The Sun.
London, England, 1861-07-29 00:00:00

T "

6, OXFORD-STREET.
This noble building being now completel, its architectural
beauty, elegance of ornamentation, and brilliancy of en hting*
reader it one of the sights of the metropolis. Open Every
Evening. The programme is varied, and includes Selectims
(by a full company of principals, powerful band, and chorus)
from " Macbeth" and "Un Ballo in Maschera." both operas
by Verdi, the composer of the day—The wonderful Solos on
the Cornet-a-Piston of the renowned LEVY—Scotch Duets by
the Misses Stuart, and other vocal and instrumental music
of the higheSt order. Conductor, Mr. F. Jonghmans. The
Comic portion of the entertainment is supported by Miss
Green, Messrs. Sam Collins, Harvey, and French (the New.es),
W. H. Wieland, E. Marshall, Stalls. Randall.. Admission,
Hall, sixpenee ; Balcony and one shilling. Private
Boxes, 10s. 6d.

-- .
lIIGH WATER. AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tit DA.T.—Morning, 6h. 20m.—Mternoon, 6h. 42m
TO-MORROW.-11.10nlin. g, 7h. 4m.—Afternoon. 7h. 24m,

THE WEATHER...-SUN OFFICE, JULY 28, 1.861.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
70 —highest since noon yesterday.
52.—lowesi this morning and during the night.
68—this day at noon.
BAROMETER-29.98 ; rising.
WIND—W.-S.-Westerly; fresh, with fine weather, but
cloudy. There was more rain in the night.
JULY 29.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
70—highest since noon yesterday.
52—lowest this morning and during the night.
6S—this day at noon.
BAROMETER-30.09 ; rising rapidly.
WlND—South-Westerly.; light, with fine weather.

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THE SUN.

LONDON, MONDAY, JULY 29, 1861.

-- 410

General M'CLELLAN'S splendid successes in
three consecutive days have quite changed the
military aspect of things in favour of the Federalists.
The moral effect, on which even the first NAPOLEON
relied so much, will probably be even greater than
the military gain, which is considerable. Our
readers will remember the position of the Federalist
and the rebel forces. The former having their
easternmost post at Fort Monroe, at the entrance
of the Bay of Chesapeake; but having nothing
further, except three steamers on the Potomac, till
we come to the main central army at Washington
en both sides of the river. Thence westward we
left General PATTERSON on the Virginian side of
the river at Martinsburg, from which he had driven
General JGIINSTONE. From thence we find Western
Virginia, as far as the State extends southward,
hilly, mountainous indeed, and the inhabitants
favourable to the Union. Into this Western and
loyal part, however, a large number of rebel troops
had entered, and it was against them that we left
General M'CLELLAN advancing, and anticipating,
what he has found, some hot work. He was quite
equal to it, however, and has probably cleared the
loyal western part of Virginia of the rebel soldiers.
Whether, however, the ex-Governor WISE would
venture to remain there is not quite certain, from
the accounts received. They speak of Western
Virginia as quite freed ; yet of General WISE as
still to be drawn out of the Kanawha Valley.
Whether the Great or the Little Kanawha is not
mentioned ; probably the latter, as it is near the
scene of M'CLELLAN'S operations, while the other
is considerably south of them. If it be, as we sus-
pect, WISE must, we should think, have decamped,
as he would hardly like the neighbourhood of such
a soldier as M'CLELLAX.

