The Sun.
London, England, 1859-05-09 00:00:00

Continued Success of INA
NiNHht OE.—Overflowing Houses
gly.

THIS EVENING, the performances will commence with
new grand spectacle, founded on Sir Walter Scott's popular
work, entitled IVANHOE ; Cr, The Lists of Ashby, intro-
ducing among the vast resources of this great Hippodramatic
Temple,Tournaments, Processions, Banners, Combats, Tilts,
Victories, and Achievemerts in extraordinary magnificence.
Ivanhoe, Mr. R. Phillips ; Isaac of York, Mr. Jas. Holloway;
Richard of England, Mr. Herbert ; Robin Hood, Mr. Wm.
Cooke, jun. ; Rebecca, Miss Bathurst ; Lady Rowena, Miss
Dowton.
After which, the matchless and unrivalled SCENES IN
THE CIRCLE, introducing Mr. John Henry Cooke, the
greatest equestrian in the world : together with Miss
Emily Cooke, Madame Blanche, Madame Bridges, Madlle.
Fleurette, and Madame Francisco, being the greatest amount
of female equestrian talent ever seen in one night in any
theatre. Grotesques—Messrs. Hemming and Tborne.
ITo conclude with the Farce of RAISING THE WIND.
;Dress Circle, 4s. ; Boxes, 25.; Pit, 2s, ; Gallery, Is.; Upper
Gallery, 6d.
Private Boxes, £4 4s. £2 2s, and is.
Stage Manager, Mr. R. Phillips

CANTERBURY HALL AND FINE ARTS
GALLERY, V'Testminster-road.—Open at Seven.,
EVERY EVENING during the week will appear
THE DELEPIERRE FAMILY,

-- - -
eonslsting of three Juvenile Violinists, viz., Jules, Juliette,
and Julia Delepierre, aged, respectively, FOUR, SIX, and
EIGHT years.
The perfect execution by these Lilliputian Artistes of some
of the most difficult and brilliant Solos, Duets, and Trios ever
written for the violin, has excited mingled wonder and admi-
ration in Continental Musical Circles, and drawn forth enthu-
siastic tributes of praise from the Public Journals of France
and Belgium.
They will perform EVERY EVENING, at NINE and
ELEVEN o'clock, in addition to the usual Entertainments.

THE WEATHER.—Sux OFFICE, MAY 8.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
69—highest since noon yesterday.
56—lowest this morning and during the night.
61—this day at noon.

BAItomETDR--30.17.
WIND, Northerly ; light, with fine weather. It rained
heavily in the night.

MAY 9.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
64—highest since noon yesterday.
DO—lowest this morning and during the night.
61—this day at noon.
BAROMETER-30.27.
WIND, South-easterly; rather fresh, with very fine
weather.

The Austrians are still hanging fire. They have
lost the chance of inflicting severe injury on Sardinia.
And in place of pressing forward rapidly to Turin,
have contented themselves with levying pecuniary
contributions on the inhabitants of the districts
they have occupied. It is difficult to understand
the motives for the course they have pursued. Had
they not decided on immediate action it was a great
mistake to appear in the character of aggressors,
disturbing the peace of Europe, and affording a
pretext to Louis NAPOLEON for the proceedings
that he so long contemplated, and is now carrying
into execution. There would have been sufficient
reason for such conduct if they advanced by forced
marches on the capital, and were thus enabled to
damage materially their most hated opponents, and
obtain considerable plunder. As it is they have
procrastinated when activity was of vital impor-
tance, and have lost much valuable time which
can never be recalled.

Their present movements, or at least the last of
which we have any authentic accounts, are alto-
gether of a retrograde character. They have fallen
back from Trino on Vercelli, and have not only
refrained from sending additional troops across the
Po, but have brought back those who had already
passed the river, and even permitted the stores
which had been taken over, to fall into the hands of
the enemy. There has been, in fact, a total want
of the vigour which had been anticipated, and it is
more than probable that the Austrians will adopt a
purely defensive, in place of an aggressive policy.
The plains of Marengo bring back inauspicious
omens to every Austrian mind, and we fancy that
the invaders will not be desirous of having a second
defeat associated with the same locality.
General GYULAI is also fortifying the line of the
Sesia, while General DE LA lklAnmona is adopting
a similar precaution on the Dora. Each party
appears anxious to wait for the first blow.
We can easily understand this feeling
on the part of the Sardinians, inasmuch as every
day brings them additional auxiliaries and greater
power. But it certainly seems strange that the
Austrians should play the game of their opponents,
or, if intending to fall back on Pavia:and Piacenza,
that they should have taken the initiative and
thus brought against themselves the public opinion
of Europe and more especially of England and,
Prussia, who might be enabled to render importext
assistance in the event of serious diffieultie4 oc-
curring.

