The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-23 00:00:00

CALCUTTA AND CHINA MAILS.

Th following telegram has been received at Mr.
Reuter's office, from the Peninsular and Oriental
Steam Navigation Company, Jan. 23d :

MALTA, JAN. 22.
The Vectis with the above mails will leave Malta

,o•morrow at 4 a.m.
She may be expect(d at Marseilles about Monday

evening.
The Pera, with the heavy portion of the above
mails, left Malta at 10 p.m. on the 21st. She may
be expected. at Southampton about the 30th.
The Mooitan brougut the mails to Suez, arriving
there on the 15th inst. (two days early).

AMERICA.

(REUTERS TELEGRAMS.)
(Per the Persia.)
NEW YORK, Jan. 12 (Morning).
Mosby's guerillas have been repulsed in an
attack upon the Federal camp near Harper's

Ferry.
The siege of Charlston is progressing ; 20 shells
were thrown into the city on the 7th.
The Confederates have retreated from Western
Virginia to the Shenandoah Valley. The condition
of the roads rendering the transportation of artil-
lery impracticable, appears to have interfered with
the plans of their campaign.
New Orleans advices state that the Confederates
have concentrated 20,000 men from Louisiana and
Mississippi to Central Texas, to attack the posi-
tions held by the Federals along the Texas coast.
It is rumoured that the expedition which lately
left New Orleans was destined for Pascaooula,
near Mobile.
A meeting of Democratic Conservative members
of Congress has been held at Washington. Reso-
lutions were passed that president Lincoln's am-
nesty proclamation was unwise, inexpedient, re-
volutionary, and unconstitutional, and should there-
fore be disapproved of.
It was also resolved to prepare amendments to
the Army and Navy Bill, providing for the pay-
ment of the army and navy in specie or its equi-

valent.
The House of representatives has ordered an in.
vestigation into the charges of official misconduc
in the New York customhouse.
A resolution introduced into the House of Re.
presentativea by Mr. Fernando Wood, to investi
gate the charges affecting General Butler's integrity
in New Orleans, and the frauds committed in the
various executive departments of the Government,
was defeated by a vote of 63 to 77 (P).
Senator M'Dougal introduced a resolution relat-
ing to the French occupation of Mexico, which was
referred to the committee on foreign relations.
The New York Herald asserts that the resolution
declares it to be the duty of the Federal Govern-
ment to demand the withdrawal of the French
from Mexico before March next, otherwise it is the
duty of the Government to declare war against
France.
The Judge and Advocate-Generalof the Admiralty
Court at Halifax have expressed their opinion that
the rescue of the Chesapeake was piracy, and that
the Chesapeake ought to be delivered to her
owners.
Intelligence from Nassau to the 2d inst. states
that numerous steamers had left for Washington,
many of them with cargoes for New York.
NEW YORK, Jan. 12 (Evening).
The correspondent of the New York Tribune
states that three new Confederate iron-clad vessels
are visible in Charleston harbour in a forward state
of construction. It is expected that these and other
Confederate iron-clads will shortly make a sortie
against the Federal squadron.
The New York Times asserts that the Republican
members of the Indiana, Maine, and Illinois State
Legislatures will nominate Lincoln for the Presi-
dency.
Resolutions have been introduced in the Ken-
tucky Legislature—that Kentucky opposed the re-
duction of the revolted States to territories, protested
against the enlistment of negroes, and lamented the
encroachments of the Administration and of Con-
gress on the liberties of citizens, and recognised in
them a preliminary step to the formation of a mili-
tary despotism.
NEW YORK, Jan. 13 (Morning).
Guerillas still continue their incursions around
the army of the Potomac.
Accounts from Newbern assert that disaffection
towards the Confederate Government was increas-
ing in North Carolina.
The Confedrates still continue to fall back up the
Shenandoah Valley.
The Senate has passed a bill to continue the pay
meat of bounties till March next.
The Committee of Ways and Means has reported
upon the amendments to the Internal Revenue
Bill, placing a duty of 6c, per gallon on spirits,
and of 2c. per lb. upon tobacco. It also provides
that spirits may be stored in bonded warehouses and
exported without payment of duty, and only such
can be exported, as no drawback will be allowed.
It is said that the committee will tax refined petro-
leum 20 per cent., but will not tax crude. The De-
mocratic and Conservative members of Congress
have unanimously passed a resolution disapproving
the emancipation proclamation, and favouring a
policy towards the insurrectionary States as shall
be best calculated to terminate the war, and to re-
store the States to the Union under the Constitution,
and with all the constitutional rights of the people

