The Sun.
London, England, 1861-12-03 00:00:00

colour. The white men of the vessel to which they
belonged were liberated on the representations of
Mr. lunre, but these men are still detained, although
it is arranged, I believe, that they shall be liberated
as soon as there is a man-of-war sent to take them
away.

The prettiest sight I have seen since I crossed
the Atlantic was the torchlight procession got up by
General Blenker and his Germans in honour of
Major-General M'Clellan on his promotion to the
command of the army. It was something like a
Bursehen procession, but it exceeded very much
any displays of the kind in the number of torch-
bearers and the variety of colour and effect. The
camp of the Blenker men—famous for lager beer
and quaint pipes, also for perverted notions re-
specting the nzeunz of Unionists and the tuunz of
Secessionists—lies some miles across the Potomac,
in the valleys and dells of the " old dominion," which
is nearly as old as C Inada, and is meeting with very
rude treatment in its primitive antiquity. From it
they came in a grand procession, with bands play-
ing and rough chorus singing, and filed over the
Long•bridge in a dancing stream of fire—blue,
green, red, yellow, orange, and dazzling white. The
air was still, the night fine, and nothing could have
been more successful than the fireworks in their
way, or the impression produced by the stream
crested with fire, which first glowed like a torrent
of lava, then gradually broke its particles into a
broad riband of nebulous flames, which, coming
nearer, was resolved into balls of diverse-coloured
light, and thus winding or thinned away into a
narrow stripe of orange-like molten iron running
through the black courses of the mould. The
"Dutchmen" pursued their career by Pennsylvania-
avenue, past the State Department, and, turning in
at the gates of the White House, treated the Presi-
dent to a sight of the demonstration intended for
his benefit.

WEDNESDAY.
The first week I was in Washington I was intro-
duced to an amazing naval officer, who held only
the rank of lieutenant, but who was capable of
being anything in the service, and was big enough

For half a dozen admirals. He was at the righ

ride of 40, and stood some 6 feet 3 or 4 in height,
and weight about, at a moderate guess, 23 or 24
stone—big-bearded, large- headed, mellow-eyed,
and strong voiced, with a fine bold front, and a
pleasant expression of countenance—one who had
travelled, and had joked and drunk with Britishers
in divers seas and ports over the world. I lost sight

of him after a time, and he slipped away out of the
world of daily acquaintances, and his memory took
place in the ranks of those which belong to peo•
ple we wish to meet again when we think of them.
Last night we had news of a great victory in Ken-
tucky, won by General Nelson, who had killed 600
rebels, taken the Confederate Generals, and 1,000
prisoners of inferior rank, and destroyed the camp
and their prospects in that part of the world. I
was certainly surprised when I heard that the
" General" who had done all this was no other than
my friend the lieutenant in the United States navy.
It appears that he was a strong Union man, and
when Kentucky was in jeopardy he went down to
his State to do his best to keep her straight. He
enlisted men, he raised companies, and finally got

up battalions, and at last became of such service and
importance that the Government made him a Bri-
gadier-General ; and so my stout friend has won the
spurs of glory—and may goodness save the Bellero-
phon on which he mounts—in the tented field, and
afforded a proof of the readiness with which a
genuine "salt" may be turned into a soldier at the
call of duty. In very truth, he has done good work ;
for, if the journals do not depart somewhat from ac-
curacy, the Confederates are defeated in a place
where defeat makes a gap in their line. This will

cause serious inconvenience to their operations.
Again, there is news that in East Tennessee
Unionists or enemies of some sort are burning bridges
and destroying telegraph wires, and giving tokens
of an intention to cut off the communication be-
tween the Confederates and their friends. The cause
of the Unionists is beginning to gain ground, and if
the reaction comes now it will produce results of im-
mense consequence in Kentucky and Tennessee,
which must react on Missouri and Virginia. In-
deed, the force in Kanawha under Rosencrans (for so,
to our discomfort, he spells his name), must now be
within five or six days' march of the Federalists in
Kentucky. Important as the operations at Beau-
fort may be, it does not appear that their present
results can be as distressing to the enemy as these
reverses and threatening combinations on their flank
and in their midst. Little as I thought Lieutenant
Nelson would turn out such a potent chief, still less
was I prepared to foresee the day when Beaufort
would be the great object of a flotilla and an expe-
dition, the largest ever fitted out in this New World.
THURSDAY.

The American journalists are insatiable in their
desire to be insulted; they are ever ou the lookout
for some pretence to shout out that their flag has
been affronted, or that England has been doing
something or other not neutral; and it drives them

to desperation to see that all our statesmen insist
on being neutral, in spite of protection or annoy-
ance. So, though it has been satisfactorily ascer-
tained that the British Consul-General at Havannah
did not put on his uniform and present the Confe-
derate Commissioners to the Csptain-General,
" Lyons" is asked why he has not inquired if the
fabrication be true—as if the British Minister were
called on to investigate the falsehood of all the ridi-
culous :myths which are concocted, Lord knows
where, to astonish the groundiings. We are told,
too, that Lord J. Russell has not taken any steps to
punish Mr. Keate for permitting the Sumter to coal
in Port of Spain ; and then follows the usual

mouthing about " the day of reckoning-up and re-
paying these small favours being near at hand,"
and an intimation that if Mr. Lincoln and Mr.
Seward were not very forbearing, Lord Lyons and
some other diplomatists would have received their
passports long ago.
There is a delusion that it is by the will of the
people everything is done over here ; it is not so.
The controlling power is held in the hands of cer-
tain party leaders, is moved by direct party in-
fluences and machinery which acts on the minds of
the masses, and is moulded in caucuses, conventions,
and small local associations. In their enormous
vanity, the men who are always searching the dic-
tionary for big adjectives to describe the wonders
and glories of the United States of Nurth America,
and of their institutions, forget that th:ir republic
has already never yet been exposed to any rude
shock, such as similar organisations would have ex-
perienced in Europe, and that they have run their
career without let or hindrance till suddenly
brought up by the violence of their internal fac-
tions. With the capital blockaded by sea, with
Missouri and Kentucky and Virginia in the hands
of contending armies, and with North and South
Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama,
Tennessee, still held by the troops which obey the
Confederate Government at Richmond, there is
something almost sublime is the way in which the
papers call on the world to fall down and worship
the rest of the late United Stater, because the occu-
pation of Beaufort gives promise that the great
resources in men and money of the Northern States
and the enormous advantages they possess in this

quarrel, lead to the conclusion that they must in the
end overcome the popular resistance and subjugate

the Southern States, which now hate them as the
Pole hates the Russian, and will not love them the
better for being beaten.
The fables of Livy are not more mythical than
the historiettes of the modern American writers,
who recount the events of the only great wars in
which the people of the United States were ever
engaged, the struggle for independence and the war
of 1814, in which England burnt the capital of the
Republic as a sort of necessary and unpleasant in-
terlude in her great war with France. There are
few Americans who do not believe that they met
important and braved the whole power of England in these
unhappy Conflicts,
that in both these war
fighting our most formidable
ptaunrtpfoaseetlsy
of
mtyhsetified case,
andby th e se
writers in the igno-
rant
really diversions of the national force.
me
ei
cd
gonist, and that the struggles and proximate ants
w with
t were
e r
America
engaged
ag e in
wore
The bulk of the people know nothing of their
defeats, and it would surprise nearly the whole of
the United Staten to know that General
Scott had