The Sun.
London, England, 1856-10-30 00:00:00

SPORTING NOTES.

FOG-BOUND.
The oldest inhabitant has had his memory sorely
taxed to recollect when Newmarket Races were before
postponed, and of course the circumstance is not within
his recollection. He is certainly a most aggravating
authority, and should be made President of the Know-
Nothings. My remembrance cannot furnish me with
an instance of the sports at head-quarters having been
before suspended on account of the skiey influences. In
1836 the snow had to be swept ofl• the course before the
races could be run ; in 1846 the course had to be tracked
out with sawdust ; and now, in 1856, the races had to
be entirely stopped. What will happen in 1866 the
imagination may help the reader to guess. The first
race which was run over the Cambridgeshire course was
seen by few people. Not even the horses could be ob-
served looming in the distance, and the whole lot of
,them narrowly escaped running slap into the Red Stand.
Two more races were held on the "flat," and then the
" Admiral" gave orders for the sport to be discontinued,
much to the annoyance of a popular baronet, who wished
to have his match run off. The people then left the
heath, and got back into the town as best they could
through the fog and mist.

I have not time to enter into particulars of the Cam-
bridgeshire running. My pick—Vengeance and Elo-
quence—were second and fourth. Mr. T. Parr, and
Messrs. T. and S., to whom Malacca really belongs, are
the principal winners. The reports about Vengeance
being sold were, after all, founded on truth, and the
reader may be prepared to hear of his removal to Findon.
This change of ownership superstitious people seem to
fancy accounts for the horse's running second, for his
present proprietor, like Mr. Peeryburgh, who was al-
ways very near making a joke, has throughout the
season been very nearly pulling off a " great thing,"
but has been destined to obtain the barren honours of
econd place. Pole Star did not go very well in the
market, and took no prominent part in the race. The
delay which was caused in getting the horses off was
most vexatious. Some of the jnckeys were must refrac-
tory, and I hear that tw• of them have been fined 201.
each.

The Nursery Handicap was published last night, and
it caused much dissatisfaction. Of the seventy-nine
entered thirty-one have been left in, and they have been
divided into two classes. For the first class I fancy
Farmer's Daughter filly and Gaberlunzie. For the second
class Companion and Rowlade.

The unclosed stakes which stood for to-morrow
(Thursday) have been withdrawn to make way for the
races not decided to-day. In all probability, therefore,
the meeting will extend over Monday next.

A FRESH MAN,

Newmarket, Wednesday night.

OMAR PACHA AND THE PRINCESS DADIAN .

The following letter hats been addressed to the Editor
of the Times
Sir,—The letter from Lieutenant Cadall that ap-
peared in your paper of Friday last has induced me to
make further inquiries with regard to the matter at
issue.

" I find that the handsome furniture of the Princess
Dadian reached Redoubt Kaleh on the 19th January,
and I am acquainted with four trustworthy and credible
persons who saw it there, in the house of Omer Pasha,
or under the care of his servants.
" The hypothesis that it was destroyed at Sugdidi by
the enraged soldiery must therefore fall to the around.
As I have already stated, it was carefully forwarded
to head-quarters, and arrived in excellent preservation.
" In reply to Lieutenant Cadell's charge, that I was
' not correct' in my account of his personal movements,
allow me to say that I only intended to give such
an outline of them as would show that he was absent
from head-quarters, and therefore uninformed of what
Was passing there at the period of which I was about
to speak. I was perfectly acquainted with the manner
in, which his time was spent, and I knowingly com-
pressed the events of some days into the words,
" having obtained leave of absence," because those
events were immaterial.—l have the honour to be, Sir,
your most obedient servant,
!Londpni Oct. 2s.

,!‘

LI IT RATURE.

