The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-30 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 30, 1863.

opened.ght
nin g paAs s
ed tremen-
dousalong the
s t o rm floodgates
o f
thunderefthe vallley which divides Missionary Ridge from
Lookout Mountain ; the deafening reverberations
li eaven
and were
li
of the thunder were tossed backward and forwards
from mountain to mountain, and the lightning
crashed among the trees, rending trunk and limb.
The consequent condition of the miry yellow clay
roads which surround Chattanooga may be con-
ceived. Bridges were carried away over Chicka-
mauga and Chattanooga Creeks—the Tennessee
ieisetsinkhtlajeogmtibalrtyuiadgsnd bridges.
xesssto.warteips:
seven
hv,aeeiwnsaumyn ctl oehe
position
sm oFe f
foor
wfdt
aeatbrhga:el
rpcgioovonnnetirfoneaogdrneofrsrsaoaetuinetsdn,Ctwthrt
enough—that of the Federals, with 45 miles of wag-
goning from Shell Mound, near Bridgeport, across
Walden's Ridge to the rear of Chattanooga, must
be irksome in the extreme. Nevertheless, both
armies continue to maintain their inactivity, and
seem as though they intended to winter in their
present lined. Unquestionably the rain which
has fallen will greatly enhance the difficulty of
extended operations in the field. But, although
I have not much faith in the inaugura-
tion of an active campaign by General Bragg,
it seems to me hardly probable that the Federal
General, strongly reinforced as he has undoubtedly
been, will abstain altogether from some attempt to
uproot his antagonist from Lookout Mountain,
which commands the railroad between Bridgsport
and Chattanooga, and impends over the river road
which approaches Chattanooga from the west. The
successful foray of General Wheeler and the Con-
federate cavalry in Rosencranz's rear, which wit-
nessed the destruction of some 800 waggons and
2,000 mules, is not calculated to increase Rosen-
eranz's good-humour. There is evidence that the
Federals in Chattanooga are greatly in want of fa-
rinaceous food, as the Yankee pickets eagerly seize
every opportunity of offering bushels of Federal
papers, or five dole, in greenbacks, for a pint of
corn meal or flour. It is a strange and unexampled
circumstance that for once the poor Confederates
should be better provisioned, as far as breadstuffs
are concerned, than the pampered Yankee. Occa-
sionally there is active shelling between the two
lines, but the batteries are too remote from each
other to do any harm.
Altogether, I carry away with me from this army
but one grain of comfort, which arises from the fact
that the brilliant and illusive glare which, prior to
this battle illuminated General Rosencranz and his
army, has been finally and effictually annihilated
and dispelled. Admitting that the hazardous and
unsoidierlike division of his army into sections,
which Rosencranz adopted prior to the battle of
Chickamauga, was attributable to his intelligent
comprehension of the calibre of the opposing Gene-
ral, it cannot for a moment be pretended that in
the battle itself Rosencranz showed any ability or
fertility of resource. As for the actual fighting of
his men, I have only once seen anything so dis-
creditable among the Federal troops fighting in
Virginia ; I mean the behaviour of the 11th Corps
of Yankees at the battle of Chancellorsville. My
belief is that the army, of which General Bragg is
now the head, is fully a match for any which the
Federals can bring against it at present; but how
long it will remain so, in presence of the disheart-
ening effects of inactivity, of a winter passed in a
cheerless and unhealthy location, and increasing
dislike which exists between General Bragg and
the Geuerals beneath him, it is impossible for me to
say. It is not my province to attempt to discrimi-
nate, or to distribute praise and blame between
General Bragg and his Generals, but it is utterly
impossible to blind my eyes to the fact that—
" Quicquid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi,"
and that the best interests of the Confederacy and
of General Bragg himself demand that he should
seek some position which will emancipate him from
the prejudices, animosities,and heartburnings which
now surround him on every side.