There certainly is an Austrian division which
crossed by Lago Maggiore, of which we have as
yet had no authentic intelligence, and which may
mean mischief. It is, however, difficult to conceive
that if the last-mentioned division. was about to
assume the offensive, that their fellow-soldiers
should have fallen back and intrenched themselves
in a position where they could render but little, if
any, aid to their comrades.
The weather has been a formidable opponent to
the Austrians. The rivers have been swollen, the
fields turned into swamps, from the heavy falls of
rains. The procrastination exhibited in the first
instance has occasioned greater mischief than could
have been anticipated ; and now that eighty thou-
sand French troops are in Piedmont, in addition to
its own army, there must be a decisive battle or a
retreat and there is no possible chance of a decisive
coup in the first instance.

To-morrow Louis NAPOLEON, glowing for mili-
tary distinction, sets out from Paris to take com-
mand of the army of Italy. That simple fact
sufficiently proves that he has, or believes
he has, already a sufficient force in Piedmont
to meet the Austrian attack. Anything
approaching to a defeat would be ruinous to himself
and the dynasty he wishes to found. He wants
fame and glory to consolidate his empire. It is
no longer one of peace but of conquest. Failure
would be destructive to kik prospects, and he will

take the best possible care to avoid any reasonable
chance thereof. He is by far too cunning to com-
promise his position with the people. His object is
to appear as a victorious general, and if there were
much doubt on the point, he would allow com-
manders of inferior rank, who will now act as his
advisers or dry nurses, to incur the disgrace and
odium of the failure.

It is our duty, at all events, and under any cir-
cumstances, to keep out of the scrape, and to pre-
serve a strict although an armed neutrality. The
task will be an arduous one. Matters may arise to
render it impossible, but English blood ought not
to be shed, or English money expended, in such a
quarrel. We must, of course, participate in the
evils that result from a state of war, even to those
who are not actual belligerents, but none of the
combatants will be anxious to invite us to the field,
and so long as our honour, dignity, and security
are unassailed, we may and ought to keep aloof
from the contest.

While England must regard all parties engaged
in the Italian war as more or less culpable, and
while in the exercise of common sense she must
suspect the motives of the professed Liberator of
Italy, still Austria and all the Germans who sym-
pathise with her must not deceive themselves.
Austria is the Eons et origo mal ; the crime of pre-
cipitating the war, unless so doing could insure its
early termination, was indefensible; but the per-
manent character of Austrian rule in Italy is the
crime of crimes in Italian and in English eyes.
Count Cavoun was perfectly right in denouncing
such a rule as incompatible with European
tranquillity, because it amounted to nothing less
than keeping five and twenty millions of
Italians in a state, morally, of chronic insur-
rection. No one could tell when and where the
next outbreak would be ; but with the Austrian
virus pervading all the States of the Peninsula,
the manifestation of deadly disease soon, and some-
where, was certain. The proofs, if they were
needed, of Austria's animosity against the liberties
of every Italian State, are patent now to all in the

treaties which she made. They are treaties not for
defence against external aggression—small States
must, of course, seek such alliances they are
treaties with petty despots to protect them against
their own people. With Austria peoples are
nothing, " Houses" are everything ; and these
"houses"—the curse of Europe—must be saved
harmless against the due reward of their deeds,
when a justly-incensed people arise to give it. Trea-
ties of foreign princes with our own to guillotine
those who resisted our martyr King (till last year
of blessed memory), or to imprison, torture, and
massacre the Whigs and Tories, too, who sent
James the Second across the Channel, would be the
parallel of those treaties which Austria has made
with her little Viceroys throughout Italy.
?fere, and here only, is the legal ground of accu-

