The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TIMES.—When the unexpected news of Sir Cress-
well Cresswell's sudden death burst upon the
town every man asked his neighbour, in a tone of
hopeless speculation, " Whom can they appoint to
succeed him ?" Sir Cresswell had made his own
Court ; he had arranged his own practice; he had
disciplined his own Bar; he had acquired an abso-
lute dominion over his own suitors. No one bad
ever thought of any other Judge of the Divorce
Court than the man who filled the piece with such
alhsufficiency. He was so strong in mind and so
unfailing in body that we had not considered that
he was treading upon the verge of the working
existence of ordinary men. He had made no men-
tion of retiring. He was altogether unconscious
of the disease which had so fatally sapped his
life. However well he had earned a right to pase
his latter years in a learned leisure, the public
would perhaps h-ve murmured a little if he had
left a post where he was so indispensable. The
sudden summons, however, came, and he died in
harness. we had nct been prepared for so
quick a necessity to answer the question
—Who among our judges is fit to be the successor
to teir Cresswell Cresswell ? It is now announced
that Sir James Wilde, one of the barons of the Ex-
chequer, is to be removed to the Probate and Divorce
Court. We cannot say that either the profession or
the public have received this intelligence with un-
qualified con tent. We will not inquire whe-
ther Mr. Baron Wilde combines in himself
all the qualities necessary to the highest
point of efficiency in the Judge of Matrimonial
Causes; and Mr. Baron Wilde is so fully entitled to
our respect that we would not willingly put an\
question which might seem to imply a slight. It is,
however, no disparagement to him to say that,
whatever may be his qualities as a lawyer and a
man of the world, he is not physically a strong
man capable of hard work. As an amiable lawyer
of respectable abilities, he will no doubt do all that
can be reasonably expected of a judge who to this
intellectual calibre adds the misfortune of a delicate
physique, and it certainly will not be his fault if
the profession shall see a difference between the
Divorce Court as it was and as it will be. The Di-
vorce Court, however, is not in its nature a sanato-
rium; it is much more of a gymnasium. We want
strength, and power, and sinew there, both physical
and intellectual, and there is at least a very general
impression that by this appointment we are not
likely to gain all these. We admit the great diffi-
culty of the choice. When the public looked around
they could not recollect among their eligibles Chief
Justice Erie or Sir Roundel' Palmer, because unfor-
tunately the place to be filled is not one of the great
prizes of the profession, and when these names have
been spoken it would be difficult to name another
of lower rank which would carry with it universal
conviction that every condition had been fulfilled.
It is not therefore in any spirit of captious criticism
that we remark upon this appointment; but simply
to point out the necessity that when you appoint
an ailing man to a place of great importance you
must make his labour light. It is physically im-
possible that Sir James Wilde can do the work that
Sir Cresswell Cressweli did, and it will not be fair
either to him or to the public to put him to do it.
Even Sir Cresswell was pumping in a well with the
water always up to his lips. We cannot afford to
have this court discredited by delays and choked by
arrears. It has a number of natural enemies through-
out the country, and any shortcomings in its work
will be made use of for superstitions and sectarian
objections to the system of law it administers. It
would be a great pity to deprive it of all the advati
cage which a full judicial staff might give it. The
at nexation of the Probate jurisdiction to the Matri-
monial jurisdiction was at first a ridiculous homage
to an absurd association of ideas ; if Sir James
Wilde is to go to the Divorce Court, it will, we
tear soon become necessary to hand over the
Pro-
bate business to another judge.
PosT.—To-day is the day with which,
esti-
mation of a very considerable and influential
in the
section
of her Majesty's subjects, autumnl is associatedin reality begins.
Not the autumn of the people
which
with falling leaves, reddening woodlands, chilly
nights and mornings, and roast goose at Michaelmas,
but the autumn of patrician and opulent sportsmen,
the autumn of sultry days upon the bills, an autumn
which is still summer ere a single hectic hue is per.
ceptible in the deep green copses. It is the 12th of
August—
Ipsi hetitia votes ad sidera jactant,
Intonsi mon tes.
Ere these lines can greet the reader's eye a thousand
keen marksmen will be awakening the echoes of the
Highlands, and as many head of grouse have flut-
tered bleeding into the heather. Shooting in all its
branches is by far the most exclusive of field sports.
