The Sun.
London, England, 1859-05-10 00:00:00

THAMES.

AN UNGRATEFUL THlEF.—Charles Major, aged 19, who
was described as hating no home, was charged with steal-
ing M. in silver and five rings, the property of John Hillier.
The prosecutor is a greengrocer and fruiterer, of No.-3,
Sidney-street, Commercial-road, and about three weeks ago
the prisoner, who was then in great distress, applied to Mr.
Hillier for employment, and said he was starving. The
prosecutor being in:want: of assistance, and his business
taking him out of doors the greater part of the day, "he took
the prisoner into his employ, assigned him a room in his
house, and made him as comfortable as possible, intending,
if he behaved himself, to make him a partner in his business.
On Saturday, the 30th of April, Mrs. Hillier sent the pri-
soner upstairs to .fetch twenty shillings in silVor from
a drawer in her bed-room for the purpose of giving
change. Shortly afterwards she handed the same amount
of silver to the prisoner, and told him to put £1 back again
in her drawer, and he went up stairs apparently for that
purpose. At half-past 11 the same morning Mrs, Hillier
sent the prisoner out upon an errand. He did not return,
and, upon going to her drawer, Mrs. Hillier not only missed
the 20s. worth of silver which ought to have been placed
there, but also missed five gold rings, two with itones, a
keeper, a wedding ring, and a mourning ring. They were
in the same drawer as the money, and nobody had access
to that drawer but the prosecutor and his wife and• the pri-
soner. Circumstandes afterwards transpired which left no
doubt that the prisoner had been robbing his kind bene-
factors of both money and property. .. •
The rings stolen were valued at three guineas. • • •

The prisoner in defence said he could take a "'loath" he
never took anythink whatsomdever, and nothing was found
upon him.
..

The prisoner was committed for trial.

THE WAR IN ITALY.

