The Sun.
London, England, 1862-09-20 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, SEPTEVIBEh 20, 1862.

never been a part of old SioNEwALL's stra-
tegy to let his opponents know how many
men he had with him. Poor POPE thought he
was but making a raid, when a large army was at
Manassas. One thing is amusing indeed. The old
,t strategical reasons " are mooted again to account
for the presence of the Confederates in Maryland.
It was the policy of the Federals to bring them
there ! When will the Government or the people
of the North give up their inveterate habit of lying!
The strategic reasons are obviously the same as took
M'CLELLAN first to Harrison's Landing, next back
to Yorktown, and then POPE back to Washington
itself. Till some feat of Northern generalship
convinces us to the contrary, there can be but one
reason imagined for the Federals permitting the
entrance of their conquerors into Maryland—that
they could not help it.

We can, meanwhile, but be on the lookout for
stirring incidents now. If the Confederates be
really in sufficient force to prosecute the war
in Maryland, and M'CLELLAN be thus forced
into the field to meet them, we must
soon either hear of a fearful battle between
two very able men, or of a rapid Confede-
rate retreat across the Potomac. Washington, with
an army of 150,000 men in it, is not likely to be
attacked. LEE will not waste his men in this way.
But if he can succeed in isolating it from the rest
of the North, of what use, in the military sense,
will it be to the Federals P Hard, indeed, would
be the fate of Mr. LINCOLN if he had to pack up
all and leap on board his gunboats on the Poto-
mac, to prevent his papers sharing the fate of POPE'S
at Catlett's station. Yet it could hardly surprise
us, after what they have done, should they give
the PRESIDENT summary notice to quit; informing
him that, as Columbia district was carved out of
Maryland and Virginia originally, in this grand
secession. it fairly belonged to the South. They
might say it was to them what Rome is to the
Italians.

What the effect of late reverses will be on the
general issue, no one can yet divine. All lies in
their effect on the temper of the North, and that is
not yet fully developed. The South has called for
300,000 more soldiers, probably to show the North
that it will not be vanquished by mere appeal to
numbers. The North has its last 300,000, though
we believe it is very doubtful whether they will
really be forthcoming; but it threatens a draft
for as many more. Now, it is certain that, unless
there is a general enthusiasm for the war in the
North, this last army cannot be created. Will
there be ? That is the question. We much doubt
it, unless, indeed, the Government were strong
enough to throw slavery to the winds, and to begin
a steady, well considered plan for arming the negroes,
and causing conquest and emancipation to go hand
in hand. That this could be done we have little
doubt, but there is, we fear, neither the head nor
the heart for it. We read, indeed, a second time of
negro regiments to be enrolled at Hilton Head ; but
how can the negroes trust the bitterly contemptuous
Northern whites to deal fairly and honourably by
them. Were known friends of negroes able to act as
their generals, the poor slaves might hasten to
their standards, and gladly fight for their race.
But we fear Mr. LINCOLN, whose only wish is to
send them all to Central America, is not the man to
gain their confidence. Indeed the North has
neither the head nor the heart to use the negroes
as they ought. Northern opinion seems to be
strongly tending that way. The New England
States, and even New York, have in different ways
spoken out. Still, we fear, it is all too late. The
North will be thoroughly beaten by the South and
slavery, because it threw away its grand chance of
breaking up their fatal cessation.

THOMAS CAMPBELL, the Poet, once waggishly
drank, in London, the health of BONAPARTE—
because the then Emperor of FRANCE, King of
ITALY, Mediator of Switzerland, and Protector of
the Confederation of the Rhine, had recently put
to death a German publisher !
VICTOR Htrao, the Poet, has, very lately, on
the other hand, drank, at Brussels, to the health
of all Publishers—toasting " The Press " in words
that might almost be called its apotheosis !
And, certainly, the Great French Author—
Lyrist, Dramatist, and Novelist—has had reasons
enow given to him, very lately, for pledging, in
heartfelt earnest, to that institution which has
been to him, even in exile, So conspicuous a plat-
form from which he has been enabled to address
himself, not only to his far-off countrymen, but,
further still, to the great mass of his contem-
poraries and to posterity. To change the metaphor
—Has he not found it a trumpet to which
he has had but to place his lips and
breath, to wind blasts that have rung
round the world ? Sounds that he may rest assured
will very long be echoed. Nay, more even than this
—Banished from his country by political events (to
employ yet another figure of speech) he has found
it for him to be the very purse of FORTUNATUS,
into which he has had but to dip his hand to draw
forth wealth rather than simple competence. In re-
turn for his last great fiction, the ten volumes of his
romance of the nineteenth century, Les Illiserables,
he is known to have drawn from the Publishing
House at Brussels the princely sum of sixteen
thousand pounds. No wonder the ironical face-
tiousness of the Author of the " Pleasures of Hope,"
when drinking, half a century back, to the health
of BONAPARTE as the tyrant who hung a Book-
seller, should now, after the lapse of fifty years, have
a pendant so startling in its contrast as the toast
given so eloquently the other day at Brussels by
the Author, as we may call him, pecuniarily, and so
far literally, of the " Pleasures of Hope Realized !"
M. VICTOR HUGO has good and substantial reasons
for speaking in honeyed words of what has been to
himself no broken reed to lean upon. Leaning upon
it, his hand is not pierced, but oiled. Is not the
poetic slang for money, oil-of-palm ? And has not
VICTOR HUGO'S hand been just filled with some-
thing more lasting than Fairy gold—that illusory
red gold that melts like snow in the grasp, or shri-
Tells up into so many dead leaves ?

Whatever the oceasion afforded, to the illustrious
French writer, for the indulgence of his grateful
emotions of love and homage for that Press of
which as a medium whereby to influence the
intellect of his generation he has so often resplen-
dently availed himself—the speech through which
these feelings of his heart were articulated must be
regarded as in many respects most remarkable, as
in some as most memorable. Speaking of Pope
GREGORY XVI.% definition of the Press, in a cele-
brated encyclical—"gula ignea, caligo, impetus
inunanis cum etrepitu horrendo (a fiery throat,
darkness, a fierce rush with a horrid noise)," VICTOR
HUG() exclaimed the other day, in this speech of his
at Brussels—" I dispute nothing of the descrip-
tion. The portrait is striking A mouth of fire,
smoke, prodigious rapidity, formidable noise. Just
so. It
th is e a
m locomotive passing; it is the
press,
might, locomotive is
of progress. Where
is it going Where
is it dragging civilisa-
tion ? Where is this powerful pilot engine
carrying naticas P The tunnel is long, ob-
scure, and terrible, for We may say that
humanity is yet underground, so much matter
envelopes and crushes it, ao many superstitious,