The Sun.
London, England, 1860-01-18 00:00:00

THE ARMY.

The Government having granted permission for
the erection of the memorial to the officers, non-
commissioned officers, and men of the Royal Engi-
neers who fell in the Crimea during the Russian
war, at the entrance to Brompton barracks,
Chatham, where the head-quarters of the Royal
Engineers are stationed, the necessary works for
raising the monument have been commenced.
The site of the memorial will be on the piece of
ground at the eastern entrance to the barracks,
and the memorial itself is intended to be one of
the finest erections of the kind raised in this coun-
try, several thousand pounds having been sub-
scribed for a monument which shall be no less an
honour to the brave men to whose memory it will
be raised than worthy of the corps to which they
belonged. The designs which have been prepared
are very costly and elaborate, and include a lofty
centre:arch with smaller openings at the sides, the
whole surrounded by a large vase. The names of
every officer, non-commissioned officer, and man of
the Royal Engineers, who fell in the Crimea will be
inscribed on the memorial. The contractors for the
erection of the monument are busily engaged in fell-
ing the trees which cover the proposed site.
Admiralty orders were received at Chatham yes-
terday, directing the bounty now paid to recruits in
the Royal Marine Light Infantry to be reduced
from Lo to £4, with a free kit as before. This has
been decided upon in consequence of the several
divisions being up to their full strength. Recruiting,
however, is still to be proceeded with.
Sergeant E. Connors, of the Ist battalion of the
10th Foot, was on Saturday last presented by the
officers of his regiment with a very handsome silver
watch and chain, with the following inscription:—
" Presented to Sergeant E. Connors, Ist battalion
of the 10th Foot, by the officers of the regiment as
a mark of their esteem for his good and gallant con-
duct during a period of 22 years in the regiment."
The sergeant served throughout the Sutlej and Pun-
jaub campaigns and Indian mutiny, and was twice
severely wounded. He wears four medals and three
clasps.
It is stated that the Government propose to erect
a cavalry barrack at Colchester, and that the site
will be the parade ground on the military road.
Col. Bloomfield, commandant of the camp at Col-
chester, has been promoted to a command in Dublin,
and will accordingly relinquish the appointment
which he at present holds. The force in camp is
now about 2,600 meu.

Mr. R. S. Frazer, who superintended the opera-
tions of the floating factory the Chasseur, in the
Crimea, who has been subsequently engaged in the
Machinery Department of Woolwich Arsenal, and
whose services in the first-named establishment ob-
tained the approval of the highest authorities at
the War Department, was yesterday promoted to
the post of Manager of the Royal Gun Factories at
Woolwich, under-the direction of Mr. J. Anderson.

THE DEAD OF 18,59.
-

Literature began the funeral procession of the
months with the almost simultaneous obsequies of
Hallam in England and of Prescott in America.
These accomplished historians, who won their first
golden spurs at almost the same moment, died
within the same week; and by a curious coinci-
dence this double loss which letters were called to
sustain in January was matched at the close of the
year by the equally contemporaneous decease of
Thomas De Quincey and of Washington Irving.
Another conspicuous name within the restricted
circle of the highest literary culture of our times
must be chronicled with these—that of Sir James
Stephen, Professor of History at the University of
Cambridge, and who had long exercised a sort of
consultative supervision over the education of the
heir of the British throne. The world of politics
has almost literally closed over the tomb of a great
statesman whose doctrines had ruled the councils of
Ecrope for nearly 40 years. There is something
worthy of the Tragic Muse of Greece in the close
which awaited the fatally brilliant career of Prince
Metternich. His every success had been a seeming
victory over the instincts of the race, over the laws of
progress, over the rights of men. And never had
man been more seemingly successful than he, alike
in Court and Cabinet. Talent, personal beauty,
power, fame, wealth, had all been lavished upon the
diplomatist whose skill had shaken down, as it was
fancied, the whole fabric of the French Revolution.
He had long passed the ordinary limits of human
life, had seen one after another his great contempo-
raries fall around him, and was reserved himself to
witness at last the utter downfall of the groat system
he had founded, the uprising of the Revolution, and
even the returning ghost of the Emperor he had
chained so strongly down upon the rock in the Indian
Sea. The last sun on which he looked shone down
upon the battle-field of Magenta. But the triumph
which France and freedom won over the deathbed
of Metternich was not unalloyed. The death of
Alexis de Toequeville robbed both of a loyal and
gifted champion, who has left behind him but few
in any land fully worthy to wear his mantle. In
our own oountrv• the ranks of our public men have
been loss sternly swept. Two diplomatists of re-
spectablee rank—Mr. Rush, of Pennsylvania, and
Mr. -Mason, of Yireinia—have been taken from us,
and three senators have fallen, two of whom. Messrs.
Geyer and Ha'e
gan had retired from political life.
The death
of the third, Mr. Broderick, of California,
is not likely, we aniv hope to be soon paralleled in
our annals, to Nvl iieh it has' given one sad and san-
guinary lesson les One m ost able and faithful
plulanthroleist has been removed from his labours in
the person if More ce Mann, who lovedoilea thei
cause of
educ Fike a .'estalozzi, and
Howard. Our ,t grows upon our
,mndi it Hike
wea
might eaten 4 its Arnost indefinitely were Ns;:nt,LO at-
tempt to in elln ia it all the simply eminent persons
whom the lest _ ti-els • Year four d in the busy front
of
life, but of who n t:ne year which 3 esterday dawned
will have no more report to give to men.
Two crowns hay r .hOt 'II taken, one from the " fore-
head villanous of the hated Ferdinand of ,
Naples, one frc Cie lowly brow of the gentle
Stephanie of Pi xe,`11.2, al. The cruel Yeh went to
his bloody ae co r int in far India, and the sweet
voice of one of the world's sweetest singers, Madame
Bosio, was fi .oze a into silence among the snows of
St. Petersbur g. BUST and prosperous as life has
been, death us been busy and prospered too, and
the Old Year 's annual lesson lies before us to-day
in a shape n 7 ore striking, if not solemn, than it
always wears t
o our too hasty and heedless eyes.—
New York Tie ,es,