The Press. — London, England, 1855-09-15 00:00:00

SEPT. 15, 1855. they find themselves suddenly reduced to short allow- ance, and the excellent and ample rations they had been in the habit of receiving, cut off or miserably reduced. For nine days there has been, with very few exceptions, no issue of tea, coffee, or sugar, to the trgops. These, however, are luxuries—not necessaries in military life. The direct cause of this scarcity is the condition of the country, which, saturated by heavy rains, has become quite unfit for the passage of carts and arabas ; but there is also a deficiency of supplies, which may be attributed to the recent gales at sea. There is, therefore, a difficulty in getting food up to the army from Balaklava, and there is, besides, a want of supplies in the commissariat maga zines in the latter place. But, though there is a cause, there is no excuse for the privations to which the men are exposed. We were all told that when the bad weather set in, the country roads would be impassable. Still the fine weather was allowed to go by, and the roads were left as the Tartar carts had made them, though the whole face of the country is covered thickly with small stones which seem expressly intended for road metal. As I understand, it was suggested by the officers of the Commissariat De partment that they should be allowed to form depots of food, corn, and forage, as a kind of reserve at the head quarters of the different divisions ; but, instead of being permitted to carry out this excellent idea, their carts, arabas, waggons, and horses were, after a few days' work in forming those depots, taken for the use of the siege operations, and were employed in carrying shot, shell, ammunition, &c., to the trenches. Consequently, the magazines at headquarters were small, and were speedily exhausted when the daily supplies from Balaklava could no longer be procured. The food. and corn, and hay, pro vided by the commissariat, were stowed in sailing vessels, which were ordered to lie outside the harbour, though they had to ride in thirty or forty fathoms of water on a rocky bottom, with a terrible coast of cliff of 1,200 feet in per pendicular height stretching around the bay, and though it was notorious that the place was subject at this season to violent storms of wind. A hurricane arose—one of unusual and unknown violence—these ships were lost, and with them went to the bottom pmyen . der and food for fully twenty days of all the horses in the army, and of many of the men. More detailed knowledge should have been then advanced ; and the letters during the famine time are not equal to the occasion, nor was there a practical view taken of the con dition of the army. Even in the trying period of January 19th we meet with writing of the following style : Tt is inexpressibly odd to see Captain Smith, of the Foot, with a pair of red Russian leather boots up to his middle, a cap probably made out of the tops of his holsters, and a white skin coat tastefully embroidered all down the back with flowers of manycoloured silk, topped by a head-dress a la dustman of London, stalking gravely through the mud of Ralaklava, intent on the capture of a pot ofjam or marmalade. Do you wonder why we are all so fond of jam ? Because it is portable and comeatable, and is a substitute for butter, and butter is only sent out here in casks and giant crocks, one of which would ex haust the transport resources of a regiment. Captain Smith is much more like his great namesake of the Adelphi, when, in times gone by, he made np for a smugglar-burglar-bandit, than the pride of the High-street of Portsmouth, or than that hero of the Phceniz•park, with golden wings like an angel, before the redness of whose presence little boys and young ladies trembled. All this would be rather facetious and laughable, were not poor Captain Smith a famished wretch, with had chilblains, ap proximating to frost-bites, a touch of scurvy, and a severe rheumatism. Many of our men have been crippled by the cold, and of our officers, Captain Strong, of the Coldstream Guards, has been obliged to go down on leave, with one foot badly frost-bitten. Surely that is not the sort of matter—if such it can be called—that the correspondent of a great political journal should furnish. From the fanciful picture of Captain Smith, of the —th, the writer jumps off to a living person, Captain Strong, and raises doubts whether he is not playing with his readers Even in the extremely vivid description of the hurricane, the reader's imagination is perpetually ap pealed to by the fancy of the writer. Thus we read : Not to digress too much, and to return to the pleasant coup d'cril before us this morning, let the reader imagine the bleakest common in all England, the wettest bog in all Ireland, or the dreariest mnir in all Scotland, overhung by leaden skies, black as ink, and lashed by a tornado sleet, snow, pelting drizzle, and rain—a few broken stone walls and rot,fiess huts dotting it here and there, roads turned into torrents of mud or water across it, and then let him think of the condition in which men and horses must have been placed in such a spot on a November morning, suddenly deprived of their frail covering, and exposed to hitter cold and wet, with empty stomachs and not the remotest prospect of obtaining food or shelter till the storm ceased. Think of the men in the trenches, the covering parties, the patrols, and outlying pickets and sen tries, who had passed the night in storm and darkness, and who returned to their camp only to find fires out and tents destroyed. These were men who dared not turn their backs for a moment, who could not blink their eyes, on whose vigilance the safety of our position depended, and of whom bad been feu• eight or ten hours in the rain awl cold. These are trials which demand the exercise of the soldier's highest qualities. A benighted sportsman caught in a highland storm thinks no misery can exceed his own, as fagged and drenched and hungry be plods along the hillside, and stumbles about in the dark to• THE PRESS. wards some uncertain light; but he has no enemy worse than the wind and rain to face, and iu the first hut he reaches repose and comfort await him. Our officers and soldiers, after a day like this, had to descend to the trenches again at night, look out fur a crafty foe, to labour in the mire and ditches of the works; what forti- tude and high courage to do all this without a murmur and to bear such privations and hardships with unflinching resolution I Very strong writing; but then it could be com posed at home as well as on the spot. To conclude, the scene-painter is for ever before us in the volume, but the sagacious ob server, the close recorder, the minutely-informed correspondent, are not present enough in these highly-coloured pages, with their vehement rhetoric and resounding sentences. Our complaint is not, let us observe, that Mr. Russell is positively deficient in practical in formation, but that with such opportunities, and such extensive resources, he did not get more knowledge of what was doing, and that more practical views were not taken by him of the events that were passing before him. Like most professed masters of the pictorial style, his writing