The Sun.
London, England, 1863-02-17 00:00:00

JOHN WHITE. Manufacturer. 228, Piocadilly.

A"FFECTUAL REMEDY.-LAMBERT'S
ASTHMATIC BALSAM, without confininc, the
bowels or affecting the head, truly efficacious and pleasant,
is admitted to be the best medicine for immediately relieving
coughs, colds, confirmed cases of asthma, and incipient con-
sumption. It frequently cures persons whom the faculty
pronounce in curabie, admirably allays the tickling which pro-
vokes frequent coughing. In approaching consumption its
effects are truly beneficial. Persons deprived of sleep, or even
lying down for tear of suffo9tion, may depend on relief in
a few minutes after taking it.
.Prepared only and sold by
W. LAMBERT, Chemist, 8, King William-street, Charing-
cross, London, and by all druggists, in bottles, 130., and
three quantities in 'me, 2s. 9d. each. Be particular, and
ask for Lambert'a Asthmatic Balsam. The name and ad-
dress is engraved on the stamp,

Yesterday gloomy skies and a murk 3 atmosphere
watched over the deathbed of the expiring year, and
many a heart in camp turned fondly homeward in
anticipation of that peace which it is hoped that the
recent fight at Fredericksburg has brought so much
nearer, and which was selected as the word for the
last countersign of the year. This morning a cloud-
less sky and a genial temperature usher in the most
eventful year which has probably ever dawned upon
the continent of North America, and they are ac-
cepted by the Virginians, over whose beautiful fields
and forests the bright sun is streaming, the har-
binger of that success in which men, women, and
children south of the Potomac have never for a mo-
ment ceased firmly to believe. If the aspirations
after peace which are universal throughout the
South are interpreted by the North as indicating
faintness and feebleness of heart, then will this in-
terpretation prove as false as the Northern doctrine
that there is still Union sentiment, smothered and
stifled but ready to burst forth, somewhere in Se-
cessia. It is needless to repeat what cannot now be
unknown anywhere inEngland,that if the,North put
a blank sheet of paper into President Davis's hand,
and bade him write a constitution for the whole
original 34 States, there are not 50 men in the Con-
federacy who would be willing to enter again on
those conditions into partnership with the North.
It is not a new constitution and adoitional guaran-
tees for the protection of slavery that the Confede-
rates want ; they only ask good faith in the observ-
ance of the old Constitution—that good faith which
no written obligations and stipulations can ever
guarantee and insure. The old Constitution is pro-
nounced by thousands in the North to be a bond
of iniquity, " a compact with hell ;" but when the
South desires to sunder that bond and set free
New England from participation in this compact,
some such words as " Southern wealth and North-
ern profits" are whispered throughout the North ;
and to maintain the connexion between them thou-
sands of millions of dollars and hundreds of thou-
sands of lives are given, when a tithe of the sum
lavished upon this war would have paved the way,
without the expenditure of a single life, to the
abatement of those evils in the system of slavery
which both North and South agree in condemning.
It is strange on a calm day like the present to
mount the commanding hill from which Gen. Lee
surveyed the recent action before Fredericksburg,
and to contrast the stillness and repose of the scene
with the hurly-burly of battle, and fire and smoke,
and the death tumult of Saturday, Dec. 13. Below
Marye's heights stretch the long low mounds be-
neath which the countless Federal dead sleep their
last long sleep; nor is there in this spot any other
evidence than these mounds, and a few dead and
still unburied horses, of the fearful struggle upon
which these heights so lately looked down. But as
the observer travels eastward along the ground oc-
cupied by the Confederate lines, and examines the
position held by Gen. A. P. Hill's troops, he will
find abundant evidences, in the shattered trees and
the furrowed hillsides, of the fury with which the
battle raged along the Confederate right. Just on
the spot where a perfect tempest of round shot and
shell appears to have rent the forest, and,where every
tree is studded with bullets, is the station which
Gen. Jackson occupied throughout the action. When
I noticed to him three days ago that his position
must have been most perilous and uncomfortable,
he quietly observed that he had been in many
hotter fires than that which were poured upon him
at Fredericksburg. In a former letter I observed
that the Confederate force which General Lee
thought proper to detach from his army of Northern
Virginia, with a view to employing it against Gen.
Burnside's force at Fredericksburg, did not, in
my opinion, exceed 90,000 men. Of course, in
this estimate I do not include the reserves which,
had they been required, Gen. Lee could have com-
manded, but for which it is abundantly appa-
rent (jndging from his address to the army, which
I enclose), that there was little necessity. In that
address, which, like everything which emanate from
General Lee's pen, makes the least rather than the
most of his success, he states that less than 20,000
of his men encountered the vast host of Gen. Burn-
side. It is a modest estimate of the slaughter which
these 20,000 men inflicted upon the Federals, to
compute that each Confederate engaged killed or
wounded one of his enemies. It will be sufficient
now to state that, although there seems in the minds
of several of the Confederate Generals a disinclina-
tion to employ more than 100,000 men in any one
army against their foe, be his numbers what they
may, it will, nevertheless, be found by the Federals,
whenever they resume their crusade upon Rich-
mond, that they will be met, if need be, man for
man, be their advance through the Shenandoah
Valley, or Fredericksburg, or Suffolk, or the coast
of North Carolina.