Frederick Grey and Capt. Drummond, when in
March, 1863, Mr. Whitbread, on whom devolved
the chief labour of preparing the Navy Estimates,
was compelled to resign on account of ill-health, and
he was succeeded by the Marquis of Hartington.
That nobleman did not continue long at Whitehall.
The death of Sir George Lewis left the post of Sec-
retary of State for War vacant the second time in
less than two years. Earl de Grey and Ripon,
who, as Under -Secretary, had displayed great effi-
ciency, was promoted, and in his subordinate post
the newly-made Lord of the Admiralty was in-
stalled, while Mr. Stansfeld succeeded the Marquis
of Hartington. Within the last few weeks there
have been important changes in the legal depart-
ment of the Government. Sir William Ather-
ton, finding that he had neither the physical nor
mental strength for conducting the highly moment-
ous proceedings in connexion with the Foreign En-
listment Act, resigned, and was succeeded by Sir
Roundell Palmer, Mr. Collier taking the Solicitor-
Generalship, and the office of Judge-Advocate of the
Fleet, which had been held by that gentleman, be-
ing conferred on Mr_ Phinn. Besides these changes
it may be mentioned that Sir R. Phillimore has suc-
ceeded Sir J. Harding as Queen's Advocate, and that
Sir Benjamin Hawes,Permanent Secretary for War,
has died, and that his office has been abolished. Thus
in four and a half years the Secretaryship of State
for War has been twice vacant, the Secretaryship
for the Home Department once, the Lord Chancel-
lorship once, the Postmaster Generalship once, the
four posts of the Attorney-General and Solicitor-
General for England and for Ireland have each been
vacant twice, and there have been four changes
among the Lords of the Admiralty. The Chief
Secretary for Ireland has been changed once, the
Under-Secretary of the Home Department and
Foreign Affairs once, of India twice, and of the
War-office three times.—Western Morning News.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

SPECTATOR..—The controversy which has been evident
in the Cabinet all the past week, which has produced four

successive Cabinet Councils on as many days, and has led
to at least one offer of resignation, bas apparently ended, and
for one result England finally declines to attend a Congress
_. •

of Paris. The great scheme for assembling Europe in coun-
cil to discuss the grievances of the world and remedy them
through a tribunal armed with the power of law, instead of
through a great faction fight, with nations for partisans and
armies for weapons, has been frustrated by English action.
Whether Russia accedes or refuses, the great South Ger-

man Power, always jealous for her last foothold in Italy,
will eagerly grasp at tine pretext, and without England or
Austria no agreement having the binding force of a Euro-
pean compact can be so much as expected. The "Con-
gress," should it meet at all, which becomes more and more
improbable, will be a mere "Conference," and Napoleon
may find, as private litigants so often find, that personal
communication only deepens jealousy and dislike. The
country, though regretting a project which had in it some-
thing strangely attractive, will not, we think, refuse to
endorse the decision, will probably, rather from instinct than
ar,lument, arrive at some such conclusion as this :—Had
England possessed at this moment what she only seems to
possess, a Minister enjoying the perfect confidence of the
people, yet familiar with all the springs of Continental
action ; able to threaten war with the certainty that the
country would follow his lead, yet resolved not to permit a
war except fcr some visibly adequate end, she might have
put her habitual distrust of Napoleon and her permanent

dread of vain specmation for once aside, and by guiding, or
checking, or doubling the immense force of France, have
secured an endurable peace for the world, As it is, the
practical difficulties are too visible, the possible advantages
too uncertain, the confidence of the country in its rulers too re-

