The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-24 00:00:00

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.

Tate DAY.—Morning, 4h. 36m.—Afternoon, 4h. 50m.
To-monao-w.-Morning, sh. 10m.—Afternoon, Oh. 26m.

THE WEATHER....-SIMT OFFICE, SEPTEMBER 24, IS6I

THERMOMETER, IN VIM MAIM.
61—highest since noon yesterday.
46 —lowest this morning and during the night.
62—this day at noon.

iltatomwrzu-29.42.
WIND—W.. S.-West—fresh; with squally, fine, cloudy
weather. Seine rain in the morning early.

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THE SUN.

LC ;MoN, TUESDAY, SEPT. 24, 1361.

A successful attack by ROSENCRANZ on the Con-
federate forces in Western Virginia seems but to
show how even in the most hopeful districts south
of the Potomac the war makes no material pro-
gress. It is now more than two months since
M'CLELLAN'S victories in that quarter, when he
drove everything before him ; and it was so long
back as May that Western Virginia separated its
action from the Eastern part and elected its own
Legislature at Wheeling, declaring it to be the true
Legislature. Governor WISE who hung JOHN
BROWN was then in the valley of the Kanawha, and
every week he was to have been captured, troops and
all, with some prospect of his sharing the fate of JOHN
BROWN himself, only for the opposite reason. Yet
after so long an interval we find ROSENCItANZ
barely able to take the offensive. He attacked, we
are told, 5,000 troops strongly posted, who held their
ground during the fight, but retreated under cover
of night, leaving part of their baggage and ammu-
nition behind them. Probably all the troops pos-
sible have been either sent to FREMONT, who needed
them enough in Missouri, or been drawn off with
M'CLELLAN himself to the Potomac.
There, in front of Washington, stand the two
armies gazing on each other. M'CLELLAN keeps his
men pretty well within their works, but BEAURE-
GARD has marched his about as if he intended
something. But whether it be to draw out
M'CLELLAN, who is not thus to be entrapped into
a worse position, or to cover a retreat, is not yet
known. His flag is said to be visible on a height

called Munson Hill, from the dome of the Capitol

at Washington, and the pickets of the two armies
are constantly firing on each other; a piece of
savageism and barbarity, useless murder indeed,
which the better disposed on each side have vainly
attempted to stop. At present, therefore, things
present a balanced appearance on the Potomac, as
well as in Western Virginia.
In Missouri it is much the same ; though there
as in Western Virginia there is some motion, and
when the Federals do act they appear to have the
advantage. It is generally, however, a barren
advantage. The Southern Generals in that part
march and countermarch, however, with appa-
rently no object whatever in view ; while Gen.
WOOL, at Fort Monroe, on the Chesapeake, is
only sufficiently strong to hold his own against
any force the South can bring to attack him.
The navy, since the Cape Hatteras exploit, at-
tracts the most attention. The watchword now is
to ,distract and distress the Southerners. Nothing
so itoposing as the recovery of Fort Sumpter,
involving a laud expedition to silence the
shore batteries, seems to be thought of.
But another naval expedition is being
fitted out whose cfc.stiny is reported to be Savannah,
the southernmost p(e-t of South Carolina. For that
very reason, however, ft is quite probable that its
real destination is quite d.i
,_crerent ; for Mr.WELLES,
the Secretary to the navy, kept his secret so well
before, that the attack on For; Hati.eras was sus-
pected by no one. It seems quite certain, how-
ever, that the late success, and the likelihood of its
being followed up along the coast, even to New
Orleans itself and Texas, is a serious annoyance to
the South.
It compels them to draw off some of
their fortes to garrison many points; for the grand

advantage of the naval procedure is, that no one
can tell where it will see fit to operate.
Hence we already hear of regiments being
withdrawn from Northern Virginia to protect the
coast of the Carolinas.

October has been the time always fixed for the
great onward movement. M'CLELLAN'S men are,
however, reported to be far from being an army
yet, although improving every day in regimental
drill and power of co-operation. We fear, how-
ever, that they will not, even in a fortnight more,
be well in band for any great offensive movement;
while, on the other hand, their impatience and that
of the public may again necessitate an advance.
Naval exploits, if they continue to be successful,
may possibly serve to quiet the restless eagerness
of the ignorant public, as it will obvi-
ously be so efficient a mode of procedure.
Already the privations of the South are severe,
from want of the ordinary comforts brought by
commerce; and if the coast be blockaded, both by
seizure of harbour forts and by cruisers, the people
will be reduced to still greater straits. It must,
however, be confessed that who will attack and
when it will be done are as great mysteries to us,
and probably to the dwellers on the Potomac them-
selves, as when the French will take themselves
from Rome, or what Louis NAPOLEON will please
to do.