It is only a rich man who can preserve game, and
it is only those who find it worth while to pay three
guineas for the privilege who are allowed to shoot it.
The preservation of foxes costs, on the other hand, a
mere trifle, and any man who has only a donkey
to bestride may join in the pursuit if he chooses,
Angling, too, has always been to some extent a sport
open to the poor. No license is required for it, and
the expense of preservation, though often consider-
able, is as nothing compared to hares and pheasants.
With grouse of course the great expense is the hire
of the moor; but even on the mcor a considerable
staff of keepers and watchers has to be kept u
And the sport itself being conducted on a large);
scale, and the game more remote and inaccessible,
becomes of necessity the privilege of still fewer
than partridge or even pheasants. Yet grouse
shooting, though more exclusive and aristocratic,
is, for obvious reasons, less unpopular than st ooting,
of any other kind. In the first place, people who
cannot shoot grouse do not as 4 rule see grouse.
And thus one source of irritation is removed. In
the second place, as they cannot be preserved I
exactly the same style as more domestic game, they
do not involve those desperate conflicts with the
poachers which bringm s omuch odium on preservers.
Thirdly, they do comparatively little injury to the
farmers' crops, and hence another topic of invective
familiar to a certain class of malcontents is not
suggested by «The Twelfth." For all these rea-
sons a peculiar superiority attaches to this noble
sport, independently of those attractions which are
almost universally acknowledged. The change of
scenery, the beauty of the bird himself, the com-
plete freedom of the hillside, and the bracing air
which is inhaled, delight and exhilarate the shooter
more than it is possible that the finest southern
shooting ground should do. Bat over and above
all this there must, in the minds of many great men
at least, be the agreeable consciousness that, in
turning oat this morning, they leave behind all
grumbling jealousies and hearthurnings. Of course,
among the very great magnates of the land the dis-
content produced by game-preserving is hardly, it
at all, felt ; and in a great many districts we must
r v e
s
remember it does not exist. By proper r
s e
manage-
ment.and liberality ibo Most populous p
may be kept up without creating a spark of ill-teel-
ing in the neighbourhood. But it is notorious that
they often do create it ; and then, unless the estate
is very large and the tenantry particularly cautious,

HERALD.—The American war has already lost
much of its interest to many persons. They assume,
somewhat hastily, that the North from henceforth
is W have it all its own way, and the conquest of
the Southern republic is now only a question of
time. The South, they say, is now on its last legs;
it has earned a title to the admiration of the world
by having fought so long, and with such success.
against a nation of vastly superior resources and of
similar pertinacity. And so, men who look on upon
such things as a sort of drama played for their edi-
fication, but in which they feel no very particular
interest, go on to speculate on the probable results
of it all, to calculate the combinations that will en-
sue, the regime that may be looked for when the
spirit of the Southern people is finally crushed,
their aspirations for freedom are trodden out. The
men and women of England are not so sentimental
is they were. Time was when a hundred bards
would have wailed in a hundred dirges, a hundred
orators thundered from a hundred platforms, at
the mere suggestion that such a catastrophe was
impending. Time was when Hope was repre-
sented by the poet as raising her pinions and
taking her leave of a miserable world, because the
promise of a resuscitated Poland turned out to be
a dream, when the Goddess of Liberty shrieked
at the failure of the adventurer who was the fore
most to espouse her cause. Is it possible that we
cannot spare for men of our own race and blood one
tithe of the sympathy which we accord to Poles and
Hungarians, to Greeks and Italians, to men of alien
race and foreign creed ? In what respect was Kos-
suth superior to Davis, or why should .Kosciusko
take precedence of Lee and Jackson ? To enlist our
sympathy in his cause a man must speak an out-
landish tongue, be dressed in a picturesque costume.
The heart does not beat quicker at the heroism of a
man with a common English name; his death is no
occasion for tears, but much a question of interest
to the Stock Exchange, because it may cause cer-
tain shares or funds to fall in value. The possible
subjugation of the dauntless Southern people, their
ruin, extermination, or slavery, are matters that are
calmly debated and reckoned up as so much profit
and loss by a considerable portion of the reading
and writing public. But the fervid anticipations
of their enemies in North America, and the conclu
sions of their lukewarm friends in this country seem
to us to be equally unwarrantable. Threatened
men, we are told, live long. The South is able to
maintain the struggle for twenty years to come. It
is not impossible that before this campaign is con-
cluded some battle may be fought which will turn
the tide of victory, and again plunge the North into
the depths of despair. It is but a short time since
we were told from New York that the return of
Lee's army to Fredericksburg or Richmond was
rendered impossible by the attitude of Gen. Meade.
