The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-01 00:00:00

THE SUN,' LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, AUGUST 1, 1864.

The Late Volunteer Review,

The following correspondence has been sent to us
fo: publication:—

Horse Guards, July 26.

My lord,—Having myself taken command of the volun-
teers assembled at Wimbledon on Saturday last, I have
satisfaction in informing your lordship that the review
passed off in a creditable manner.
There were between 9,000 and 10,000 men on the ground,
including 40 pieces of artillery of various calibre, fairly
horsed.

The force was divided into two divisions, the one under
Major-Gen. Lord F. Paulet, the other under Major-Gen,
Rumley. In consequence of the serious accident which had
occurred on Thursday last to a man of the Coldstream
Guards the medical men in charge of the patient were of
opinion that no firing should take place. This seriously in-
terfered with the effect produced by the movements that
were performed previously to the marching past. It, how-
ever, enabled me to look more critically into the drill of the
force on the ground, and I am enabled to state that the
orders issued were carried out with great attention and zeal.
Battalion and company drill still require much attention,
for extended movements can only be executed with success
and with good effect when corps are all practised in these
rudiments of the profession.
There is one point to which I am particularly anxious to
draw attention. The corps in general appeared on the ground
in reduced numbers on former occasions, and many of them
arrived so late that the Second Division was only formed
just before it became necessary from the lateness of the
hour to commence the marching past, Both these inconve-
niences must be ascribed, I think to the same cause—the
difficulty experienced by the members of the several corps
in leaving their ordinary avocations in time to enable them
to reach the ground at the hour specified, and the impossi-
bility for many members of the corps coming out at all.
These drawbacks would, I think, be obviated if attendance
at the larger gatherings of volunteers by the respective
corps were confined to three or four in the course of the sea-
son. In that case I cannot bat think that the members of
corps would be enabled to give themselves or to obtain a
whole holiday from their ordinary avocations; a larger and
more useful field day could then be attempted ; corps would
turn out strong, greatly adding to their appearance on parade
and to the efficiency of their drill, as it must be evident to
all who are conversant with military operations that larger
companies and stronger battalions always drill and manoeu-
vre with greater effect and advantage than small bodies of
men.

Trusting that these remarks may be useful to the future
succets of the valuable movement which has now assumed
so permanent a character, I am, my Lord, yours,

GEORGE.

To the Right Hon. the Earl De Grey and Ripon.

War-office, July 29,

Sir,—l have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of
your royal highness's letter of the 26th inst. on the subject
of the volunteer review at Wimbledon on the 23d inst. In
reply, I have to express my satisfaction that this review
passed off so creditably, and that the orders issued by your
royal highness were carried out with attention and zeal by
the various corps present.—l have the honour to be, Sir,
your royal highness's obedient servant,
',DE GREY AND RIPON,
His Royal Highness the Field Marshal
commanding-in-Chief.

and encampment during last week, at Lockinge, near Want-
age, in close proximity to the seat of the commander of the
battalion, Col. Loyd Lindsay, V.C. The meeting com-
menced on Monday, and the camp presented an interesting
and animated scene—and the proceedings lasted nearly the
whole week. Ia addition to the competition for prizes,there
were battalion drills, athletic sports, amateur theatrical per-
formances, two grand balls, &c., and Col. Lindsay spared
no expense or trouble to render the meeting successful and
pleasant. Quartermaster-Sergeant Clarke (Wallingford)
made 52 marks at 200, 500, 600, and 800 yards (which were
the ranges selected), and carried off the County Challenge
Cup with a purse of £2O, and the bronze medal of the Na-
tional Life Association—Private J. S. Morland (Abingdon)
won a silver cup value £3O, given by the County Associa-
tion, having scored 50—Corporal Witherington (Reading)
gained the Ladies Cup, value £2O, with a score of 49.
The handsome prizes offered by the Lord-Lieutenant of
Lincolnshire, Lord Aveland, for the best shots, were con-
tended for on Friday, the 29th ult, at the Spalding butt,by
60 competitors from the several companies forming the 2d
battalion of the South Lincolnshire Rifle Corps. First prize
a silver bowl, 25 guineas, to Quartermaster-Sergeant Lax-
ton, sth Stamford Company. Second prize of £5, to Cor-
poral Wadsley, 18th Company, Falkingham. Third prize
of £3, to Sergeant Preston, 13th Company, Spalding.
Fourth prize, private Miller, 3d Company, Grantham.

more long sighted wisdom may prevail in both
countries and determine the relations they hold to

each other.
THE " SPECTATOR" ON MR. FREDERICK PEEL
AND MR. WILLIAM COBBETT.—Is there a Bourbon

among the Treasury clerks, or a Plantagenet
hitherto unknown to genealogists, or a claimant for
the extinct honours of Aubrey de Vere, " noblest

subject in Europe ?" It surely never can be Mr.
Frederick Peel, of all men on earth, who drew up,
though he has certainly signed, this oddest of little
notices, inserted in the Parliamentary return of
pensions granted this year :
"Mrs. Emma Leaf, £so.—As the widow of Mr J. Leaf,
who, though of humble origin, was a contributor of articles
of great merit to various journals."