sation against Austria. Her engagements to pre-
vent the acquisition of liberty by any Italian State
her consequent occupation of fortresses south of the
Po for that purpose, and the intolerable tyranny
which crushed all Italy in consequence from the
Po to the Island of Sicily, are the illegalities for
which she has no excuse but that haughty self-will.
She would tolerate no political freedom amongst
those who spoke any dialect of the Italian tongue.
She hated the sight of freedom anywhere ; but
the sight of freedom which would flow through
a common language all over Lombardy too, this
was to her more intolerable still. Now our
rulers well know all this ; and woe to the Minister,
or to his secret Royal backer who trifles in this
matter with the feelings of the English nation.
We know who said that Constitutional Govern-
ments were on their trial, although they had been
tried here ages before he was born who uttered
these words ; but we beg to remind the august
author of that insult, as we have ever felt it, to the
English people, that despotic Governments have
also had a pretty long trial, and that the detestable
results which we now see in Italy are the natural
ones of Hereditary absolutism. Gaols full of the
noblest patriots, military brutality, an exasperated
populace, priests employed as the instruments of
tyranny, the reign of spies and informers, and a
chained press—these are the genuine fruits of the
regime so dear to petty German Courts.
But not only has Europe a legal accusation
against Austria, she has quite as strong a moral
one. It may be, as Austria asserts, that one inde-
pendent Government has no right to "lecture
another" on its administration of its own domains—
no legal right; Count CAvoUR acknowledged as
much himself. But the eternal laws of right and
wrong cannot be annihilated by technicalities and
legal forms. Europe has a moral right to " lecture
Austria" if, in 1815, she placed six or seven mil-
-1 lions of people under her power, and if Austria has
used that power in a manner quite the opposite of
that which Europe expected. There is surely some
court of equity to take cognisance of the mode in
which trusts like that of giving northern Italy to
Austria are fulfilled. And if there be, any other power
like Piedmont has a right to appear as counsel for
the cestui que trusts. Had Sardinia treated Genoa
as Austria has treated Lombardy, all or any of the
parties to the treaties of 1815 would have had a
right to complain. Had she, instead of treating
her as on a perfect equality, a constitutional
equality now, with the remainder of the kingdom,
maddened all her patriots to insurrection, Europe
might justly have said—lf we have no legal right,
we have a moral right to protect against such an
abuse of our confidence. Genoa, we know, was
it
and justly disappointed at not being con-
secuted an independent Republic ; but, contrast
the sentiments now of Genoa towards Sardinia,
Iwith those of Lombardy and Venice towards
Austria.

We beg to refer our Court, and all who are too
ready to take their lessons from it, to an authentic
letter given in onr able weekly contemporary, the
Spectator, last Saturday ; it is from an " esteemed
correspondent, who knows the country well, and
who travelled in it in recent years." Some of the
facts we have indeed heard before, but here they
come to us with others, freshly attested by an in-
dependent eye-witness. They corroborate all that
Sardinia has laid to the charge of Austria, and fully
justify ViCTOR EMMANL'EL in not being "indiffe-
rent to the cry of Italy's anguish." "To begin," he
says, "with the penal code, the proceedings are to
be strictly secret." The defence of the accused must
be given in writing, the prisoner can claim no de-
fender, nor even that the charges against him
should be communicated to him ! By this code,
high and low, rich and poor, man and woman, are
equally subject to the degrading punishment of
flogging. True, not more than fifty blows may be
given at one time; but fasting and bastinado

may be added. In the worst kind of imprisonment,
that to which all guilty of patriotism are subjected,
the prisoner is confined in a dungeon, shut out from
all external communication, with only light and air
sufficient to sustain existence. He is loaded with
fetters and chained by an iron ring rivetted round
his waist ; his food is bread and water, his bed a
bare plank, and he may not speak even to his
gaolers. " It is beneath sinzilar treatment that some
of the best and noblest Italians are now writhing.*
In everything relating to the State, it is enjoined

that t7ie wife shall denounce the husband, the hus-
band the wife, the child the father, the father the
child, on pain of punishment as accomplices!"

We must, however, refer our readers to the letter
itself, which they will find in another column ; let
them notice the tribunal for political offences ; the
punishment inflicted on those who hissed the Aus-
trian flag (or perhaps did not hiss it) in the window
of a courtezan, with the cruelly ludicrous post-
script; the extent of these brutalities—and then
let every Englishman ask himself—let our Court
itself ask itself—whether such a brutal power
ought to be tolerated in Italy for a single year
longer. Instead of its being criminal to rise in re-
bellion against her, it were criminal not to do it.
England must not intervene. But if she even did,
it could only be to expel the brutal torturers of
Italy.

Although the late deplorable outbreak of war in
Europe has not actually involved England in mili-
tary operations upon the continent, it has so
directly tended already to concentrate the national
attention upon the necessity of securing as rapidly
as possible the efficiency of both army and navy,
that the immediate result will probably be, under
any circumstances, to postpone for a long time to
come, many an intended—internal—peaceful im-
provement. It was upon the very eve, however, of
the positive commencement of hostilities upon the
eastern frontiers of Sardinia that the Premier, upon
the occasion of the Royal Academy banquet, ob-
served—" I trust that before many anniversaries
are over we may be enabled to congratulate the
Royal Academy on having a larger and more suit-
able site for the exhibition of the trophies of art
which adorn these walls—for the extension of their
meritorious and laudable endeavours to cultivate
the fine arts and promote the instruction of their
younger brethren; and that at no distant period
we shall find the productions of British artists in
their annual collections displayed where there is
room for all the deserving, many of which, I am
sure, from the present inadequacy of the space at
your command, have necessarily to be excluded."
The noble lord, determined apparently to be as ex-
plicit as possible in his statements—(under what
could hardly be regarded as very encouraging cir-
cumstances to the cultivators of the arts of Peace)
—added a few words, first by way of timely retro-
spect, afterwards by way of welcome promise or
vaticination. " Gentlemen," he said, " I recoiled
that when I last had the honour of holding office
under the Crown I expressed in this place the
same anxious desire, and I then made an appeal to
the liberality of my right hon. friend the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, who is not now present, to
provide better accommodation for thistociety ; and
I am happy to think that now, while filling the
same situation for the second time, we find our-
selves near the completion of that wish of my
heart at that day; and that, knowing the exertions
which the Royal Academy is itself making for the
advance•.nent of art and science, we shall see that
great object realised in a short time by the aid of
Parliament, viz., the provision of a more worthy
huilding for the exhibition of the works of the Royal
Academy." So that even in the opinion of the
First Lord of the Treasury there is every reason-
able prospect before us of witnessing the reconstruc-
tion and reorganisation of the National Gallery—

