The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-30 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVNNING, DETEII3ER 30, 1862.

the boy lived to come safely out of the terrible en-
gagement.
._

GENERAL " STONEWALL" JACKSON.

At a distance of seven miles from General Lee's
head quarters, near the little village of Bunker-
hill, were the head-quarters of the hero of heroes
of this struggle, General "Stonewall" Jackson.
We had been taught to expect a morose, reserved,
distant reception; we found the most genial, cour-
teous, and forthcoming of companions. A bright,
piercing, blue eye, a slightly aquiline nose, a thin,
tall, sinewy frame, " made all over of pinwire," a
great disregard of dress and appearance—these are
the characteristics of General Jackson's exterior.
There is also about him a very direct and honest look.
The disappointing circumstance is, that his voice,
which is rapid in its utterance, is weak and unim-
pressive. Passionately attached to the Valley of Vir-
ginia, which has for so long been the principal scene
of his achievements, idolised by the inhabitants
of Winchester and of the Valley, Gen. Jackson has
acquired such a fame in that entire neighbourhood
that it is sad to think what would happen if the one
life round which such prestige clings should yield
to a stray bullet or to the chance of disease. Sinewy
and wiry as the General seems, it is impossible not
to fancy that he is wearing himself terribly by his
restless, sleepless activity, by his midnight marches,
and by the asceticism of his Hie. The respect and
consciousness of his presence, and what that presence
means, exhibited by Ws staff, impressed me very
strongly, and seemed to exceed the respect exhibited
towards Gen. Lee. He spoke a few hearty words
of admiration of Gen. Lee, saying that he never
should wish to serve under an abler commander.
But his heartiest and most enthusiastic utterances
were in admiration of the Cathedral edifices of Eng-
land, and notably of York Minster. He dwelt with
great animation upon the vibration of the air pro-
duced by the deep notes of the organ in York
Minster, and which he had never heard equalled
elsewhere. lt is rare to find in a Presbyterian such
appreciation and admiration of Cathedral magnifi-
cence.

There are such endless stoeics about Gen. Jack
son that to repeat them would fill a volume. Stories
of his being wrapt in prayer in the midst of a fierce
engagement—stories of the unaffected earnestness
and piety of his life in tent, and of his black ser-
vant saying that when his master, who invariably
prays morning and evening, rises also in the middle
of the night to pray, he knows that gi eat and criti-
cal events are imminent. A most undemonstrative,
reticent man, doubtless, in all that regards his voca-
tion of a soldier. There is every reason to think
that, when the war is over, Gen. Jackson will be
the very first man to bury himself in the deepest
obscurity of private life. Throughout this war it
has been the practice of Gen. Jackson to throw him-
self, disregarding his own inferiority of numbers,
upon large bodies of his enemy, and the day is ordi-
narily half-won by the suddenness and desperation
of the attack. His usual policy then is to retire,
upon which the correspondents of the Northern
journals, who upon the day of Gen. Jackson's on-
slaught, have been half-frightened out of their
lives, announce with their usual fanfares a great
Federal victory, and joy and exultation are uni-
versal. In a few days, however, when the Federals
have reached some spot where it suits General
Jackson to attack them, he pounces upon them
again, and frequently the very fame of his second
approach drives his opponents to a precipitate re-
treat without fighting, if the ground admits of such
a possibility. The upshot of nearly a year and a
half of General Jackson's conduct of the war, fre-
quently at the head of no more than a handful of
men, is that no permanent foothold has been gained
by the Federals in the Valley, and that, at will,
General Jackson has run his opponents, sometimes
including at once two or three Federal Generals of
rank, out of the Valley. As there are many
conflicting reports about the origin of the name
" Stonewall," it may be interesting to repeat the
true circumstances under which it was given. In
the first battle of Manassas, on July 21, 1861,
General Bee, of South Carolina (himself subse-
quently killed in the same action), observing his
men flinching and wavering, called out to them to
stand firm, exclaiming, " Look at Jackson's men ;
they stand like a stone wall!" In his official report of
the battle, Gen. Beauregard employed the same ex-
pt ession in connection with General Jackson's com-
mand, and the name has clung to General Jackson
ever since.

THE FINANCIAL STATE OF FRANCE.

The following is a full translation of M. Fould's
Report of the financial condition of the French
Empire, the substance of which has already appeared
in our columns :

fens necessitating an application for credits, they do
no exceed 1,200,000 f.

" I will now briefly ex,lmine the budget of 1863.
That budget was voted with an excess of receipts
of 8,300,000 f. It we assume that the product of
the taxes and of the revenues will reach in 1863
the same total as in 1862, the estimated excess of
the receipts will be exceeded by, at least,
60,000,000 f. It will be increased also by 5,000,000 f.,
which figured in the budget for the reimburse-
ment of the Bank, and which, by the terms of
the convention of the 21st June, 1857, cannot be
demanded before the expiration of the privile,,;e
of that establishment—viz., in 50 years. Reckon-
ing, in addition, some other savings that may be
effected in the interest on the floating debt, I have
estimated an excess of receipts of 80,000,000 f.
There is no presumption in supposing that the con-
stant progress of the public revenue, which for the
last ten years has been about 38,000,000 f. a year,
will not stop in 1863. Even though it should be
only 30,000,000 f. for that year, the excess of re-
ceipts would not reach to much less thanllo,ooo,ooof,
and would allow us to meet the expenses of the
Mexican expedition in 1863, as well as the unfore-
seen expenses that might be required at home.
Without wishing to anticipate the future, it may
be conjectured that the Mexican expedition will
not occasion in 1863 the grave expenses of trans--
port and victualling which have weighed so heavily
upon the budget of 1862. In fact, the expeditionary
corps is now upon Mexican soil; it is furnished
with all requirements for a forward march; and
from the commencement it will find itself in a re-
gion where the provisioning will be easier and less
onerous. Whatever the issue of this hope, the ex-
cess of receipts, the source of which has just been
indicated, justifies us, under any circumstances, in
expecting that theequilibrium of the budget of 1863
will not be disturbed.