The pension is an odd one in itself, for it has not
hitherto been customary to make such grants to the
widows of journalists, and the precedent is not one
the country would like to see extended. It savours
too much of the old relation between the journalist
and the minister, the dependent and the patron,
which has passed away, let us hope for ever, and
suggests doubts whether the contributor of great
merit who attacked Lord Palmerston could bequeath
his widow to his country with quite as much confi-
dence as the contributor of little merit who had
defended him. The Premier who gave Poet Close
a pension " as a sort of Burns you know" can hardly
be implicitly trusted even to criticise " leaders,"
would be a better judge of the: merit of a jour-
nalist's subject than of the literary skill
with which the subject was disposed of, might even
be inclined to consider the circulation of the jour-
nal with which his pet contributor was connected
as an element in his literary rank, reward every.
body on the Adverfser, the "Protestant flail" in-
eluded, while leaving people on the Herald to lan-
guish in hopeless envy. The pension itself, however,
may pass, for Mr Leaf was so unknown to fame that
he may have had real claims ; it is the wording of
the explanation to which wo are anxious to call at-
tention. It is, we think, the first time since the
days of Homer that " humble origin" has been
officially declared to be a disqualification for literary
success—to add anything to the credit which at-
taches to the possession of brains. It is common
enough to remark when a man rises high in life
that he was of humble origin, because in such cases
the social distance to be covered really increases
greatly the exertion required for the race, and con-
sequently the merit of victory in the strife. When
M. Arouet dined with kings his origin added to the
credit of the social achievement ; but even a Mont-
morency hardly considered " Zaire" more wonder-
ful because its author was not born de Voltaire.
Sir Robert Peel felt the former truth when he told
the House of Commons it was a subject of
boast for England that he, the son of a man who had
worked at the loom, could stand there as Premier;
but origin has not hitherto been considered among
the countrymen of Shakspere and Bunyan, Cobbett
and Whewell, to include among its drawbacks intel-
lectual impotence. The idea of the clerk who wrote
that sentence, if not of the Peel who passed it with.
out excision, was obviously of this kind—" The
articles are very good, and he was only a tradesman's
son ; quite wonderful you know ! if he had been a
peer's, now, or even a baronet's son, there would
have been nothing in it." He seems to have thought
that " family," and hereditary wealth and status,
besides conferring qualities on their possessor, con-
ferred also capacities, would, if the Treasury could
be logical, argue in the teeth of Professor Owen that
the brains of working men's sons must of necessity
weigh less than those of the descendants of the idle.
This is carrying the aristocratic idea into quite a
novel region. Hitherto the believers in rank have
been content to claim an inherent capacity for soldier-
ship,though the best English general was the descen.
dant of an Irish exciseman; and governing, though
the "son of the weaver" through life outstripped
the Stanleys ; and sitting on thrones, though the
son of the Corsican lawyer made of them all a
pedestal for his own ; and diplomatic finesse, though
the ablest diplomatist we ever had was a little clerk
in Henry VIII.'s Court named Paget; and have left
such low pursuits as art, and literature, and physi-
cal science, and national economics to the men " of
humble origin," but the concession is to be made no
longer. At the Treasury it is believed that origin
not only helps a man to govern—that has been its
permanent creed for ten centuries—but that it helps
him to think, that for a man of no family or means
to write contributions of merit is a development so
wonderful as to justify national grants to the lusus
naturce who accomplished it. One does not expect
the Treasury to know much of literature, to be
aware that its high priests have belonged indiffe-
rently to the " blue" and the " gutter" blood, that
Scaliger, head of a consular house, a man by whose
side even a Bourbon is a 210VIIS horn°, was no greater
than Person, son of a parish clerk; but "a depart-
ment" might recollect a man who once worried it
sorely, one Cobbett, son of a little country
publican, himself a common soldier, and beyond all
comparison or chailenge the most effective writer of
"leaders" who ever lived—as much beyond Ster-
, ling as Sterling was beyond lir. Slop. We wish
he had had the task of commenting on this Treasury
return, he would have given its author what the
bluest blood does not invariably secere, an immor-
tality of ridicule. Somebody in the House, let us
say the Protectionist who, his ancestors having
lived on the same Dutch swamp for a thousand
years, is entitled to consider himself moseegrown,
should move for a tabular statement from the Trea-
sury explaining its ideas about origin in the form
of the "Table of precedence among men." Where
does "humble origin" begin arid end that it should
be entered as an accepted definition in a Treasury
minute ? Is occupation everything, or will clear
descent be admitted as a palliative, and an excep-
tion drawn in favour of men like the mason who
died in Cornwall, last of the Palwologi, or like
Purkis, who lives or did live in the New Forest, and
whom Sir Francis Puigravo believed to be as clearly
the descendent of the charcoal-burner who lifted
the body of William Rufus as the Queen is of the
Conqueror l How many generations of assured
status does it take to enable a man to write a leader

