The Sun.
London, England, 1869-06-26 00:00:00

POLITE BEICANDAGE.

The Duke and Duchess of Saxony have been captured
by brigands whilst driving out in the neighbourhood of
Sorrento. They fell into the bands of the most able and,
it appears, the most polished of Italian robbers—Fuoco,
the Neapolitan. As soon as this great personage learned
who his prisoners were, he at once took off his hat,
politely handed them to their carriage, and, giving a five-
franc piece to the coachman, said, with a final bow,
" Will your Highness deign to excuse the audacity and
insolence of my men, and carry away with you a favour-
able recollection of the roor Neapolitan Fuoco?" The
Duke sent the robber a watch and chain valued at £l6O.
This looks a good deal like encouraging roguery ; but
then the Italian Government cannot put down brigandage,
and strangers therefore have some interest in teaching the
robbers the value of good breeding.

(From the Anglo-American Times)

Mr. iteverdy Johnson has returned to the prac-
tice of the law, and is already at work on the gold
contract case of Messrs. Abell and Co. against the
Chesapeake Bank, involving a claim for a special
gold deposit of $3,000, made in 1861. This case
has been to the Court of Appeals of Maryland, and
is now on trial for the second time at the Supreme
Court of Baltimore City. On appearing for the
plaintiffs he was cordially welcomed by the Court
and members of the bar, and he is to dine with
the city authorities. Mr. Johnson was promptly
" interviewed" on landing by a correspondent of
the New York Times, who intercepted him at his
house, near Baltimore, and represented his face as
wreathing into smiles, and his eyes twinkling at
the recollection of the jolly English dinners which
ho so heartily enjoyed. "They dine at eight," he
said, " and they are grand affairs." Of England
he spoke in the warmest terms, as the outspoken,
courageous, sincere person he is ; terming his recep-
tion there an ovation. " They are a proud and
powerful people, and are not to be frightened into
any concession they do not believe to be just." Ile
considers Mr. Sumner's speech preposterous, and
asserts the Senator wrote to England last January
that had the protocol sentby him (Reverdy Johnson)
been concluded three weeks earlier it would have
been unanimously approved. He is going to show
that he strictly obeyed his instructions, of which Mr.
Sumner himself approved. lie spoke disparagingly
of the London correspondent of the Tribune, as the
man Smalley ; but he considers it will all come
right in the end, and that there will be a reaction
in his favour. Nor is this prediction without
grounds, for already the Tribune is protesting
against the continued abuse of a lawyer to whom
the Union is indebted for substantial services, who
eminently adorns his profession, and who lost his
seat in the Senate because of his manly Anti-
Slavery vote.

Many persons carelessly assume that civilization
must progress of its own impetus, that it cannot re-
trogade, and are therefore the less impressed with
the necessity of throwing theirsmall individual efforts
into the scale. Though at a time when the world
did not possess the press and rapid locomotion,
yet we have seen in many instances a direct re-
lapse of mankind into barbarism, and we know that
it is with the utmost difficulty, and only by a sus-
tained effort, that Christianized savages, can be kept
from falling back into idolatry. At the Presbyte-
rian General Assembly, at Mobile, it was asserted
that many blacks since emancipation, had lapsed
into heathenism, and that obi-worship was reviving
among them was shown by the testimony of several
clergymen. If this is to be the end of
_emancipa-
tion, the North might as well have accepted the
Domestic Institution of the South, and preserved
the Union without the disastrous war. In the face
of the influx of Chinese heathenism, and the diffi-
culty of Christianising that race, it would be awk-
ward if the negro relapsed into the idolatrous prac-
tices of his African progenitor.
There is a league in Nova Scotia now agitating for
the annexation of the proyince to the United States.