The Press. — London, England, 1857-08-01 00:00:00

consumed by fire, while the hardy tenants, left on the bleak hilltop, or the open heath, have remained for days together half naked and unsheltered. Such was their discipline and such their spirit, they continued to labour protected only by their great-coats—if haply they escaped destruction--till, renewed with tenth or huts, they pitched again their solitary dwellings far away on the height or the moor. Even on the less exposed employments of the survey the men were subjected to many discomforts and fatigues. The marching was harassing; miles to and from work were daily tramped, frequently in a drenching rain ; and in this kind of weather, soaked to the skin, they barely permitted their work to be interrupted.l Night after night, for two or three weeks together, have these men returned to their quarters dripping wet ; and when, in frosty weather, their clothes have frozen on their backs, the removal of boots and trousers have only been accomplished by immersing the legs in warm water. In the second volume a very interesting chapter is devoted to the labours of the Sappers and Miners in making the camp at Chobham ; and the realities of what real war fare must be are shown by thinking of the trouble which the corps had in carrying out operations even at Chobham. Of the events at the siege of Sebastopol there aro several interesting anecdotes. Here is a picturesque incident, more or less of nightly occurrence in that tremendous siege : At night on the 27th, Sergeant Docherty accompanied Lieutenant Penn, R.A., to a-point in the ravine near the cemetery, where some rifle•pits were to be established. After acquainting himself with the locality, he was directed by the officer to return to the trenches and visit the work men. The night was very dark, and dancer was appre hended from some Russian screens near the garden wall. Docherty picked his way as beat ho could, without a track to guide him, over broken ground and by detached blocks of rock and precipitous cliffs, till he clambered up a beetling brow to the crest of the valley, where, lying down, lie applied his ear to discover if any one was astir in his vicinity. There were footsteps not far from him—the measured pace of a sentinel—towards whom he cautiously moved ; but, as he went nearer, he saw through the dark ness the shadowy outline of two men, whom lie suspected belonged to a Russian picket. Wishing, as he was still unobserved, to be assured of his position before proceeding further, he used the faint whistle which the English sen tries knew how to acknowledge, and his signal was returned by a purling sound equally faint. No longer in doubt of his safety, he advanced to the two men, one of whom was a sergeant ; but as Docherty, approaching them from the front, was looked upon as a spy, he was msrche'l to the field•ofcer of the trenches. Speaking English, and making known his corps and rank, were only so many proofs to the sergeant that his prisoner was a clever Russian. The field•otficer examined him, and, receiving accurate replies to his interrogatories on subjects which a sapper only could have become acquainted with, dismissed him—to the surprise of the sergeant, who was thus deprived of the chance of recording, among the incidents of Ws trench life, the capture of a Russian spy. - - - - And here is another incident, a fair sample of the hairbreadth escapes mentioned in these readable volumes : Three days later seventy men were employed on the left attack, forming, on the right extremity of the third parallel, a work for two 9-pounders. Four hours they had laboured at it, when, daylight having exposed them, the field•otficer refused to permit the continuance of their services. As, however, it was important to push the work Major Chapman of the 311th Regiment, the assistant engineer on duty, ordered ten sappers, under Lance- Corporal Robert Hanson, to repair to the trench. It was a clear morning, and the work exciting. Gabions and fascines had been laid by a previous party, so that the sappers were covered from musketry, though not from heavier missiles. As they were strengthening the parapet, the earth thrown np being seen by the enemy, a fire of every description of projectile, even links of chain, was burled against it. In some measure to prevent accident, a " look. out man," in turn, took his station at the head of the trench to peep round the hot corner. Sweeping with a quick eye the cordon of ordnance in front, the caution to look out" came thick and fast. In time it was so rapidly reiterated, occasioning interruptions which did not coin cide with the men's notions of progress, that,preferring to toil without this species of ouestiunable assistance, the " look•out man " was withdrawn, and made to unite his strength with the shovellers. With faultless energy and confidence they persevered in the work, though harassed by an incessant fire, with grape in clusters, blown from mortars, dropping into the trench. Presently a shot crashed against the revetment, capsized three gabions and two fascines, wounded Lance• Corporal James Veal in the neck, and, knocking down Corporal Hanson, buried him beneath the rubbish. There was great reason to fear that the smash was fatal, and Major Chapman, who hap pened to be in the work at the moment, called out, in the torlorn hope of receiving a reply, " Are you hurt, corporal ?" Unexpectedly there was a movement in the mass; the gabions rolled lazily aside as the corporal struggled from the debris ; and in springing to his feet he cheerfnlly exclaimed, " All right, sir !" The perils of the battery were of a nature to induce Major Chapman instantly to withdraw the sappers. The total strength of the corps of Sappers eonsists of 4,025 of all ranks, divided between thirty-two companies. The- cadets at Sand. 44rkit and Woolwich nro instructed by them, #44 1 4 C that the 641 ) Perf giMOCIY94 THE PRESS, AUGUST 1,1851. taught the field services of the Royal Engineers' Department. A final chapter to the second volume gives a large amount of blue-book knowledge about the present state and position of this excellent corps. Interspersed throughout those volumes are many curious anecdotes. We find the follow ing refereneds to the famous song, " The Bay of Biscay." The text says:— Several recruits having enlisted in Scotland for the com panies at Gibraltar, passage was provided for them on board a ship—the name of which cannot be confidently traced—and they landed or "joined" at the fortress on the 16th April, 1791. When in the Bay of Biscay the vessel encountered a white squall, accompanied by terrific thunder and lightning, which carried away her main and fore masts. Each moment, indeed, her final plunge was expected, and the passengers and crew, clinging to spars and boxes, shreds of sails, and fragments of the dismantled bulwarks, as the last and only chance for their lives, awaited in suspense the time when the dread alternat►ve must be taken. With the appearance of the morning, providentially came the desired calm. All hands imme diately set to work to right the vessel; the jury mast was rigged, and the shivered ship, once more under weigh, wore on with struggling throes, and made good her pas. sage to the Rock. The wreck and its circumstances gave rise to a song, called " The Bay of Biscay, 0 !" And there is appended the following note : There exists two ballads with this title, one justly celebrated in the royal navy, written by Andrew Cherry, and embodied in Dibdin's " Naval and National Songs," and the other by a homely mariner, named, it is said, John Williams. Both songs may have taken their origin from the vessel spoken of above. Be this as it may, without doubt, one or the other was written to record the distiess and struggles of the ship which conveyed the artificers to Gibraltar. The incidents of the affair related in the first edition of this history were made to correspond with the seaman's effusion, as there were reasons at the time for believing it referred to the vessel with the recruits on board ; but as, on a closer review, there are doubts about its application, the details given in the former edition are omitted in this, leaving the question to be solved at a future day. If the ballad of the seaman have reference to the ship in which the artificers sailed to the Bock, it differs in two known points from the facts of its voyage. The Caroline is the ship of the song, and she is said to have sidled from Spithead on the fourteenth day of April, whereas the party of recruits sailed apparently from Scotland, and positively landed, or, to use the official word, " joined," at Gibraltar on the pith April. The seaman's " Bay of Biscay, 0!" is worked up in pure Grub street doggrel ; but bad at it is, it has been rendered worse, particularly in the last verse, by the tampering of some grossly vulgar hand. In the lapse of years the precise wording of that Catnach composition has probably been lost, and the version that exists, tilled up by the imperfections of tradition, may have had its dates and places disturbed. In a printed form the ballad, seemingly, cannot he obtained. If the differences just shown be considered fatal to the relationship between the sailor's song and the vessel , noticed in the n.Arrative, then Cherry's very popular ballad belongs to the history of the Sappers and Miners. We cannot undertake to give a decided opinion on this point, but our impression is that the song of " The Bay of Biscay " is older in date than 1791, when the wreck took place mentioned in Mr. Connolly's text. It seems strange that the song should be identi fied with a ship whose name is not recollected. Charles Dibdin's capital piece of The Water man was produced in 1774, ani " The Bay of Biscay, 0 ! " enjoys much of its popularity to the fact of every famous Tom Tug singing it in that musical oneretta after " Farewell, my trim-built wherry." The song is thus often ignorantly ascribed to Dibdin, instead of Andrew Cherry. The Irish Sketch-book. 1842. By M. A. Titmarsh. London: Chapman and Hall. IRELAND has always been one of Mr. Thackeray's pet subjects of satire. He does not sympathise with the grievances of an imaginative people, and for the results of long cherished traditions and hereditary cus toms he makes DO allowance. His view of Ireland is much that of the unromantic Canon of St. Paul's,—" Erin go bragh ! Stuff! Erin "go shoes without holes in them. Erin go " roast mutton," and so forth. For the beauty and grace that are to be found mingled with all these objectionable peculiarities Mr. Thackeray has a keen cye. TJ the social amenities, the feminine grace, the natural wit, which the stranger everywhere encounters, ho is fully alive; but they do not awake a mo ment's compassion in the bosom