The Press. — London, England, 1855-10-27 00:00:00

OCTOBER 27, 1855. of hostilities is about to be removed from a fortified town arid a mountainous country to boundless plains, their services will become all important. Have her Majesty's Ministers thought of this? The scandalous want of foresight which they have hitherto displayed i n the conduct of the war, and which has subjected our troops in the Crimea to dire disasters, and our fleets in the Baltic to in glorious inactivity, unfortunately warrant the assumption that they have not done so. It is therefore the bounden duty of the public, to see to the matter themselves; and, to enable them to do so with advantage, we invite their attention to a small volume of sixty pages w hich General Daumas, of the French army, has just brought out in Paris, Under the title o f " Le Cheval de Guerre " General Daumas, who, in addition to eminent military services, occupies 4 high p o sition in the French Ministry of War, is favorably known in England as the author of several works on Algeria, and especially of a most remarkable one on the horses of the Sahara. In this work, which was published in 1851, he laboured to prove that, to use his own words, "no horse is so " capable as the Arab horse of supporting " hunger, thirst, fatigue, and bad weather, and " consequently does not unite in an equal " degree the conditions which should distin " guish the war horse." The General's opinion was warmly approved of by nearly all the French superior officers who had served in Algeria and seen the Arab horses at work ; but it was vehemently disputed by several practical men, whilst others represented that it was only true in ilfrica, the climate being indispensably necessary to enable the Arab horse to develop its extraordinary qualities. In order to set the matter at rest, the General obtained reports and letters from the Crimea as to the respective performances of the Arab and European horses in the war and during the winter ; and the result is, that it is clearly and triumphantly established that as a war horse none approaches the Arab, abroad as well as at home. Here is a translation of the General's own words : From the information I am about to produce I believe that every one must be convinced the Arab is the veritable war horse. It will be understood that, after having ex pressed this opinion in a book, I felt bound to ascertain by all means if the Arab horse were only the best war horse in Algeria, in the climate in which he was born, or if he were destined in other regions to chow his superiority, and to prove that he is capable of supporting cold as he has proved that ho can support heat, fatigue. bad weather, hunger, and thirst. The experiment which has been made in the Crimea appears to me conclusive ; and this opinion will, I hope, become the opinion of all, after reading the documents which I now publish. It is to be remarked that the experiment which has been made was on a sufficiently extensive scale to enable a definitive judgment to be formed. We had, in fact, in the Crimea two regi ments of Chasseurs d'Airique* (and we shall soon have four), some troops of Spahis, and a great number of officers of all grades and all arms, mounted on Arab horses- We can, then, obtain from observations which have been made the most positive information fur the solution of a question which interests us all so greatly. 1 must, however, declare that I have no intention of instituting painful comparisons between the Arab horses and those of other races and nations. All hones are pos sessed of utility and merit according to the point of anew from which they are regarded. What I am anxious to establish is the superiority of the Eastern horse as a war horse, The General then proceeds to quote a long string of authorities in support of his position. Colonel (now General) Count de Champeron, of the 4th African Light Dragoons (Cluisseurs erAfriyue), wrote from before Sebastopol on the 20th of November : In spite of embarkations, disembarkations, cold, and of this sufferings inseparable from war, my, regiment still possesses 133 horses per squadron. It is incredible. - - General Canrobert wrote on the 25th of January last : The Arab horses eye the only one* which resist the se• verity of the climate and the scarcity of food. Major Renson, of the Staff, wrote on the 2nd of February : Our horses are suffering but those of the Chasseurs d'Afrique keep up wonderfully well:— - - General Trochu wrote on the 10th of March:— As for the African horses, they have acted in an unex ampled way. Everybody is trying to get them, and the English pay any sums for them. _ . . . General de Cissey, of the Staff, wrote on the 30th of Iklarch:— • ♦ French regiment is much more numerous than an Eng bib op, THE PRESS. Our horses from Africa have admirably supported the rigours of the winter, privations and fatigue. It was be lieved that they could not