wants shrewd sense and depth of reflection. He seems not to have a political mind, and to have developed only those qualities which make a mere writer, as distinct from a thinker and observer. For the duties of sole war correspondent to a vast jour nal like the Times, with its myriad of readers, we think Mr. Russell unequal, from his propen sity to seize upon " scenes," instead of appre hending facts. Another correspondent should be by his side to gain knowledge, make shrewd guesses, ferret out secrets, and detail with truthful plainness the daily life around. Meteorological Essays. By Francois Arago. With an Introduction by Baron Alexander Von Humboldt. Translated under the Superintendence of Colonel Sabine. Lon• don : Longmans. IT has for some time been contemplated to publish a complete edition of Arago's works in English, and we are glad to see such a commencement made at last as must be eminently satisfactory to our scientific public. To this first volume an introduction is con- tributed by the distinguished Humboldt, who more, perhaps, than any man living is able to give an adequate estimate of Arago's genius ; and this volume of " Meteorological Essays," including the author's researches on terrestial magnetism, is edited by Colonel Sabine, justly celebrated for his attainments in the latter branch of science. Arago devoted himself to scientific pursuit early. Humboldt's acquaintance with him began in 1809. He was then twenty three, and had lately returned from the coast of Africa, having been for some time previously a prisoner in a Spanish citadel at the conclu sion of important trigonometrical operations for connecting the Balearic islands with the continent. In the same year, 1809, he was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and for upwards of forty years con tinued his labours in celestial and terrestial physics, with a degree of ardour and success rarely paralleled. Humboldt has chronicled his chief labours, but has hardly done justice to that quality of his genius which is sure to meet with peculiar appreciation in this country. Arago was indefatigable in collecting facts, and in making experiments by which he might multiply observations. His facts, if they did not uniformly precede his theories, yet always formed their support and constituted the groundwork from which he argued. In this respect his practice was the opposite of that tendency of the French mind to overlook facts in its excessive love of system. The fabled reply of the Frenchman to one who urged that facts did not support his theory —" Tant pis pour les faits "—must greatly lose its point after the scrupulous re gard pa►d to facts by Arago throughout his whole career. Apart from his original views, his works would be eminently valuable merely as the best collections of facts extant on the particular subjects on which he wrote. Hence his papers are more than essays—they are scientific histories showing the solid basis on which conclusions rest,' and distinguished as much by their copious knowledge—the fruit of years of research and study—as by their profound reflection anti luminous and logical reasoning. Of this peculiarity of Arago's genius all may easily satisfy themselves who will take this volume in hand. It opens with an elaborate essay on thunder and lightning, in which are collected with astonishing care those great facts connected with thunderstorm which from their marvellous character have been re corded, as well as those minor particulars and observations which have been preserved by the care of previous investigators. All these facts are skilfully , marshalled under the see tions to which they refer, so that the reader rather seems to form conclusions for himself than to have them dictated to him by Arago. This quality of his mind—never to be valued too highly—commonly gave to his deductions the force and exactitude of mathematical de- monstration, and preserved him in a very remarkable degree, not only from being led astray by theoretical fancies, or by popular delusions, but from any chance of his judg ment being warped by favorite preposses sions. The physical philosopher, blessed with this truthful disposition—and no man can be eminent as a physicist apart from it—has a great advantage over the moral philosopher, however free he may be from prejudice, and determined to seek truth for its own sake alone. The physicist is surrounded with facts —it, is with them he deals, and from thorn be reasons. Their significance may sometimes be obscure, but they are to be trusted as far as they go. His language is always real: it represents actual things which everyone can recognise, and hence there can be no dispute as to words. The physical investigator is only in danger when, presuming—as he easily may, and as geologists in our day often have done— too much on analogy, he carries his conclu sions further than the actual facts will warrant. But from any danger of this kind mathematical minds like that of Arago are effectually pre• served by their rigorous adherence to what is known and determined. It is otherwise with the moral or metaphysical philosopher. Deal ing with the consciousness which is in itself impalpable, he is liable to error at every step. His language is arbitrary. Iu reasoning, be cannot force his opponents, or even his readers, to attach that meaning to words which he attaches to them himself. Hence interminable arguments and indefinite conclu sions. There can be no dispute as to the meaning of terms used by physicists—as air and water, iron and coal—but who is to de termine the meaning which is to be attached to the elemental terms of metaphysicians—as consciousness and mind, thought and will ? Metaphysics will never entitle to rank as a science until its professors pay more attention to facts and less to abstract reasoning. It is true indeed that the theories of physi cists often precede those observations and experiments by which they are demonstrated. To take a familiar instance, suggested by this volume: Franklin had conjectured rightly the nature of lightning before, with his beautiful experiment of the kite, he drew sparks from the clouds, yet it was nevertheless the ob servation of facts in the first instance which suggested his theory to him, as it was the observation of facts which led Newton to the discovery of gravitation, and Harvey to the theory of the circulation of the blood. In these and in similar cases genius does, no doubt, take a leap. The highest reasoning and the highest imaginative powers are some times allied ; and as we find that an excited and fervid audience will anticipate the con clusion of an orator's sentence, and, appre hending his idea before it has found appro priate expression, will drown the conclusion of his period in applause—so a great mind, expanding by facts being revealed to it in a blaze of light, will leap to a conclusion before all the links in the chain of evidence are coin / plete. Such jumps partake of the nature of imagination; but the intellect of great phy sicists is too calm to repose in these conclu sions without greater certainty ; and nothing is more remarkable in the history of science than the patience with which the authors of great discoveries have spent years in working them