The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-28 00:00:00

Commence at 7 o'clock;

CANTERBURY HALL CONCERTS.-
EVERY EVENING.—The Music of Verdi's Opera of
MACBETH (now first made public in England at these Con-
'efts), the extraorAnary Violin Performances of the e,ele-
Lrated Infant DELEYIEREE FAMILY, and the usual
Vocal Conce, t.

Comic Vocalists -Messrs. George ITo.lson (the Irish Come•
dian and Mimic), W. T. Critchfield, and E. W. Mackney.

Several interesting Pictures are added to the Fine Arts
Gallery. The suite of halls have been re-decorated and
beautified, and constitute one of the most unique and brilliant
eights of the metropolis.
Will shortly be produced, a Grand Selection from Meyer-
beer's new opera of DINORAH.

THE `NEAT EIER.—Srx OFFICE, SEPTEMBER 23,
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
64—highest since noon yesterday.
57—lowest this morning and during the night.
66—this day at noon.

BABo:Arun-29.85.
WIND, South-Westerly; light, with fine weather. Some
rain in the morning.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
This DAY.—Morning, 2h. 37m.—Afternoon, 2h. 57m,
To-Moßßow-Morning, 3h. 17m.—Afternoon, 3h. 37m

_se
-4.

y,

THE SUN.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1859.

The capture of SCHAMYL—as recounted in pie-

turesque detail in our columns yesterday—is but
the repetition of an old, old story ; yet a story,
old as it is, that never palls upon us by repetition.
The incident has been witnessed again and again
before now in the world's history. It is fami-
liar to us in the instance of REGULUS—and
later in Italian annals in the more mourn-
ful, though less terrible, narrative of the rise
and fall, the glory and the misfortunes, of

BELISARIUS. We remember in our own time a
precisely sialar occurrence to this final capture of
SCHAMYL, the redoubtable Imaum of. the Caucasus.
We remember another renowned warrior, like
,SCHAMYL half knight, half prophet, the heroic
ABD•EL-KADER, falling at last into the hands of the
foreign foe whose chivalrous assaults he had so
often repelled, and whose most insidious advances
he had so often evaded. A yet more famous inci-
dent of this character, the most extraordinary
instance of the kind anywhere to be found on record,
is that in which the conqueror of Europe, bowing
to adverse destinies, in 1815 delivered himself np
to the captain of an English man-of-war, then lying
off Rochefort. At a first glance it appears incom-
prehensible how men of this character, and of these
peculiar
.antecedents, can survive any such over-
whelming catastrophe. Viewing any one of them
in their pride of power, it seems incredible that they
can ever submit to captivity. You would say that
surely these men at least would perish rather than
yield. That the lion of the desert could never be
barred into a den. That the eagle of the mountain
Crag could never be caged. The one simple explana-
tion of the anomaly is, however, discoverable in the
very fatalism which is, ' generally speaking, the
distinguishing characteristic of the world's great
Adventurers. It is herein especially, though in a
sense in which the familiar words are not generally
used, that these extraordinary personages pay their
tribute to humanity. It is by their absolute sub-
mission to their evil fortunes in the hour of supreme
trial that they attest in a very signal manner before
the gaze of all the living millions ,of their fellow-
men, as well as for the contemplation thenceforth
of generation after generation—their subjection to
a power as superior to their own as immeasurable
space is to an atom. That is unquestionably the
true significance of this otherwise inexplicable
spectacle. That is the real import of the great
lesson taught by these astounding catastrophes.
Viewed in this light, there is a grandeur in the
bending of those haughty spirits to the decrees of
Heaven—a grandeur incomparably more sublime
than is the height of their earlier puissance and
prosperity. So regarded, BELISARIUS in rags.
BELISARIUS blind and begging alms stands before
posterity in an aspect far more venerable than
Rztasamus at the head of his legions in his charac-
ter as a Powerful generalissimo. And in the melan-
choly shadow of his nearly six years' captivity-in
.the island of St. Helena, NAPOLEON, Captain,

Consul, King, and Emperor, "NAPOLEON, le plus
grande poete du monde," as BERANGER called him,
captive though he is there himself, himself more
effectually captivates the imagination of thoughtful
men in after ages than when from his palace of the
Tuileries his imperial sceptre swayed directly or
indirectly the destinies of all Christendom.
Misfortune, in truth, if but rightly used, if but

accepted with dignity, seems rather to enhance than
to diminish a heroic reputation Of this there is

in France at this moment, indeed, a very noble and
a very conspicuous illustration. The fair fame of
M. DE LAMARTINE has in no way been dimmed by
his retirement into privacy after having in 1848
held for three months the reins of a virtual dictator-