good enough for Treasury approval ? Can a black-
smith's son do it, or ought he to confine himself to
reporting, and leave the higher walk Bey to his
third descendant ? There is a record existing of a
shoemaker's son who translated the Scriptures into
forty languages, translated them so well that the
worst of all was read out in Peshawar to a crowd of
Afghans, who understood every word; was that, in
Mr. Peel's judgment, an impertinence ? Ought the
learned old man to have waited till his son, a lawyer,
we believe not given to Biblical inquiry, could show
a brain one remove further from the " last ?" There
are differences of rank among occupations. Topeople
so great as Treasury clerks everybody who earns his
bread, from a cobbler to a chemist, may appear of
the same grade, but those incompetent persons do
not agree with the clerks, and as they have votes
there may be come trouble in settling their compa-
rative precedence, more especially as the popular
feeling is altogether chaotic. A man who had risen
far would much rather say " I am the son of a
ploughman" than " I am the son of a tailor," yet
socially the tailor is uppermost. Is the tailor's son
to be permitted to write small paragraphs of news,
and the ploughman's only to do penny-a-lining ?
'That would have been a little hard upon
Burns, and oven Place, who wrote plays
our fathers used to admire, might have kicked
at his promotion. Where, too, is printing to stand ?
Is it to rank as a handicraft, and only use the
scissors ; or as a trade, and condense the murders ;
or as a profession, and ascend to short notices,
leaders and reviews being kept for the gentry ? That
will be an anxious point for Lord Palmerston, who
knows people as well as things, and won't be much
disposed to condemn all printers' sons to the literary
kitchen. What is to be done, too, about a man who
sells slate and happens to be of blue blood and ruler
of a vast empire, or deals in iron and is one of the
few Norman nobles, or has money out of a mercery
and is a respected Bishop and theologian? Such
people must be allowed to write leaders, but with
only one hand and one eye, which would be incon-
venient. We fear Mr Peel's subordinates have
thrown on him a task which will worry him a little,
and we would advise him next time he signs a par-
liamentary paper to read it, and habituate himself
when granting a favour to be very careful that its
wording does not convey an insult.
THE "LANCET" ON THE ACCIDENT AT WIMBLE-
DON.—WC have gathered the following particulars
of the accident from inquiries among some of those
who were present and rendered him assistance. The
poor fellow, it seems, was stooping, with his back
to the firing point, at the time of the infliction of
the injury. The bullet entered his body about two
inches from the spine on the left side, between the
eighth and the ninth ribs, fracturing the former,
and lodged in front about the junction of the
fourth costal cartilage with its rib, on the same
side, where it was felt by Dr Westmacott immee
diately after the accident firmly wedged. When
the wound in the back was explored it was found to
admit readily the little finger in a channel which
passed upwards as regarded the upright posture of
the body, but horizoctally, of course, in reference to
its, position when the wound was inflicted. There
was at first a considerable haemorrhage from the
wound, but this speedily ceased. Although the ball
immediately after the accident could be distinctly
felt at its seat in the front of the thorax, effusion of
blood and air in the areolar tissue under the skin
speedily raised a large swelling, which completely
obscured the situation of the missile. The emphy-
sema spread gradually over the left front of the
thorax, invading also the upper part of the right
te.
side, but did not go beyond this. It seems probable
that the coagulation of the effused blood prevented
any fat tiler extravasation of air from the thorale
cavity. Brig et arterial frothy blood was
ispat
np
frequently by the patient, and this, coupled with

