The Press. — London, England, 1854-07-15 00:00:00

JULY 15, 1854. suicides, triple duels, and crying ladies in white satin. If the boor of Anglo-Saxon race, the countryman of Bacon and Newton, and the subject of Queen Victoria, experience difficulties in rising to a perception of the beauties of the most popular of our poets, what shadows must there be before the simple pagan mind before it can be brought to adore a Reedemer whose kingdom is not of this world? At this point the sceptical and the lukewarm stop, flippantly pronouncing that missionary toils must be as fruitless as giving Schlegel on Othello. or Coleridge on Hamlet, to rustics. They forget, however, that, if a labourer has been accustomed to a Sunday school, and habituated to hearing the Bible read by an aged parent or his lisping children, its words of power and love go home to his heart, purifying and refreshing his simple soul. If he grow up in infidelity and vice he might, as a practical pagan, have as much diffi culty in perceiving the truth and beauty of the Bible as a cannibal of New Zealand. It is, therefore, we contend, of great importance and of practical utility to habituate the heathen to Christian influences, to accustom him to the sight of his conquerors humbling them selves before the Invisible, and in tempting him to inquire how they worship their " Great Spirit." There are parables in the Gospel which, if adequately translated, will go home to universal man. Nor should we forget, on this point, that the words of those divine dis courses have been preserved, while the sub stance of the reasonings with the worldly-wise doctors in the Temple have been omitted. We conclude these remarks by observing that our modern facilities of communication, our multiplied physical discoveries and me chanical inventions, must have as great result on the missionary influence as the mariner's compass and the printing-press had on dis pelling the night of the dark arges, and rescu ing the Bible from the clutch of the Church of Rome. There exists no reason for doubting that our intellectual advancement must ao celerate the progress of Christianity amongst the nations ; and it is because the work before us is defective in the profound consideration of this greatest of all subjects that we can give it but qualified praise. The Rusinans in Bulgaria and Rumelia, in 1828 and 1829. From the German of Baron von Moltke. London : Murray. THIS memoir was published by the author in German in 1845, and, as ample use has been made of it in the various works which have since been issued on the war between Russia and Turkey in 1828-9, its substance was tolerably well known before this translation appeared. The author served with the Turk ish army through the campaigns he described, and his narrative is marked throughout, not only by exact knowledge, but by the most scrupulous good faith. With such trustworthy information spread through Europe, it is easy to understand how last summer and autumn general opinion (and especially among com petent military authorities) formed strongly against the success of the Russians in the im pending war. That notion of the weakness of Turkey and of the invincibility of her antagonist, which a Ministerial paper—the most influential of our journals—so indus triously propagated, must be attributed to complicity, as it could scarcely have proceeded from ignorance. The reader is here presented with a military view of all the chief events of the campaigns of 1828-9, illustrated by well drawn plans of fortresses and battles, and instructed in the accidents which led to that treaty of Adrianople on which Lord Aberdeen wrote so gloomy a commentary. In every case a writer's judgment is likely to be greatly biassed by the result of the events he narrates. Our author possesses great penetration, yet, overlooking the vigorous defence made by the Turks in their Danubian fortresses, he hazards an opinion that the more it has become necessary for the Porte since its repeated disasters to concentrate its forces, the more certain is it that the defence of Turkey in Europe, in the event of any future war, can only begin at the Balkan. In the campaigns of 1853-4 the defence has not only begun but has been successfully ter- THE PRESS. minated on the Danube. Moltke must have received his impression in this instance from the treaty which concluded the war, not from its actual incidents. This opinion, however, when contrasted with recent facts, is a strong proof of the great progress made by Turkey during the last eight or nine years. The closing chapters of the work are those which possess just now most interest. The march of Diebitsch on Adrianople was one of the most hazardous operations on record. After his entrance into the city, he found himself with 20,000 men in a hostile town of 80,000 inhabi tants, half-way between 30,000 Turks at Constantinople and 30,000 Albanians at Sophia, while his own corps was exhausted by desertion and disease. Add that Shumla, with a powerful garrison, was in his rear, and that several of the Turkish fortresses on the Danube were unsubdued, and it will be acknowledged that Diebitsch was in no enviable position. The military events of the campaign are before us, but the secret history of the period, and particularly of the intrigues which in duced the Sultan to suspend hostilities and to sign the treaty of Adrianople, has yet to be written. The statements of our author—who had access to good sources of information — may now be referred to on this point with profit. He writes : - The diplomatists, on their part, while Diebitsch rested on his arms, were diligently working in his behalf. As representatives of their several Courts, they of course had to support interests altogether foreign to those of Turkey, and were anxious in the first place to put an end to a war which for two years had threatened the peace of Europe. Again : Sultan Mahmoud for a long time resisted the pusillani mous advice of his ministers, who trembled for their heads, and the pressure of foreign powers, not one of whom had as sisted him in the war or was in a condition to support him in his extremity. He shed bitter tears when on the 14th of September he was compelled to bow his iron will to the still harder force of necessity, and for weeks he shut himself up in his palace at Therapia crushed in spirit. For on signing that treaty he acknowledged that he had failed in the object for which he had striven all his life. In reality he was conquered, after all, by the diplomatists, not by the foe. We have Lord Aberdeen's commentary on the treaty, why have we not the papers which would show the part which Sir Robert Gordon took