It is but seldom that so much excitement can be
got out of an ordinary agricultural meeting as that
which was evoked last week by Mr. WEGUELIN
down at Wolverhampton. The occasion was
nothing more out of the way than one of the
customary Harvest Home Meetings. It was a
jovial banquet, in fact, bringing to a close—accord-
ing to our convivial wont here in England—the
sayings and doings of the local agricultural associa-
tion, the Agricultural Association, that is,
of Staffordshire. One would hardly have
expected that very much. in the way- of ex-
citement could be elicited from that. There
seems scarcely an opportunity for anything
of the kind, in an incident so exceedingly common-
place, and so excessively matter-of-fact. The pro-
ceedings at these banquets might almost as a rule
be reported for the local papers without any neces-
sity for personal attendance on the part of the
short-hand writer. Earl So-and-so (the county
magnate), as a thing of course, takes the chair; his
Lordship being " supported " (as though he was in
a fainting condition) on the right and left by Sir
DASH BLANK and Squire SUCH-AN-ONE, together
with a longish list of illustrious obscures, known
only to the countryside in the immediate neighbour-
hood. Full justice having been done to the excel-
lent fare provided by our " worthy friend," JONES
of the Golden Fleece, or ToMKINS of the Red Lion,
as the case may be, when the cloth has been removed
[they are full of these particularities in the provin-
cial newspapers] the "business" of the evening [as
if that, forsooth, were not the Dinner itself that has
just been consumed], the business of the evening
commences. Instead of slurring over the pre-
liminary part of this same business of the
post-prandial speech-making, with that little hack-
neyed sentence so familiar to us Londoners—" The
usual loyal and patriotic toasts having been duly
given and responded to "—our unsophisticated
country contemporaries indulge us with a record of
each toast with the utmost degree of particularity.
It is almost with reluctance apparently that at the
close of the second on the list we are let off with—
(after " H.R.H. the Prince CONSORT and H.R.H.
the Prinee of WALES " and the rest of
the _Royal Family." It seems like a missed
opportunity. And it is because of this,
perhaps, that we generally note immediately after-
wards that another royal highness is expressly
referred to, the toast of the " Army and Navy,"
admitting a courtly allusion en passant to the
General Commanding-in-Chief. Nay—so much are
the minutiev in these matters attended to that we
are generally informed (sometimes in the most ab-
surdly incongruous way in the world, of the music
warbled out at the close of each toast by the little
groap of professionals who have begun their per-
formances simultaneously with the appearance of
dessert by nearly tiring every one to death by their
drearily protracted, " never-ending, still-begin-
ning" intonation of Non Nobis Dornine. Nor is it
enough that we are informed who gave forth the
toast of the Army and Navy ; we are next apprized
that the gallant Capt. SMITH, of the Onety-oneth,
returned thanks for the former, and that Commodore
BROWN duly responded on behalf- of his brother
blue-jackets. In return for the successive toasts of
the "Lords" and the "Commons"—a thousand to one
but a non-political peer (for there are such) replies
on behalf of the Lords, and a silent member (silent,
that is within the House) on behalf of the Commons.
Yet it was actually out of proceedings of this
deadly and thoroughly used -up character,
that Mr. WEGUELIN contrived, by a master.
stroke of—what shall we call it P—want
of tact—to elicit an exhilarating burst of
excitement. Speaking of Mrs. DOUGLAS (fami-
liar to the readers of the sparkling little
novelette of " The Semi-Attached Couple ") Colonel
BEAUFORT, the blase fine-gentleman, says very
wittily, " If she occasionally squeezes a few drops
of lemon-juice into any stagnant cup it will be
rather an advantage. I shall effervesce." It was
in this opportune manner precisely that Mr.
WEGUELIN acted the other day down at the
farmers' dinner at Wolverhampton. He
squeezed a few drops of lemonjuice
into the stagnant cup of the agricul-
tural banquet of the Staffordshire Associa-
tion. And forthwith•—the farmers effervesced. It
was absolutely refreshing to read the account of it.
And all out of a matter so apparently trifling in
itself. An allusion to the " burking " last session
(among so many other Innocents) of the much-
talked-of and eagerly-looked-for Transfer of
Lands Bill ! The Bill projected by Sir HUGH

CAIRNS, and afterwards shelved by the hustling

of the Tories out of place, and the induction into

office, in lieu of them, of those wonderful much-
talking but little-doing Reformers ! It was a deli-

cate subject to touch upon, we may presume, in
purely bucolic company. Mr. WEGUELIN, like a

great city man, as he is, with all the weight of
the Bank of England on his shoulders, came

down upon the corns—not upon the corn but
upon the corns—of the Staffordshire agri-

culturists and landed proprietors.

Came down

so unexpectedly and heavily, too, that, as a
matter of course, they howled. It was like the

stamp upon the tenderest of gouty toes from Miss
KILMANSEGGE'S wonderfully precious, but fright-

fully ponderous Golden Leg. The agriculturists
at Wolverhampton were not to be mollified by any
words that could afterwards be uttered by the perpe-
trator of this excruciating gaucherie. Mr. WEGUE-

LIN had decidedly put his Golden Foot in it. He had
dared to talk politics—unpleasantly. And while
nothing but politics will " go down" at a public

dinner, perhaps we should rather say with a public
dinner at Sheffield—it is diametrically the reverse

apparently at Wolverhampton. Mere—anything
but politics ! Particularly—anything but politics
talked unpleasantly! Even when the oil of poetic

compliment was poured upon the troubled waters,
the turbulence of the latter waS pt to be in Any