The correspondent of the Times at Richmond writes on the
27th -of December, between the two attacks on Wilmington,—after the failure and before the success,—a letter in which he speaks of the loss of Wilmington as almost a " blessing in disguise;'—because it would extinguish a sink of corruption. He asks, however, whether " in the existing decline of Confederate virtue" the Con- federates can stand the discouragement .caused by the loss of the blockade-running port. The Richmond papers,are no less gloomy. Some of them talk of applying a " Pride's purge" to their Congress, some speak of the shocking morale of the Confederate troops, one says that out of 150,000 conscripts the army actually got only 13,000, and that the rest are marauding about the country, and almost all are bitter to the verge of madness against the Confederate administration.
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