the extending emphysema, the amphoric breathing,
which could be plainly heard by the ear applied to
the chest, and his state of alarming collapse,
gave what must be considered unequivocal
proof of a wound of the lung. On the
other hand, the fact that in the course of a few
hours the bloody sputa lessened in quantity and fre-
quency, and that the dyspneca although urgent was
not excessive, gave reason to hope that the lesion
of the lung was not of a very severe character. A
right line drawn from the wound in the back to the
place of lodgment of the ball would pass through
the thickest part of the left lung and the seat of the
largest pulmonary vessels, possibly also through the
important vessels about the root of the heart. Now,
although it is conceivable that the bullet took this
direct course, and yet fortunately avoided the ex.
tensive injury which might seem almost inevitable,
it is easier to imagine either that it skirted the wall
of the chest internally, or that the lung, by offering
little or no resistance, allowing the bullet to slip
over its surface generally without traversing it. In
either case, however, there seems lktle doubt that a
portion—probably a small one—of the lung was
transfixed. The amount of shock was excessive ;
the pulse was so enfeebled as to be at times inap.
preciable, and for au hour or two it was doubtful
whether the patient would not rapidly sink and die.
Dr. Westmacott, in consultation with several volun-
teer surgeons who were present, decided, and we
think with proper judgment, upon leaving the ball
alone. The presence of the bullet in the front wall
of the chest had nothing to do with the symptoms
under which the patient seemed likely to succumb,
and its removal could not, at that time at least, im.
prove his condition. If it were so superficially
placed as to be then got at readily, such an operation
could be undertaken at a future time, supposing the
man lived, with much less risk of injury to him.
If, on the other hand, there was any difficulty to be
apprehended in its withdrawal, a period of such
momentary peril to his life was an inappropriate
one in which to enter upon the task, The times
have gone by in which some mysterious influence
and power of harm used to be attributed to the
presence of a bullet in the body, and when
army surgeons would risk everything, including the
life of their patient, to an effort for its removal.
(Some remarks in a letter recently published in
the Times by Staff-surgeon Wyatt, more than in-
sinuating that the non-removal of the bullet would
jeopardize the patient's recovery in the sequel, were
unprofessional and totally uncalled for. Mr. Wyatt
is entitled to have an opinion of his own, whatever
it may be worth, but he is only degrading himself
in the estimation of his professional brethren when
ho obtrudes that opinion upon the public in an
offensive letter.) The patient was placed upon the
injured side to allow of the free play of the sound
lung, while ice and brandy were administered to
him. When the most pressing period of collapse
had passed over, chloroform was inhaled with some
relief to the agonizing pain in the chest, of which
he constantly complained. On the following day
he was able to take some beef-tea in addition to
other restoratives. The expectoration of blood
gradually lessened and some vomiting occurred.
His breathing was 44 to 48, and his pulse ranged
from 120 to 140 in the minute. On the next day he
coughed up some black coagula. The urine being
retained, with great spasm of the urethra the
catheter was introduced twice. The patient
still remains at Wimbledon, and, by our last
accounts, no unfavourable symptoms had super-
vened. Although the risk of fatal hwmorrhage
may now be said to have ceased, he has still, in all
probability, to go through the trying ordeal of
localized or general pneumonia with empyrema ;
and it need scarcely be said that his condition is a
very precarious one, although far from hopeless.
O❑ Wednesday morning effusion of blood was found
to have taken place into the left side of the thorax,
impeding the respiration, and pushing the heart to
the right side. This effusion has not apparently
increased since Wednesday, and the patient is
tolerably free from pain.