The return this evening of General Stuart and his
staff from another of those successful raids in which
he has so frequently indulged has shed a glow of
cheerfulness throughout the camp, and has afforded
much merriment by reason of the incidents which
accompanied this expedition, and of which every
one is talking. It appears that General Stuart
started upon Christmas-eve with a considerable
force of cavalry in the direction of Dumfries,' dis-
tant about 30 miles from these headquarters. Thence
he proceeded towards Occoquan Creek, where, as
well as at Dumfries, he had skirmishes with the
enemy, during which he took about 200 prisoners,
and inflicted some loss upon them, himself sustain-
ing the loss of only man, Captain Bullock (a very
gallant officer), who, it is feared, was mortally
wounded. After crossing Occoquan Creek, General
Stuart struck the Orange and Alexandria railroad,
and at Burke's station burst into the room where
the telegraph operator was at work, and commanded
him, upon pain of instant death if he misinterpreted,
to read off the messages which the click of the in-
strument pronounced to be at that moment passing
along the wires. In this manner General Stuart
learnt the movements which Gen. Heintzelman and
other Federal Generals were concerting with a view
to intercepting his retreat, and altered his course so
as to baffle their preparations. The luckless tele-
graph operator and his fellow-prisoners—all of them
dismounted cavalry soldiers—were started off on
foot to walk 45 miles to Culpepper station, in order
might learn by practical experience what
athalot they
ng
and weary travel was requisite to carry
them to that Richmond which they have been so
long in reaching. The submarine telegraph clock
found at Burke station is now a valuable acquisition
at Gen. Stuart's headquarters, and will probably be
the guide by which many a future reveatee and
tattoo will be sounded. After leaving Burke's sta-
tion Gen. Stuart proceeded towards Alexandria,
within eight miles of which town he turned towards
the north-west, and returned hither by a circuit
which brought him through Warrenton—which
town was occupied by a large body of Yankee cavalry
a fuw hours after Gen. Stuart had passed through it
and Culpepper, thus concluding an expedition less
important, bat not less successful, than its prede-
cessors.

Au rests, the
materialtw o antagonistic
ha nge
without anyground which
they held before the battle the same
of Fredericksburg, .
and
from which neither
of them rmmei.es still occupy
seems at present dis-
posed to withdraw. It is certain Lee will
that Gen.
never permit the Federals to occupy Fredericksburg,
and to convert it (as they are known eagerly to de-
sire) into a vast entrepot of stores and munitions of
war, which might serve as a base whence to com-
mence another expedition against
Richmond next
spring. The sufferings of the inhabitants of Frede-
ricksburg, who have lost everything which they pos-
sess upon earth, are likely to be protracted through-
out the winter; for in the present menacing attitude
which the two armies preserve in regard to the