and the induction of the Royal Academy into
an edifice appropriated entirely to themselves.
Hitherto our Academicians, if they have cultivated
any particular school of philosophy, have certainly
cultivated that of the peripatetics. They have
never yet had a house of their own in which to give
their annual dinners, and upon the walls of which
to hang their yearly exhibitions. Whether they
have been in Pall-Mall, or in Somerset-house, or
in Trafalgar-square, they have lived under a roof
as yet only, so to speak, upon sufferance.
It was not, remember, until after the Royal Aca-
demy had been in existence upwards of half a
century that England had any National Gallery at
all. Upon St. George's Day, of all fine days in the
year—upon the 23d of April, the birth-day and
the death-day of the brightest gift St. George has
surely ever given to England (SHAKsPERE)—in
the year of our Lord 1771, Sir JOSHUA first occu-
pied the presidential chair at that earliest convivial
gathering of the academicans and associates. Fifty-
three years afterwards—and still England had not
the ghost of a National Gallery. Then, however,
in that auspicious year (1824) died Mr. ANGER-
STEIN. And immediately upon the demise of that
eminent connoisseur, the notion was then first started
that England should at length possess a collection
of her own—the nucleus of that collection being the
pictures left behind him by Mr. ANGERSTEIN, pic-
tures which the nation then purchased for the sum
of £57,000. For £3,000 more those pictures were
housed and preserved for the nation at a house in
Pall-Mall. Gradually—little by little—the collec-
tion increased in number and value, now by be-
quest, now by purchase, until, in 1838, the pictures
having become too numerois for the space hitherto
allotted to them, were removed to the new building
which had just then been completed from the
wretched designs of poor Mr. W. WILKINS, the
architect. Twenty-one years ago, on the opening
of that new building of the National Gal-
lery, the collection contained exactly 110 pictures
by the ancient masters alone. That number
has since been more than trebled—the paintings
by the ancient masters in the National Gallery
being at this moment as many as 350 altogether.
The collection of modern pictures, meanwhile, hav-
ing multiplied with kindred rapidity, so that the
whole number of paintings, both ancient and
modern, now forming the National Gallery, exceeds
six hundred! Mr. VERNON has given to the
country his noble collection. Mr. SHEEPSHANKS
has with equal munificence parted with his. TUR-
NER, dying in that miserable little lodging-house
at Chelsea, leaves to England as a magnificent
memorial of his genius as many as 282 of his paint-
ings, together with 19,331 of his hardly less mar-
vellous watercolour drawings and sketches. No
wonder the nation, with all this wealth of art mul-
tiplying thusin its possession, resolves at last upon
making a clean sweep in Trafalgar-square of the
Royal Academy and of that preposterous structure
called, and absurdly called, the National Gallery.
Let us hope nothing will now set aside that resolve
or even delay it. Although England has not yet
33
anything at all like the 2,000 specimens of the old
masters at Florence, or like the 1,860 at Dresden, or
the 1,833 at Madrid, or the 1,800 at the Louvre, or
the 1,350
at Berlin, or the 1,300 at Vienna, or the
700 at Naples, or the 569 at Turin—still we have
here 350, some of them very noble specimens pf the
old masters ; we have made at least a very notice-
able beginning; we have a prospect before us, as
time goes on, of witnessing the accumulat ion of a
collection worthy of taking rank among the Na-
tional Galleries of Christendom.

The Duke and Duches de Malakoff, accompanied
by Col. Appert, Commandant Duval, and M. Gudin, left
Albert-gate House on Saturday evening for Dover, en route
to Paris• _ _ _

The Marquis and Marchioness of Londonderry
have returned to town from visiting the Duke and Duchess
of Marlborough, at Blenhim House, Oxfordshire.
It is understood that, if the indisposition of Sir
Edward Bulwer Lytton should be of much longer duration,
the Cabinet have determined to accept his resignation, and
appoint a mccevor to the Colonial-office,—Court ,journal.

„t.
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011,4 nit 4 13, DPO T -”
*a • z. • Vin.s

THE SUN.
MONDAY, MAY 9, 1859.