of the pitiless satirist. He passes from some description of a hospitable host or a fascinating landlady, only to drive his goad deeper into the sonsi tiye of the Triob people, AO to ?Num 753 their foibles with unnecessary minuteness and severity. And what. after all, do these weaknesses amount top Simply to the absence of those business habits which are almost peculiar to the Saxon race, and which Mr. Thackeray himself has not been slow to depre ciate elsewhere. A race cannot change its character. The Celt will be gay, warmhearted, careless, and contemptuous of the useful, the Saxon slow, frigid, calculating, and contemp tuous of the beautiful, to the end of the world. Each temperament produces results ridiculous, or respectable, or worthless, or valuable, accord ing to the point of view from which it is regarded. And even if "the greatest happiness of the " greatest number" be taken as the end of government, the smiling content which Mr. That keray witnessed throughout Ireland would present formidable contrast to the revelations of Mrs. Gaskell, or the agony of the " Song of the Shirt." However, between the Ireland of to-day and the Ireland of 1842, the date of these sketches, so wide a gulf is fixed, that they are already nearly antiquated as evidence of the state of the country. As specimens of Mr. Thackeray's literary powers they are still fresh and charm ing, and form a welcome addition to the present issue of his works. Though Mr. Thackeray is continually insisting on his own inability to describe the beauties of scenery, there are some little bits of description every here and there which combine deep feeling with a most happy 111614 of expression. As at page 115 : For almost half the way from Kenmare, this wild, beau. tiful road commands views of the famous lake and vast blue mountains about Killarney. Turk, TomieA, and Mangerton, were clothed in purple, like kings in mourn. ing ; great, heavy clouds were gathered round :heir heads, parting away every now and then, and leaving their noble features bare. The lake lay for some time underneath us, dark and blue, with dark misty islands in the midst. Ou the rtght•hand side of the road, would be a precipice covered with a thousand trees, on a green rocky flat, with a reetivnere in the midst, and other mountains rising as far as vre could see. Again, at page 317 : The grounds are beautiful, and excellently kept; the trees in their autumn livery of red, yellow, and brown, except some stout ones, that keep to their green summer clothes, and the laurels and their like, who wear pretty much the same dress all the year round. The birds were singing with most astonishing vehemence in the dark glistening shrubberies; but the only sound in the walks was that of the rakes pulling together the falling leaves. There was of these walks one especially, flanked towards the river by a turreted wall covered with ivy, and having on the one side a row of lime trees that had turned quite yellow, while opposite them was a green slope, and a quaint tortace•stair, and a long range of fantastic gables, towers, and chimneys ;—there was, I say, one of these walks which Mr. Catermole would hit off with a few strokes of his gallant pencil, and which I could fancy to be fre• quented by some of those long•trained, tender, gen►le. looking, young beauties, whom Mr. Stone loves to design. —Here they come, talking of love in a tone that is between a sigh and a whisper, and gliding in rustling shot-silks over the fallen leaves. That this volume contains plenty of humour the reader may be certain. It is, indeed, so thoroughly and evenly diffused through the whole composition that it is difficult to find any passage more highly flavoured than an other. The following are perhaps as good as any : went to buy some of the pretty Limerick gloves (they are chiefly made, as I have since discovered, at Cork.) I think the man who sold them had a patent from the Queen, or his Excellency, or both, in his window ; but, seeing a friend pass just as I entered the shop, he brushed passed, and held his friend in conversation tor some minutes in the street,—abont the Killarney races, no doubt, or the fun going on at Kilkee. I might have swept away a bagful of walnut shells, containing the flimsy gloves ; but instead walked out, making him a low bow, and saying I would call next week. Ile said, wouldn't I wait? and resumed his conversation ; and, no doubt, by this way of doing business, is making a handsome indepen• dence. I asked one of the ten thousand fruit women the price of her green pears. " Twopence apiece," she said ; and there were two little ragged beggars standing by, who were munching the fruit; a bookshop•woman made me pay threepence for a bottle of ink which usually costs a penny; a potato•woman told me that her potatoes cost fourteen•pence a stone; and all these ladies treated the stranger with a leering, wheedling servility, which made me long to box their ears, were it not that the man who lays his hand upon a woman is an—, &c., shom 'twere gross flattery to call a what•d'ye•call•em. Here is a coffee-room sketch : The speaker was dressed in deep black, worn however with that dogagii air peculiar to the votaries of liaeohus, or that nameless god--.oftl3pring of Ilaciohus and Ceres, who may have invented the noble liquor called whisky, 11 WW 4 0 4 0 to eti, ths .417 folds la wl►iv4 140 90090104 994 1