The Sun.
London, England, 1870-10-27 00:00:00

THE LATE GENERAL LEE.

The immediate cause of General Lee's death, says the
New York correspondent of the Standard, was congestion
of the brain, aud his term of life was sixty-three years,
eight months, and twenty-three days. He retained
during the greater part of his illness the full possession of
his faculties, but there were moments when his mind
wandered, aud, like that of Napoleon in the death chamber
at Longwood, reverted to the scenes of war. Once
he asked that General Hill might be sent for, and
again he gave orders that his tent might be struck for the
march- Robert Edmund Lee was the son of Henry Lee,
the "Light Horse Harry" of the revolution. With an
early predilection for the army, he was entered at the
West Point Military Academy in 1825, and graduated the
second in his class in 1829. The first five graduates in every
class at thisinstitution are hold to have won distinguished
honour, and are rewarded with commissions in the Topo-
graphical Engineers; accordingly young Lee took
a second lieutenancy at once in this corps, and his
first service was performed as assistant astronomer in
drawing the boundary line between the States of Ohio
and Michigan. At the breaking out of the war with
Mexico he was a captain of Engineers, but his con-
spicuous gallantry and inestimable services in that contest
secured for him rapid promotion, and he came out of it a
lieutenant colonel and colonel by brevet. Of his conduct
in the war of rebellion it is unnecessary to speak. His
campaigns have been the study of the best military minds
of Europe, and no intelligent observer of the course of
events in our own times is ignorant of them. Since the close
of the struggle, General Lee 'has devoted himself wholly
to the college over which he was called to preside, mani-
festing the utmost aversion to anything like public dis-
play, refusing entirely to take part in politics, and endea-
vouring as far as he could to heal the animosities that had
been caused between the two sections of the country. No
aspersion of his motives, no attack upon his private cha-
racter, could make him break the silence he had imposed
upon himself. On the other hand, no expression of
popular feeling on the part of his admirers, no spontaneous
ascription to him as the leader of the lost cause, could
betray him into a public speech or a political argument.
He accepted fully and bravely the consequences of defeat,
and counselled submission to the re-established authority.

A correspondent at Barcelona informs us that the
deaths from yellow fever have again increased, and that
the daily average has gone up from seven to sixteen.
Everything is at a standstill, and great poverty and desti-
tution prevail.

The Rev. George Akers, 8.A., of Oriel College, has
just received priests' orders a second time from the hands
of Archbishop Manning. He is appointed director and
confessor to the Franciscan Nuns at Ash Grove, South
Hackney.

- -
His Excellency the American Minister and Mrs.
and Miss Motley are visiting Mr. Beaumont, M.P., and
Lady Margaret Beaumont at thir seat in Yorkshire, where
a succession of visitors have assembled during the past
week.

His Excellency Edward James Roye, President
of Liberia, left England for Liberia on board the African
mail steamer whicb sailed from Liverpool onTuesday morn-
ing.. His Excellency was accompanied on board by seve-
ral of the leading merchants of Liverpool.
The Cambria was not the only ship wrecked on
the Donegal coast in the storm of Wednesday night. The
Sydney, a vessel bound from Quebec for Greenock, with
a cargo of timber, shared the same fate ; 19 of the crew
were drowned. Two men clung to some floating spars and
were rescued.

A marriage is arranged between Mr. Albert
Brassey, youngest son of the well-known railway contrac-
tor and the eldest daughter of Lord Claumurris; also
between Lord Richard Grosvenor, brother of the Marquis
of Westminster, and the second daughter of Sir Dudley
Coutts Marjoribanks.

The health of the Marquis of Bath, according to
a letter just received, has improved so little that his
enforced journey up the Nile will be considerably pro-
longed. The noble marquis, in consequence of his
severe indisposition, has resigned the Chairmanship of
the Wilts Quarter Sessional Committee and other official
posts.

The Rev, F. 0. Morris, the ornithologist, mentions
that on Friday last he heard the thrush singing in his
garden as lustily as on the evening of .a summer day,
And that there are rhododendrons in flower in a garden at
Mahon, some twenty miles north-east of York. The last
swallows he has seen—martens, that is to say—were
on the 17th instant. The martens arc apparently dying
out.