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Lyttelton Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1093, 2 May 1863, Page 3

A Stage Scene.—A writer who has travelled extensively says that he witnessed rather a strange scene in Shakespeare's beautiful tragedy of " Romeo and Juliet;" it was at one of the Western Theatres. The piece had passed off well without interruption until the last scene. The character of Borneo was excellently enacted and loudly applauded. The very model of the lover was before the tomb of the Capulets, gazing upon the motionless form of her who had so attracted his soul, and meditating upon an act which would send his spirit to that undiscovered country where he supposed Juliet's had gone. Just as he exclaimed, " Here's to love!" and at the same time raised the vial which contained the poison to his lips, a stalwart young countryman jumped upon the stage, seized him, dashed the vial from his hand, crushing it to atoms, and yelling, " Yer darned fool, she ain't dead! Only been takin' a little sleepin' medicine. Did'nt yer get the parson's letter?" " Sirrah!" growled out the enraged tragedian, while the house fairly shook with laughter. " Why, yer gal ain't dead, I tell yer. The way it was, they wanted to make Julie marry that chap thar, pointing at Paris, " whose business they have just settled; but I tell you Julie war pluck—she got her back right up and vowed she would'nt do it, even if while she war lying in the vault the ghost of the other feller whom you kilt should dash her,brains out with the bones of some of her dead cousins. Wal, her pluck war up, and she took the stuff the parson fixed; so she could play possum till you got hum. That's the way it Avar," replied the countryman, giving the desperate lover a tremendous poke in the ribs with his elbow, and at the same time loosing his hold. " Hell's curses on the fellow!" muttered the raving tragedian as he stalked behind the scenes. " Wal, now," said the countryman, fronting the audience, " if that ain't a leetle the dod darned meanest cuss I ever did see, I hope to be swowed. That's all the thanks I git for stopping him from pizenin himself. Hope to be tarnly smashed if ever I go to interfere again when a feller wants to murder himself," he continued, as he clambered back to his seat, just in time to prevent his upper story from coming in contact with the curtain as it descended.—American Scrap Book.

Winchester Gaol. —It seems that for the last fifteen years prison discipline in the county of Hants has been mitigated by successive modifications in favor of the prisoner, until at last the state of things actually existing appears scarcely credible. Let us take the case of a man convicted of crime and sentencedtobe imprisoned with hard labor. Wefind, then, that in Winchester Gaol such convicts are divided into four classes, comprising respectively the men in the first, second, third and fourth months of their confinement. The hardest work is given to the first of these classes, and that work extends, at the outside, to three hours and a half a day, and may very possibly be less. The three other classes work for a period not exceeding two hours per diem, and we need not add that the labour performed during this period is by no means severe. So much for the amount of punishment inflicted; but that is not all. It is now announced to us as a positive fact that the work imposed upon offenders is so far from expressing any penal degree of severity that it is actually not sufficient to keep the convicts in good health. " You cannot," says Lord Carnarvon, " take a man in the prime of life, as the majority of prisoners are, and clap them into a cell, however warm and comfortable, for the best part of twenty-four hours, without endangering his life." As the essence of the system, therefore, is to keep the convicts in the best possible condition, " it has been found necessary to give the prisoners open-air exercise to such an extent that not only is it no punishment at all, but it tends greatly to aggravate the difficulties of carrying on the prison discipline." So we should think. But then another step is taken. A strong, able-bodied man, carefully provided with sufficient exercise, in wholesome air, acquires a very good appetite, and the inclinations of our convicts in this respect have been satisfied accordingly by a progressive improvement in the dietary. There has been " a considerable increase in the amount of meat given to the prisoners, who have now meat five days out of the seven." Quite recently, too, there has been " an extra allowance of pudding." Moreover, there " exists a system of extra diet, and that has grown to such an extent, that, out of 300 or 320 prisoners, the number on extra diet is no less than 59." Of course, such keep requires extra comforts to correspond, and so every prisoner now lias " in the daytime an additional waistcoat, and at night an additional blanket; and not only that, but, in order to keep his feet off the asphalt floor, and save him from any draughts that may creep through the exceedingly well-fitted door of his cell, I perccived," said his lordship, " on a recent visit to the gaol, that you had actually accommodated him witli a footstool." When we add to all this that the prison library comprises " works on history, on ancient Egypt and Grcece, treatises on modern astronomy and astro-theology books of fiction, such as ' Frank Leverton' and the 'Dairyman's Daughter;' books of travels, such as Dr. Livingstone's ' Travels in Africa;' and, lastly, popular poems and prize essays," we think we shall have drawn a tolerably inviting picture of life in Winchester Gaol."—Times.

