The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-29 00:00:00

" EPIGRAM ON OLD ABE."

Some months ago the following epigram appeared.
It is doubly applicable since the last proclama-
tion :

" Honest Old Abe, when the war first began,
Denied ' Abolition' was part of his plan!
Honest Old Abe has since issued decree,
The war must go on 'till the slaves are all free.
As both can't be honest, will some one tell how,
If Honest' Abe then, he is Honest Abe now ?"
" MR, LINCOLN'S LONG FEATHER."

A very curious statement has been made by a
person who must be upon excellent terms with
Minister Adams. I presume the person is Beecher.
He says that when Mr. Seward was absent in the
West skylarking with Lord Lyons and the other
foreign Ministers, Mr. Lincoln got excited and went
to letter-writing. He addressed a letter to Mr.
Adams. It contained this :
What do the British Government mean ? What do they
want ? Do they really want war ? It May be the most
disastrous thing in the world for us ; and it is certainly
what we most earnestly desire to avoid; but if those rams
are permitted to leave England the people will force us into
war, whether we wish it or not. We shall not be able to con-
trol their exasperation, and the British Government ought
to understand this.

Mr. Adams was delighted at getting a letter in
the hand-writing of the President. He called upon
Earl Russell and said :
I do not call upon your lordship in my official capa-
city. Bat 1 have received a plain, outspoken, sincere
letter from President Lincoln, which, though addressed to
me as a private epistle, and not as an official document, I
am sure was not designed to be withhold from your know--
lodge.
Earl Russell listened attentively, and Adams
concluded :
but the honest,
This is not diplomacy, your lordship
,honest
dealing of a plain, blunt,
Mr. Lincoln. honest man, as is
detention of the rebel rams was promulgated, and
the
Within twelve hours after the order for
to the President is due the credit of effecting
what
a feather in his cap that he will keep it
Seward could never haNed one. Old Abe considers
letterT io co 1
uThobari:E hlaVeta s a i
et 0 p y
until he gets back to Illinois after his
this
oe k es
(03. Juopng
PresidenuY• The question is_
lqinister Adams, or Mr.
Who made that
ritish Secretary,
arl Russell P I • am afraid we cannot
fasten it upon the li • as it does not
appear furnished to him ; his
memory at hie age could hardly have retained the
exact wordH,

.
t'Dval : ,t .„..A„, - vi ,
.--- ~,ritilbil
,c----p ,1,-

HER MAJESTY.

OSBORNE, Dec. 28.

The Right Hon. C. P. Villiers arrived at Osborne
on Sunday, and had an audience of her Majesty.

Dr. Watson and Dr. Jenner also arrived from
London.

The Queen and Princess of Wales drove oat this
morning.
• The Prince of Wales and Prince Alfred went out
shooting, attended by Lieutenant-General the Hon.
C. Grey, Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. D. de Ros,
and Lieutenant-Colonel Keppel.

The Right Hon. T. H. S. Sotheron-Esteourt
M.P., and Mrs. Sotheron-Estcourt, have left Farrance'S
Hotel for Estcourt, near Tetbury.

The Hen. Capt. Elphinstone has left the Bruns-.
wick Hotel, Jerrayn-street, for Newport-Pagnell.
Major and Mrs. Wombwell have left the St.
George's Hotel.

Madame de Pereira and family have left the
Brunswick Hotel, Jermyn-street, on their return to Paris.
Mr. M'Cann, M.P., and Mrs. M'Cann have left
Brown's Hotel.