Rittory of the Consulate and the Empire of France
under _Napoleon. By M. A. Thiers. Vol.
XIII. Willis and Sotheron.
1 Volumes 14 and 15 will complete this great his-
-2 tonic masterpiece. The labours of M. Thiers are
consequently rapidly approaching their termina-
tion. This remarkable instalment (the antepenul
1 timate I) brings us in fact within view of the
2
grand and overwhelming catastrophe—the pathetic
3
and heroic close of that wonderful narrative which
llas been happily termed the Fairy Tale of
Modern History, the downfall and death
2 o f tho great Emperor and King Napo-
leon ! Within view of it—are wo not ?—that
grand and overwhelming catastrophe consummated
in the little death-chamber at Longwood, and
commencing at Waterloo--nay ! rather should it be
3 said dating back much earlier, from the rupture
with the Pontiff, from the seizure of the Peninsula,
from the invasion of Russia, from the divorce from
Josephine. Those arch-errors, to say the least
of them, which brought down the avenging blade
• of Nemesis, by snapping asunder the death-thread
of the later Damocles ! Already two out of these
four enormous blunders on the part of Napoleon
have been described in earlier chapters by the
master-hand of M, Adolphe Thiers—the result
of the occupation of Spain being here illustrated
by fresh anxieties, mingled with new glories and
new disasters—that of the putting aside the Bride
of Love for the Bride of Ambition being in its turn
illustrated by the record of the birth and baptism
• of that young Astyanax the King of Rome ! Be.yond all question one of the most enthralling and
masterly portions of M. Thiers' narrative of the
War in Spain is that in which he here relates the
memorable siege and capture of Tarragone—a
victory by which General Sachet won for himself
the glorious baton of one of the Imperial Marshals
of Napoleon. As for the account given in the
previous chapter or book of this great history by
M. Thiers of the advent of the King of Rome, we
may declare it at once to be penned in words
worthy of having fallen from the golden style of
Tacitus. Are we, in so speaking, guilty, in its re-
gard of any hyperbolical exaggeration ? o Let the
subjoined excerpt from the volume =Wei our
hand suffice of itself to demonstrate conclu-
sively to the contrary. It is the passage in which
the annalist depicts the heroic Founder of the
Napoleonian Dynasty holding aloft in the presence
of the grand dignitaries of his empire the infant
King of Rome in the cathedral of Notre Dame.
"On the following day, the 9th of June, Napoleon,
accompanied by his wife and his family, conducted his
son to Notre Dame, and presented him to the ministers
of religion. A hundred bishops and twenty cardinals,
the Senate, the Legislative Body, the mayors of the
large towns, and the representatives of Europe filled the
sacred enclosure, where the imperial infant was to re-
ceive the waters of baptism. When the Pontiff had.
concluded the ceremony, and given the King of Rome
into the hands of the governante of the children of
France, Madame de Montesquiou, the latter transferred
him to Napoleon, who, taking him in his arms and ele-
vating him above his head, presented him in this manner
to the magnificent assembly which assisted at the cere-
mony with a visible emotion which speedily became
general. This spectacle moved all hearts.
"How great is the mystery which surrounds human
life. How grievously would the spectators have been
surprised if, behind this scene of prosperity and gran-
deur, they could suddenly have beheld a crowd of ruins,
torrents of blood and fire, the flames of Moscow, the ice
of the Beresina, Leipzig, Fontainbleau, the Isle of Elba,
Saint Helena,[the death of this august infant at 18 years
of age, in exile, unpossessed of a single one of those
crowns which were now accumulated on his head ; and
could they have beheld, besides, all those other revolu-
tions by which his family was still to be raised up after
having been overthrown."

It is in the very book (xli.) recounting the par-
ticulars of the birth and baptism of Napoleon's
son, that the biographer of Napoleon describes at
considerable length, and with minute particularity,
the rupture between the Pope and the Emperor, a
rupture from which the paling of the star of the
great Bonaparte may be incontestibly asserted
to have commenced. The Council is the significant
title of this portion ef the narrative, meaning by
that phrase the National Council, through which
Napoleon hoped, but hoped in vain, to overcome
the resistance of the Sovereign ontiff. Very
striking indeed is M. Thiers' account of the unex-
pected issue of this notable assemblage (dating
from the 17th of June, 1811), when the Prelates,
scarcely collected together a few hours, manifested
the sentiments with which they had become in-
spired—sentiments of sympathy for the sufferings
of Pius, and of aversion for the despotism of Na-
poleon ! About the most startling manifestation
of which sympathy was that evidenced through
the lips of the uncle of Napoleon himself. Refer-
ring to which M. Thiers says :
" Immediately after the sermon, Cardinal Fesch, with
the mitre on his head, ascended the throne, which was
decked out in the customary manner for this ceremanYs
snd took the oath prescribed by Pius IV.:—I acknow-
ledge the Holy Catholic and apostolic Roman Church,
Mother and Mistress of all the other churches ; I promise
and swear sincere obedience to the Roman Pontiff, suc-
cessor to St. Peter, Chief of the Apostles, and Vicar of
Jesus Christ."