A clergyman having preached several times in a small town, in which lie had not been invited to dinner, said, in seriously exhorting his hearers against being seduced by the prevalent vices of the age, " I have preached against every vice but luxurious living, having had no opportunity of observing to what extent it was carried on in this town." At a woman's convention, a gentleman remarked that a woman was the most wicked thing in creation. " Sir," was the indignant reply of one of the ladies, " woman was made from man, and if one rib is so wicked, what must the whole body be?"

THE CONFEDERATE GENERALS. The 1 Times' Correspondent-, writing from Richmond, gives sketches of three of the Confederate Generals, whom he saw at Winchester, when the Confederates had evacuated Maryland, after the battle of tfharpsburg. They are as follows :— GiCNKIIAL LIU:. General Lee is, I believe, between fifty and sixty years of age, but wears his years well, and strikes you as the incarnation of health and endurance, as lie rears his erect soldier-like form from his scat by the fireside to greet courteously the stranger. His manner is calm and stately, his presence impressive and imposing, his dark-brown eyes remarkably direct and honest as they meet you fully and firmly, and inspire plenary confidence. The shape and type of the head a little resemble Garibaldi's, but the features are those of a much handsomer man. On the rare occasions when he smiles, and on the still rarer occasions when he laughs heartily, disclosing a fine unbroken row of white, firm set teeth, the confidence and sympathy which he inspires are irresistible. A child thrown among a knot of strangers would be inevitably drawn to General Lee first in the company, and would run to claim his protection. The voice is fine and deep, but slightly monotonous in its tone. Altogether the most winning attribute of the General is his unaffected childlike guilelessness. It is very rare that a man of his age, conversant with important events, and thrown to the surface of mighty convulsions, retains the impress of a simple, ingenuous nature to so eminent a degree. It is impossible to converse with him for ten minutes without perceiving how deeply he has meditated upon all the possible eventualities of the campaign in Virginia, and how sound and well-con-sidered are the positions which he advances. It is obvious that the most entire and trusting confidence is placed in General Lee by his subordinate officers, whose respect and affection he seems thoroughly to have won. The General is crippled in his hands from the effects of a fall which he sustained so long ago as the 30th of August. At dawn that day he rode across the historical stream of Bull Eun, and, observing a patch of herbage, he dismounted and allowed his horse to graze, recollecting that the animal had carried him the whole preceding day almost without food. The General himself sat down on a stump. There were only a few cavalry pickets of Confederates between General Lee and the enemy. Suddenly a charge of a large body of Yankee cavalry drove in the Confederate pickets, and came close up to the spot where General Lee was. The General ran forward to catch his horse, and, grasping at the rein as his horse sidled off, he fell heavily forward entangled in his cloak, upon both hands, and jarred the nerves of the arms right up to the shoulders. His horse was caught by one of his staff, and the Yankee cavalry, not knowing what a valuable prize was close at hand, fell back without approaching more nearly. The General rode throughout the whole of that eventful day, the 30th of August, but for many days and nights he suffered agonising pain ; and even now, on the 21st of November, he is far from having wholly recovered the full use of his hands ; though not for one day or hour has he permitted himself to be absent from duty.

A similar abnegation of self is visible in every thought and act of General Lee. "If only lam permitted to finish the work I have on hand, I would be content to live on bread and beef for the rest of my life." " Occasionally we have only beef, occasionally only bread; but if we have both together, and salt is added to them, we think ourselves Sybarites." " Upon this occasion it was necessary to stop and procure food for some of the younger men." ' These are some of the characteristic utterances which struck me as they came from General Lee's lips. In reference to the last, it would seem as though the ordinary demands of human appetite were in him subordinated and subjected in presence of the imperious exactions required from his brain. In all the varied attributes which go to make up the commander-in-chief of a great army, it is certain that General Lee lias no superior in the Confederacy, and it may fairly be doubted whether he has any equal.

General Lee has three sons in the army—the one a general, under General J. E. B. Stuart; the second a colonel; the third, a lad of eighteen, who is a private attached to one of the batteries of General Jackson's corps. In reference to the last, General Lee told me a story which seemed to me, for the first time only during many conversations, to have elicited from the narrator faint traces of emotion. Most certainly it was difficult to listen to the story without one's self experiencing such emotion. It appears that at the most critical moment of the Battle of Sharpsburg, when General Lee was ordering up every gun to meet the heavy masses of Federal artillery pressing on the centre, he observed a single gun harnessed and ready for action, the sole survivor of a battery which had been engaged earlier in the day, and had been roughly handled by the Federals. General Lee immediately ordered the gun to the front. As it passed to the front, coming close to the spot where General Lee was standing, he recognized in the postillion mounted on the leading horses his young son. The boy turned and smiled brightly on his father, exclaiming, " So I see that you are sending us in again." It is a pleasure to add that, although slightly wounded, the boy lived to come safely out of the terrible engagement.