ship. A gentleman and a man of unsullied white-
ness of honour—a poet and a hero—M. DE LAMAR
TINE, whatever the other Republican chiefs may
have done since the downfall of the Provisional
Government, M. DE LAMARTINE, at any rate, has
not found it necessary to seclude himself near
Leicester-square nor at St. Heliers—and it is no
derogation from his personal dignity, but, on the
contrary, a very striking tribute to it, that a villa
is now being erected is the Champs Elysees as a
present to him from the grateful and appreciative
Parisians. The Emir ABD-EL-KADER lost not one
particle of his dignity, again, when placing his
submission in the hands of the Prince DE
JOINVILLE, or, when later, a prisoner in the Chateau
d'Amboise, he was visited by the veteran Marquis
of LONDONDERRY. In his place of honourable
banishment in the dominions of the Sultan ABD-
CL-MEDJID, the scymeter of the Arabian warrior
remains to this day as unstained as when, with the
green turban coiled under the shade of his bunions,
he led his heroic cloud of followers over the wilder-
ness. So will it be now, let us hope, for years yet
to come with the valiant Imaum SCHAMYL lately
captured at last at Gounib by the Russian Prince
BARIATINSKI. The circumstances of his capture
were certainly in every way eminently charac-
teristic. Driven into the fortified stronghold of
Gounib by the vastly superior forces of the enemy,
SCHA3IYL there stood at bay in that little rocky
fort with a small force of no more than 400
Murides. Upon the 7th of this present month of
September the Russian assault upon Gounib com-
menced. Before the close of that fatal day for
SCHAMYL, his warlike career had terminated. Not,
however, until after a most desperate resistance and
a contest as prolonged as it proved to have been.
sanguinary. Out of his 400 followers but 47
remained with SCHAMYL still living at the termina-
tion of that deadly encounter. BARIATINsKI, the
Russian Prince, we then read in this last chapter
of the history of SCHAMYL'S war in defence of the
Caucasus—BARIATINSKI having come up, bade his
men to cease firing, and himself in a loud voice
summoned the Imaum to surrender ! SCHAMYL in-
quiring (from within his last retreat " a house cut
out of the solid rock") upon what conditions !
" Come out without conditions !" said the Prince.
" SCHAMYL," says the Nord, " came out, and the
Prince met him, though advised by his officers to
retire for fear of treachery. Are you SCHAMYL?'
asked the Prince. I am,' replied the
Imaum. 'Well, your life is safe,' said Prince
BARIATINSKI ; you nny keep your wives and
treasure, but to-morrow I send you to St. Peters-
burg. Your fate will depend upon the will of the
Emperor, my august master.' SCIIAMYL," adds
the Ru-sian record, "bowed, without uttering a
word." It is the hero-Fatalist once more submit-
ting implicitly and reverently to the irresistible
decrees of Divine Providence.

Quite a show of Agricultural Meetings we have
had lately; some half-dozen we have had to report
in the last few days, and some notice they certainly
deserve. They serve to mark the change of ideas
among agriculturists, as well as the actual results
in prize cattle and implements, and, we mutt add,
in prize labourers too. Country lords and 'squires,
and county members are, of course, the chief
speakers, and will continue to be so. The agricul-
tural meetings of different kinds are their Forum ;
only, a dinner table, not despised amongst good
citizens, also, must ever be the rustic rostrum.

And, truly, looking back a little, what a change
do we notice in these meetings. Well do we remem-
ber the time—indeed it is hardly fifteen years ago
—when the farm steam-engines in England might
have been counted, as the Esquimaux would count.
Indeed, the fingers of one hand would probably at
that time have been more than sufficient. Now,
steam power is one of the regular shows at agri-
cultural meetings—the very cream, indeed, of the
implenents, and examined with more curiosity than
all besides. And when we listen to the speeches,
steam is the watchword—give us steam ploughs,
and steam to do everything for us—till one begins
to fear that our noble sleek teams of agricultural
horses will give place to hissing, greasy smelling
engines ;as the four-in hand of the mail-roads have
done ; or as ugly, long, smoking funnels have super-
seded so many of our masts, with their graceful,
curved, and swelling sails. Ycs, it is a fact, a sober
fact, that farming is rapidly becoming a manufac-
turing affair, not in the etymological sense of the
word; that, alas, is vanishing with the age when
the wives and daughters spun and wove in their
own cottages, but in the modern, the steam sense of
the word, which gives the name, manufactures, by
preference,:to articles in proportion as they are not
made by hand. _Lucas, again, from non lacendc

The result is to be, that labour-saving machines,
all possible of them -worked by the great agent of
our manufacturing towns, are to cover the land.
The railroad is to permeate such purely agricul-
tural districts as one we noticed the other day
amongst the list, from Lynn to H-un-stanton, is to be
brought near to every agricultural village, and to
send up a cheap horse tramway adapted to its
goods trucks, to every farm; and, it may be, eventually
to send a tram-road to every field in the farm. The
land is to be drained by steam, ploughed, by steam,
drilled by steam, weeded by steam, the crop carried
home by steam, threshed, winnowed, and sacked by
steam—these last three being all now commonly done
at once by one implement—and finally carried by
steam to the nearest market town or port, there,
perhaps, in these days of the supremacy of steam
it will be ground to flour by steam, the old uncer-
tain windmills at least giving place to the power
with which water can alone compete ; water indeed,
itself, being of little pecuniary advantage except to
the 'first individual who appropriates the quiet,
rustic, half poetic power.

But what is to become of the labourer amidst
these great changes ? Is he to be " improved" as
-Yankees would say of the Red Men, " off the soil!
By no means. Our speakers tell us that, in the
good times coming, the working man is to have at
least one meal of meat per day. The little slice of
bacon to flavour a whole bowl of potatoes is to be
represented by a better plate of mutton, or beef, or
pork than they give us iu a Lon don eating house
for sixpence. The millions'' rejoi,ling in potatoes"
y,..m.rs back, are to
bofe tehxechNaonrgfoeldk,scalyesrgthyemNanorfaolfl:NLvordTlVALslNGHA3r,
for "rejoicing in a dinner of meat each day ?" And
how is this result to be brought about. Our own Mr.
MECHI, we have no doubt,' could ll us. The
labour-saving machines have proved, everywhere,
and creators
yet, to be labour-creating machines,