The Sun.
London, England, 1862-02-24 00:00:00

24, 1862.
THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY

left Bowling Green, one of their strong positions
before the defeat of poor Zollicoffer ; while their
victorious antagonists have seized on the bridge over
the Tennessee River, on which Fort Henry stood,
and have thus completely cut the railroad connec-
tion between Memphis, the Mississippi port, and
the Confederates who are endeavouring to cover the
North of Tennessee. These minor movements of
BURNSIDE on the Atlantic, and BUELL on the Mis-
sissippi flanks of the Confederates are evidently felt
by the latter to be of serious consequence to them.
It has already weakened the Confederate centre, and
will increase the difficulty of maintaining their posi-
tion at Manassas.

Still the Southerns appear to be as determined as
ever. We have mentioned the spirit of Southern
artisans so different from that of Northern con-
tractors; and amidst all the troubles of war, the
the South is actually "devoting much of its atten-
tion to the subject of new railroads." We read of
one road completed since the war began, of voting
a 150,000 dollars to complete another ; also a mil-
lion of dollars to construct another, in North Vir-
ginia and North Carolina, for military reasons.
This looks as if they had something to vote which
the workmen would take and could use as money.
But as ever, the issue depends chiefly on the temper
of the South. If as determined as it appears to
be, the North could not, in many campaigns, re-
duce it to submission. It will be only a miserable
prolongation of a war in which each side is deter-
mined not to yield except to exhaustion. The South
from the begining has fought in forma paupers , and
such litigants are by no means always the easiest to
vanquish.

Among the proposed new harbours and piers
designed to be erected at different points along
the British seaboard, there is one especially that
we are rejoiced to see has received the assent—
of course, upon " certain conditions"—both of the
Board of Trade and of the Admiralty. We refer
to the project of a Pier and Harbour at Hastings.
There is another scheme that has received a similar
duplex approval in the direction of the land's end,
the scheme, that is, of a St. Ives' Pier in Cornwall ;
besides which there is another for a new pier at Deal
and Walmer. The pier at St. Ives is "proposed to
be carried out 540 feet below high-water mark, and
in a depth of 30 feet at time of high waters" while
the proposed improvement at Deal is for " a pier on
iron piles, 920 out at sea, with a general width of
20 feet, and at the head of 40 feet, height of plat-
form above high-water mark 13 feet, and an
average depth at the head of the pier at low water
spring tides of 10 feet, so as to insure landing and
embarking at all times of tide." Both of which
enterprises are manifestly worthy of every possible
encouragement as calculated to favour so many
advantages, here on the coast of Kent, there on the
coast of Cornwall. But the undertaking that we
ourselves cannot but regard with particular com-
placency is, as we have intimated already, the one
marking out at last a new Pier and Harbour where
it has so long been manifestly wanted—namely, at
Hastings, and within view of its twin sister
watering-place of St. Leonard's. This new Pier
is sketched out according to the plans now
ripe for carrying into execution " opposite
the present fish market and beaching ground, com-
posed of iron screw piles, with stone hearting up
to high water mark, commencing from the site
of the old fort on the west, and 1,650 feet in a
southerly direction, and then curving eastward
1,230 feet. Also," so runs the account, " a simi-
lar pier or breakwater 1,200 feet east of the
other from the Rock a Nore ;' 1,650 feet in a
line nearly parallel to the western pier. These
works," we are informed, " will enclose a harbour
area, at time of high water, of 67 acres, and secures a
depth of 10 feet at low, and from 20 to 30 feet at high
water, with an entrance at the south-east corner of
300 feet wide." The plan looks well in itself, and
it is obviously one that it is very desirable should
be carried out at that particular part of our coast-
line, Long since, satisfied as we have been that some
such pier and some such harbour at Hastings, are
advantages there earnestly to be wished for, we
repeat that we are heartily rejoiced to find that the
scheme we referred to has received at length the
joint approval of the Admiralty and the Board of
Trade.

