The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-03 00:00:00

intend not to affront our susceptible descendant s
we must be ready to meet their indignation with
what we may deem mere justice. Wo have had an
illustration of this in the epirit with which they
received an acknowledgment of the belligerent
rights of the South. Their temper in the recent
affair is a similar warning. We must think, there-
fore, that all who wish peace to last between Eng-
land and the Federal States, should also think it good
economy to make our colonies secure. In a word, to
show the Federal war party that their chance of
success is hopeless.

Only with too much reason did the French EM-
PEROR, on the Jour de l'An, remark to the Corps
Diplomatique that " The past year has been sadly
marked by numerous agitations in various quarters
of the world, and by cruel losses among royal
families." Adding, "I hope that the year 1862 may
be a happier one both for kings and peoples." The
"agitations" referred to by his Majesty are chiefly,
of course, those which have taken place among the
American Republicans, among the Poles, the Nea-
politans, the Hungarians, and the Japanese. The
"cruel losses" sustained during the past year by
certain reigning families start upon the instant
quite as readily, and if possible still more painfully
in some respects to, public recollection. The
cruellest loss of all, naturally enough in our estima-
tion, being that endured by our beloved SOVEREIGN,
and sympathetically by ourselves, her MAJESTY'S
lieges. More numerous and more tender ties being
abruptly ounderedg, the premature aeuitsu ur his
Royal Highness ALBERT, the late PRINCE CON-
SORT—

VICTORIX REGINA

CONJUGIS PERCARISSIMI,

dying, as that virtuous and accomplished Prince
did, on the 14th of December, in the flower of his
age, the joy and solace of his august partner, him-
self the central figure of a youthful and fondly
attached family, It was in these respects the
heaviest, and the saddest, and the fatallest, blow to
the happiness of the Royal Home upon which it
descended almost as abruptly as a thunderbolt.
Other reigning houses, besides that of England,
have been desolated by grievous calamities of this
kind during the lapse of the last twelvemonth.
In truth the death that thus saddened all
this vast Empire owning
allegiance to the
sceptre wielded by the fair hand of VICTORIA
at the head of our grand Constitutional Govern-
ment, had its mournful precursor but a very few
months previously—namely, within the first quar-
ter of 1861, by the demise, on the 10th of March,
of her Royal Highness
the Duchess of KENT, the
mother of the sovereign. The Ottoman Empire,
moreover, during the same fatal year, has had to
witness the sudden disappearance from life of his
Imperial Majesty the Sultan ABDUL MEDJID.
Yet, in this instance, although, considering his age
alone, the deceased monarch might be deemed to
have expired prematurely—AßDUL MEDJID, at the
period of his decease, being only in his thirty-eighth
year, his constitution was so undermined and broken
down by the enervating influence of Oriential
luxury—that with him " the pear" may be said
to have been precociously ripened almost to rot-
tenness. Generous and noble though the dead
SULTAN'S disposition unquestionably was—as was
magnificently manifested by various acts of personal
magnanimity and munificence, acts that can never
be obliterated from the annals of his reign—in-
stance this, his princely contribution in aid of the
starving peasantry of Ireland his throwing
the shield of his protection over KOSSUTH and
his compatriots, when hunted within the boun-
daries of European Turkey by the banded sol-
diery of the Austrian and Russian despots—and
last, but not least remarkable, the late SULTAN'S
spontaneous presentation of an estate to
M. DE LAMARTINE as a token of his
MAJESTY'S admiration of the French Poet's Heroism
and sympathy for his misfortunes: notwithstand-
ing incidents like these, we say, redeeming in a
great measure the otherwise unsatisfactory cha-
racter of ABDUL-MEDJID as a Sovereign Ruler—
Turkey itself, Europa at large could not but by
contrast regret his glorious predecessor, could not
but look hopefully to the chance of improvement
under his possible successor. Those hopes it is yet
painfully matter of uncertainty whether his brother
the present Sultan ABDUL -AZIZ will dash to the
ground or realise.
Death, for a long while threatening to destroy
the fair and youthful partner on the imperial
throne of the Austrian Emperor FRANCIS JOSEPH
has happily to, all appearance in that instance
only threatened to do so. The fatal stroke has
seemingly been averted, under Heaven, by the care
and skill of the physicians in attendance upon her
MAJESTY. And it is a gratifying souvenir for Eng-
land to remember that in the efforts that have been
made during 1861 to ward off in this instance the
dangers of consumption, her Government have very
conspicuously participated. The Royal yacht con-
veyed the Austrian Empress with all despatch to
and fro between Europe and her Imperial MAJESTY'S
place of southern sojourn ; and the young EMPRESS
not only found a home, and, with that, returning
health, upon British soil in the island of Madeira,
but afterwards, and under yet happier auspices,
and with more appreciable success, in the prin-
cipal island of the lonian Archipelago. The
crown of Prussia we have seen transferred from the
dead brow of an imbecile and faineant Sovereign to
that of a Prince having only too haughty and
energetic a notion of the grandeur of the kingly
dignity and of the " right divine," appertaining to
a Monarch of even the most mushroom dynasty.
Worse than Death has swept the diadem and the
whole regalia of tho :Two Sicilies from the grasp
of young King FRA:NCIS IL—has swept them off
by the force of an overwhelming defeat to swell
the mass of the accumulating crown jewels
gathered already from Parma, and Lom-
bardy, and Tuscitny, and Modena, and

other minor Italian principalities now appertain-
tamping to the &minions of King VICTOR
EMMANUEL. Divers other calamities, now of
death, now of political disaster, might be par-
ticularised here, and descanted upon at length,
as having befallen diZerent Royal Families during
this late fatal year of 1861. The demise of the
Chinese Emperor MEN FUNG alone is eminently
suggestive of certain solemn considerations, occur-
ring as it did upon. the very morrow as it were
of the capture of the hitherto sacred capital of his
stupendous empire. But—there is one Reigning
House nearer Home: whose griefs from deaths occur-
ring within its 'acrrow but august limits with
extraordinary rapidity, prematurity, and reiter-
ation, have so startled us all into attention—even
here in England in the midst of our own bitter
regrets for the lot€ bereavement cf the British
Queen and the Brit ish Nation—that it is difficult
not to pause for a. r nornent before the dire calami-
ties that have %within Lo brief an interval
desolated the 'alace of Necessidades at
Lisbon. There--n otwithstanding that the late
Queen Regnant of: Portugal, MARIA DA GLORIA,
had left us heirs to her Sovereignty a family of
Five Young Prin .c• all of them more or less upon
the verge of man'he od, a sudden and total extinc•
tion of that branch: ,of the dynasty appears to have
been threatened. 'Three of those princes—the
eldest of the three, t) ie heir to the Crown of MARIA