endure either odd, or snow, or frost, and yet they have vicutriourly passed through all these and other trials, which God knows were not wanting to us—and this they did without any other protection than a simple covering. They are an admirable race of horses! The English offer us fabulous prices for the Arab horses we have hare ; but, as you will suppose, we sell but rarely. We want them ourselves, and keep them. 1 have still the horse which you knew me to possess in 1842. lie was with me in all my campaigns in Algeria with the 'Marshal Duke d'lsly (Ilugeaud), in all the expeditions undertaken after his departure, in all my embarkations and disembarkations, and he is still so vigorous and so hand some that the English pester me every day to sell him. .Bat that is impossible; my old companion shall die with me, and I will place him on the retired-list as soon as can. In addition to the above testimonials, all of which are dated from " Before Sebastopol " a date which speaks volumes—General Datums quotes the authority of General Lowtestine, a distinguished cavalry officer of the First Empire, as to the superiority in every respect of Arab horses in war ; and he states a fact which is but little known—that the Arab horses of Napoleon and his suite were almost the only ones which survived the dreadful sufferings of the campaign in Russia. The General also cites the late Captain Nolan, who was killed at Balakiava, in support of his views. It is, then, a demonstrated fact that the war horse of Arab race is better than the war horse of English, French, or any other breed : to question it, after such testimony as we have quoted, would be foolish. Now, all the world knows that the horses of our cavalry are not Arab. They cannot, as General I)aunias tells us the Arab does, live on eight pounds of barley a day, without hay or straw ; they can not, ae the Arab does, pass a whole day with out eating at all, and two or three days without drinking; they cannot, as he does, bear extremes of heat and cold ; they cannot, like him, brave rain and drought, the storm and the hurricane ; they cannot, like him, carry heavy burdens during marches of fearful length ; they cannot be, as he fre quently is, on their logs, in mud or sand, for the greater part of the twenty four hours, day after day, for three or four months at a time. No ! They are noble animals to look at — make a goodly parade down Regent•street— dance proudly at a review—run fleetly for an hour or two—hut they have been reared with such care, are watched over so tenderly, and are accustomed to so little work, that a few days' fatigue knocks them up, and a few days' hunger and cold cause them to perish. This we saw by what took place in the Crimea in the winter. Behold, then, our prospects ! The Govern ment is about to undertake a cavalry cam paign on the vast steppes of Russia, where necessarily the marching and fatigue will be excessive—the forage and water scarce—the climate trying in the extreme ; and it is about to do so with horses manifestly unfit for their work, and which must in a short space of time be knocked up or killed off. We expect, in fact, to hear of similar disasters befalling our cavalry to those which befel the army on the heights of Sebastopol last winter ; or, at the very least, that they—the cavalry — will have to fight without horses, just as big ships of the line were expected in the Baltic to fight in water in which they could not swim. The Life of Bernard Palissy, of Saintes. By Henry Morley. London : Chapman and Hall. Is this volume Mr. Morley has collected all that is authentically known coueeining the life of Bernard Palissy the Potter, and to each division of his life there is added "illustra tions " from his works, giving his own account of his labours. These illustrations are the most valuable part of the book, as they con stitute a tolerably complete autobiography of the diligent, persevering artist. The Palissy ware deserves its repute for its beauty, but a still higher value is given to the rare specimens of it which remain, from the extreme pains taken by the inventor to bring his work to perfection. Never did man labour harder to achieve success than did the humble " worker " in earth and inventor of rustic figulines " to discover his white enamel. It is believed that he was born in 1859, in the province of Perigord. He was bled to the honourable craft of glass-painting, and spent his youth in travel. Subsequently he settled down at Saintes, took to himself a wife when about thirty, and thenceforward followed for a time his occupation as a glass painter, though often his employment was scanty, and his increasing family caused him some care. Au acciileut seems to have turned his mind to the pursuit which for a time proved ruinous to him, but at last brought him competence and fame. He was shown an elegant enamelled cup of Italian manufacture, and thenceforward only