tion's love, while the worth of the other was hardly
known till we knew it by his loss.
From acknowledging the language of Bishop
WILyAINE it would seem ungracious to notice too
controversially other statements at the same meet-
ing. Nor was there much calling for remark of
that kind. In the praises of WASHINGTON all
Englishmen of all parties now concur. We all
sympathise with the feeling of the village clergy-
man who was presen, and who lived in
the place whence the WASHINGTON family
emigrated to AmerieavAsmHaNdeTWoNe s liwyeoduldthhearvee,
the memorials of the W
interested us as much as they did the Rev. J.
SIMKINSON. We did not understand exactly what
the chairman meant when he observed that the
Union "was throwing off the burden of a malign
power which aspires to rule or ruin." We will hope
that it was the South as a slave power, that
the Bishop meant, and that his communications
from England will impress on his American friends
the ardour with which Englishmen would support
the North in their contest, if they could but see the
" malign" strength of that power, its fatal virus,
to be that which the North aimbd directly to destroy.
If the war were distinctly one for emancipation,
England would find a way, regularly or irregularly,
to throw herself into the conflict with irrepressible
zeal.

The United States Consul spoke well, but he must
excuse us if we look on the Declaration of Inde-
pendence with eyes somewhat different from his
own. It may survive, as he says, the ruins of our
old world cathedrals and palaces, but as long as it
exists side by side with slavery, it does but point,
like the spires of a cathedral in a depraved neighbour-
hood, to a world above, which condemns what is
passing in the unworthy world on which it stands.
The world, where all men are born free and equal,
and so forth, is not the world of the old thirty-four
States. And if it be said that slavery is not to be
seen in the constitution, the answer is No, because
the fig leaves of a euphemism hide a fugitive slave
law from view.

Dr. BLIMBER'S old friends the Romans—those
great enemies of the worthy Doctor's young friends
—would certainly have counted it an evil omen, this
singular and most inopportune accident to the
Defence, upon her official trial of speed on Satur-
day morning near Spithead. It was one of the
oddest contretemps, by the way, well imaginable.
No foresight hardly could have guarded against it.
It arose from a little casualty so wholely unlooked
for in its way. According to previous arrange-
ment the Defence, 18, iron frigate, Captain R. A.
POWELL, C. 8., was, at a given time early on
Satuiday morning, to make her first official trial
of speed at Stokes Bay—the usual rendezvous for
that kind of experimental ordeal. Having duly got
up her steam there, away moved the Defence, in
every respect quite en regle, and with no seeming pro-
bability any where discoverable of the merest chance
of a hitch. Shortly, however, before the time for
starting, had arrived, comes an officer on shore with
tidings that the Defence (apparently a sad misno-
mer, from her incapability of defending herself
before even her speed could be tested), that the bran
new iron frigate Defence was there and then lying
disabled off Spithead ! And disabled, too, from a
collision with a forty-horse rower gunboat, to wit
the Fenella! The naval correspondent's account
of the odd way in which things had
fallen out, so as to aid in leading to
this vexatious little catastrophe, is so clearly
recounted by a few aptly chosen technicalities that
we give his words verbatim. It had so chanced,
then, " that the Fenella gunboat, doing duty be-
tween the harbour and Spithead, had, as will happen
with vessels of this class, got under the Defence's

bows as she lay at Spithead, and fouling the ship's
anchor, had by some means got adrift the tumbler
and shank painter, and the anchor, falling from off
the bill board and being brought up suddenly by
its stock suspended from the cathead, had swung
with its flukes towards the ship's bow and delivered
a blow at that portion of the vessel's bow imme-
diately under the cathead, about four inches above
the water line, and some 14 or 15 feet from the pro-
jecting stem at the water line, making a hole
through an plate which rendered the vessel's
stay at Spithead impossible, even at anchor, and
therefore putting an end to the trial for the
present." Such a ludicrous anti-climax as
it is, all things considered ! A hole driven

through the iron plate of the new frigate
by the fluke of her own anchor! Surely had
the Fenella gunboat been an enemy's vessel in
stead of our own, a telling hit like that delivered

" first go" must have been set down, according to
the term familiar among billiard players as an
unquestionable " fluke "—on the part of the Fenella
herself. As the only sequel that could be looked
for reasonably under the circumstances at the tail
of such an incident, we learn that the hole thus pro-
vokingly driven through the iron plate at the bows
of the Defence, was, at once on Saturday afternoon,
plugged up, just literally as a stop-gap, and the ill-
starred vessel taken round afterwards to Ports-
m3uth, to be more carefully examined and more
deliberately doctored. It can hardly be matter of
surprise to anyone to know that the whole of the
injured plate is expected to require removal, with
a view to the substitution of an entirely new one in
its stead. The whole circumstance is, of course,
merely a momentary baulk. But it is one so irri-
tatingly ill-timed as to be actually ludicrous. Next

time, the officers of the Defence had better
keep a sharp look-out ahead when they have
got the steam up for testing the frigate's speed
according to previous, arrangement—they had bet-
ter keep a right sharp 100k-out ahead to see that
there are no lubbers loitering about there, and
likely to hustle the ship's anchor off the bill board,
as was done the other day by the bungling crew of
the Fenella.

