The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-23 00:00:00

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THE SUN.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23, 1862.

The accounts of the great battle near Corinth in
the American papers, and letters, fully confirm the
view -we took yesterday of Southern strategy.
BEAUREGARD marched his men from both flanks of
his line to Corinth, and attempted to crush Gen>
GRANT before BUELL and his reserves could come
to his assistance. The plan was ably conceived,
and ably and bravely carried out. It must have
succeeded completely, had not the Federal
reserves, and their superior artillery, been
nearer than BEAUREGARD had supposed. Even
taking the results as they now stand,
we should think the battle will repay its
losses to the South. Both aides Claim a large
number of prisoners, and of captured artillery ; the
accounts from each being on these points, and in
regard to the number of the killed and wounded,
so evidently coloured by the medium through
Nlhich they reach us, that it will be long before we
know the exact truth if we ever do. We incline to
the opinion that, if the Confederates had the sense
to march off immediately the guns and men they
captured the first day, they must have much the
larger number, as the Federalists were evidently suf. I
prised, and much the weaker. By a telegram to-day I
BEAUREGARD claims 2,000 prisoners. But the great
advantage to the South is, that BEAUREGARD has
shown his men once more that they are able to face
and conquer the Northerns in a fair fight. Re must
have raised their spirits after their long succession
of defeats and surrenders, since the first in Tennes-
see, in which ZOLLICOFFER fell.

Our readers will see that on both days the battle
'was fought with the utmost resolution and courage
oe both sides. The Federals were quite overpowered
by the first onset, their left wing thoroughly beaten,
and the right only held its ground with great diffi
cultY under 11/PCLERNAND. The Federals knew,
however, that they had the river Tennessee
behind them,
and that BUELL was not
far off —_ the
difficulty of flight and the
23 pproach of 1,
"Eap sustained their energy ; and
in tb.e evening they began to receive the ex-
which of
pected aid, tonne encouraged them. Still,
the Confederates were but
liesid es occupying two-thixda the more energetic, and,
of the Federal en-
campment
on the left, bore
hard on their right.
This was at five p.m. on the
first day. But the
Confolerates were now too newt
the river. BUELL'S
artillery on the opposite bank Nytt
' too much for
got on the
them; ; two gunboats also Confederate
flank and enfiladed their line, and they ware
neces-
sarily stopped.

Dvaing the night, from the ficeotlnts of the
Rde.rals themselves, the numbers which came to
their support must have given them great
superiority over the Confederates, and in
artillf my the Unionists had confessedly greatly
the i a vantage. Yet the second day was almost
as h 3rd fought as the first ; we again read On
each :side of successful attacks, of rallyings and re-
pulses, and of the desperation of Southern bravery.
Not till 3 p.m. did General GRANT—seeing the
Confederates begin to waver under the attacks of
the continually arriving fresh reginzente of the
Northerns -make a charge with five regiments,
headed by pinked men, which seems to have decided

the fate of the day. By 5.30 General BI7ELL was
following the whole Confederate army in its retreat
upon their strong position at Corinth. It w evi-
dently a day in which neither side had anything
to blush for, but which, as the South has had so
many mortifications lately, must be more encourag-
ing to it than to the North. The South has made a
successful assault, and though it seems somewhat
Hibernian to say so, the North has made a success-
, ful defence. Each retain their former positions.
It remains to be seen which can reorganise first to
a fresh attack on the other.

The capture of Island No. 10 was effected with
considerable perseverance and skill, and does much
credit to General POPE and Commodore FOOTE ; it
was effected too probably without much loss of life
—with the loss of none on the side of the Federals.
It leaves Memphis and the Mississippi quite open
to the advance of the Federal gunboats, and de-
prives the Confederates of 5,000 men and 100 guns
captured.

On the other hand, what Editor LINCOLN—for
he now supervises the entire Northern press—per-
mits us to know, points to the probability that
M'CLELLAN'S advance is really checked at York-
town. We are allowed to know that after driving
in the Confederate picquets, his best glasses could
discover no weak point in the enemy's works. And
a private letter of the Bth from Baltimore even says
that the boat from Fort Monroe has brought the
news of a severe defeat of the Federal forces at
Yorktown, but the rumour is not confiamed by this
afternoon's telegrams of the 11th. This letter, and
other advices also, represent the Merrimac as
better equipped than ever for service, and as being
actually out again. She has taken some small
vessels, and received a few shots from her old friend,
the Monitor. Thus, except on the Mississippi itself,
the Federals seem to have been checkedrather than
advancing, when the last information left. One
thing seems certain—Lancashire and our Govern-
ment must give up Lord RUSSELL'S ninety days
hopes. There is nothing apparent in the South
but desperate determination to fight ; while the
North shows not a symptom of giving up the
Union. A debt of £240,000,000, which its own
authorities report as its certain amount by the close
of a year of war, does not touch them at all. There
are, however, indications that the obstinacy of the
South will compel the North to abolish negro
slavery. They have made a beginning, and they
will be obliged to go on if the South holds out much
longer, A few Northern defeats will do more than
anything for negro emanci ati on.