considered how he could discover the secret of enamelling pottery. His own narra tive is charming for its simplicity : Learn that it is more than five and twenty years since there was shown to me an earthen cup, turned and enamelled with so much beauty, that, from that time, i entered into controversy with my own thoughts, recalling to mind several suggestions that some people had made to me in fun when I was painting portraits. Then, see ing that these were falling out of request in the country where I dwelt, and that glass•painting was also little patronised, I began to think that if I should diso3ver how to make enamels, 1 could make earthen vessels and other things very prettily, because God had gifted me with some knowledge of drawing; and thereafter, regardless of the fact that i had no knowledge of clays, I began to seek fur the enamels, as a man gropes in the dark. Without having heard of what materials the said enamels were cam osed, I pounded, in those days, all the substances which I could suppose likely to make anything ; and, having pounded and ground them, I bought a quantity of earthen pots, and, after having broken them in pieces, 1 put some of the materials that I had ground upon them, and, having marked them, I set apart in writing what drugs I had put upon each, as a memorandum ; then, having made a fur nace to my fancy, I set the tragments down to bake, that I might see whether my drugs were able to produce some whitish colour, for 1 sought only after white enamel, be cause I had heard it said that white enamel was the basis of all others. Then, because I had never seen earth baked, nor could I tell by what degree of heat the said enamel should be melted, it was impossible for me to get any result in this way, though my chemicals should have been right; because, at one time, the mass might have been heated too much, at another time too little ; and when the said materials were baked too little or burnt, I could not at all tell the reason why I had met with no success, but would throw blame on the materials, which annietimes, perhaps, were the right °ties, or at least could have afforded me some hint for the accomplishment of my intentions, if I had been able to manage the fire in the way that my materials required. But again, in working thus, I com mitted a fault still grosser than that above named ; for, in putting my trial-pieces in the furnace. 1 arranged them without consideration ; so that if the materials had been the best in the world, and the tire also the fittest, it was impossible for any good result to follow. Thus, having blundered several times at a great expense, and through much labour, I was every day pounding and grinding new materials, and constructing new furnaces, which cost much money, and consumed my wood and my time. When I had fooled away several years thus imprudently with sorrow and sighs, because I could not at all arrive at my intention, and remembering the money spent, I re solved, in order to avoid such large expenditure, to mud the chemicals that I would test to the kiln of some potter; and having settled this within my mind, 1 purchased afresh several earthern vessels, and having broken them in pieces, as was my custom, I covered three or four hun dred of the fragments with enamel, and sent them to a pottery distant a league and a half from my dwelling, with a request to the potters that they would pleinie to permit those trials to be baked within some of their vessels : this they did willingly; but when they had baked their batch, and came to take out my triadpieces, I received nothing but shame and loss, because they turned out good for nothing ; for the fire used by those potters was nut hot enough, and my trials were not put into the furnace) in the required manner and according to my science. And be cause I had at that time no knowledge of the reason why my experiments had not succeeded, 1 threw the blame (as I before raid,) on my materials; and beginning afresh, I made a number of new compounds, and sent them to the same potters, to do with as before ; so I ouotinued to several times, always with great cost, loss of time, confu sion, and sorrow. We make this long extract as a sample of the entertainment to be found in the volume. No more interesting autobiographical fragment is extant. Palissy goes on to relate how, to sustain his family, he was compelled to abandon his pur suit for a time. He was employed by the Government to map the lands of his district, and with the little money thus received he began his experiments anew, broke about three dozen earthen pots, and covering the pieces with his compounds, sent them to a glass furnace. To his great joy he found that on one of his three hundred pieces his compounds had melted ; but this only brought him greater trials and labours : There was one among those pieces whic h . was melted within four hours after it bad been plead in the furnace, 1 1