The Sun.
London, England, 1867-11-23 00:00:00

THE HONDURAS RAILWAY.

Mr. AYRTON asked the secretary of State for Affairs
whether any new treaty of guarantee had been entered
into with the state of Honduras.

Lord STANLEY said no new treaty had been entered
into with Honduras, and there was no intention to
to do so ; the treaty referred to in the document connected
with the Honduras and Oceanic Railway must be the one
dated August 27, 1856.
THE PASSPORT SYSTEM

Mr. D. GRIFFITH brought the case of Mr. Coventry,
and the ungentlemanly treatment of her Majesty's vice-
consul at Calais, under the notice of the house. The hon.
member said he hoped an apology from the French autho-

titles would bo demanded, and that the s irgetat de title
would be dismissed.
• "

Lord STANLEY said be had waited for particulars on
the subject. He found that Mr. Coventry had not been
given into custody, and the Vice-Consul also said that
feeling the serpent de rifle spoke merely under some temporary
excitement, he was quite satisfied with the apology that
had already been made, and that he had no -wish that any
further notice need be taken in the matter. Under these
circumstances it had not been thought necssary to take
any further notice of the occurrence.
LAW OF LIBEL

Sir C. O'LOGIILEN brought in a bill to amend the law
of libel, which, he said, was similar to the one he intro-
duced last year.
The bill was read a first time.
The house thou adjourned.

THE ROMAN QUESTION.

-~_

A letter from Rome, dated Nov. 16, says :

On Sunday morning the Pope assisted at the
solemn obsequies of Cardinal di Roberti at the
Chiesa Nuova. He was looking remarkably well,
and his voice sounded loud and sweet as usual in
that large church as he pronounced the absolution.
The Mass was sung by Cardinal Reisach. The
Chiesa Nuova, the large Oratorian church, was
well filled, and the crowds in the piazza and ad-
jacent streets greeted the Papal cortege warmly.
After the ceremony the Holy Father drove to the
Hospital of San Spirito to visit the wounded sol-
diers there, though he had visited many of them
before he went round to all the beds again. These
visits are always conducted in the simplest and
most unostentatious manner, no previous notice
being given, and no preparations or disturbance
occasioned ; and it has been always observed that,
so far from any fevered patient becoming excited
by the event, all are found afterwards soothed
and calmed. Nothing could be more touching than
to hear the voices of the poor fellows, broken by
suffering, and steadied again by great resolution,
crying their vivas as he took his departure.
The Queen of Naples returned to Rome on
Monday, having travelled in an Austrian steamer
from Nice to Civita Vecchia. She had a private
audience of the Holy Father next day.
The return of the mixed Papal and French gar-
risons into the various towns whence the Garibal-
dians fled on the disappearance of their corypheus,
has been continuing. At Viterbo, where one party
of them had got up a plebiscite, which another
section, headed by Acerbi, disavowed, and where,
for ten days, the various leaders had been trying to
force themselves on the people as a " Provisional
Government "—whose chief measure has been to
extort a contribution of 40,000 scudi—the Papal
troops entered on the 9th. All the people of im-
portance in the place came out in procession to
meet the troops, while the inhabitants hailed them
with acclamations of joy, and draped the fronts of
their houses with the Papal colours.
The Osservatore Romano publishes the following
from Montefiascone :—" On the 7th our city was
freed from the Garibaldian incursion. The legiti-
mate municipality immediately resumed its func-
tions, and the Pontifical arms were set up again in
all public places amid general and spontaneous de-
monstrations of rejoicing. The iniquitous invasion,
which has done great damage to the population
by impositions extorted from the commune, from
the clergy, and from individuals, has only served
to confirm us in our proverbial devotion to the
Holy See. The Pontifical troops reentered the city
on the 10th, and were received by a vast con-
course of people, while all the houses were deco-
rated with the colours of the Holy See and of
France ; the streets through which the troops were
to pass were strewn with flowers, and the ladies
presented Colonel Azzanesi with a silk banner."