Few of our charitable institutions stand so de-
servedly high in public estimation as the admir-
able establishment at Brompton for the relief of
patients suffering from Consumption and other
diseases of the chest. The great numbers who
claim its assistance (the deaths from this class of
diseases being stated by the Registrar-General to
amount to one in four of the entire adult mortality
of the country) render the Hospital one of especial
importance, for it must be remembered that the
benefits of the institution extend far beyond the
the class of patients who seek its aid, by extending
T
our knowledge of this mysterious and fatal disease.he advantage of testing the relative merits of the
various remedial agents employed has also proved of
great advantage to the profession. We believe that this
hospital was among the first to adopt the now uni-
sally applied remedy of cod-liver oil. The arrange-
ments most careful and considerate
nature; areve every theregard being had to the comfort of
the patients, who, from the lengthened and fitful
nature of their sufferings,iti and the feverish restless-
ness which they pass so many
weary hours, stand especially in need of the
and languor
alleviations of art. The change from the close
room of some alley, with insufficient
and unsuitable food, and, very possibly, loneliness
niluitable dismal city
and parish doctoring, to the balmy air and fresh
gardens of Brompton, with all
the APpliances that

science can bring to ao•Jthe and relieve his suffer-
ings, must, indeed , be an inestimable comfort to
the poor, hopelP.ss patient who knows how heavily
his support, '-aeagre though it be, presses on his
struggling family, The kindness of Sir HENRY
FouLls has attached a chapel to the hospital, from
which the inmates derive the consolation of which,
unfortunately, they often stand so much in need.
In proportion to the relief and comfort of those
admitted to the benefits of the institution must
be the keen disappointment of the rejected ap-
plicants—rejected, not because their need is less
urgent, their sufferings less wearying, their friends
more able to maintain them, but because the
wards are full, and the disease so prevalent in
this country, that it has been called " the Eng-
lish malady," cannot excite sufficient pity among
us to support more than a limited number of pa-
tients. The applications during this winter have
been unusually numerous, and no less than 250
approved candidates are now waiting for admission.
The managers have recently put up several extra 5
beds, to endeavour to meet the pressure, thus in-
creasing the number of in-patients to 212. This
position of affairs has excited the sympathy of some
valuable auxiliaries, whose assistance, we cannot
doubt, will be of important service to the charity.
The following paragraph describes the plan pro-
posed :

"WANDERING MINSTRELS.--Many persons are doubt-
less not aware that under this very una!:uming title there
has existed for some time past a society which com-
prises among its members nearly all the most talented
and accomplished amateur musicians belonging to the
higher ranks of society. These are all highly-trained
and effioient performers, and are under the leadership
of their president, the Honourable Seymour Egerton.
The society, with that practical benevolence which distin-
guishes the English character, have most laudably desired
to render their talents and exertions subservient to the cause
of charity. They had first resolved to apply the proceeds
of a concert to the Hartley Colliery Fund, but sufficient
money having been subscribed for that purpose, as inti-
mated to them by the committee at Newcastle, they have
selected the Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the
Chest, at Brompton, as a charity well entitled to public
sympathy and support, A list of ladies patronesses, com-
prising the leading members of the nobility, attests the ap-
proval of the objects for which the Minstrels' have so
kindly proffered their valuable services. The concert will
take place on Tuesday, the 11th March, at St. James's
Hall; and it is confidently anticipated by the committee of
the hospital, as well as by the committee of management of
the concert, that a very large sum will be realised by this
attractive performance."

The hospital will complete its majority this
spring, having been in existence 21 years, and
we cannot believe that the charitable public will
suffer such an institution to flag ; appealing as it does
so powerfully to the sympathies of those who have
been bereaved by the agency of a disease which
is truly no "respecter of persons," and to the
gratitude of those whose hearths have been spaied
so fatal a visitant.