signed, for any experiment so vast to awaken the necessary
enthusiasm. Tne project in England is given up, and men
turn from it uneasily to speculate. from data which grow every
moment more uncertain, upon what Napoleon will do next.
They see plainly enough that it is on him that all action
depends, that so long as he halts all Europe will halt, it
only out of wariness, that so long as he and Great Britain
can by any possibility keep step, wars must be limited in
area, in time, and in destructive effects. But then they can-
not decide how long he will halt, howlong he will suffer the
alliance to remain a possibility, how suddenly or in what
direction he may burst into an isolated course of activity
of which no one can see the end. It is felt rather than
known that there is war at hand, but the objects and direc-
tion of that war are still matters of feverish speculation.
Napoleon will war with Russia for Poland ; he will fight
Germany for the Rhine ; he will finish his work in Italy :
be will settlo the Eastern question with Russia for an ally—
such are a tow out of the speculations gravely discussed in
papers frequently well informed within this single week.
Every new accident in Europe, the death of a petty king,
the vote of a powerless Diet, even the resolutions of princes
whose very names had but yesterday been forgotten, fur-
nish new cause for alarm ; and so perturbed is the public
mind, that for the first and we trust the last time in history,
a resolve of the Saxon Duchies, whose very names politi-
cians can barely spell, has affJcted all European exchanges.
Men acknowledge on all sides that everything is shifting
visibly, that plans and speculations are equally futile till
we know what the ruler of France may intend to do in that

much dreaded future--the coming spring. One halt of a/1
this alarm is we believe unfounded. That the Powers, and
especially Russia, are arming fast, is evident ; that war will
come with the spring is only too probable; that any war,
however well justified, must at first be disastrous, is cer-
tain; but this talk about all manner of wars at once can be
productive only of unreasoning panic. The people who
accept or even consider the huge mass of rumours and sus-
picions and personal stories which the exiles and the gos-
sips are tossing by cartloads into the papers of the conti-
nent, forget the first two elements in the question—the
character of Louis Napoleon and the public opi-
nion of France. In the long run, and on external
politics, those two elements will be found, when

rightly estimated, either to be, or believe themselves
to be, en rapport, and to estimate one without counting the
other is to calculate aberrations in the solar system with
one of the planets forgotten. The moment they are consi-
dered together 'whole sets of vague apprehensions will at
once be laid aside. This secret Russian alliance, for

example, might, for aught arybody can tell, be possible to
Napoleon. We doubt if it is, for it would involve sooner or
later that conflict with England which, except in the last
resort, when' every other prospect has failed, he does not
wish to provoke. But admit that it is on certain conditions
possible to himself, there remains the question, is it possible
to France ? Napoleon is no Oriental despot, no Caliph or
Great Mogul, to wage mighty wars in spits of all sections
of his own people. His role is to represent France, or where
that is impossible, as in the Italian war, then the party of
progress in France—the party which, and not the rich, has
the courage to make revolutions. Neither of these two
powers, neither France as a nation nor the progressive classes
of Franca, desire an alliance with Russia. The Republicans
would regard it with horror, as a final breach with the Re-
volution. as a menace to social advance through every part
of the Continent; the bourgeois would regard it with tremor
as leading to the one contingency they dread—a final rupture
with England ; the priests cannot see heretics exalted with •
out a pang of annoyance;
the cultivated classes would sigh
over the hopes they have indulged for Russo-Poland, and
the army would rage at a policy which, while it abandoned
the comrades who died by their sides at Borodina, would
cut off from them finally the hope of a march on the
Rhine. For the Russian Czar, unscrupulous as he may
be, cannot abandoned the one friend who, in his extremity,
has threatened war on his behalf. The alliance with Russia
for active objects is, in the present state of French opinion,
with men's minds all ulcerated by the stories told of Gen.
Berg and decrees actually published by Mouravieff, simply
impossible, So is a direct attack on all Germany in order
to gain the Rhine. Napoleon is not a gambler who stakes
immense wealth already in hand in order to gain double or
quits, and though a blow for the Rhine might,
if unsuccessful, finally seat his dynasty, failure would as
finally unseat it. Even if he goes to war for Poland he must
move with exceeding wariness, for England might not
tolerate farther aggression, and the one object the Haps-
burgs never abandon is the hope of a German crown. They
dare not sell the Rhine, and without their consent war for
a frontier involves a contest between France unaided and
the whole Germanic people backed by the recovering Rus-
sian strength. Napoleon plays for quick and decierve wars,
and though he may, and we trust will, etrike a blow for
Poland, still with Mexico on his hands, Germany sulky
and suspicious, and England ever watchful, his object will
be to limit, not to enlarge, the area and scope of his opera-
tions. War, of course, may produce any amount of unex-
pected or undeserved results; but those results are not
planned, and it is the suspicion of possible plans, of deep-
laid intrigues for aggrandizement, which produces such
perturbation. Of course, if Prussia, forgetting alike her
history and her treaties, with her people in open conflict
with their king, and a Ministry whose best future will be
to escape the block, is mad enough to rush upon Denmark,
the Emperor of the French may have a great opportunity.
But even then annoyance of Great Britain at his aggran-
dizement, and the chance of a European coalition, which
we should not without guarantees help him to resist,woulcl
tend to make him hesitate before he changed a war " for
the public law" into a war of boundaries. There are rocks
enough ahead, and while Europe is subjected to the ambi-
tion of one great brain uncertainty must continue ; but it
is not by feeding imaginations fast getting morbid that men
can clear tbeir eyes. Every sheet in the dark looks a
ghost, and Europe is in the dark—but it is at least well to
remember the vast antecedent improbability that any
ghost should be there.
SATURDAY REVIEW.—That strong feeling has been ex-
cited by the untoward events at Kagosima is creditable to
public morality, out indignation is generally in a hurry,
because anger is incompatible with scepticism. As the
facts of the case are only known from the reports of
Colonel Neale and Admiral Kuper, it is plausibly argued

