The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-28 00:00:00

MR. THACKERAY'S DEATH.

70,458
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Naval and Military Intelligence.

THE NAVY.

The most searching investigation has been made by the
Lords of the Admiralty into all the circumstances attending
the Confederate privateer Rappahannock, formerly her
Majesty's screw gunvessel Victor, 6, 350-horse power, at-
tached to the Chatham Steam Reserve squadron. The Cor-
respondence which has taken place between the officials of
the dockyards and the Board of Admiralty has been con-
ducted, and is still being carried on, with the greatest possible
secrecy, but during the last few days some important cir-
cumstances have become known with respect to the
transaction. The result of the investigation Which has
taken place has been to entirely exonerate the officials at
Chatham Dockyard from having, in the remotest degree,
been connected with the illegal proceedings, as their respon-
sibility ceased the moment that vessel was sold out of the
Steam Reserve, and the order was received from the Admi-
ralty for her to pass into the hands of the parties by whom
she was purchased. From inquiries since instituted, it
would seem that the Victor was purchased by a London firm,
trading, as would now appear,•under, an assumed name, and
that several of the Government mechanics, if not under
the express orders, at all events with the cognisance, of cer-
tain of the officials, were illegally allowed to be employed in
assisting to equip the vessel, several of the number, con-
nected, it is asserted, chiefly with the engineer department,
proceeded from Sheerness dockyard to Calais on board the
Victor when she escaped from the Nore. The whole of the
hands who were proved to have taken any part in the breach
of the neutrality laws by assisting in the equipment of the
Rappahannock, as well as the men who proceeded to Calais
with that vessel, have been dismissed from Sheerness dock-
yard, estensibly for being absent from their duty without
leave, but in reality for the part they were proved to have
taken in the matter. The conduct of certain of the dockyard
officials, who, there is reason to believe, allowed themselves
to become implicated in the fitting out of the Victor after
she had ceased to be a Government vessel, is now under the
consideration of the Admiralty, and a rumour was current
at Chatham yesterday that two of the number, both of whom
hold responsible offices in Sheerness dockyard,would be called
on to resign their appointments to avoid their dismissal from
her Majesty's service. With regard to the other vessels
attached to the Chatham Steam Reserve which are ordered
to be sold out of the service, such precautions are directed
to be taken that no apprehension need be entertained of any
of the number falling into hands of persons who will use
them so as to again violate the neutrality laws.
In addition to the wooden screw steamers the names of
which have been ordered to be struck off the list of vessels
to be constructed at Chatham dockyard, Admiralty directions
have been received for the name of the Pomona, 61-gun
frigate, to be removed from the list of new ships to be built
of Chatham.

Her Majesty's 17-gun steam sloop Mutine, Commander
William Graham, arrived at Woolwich on Saturday from
the South Pacific, to be stripped and paid out of commission.
The Mutine has been six months on the passage home, and
touched at Mazatlan, San Bias, Panama, Valparaiso,rounded
Cape Horn, touched at Rio, and thence proceeded to Spit-
head, where she arrived on the 24th instant, She landed a
valuable freight of specie and bars of silver from Valparaiso
at Rio. The Mutine was fitted out and commissioned at
Woolwich by Commander Graham in October, 1859, and
has fulfilled her full term of commission. The ship has been
remarkably healthy. The whole of her officers, with the
exception of Second Lieut. Peard, who died in crossing the
Line, and one assistant-surgeon who was removed, have all
returned to Woolwich. On account of the peculiarly high
state of discipline and cleanliness which the ship displayed
on her arrival, two-thirds of the officers and crew have teen
granted three days' leave of absence, a most unusual cir-
cumstance, as in ordinary cases no one is permitted to leave
the ship while under orders to pay off. Commander Lysaght,
in the unavoidable absence of Rear-Admiral Sir F. Nicol.
son, who is suffering from a severe attack of erysipelas, will
inspect the ship and muster the crew under arms, prepara-
tory to her discharging stores and dismantling.
A circular memorandum addressed to the army has been
promulgated by the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-ChTt,
in concurrence with the Secretary of State for War, with
instructions for sergeant-cooks.
The Ordnance steam storeship Lord Panmure, Master
Commander Harry Moore, has arrived at Woolwich from
Devonport, laden with returned war stores, and will reload
from the Tower with 1,200 arm-chests for Devonport and
Portsmouth.
The command of the Chatham district will shortlyE
All be-
come vacant by the retirement of Major.
GefnseeTivice
H.
on the completion is five years' period
It
rumoured in military circles at Chatham Major-General
the command
is
amand
of that important station will be given to . the
Hon. A. Gordon, C. 8., at present commanding the second
Infantry brigade at the Curragh, where he holds the rank
of brigs tier-general. Major- General Gordon served on the
Quartermaster-General's staff throughout the Crimean war
and subsequently held the command of the camp at Col'
chester,

