The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-07 00:00:00

THE SUN.

LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPT. 7, 1861.

The subjoined comments upon our latest advices
from America were hardly in print, when telegrams
have been flashed to us—indicating a new phase in
the development of that lamentable Civil War.

It was not so much when these last advices left for
Europe that further reverses to the Northern power,
the power of the Federalists, were dreaded—so much
as it would seem that other reverses had actually
happened. No city has fallen, it is true, into the
hands of the Confederates. The Capital of Wash-
ington remains yet unassailed. But—signs of the
times are noted there that begin to look uglier
than ever for the North, and more than
ever propitious for the South. Fort Fill-
more—we now learn—has surrendered. The
Southern troons have entered it. If—as
we have already said—the capital itself has
not yet been laid siege to; it reads disagreeably in
these latest accounts from Washington that
intimation, suggestive of either as the phrase
rubs) " treason in the camp," or (almost worse
this, during a civil war) " indifference in the cause"
at issue, i.e., the cause of the Federalists, the cause
of the Union that intimation that the Mayor
of the Capital had been confined as a State prisoner
in Fort Lafayette. More than this—" numerous
arrests" are still spoken of as taking place con-
tinually.

There comes news a day later even than the
above from NeW York. News down to within an
hour of noon on the 28th ultimo—from which
advices we learn darker rumours still of disaster
and defeat to the Federalists.
It was reported at eleven o'clock in the forenoon
of that day at New York, that down in Western
Virginia a portion of the Federal force under Gene-
ral ROZENCRANTZ had been actually surrounded
(showing, however, it will be observed, an evidently
considerable disproportion of numbers), and that
these Federal troops had not only been defeated,
but " badly defeated " by the Confederates,
under General FLOYD at Summerville. While it
blows hot from one quarter, however, it blows cold
from another. For we read in the next portion of
the telegram that a report—this time not from
Western Virginia, but from North-eastern Missouri
—described the Federalists as in rapid advance
from Athens in pursuit of the flying Southerners .
The half-paralysed guardians of the com-
mercial interests of the North are awaken-
ing at length, it will be noted, to a sense of the
urgent necessity there is for a change in the policy
of President LINCOLN. In that awakening we
recognise something like hope for the North. The
deputation of bankers hastening from New York
and Boston to urge upon Mr. LINCOLN the necessity
for a more vigorous prosecution of the war,
may at last rouse the Federal Government, though
tardily, to an adequate sense of the emergency.

In the absence of striking movements in Ame-
rica the prospects of each side are reported to us
with small fluctuations, much like those of Consols
in ordinary states of the market. But a few days
ago, Northerns were down to expectation of an
advance of the rebels across the Potomac. By the
next mail they had risen to absence of any hostile
preparations on the Southern bank after a careful
naval search. And by the last they are up to retire-
ment of the rebels from Centreville and Fair-
fax, the two positions nearest Bull's Run.
The rise, however, is hardly maintained,
for it turns out that the retreat was owing
to two companies
of rebels having mistaken
each other for foes, and consequently fired en their
friends. Also that the number of killed and
wounded in Missouri had been very considerable ;
thus the prospects of the North had receded at
least an eighth from the quotations of the earlier
news of the same day.

What we are told that MICLELLAN is getting
his army into first-rate order and drill—that works
are thrown up round IVashington which may vie
with those of TODLEBEN in the Crimea—that a
grand review of the army of the Potomac has been
witnessed by the PRESIDENT—that the North has
%00,000 men in the field, soon to be 100,000 more,
the South 200,000—that old General WOOL IS
Fitting things in order at Fort Monroe, where he
has superseded Gen. BUTLER ; and, of all things in
the world, the arrest of a lady spy, and an authoress