unimpaired.
Those persons who rescued the pirates of the
Chesapeake, at Halifax, have been held to bail to
appear before the Supreme Court.

MEXICO.

NEW YORK, Jan. 12.

News from Mexico to the 22d ultimo states that
the success of the French continued uninterrupted.
They had occupied the capitals of all the principal
States.

.....____
It was reported that Juarez would take refuge
in Texas. _ _

NEW YORK, Jan. 13 (Morning).

Advices from Mexico to the 22d ult. state that
the French had defeated Uraga, at Morelia, with a
loss of 2,000 in killed and wounded.
The Franco• Mexican General Tobar had been
defeated, near Guadalajara, by the Mexican Col.
Rajos.

COMMERCIAL INTELLIGENCE.
NEW Yont, San. 12 (Evening).
Money still continues very actiVe, but is slightly easier.
Gold opened on Monday at 52, advanced yesterday in con-
sequence of an animated demand to 544, and closed to-day
at 54/ per cent. prem. The advance is attributed to the
continued increase in the excess of the imports over tly-,
exports, and to anticipation of a large export of specie. Ex-
change on London, bankers' bills, 169; on Paris, 3.30.
There was considerable excitement in the stock market
yesterday, with a large rise in some of the western rail.
roads. Stocks continued to advance to-day. fork Cen-
trals were quoted at 133 ; Illinois Centrals, 123; Erie,
1391 ; Six per Cent. United States Bonds, 1041. Cotton
advancing—middling Upland, 81c to Ric. Floth very
firm. Wheat advancing. Corn slightly firmer. Provi-
sions rising. Coffee quiet. Sugar steady. Molasses good
inquiry. Petroleum steady—crude, 31c to 32c ; refined,
46c to 470.

GALWAY, JAN. 23.

The Atlantic Royal Mail steamer Adriatic, from
Beaton, arrived here at 9 a.m. to-day. She brings
32 cabin and 20 steerage passengers, and 21 sacks
of mails. She was unable to call at St. John's in
consequence of the fog. Her news has been fully
anticipated.

