The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-28 00:00:00

TUSCANY.

A letter from Florence, dated Nov. 21, says :
" The Dictator Farini, as Governoi-General of the
Romagna, has given orders for the fortification of
Bologna, and granted 500,000 f. to the beginning
of the works. It would be needless to observe that
this measure comes rather too late, if it might be
considered in any manner wise or expedient.
Bologna is a great and brave city, and with no pro-
tection but its medieval walls it opposed a stout
resistance to the Austrians in 1848, and defeated
them. It must be allowed also, that the defence of
towns is the kind of warfare that the Italians best
understand and are best suited for, as witness the
sieges of Rome and Venice in 1849, and the heroic
deeds of Brescia and Bologna itself at the same
period. I made myself, lately, the tour of the walls
of Bologna, and climbed the hills which overhang
the town on the south. I confess that the vast area
of the city, and the great number of hill rising one
behind the other and commanding one another,
gave me the impression that nothing was easier
than to protect Bologna from a coup de main, but
at the same time nothing more difficult than to put
it into a permanent state of defence, unless the
works were undertaken on a gigantic scale and
a whole army was thrown into it by way of
garrison.

A HAPPY ARISTOCRATIC CONNEXION.—The
Divorce Court opens to the public some strange domestic
histories. Miss B. has the good fortune to captivate the
lion. H. R., the son of an Irish Peer. They are happily,
married in 1852. Three weeks afterwards, before the expi-
ration of the honeymoon, Mr. R. locks un his wife in a
sitting-room from 7 o'clock in the evening till 4 tho next
morning without fire or candles. They go to Calais for a
few days, where he beats her. Next to Brussels, where he
tears her bonnet from her head, and forces his hat over her
eyes. From Brussels the happy pair proceed to Frankfort
in a railway compartment to themselves, in which Mr. R.
passes her time in kicking her because some one; had
looked at her at the station. At I'rankfort, after this
usage, the lady faints, and upon asking for a glass of
water on recovering her senses Mr. R. forces a spoonful of
salt down her throat. Upon a journey of 20 hours from
Strasbourg to Paris the lady is not allowed to get out of the
carriage. Next Mr. R. cuts off his wife's hair, saying he
does so because she prizes it. About the same time he pulls
her out of bed when ill, and threatens to strike her with a
meat-chopper. But the complaint of the lady which seems
the most extraordinary, considering what she had suffered,
1 Cer-
tainda '
s
is that fot 13 b
months when taey lived at Brussels, the hus-
band was in the constant habit of going away and leavinn•
acPxs e re al
:e. l"her for a week at a time. One would have thought that the
poor woman would have rejoiced at these occasional sus.
p
lelsi,kerbturtial npaerha
s
it is that for three years this lady submitted to facultytreat-
ment of o t
endurancemarital
ment iite,l4 as has been described, and the only parclla to
utovsetdilititi
her patience is that of the gentleman who told a friend he
was about to change his residence in a lonely quarter, " be-
cause_," said he, _ I have given it a fair trial, having mhe
knocked down a "
robbed every night on my wayhome
for three years, and now I think It high thee to be off."
the evidence. The character of a man
There is probably a moral in the nom Mrs. lt.'s case which
hedaoepresahbrestboaaPrilitiecoeholu' ujincinmhaanrolyiybhrupvtvapl brutalities Nnv=ipottio, v:4;n4tilksw4iutvdt
have deterred her from aeeepting him if it had not not been
for the addition of the " honourable" to his name. She has
now 04piated this folly, and obtained her release from her
tyrant, but wt 1444 4 eQo of suffering I But 9x4R41e;.. of
this sort have, we fear, Iliac effect, fa' aristocratic connec-
tion covers a multitude of sins, surpassing charity a hun-
dted-fold.—.E.tialfiificr.

INDIA AND CHINA.

