The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-31 00:00:00

THERMOMETER.

Highest since Noon yesterday
Lowest during the night
This day at N00n.....

Barometer-30.28.
; light, fine weather, but dull.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIS DAY. —Morning, 10h. 14m.—Afternoon, 10h. 47m,
To-monnow..illorning, llh. 35m.—Afternoon, h. —m,

)
:11)

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, DEC. 31, 1862.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO closes with
the Civil War in America till raging ; with the Dia-
trees—consequent upon the Cotton Famine—still
desolating the North-west of England; with the
spirit of political reaction still gathering greater
and greater strength to itself daily throughout the
majority of the States of Christendom.
At home the twelvemonth now upon the eve of
expiring has been one of general mourning, of wide-
spread solicitude, and of systematic postponement.
It opened upon this country while the hearts
of its loyal population were yet wrung with
profound sympathy for the overwhelming
affliction that had fallen upon the most beloved
of our Constitutional Sovereigns. The shadow
of that immense grief has darkened the whole
of 1862, fading off in intensity (though still sombre
to the very last), from the Ist of January to the 31st
of December. Two consolations connected with
this grief are happily left to the people of England,
however, by way of assuagement. First, the recogni-
tion of the truth that visibly and most undeniably
results from its very poignancy, the truth, namely,
that the noble and beautiful Fame of the Dead Prince
has been, if one might venture to say so, perfected,
in its appreciation by the world at large, by the
simple fact of the abruptness of his disappearance.
Snatched away from the midst of us thus suddenly,
and, to human view, prematurely—it was
only when he had, in this startling manner,
vanished from the public observation, that we
were enabled to realise, upon the instant how
pure and majestic were the attributes of that ele-
vated reputation. We only understood to the full
how good he was when he was gone—how worthily
he had acquitted himself of his high and sacred
trust—with what consummate tact and discretion
he had fulfilled, from early youth to middle age,
his many onerous and complicated responsibilities.
That has been, throughout, our foremost, as it
must prove our abiding solace in connection
with the affecting remembrance of his ROYAL
HIGHNESS. Another consolatory reflection we
have referred to, as tending to mitigate the national
sorrow in his regard—and this is obviously the
One simple, inevitable, grateful recollection, that the
sentiments of attachment hitherto subsisting be-
tween the Gracious SOVEREIGN of these realms and
her free and loyal people have been drawn yet
more closely together by the stress of their com-
mon anguish, by the oneness of their profound and
unaffected sympathy. Assuaged though the grief
caused to the QUEEN, and to the Nation at large,
has indisputably been by these and other (diviner)
considerations--the grief itself has been with them
all this while nevertheless—it has overshadowed
unintermittently both the CROWN and the
country during the entire year of grace now
drawing immediately to a close, a year, indeed,
expressly set apart by the SOVEREIGN as a year of
mourning to Herself and Her Royal House.

Even the International Exhibition of 1862 failed
in any appreciable manner to dissipate the gloom
that hung over the metropolis of the empire
throughout the twelvemonth immediately following
the demise of the august Organizer of its memor-
able prototype. London all this year has remained
socially under an eclipse. There has been, for
once during this happy reign, no Court held what-
ever. Even the Imperial Legislature, sympathis-
Lag with the royal and loyal affliction, consented
Withth one accord to postpone for an entire year all
.could by possibility be postponed with-
outdatriena ato the common weal. With Pa--
ties almost in a state of equilibrium —with
every
conceivable inducement, therefore, to
party contests I within the walls of Parliament—
a truce hasll maintained all this last twelve-
month between the
powerful Coalition Government
and the formidable conservative
Opposition. Poli-
tically, 1862 has tiaer,a e
been an annul non. As
a subject for legislative
record
d it will appear as
little less blank than an absolute hiatus in the
annals of Parliament Everything% postponed that
could be—everything set aside
until this now fast on-coming y„rmoltt next year,
a
which have to make up so many d;ac. te
enies
1863,
The confronting ranks of the Governinet,tndc
Opposition will then, at length, have it fdirlytol et
together. Trieir le‘^clers will " have at" one another
—we may rest assured of that—immediately after
the Houses have met in February. As legislative
trophies in 1869, all that we can look back to
with anything like satisfaction, are tl:e pass:ng, of
enactments for the regulation of the title and
the facilitation of the Tlansfer of Property
in Land, and for the Embankment of the River
TLames, that grandest of all our metropolitan
improvements.

