The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-10 00:00:00

those who do not attend to such matters very parti.
cularly to learn that there are as many as seventy
thousand recipients for outdoor relief at one time,
and that the "annual number assisted by the poor
rates is calculated at two hundred thousand." Surely
such facts speak volumes as to the importance of
this subject, and it is essentially one that calls for
attention and regard. There can be no greater
mistake made than to shut out those driven by hard
necessity from all intercourse with the better and
more elevated of their fellow-beings. They become
hardened in iniquity and lost in corruption, and
when they sink into those depths who shall say
where the blame rests, and by what limits it may
be bounded ? Have not the wealthy, the influen-
tial, and the powerful great responsibilities
resting upon them, and do not the tenets of

their religion inform them that they will have
to render one day an account of their steward-
ship. There must have been something very
faulty in the structure of that society which
shut out the suffering and sorrowful from all chance
of alleviation :and prospects of solace, and made
poverty an unpardonable crime. It is well that a
better and truer spirit is gaining ground among
us, and there is this satisfaction in the benevolent
efforts now so strenuously made by the Workhouse
Visiting Society, that their work cannot change
with the ccnvalsions of politics and the current of
shifting events. The poor shall never cease out of
the land. We are all well acquainted with this
fact, and it should quicken our efforts and urge on
our enterprise to mitigate the evils and lighten the
burdens of their crooked lot. It is very satisfactory
to find that so much can be done to benefit the
condition of the inmates of workhouses, and it is
doubly gratifying to reflect that the beginning is
always the hardest part of such undertakings.
Thera is no reason to doubt or to despair of great
improvements taking place in a few years in this
important work, and it will be a blessed day for the
distressed when all the workhouses of the metro-.
polis are open to visitors, instead of little more than
one-third as at present. To help those who cannot

help themselves is a praiseworthy endeavour, and

it is also a gratefal task to give the needful chance
the desired opportunity to the
,struggling who,
without the friend in need, may sink into a hope-

.ess state of despondency.

Naval and Military Intelligence,

The 2d Life Guards, Col. Marshall, left the
North Camp, Aldershot, yesterday for Windsor, the
dismounted parties proceeding by the South.
Eastern Railway.
The 6th Dragoon Guards (Carabineers), Colonel
Sawyer, marched from Aldershot yesterday and
Monday for Shorneliffe and Brighton—three troops
to the former place, and head-quarters and five
troops to the latter.
The A battery, B brigade, Royal Horse Artillery,
under the command of Capt. Donne, marched from
Aldershot yesterday morning for Dorchester.
Four companies of the 87th Royal Irish Fusi-
leers marched from Aldershott yesterday morning,
at 7 o'clock, for Portland and Weymouth. The de-
tachment was under the commald• of Major Lord
D'Arcy Osborne, and it was to halt at Woolmer for
the night and proceeded this day on its route. The
head-quarters and remaining five companies of the
regiment will leave the camp to-morrow morning
for Gosport and Tipper, encamping at Woolmer one
night, marching into Gosport on Friday.
The 37th Regiment, under the command of
Lieut.-Col. Francis Douglas Grey, left Aldershot
Gimp ou Saturday morning for Dover. The regi-
ment marched from the South Camp to the North
Camp station of the South Eastern Railway, where
a special train conveyed it to its destination. The
strength marching out was as follows :-30 officers,
35 seargeants, 21 drummers, 953 rank and file, 81

women, 85 children, and 6 horses. The bands of
the let battalton of the 6th, 59th, 731, and 87th
Regiments accompanied the regiment to the station.
In addition to the detachment of non-commis-

sioned officers and men of the Royal
Engineers
selected for service in New Zealand,a further num-
ber of Sappers and Miners were yesterday selected
from the companies at head quarters, Chatham, in
accordance with instructions from the Horse
Guards, and placed under orders to embark from
the colony as soon as the necessary amount of ton-
nage has been taken up for them by the Government.
The 62d Regiment, under the command of Colonel
Brett, embarked on board the screw troopship
Tamar, Capt, Stirling, yesterday, at Portsmouth,
and will leave this morning for Dublin.

A number of the workmen employed on the iron
frigate Achilles, 20, 1,250 horse power, at Chatham,
have again commenced working extra hours, and
are now employed each evening until 9 o'clock
p.m., by order of the Admiralty, In anticipation
of the mechanics employed on the iron-clad frigate
Lord Warden, building at Chatham Dockyard,
being required to work additional hours during the
approaching autumn, the Admiralty have given
directions for the necessary gasfittingsto be erected
at the, slip on which the ironcased ship is under
construction. The Achilles is expected to be en-
tirely out of the hands of the dockyard officials by
the close of the present month, when the mechanics
still engaged on her will be transferred to the Bel-
lerophon and Loid Warden, both of which, it i.
believed, will be completed and afloat by the end of
the ensuing year. The Achilles commenced ship-
ping her sails from the dockyard yesterday.
The screw steamsnip Himalaya, 6, Captain E.
Lacy, was spoken, all well, off Plymouth, going
down Channel, by the pilot cutter Alarm, No. 7, on
Saturday at 2 p.m.
The Orontes, screw troopship, Capt. H. W. Hire,
arrived at Spithead yesterday from Bermuda, after
a passage of 13 days, with the 39th Regiment on
board, under the command of Col. Munro, C.B.
The regiment will be disembarked this morning,
and be forwarded on from Portsmouth by special
train to Aldershot.

of these outcasts from fortune and friends, the bet-
ter it will be for the diffusion of the first
principles of Christianity and the welfare
of the community at large. There are many
reasons which might be furnished for the prevalence
of this practice of workhouse visiting, and besides
worldly considerations of benefiting the poor and
ameliorating the social condition of the country, the
best influences of human nature must surely plead
for those who have been placed in so lamentable a
position. It is an awful thing to reflect upon that
the workhouse should be the receptacle of so many.
There are hundreds now pining in its confines whom
ono thought as little that they should ever enter its
precincts as some of the effluent and some of their
visitors. It is not always easy to foretell to what
straits a person may be reduced through the thou-
sand ills to which flesh is heir, and it is dealing out
a very hard measure to say, that all who become
paupers forfeit their claim on the friendly feelings
of the :community, and must not expect to share
more than the scanty portion allotted to them. For
too many, alas, all assistance is useless; the passage
to the grave may be smoother, and that is all ; they
have entered upon a dwelling which must henceforth
be their home until they are called upon to enter
the common home of our race. There are hundreds,
however, for whom a timely aid would do much,
and many others would be cheered on the dark
road by acts of kindress and testimonies of
sympathy. It would be a wiser, kinder, and
more Christian course to regard this large
array of paupers as a part of the great family of
mankind, who are dependent, in a great measure,
upon the kindness and attention of their more pros-
perous brethren for the comforts they can enjoy in
their sad state of privation. As a writer in this
periodical truly remarks, " The harvest is great but
'the labourers are few." It may surprise some of