THE "LONDON REVIEW" ON BATHING.—Mr I)
Urquhart, the champion of the eastern mode o.
bathing. whose writings upon the subject induced
an Irish physician, Dr. Barter, of Blarney, to erect
the first Turkish bath eve! seen in Christian Europe,
gives an amusing account of the comments made by
a Turkish lieutenant of a man-of-war who, whilst
smoking, was watching the ablutions of an officer
of a British man-ofawar, which lay near. "Allah
bo praised !" he said, taking the amber from his
mouth ; " that poor devil wishes to be clean, if he
only knew how. See—how he dabbles, and throws
back upon his face and neck the foul, thick, greasy,
nasty, nasty puddle. And now he rubs down and
presses into his skin all that filth with a damp towel,
and feels quite satisfied that he is washed and clean.
Allah be praised 1" But the Turkish bath is only a
form or a copy of the old Roman and Grecian hot-
air bath, and, how charming soever may bo its
cleansing and restorative powers, the thought of it
is by no means agreeable or refreshing in these
scorching days of summer. Far more tempting are
the cold plash of the ocean brine, and that peculiarly
fresh and invigorating odour which comes from the
open sea. Even as wo sit broiling and working,
with the yellow atmosphere of London stretching
away over our field of vision, we fancy a faint scent
of the sea breeze comes in at the open window, and
intimates that a delightful " header" may be within
the range of possibility. Unless cleanliness be ac-
cepted as a very modern handmaiden of godliness,
how are we to judge of the piety of our forefathers ?
The luxury of the heathen Romans in their baths
and modes of bathing was so offensive and repugnant
to Christian morality, propriety, and decency, that
studied neglect of the person became a distinguish-
ing characteristic of those early Christians who set
themselves most zealously in pious opposition to
Pagan customs, And when we remember that
the ancient name of a public bath has come
down to our own times as a synonym for a place
of the most infamous resort, we shall cease
to wonder at the long and stern contest which
Christianity has been forced to wage against a sys-
tem of deep demoralisation fostered under the sem-
blance of cleanliness, and at the strange tales of the
boastful negligence of washing by even eminent and
learned Churchmen, laymen, and ladies of the early
and the middle ages. The plain truth is, that with
the aucient Romans bathing was resorted to, not
for ablution, but for luxury. Those masters of the
world, when they abandoned the grim severity of
their republican manners, and adopted the sensual.
ism and effeminacy of the Lydians and Sybarites,
spent a large part of their time in baths, which
they adorned with the most profuse splendour,
making them shine with costly marbles and pre-
cious stones, with silver and with gold. Hero they
would sit for hours, reading, conversing, receiving
friends, and killing time in a hundred ways of which
the least objectionable was mere indolence. We
have but to read Juvenal to know the corrupt uses
.to which the system was turned; and there can be
no doubt that the vicious indulgences which cloaked
themselves under a pretext of salubrity had much
to do with the decay and ruin of the vast Roman
empire. The strong, hardy, and withal dirty North•
men seem to have extinguished the system of hot
bathing in which Imperial Rome had so long re-
velled ; but for some reason or other it survived in
the Eastern Empire—probably because that part of
Europe was less influenced than the West by the
exampleeof barbarian manners. When the Turks
took Constantinople in the fifteenth century, they
were as rough, unkempt, and unwashed as any Goth
or Hun that ever marched under Alaric or Attila ;
but they were not slow in adopting the system of
bathing which they found in full existence among
the people they had conquered, and it must be added
that they were equally quick in assimilating those
vices which the supple Greek had preserved
through all the changes of government and
religion. The Turks became externally clean, and
internally, in many cases, foul enough. The exces-
sive stress which their faith lays upon personal
ablutions made them the more ready to adopt a
system which they found made to their hands ; and
it has thus come to pass that the luxury of bathing
has never quitted the shores of the Bosphorus from
the days when the rude Thracian first softened his
primeval manners to the existing moment.
THE " EXAMINER " ON THE AMERICAN WAR.—
Here is the old see-saw, the ups and down, the
tides of ebb and flow of fortune of war. Each side
has its regular tarn of series of successes, which are
followed by a series of disasters. A feve weeks ago
Richmond and Petersburg were thought to be in
the grasp of Grant, but presently Washington and
Baltimore were much more seriously threatened by
the Southerns. It turned out, however, only a
runaway knock. The Confederates had something
better to do than to capture a capital they could not
hold, and accordingly they sacked the country, and
carried off a large booty for the supply of all their
wants. They went with their heads empty and
returned with them full, having given the Federals
a lesson of insecurity. There was, probably, a
bird in the hand worth two in the bush, and the
capture of Washington was not quite so certain,
nor the value of the capture, as the value of the
booty to be carried off. We expect no decisive
reselts from the tide of Southern fortune. We ex-
pect only the turn of the tide, and the turn and
turn again, at least for many a weary, waste.
ful, and bloody day. The best signs of the exhaus-
tion which must be the euthacasia of this detestable
struggle are the shameful shifts to which the
Federals have recourse to enlist foreigners. It must
bo their poverty in men,
consents to expedients SO scoundrelly, as kidnap-
ping, drugging, and deceiving by false pretences.
and not their will, that
Lord Edward Howard has rendered a most
timely and valuable service in exposing the
vile tricks by which poor fellows are tre-
panned into the Federal service, Some are actually
stolen to arse in the war whose boast is anti-sla.