The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-15 00:00:00

alit;

LONDON, SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 1863.

A gallant soldier has been lost to England by the
death of Lord CLYDE. Yet can that death be
scarcely mourned over as a calamity under the cir-
cumstances. Death came at last, here, as a relief
after two months' of severe suffering. It came after
the allotted age of man had been reached. It came
when the distinguished invalid had long been
covered with honours, by a country:disposed—as it
appeared to us during his lifetime, as it does still
most certainly appear to us now that he is actually
dead and gone a country disposed rather
to exaggerate his merits than in any way
to and ;Grate them. A public Funeral in
Westminster Abbey a National Monument
erefitA somewhere in the metropolis—will be mere
Oua'tter•of-coarse evidences of consideration already
attvished with an unstinting hand upon COLIN
CAMPBELL. He died a Field Marshal. He died
a Peer of the Realm. When a far greater soldier
than he—CIIARLES NAPIER, conqueror of Scinde,
victor of Meannee and Hyderabad—died Neither a
Field Marshal, nor a Peer !—merely a General and
a G.C.B. Thinking of Sir CHARLES NAPIER'S
career, of his heroic life, and of his death coming
to him in his old age, when he was yet
almost wholly unrewarded by his ungrateful
country —we confess to it that the con-
trast presented to view by that career,
by that life, by that death, when considered side
by side with the career, the life and death of Field-
Marshal Lord CLYDE, we do confess to it frankly
that the contrast strikes us, there, as rather a pain-
ful subject for contemplation.
The remains of the greatest soldier of
England, after the Duke of WELLINGTON, lie
mouldering in their honoured but lowly resting-
place in the soldier's graveyard near Portsmouth.
Upon the unostentatious tomb above them are in-
scribed the names and titles of the buried Conqueror
—General Sir CHARLES JAMES NAPIER, G.C.8.,
and so forth. That heroic soldier, dead, and gone,
and buried away there in that obscure graveyard,
having added to the vast possessions of England one
of the noblest provinces of her Empire—having not
only conquered that great province of Scinde with
his sword, but having brought its people into subjec-
tion after its conquest by the combined vigour and
clemency of his rule over them as a Proconsul. Had
Sir CHARLES NAPIER had his desserts, he, too, would
have died a Peer of the Realm and a Field Marshal
of England, The baton that no doughtier hand
could have grasped, would have laid upon his coffin-
lid, side by side with, at least, a baron's coronet.
A Funeral procession befitting the friend and
brother-in-arms:of WELLINGTON, would have fol-
lowed that coffin to its last resting place under the
gothic roof of the old Abbey at Westminster. A
Public Monument to CHARLES NAPIER (such as it
is) London has, it is true, to show in one of its
most conspicuous sites (such as that is also) but it is
a monument erected to his memory, not by his coun •
try (still even thus pertinaciously ungrateful to the
last), but by that one particular class among his
countrymen the most capable of appreciating
his great and heroic qualities, that of the Pri-
vate Soldiers of the British army. It is not
that we grudge one of his many honours
(nobly won as they were upon so many
battlefields), to Field Marshal Lord CLYDE.
It is simply that the remembrance of him as
Field Marshal and Baron of England—is embittered
by the instant reflection that a far greater soldier

than CoLIN CAMPBELL died neither a Field Marshal
nor a Baron ! That England never had the thought

even when he was snatched away from the chance

of being at last the tardy recipient of the evi-
dences of her gratitude, that England never
had the thought even then, even out of

her sense of a remorseful homage, to bury among
her illustrious dead, in Westminster Abbey, the
remains of one who was as great a soldier as any
Zill°6l3 dust reposes under that venerable pile.
ononr to the memory of Field-Marshal Lord
tit../De
Let honours, fall and unstinting, still
accompany his inanimate corpse to its grave ! For
he was a
noble and chivalrous soldier, and one
worthy of
y':
token of r
admiration. But, while Eng-
land is
begretrYlag him away, with every
and homage down at Westminister
Abbey, let her a
have
some remorseful sense the
while of her consistent ingr
lifetime to one who atitude during a long
than he, one Who died Not
Was a far, far greater soldier
Not a Field Marshal of xagi
and Peer of the Realm,
death was Not Buried at wed, and one who after
troineter

The Conference at Frankf:
topic in foreign j ournals , which y natural, con-
the engrossing
sidering its novelty and also its
leiPortiteeQ• The
King of DENMARK has declined tobe pr"
C a °onference of the Sovereign member rent at the
- the Ger-
man Confederacy. This is not to be wondered
at,
considering the unpleasant disputes and discussion,
that have taken place regarding Schleswig-RoistinTheKing of PRUSSIA, the CROWN PRINCE, and Herr
VON BISMARK have had very " animated confer-
ewes" at Gastein. It is, of course, very annoying
for the Prince to fiud his father so determined to
pursue the policy laid down by the Minister who
has already done so much damage to his own repu-
tation, and injured the popularity of his monarch,
while occasioning so much disquietude to the coun-
try. The semi-official journal, Correspondenz,
states that when the EMPEROR was at Gastein, the
KING promised to attend the Conference, but that
subsequently Herr BISMARK persuaded him to give
up the idea. He therefore wrote to the EMPEROR
declining to attend, and suggesting that there