M'CLELLAII'S despatches are dated the 12th,
13th, and 14th of the present month. The first
announces the complete rout of the enemy's forces
near Beverley, which is situated in the very midst
of the mountain ranges in Western Virginia. A
large number of prisoners being taken, also guns,
waggons, and camp equipage. Ills loss was but
small, and chiefly confined to a column under Gene-
ral ROSENCRANTZ, which was employed to turn
the position of the enemy. But this active officer,
in the spirit of his chief, boldly pushed on ;imme-
diately towards Beverly. Next day M'CLELLAN
announces fresh successes—" all he could desire"—
sis brass cannon, all the camp equipage, and trans-
port materiel, " even to his cups ;" 200 tents, a
large addition to the prisoners, and 150 of the
enemy killed and wounded, were the immediate
fruits of the meeting. The enemy had, it seems,
attempted to return to Beverly, but disconcerted
by finding the troops of their pursuers advanced so
far, retreated with all haste ; General MORRIS WAS
following him up closely. M'CLELLAN estimated
that he had driven out of Western Virginia some
10,000 troops. The same day he received an offer '
to surrender with the remnant of his troops, about
600 men, from General POGRAM. They seemed to
be " extremely penitent," and determined never to
be guilty again of the wickedness of taking up arms
against the Government. The last dispatch tells
as of a third victory, in which General GAnNETT,
the commander-in-chief of the body to which
:NdI`CLELLAN was opposed, was killed. It is this
I)ateh which says that the " enemy is completely
annihilated in Western Virginia," and that "he
firmly 'believes that secession is killed in this sec-
tion of the Country." Indeed, it ought to be
M'CLELLAN had a thousand prisoners on hand and
seven captured guns, and though a pertion of GAE-
NETT's troops had retreated General rILL was in
hot pursuit of them, expecting before long to capture
thee].

Dameneement of be earn-
The effect of such,a co
pa;',gn, for it must be viewed as the real commence-
= will be very great. It shows that thel\Torth
and skilful General
has at least one young, ect.ive,
who understands something better than routin,o,
while he ip,y,etlaptyirn to bp thoroughly versed in
military science ; a man, too, who has evidently the
power of infusing his own spirit into both officers

and soldiers under him. One such man is equivalent
to an army. His troops, too, are from the Western
States, and he has therefore taught the South that
the North-Western soldiers are more than a match
for them ; the Southern boast having been,
hitherto, that Northern farmers and shopkeepers
could never stand against the "chivalry of the
South." The chivalry, however, has had to turn,
flee, or surrender in most " penitent" style before
the young Northern General. We should not
be surprised to find that this three days' battle in
Western Virginia becomes what the battle of
Maida was in the last French war—the battle
which will reverse the current opinion, of the
South respecting the superiority of their troops to
those of the North, just as the Italian battle
taught France and all Europe what they had
little dreamed of before, that French infantry
could not stand a bayonet charge of the British.
If so, its moral effect will go far towards deciding
the issue of the war.
Of course the great battle is yet to be fought
opposite Washington. General BEAUREGARD is
thought to be in considerable foree there, and in
all the part of Eastern Virginia, north of its capi-
tal, Richmond. But either from cunning or from
fear, the South is very silent; and if the gallant
Veteran SCOTT knows the strength of their
army, which some say he does, he at least keeps
his own counsel. I&CLELLAN'S movements have
all been under his direction ; and it would seem
that having cleared Western Virginia, he will bring
PATTERSON andIVPCLELLAN on the flank of the rebel
position as fast as the rugged nature of the country
admits ; when, if he deems himself strong enough
in front, he will push M'DOWALL forward, and
then, fighting or retreating will be the only alter-
native for BEAUREGARD. His main army is said
to consist of 55,000 men, and to have advanced
lately about five miles towards Washington.
As to Congress it is almost unanimous—minori-
ties of six or seven, at most, oppose the strongest
resolutions. One was passed in this way condemn-
ing the Southern movement in the strongest terms
and pledging the house to all the supplies requisite
for crushing the rebelli )n. We mentioned the
other day that seven members of the Senate were
expelled for knowing of the conspiracy to rebel
and not informing the Government of it. The
civilians seem to be fighting their battle as
vigorously as M'CLELLAN is fighting his. We
may now look every day for some important move
at Washington ; though SCOTT is not the man to
be betrayed into premature action, by the success
of one of his subordinate movements.