WARLIKE RELIC OF THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH.
—A. curious and richly-ornamented sword, through
the kindness of the Rev. Mr. Whately and Mr. Allsop of
Cheltenham, has been recently exhibited before the Society
of Areha3ologists. The sword, which is an Andrea Ferrara
blade, was said to have belonged to the Duke of Monmouth,
by whom it was left at Sedgroor.

SPECTATOR.—The great event of the week to
England is the loss of her great satirist Mr.
Thackeray, who died early on Dcc. 24, in the 52d
year of his age, of effusion on the brain, brought
on, it is supposed, by violent sickness, to which he
was periodically subject. Of a new novel promised
by him to the Cornhill Magazine he had completed
four numbers, and only two or three days before his
death was showing his achievement to a friend in
the most buoyant spirits. His death at the season
whicb. has so often been associated with his higher
literary efforts strikes us with something of the
same imaginative effect as those Christmas books
themselves, in which the thin veil of superficial
gaiety was constantly blowing aside, and showing
the graduated depths of darkness beneath. He is
the founder of a school of satire of which he will
probably be the only master, though be has already
had many imitators. We do not wonder that he
failed as a painter, for painting, which must select
an effect visible in a single moment of time, gave
no scope to the peculiar mobility of his genius.
He delighted in varying indefinitely the expression
visible on the face of his characters, so that before
the contraction of the suffering nerve, or the sneer
of the parted lips was distinctly visible, it was gone,
and if you sought to recover the source of the im-
pression it was seldom easy to do so. There was a
strange mixture of pain and pathos in all his pic-
tures; bitterness and tenderness mingled their tones
in the laugh of the humorist, and there was some-
thing at once loving and fatalistic about the frequent
gleams of his religious feeling. Tennyson has ex-
pressed the essence of his genius, though not of its
highest temper, in the line—. •

Out of that mood was born
Self-scorn—and then laughter at that self •scorn.
SATURDAY REVIEW.—The death of Mr. Thacke-
ray, in the height of his popularity, is a calamity
which will not indeed affect any public interest, but
which yet will be widely felt. This generation is
not strong in humourists ; but to those few whom
we do possess belongs the credit of having given
refinement and delicacy to an art in which those
qualities were not formerly conspicuous. Mr.
Thackeray was one of the best examples of a school
of which the popularity has been enormous, and
which has done no slender service in raising the
character and establishing the purity of English
literature.

EXAMINER.-Mr. Thackeray was found dead in
his bed on Thursday morning. Sudden as the loss of
Peel, or of Talfourd, or of Lord Macaulay, whose
death saddened the Christmas holidays three years
ago—sudden also as other recent deaths of able men
who laboured worthily in the world's eye, but whose
calling did not bring them so near as that dm fore-
most novelist to the world's heart, has been this
new cause of public grief. For a few days past
Mr. Thackeray bad been slightly unwell; yet he
was about among his friends, and he was out even
on Wednesday evening. But when called at about 9
o'clock on Thursday morning be was found dead in
his bed, with placid face, having apparently died
without suffering pain. Mr. Thackeray's age
was but 52, and he seemed a man large, vigorous,
cheerful, with yet a quarter of a century of life in
him. There were some parts of his character that
never felt the touch of his years, and these were ten-
derly remembered yesterday at many a Christmas
fireside. There was to the last in him the sensibi
lity of a child's generous heart that time had not
sheathed against light touches of pleasure and pain.
His sympathy was prompt and keen, but the same
quick feeling made him also over sensitive to the
small annoyances that men usually learn to take for
granted as but one form of the friction that belonizs
to movements of all kinds. He was sensitive to his
sensitiveness, and did in bis writings what thou-
sands of men do in' their lives, shrouded an over
tender heart in a transparent vale of cynicism. Often
he seemed to his readers to be trifling or nervously
obtruding himself into his story when he Was but
shrinking from the full discovery of his oven simple
intensity of feeling.