M. Gounod's " Faust" has been produced at NO
Yhrk, with Miss Kellogg as the heroine.
TRACTION ENGINES ON COMMON ROADS.--A spe-
cial meeting of the waywardens of the Faversham
Highway Board was held yesterday for the purpose of con-
sidering a resolution, of which notice had been given at
the previous meeting, to the effect that in the opinion of the
Board the use of locomotives on the public highways iS
dangerous and inconvenient to the public, and therefore
that an application be made to the Home Secretary, under
the powers of the 24th and 25th of Victoria, cap, 70, to pro-
hibit the use of all kinds of locomotives on any highwal
whatever within the district. The motion was supported
by Mr. Carter, the deputy-chairman, who contended that
the engines were altogether unsuited to the roads in the
district, and that their passage to and fro was exceed-
ingly dangerous. An animated and lengthened discussion
took place, from which it appeared that steam traction and
ploughing engines were now moat extensively used in Keat,
there being as many as 20 working in that district alone. It
was also contended that there was more danger by the
passing of traction engines by night than by day. Several
of the owners of the engines, including Messrs. Aveling
and Porter, of Rochester, who have made upwards of 100
of the engines, attended, and argued against the suicidal
course proposed to be adopted. On a division only two
hands were held up for the prohibition, and more than 50
against it, Lord Harris, who is a large Kentish landholder,
voting with the latter.