in negotiating it, and in urging the Sultan to submit to the hard conditions imposed on him? When Diebitsch had sent forward a corps of 7,000 or 8,000 men on the road to Constantinople, which he represented as his advance, it is shown in this memoir that his main army amounted to, in all, deducting the numerous sick, about 4,000 or 5,000 men. Such was the army which was to make head against 30,000 Arnauts, to keep in subjection a town of 80,000 inhabitants, and finally to conquer another city con taining 500,000 souls. Well may the work conclude with the sen tence that the campaign would have led to far different results if the Sultan and the European diplomatists had been at all aware of the real state of things. Insignificant as the force of Diebitsch was, it was daily dwindling through the ravages of disease : The hospital filled fast. By the time the army had-been in Adrianople a week 1,618 sick were taken there; bl the Ist of September it contained 3,686, and by the middle of the month 4,641—0ne-fourth of the whole remaining disposable force. The frightful mortality in the Russian armies shows both the iron will which urges them forward and the check imposed on its power. The details given here of the deaths from diarrhoea (cholera ?) and fever or plague are sickening. In the five months from March to July, 1829, 81,000 sick were received into hos pitals, and 28,000 died. The mortality in proportion to the number of sick was after wards much greater. The loss of the Rus sians in this campaign, mainly through disease, is estimated at 60,000 men ; and it is supposed that, of the whole number of effective soldiers in the Russian army, not more than 10,000 or 15,000 ever returned home across the Pruth. It would he a curious subject of inquiry how northern hordes in ancient times poured to ward the south with so much more ease and so much less waste of life. It is, on the whole, surprising that the Rus sian commanders did not, early in the late campaign, imitate the daring example of Die- 665 bitach. Had they neglected the frontier for tresses and advanced into the heart of the empire they might have forced the Turks to fight a great battle, which, had Russian tactics proved successful, mighthave led to that result which, at the commencement of the war, our Premier seems confidently to have anticipated —a treaty of Constantinople. One great ob stacle to such a course must have been the entrance of the allied fleets into the Black Sea; for, throughout the campaign of 1829, it is apparent that the success of the Russians was in great part due to their naval superiority ; and another obstacle might be the cautious dis position of Nicholas. In his mind inordinate ambition seems singularly tempered with fear of loss. He certainly has none of the fierce, reckless ardour which we attribute to the northinen of old, or which has distinguished the career of great conque►ors. The caution of Machiavel does not accord with the genius of Attila. That the campaign of 1854 has thus far been in every respect the reverse of 1829 must immediately, no doubt, be attri buted to the increased efficiency of the Turkish forces and the great generalship of Omer Pacha. But, on a wider survey, the defeat of Russia must be ascribed to that union of France and England which it was the fortune of Lord Derby's Government to found and of Lord Aberdeen's to discredit, until circumstances proved not only its policy but its necessity. Whatever course future events may take, that fact, at least, is established beyond dispute. Katharine Ashton. By the Author of " Amy Herbert." Longmans. IN this new work, by the author of " Amy Herbert," we have presented to us the interior life of a small country town, with its dwarfish ambition. The minuteness of the details, and the literal closeness to nature of the copy, produce merits and faults incidental to the subject. We fancy that the clever writer has designed to imitate Miss Austin, but she wants the English humour and the subtlety with which commonplace people were painted in " Pride and Prejudice " and " Emma." In " Katharine Ashton " there is rather too much of the moralising lecturer; but there is no vulgar cant, and there is great sweetness of tone, that occasionally rises into the pathetic. One of the most lifelike figures in the social picture of Rilworth is Colonel Forbes, a pro vincial fashionable of first-rate pretensions and subordinate consequence. Katharine Ashton herself is the daughter of the keeper of a circulating library ; and class feelings of various kinds are portrayed by the author with great nicety of observation. She has a keen perception of the dissatisfaction some times produced by education. There is a large portion of truth in the following remarks from Mrs. Reeves, a clergyman's wife : " But what people sayto me sometimes," said Katharine, " is, that education makes all the differenoe, and that if persons are well educated they are equal to the Queen, or any one. I don't mean that that applies to me," she added, blushing, "because I have not been well educated."—" I think I see where the difficulty lies," replied Mrs. Reeves; " highlreducated persons in the professional classes meet with society among themselves to satisfy them. Clergy men's families associate with clergymen's families, for instance, and find themselves very pleasant companions, and so they are not tempted to wish for anything beyond ; but this is not the case with the generality of persons in trade, in this generation at least; perhaps things may be different in the next. In former days education was but little thought of amongst them, and so parents who were ignorant allowed their children to be ignorant also; and now, when young people begin to read and think, they do not find sympathy and companionship in their own set, and then they seek it in those above them." And find it," said Katharine, gratefully ; "at leant if they are like me." —" But all are not like you, Katharine," replied Mrs. Reeves ; " a great many have their heads turned at the same time that they have them filled, and so they think that because they are equal in one point they are equal in all ; wh.ch is just as if, because I can play and sing, like the Duchess of Lowther, therefore 1 must be a duchess myself." It is very possible that the educated families of shopkeepers may find it more difficult to obtain agreeable society than professional classes. But education must not be blamed for that. On the contrary, it gives some chance of bridging over the gulfs between different ranks ; and it would be difficult to show that vulgar pretensions are necessarily fostered by the intellect being enlarged. ‘ S ,