Mr. LAYARD'S appointment as the successor of
LorerWODEllousE will give satisfaction to others
besides the numerous personal friends of the hon.
gentleman, the member for Southwark. It is a
selection that cannot but be regarded with interest
by all the more impartial observers who—alien
though their sympathies may be from the majority
of the political opinions of Mr. LAYARD—have
watched the career of that energetic aspirant for
distinction as a public man, first of all in the arena
of Literature, and afterwards in that of Parliament.

AUSTIN LAYARD, though as yet but upon the
threshold of power as an administrator, though as
yet but in the early vigour of maturity, may be
said without any exaggeration to have already won
for himself two distinct reputations. As the Dis-
coverer of Nineveh his course has long since been
run and the goal won triumphantly. Among the
most interesting trophies of archmological research
now collected together in the British Museum are
those colossal attestations of the energetic labours
which were carried to their completion with such
extraordinary rapidity by this young antiquarian
Adventurer. Among the most remarkable
Books of Travel published within the pre-
sent century is the at once profound and
enthralling, the erudite and romantic record
penned by Mr. LAYARD of those gigantic inves-
tigations which led to the disentombment, after the
lapse of so many ages, of the great Buried City,
once the capital of the ancient world, doomed to de•
struction by the wrath of God. Coming as Mr.
LAYARD'S Discoveries, and as his picturesque and
impressive narrative of thche Discoveries, did
just mid-way between the cynical scientific
unbelief enunciated in the "Vestiges of Crea-
tion," and the insiduous, and if we may
so express it, purely ethical unbelief of the
" Essays and Reviews." Mr. LAYARD'S opus mag-
num, as a man of letters and an archaeologist has
left a salutary impress upon the age, one, the
wholesome influence, of which—if only from the
mere circumstance of being more instantaneously
recognisable and widely appreciable by the
masses —is calculated to be far more
durable in its effects than either the " Vestiges of
Creation " or the "Essays and Reviews," or, in
point of fact, than both of them put together.
The visible corroborations of the truth of Holy
Writ brought to light by the combined agency
of the daring hand, and the indefatigable
genius of AUSTIN LAYARD will affect the belief
of the world at large, far more powerfully, far
more lastingly, than all the most audacious
hypotheses ever indulged in by soi disant philo-
sophic daydreamers, or than all the most
ingenious sophistries—sophistries, now " hinting"
Doubt, now " hesitating " Deism ever
put upon paper and printed and published by all
the Essayists and all the Reviewers who have yet
striven to reduce the Bible to the level of the Shag.-
, ter and the Zendavesta.

Apart altogether from his first and "finished"
career as a literary antiquary, Mr. LAYARD has long
ago adventured upon another and a very different
career, indeed, that of a politician aspiring to
assume a conspicuous place in the national Parlia-
ment as a Debater, as a Legislator, and finally as an
Administrator. At the outset of this his second
career, Mr. LAYARD gave large promise of realising
very rapidly the high expectations indulged in by
those who imagined they knew him best, and who
felt confident that his energies and abilities would
carry him onward—energies and abilities both
cf them considerably above the average even among
the leading men of his time and of his own age.
How grievously these more sanguine observers were
mistaken—how grievously we were all us more
or less in error in so viewing Mr. LAYARD'S pro-
spects as a rising politician—the majority at least
must bear in rather disagreeable remembrance. It
was very much as if the old anti-climax were really
and truly about to be recognised in his
instance, in the instance of this archwological
man -of - letters turned into a popular
representative—the hon. "Member for Nineveh"
as Punch called him—it was really and truly, we
say, as if in this instance we were at length to see
one who, having gone up lips a rocket, was to come
down like a stick. Before any such melancholy
spectacle could be witnessed, however,—and it
actually did at one time seem to be very' imminent
—M. LAYARD was (opportunely we now think it,
for his reputation !) deprived of his seat in Parlia-
ment. During the interval which elapsed between
the hon. gentleman's ignominious rejection by his
first constituency, that of Aylesbury, and his
triumphant return' by his second constituency,
his present constituency, that of Southwark—
' he had, what we hope and believe to have been alone