THE QUEEN AS A RULER.—Of the deep and
ready interest which the Queen has manifested ill
every great public event, whether calamitous or glorious,
which has occurred during her reign, she has given mere
than one memorable proof. We most of us remember a re-
markable letter from her Majesty to Lord Palmerston which
was read in the House of Commons on the occasion of
certain Ministerial explanations between that nobleman
and Lord John Russell, in which she intimated her
pleasure that no important despatch should be issued
from the Foreign Office until she should have been made
acquainted with its contents, and her pleasure taken
thereupon; and it is well known that she required to be
kept thoroughly informed as to the nature and the grounds
of every Ministerial decision on the great questions of the
day, so that, without in the least degree hampering the
action of the Cabinet, she might be able to exercise an inde-
pendent judgment on the course of affairs, and to discuss
them intelligently with her advisers. During the Crimean
war her sympathy with each day's tidings was painfully
intense ; no one who witnessed it can ever forget the eager-
ness with which she questioned every competent messenger
from the scene of danger as to all the details of that heroic
struggle, and the prompt and spontaneous tenderness with
she sought to alleviate the sorrows both of sufferers and
mourners can never be effaced from the memories of either.
There was a vigilant solicitude in her every word and
action throughout that sad and terrible crisis of our history
which perhaps did more than any other incident in her reign
to endear her to the nation's heart. It was a perfect cow'
munity of feeling, reaching from the hovel to the throne,--
Victoria Magazine for January.
A WOMAN KILLED BY HER HUSBAND IN LIVER-
POOL.—On Saturday evening last an unfortunate
occurrence took place, resulting in the death of a woman
named Catherine Lewis, wife of Richard Lewis, a master
carter, residing in Church-street, Soho. It appears that on
rat-v....n0t-1 home and foumd
his wife in the yard preparing provender for the horses
which he kept, and the dwelling house which adjoins the
yard being closed, he asked her for the key to
open the door. She was then partially intoxicated, and
was unable to furnish him with the key, and
getting alarmed she ran to her sister's in Bennett-street.
The house in the meantime had been entered by means of a
ladder, by which a man named Radcliffe, in Lewis's employ,
scaled the outer wall, and Lewis then went to his sister-in-
law's and brought his wife home. Radcliffe and a man named
Williams, also employed by Lewis, accompanied the latter
into a publichouse, where they had some drink, and the
deceased also bad drink in the same place. On reaching
home Lewis and the deceased remained together apparently
on friendly terms, and nothing more was thought of the
unpleasantness which had originally arisen. It seems tl tat
Lewis, when alone with his wife, made some further mis-
understanding with her respecting the disappearance °f
some bed-clothes, and while she was sitting in a chair 11°
dealt her a blow on the neck with his hand,
which catascd
her almost instant death. He made every exertion to re viva
her, but his efforts being unsueeet sful, he obtained the at ten"
dance of Dr. Taylor, Springfield, but the medical gentleivall
on his arrival pronounced life to be extinct. Lewis, m'h°
has been habitually a sober man for a considerable dive,
was deeply affected at the unfortunate issue of the disputei
and when taken into custody shed tears copiously. He
be brought before the magistrates for examination this day
(Monday).—Liverpool Courier.
A DELIRIUM OF NIGHTMARES.—Every suport,tim
tion that has ever disturbed the soul of ignorevt
man lent some one awful feature to the crowd of hid On!
images uprising in this man's mind. Awful Chaldean s°l
and Carthagenian goddesses thirsting for the hot blood °
human sacrifices, greedy for hecatombs of children flung
shrieking into fiery furnaces, or torn limb from limb by
savage beasts; Babylonian abominations; Egyptian Isis°r
Osiris ; classical divinities with flaming swords and nnLet
impassible faces, rigid as the destiny whose type they ?Orel
ghastly Germanic demons and witches—all the dreg
.
avengers that man, in the knowledge of his own wieired
ness, has ever shadowed for himself out of the darkness of
his ignorant mind, swelled that ghastly crowd until the
artist's brain reeled, and he was fain to sit wit.h his head.
his hands, trying, by a great effort of :the will, to overdo!.
these loathsome phantoms.-11188 Braddon's John Nardi ,
mont's Legacy.
BAVARIAN MORALITY AND INFANT MORTALITY;
—ln Lower Bavaria, illegitimate births are one in four ; 10
the Palatinate, where freedom from vexatious law
(through the introduction of the Code Napoleon) produce°,
_II
less proportion of crime, more contentment, and far great::
prosperity, they are one in nine—and in Saxony and Prue,
sia, one in 13. in Munich, in one year, there were 1,77.
legitimate and 1,702 illegitimate birth.--nor is it rare
the illegitimate births in one month to exceed the
lea
mate. But the worst side disclosed by these statistics
the proportion of deaths. In the whole of Bavaria mere
die under 14 than over—and the number that die bet.oir;
attaining one year is four times as great as the Were
which comes next to it, grown-up people who
60 and 70. That is, in one year more than 69,0thecoilcahreii_
died, and only 62,000 persons are over 14. oftbe greatest
dren 53,000 were under one year, whereaßopie between
number of deaths above 14 were 13,000, ofloonich.
60 and 70. Wilberforce's Social Life iDriE:
EAGLE.-012
MUTINY ON BOARD THE
_GOLa
saiii,_
vessel of
Captain Martin, and
die bile
Monday last the Golden Eagle
of
about 590 or 600 tons, the p
r:nljd Co, sailed from the Mersey'
of which Messrs. Poole
chartered by Messrs. Ifewle
cargo,
for, Sydney with a general On Sunday she returned to
and Co. were the consignees.
ening the crew was taken into cus-
todythe river, and in on the high seas. About. 807!
ichterateievutinY
arrived at the police-office in e
o'clock CaPtain
made the statement which led to the interference
street, and
stated that left
on a charge
of the police. a day or two after ha
Liverpoo , 1 when the ship was off the coast of Wales, some
distance from Holyhead, the crew mustered and came aft,
requesting to see him. He asked whether they had anY
complaint to make, and said if they had he would take it
down upon his official slate for transfer to the log. Th°Y.
did not, however, make any complaint, but returned for a
short time forward. Afterwards they again came aft, seized
the captain, tied him with a rope, placed him in his state
room, and stationed a sentry at the door. At the earns time
they secured the two mates. They then reversed the course
e.
of the ship and came back to Liverpool, keeping the caPta!
a prisoner until their arrival in the Mersey. Soon after the
vessel entered the river a boat came oil, and the steward,
acting under the captain's orders, got the boatman ea
.
board. The captain lay upon the table in the ancabinotect,_
feigned sleep, while the steward got the log-book and
bens,:
documents, tied them about him, and got into ithe
001.
leaving a rope hanging over the ship's side as be did
The captain then jumped up, rushed past the sentry,, Fe
upon deck, slipped over the side into the boat, and eseepea,
to shore. Upon the receipt of this information thectl:v
lice-station, Inspector Horne, Inspector Cairns, DeSte3.
Beattie, and 12 constables went off to the Golden
then
and there took into custody ten of the crew. :Yesterday
ten men were brought up at the police-court, when
captain's statement was received, and the case adjourn