that culprits may be fairly condemned on their
own voluntary admissions—but English law generally
requires additional proof that the criminal act was really
accomplished. It is also worth while to recollect that, instead
of consciously confessing their guilt, the Minister and the
Admiral are complacently assuring their superiors that they
have sedulously obeyed their instructions. Their own in-
terpretation of their conduct is not to be implicity accepted,
but their accusers ought to allow that apparently confident
innocence must at least admit of an intelligible explanation.

English writers who have condemned the transaction dog-
matically assert that Lord Russell's despatch afforded no
justification for the consequences which nevertheless un•
_ _ _

. _
doubtedly.followed from the attempt to comply with its
terms in the strictest manner. Colonel Neale, who had the

strongest motive for endeavouring to understand the mean-
ing of his superior, evidently believes that his own proceed-
ings are covered by his orders, and that it is even necessary
to apologise for his inabili y to exact complete satisfaction
from the Japanese. Admiral Kuper also, who must have
seen Lord Russell's instructions, is anxious to satisf3 the
Admiralty that he has neglected no practicable method of

enforcing the policy which he attributes to his Government.
Both functionaries assume that what they have not done,
and not what they have done, can alone justify them to
censure. Hasty critics may reply that the stolidity of a
hardened conscience aggravates the guilt of unavowed
,mis-
deeds, but the simultaneous presence at Kagosima of two
bloodthirsty and unprincipled Englishmen in high positions
requires some explanation, or perhaps even a suspension of
judgment, Whatever may have been the special policy of