It has been the same thing in all the other towns.
Everywhere the troops have been received with
cries of " Viva Pio Nono !" " Viva la Francia !"
Everywhere the Te Deunt is sung, and deputa-
tions sent up to Rome to protest against the in-
vasion. At Tivoli, Bracciano, and other places
there have been general illuminations and fire-
works in token of rejoicing, and the discharge of
mortaletti, that unfailing accompaniment of all Ita-
lian festivals.

Everything goes on here on its old footing again,
almost as if nothing had happened. Almost the
only remaining token of the crisis we have passed
through is the continued strengthening of the
walls and gates, at which the troops are still work-
ing ; and the peaceful Pincio bristles with cannon
as you take your afternoon ride. Occasionally,
too, events occur to recall the realities of war ; as
on Wednesday evening, when the prisoners of the
26th October were marched into Rome. There
were two companies of the Antibes Legion, a com-
pany of Cacciatori esteri, and a few Dragoons and
Gensdarmes. The surgeon is a British subject, Dr.
O'Flyn, of Cork, who studied at Louvain. After
the capitulation, Garibaldi had the prisoners
brought before him, and said he could not forbear
congratulating them on their noble defence, but
his victory had been a sad (luttuosissima) one for
him, as it had cost him 200 or 300 men. The pri-
soners were then marched to the frontier at Cor-
resse, where they were delivered over to the regular
Italian troops, who escorted them through Terni
and Perugia to Florence, thence to Pisa, and finally
to Varignano, in the Gulf of La Spezzia. Here
they were treated to the same lodgings and rations
as if they had been Italian troops, and they were
left free to walk about within the limits of the fort.
While here, an Italian officer, who execrates Gari-
baldi; informed them of his final defeat at Men-
tana, and a few days later they saw himself brought
in a prisoner with Canzive and Basso. A French
steamer brought them to Civita Vecchia, and on
their arrival at the Roman railway station, they
were met by Colonel d'Argy and a detachment of
the Legion d'Antibes, of Carabinieri, Artillery,
Gensdarmes, and Dragoons. It was a fine sight to
see them come in by torchlight thus escorted, and
still more, by a number of the population, who
turned out to welcome them notwithstanding the
lateness of the hour.

It seems very strange to a humdrum islander to
be living in the midst of these stirring scenes—to
watch the very beatings of the heart, and the
welling of the life-blood of that vast body which
lives in every clime and age, for it is not always
that the secret operations of her being are thus
open to view. We are not surprised to see crowds
from other nations peering over us, and those,
even, who profess generally to care for none of
these things casting a glance at us askance, but
we are astonished at the affectation of indifference
with which one paper which generally boasts of
the fullness of its foreign information, seems to
treat us. I have not seen the Times very regularly,
certainly, since I have been back in Rome, but
when I have seen it, I have seen no letter from
any regular correspondent in Rome. If they can-
not command a writer who can keep sufficiently
within the line of truth, to avoid the risk of being
marched out of the States, they had better copy
from some respectable French or English Catholic
journal—which, by the nature of the case, must
have the best information—rather than give such
miserable displays of impotence as they content
themselves with reproducing all the way round
from Naples, where they seem to have established
a kind of provincial head-quarters of their own,
the arbitrary heading, "Southern Italy," including,
as an insignificant item, all they are able or willing
to let their readers know about Rome.
The Times of the 4th is before me, and I ex-
tract the following :—" At the date of my last
from Rome " (such is the thirdhand information
with which the readers of the Times suffer them-
selves to be put off), "a new incident was observed
—the patrolling of the city by dragoons. Cannon
were placed also on Monte Mario and the Pincio.
It is resolved, therefore, to give a warm reception
to the Garibaldians, who are said to be approach-
ing nearer and nearer, notwithstanding the official
reports that in the provinces loyalty and trant
quillity reigned." Now, why the " notwithstand-
ing?" as if a mare's nest had been discovered.
Who would not imagine, from reading the above,
that these precautions against the Garibaldians,
and even the advance of the Garibaldians, had
been kept out of sight by the " official reports ?" and
yet the very same papers w,hich recorded the loyal
bearing of the Roman populations were filled with
accounts of the Garibaldi= moyemente and the