No marvel that a council thus inaugurated be-
came before long tedious and distasteful to the
haughty Lord of Europe, or that weary at last of
the religious contest involved in it, Napoleon be-
came only solicitous in the end to get rid
of the assembled ecclesiastics. Within the
compass of this same forty-first book
besides the record successively of the birth
and baptism of the King of Rome and of
the assembling and scattering of the National
Council—M. Thiers relates events as remarkable
in their way as the transference by Napoleon of
the portfolio of foreign affairs from the Duke of
Cadore to the Duke of Bassano ; as the permission
accorded by Napoleon to Bernadotte to accept the
proffered crown of Sweden, a crown proffered to
the Prince of Ponte Corvo solely with a view to
the coiciliation of the Emperor of France, or as
as he might then have been termed more correctly,
the Emperor of Europe ; above all, as the gradual
preparation for the final rupture between Napo-
leon and the Russian Autocrat. Tarragone, the
theme of the forty-second book, follows in due
course: an important section of the History, in
which we learn not merely the particulars of the
siege and seizure of that great fortress by
the French soldiers under General, afterwards
Marshal Sachet, but besides this—of the return of
Joseph to Madrid, of the temporary relief of Ba-
dajoz by Marmont and Soult, of the recapture of
Figueres, of the revictualling of Cuidad Rodrigo, of
ptih el e desperateoultimaten (
)Wellington,r ofraa Inaosdoshnaoiufst
Ihttioeceol.
of the
tht
departure
of fpi
ulterior
Britishtnnuuor nomination
r iyfno,
forces
riBcßol .en2us
sbsubyi ehaNf)d, o
under
f
his brother, King Joseph, as the Commander-in-
Chief of the whole of the imperialeomes forces of France
in
eootkh—e tih3eenbineegilinian.ingFoiefatihlye end—the eb
tive of the commencement of Napoleon'see
forty-third
book—the
re;maEsesvmaigloer able and, for
cdb
oyi snat,shtoerfoe uvtseh
June, 1812—the momentous crosesni him, the whol
of
ly
downfalldescrip-
FofortauenelVs joefmtheer
of the
2_4th.
Whereupon M. Thiers closes this
vo-
lume of his " History" witiathese sad and solemn
reflections
th:—; die thirteenth Goa rtihoe e limus ba
r].
wannaings:hhicinsaadsatenmwpThus
towards the interior of Russia at the head of four hun-
dred thousand men, followed by twtwoohundredb f thousandre o.
ooetl;hsetohrnse. g
vToehrnluds
at
aEt the same
isoi Napoleon marched
hisl return. from Austria, had reflected a moment
taken pains to bestow peace
with hereditary stability, to assume'
the character of a
man of domestic tastes, to appease all enmities, to eva-
cuate Germany, and to force England to make peace ;
h s same man, we say, was now advancing to the north,
leaving behind him France' exhausted and disgusted with
amurderous glory, all independent minds indignant at
his political tyranny, and Europe weary of the yoke he
had laid upon her - whilst all those feelings were sul-
lenly cherished in' the ranks of the army which he
took with him, an army composed of troops of all na-
tions, only held united by his genius and his prosperity.
What would become, in the midst of the distant tracts
of country it now traversed, of this vast army of six hun.
dred thousand men, following one star, if this star should
suddenly pale from before their sight? This problem, to
our misfortune, has issn solved for the world in a mat.
ner it can never farget ! But it still remains to inform
it, by the e d t led narrative of events, of that of which
dby the clamour of a t • errible
it has only been informed
and heroic • recital we are
catastrophe. In this sad
about to engage. Glory we shall meet with at every
step ; but of good fortune not a trace beyond the
Niemen."
It is the grand and awful voice of the Chorus
of a Greek Tragedy a voice full of tears and
tenderness, poignant with the accents of pathos
and thrilling with the tones of lamentation.

The telegraphic accounts from China are to the 18th
of September, and report a renewal of the adverse move-
ment of the rate of exchange at Shanghai, the quota-
tions having advanced from 7s. 2d. to 7s. 6d. This,
however, was owing to the last mail having brought
only a small amount of silver, that of the 3d of July,
with 456,4371., not being yet due. At Canton there
had been a favourable turn, the quotations having re-
dceadteedwferroemls4:s. 4s.ooo4,od.otoolb.:and of
pe 100
silkc e. The export of tea to
season's supply
Prices of silk, on account of the advices from this side,
were 30 dole per picul higher. The settlements to date
of
tea
wasextdlt9,oooboe bales.very short.Th
had been between 32,000 and 35,000 bales.
Aare,
The Morraonites have taken a beereshop at West
H npeuarryßasoew,oaindexipnoteennddicrogr, theirverting peculiar
into
religious chapel,
for a
the