the Home Government, the Duke of Somerset is responsible
for the appointment of Admiral Kuper, and Lord Russell
for the appointment of Colonel Neale. It has not been
suggested that the Admiral has hitherto been notorious for
cruelty of disposition, and it ought not to have been for-
gotten that Colonel Neale has been repeatedly accused, by
his countrymen ',resident in Japan, of indifference to their
safety and to the protection of their property, and of undue
subservience to the native authorities. His character may have
altered, or it may have been misunderstood, but on the whole
he is entitled to a hearing before he is definitively condemned.
Lord Clarence Paget committed an error of the same kind,
in the opposite direction, when he informed his constituents
at Deal that Admiral Kuper's conduct at Kagosima was a
proof not only of gallant seamanship, but of considerate
humanity. According to this account, the destrUction of
the town was caused by the unsteadiness of the English
fire when the gun-platforms were rocking up and down
with the waves under the influence of a violent gale. The
sailors of Deal are invited to confirm the statement that it is
impossible to take accurate aim in a storm, and they are
therefore expected to acquit the Admiral, who only in-
tended to silence the batteries, of intentionally setting the
town on fire. The sagacity of mere landsmen is equal to
the additional remark that a high wind has a tendency to
render a conflagration more destructive, and philanthropic
civilians might even inquire shether a battle conducted
under circumstances so anomalous might not have been
conveniently postponed until the gale subsided. It might,
indeed, be Admiral Kuper's duty to return the fire of the
batteries; but. according to Lord Clarence Paget, he neces-
sarily missed the forts, and directed his guns on the peace-
able inhabitants of the town. If a principal in a duel were
prevented by any accidental impediment from pointing his
pistol at his adversary, the laws of honour would scarcely
require him to shoot his adversary's second. It is not alto-
gether clear whether Lord Clarence Paget's apology was
founded on conjectures of 11;s own, or on unpublished in-
formation. His statement that Admiral Super expressed
regret for the destruction of the city is important, if it is not
to be understood as a hypothetical embellishment of an
after-dinner speech. It was commonly remarked that
Kuper might have escaped the greater part of the popular
censure which he has incurred if his report to the Admi-
ralty had contained the professions of sorrow which he is
now supposed to have uttered. If his private letters con-
tradict his public despatch, his humane feelings may be
vindicated at the expense of his consistency, and his absti-
nience from any official' utterance of regret must be ex •
plained by the supposition that he attributed to the Ge-
-1 vernment or the Admiralty a revengeful pertinacity which
for himself, in his private capacity, he disclaimed. If, as
is possible, the Secretary of the Admiralty really knows no
more of fue transaction than the rest of the world, it would
perhaps have been judicious to withhold information until
he had himself received it.

THE READER.—We do not know that Earl Russell has
been particularly prolific in memorable phrases, considering
his opportunities; but his "Rest and be thankful" of this
autumn has been a great success. It has been the phrase of
the season. Not to take account of references to it for
several weeks past in newspaper articles, it has made its
appearance this very week as a text for comment in two
such opposite quarters as Mr. Bright's speech at Rochdale
and Earl Powis's address at his mansion in Berkeley-square
on accepting the High Stewardship of the University of
Cambridge. The origin of the phrase may not be gene-
rally known, The speech in which Earl Russell made use
of it was one delivered during his recent autumn vacation
iu Scotland, when he had been enjoying Highland scenery
and probably climbing a few mountains. Now there are not
a few of the fine but toilsome mountain ascents in Scot-
land, at the top of which, when you are dead-tired, you
come upon a stone-and-turf seat, or, it may be, a shieling,
on which you read painted in rude letters, the inscrip-
tion " Rest and Be Thankful," telling you that other
wayfarers have been there before you and have
felt very much as you do. You obey the injunc-
tion, and sit down for a longer or shorter
time to recover your breath and rest your limbs;
and, if you are alone, and, as, usually happens, the resting-
place is so chosen that you can trace from it all the wind-
ing way by which you have come, and let your eye range
over wondrous adjacent tracts of silent solitude lying be-
neath you, the chances are that you yield to the genius of
the spot, and have a little fit of as wholesome philosophic
meditations as you are ever likely to have. There are, we
say, not a few of these spots in the part of Scotland which
tourists visit ; and we have ourselves seen " Rest and Be
Thankful" painted on stone seats on eminences of very
easy accesss that it was plain they must have been very
very asthmetic persons indeed that had found occasion
there either for the seat or for the sentiment. But the
original "Rest and Be Thankful," from which all the
others are mean plagiarisms, is at the head of Glencroe,
through which you make your way on foot, or otherwise,
going from the top of Loch Long to the top of Loch Fyne.
That is the spot weer° the sighing soul of a whole district
first vented itself in a pious topographical expression of its
fatigue; that is the only "Rest and Be Thankful" to be
found marked as such on the map of Great Britain. Our
venerable Foreign Minister, there is little doubt, had been
there this autumn ; he had there probably had his brief fit
of meditation, seeing in the difficult and cocky Glencroe
beneath him—as thousands of other wayfarers have done—
an image of his life up to that moment. But, though the
actual Glencroe mignt be the same to all wayfarers, how
different the spiritual Glencroe which an Earl Russell
would see imaged in it from :hat which more private mortals
could see I At all events, the lesson of the spot remained
with him, associated with the name of the spot. i t
occurred to him that there are moments of the collec-
tive life of nations, as well as in the lives of individuals,
when they should rest satisfied with what they have at-
tained and not seek for more; and it farther occurred to
him that the present, at least in respect of home politics,
may be one of these moments in the collective life of Great
Britain. Atad so he promulgated the lesson; and a phrase
picked up at the head of Glencroe has gone through all the
newspapers, and been repeated in Rochdale and in Berkeley-
' square. The poet Wordsworth was also once at the head
of Glencroe. It was 32 years ago ; and he also had his
little meditation at " Rest and be Thankful." It took the
form of a sonnet, as follows :
" REST AND BE THANKFUL."
AT THE HEAD OF ()LENORA'S.

