The Press. — London, England, 1854-06-10 00:00:00

546 Russia, and the War. By Captain Jesse. London : Longmans. " HANDBOOKS to Russia" are useless for the present ; and Captain Jesse has done wisely in turning his knowledge of the country to hatter account. He writes well, tells stories amusingly, avoids encumbering his pages with mere commonplace; in a word, his book is one of the most entertaining which the Russian war has produced. Of the Government and people his opinion is exceedingly unfavourable; in deed he seems sometimes to go out of his way for the purpose of finding fault; nor should we like to accept all his anecdotes without further proof than he supplies. But, whether right or wrong, he has certainly taken the popular side. Criticism on a work of this kind is almost impossible, wherefore we confine ourselves to the selection of a few character istic passages. Here is a view of the Russian army when drawn out expressly for dis play : The corps of Guards and Grenadiers go under canvas every summer. When at St. Petersburg I went to see the camp at Sarsko-Selo o and, as it had rained for several days consecutively, the troops appeared tobe in a most forlorn state ; the interior of their tents was full of mud mixed up with straw, and upon this the men were lying, in dirty cotton drawers and shirts, without either coats, trousers, or shoes—very different from Chobham. I was not a little surprised, however, to find that many of the officers, though apparently living in tents, were inhabit ing little wooden houses fixed under them; they were about six feet square, and as easily packed up and re erected as the tents; the floor was boarded, and four of us dined in one of them very comfortably. The Emperor, when in camp, lives really under canvas. I saw a picked man from each company of a battalion of the Preobrajensky regiment. They were remarkably tall, but being very much padded out at the breast, and drawn in tight at the waist, they had, in their great-coats, a very lanky appearance ; many of the regiments of the line that I saw at Moscow, and in the south, would have worked them off their legs in a campaign of any duration. Their coats were well brushed, and they were, no doubt, made to look their best. Brushing is continually going on. I re member being not a little amused by seeing a batch of orderlies going down the rear rank of one of their regi• meats, and performing this operation upon the back of every man in the line. The camp hospitals were unusually full at Sarsko-Selo, and I was told that a great many casual ties regularly take place on their return to their splendid quarters at St. Petersburg after the summer manceuvres. There they are so worried by the numerous orders con nected with their dress and appointments that they avoid leaving their barracks as much as possible. The Emperor, not long ago, observing that but few soldiers were to be seen in the streets, asked the military governor the reason. This official was either afraid or too good a courtier to give the right one ; but, to prevent a recurrence of the re mark, he issued an order that some of the men of each company should be told off every day as the " walking sec tion," to ornament the most public parts of the capital. The soldiers' food is coarse and cheap, consisting chiefly of black bread and vege tables: The soldiers and sailors' messes are served in an im• mense bowl, round which they sit or kneel, and, dipping in their wooden spoons, continue the operation till the por• ridge or borsch is eaten. The clothing, that is the uniform and accoutrements, are excellent; the cloth, though not quite so good as English, is close ; the belts, of a white patent leather, are much more easily cleaned than our com mon buff, and the sling of the firelock is of red leather; were it not, therefore, for the bright barrel of his musket, the Russian soldier would have scarcely anything to oc• cupy him in barracks. His knapsack, however, is all but empty ; socks, even amongst officers, are not always worn, by the soldiers never ; a few of them tie or swathe a dirty piece of calico round the leg and foot. Yet Captain Jesse considers the army as effective ; " their morale, as being based on " enthusiasm for their religion and their Czar, " is likely to support them under the most " trying circumstances." He does not think equally well of its generals, whose blunders in Poland, Turkey, Circassia, and Khiva are notorious among military authorities. The medical department is " disgracefully ineffi cient." A regiment three thousand strong, serving in Persia, was reduced by disease to fifty : In conversation one day with an aide-de camp of the Em peror, at St. Petersburg, upon the state of the sick list among the guards, I was not a little astonished at his telling me that mercury and quinine were medicines too expen sive to be given to the men ; and when I adverted as politely as I could to the inhumanity as well as false economy of such a system, be replied, " Ah, mon cher 1 a soldier in Russia costs nothing." The