The obituary of 1862 has embtaced within it the
record of an immense loss to philosophical litera-
ture, in the person of THOMAS HENRY BUCKLE,
who died suddenly, aged only forty, while sojourn-
ing (in the midst of an oriental tour) at Damascus.,

Medical science has to lament the disappearance,
full of years and of professional honours, of the lead-
ing surgeon of his time, Sir BENJAMIN BRODIE.
Among our Statesmen we have had occasion, in
1862, to mourn the premature death of Lord CAN-
NING: that distinguished son of an illustrious sire
having, but just before his demise, returned home-
ward from his memorable and, eventually, victori-
ous administration of affairs, as Her MAJESTY'S
Viceroy in Hindostan. Among our diplomatists we
have had to lament the loss of one of the most able
and experienced, in the person of the Right Hon.
Sir THOMAS WYSE, his excellency's death occurring,
most inopportunely, as it happened, for the inte-
rests alike of Greece and of England, immediately
prior to the former of those two countries becoming
once more completely revolutionised, immediately
before the Provincial Government (thereupon esta-
blished at Athens) was called upon by the
unanimous voice of the Greek nation
to proclaim the second son of the
Queen of ENGLAND the new Greek Sovereign.
Reverting to the sombre catalogue of names in-
scribed upon the year's Obituary—we have occa-
sion to reeal to mind the nearly simultaneous dis-
appearance towards the close of 1862 of the
Primates respectively of Ireland, of England, and
of France—the Archbishop of ARMAGH, the
Archbishop of CANTERBURY, and the Cardinal
Archbishop of PARIS. RICARDO and WAKEFIELD
have, during this last year, been removed from
the comparatively small group of sound writers
as well as sound thinkers among our political econo-
mists. As a conspicuous leader among our arctic
and antarctic navigators, we have to regret the
demise of Admiral Sir JAMES Ross—and among
our more adventurous travellers we look now in vain
any 'onger to recognise the remarkable presence of
Dr. WOLFF of Bokhara—as at our antipodes we have
reason to grieve also for the loss of Messrs. WILLS
and BURKE, the daring but ill-fated explorers of
the interior of Australasia. WYATT and THOMAS
among our sculptors, WILLis and SOLOMON among
our painters, Sir BENJAMIN HAWES among our
administrators, Mr. WAKLEY, the able Coroner
for Middlesex, Dr. HAWTREIZ, the popular provost
of Eton, who after his fashion was to Eton almost
what Dr. ARNOLD was to Rugby; these and a few
other notabilities complete the list of those more
widely regretted by their neighbours, as having
passed away during 1862 from amongst the ranks
of our contemporaries.

Of causes celebres the year now dying out has
not by any means had a deficiency. The Y EL-
TERTON marriage case has again thrust itself upon
public attention—awakening almost as much en-
thusiasm in Scotland as formerly was awakened in
Ireland, in behalf of the lady claiming the very
singular honour of being the lawful wife of Major
YELVERTON ! The WINDHAM lunacy case, if
in no way tending to adorn a tale, has cer-
tainly pointed a moral, that has, before
the close of the same twelvemonth, been yet
further enforced by means of the obscurer case of
HALL V. SEMPLE. Among the legal scandals of
the year scarcely any have been more flagrant of
their kind than those brought to light
during the progress of the two strongly
contrasting cases of HUDSON V. SLADE and
KENNEDY V. BROWN. Crimes of a more than
ordinarily frightful, and some of these crimes of
a more than usually mysterious, character have
horrified the community during 1862 with very
lamentable frequency. Wholesale crimes like those
of the secret poisonings perpetrated by CONSTANCE
WILSON, that more vulgar BRINVILLIERS. Indi-
vidual crimes such as the murders of JESSIE
M'PHERSON at Glasgow, of Mrs. GARDNER, the
Sweep's Wife, in London, of Mr. MELLOR and
of his murderer's (TAYLOR'S) own children
at Manchester. The ROUPELL Forgery Case
would of itself have affixed an indelible brand of
guilt upon the memory of 1862—a year yet further
associated with the recollection of great criminals
by the brutal crimes of personal violence, indulged
in by the pampered felons let loose upon society
by that most mistaken system of abbreviated penal
servitude which has of late enabled so many ticket-
of leave holders to develops into formidable Garot-

:ers.