Lee had crossed the Potomac with the plunder of
Pennsylvania, and lay in the Shenandoah Valley.
It was said that the passes of the Blue Ridge
were guarded ; but it appears that he crossed
those mountains without opposition. We next
hear of him in the plain of Virginia, assuming a
defensive attitude, between Culpepper and Gor-
donsville. After that he massed his forces at the
former place, ready to give battle, the front of his
army extending from Fredericksburg to the
Rapidan. One account represents General Meade
as taking up the old Federal position at Falmouth,
north of the Rappahannock. Another asserts that
he is prepared to dispute with Lee the position of
Fredericksburg, and has even attempted to Occupy
the heights to the rear of that important place. It
this be true, there will probably be another battle
ere the close of the campaign ; and this time Geneni,
Lee, fighting in the Southern country, and secure
of his communications, will take care. that he is not
taken
A defeat which would
repeat
of Chancellorsville would
at
the a
terrible disadvantage.
lesson
shrivel up in a day the mushroom reputation of the
general whom fortune has so si •
that his friends proclaim him thengularly favoured
superior of such
soldiers as Lee and L
ongstreet, Ewell and Hill,
men accustomed to victory and u
a reverse. In thnwi unwilling to accept
compariJon
battle on the Thppahannock thewith
the chance of a
movements of the
other armies possess but little
interest. It is curious
that Johnstone and Bragg, whose armies were re-
presented but the other clnsday as utter crushed and
pers,d, seem able still topresents b
. old front to
the enemy on the line of t he Mobile and Ohio Rail-
road. The war in Kentucky is going on with 1 a ter-
nate advantage to each of the combatants.r The
siege of Charleston is still vigorouslyprosecuted;
but since their repulse from Fort Wagnerp andted
re-
treat from James Island, the Federals have gained
nothing in this quarter. The Confederat
meet with aid in more than one may
quarter. Wese do nor
at present attach much importance to the rumours
of a coming alliance between France and the South ;
and, though the Northerners are pleased to con•
alder it an encroachment on their rights, we suppose
that their Government will be forced by its
neces-
sities Pose to swallow the bitter pill of the Austro-
French empire in Mexico, which ehould be a subject
for congratulation everywhere, as promising the
restoration of order in that distracted country.
The mob of the North, and the negroes of the South
--very antagonistic agencies as they may seem—
may yet work together for the contusion of the
Washington Government. On the third of this
month the conscription was to be carried out under
the protection of the army at New York. The
people, as far as we can learn, were determined to
resist it, and the next riot, better organised than the
last, may end in the subversion of the Government,
of Mr. Lincoln. Meanwhile we understand that
it has been urgently represented to that Government
that if it perseveres in arming negro troops for the
war, the South, on its part, will arm its negro slaves,
and send them out to fight under the masters whom
they are accustomed to obey, and for whom they
feel an affection and reverence far different from the
feeling which they have for those would-be friends,
who, in their cities, beat and persecute them, and
in the battle-field drive them on like cattle, to be
slaughtered in the front. In a very short time the
South can send into the war a disciplined army of
750,000 blacks. To the civil struggle between the
whits s we shall then have added a civil war between
the negroes. The massacres of St. Domingo will
be repeated, the savage achievements of Dahoman
warriors outdone. If the North ehould persevere
in its inhuman policy of arming runaway servants
against their late masters, the South, in its indig-
nation and despair, will retaliate by hurling against
them its myriads of yet faithful slaves, and the
darkest picture yet painted in this hideous war will
be outdone by a deeper horror.
Nair NEWS. If heroism and martyrdom were
sufficient title-deeds to national existence, P land
for the right to live.
would not now be fighting
fried in the furnace of affliction, sharpened by de-
spair, and strengthened by endurance, the con
stancy of that noble people seems to acquire a finer
and firmer temper from day to day, wearing out the
Weight of an immense y
r m by desultory contests
over an ever expanding area of revolt, and carryiue
their resolve unshaken through loss One e
slaughter.
Borne down at one point by overwhelming force,
the insurgents rise in another, like a mountain tor-
rent that, fed by subterranean kitreanas, swells un