nobility, according to our author, are as far from being free as the serfs. They must all go into civil or military employ if the Em peror thinks fit ; and their profession is some times very arbitrarily chosen for them, as witness the following instance : ~ i THE PRESS. Captain Wilbraham, in his " Travels in the Caucasus," relates the following, which is a case in point :—" 1 at tended the Emperor's levee at Tiflis, and was presented; after me came my friend Suwaroff. On his name being announced the Empesor immediately exclaimed that it did not please him to see the grandson of the Prince Suwaroff Italisky in other than a military uniform ; whereupon my friend had to kiss hands and to become a soldier nolena voices. This struck me as rather an arbitrary mode of changing a man's profession, especially when he has for many years been following some other line, and has, per haps, no inclination for a military life." The Russian workmen are good imit4tors, rather in the Chinese style. Who would not imagine this story to be told of a " celestial " ? was much amused by the copying propensities of the man from whom I ordered a leather strap. To give him, as I thought, a notion of what I wanted, I cut a strip of paper of the width and length I wished it to be, and snipped a few holes for the tongue of the buckle without much pre cision. When it came home it was a perfect facsimile of my pattern, notched at the edge, all the holes crooked, and at different distances from each other. But this is a trifle to the anecdote related by a summer tourist of a pianoforte made by a man who had never seen but one in his life— curious, if true. Conversing one day on this subject with a Russian, a Frenchman who was standing by said to my companion, " I never heard of your having ever invented anything but the somovar " (the Russian tea-urn). The Frenchman was a competent judge, and had been twenty five years in the country. English, French, and German employes abound everwhere. They are of course re garded with jealousy by the natives, but their services cannot be dispensed with. Official employment, especially, is almost monopolised by Germans. 10f the lower or servile class Captain Jesse tells us little except what other authors had made known. Dirt and degrada tion seem their universal lot, though some rise to wealth by their industry, even while nomi nally enslaved. Here is a pleasant account of domestic management in a Russian house hold : One morning, while occupied in writing a letter, a very odd squirting kind of noise outside the door attracted my attention, and at length worried me so that I left my desk and went out into the passage to ascertain the cause. Here I found my neighbour's housemaid quietly ironing her mistress's lace collars and caps, so this did not account for it. I therefore re-entered my room, but had scarcely got seated at my desk when I heard the noise again " whist, whist ; " I looked out once more, and caught the abigail in the very act of filling her mouth with water, which she discharged over a richly-embroidered muslin dress, to damp it before ironing. This, to make the spray fall evenly from between her teeth, was done with a good deal of method, by first puffing out her cheeks, and then slapping them sharply with both hands. We hear enough, and something too much, of alleged acts of violence and brutality on the part of Russian masters. That such occur no man doubts, for when was absolute power not abused ? But Russians might retaliate upon us by a recapitulation of the wife-beating and child-murdering cases which fill our police reports. Captain Jesse was allowed to visit Se bastopol and examine the fortifications without molestation from the authorities. His description of them is too long to quote. The whole number of guns mounted is twelve hundred ; and it is said that there is no point in or near the harbour which is not commanded by at least sixty pieces of heavy calibre. All the works are casemated. The means of ventilation seemed insufficient, and the walls are built of soft stone. Not withstanding this defect they seemed formida bly strong, each fort supporting, and being supported by, the rest. Cyclopedia of Biography. Edited by Elihtt Rich. London: Griffin and Co. A COMMENDABLE attempt to comprise within the limits of a volume of portable bulk a comprehensive dictionary of biography. The size of the book is convenient, and amongst its contributors are some of the most eminent writers of the day. Alison has assisted in the department of history; Brewster in that of the sciences; and Professor Spalding in that of literature. Sbakspeare is, however, very properly considered the property cf r. Charles Knight, and from his pen, within the limits of three columns, is comprised all that can be said with certainty of the great bard. Compression in such a work is neces sary, but we are unable to discover the principle which has regulated the distribution of space. Undue preference has, we think, been given to men of thought over men of action. It may be right that Dr. Robertson should occupy nearly a column, but why dismiss Maurice of Saxony in a couple of lines? Minute details of Milton's life are given to the extent of five columns, while Graham of Clever house, Viscount Dundee, is dismissed in three lines SATARDAy . as "commander of the cavalry serving in sno od "against the Covenanters." 