Still, in to-day's epitome of the records of this
fast expiring year of grace 1862, keeping our atten-
tion diverted to the condition of things generally
amongst ourselves—it is noticeable that in propor-
tion as the cloud of gloom cast upon the nation at
this time last year by the lamented death of
H.R.H. the Prince Consort has gradually paled away
with the lapse of time, the cloud of sorrow then
but a year ago, little bigger than a man's hand upon
the remote horizon there in the West (that man's
hand, shall we not say it, ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S) has
darkened and deepened and expanded with lamen-
table precision until it has overspread all Lao eashire,
and by sympathy, all England. The privations of
our factory operatives have darkened with a
double darkness the melancholy associations of a
twelvemonth begun with a nation's grief for the
death of Prince ALBERT, and closing now with a
whole nation's grief for the miseries of Lancashire.

We all know what has been the grand object of
public interest during the year. The placards of
sensation advertisers of news, the almost involun-
tary turning to REUTER'S telegrams when we first
open a paper—the conversation of friends and
neighbours when their discourse turns to public
events, and the speeches at public meetings—all
have pointed to the American war as the grand
topic of popular interest. It would be strange
were it not so. We have felt its effects too keenly
not to keep our eye closely upon it. It is, moreover,
so closely bound up with the fate of slavery—a sub-
ject of never-failing interest to all classes in our
free island home—that this alone attracts to it the
attention of all thorough Englishmen.

The year opened with the cotton ports blockaded,
and the affair of the Trent yet unsettled. We
knew enough of the behaviour of Americans towards
the " Hero WILKES," to find matter for provocation
if we had pleased. We showed, however, no irri-
tation ; but we did show that we were not to be
trifled with ; and Mr. SEWARD, after proving
WILKES to be in the wrong, wound up by surren-
dering the men, with the courteous intimation that
he would have kept them, if he had thought such
a course for the interest of the United States ! At
that time the cotton famine had not begun to tell,
although its approach, should the war continue,
was obvious enough ; but when the summer
arrived, and the " ninety days" brought no indica-
tion of the close of the war, the danger stared us in
without
the face, and tln session of Parltacuent, even, vies
equal to the
slightly prolonged, that it might not separate
noble general
iesgia powers to Boards of Guardians
emergency. And then began that
parallel in the historyoft
eription in aid of our innocently
suffering fellow-countrymen
world.d That on be-
hick is without
was, perhaps, the
I half of too little grateful Ireland
peasantry.
nearest approach to it. Two
war has taught us thnugh the d.isint,l3
5 the American
remit has caused.
The wide-spread generosity of all
classes, and the
moral elevation of the English
their independence, their Such,
e• their self-
control, and their patience, that not
indeed, hss been "
Only their

countrymen, but the world, has looked on and
admired and sympathised. Not only English
' counties, cities, and towns, but English colonies
have sent their willing gifts. The SULTAN and the
POPE from the far south; and Americans them-
selves, who cause the distress, have all testified by
their generous subscription their admiration for the
conduct, and their feeling for the sufferings, of
British operatives. It is unquestionably the better
education and increased intelligence of the work-
men which has prevented discontent and violence,
and enabled the men to appreciate those
obligations of international honour and duty which
induced our Government to respect the blockade_
Forty or fifty years ago, how different their beha-
viour would have been !
Liberal politicians have had too good reason to
dislike this war. Probably nothing has done more
to discredit advanced Liberalism than the cry now
raised—" See what Republican institutions, uni-
versal suffrage, voting in proportion to population,
and the ballot, have done in America ! " The logic
of the exclamation might:be inconclusive enough, in
the view of thinkers. No pains might be taken to
show the connection between the premises and the
conclusion; it might be hinted that slavery and
slave institutions, not freedom and free institutions,
were the obvious cause of the war and its conse-
quences—still, the stone was a good one to pelt
with, and we cannot wonder that it should be used
to pelt those wicked ones who think pocket
boroughs political nuisances, who demand that
more than one in seven of the adult male popula-
tion should have a vote, and who maintain that the
protection of the ballot is indispensable to perfectly
free voting. The thorough-going Liberals of Eng-
land have sad cause to remember the American war
of 1862. It has not only helped to divert public
attention from political reforms, but it has fur-
nished a cheap and easy cry, which any dunce of a
speaker could use to discredit reform itself.
And then the war itself has been so full of such
1 remarkable vicissitudes that the public interest has
been kept up by the excitement itself of defeats
1 and victories. In the spring the Federals, with
their gunboats in the west, seemed to carry all
before them. Forts Henry and Donnelson, Island
No. 10 and Memphis, New Orleans and Baton
Rouge, will recur to the recollection of all. Ken-
tucky, Missouri, and a great part of Tennesee were
cleared of the rebel forces, which have never since
been able to do more than make temporary inroads
into these States. And then when Norfolk, with
its old navy-yard, and Yorktown and the peninsula
between the James and York rivers, were occupied
by the Federals under M'CLELLAN, it seemed as if
the crisis of the war was come, and Richmond was
soon to be a Federal town. The South had, indeed,
made two remarkable efforts, efforts which at-
tracted the attention of all Europe, to meet the
Federal navy. The feats of the Merrimac, still
move her check by the little Monitor, are still
telling on our dockyards. But both the Merrimac
and the Arkansas, whose appearance flustered the i