-- -
Doubling and doubling with laborious walk,
Who, that has gained at length the wished for Height,
This brief, this simple wayside Call can slight,
And rests not thankful ? Whether cheered by talk
With some loved friend, or by the unseen hawk
Whistling to clouds and sky-born streams, that shine
At the sun's outbreak, as with light divine,
Ere they descend to nourish root and stalk
Of valley flowers. Nor, while the limbs repose,
Will we forget that, as the fowl can keep
Absolute stillness, poised aloft in air,
And fishes front, unmoved, the torrent's sweep—
So may the Soul, through powers that Faith bestows,
Win rest, and ease, aua peace, with bliss that Angels
share.

There is some difference, it will be peeceived, between this
spiritual rendering of the Glencroe inscription by the poet
and that by our Foreign Minister. Earl Russell's applica-
tion of the text is that there may be times when farther
striving may be useless or uuadvisable, and when the best
thing people can do is to rest satisfied with what they have
got, and be thankful that they have got so much. The poet
Wordsworth's interpretation of the text, we venture to say,
is both deeper in itself and more exact in its truth to the
circumstances.

THE LONDON REVIEW.—The aspect of the Schleswig-
Holstein dispute becomes more warlike almost every day.
Although neither Austria nor Prussia has yet made any
sign, the smaller German powers appear to be quite carried
away by the popular enthusiasm. It is an obvious policy
for the petty dukes and king who are not on too good terms
with their own sutjects, to stave off inconvenient discus-
sions by fostering the national sympathy for the Germans.in
Schleswig. Nor is it inconsistent in sticklers for the divine
right of rulers to protest against the sacrifice of the claims of
the Augustenburg family to the convenience and the peace
of Europe. But an obvious policy is not always a sound one,
and if Germany has once more to bear the brunt of a great
war, it is not likely that the people will again be content to
bear the sacrifices and reeign the profit to their princes. It
is scarcely possible that the most obtuse of Teutonic sove-
reigns seriously believes that Denmark will be left to main-
tain unaided her own integrity end the provisions of the
treaty of 1852. But unless they can secure the acquiescence
of England, France, and Russia in their projects, the at-
tempt to sever Schleswig-Holstein from the state to which
it ch
it belongs must entail the risk of a contest whose
dimensions are quite uncertain, but which wtill7:aensrtetaatien
of
before it closes reduce every ruler in Germ
any
However, it is no
abject dependence upon his parliament.
imprudent and rashly dis-
concern of ours if kings will be th3P
turb a status quo from which they derive more benefit than
any one else. But we cannot remain indifferent to the
threatened disturbance of a settlement under which oo