Eton School Days. By an Old Etonian. One Vol.,
pp. 316. Maxwell and Co.
A capital work, this is—and one that we have
found thoroughly enjoyable. It is nothing more
than it affects to be : namely, a narrative of school-
boy life, told in a gay, helter-skelter, rollicking
schoolboy fashion. Here and there, in the manner
of it, there is a touch of affectation—a rather
powerful flavour of the sesquipedalia verba. Occa-
sionally the schoolboy slang is wonderful in its
truthfulness—the odd little phrase (picturesque,
almost poetical, like the gipsy slang fami-
liar to the glib tongue of Harrison Ains-
worth's Paterers, of which perfection of
slang the Romany Rye is the incomparable master.
piece)—precisely the right word in the shape of
some odd little phrase of the schoolboy lingo drop-
ping into its place, at times,with a sort of aplomb that
is quite delightful. There is something, in fact, so
thoroughly boylike in the whole performance—
something so xacy of the schoolroom and the play-
ground—that we should almost be tempted to re-
gard the book as the performance of a Young
Etonian instead of an Old Etonian. Oaly—that, in
that case, the writer would have to be regarded as
some such hardly conceivable lusus naturce
as a humouristic Chatterton. An Old Etonian,
as the author calls himself upon his tit'.e-page, if
he be old at all, must certainly be what you would
call a genuine Old Boy—one of those warm-hearted
creatures, gifted in temperament with a shadowy
semblance of immortal youth, but having a decided
tendency, in the body, to that dread of dandies, that
result of constitutional laughter—corpulence !
Sometimes, or rather it should be said, in some few
particulars, the puerile diction put into the
mouths of the interlocutors, will be found to have
rather a tedious leaning to iteration. The changes
are rung, for example, usque ad nauseam, upon
several pet schoolboy words most fantastically
applied, according to the wont of boys. As, par
exemple, when the young hero of the narrative, But-
ler Burke, talks, in a rapture of admiration, about
Charley's sister Constance being " awfully pretty'
—or again, as where another urchin speaks of an
opposing player at football, playing " beastly well."
Etonian Life in all its varieties—in its " ins" (even
spelling those with a double n), no less than in its
" outs" (indulged in, some of those, at no inconside-
rable risk of a sound switching afterwards, when
caught)—Etonian Life, both high and low, from
the head master to the itinerant vendor of tarts,
from the Swell Colleger down to the veriest brat of
an Oppidan, from the mere child who fags up to
that terrible being the hobbedehoy who fags him!
To a certain extent, in a lighter, in a more super-
ficial, not to say it invidiously, in a more frivolous
way, the work, so far as it goes, is of the genus of
which "Tom Brown's Schooldays" is the most ini-
mitable of exemplars, the very chef dceuvres ! as
in Torn Brown's Schooldays, here in Eton school-
days, we have an account of a Football Match. But,
whereas the Rugby football match, as described
by Mr. Thomas Hughes, has about it a Homeric
sweep of vicissitudes, a sort of epic importance—
our author's account of the Eton Football Match is
more of the Tom Crib character, than either the
Tom Brown or the Tom Hughes. -It is admi-
rably well done, nevertheless—it is full of life
and animation. Only—it comes second ; and,
therefore, it comes off by comparison second best.
Butler Burke is a lesser, shorter, stouter, " nub-
blier" sort of a blundering Tom Brown in his way.
A thorough boy—a boy full of impulse, with a good
deal of passion about him as well as impetuosity,
plenty of affection, some humour, lots of pluck, a
spice of mischief, and an unmistakeable tendency to
dare-devilry. The Bad Boy, the very Bad Boy of
the book—and yet with redeeming traits, too, about
him—is Edmund Chorley, Thief, in some sense
Sneak, also Liar, ditto Bully, ibid Traducer, and eo
forth through a nice little hotly peppered catalogue
of vices. Vices more odious almost in the boy than
in the adult, and this is because so grossly in anta-
gonism:to what is so charming as the dominant
characteristic of boyhood—frank, bold, uncompro-
mising, instant ingenuousness. 'Tae friend, the
chum, the alter ego of I3utler Burke is his cousin
Reginald Purefoy—the Good Boy of the story.
Constance Chorley, the Bad Boy's sister, we have
a glimpse or two of, as the little heroine
of the tale. Mr. Wynne, the Tutor, is charmingly
sketched, being a favourable specimen of a Master
at Eton—just precisely what a Master at a College
like Eton ought to be. A scholar and a gentleman,
every inch of him, entitled to be loved as well as to
be respected. One preposterous flaw there is le the
book, and that flaw a whole chapter. Of all the ate
surdities we ever remember to have seen perpe-
trated by any story-teller gifted with a lively,
not to say skittish, imagination, this is the
most ridiculous. Chapter the twenty-fifth it is—
entitled, with almost impertinent significance,
"H.R.H." The impertinence of it, in truth, almost,
as one may say, amounts to the heinousness of leze
maieste. Will it be believed that the incident this
chapter undertakes (in the coolest and most off-hand
manner imaginable) to relate, brings upon the
scene—that scene, now the gardens, now the
terraces, now the drawing-rooms of Windsor
Castle—her Majesty the Queen, H.R.H. the
Prince of Wales, and H.R.H. Prince Alfred !
These being revealed to us in familiar converse
with the two Eton Boys, one of them Butler
Burke, the other his school companion the Boy
Earl of Horsham. In such familiar intercourse
with their Royal Highnesses, indeed, that we
have them actually skylarking together—the
Princes "boneing" (there is no other word
.for it)
the hats of the two young gentlemen from Eton,
and after boneing them, and running off with them,
absolutely turning the said hats into a couple
of imp, omptu footballs ! Nay, nor is that
the whole of this outrageous and audacious
extravagance—we have Butler Burke's boy-com-
panion chasing the Heir Apparent within an inch
of his life, as one may say, along the terrace to
one of the garden entrances to the Castle, and there,
just upon the threshold, " bonnetting" his Royal
highness, or, at any rate, knocking the Prince of
Waiee's own hat off in retaliation. Her Majesty the
Queen, after this, actually complimenting the
Etonian upon his performance and requiring
H.R.H. to apologize. The whole thing is as bizarre,
as improbable, wss repeat it, as utterly preposterous
as anything that wale ever penned by way of afford-
ing a reader a surreptjtious peep into a palace.
Apart froni, thiss.ane nonsensical chapter, the de-
scription here given by an Old Etonian of Eton'
School-days, under all their phases, whether of fun
or tribulation, is a delightful effusion—pleasantly
drawn, for the most part, we should isnagine, less
from the writer's fancy than from some of his
most dearly cherished recollections of whet Eton
School-days were in his own experience.

LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS FOR THE
W EEK.—Moaday—Actuaries, at 7—Entomological,
at 7, Anniversary—Geographical, at 8 30, " Mr. Hector's
Exploring Expedition, Middle Island, New Zealand"—
"Report of Mr. WlCerrow on Lake District of Otago"—
" Lefroy'a Expedition in Western Australia—" Ascent of
the Moisie River," Professor Hind. Tuesday—Ethnological,
at 8, "Ethnology of Indian Archipelago," Mr. Wallace—
"Au Account of thoMookwas, district of Putlam, Ceylon,"
S. Casio Chitty Maniegar. Engineers, at 8, "East Coast
between the Thames and the Wash," Mr. Redman. Royal
Institution, at 3, "Experimental Optice," Professor Tyn-
dall. Zoological, at 9, "New Australian Serpent," Mr.
Krefft—" New Goliath Beetle from the Z":qabesi," Mr.
C ray. Wednesday-,-Society of Arts, at 8, " System
of Weights and Measures, and its Proposed Adoption in
this Country," Mr. Brown. Ardleplogigal ,Asscciation,:lt Bi,
" Stone Coffin and Cross discovered at Ash," Mr. Planale
—" Roman Remains at Carlisle," Mr. 'Vera Irving.
Thursday—Royal Academy, at 8, "Architecture, Pro-
fessor Smirke. Antiquaries, at 8. Royal, at 81. Royal
Institution, at 3, " Experimental Optics," Professor Tyn-
dall. Friday—Royal Institution, at 8, The Glacial
Epoch," Professor Frunkland. Saturday—Roal Innaum stitu-
tion, at 3, " Antiquity of Man," Mr. Lubbock.—Athe.
THE SHAKSPERE TERCENTENARY.—A corres-
pondent writes to us as follows Your
ears that
report of the meeting on the above subject, it app
Mr. Tom Taylor and his friends propose to devote a theatre
to Shakspere and the high class dramatists, which sugges-
tion you did me the honour to publish in the columate°, I, as
ns of
The Sun in June last. As for the Statue Consul
one of the public, thank them for an amusing performance
of " The Comedy of Errors," and " Much Ado About
Nothing,"