The Sun.
London, England, 1865-04-05 00:00:00

Ever since Bull Run Sherman has been one of the
most earnest, impetuous prosecutors of the war that
the Federals have ever had in the field. For a long
time, and especially in connexion with his operations
against Vicksburg at the end of 1862, he met with
very little success, and he attained very little cele-
brity until after the defeat of Rosecrans at Chicka-
mauga, and his own appointment as Rosecrans' suc-
cessor at the end of 1863. Since the commencement
of the campaign which he opened in May, 1864, at
Dalton, in Georgia, and which he has not yet closed,
Sherman has met with one unbroken career of pros-
perity. History will, I think, hereafter have a good
deal to say about General Johnston's conduct of the
campaign which drove the Confederates, without
any pitched battle, out of the hill country of Georgia
into the flat plain around Atlanta, and which, more
than any other event during nearly four years of war-
fare, has led to the present crisis in Confederate affairs.
But without reverting to a question which already
provokes sufficient heartburnings in Secessia without
my adding fuel to it, let me state that perhaps no
military commander ever attained such fame as
Sherman's without fighting ten battles where Sher-
man has fought but one. It is impossible that Sher-
man can plead armed resistance and the hot blood
of exasperated soldiers in extenuation of the horrors
and excesses of which his army has been guilty in
South Carolina. Armed resistance, since the battle
of Jonesborough, which led to the fall of Atlanta at
the end of August, he has met with none. It is
impossible to know how far these excesses, which
rival the sack of Magdeburg or San Sebastian, have
been connived at by Sherman ; but there is arising
a general conviction in Secessia that very little effort
is made by Sherman and his officers to repress them.
It is remembered that in a recent conversation which
Sherman held in Georgia with Mrs. Elliot—the
daughter-in-law of the Episcopal Bishop of Georgia
—he said to her, on her expressing a wish to return
to South Carolina, " You will be going, madam,
out of the fryingpan into the fire. My army is
composed of some of the most lawless ruffians upon
earth. Here in Georgia I can with difficulty control
them, but when I enter South Carolina I shall
neither be able nor desirous to do so. You have

. _
heard of the horrors of war ; wait until my army
gets into South Carolina and you will see their
reality." Read by the light of this speech the re-
cent incendiarism of Columbia—a town over which,
as it once existed, richly garnished with magnolias
and japonicas, and surrounded by dense groves of
ilex or the beautiful live oak of the South, a South-

ern poet might have written verses which, if worthy
of their inspiring theme, would have lived as long as
those which celebrate the beauties of Sweet Auburn,

is a passage in Sherman's history which will not
soon be forgotten. But, reverting once more
to Sherman, I may remark that his long
residence in the South has taught him to
disclaim any intention of carrying on war on be-
half of the " poor lashed, degraded slave," out of
whom Mrs.lStowe has manufactured a melodramatic
fame of which the incidents of this war are already
making her countrymen ashamed. Possibly, in
common with every other intelligent man, Sherman
may think that the abolition of slavery would be a
great boon. to the South, but he does not seem to
think that it would be a boon to the slave. At