----tom

By the arrival of the Ci Ileutta mail we (Times)
have received our private correspondence and files
of papers from Calcutta tc • the 22d of October, and
from Hongkong to the 131,h of October.
The following is the let ter of our Calcutta corre-
pondent

" CALCUTTA, OCT. 22.
" On receipt of the news of the disaster at the
Peiho the Governor-General was warmly pressed
to permit the discharged Europeans to volunteer,
with bounty, for China. His lordship refused, al-
leging, I am told, that if he offered a bribe to the
discharged, her Majesty's regiments would demand
bounty too. Mr. Bruce, also apparently in doubt
as to the support he woul d receive in England, ne-
glected for some time to send any official requisition
for aid to Calcutta. The men, therefore, were suf-
fered to leave the Hooghly in shiploads. At last
orders were received from England to engage them,
and as two of the last ships were leaving the river
they were stopped by telegraph, an officer sent
down, and the men requested to volunteer. Out
of 800 men all but 45 declined. The remainder
said, with some reason, We go home free, get a
shy' in England, see our friends, 'list, get the £5
you offer, and the new kit you don't offer, and
return free. What should we volunteer for ?'
This difficulty had been foreseen is India, and
the Governor-General was urged with no effect
to increase the terms to £lO. His lord-
ship declined. The detention of the vessels cost
£BO a day in demurrage, and what with steatn
expenses and whatnot each man of the 45 who
returned to Calcutta had cost Government £2O. At
Chinsurah I am assured the failure was far more
complete, every man, of 200, refusing the offered
boon. There remains one large regimennt, the 3d,
but I hope no offer will be made to them. These
incessant failures lower the tone of all concerned,
and produce an appearance of antagonism between
Government and its defenders. I question, myself,
whether double or even treble bounty woule have
had the smallest effect. The Government, with em-
traordinary stupidity, insisted on a bond of ten
years' service, and ten years to men stricken with
the homesickness raging in India just now seem an
eternity.
"A force (5,000 men) I hear will be sent from
this country China, but there is a hitch of some
kind about the Sikhs. They were willing enough
to go three months since, and several regiments
volunteered, but ;here is a hitch now, though
whether it • proceeds from the men or the officers,
I cannot, with the Government at Allahabad, im-
mediately ascertain.

" A story is circulating here, apparently derived
from a Chinese pamphlet translated in the Northern
Bee, which attributes to the Cabinet of Pekin an
idea of invading India. They will not do it, nor
would it signify if they did, but I question if your
readers are aware that such an enterprise is within
the bounds of possibility. Yet a Chinese army of
70,000 men did in 1855 drive Jung Bahadoor out
of Thibet, and advance to the frontier of Ne-
paul. The road via Sikkim, or, still better,
via Bootan, is open to them, and the Mant-
choos in despair might try in that way to create a
diversion. It would not matter. The hatred of a
Hindoo for a Chinaman is innate and unconquerable,
and we could enlist the population in a week. The
appearance of a Chinese force on our border would,
ho wever,be a curious phenomenon inAsiatic history.
There must be extant somewhere in the archives of
the India-house a proposition made by the ruling
Llamas in Thibet to Lord Auckland, offering on
certain terms to conquer China for him and hold it
as feudatories of the Company. lam not aware of
the precise form of Lord Auckland's refusal, but a
proposal of the kind was made.
‘• Reports, one of them official, announcing the
death of the Nana, have been received in Calcutta
from Katmandoo. They are not believed. Accord-
ing to the latest accounts, he was levying recruits
on our frontier, and threatening to annihilate
Lucknow, or blow up St. Paul's, or commit some
deed of equal absurdity. He has about 6,000 ruf-
fians with him, half armed and more than half
starved, and the Nepaulese troops are at last ad-
vancing on his rear.
" The report of his death from jungle fever was,
it is suspected, spread by the Nepaulese to avoid
the necessity of surrendering him when taken.
" Orders are expected here immediately to com-
plete the submarine telegraphic communication be-
tween Calcutta and Singapore."