at Cam-
bridge." Now, in alluding to this stipulation we are
perfectly conscious that we are doing nothing less
invidious, nothing less ungracious than—looking
a gift horse in the mouth, and a gift horse, too,
which is valued at upwards of £50,000 sterling !
The SHEEPSHANKS' collection is a very rare and
noble gift to the nation—one reflecting the highest
honour upon the munificent giver. His donation
—valued at £52,592—being all the more generous
from the fact of its being vouchsafed by Mr.
SIIEEPSHANKS during his lifetime. But—grate-
fully acknowledging this on behalf of the nation
thus magnificently benefited by the spontaneous
generosity of this gentleman of ample fortune, of

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