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
for 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 but 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
tarn 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 mancea-
vre with greater effect and advantage than small bodies of
men.

Trusting that these remarks may be useful to the future
success 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.-1 have the honour to be, Sir,
your royal highness's obedient servant,
iDE 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, aid the camp presented an interesting
and animated scene—gad 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), aid carried off the County Challenge
Cup with a purse of LD, 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 Ave and, for the best shots, were con-
tended for on Friday, tie 29th tilt, 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 Pieston, 13th Company, Spalding.
Fourth prize, private Xiller, 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.—IB 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 nevsr 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 Advertiser, the " Protestant flail" in-
cluded, 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 we 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 mau 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 be, 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 lel
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
natures wbo 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 naves homo, was no greater
than Person, son of a parish clerk ; but " a depart-
ment" might recollect a man who once worried it
sorely, one William Cobbett, son of a little country
publican, himself a common soldier, and beyond all
comparison or challenge the most effective writer of
"leaders" who ever lived—as much beyond Ster-
ling as Sterling was beyond Dr. 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 secure, 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 mossagrown,
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 and end that it should
be entered as an accepted definition in a Treasury
minute? Is occupation everything, or will clear
descent ba admitted as a palliative, and an excep•
tion drawn in favour of men like the mason who
died in Cornwall, last of the Palmologi, or like
Purkis, who liven or did live in the New Forest, and
whom Sir Francis Pulgrave believed to be as clearly
the descendant of the charcoal-burner who lifted
the body of William Rufus as the Queen is of the
Conqueror ? 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 say to his
third descendant P 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 Peshawur 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 farther from the " last ?" There
are differences of rank among occupations. To people
so great as Treasury clerks everybody who earns his
bread, from a cobbler to a chemist, may appear of
the same grade, hut those incompetent persons do
not agree with the clerks, and as they have votes
there may be some 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 lam 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 b© 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 even 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
win no an anxious point for Lord raimerston, wno
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 incona
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.—We 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 hie 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 W i ostmacott mmea
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 horizontally, 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
side, but did. not go beyond this. It seems probable
that the coagulation of the effused blood prevented
any further extravasation of air from the thoraic
cavity. Bright arterial frothy blood was spat up
frequently by the patient, and this, coupled with