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

complaints will reach the owner's ears, or oftener
we should say his eyes, which must detract more or
less from the pleasure of knocking down his birds.
To see a farmer look on unsympathisingly at a
neat "right and left," and then walk moodily
away, evidently occupied in calculatieg the
damage which he undergoes that another may enjoy
the fun, is disturbing to the best balanced minds.
The farmer may be quite in the wrong. His com-
pensation may be ample. But still clearly he is out
of humour. Now, from all this kind of petty annoy-
ance grouse shooting is quite free. That is a great
point. It is also, as far as regular shooting goes,
like the first plunge into the sea to the overworked
barrister or doctor—and the difference between that
plunge and what you get on the Ist of September
is as great, if experts are to be trusted, as the diffe-
rence between bathers from a machine and jumping
out of a boat into clear water a good mile or two
from land. These may be but travellers' tales, and
we do not believe in the whole of this alleged supe-
riority. But some of it is evidently true. One of
the great and growing advantages of all field sports
at the present day is in the healthy tone which they
impart to the members of fashionable society. There
has been a time in England when fox-hunting and
partridge shooting were looked on as the amuse-
ments of boors. The consequence was that the
sportsman was deficient in refinement, and the fine
gentleman in manliness. The two were seldom found
united. The season was in those days in the winter,
and when that was over, instead of the healthy
alternations of rural life, the exquisite of the period
sought only to make a mimic London of Bath or
Tunbridge Wells. A fine gentleman, as we learn
j from the Spectator, paid a flying visit to his estate
once in three years, "to raise his rents and de-
bauch a milkmaid," and this was all his tenants
ever saw of him. Nothing but evil could spring
from such a system as this; and the modern
method of passing the opening or early summer in
town, and the autumn and winter in the country,
is the only possible way of averting it. Some of
the most polished gentleman in England constitute
the Melton Club. Some of the most manly and
athletic congregate at White's and Brookes's. If
Chesterfield had lived in the the present day he
would have been " a first flyer," in Leicestershire,
as well as the first wit at St. James's; and it is in
the union of theee characters, scarcely, we think, to
be met with out of this country, that the peculiar
excellence of the Englig4l gentleman consists. Long
life, therefore, to the 12tit: of August, and let us
add, by anticipation, to the 14.'t of September also.
Both are red-letter days in the calendar of English
sports; and in the calendar of Eng,2iah sports we
shall not seek in vain for the elements .41f English
greatness.

HERALD.—The American war has already 14,:`8t
much of its interest to many persons. They assume,
somewhat hastily, that the North from henceforth
is to 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
as 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 tailure 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 be 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. If
this be true, there will probably be another battle
ere the close
iof the campaign; and this time General
Lee, fighting n the Southern country, and secure
of his communications, will take care that he is not
rt ae
pk
ee
ant atth ae
tdei
re vl
ea n t a
lessong fA
Ch a defeatoeell owr
shvi e
ww
oe
ou
ldd
shrivel up in a day the mushroom reputation of the
general whom fortune has so singularly favoured
that his friends proclaim him the superior of such
soldiers as Lee and Longstreet, Ewell and Hill,
men accustomed to victory and unwilling to accept
a reverse. In comparison with the chance of a
battle on the Rappahannock the movements of the
other armies possess but little interest. It is curious
that Johnstone and Bragg, whose armies were re-
presented but the other day as utterly crushed and
dispersed, seem able still to present a bold front to
the enemy on the line of the Mobile and Ohio Rail-
road. The war in Kentucky is going on with alter-
nate advantage to each of the combatants. The
siege of Charleston is still vigorously prosecuted ;
but since their repulse from Fort Wagner and re-
treat from James Island, the Federals have gained
nothing in this quarter. The Confederates may
meet with aid in more than one quarter. We do not
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-
sider it an encroachment on their rights, we suppose
that their Government will be forced by its neces-
sities to swallow the bitter pill of the Austro-
French empire in Mexico, which should 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 confusion 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 clues, 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
whitts 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. It' the North should 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.
DAILY NEWS.—If heroism and martyrdom were
sufficient title-deeds to national existence, P, land
would not now be fighting
.for the righttee
Cliovne..
Tried in the furnace of affliction, sharpened by de-
spair, and strengthened by endurance,cqnire El finer th
stancy of that noble people seems to acquire
and firmer temper from day to day, Wearing out the
weight of an immense army by desultory contests
over an ever expanding area of revolt, and carryiug
their resolve unshaken through loss and slaughter.
Borne down at one point by overwhelming force,
the insurgents risein another, like a mountain tor-
rent that, fed by subterranean streams, swells un