STONEWALL, JACKSON. At a distance of seven miles from General Lee's head-quarters, near the little village of Bunker hill, were the head-quarters of the hero of heroes of this struggle, General "Stonewall" Jackson. We had been taught to expect a morose, reserved, distant reception ; we found the most genial, courteous, and forthcoming of companions. A bright, piercing, blue eye, a slightly aquiline nose, a thin, tall, sinewy frame, " made all over of pinwire, a great disregard of dress and appearance—these are the characteristics of General Jackson's exterior. There is also about him a very direct and honest look. The disappointing circumstance is, that his voice, which is rapid in its utterance, is weak and unimpressive. Passionately attached to the Valley of Virginia, which has for so long been the principal scene of his achievements, idolized by the inhabitants of Winchester and of the Valley, General Jackson has acquired such a fame in that entire neighbourhood that it is sad to think what would happen if the one life round which such prestige clings should yield to a stray bullet or to the chance of disease. Sinewy and wiry as the General seems, it is impossible not to fancy that he is wearing himself terribly by his restless, sleepless activity, by his midnight marches, and by the asceticism of his life. The respect and consciousness of his presence, and what that presence means,

exhibited by his stall', impressed me very strongly, and seemed to exceed the respect exhibited towards General Lee. He spoke a few hearty words of admiration of General Lee, saying that lie never should wish to serve under an abler commander. But his heartiest and most enthusiastic utterances were in admiration of the cathedral edifices of England, and notably of York Minster. He dwelt with great animation upon the vibration of the air produced by the deep notes of the organ in York Minster, and which he had never heard equalled elsewhere. It is rare to find in a Presbyterian such admiration of cathedral magnificence.

There are such endless stories about General Jackson that to repeat them would fill a volume. Stories of his being wrapt in prayer in the midst of a fierce engagement—stories of the unaffected earnestness and piety of his life in his tent, and of his black servant saying that when his master, who invariably prays morning and evening, rises also in the middle of the night to pray, he knows that great and critical events are imminent. A most undemonstrative, reticent man, doubtless, in all that regards his vocation of a soldier. There is every reason to think that, when the war is over, General Jackson will be the very first man to bury himself in the deepest obscurity of private life. Throughout this war it has been the practice of General Jackson to throw himself, disregarding his own inferiority of numbers, upon large bodies of his enemy, and the day is ordinal i!y half won by the suddenness and desperation of the attack. * His usual policy then is to retire, upon which the correspondents of the Northern journals, who upon the day of General Jackson's onslaught have been half frightened out of their lives, announce with their usual fanfares a great Federal victory, and joy and exultation are universal. In a few days, however, when the Federals have reached some spot where it suits General Jackson to attack them, he pounces upon them again, and frequently the very fame of his second approach drives his opponents to a precipitate retreat without fighting, if the ground admits of such a possibility. The upshot of nearly a year and a half of General Jackson's conduct of the war, frequently at the head of no more than a handful of men, is that no permanent foothold has been gained by the Federals in the valley, and that, at will, General Jackson has run his opponents, sometimes including at once two or three Federal Generals of rank, out of the Valley. As there are many conflicting reports about the origin of the name " Stonewall," it may he interesting to repeat the true circumstances under which it was given. In the first battle of Manassas, on July 21, 1861, General Lee, of South Carolina, (himself subsequently killed in the same action,) observing his men flinching and wavering, called out to them to stand firm, exclaiming, "Look at Jackson's men; they stand like a stone wall!" In his official report of the battle, General Beauregard employed the same expression in connexion with General Jackson's command, and the name has clung to General Jackson ever since.

GENERAL LONGSTKEET. It remains for me to say a few words respecting one other of the most valuable officers of the Confederacy—an eminently combative man—General Longstreet. His frame is stout and heavy, his countenance florid and cheery, and eminently English in appearance. In every position which he has occupied—first, as commanding a brigade; secondly, as commanding a division; thirdly, a corps d'armee —he lias grown in the affections of his men and in the confidence of his commanding officers. As brave and imperturbable under fire as in his tent, remarkable for his promptitude in thinking correctly when in the greatest danger, his value to the Confederacy can hardly be over-estimated. A review of some 10,000 of his men took place when we were at Winchester. Among tlxis body there were no shoeless or barefooted sufferers; a finer or more spirited body of men has never been assembled together on the North American continent. In conclusion, I can safely say that, although I saw much suffering, great want of shoes, frequently very inadequate clothing, among the men of General Lee's army, I was astonished to observe how confident was the spirit pervading the entire body. No such army has ever yet been assembled to fight for the Confederacy. Any battle into which these men enter, is half won when the first shot is fired. Again and again they have joined issue under most unfavorable circumstances with their opponents, and have gained victories. It is not likely that the tide will be turned now the Federals are every day fighting with less and less appetite, and now that the experience of eighteen months of war has given such confidence to the Confederates in themselves and in their commanding officers, that the day of battle is surely and triumphantly looked on as necessarily the day of victory.