The National Monument to the memory .of the

PRINCE CONSORT is, after all, it would appear, as
far from its commencement as ever. Nay, farther
than ever apparently, if distinctness of hope may
be taken as any criterion. For hitherto we have
all been more or less under the impression that the

right notion had been at once hit upon when the
erection of a grand obelisk in Hyde Park had been
suggested by the widowed SOVEREIGN. That illu-
sion, however, has now been entirely dispelled.
The deeply interesting, but, as it has proved also,
the exceedingly disappointing reports of the four
distinguished Commissioners entrusted by the
Crown with the responsibility of carrying out
the enterprize of this national monument has
explained to Her MAJESTY the absolute im-
practicability of this proposed scheme of a Giant
Obelisk. The difficulty in the first instance, of
course, was to discover the proper material. A
granite monolith, the memorial was to be at its
central point. That was the memento around which
all the other adornments of the monument in its
entirety were to be subordinate or subsidiary. In
the general outline of the memorial it was designed,
of course, that the central portion of the monument,
the gigantic obelisk hitherto thought of, but now
abandoned as impossible under the circumstances,
was to be clustered about by various picturesque and
symbolical groups of sculpture—statuesque produc-
tions, including amongst them, of course, a noble
effigy, at the least life-size, or it might even pos-
sibly be coloisal in its proportions, of the beloved
and lamented PRINCE himself.
The four responsible Commissioners---namely, the
Earl of DERBY, K.G., the Earl of CLARENDON,
K.G., the Right Hon. WILLIAM CUBITT, Lord
Mayor of London, and Sir CHARLES EASTLAKE, the
accomplished President of the Royal Academy—
have carefully detailed in the report published in
our columns last evening, the various stages of dis-
appointment upon disappointment through which
they have been at length driven perforce to suggest
most respectfully to her MAJESTY the abandonment
of this now nearly hopeless notion of discovering
any suitable block of granite capable of being hewn
into a fitting Obelisk. A magnificent monolith was,
it is true, lying there, half revealed in the Isle of Mull
—the property of his Grace the Duke of ARGYLL,
who with princely munificence and loyal gene-
rosity placed it absolutely at the command of the
Commissioners, in the event of their deeming it
advisable to select it. The length of this superb
mass of red granite was. all that could be desired.
The durability of the granite itself was all that
could be wished. Everything in regard to it ap-
peared at the outset to be in the highest degree
propitious. When—unhappily, upon a little fur
ther investigation—it turned out that, at about its
centre, this otherwise admirable monolith was in-
sufficient in thickness. Even in its then excavated
position, the block was known to exceed 115 feet
in length. But about midway the stone inoppor-
tunely narrowed—insomuch, that, if employed
in the manner proposed, namely, as an obelisk, it
would have been so far, out of all reasonable propor-
tion, as to have amounted to nothing less than a geo-
metrical deformity. Aided still, as they had pre-
viously been aided'all through these negotiations, by
the inestimable advice of Sir RODERICK MURCHI-
SON, the great geologist, the Commissioners there-
upon turned their regard from Mull (name of ill
omen as it had proved) to the more remote direction

of Russian Finland. There, however, they appear
to have been encountered by difficulties of totally
another character. Beautiful though the granite

of Russian Finland is in colour, noble
and majestic though the size of its

monoliths here and there discoverable--
the substance of the material lacks what is an

absolute essential in the design proposed—namely,

durability in our humid and variable atmosphere as

an out-of-door monument. Added to which, even

supposing there was not that obstacle—there was,
and is, undoubtedly, this still more fatal difficulty,

if possible, in our way—the overwhelming expense

inevitably attendant upon the labour of hewing out

a monolith of sufficiently gigantic proportions, and

carrying it from a distance to the place of its desti-

andc rltt and:t a.
nation. Upon this head, the opinion expressed by the
11°Yal Commissioners must certainly be allowed to
have been expressed by them with adcquate em-
phasis.
"Without," they say, "venturing to
asBign 8.
11414 to the entire cost, we conceive we are
justified in
expressing our opinion, that the whole
of the sum already subscribed [now, remember,very
nearly X 50,000. stktling !] would be absorbed by the
obelisk alone."' Lew
tug uncared for, of course,
himself, and
nllll4
away in the procuring,
andwhe when all
on s was done
d:anned etent:cot; ntgheof
Greatthe
huge
and red gprrainnictee
toed groups