(From the Times.)
Hitherto we have read the riddles propounded to
us by the daily telegrams with a moderate success.
There is an interval of five days between the enig-
matical sentence Which comes by wire and the inter-
pretation which halts after it. We accordingly now
find our correspondents from the scat of war de-
scribing the Austrians as gathering in force upon
the northern bank of the Po, making •pontoon
bridges, pushing- slender parties across the great
river, and marching in force upon Tortona and
Voghera. They. describe, in fact, those demonstra-
tions which we •have already picked out from
'the telegrams, and picture the Austrians as ready
to cross • the river and attack the French and
Sardinians posted among the hills and fortresses
on the southern .side, and to attack then .. both in
front and "flank. • Our correspondents now describe,
with as much • certainty as can be, perhaps,
expected under the circumstances of great discou-
ragement in which they are placed, those movements
which seemed to .place .the Austrians in such a posi-
tion with regard-to the French army and its coin-
municztions that a conflict near Marengo appeared
at one moment inevitable. We know, however, that
during the five days that have elapsed since these
letters were written an entire change has taken place
in the Austrian position. The invaders have with-
drawn all those troops which rendered a battle im-
minent; they have left to the French the valley of
the Scrivia, which forms the eastern boundary of
the battlefield of. >farengo, and which washes the
walls of Tortona.;. they.are no longer occupying in
vast numberssome 20 miles of the northern bank of
the Po, and theyno longer appear inclined to decide
the fortune of the campaign by a decisive • battle.
They seem to the.distant observer to have changed
their tactics altogether. They have quitted the
dangerous neighbourhood of the French and the
fortresses, and they have spread themselves along
the line of the river Sesia. The telegrams have
marked them. step by:step, first retiring from the
south bank of the Po then evacuating Tortona and
Voghera, then spreading themselves northwards to
Vercelli, thence north again towards Gattinaro, but
always on the lino of the Sesia. The places men-
tioned in yesterday's telegram are on the road to
Gattinaro, and between that place and Vercelli. It
seems that upon both.banks of this river they are
throwing up defences, as though they contemplated
a protracted occupation of the position they have
now chosen. The river Sesia, which now marks the
position of the invading army, comes down from the
frontier mountains, and has its rise not far from the
Simplon Pass. It crosses the plain of Piedmont
at its widest breadth; and falls into the 'Po near
the fortress of 'Casale. The Austrians therefore
.
are now in line right. across the flat country, and
have their right wing resting upon the foot
of the Alps, and their left on the Po, close
to the fortified city which they were thoughtto be
about to attack. • • They were face to face also with
the Dora line, Which' General Della Marmara
publicly declares to he the strategic line of the
Sardinians. The evolutions which have thus
changed the Austrian. front 'must have giving op-
portunities to a' dashing enemy, and reports are
already rife that: Garibaldi, with his flying bands,
has seized occasion to strike a blow. The Con-
tinental papers have reported or invented a story
of an attack at• Vercelli, wherein Garibaldi and
Cialdini surprised and routed the early Austrian
occupants of that town and brought away 300
prisoners. This story is only not impossible, for if
such a feat had been accomplished the Sardinians
would have 'wrung it merrily through Europe
with peals of telegraphic bells, and we should not
be left to hear of:it until, after a five days' interval,
it filters through.the medium of a Turin letter and
a Belgian newspaper. It had been generally be-
lieved, but as far •as we know upon no certain au-
thority, that Garibaldi was in the mountains,
watching the:operations of that division of Austrians
which advanced . into 'the Alps, and which was ex-
pected to debouch upon the --Dora line, but is now
with some probability supposed to have .had no
other object than to watch the Alpine passes, and
to prevent the ' game :of 1800 being played over
again. These fastnesses have no railways and no
electric wires, and it .is not impossible that Gari-
baldi may have • attempted some unreported, but
just rumoured, enterprise in that quarter: •
What this change in the Austrian front may
mean we no longer, pretend to guess, except that it,
manifests a sudden disinclination for the immediate
neighbourhood of the French, and an intention of
making theMselves as safe as possible at a distance
from Alessandria. It may be a choice of battle•
field and a ohallongp to api tuliud battlo it may
be a precaution until the rains have ceased
and the spongy soil has drained itself dry
enough for military operations and hard
enough for the transport of guns ;• it may
be a gathering like that of starlings at- sundown
preparatory to some wheelings and whirlings abOut
and then a rapid disappearance. The Sardinians
who are charitable enough to-hope all things, hope
for this, and expect to see their enemy evacuate
their country, and retire by way of Piacenza to
Mantua and.--Peschiera,leavingthe revolted Duchies
to enjoy their freedom, and even the turbulent little
town of Como to delight in its relief from •its Croat
garrison.
All is very vague guesswork as to what the future
may be ; it is quite sufficiently difficult to extract,
out of such materials as we have any tolerable idea
of the present. We see the Austrian army
stretched in line across the plain of Piedmont, but
we can see no more. IMpenetrable mystery shrouds
the doings that are going on in the hills that look
over Genoa and-in the valley of Asti, and no pains
are spared to prevent the escape of any fact which
can throw light upon the intentions of the Franco-
Sardinian army. We may, if we please, assuage
our curiosity by the perusal of official bulletins,
sometimes generally -explicit as to the presumed
woes and difficulties of the Austrians; but no one
can tell more than that day by day, and hour- by
hour, the migrations of troops from France to Italy
still goes on, and that the swelling multitude must
soon burst out somewhere from beyond the narrow
confines that now constrain and coceal them... It
seems impossible that the Austrians can retire with-
out fighting a battle, and it is equally impossible
, that the French can remain much longer without
striking a blow at them. The plain of. the Sesia
offers a fair field for a fight, but the Austrians have
probably made their position there, on the banks of
an unfordable *river too strong to make it quite
eligible to the- French. It would appear; however,
from all this, that the Austrians have already as-
sumed a defensive position, without, so far as we
know, any one aggressive operation having been
made against them by the French. Everything
continues to confirm" what was at the time the in.
stinctive judgment of all Europe—that this inva-
sion was a'false movement on the part of Anstria,
and an error from which she cannot extricate her,
self either with honour or profit.