whole Mississippi fleet, perished almost myste-
riously, and the Federal ships and gunboats were
left in undisputed control of all the waters which
would float them.

But with the ascent to Richmond the tide of
Federal victory began to turn. First BANKS was
surprised and driven back at Winchester, though
he soon returned. Then at Richmond STUART took

that daring cavalry ride round M'CLELLAN's army
which the Federals themselves were compelled to
admire. The night attack by LEE and JACKSON on
CAREY'S division soon followed—M'CLELLAN just
contrived to ship or destroy all his stores on the York
River, and immediately executed that " strategic
movement," which consisted in massing his whole
army at HARRION'S landing further down the
James River. In August the North was but too

thankful that the army, diminished as it was by
war and sickness, got clear away without being
molested by the Confederates. These latter had,
indeed, now other work to do. POPE had come
down towards Richmond by the old Bull's Run
way, blustering and threatening. Very soon he
found that JACKSON could ride round him too; his
luggage and papers went first, and soon the Confe-
derates in full force drove him back in grand style
to Washington, compelling him to recross Bull's
Run in double quick time. The raid into Mary-
land followed, terminating in the murderous drawn
battle of Antietam Creek, and the capture of Har-
per's Ferry, with eleven thousand prisoners, and a
large amount of military stores.
In the West also the Confederates had one im-
portant success. Vicksburg, which no one had
anticipated, held out against Federal gunboats, and
destroyed the completeness of the Federal command
of the Mississippi. Still the battles of Perrysville
and the last one at Corinth were important Federal
victories, and seem to have established the Federal
authority in the border states of the West. Indeed
till the repulse of the Federals on the 13th from
Fredericksburg they seem to have been making way
again, and the Confederates falling back.
The coast and river conquests have been remark-
able for one important fact. They have demon-

btrated the possibility of emancipation without the
" horrors of servile war," so loudly talked of by
the thoughtless. If, indeed, planters obstructed
negroes seeking their liberty, then England, whose
courts held JOHN ANDERSON guiltless of murder,
would hold all the slaves who did the like guilt-

less. .But in all the liberties of negroes not one
instance of massacre and assassination has occurred.

These occupations have also proved that the negro
will work freely and steadily for wages ; and, what

_..
is of more importance in this crisis, that if armed
and led by white men, he will fight coolly and be

perfectly steady, after a little drilling, under dange

rous fire. This last fact, we must think, shows to

the North the only way in which it can ever bring

this cruel war to a successful conclusion.

Although, in consequence of two or three minor
inaccuracies having crept into the Revenue Tables
—(inaccuracies requiring the lapse of a few hours
for their correction)—we are preeluded from anti-
cipating the publication of those Revenue Tables
by anything like a distinct abstract of their contents,
we are nevertheless enabled at ones confidently
to assure our readers that the returns will be found,
upon their publication tomorrow, in very many
respects in the highest degree satisfactory. This,
in spite of so many, and some of them such im-
mense disadvantages! With our cotton manufac-
tures almost entirely interrupted ! With a dimi-
nished consumption of spirits and so forth. A
few hours more, however, and the Tables them-
selves will have made their appearanc?.

The Marquis and Marc►ioness of Carmarthen
haves tuft Thomas's Hotel, Berkeley-square, for Rushmore
Lodge, Salisbury.

The Marquis and m,,hioness of Exeter are
passing the season in the south of Franco.

The of Fife has left GrGavenor-plaeo.3o a
visit to Viscount Powerscourt, at his seat in Ireland. Her
ladyship has left town for Tunbridge Wells.

The Countess D )wager of Westmoreland and
Lady Rose Fane left Portman-squaro yesterday, on a visit
to the Earl and Countess of Clarendon, at the Grove, near
Watford.

The remains of the late Earl of Gifford were in-
terred on Monday in the parish -churchyard at Hendon.
The ceremony was strictly private.
The Right Hon. C. P. Villiers has returned to
London from Osborne.