any rate, Sherman has always shown great disin-
clination to admitting negro soldiers to his ranks,
whatever allegations to the contrary may be made
by journals, to which he gives little heed. lam
informed that he forbad recently any junction be-
tween his own troops and those which Gen. Foster
commands on the South Carolina coast, and which
consist principally of negroes. If in the Armageddon
which seems now approaching, Gen. Sherman once
gets the South down it may confidently predicted
that his politics will be more in harmony with those
of Gen. Lee than those of President Lincoln. Mr.
Lincoln has found him hitherto a very valuable
friend—it is possible that before the end comes he
will find him a still more dangerous enemy. During
this war I have seen no man who seemed to me to
possess so much of the temper of Cromwell as
Sherman. Vain, eager, enthusiastic, fanatical, at
times gloomy and reticent, at others impul-
sive and talkative, by some regarded as half mad
when the fit is on him, General Sherman pos-
sesses a character which, unless I am mistaken,
is of the stuff of which great and mysterious actors
in history are often made. It is possible that,
profiting by his supposed knowledge of General
Johnston's strategy, he may try to flank him out
of his strong position, wherever it is established—be
it on the Neuse, or be it on the Roanoke River—as
he flanked him out of Kennesaw Mountain, or the
Buzzard's Roost, between Dalton and Atlanta. But
in addition to General Johnston's knowledge that
the present is his last chance of establishing the
military reputation to which some of his coun-
trymen still think him entitled, and which no one
more desires to see him establish than the writer of
these words, he has behind him an adviser before
whom every antagonist has hitherto recoiled, and a
touch of whose wand—little hopeful as the sur-
rounding circumstances appear—may even, at this
eleventh hour, crumble into dust the towering fabric
of Sherman's success and fame.
Naval and Military Intelligence.

Her Majesty's paddle yacht Elfin, Staff-Com-
mander Balliston, has been placed in dock at Ports-
mouth to make good defects, preparatory for further
duties in the service of her Majesty and the Royal
family, and to replace her present experimental
screw blade wheels with her ordinary feathering
floats. The trial of the new apparatus, which con-
sists of a number of ordinary screw blades fixed
round the periphery of the wheel of a side-wheel
steamer, fixed, and at a certain angle, in lieu of the
complicated machinery of the feathering float, has
been attended with sufficient success to warrant

further experiments. The principle is entirely new,
and the figures appended will show that, although
the trials have as yet been made in a very crude
form, some very important results may be arrived
at by further trials. This will be especially the case
if they are carried out with a vessel of a rather
Luger class than the Elfin. To' how what has
really been accomplished, the plainest and most in-
telligible course will be to give a comparative return
of the results obtained with the Royal paddle yacht
next in size to the Elfin, the Osborne, with both
common and feathering floats, and also with the Elfin
with her feathering float wheels and her screw blade
wheels. On the 11th of February, 1863, the Osborne
was tried over the measured mile in Stokes Bay with
common floats to her wheels, when the mean revo-
lutions of her engines were found to be 15, the
indicated power of her engines 981-horse, and the
speed of the ship 10.695 knots, very great vibration
pervading the ship's hull during the trial. On the
16th of July, 1863, the Osborne in the meantime
having been fitted, at great cost, with new wheels
carrying feathering floats, the ship made a second
trial over the course of the measured mile ; and on
this occasion the revolutions of the engines were
found to be 22, the indicated horse-power of the
engines 1,550, and the speed of the ship 12.406
knots, the vibration not being so great as with the
common float to her wheels, On the 20th of
September, 1864, the Elfin was tried at the mea-
sured mile with feathering floats to her wheels, the
immersed float surface being 60 square feet ; when
the revolutions of the engines were 46.91; the in-
dicated horse-power of the engines, 191.80 ; and
the speed of the ship, 11.237 knots. On the 28th
of March, 1865, the Elfin made her trial trip with
the screw-blade wheel at the measured mile, the
immersed screw-blade surface being 32.72 square
feet of the feathering float, the revolutions of the
engines 46, their indicated horse-power 185.558,
and the speed of the vessel 10.012 knots. There
was a moderate swell on during the time the Elfin
was under trial with her screw-bladed wheels, but
no vibration whatever was experienced on board.
The screw-bladed wheel promises much greater re-
sults than the foregoing, although those are suffi-
ciently remarkable to invest the principle with' con-
siderable interest. The inventor is Dr. J. M'Grigor
Croft, late staff surgeon in her Majesty's army.
Her Majesty's screw steam gun-vessel Plover, 5,
Commander the Hon. Armar L. Corry, from Port
Royal, February 12, arrived in Plythouth Sound on
Sunday night; after coaling she proceeded to
Chatham.

ieut.-Col, J. W. Lovell, C. 8., the head of the