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

:111E SUN, LONDON MO DAY EVENING, PEBRUARY 24, 1862.

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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 I
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 pauperis, 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 water ;" 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
I area, at time of high water, of 57 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.

cans.

The anniversary of WASHINGTON'S Birth-day,
which was celebrated at Freemasons' Tavern on
Saturday last, had several points of interest worthy
of notice; but it is only due to the good feeling
which dictated the spontaneous language of Bishop
MbILVAINE, of Ohio, to call special attention to the
terms in whichhe spoke both of our Sovereign and her
son. Having to introduce the toast of "The QUEEN,"
and having adverted to her as a Sovereign " who

to official pre-eminence adds indisputable claims to
affection and veneration not only upon the part of
her own subjects, but on the part of all who know
her name throughout the world," he went on to
advert to the visit of her son to America,
and to speak of him in language con-
trasting very gratefully to English hopes
with that of a journal which on
the death of his father caused such groundless
anxieties to many loyal hearts. " When," he said
" her eldest son, as her representative, visited

America, he was received everywhere with manifes•
tations of esteem and respect for himself, but
especially for his honoured mother. It was my
honour to have him as my guest in my house, and
I saw much of him in different places during his
tour in America, having been brought perhaps into
more near social relations with him than any
one in our land, insomuch that when re-
cently he was departing upon his present
journey he requested me to go to the Palace to take
leave of him. I was exceedingly impressed with
the very great judgment—l will not say propriety,
for it is not a sufficiently strong term—but the
great judgment and discretion with which he re-
ceived the attentions that were offered to him by
such a variety of classes and under circumstances so
entirely novel to him. I am persuaded that the
spontaneous, earnest, and affectionate veneration
which was offered through to him to his
honoured mother still continues with una-
bated warmth in the bosom of all Ameri-•
I am satisfied that nothing has
impaired those feelings, and I believe nothing will
ever occur that can impair them. We, as Ameri-
cans, may at the present time claim to take place
next to Englishmen in affectionate sympathy with
the present sorrows of the QUEEN."
We accept in the spirit in which it was offered,
this testimony of a foreigner of high character and
intelligence, to the probable future of our young
Prince. His Mother will be gratified by it, and
after the mysterious hints made so public a
short time ago, all Englishmen will be
pleased. "Judgment and discretion" are, above
all others, qualifications for Royalty in con-
stitutional countries, they are qualities which,
if any, our Prince might be expected to inherit from
him whose loss the nation mourns, and we shall
all cherish the pleasing hope that when advancing
years enable him in a measure to supply his father's
place in the closet of her MAJESTY, he will show
that he is in all respects a son worthy of parents
one of whom has ever been the object of the na-

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
ISPILTAINE 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 America. Had we lived there,
the memorials of the W. ASHINGTONS would have
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 aimed 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, bat 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
Saturday 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 power 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 a 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-
mDuth, 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 look-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 atand 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
our knowledge of this mysterious and fatal disease.
The 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 are of the most careful and considerate
nature; every regard being had to the comfort of

the patients, who, from the lengthened and fitful
nature of their sufferings, and the feverish restless-
ness and languor in which they pass so many
weary hours, stand especially in need of the
alleviaticns of art. The change from the close
room of
some dismal city alley, with insufficient
and unsuitable food, and, very possibly, loneliness
and parish doctoring, to the balmy air and fresh
gardens of Arocipton, with all the appliances that

science can bring to soothe and relieve his suffer-
ings, must, indeed, be an inestimable comfort to
the poor, hopeless patient who knows how heavily
his support, meagre though it be, presses on his
struggling family. The kindness of Sir HENRY
Forms 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
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 reassuming 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 efficient 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 ♦ery 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 spared
SO fatal a visitant.

LATE

E W S.l

MADRAS, JAN. 22.

The first meeting of the Legislative Council
under the new presidency, was held on the 22d inst.

The Governor-General has published a minute.
censuring the policy of the Lieutenant-Governor of
Bengal in the indigo districts.

CANTON, JAN. 15.

Ningpo is still occupied by the rebels, and the
streets of the city are literally strewn with dead
bodies. The rebels continue to display moderation
towards foreigners.
The English missionaries have been ordered to
quit Ningpo by the consul. Hangchow is reported
to have fallen into the hands of the rebels.

Mr. Parkes goes to England by this mail.

VIENNA, FEB. 23.

At a meeting of the shareholders of the National
Bank the proposals of the Government were ac
cepted. The charter of the Bank has been renewed
for a term of 25 years. The Government will
obtain in return an unredeemable loan at 2 per
cent.

BERLIN, FEB. 23.

According to trustworthy information, the reply
of France to the Prussian proposals for a treaty
of commerce between the two countries has arrived
here. It is said that the treaty is on the point
of being concluded.

THORN, FEB. 22.

All the councillors of the districts and towns of
Russian Poland are to re-enter upon their public
duties on the 15th March next. The Archbishop
of Warsaw has visited the Jewish Hospital and the
Asylum for Paupers.

LISBON, FEB. 21, EVENING.

The new Ministry has been constituted, and is
formed as follows :—President, the Marquis de
Louie; War, Viscount Sada Bandeira ; Public
Works, Senhor Horla ; Interior, Senor Braam-
camp ; Justice, Senhor da Silva; Finance, Senhor
de Avila ; Marine, Senhor Mendez Real. The
members of the new Cabinet are of the same party
as the preceding one.