The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-27 00:00:00

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. ISS BA I'EMA N.-L E A H.---tylf
EVENING and EVERY EVENING —Miss Bateman
will appear in her great impersonation of the Jewish
ma .d n intfl turther notice In order o give due effect to
tl.is most remarkable sucaesA of the se .son, ea,ireLy new
scenery by the celebrat,a artists Messrs. n
banson and ,•ons,
a Thonap3,n. New dr sscs and appo ntments have bet
t,,,a_e_parei tor its productioc.—N. In consequence of the
"'Sing and numerous applications at the BoX'otn b
ob-
ar-
in;.,,ement-, have row been made by which Scats y
tained a Fortnight in A.uvi.ne.

WYA-1, ST. JAMES'S THEATRE. under the
Management of Mr. B. WEBSTER.
Crowded with rank and fashion.— The highly successful new'
m dy, by Dian Boucicault .Esq., every Evening.
Be- engagement of those ce ebrAcei and popular artistes, Mr.

LONDON, FRIDAY, MAY 27, 1864.

Every additional scrap of intelligence from that
blood-stained, corpse-littered, slaughter-ground
the seat-of-war in Virginia, more and more clearly
realises to our apprehension the reality of the fact
which from the first was sufficiently apparent,
namely, that the advantages throughout have been
upon the side of the Confederates. 'With all our at
first extorted, but long since unstinted and earnest
admiration for the heroism of the South, and for the
consummate generalship of their illustrious Com-
mander-in-Chief General LEE—the one Great
Captain born of the War—the marvel is that it
should still continue to be so. The wonder is that the
advantages should yet remain upon the side of the
Confederates. Remember, merely, the dispropor-
tion there still is—as there has been from the very
first—between the aggregate numerical strength of
the two contending Powers! It is a struggle nut
between equals, not between six and half-a-dozen.
The disproportion we are referring to is not as
of two to one. Whereas tae Federals are
some 20,000,000, the Confederates are no more
than 6,000,000 ! Yet, still, within the cno-•
tral States of what was once the Union—
that state of -Virginia common to the capitals alike
of the North and of the South, of the Confederate
Richmond and of the Federal Washington, great
armies led respectively by the foremost soldier,
here of President ABRAHAM LINCOLN, there, of
President JEFFERSON DAVIS, are still, after four
long and terrible years of civil conflict still con-
tending ! They are still—those main armies
of the North and of the South—still, after
four years, contending, and contending more
fiercely and more ferociously than ever, in
a portion of that blood-saturated State of
Virginia, situated behind the rival capitals—the
capitals of the North and of the South, Richmond
and Washington. Against the largest and the
most highly-disciplined ermy the North has
yet been able to bring together into the field,
the army of the South has, during this
present month, been holding its awn manfully
during the chief part of a fortnight of almost
continuous fighting ! And that fighting more
disastrous and destructive of its kind—considering
inst of all that it has been nearly, as one may say,
a hand-to-hand encounter, not with artillery and
long-distance rifles, but with sword, and pistol, and
bayonet, and considering, in the 8E cona place, that
it has been fightirg. persisted in by the belligerents
day after day almost uninterruptedly—fighting,
we say, more disastrous and more destructive than
we have any equivalent record of even in the
bloodiest pages of our European annals. In testi-
mony of our accuracy in assenting to which it is
only requisite, indeed, to recall to recollection the
fact that after three days continuous fighting during
these recent contests in Virgiaia, on one side alone,
namely, on the side of the Federals (according
to their own account) as many as 40,000
men were put hors de combat—the dead more
over vastly outnumbering the wounded in this
la'deous aggregate of slaughter ! So piteous, so
merciless, eo literally to the death and to despera-
tion have been these hand to hand combats between
North and South, during this very month of May,
upon that afflicted soil of Virginia! And now, the
latest additional intelligence from these sanguinary
battle fields,the supplementary intelligence brought
to us this very afternoon by telegram, consequent
upon the arrival of the Scotia with accounts from
New York down to the morning of the 18th inst.
inclusively—more than simply confirms our first,
our instant impression as to the successes being on
the side of the Confederates. Even the rumoured
retreat of General LEE from his new position, his
more than ever formidable position at Spottsylvania
Court House, appears never to have been thought of
for a moment by the Southern Commander-in-Chief
There, at Spottsylvania Court House, at these lines of
the transatlantic Torres Vedras of the Confederate
WELLINGTON, the Southern army maintained its
ground when these last advices left. The position
of LEE was not only at the Court-house, but north
of it. There, at Spottsylvania, after all their ten ific
fighting, the opposing armies still, when the latest
news left,continued doggedly to confront each other.
Further military operations, it would seem, were
alone interrupted by the casualty of the heavy
rainfalls. But, satisfactory for the South, though
these tidings up to the 12th inst. inclusively, were,
from those held-quarters of the belligerents north of
the Court House of Spottsylvania—from other parts
of the seateof-war the accounts now brought to us
by the Scotia are wonderfully favourable for the
Confederates. From Drury's Bluff, for in-
stance, we learn that General Butler--
the infamous General BUTLER—had been, not
retire to his lines after con•
ohnadl y
bete tet
na ccleoemd seuncecde set foulrly
siderabla loss. From Newmarket, again, we hear
that the Federal General SIGEL had, with a loss of
five guns and of upwards of 600 men, been so un-
mistakably defeated, that he had been driven to
the necessity of retreating upon Strasburg,
by crossing the Shenandoah. As more than a
counterpoise to the tidings of General JOHNSTONE'S
retreat towards Atlanta, hotly pursued, as the
telegram intimates, by the Federals, there comes
a fragment of additional information as to the des_
puted piight iu which General BANKS still finds
himself add the army entrusted to his guidance. A
mere portion of this army, we are here apprised, has
been compelled to march overland to the Mississippi
river—to what end ? 'To that end that speaks (how
eloquently) of the momentous alternative of life or
death—of" fighting its Way out !" Such are the very
last advices brought to us by steam and electricity
from the scenes of that cruelly protracted civil war
in America, that civil war of which it way be said
that—however much longer it may be protracted—
it can never, we may rest perfectly Well satisfied,
result in the subjugation of the haughty and heroic
spirit of the South even by the most stupendous
efforts that can be directed against the Confederates
by the gigantic but hitherto impotent wealth, and
numberi, and grimly deoporation of the Fed6ol6,