14von In the comparison of men of action with each other like disparity ap pears. The career of Cromwell, measured by the length of his biography, is of less importance than that of the late General Sir C. J. Napier. The volume, however, so far as we have tested it, is " comprehensive" as respects the great number of t names introduced, and is certainly cheap and con venient. It is illustrated with numerous woodcuts of birthplaces, dwellings, monuments, dlc. The, may be entitled to the praiskor . Accuracy, but w e are decidedly of opinion that thy 'pace thus occupied might have been more usefully The Governing Classes of Great stain. Polite Portraits. By Edward M. Citty. London Triibner and CO. THESE characters of nineteen political personages of the day originally appeared in the columns of a weekly contemporary, and, as mere newspaper sketches, might have escaped criticism ; but the author justifies their appearance in a collected form " on the ground that they were written with a consistent political purpose, and that the topic is a permanent topic—viz., the governmental system of Great Britain." The book abounds in paradox, and the author attempts rather to dazzle than to define. He gives a portrait of his hero in pitch, that he may more amaze the reader by showing the diffe aspect it will present when a few vivid touched light are dashed in. For instance, at page 14 Lord Aberdeen is described : "Not a saying of his is in vogue : not a speech of his is remembered : not a despatch of lea byes. Up to 18,53 he was regarded as a Tory : in 1843 he is believed to be the chief of rather a liberal Administration: hut the enlightened country is in doubt. Half a century in public life, Lord Aber deen has not had the good fortues4o connect himself with a single great measure, good or bad. 4 Except, perhaps, the last—the Coalition." A page or two afterwards the " mental grandeur" and the "large and lofty considerations" of this nonentity are seriously dwelt upon : " We can all remember Lord John Russell's greatly. cheered insinuation at him that he was, in office, not the Minister of England alone, but also the Minister of Austria, and Russia, and France; and, properly considered, such a sneer from so merely British a man is a great coin• pliment to Lord Aberdeen, as showing how largeand lofty are his considerations in political action." Again, it is said that he failed to settle the Scotch Church crisis " simply because his intellect was too " comprehensive to understand the earnestness on " small points which influenced paridt heroes such "as Dr. Chalmers (!'l on that occasion." This con tempt for small points, which led to failure in that instance, has resulted in success in the greater coup, the Coalition, we presume from a similar cause, viz., that he "could not understand the earnestness on " small points which" separates Dr. Sumner from Cardinal Wiseman. Mr. Whitty appears yet more lamentably deficient in biographical and historical knowledge than in discrimination:— "Throughout the Peninsular war," he says, "only Paget, of the whole peerage connection, got a first position; and, in India's military service, no lordly name is known since Wellesley. In diplomacy we may count Lord William Bentinck as the only great man that has turned up from the peerage in behalf of the British people. In the Church what honourable, beyond Mr. Noel, ever gained even a respectable place ? At the bar Mr. Norton (through Mrs. Norton) got a metropolitan court, and Mr. Wortley, by cultivating a knowledge of fish dinners, be came City Recorder." It would be an insult to the reader to point out the gross errors contained in this passage. What is to be thought of a writer who ignores the name of Wellington in connection with the Peninsular war, and of Thomas Erskine in the roll of eminent barristers? In other parts of these sketches there are attempts at facetiousness and cynicism, the former indicating a close study of nasally *ll4 the latter a servile imitation of Mr. ThsaberilA abets. The Industry of the United States. London : Ront. lodge and Co. THIS little volume is compiled from the official re ports of Messrs. Whitworth and Wallis. It might be improved by diagrams, illustrating novelties or im provements in the construction of machinery. Sacred History. Edited by the Rey. J. P. Chambers. London : Hope and Co. A JUDICIOUS compendium of ecclesiastical history, intended to mark, as in a chart, the bold outline of its course. Bossuet was of opinion that a history was half learnt when its table of contents was mastered. Such outlines, however, should be discreetly used, as, without reference to ulterior teaching, they are the mere dry bones of historical knowledge.