The Press. — London, England, 1856-11-01 00:00:00

1050 that, not only did regimental officers expe rience no difficulty in getting their requisi tions signed, but that, whenever they had horses for transport, they never failed to get the goods. The form of procedure was as follows : Suppose that the 49th Regiment required 300 great- coats, the Assistant Quartermaster• General of the division would come to the Quartermaster-General's office and present the following simple requisition : "Required for the 49th Regiment 300 great-coats." (Sigurd by the Lieutenaut•Colonel of the Regiment.) Hereupon the officer attending to this brunch of the Quartermaster General's office would look to his account of the great-coats then lying available in the commissariat storehouse to see whether this requisition by the 49th Regiment could be acceded to without injus tice to other corps. The officer would not raise any question upon the fact that great coats were really wanted. On the contrary, he would assume, on seeing the requisi tion by the lieutenant colonel, that the want existed, and he would oily have to determine whether the supplies ware such that the want could be met. This he would deter. mine instantly, for the books in the office, corrected from d ty to day upon the footing of the returns furnished by the clinmissanat storekeepers, showed at a glance the quantity o' any particular stores which might be available at the time. If the officer saw that there were stores enough to war rant him in sanctioning the requisition to the full amount, he simply signed his name, and the requisition then be othie a complete authority for the delivery of the stores in question, and the commissariat officer delivered them accordingly upon the presentation of the " approved re quisition." If the quantity of the supplies warranted only a partial trimpliance with the demand, the requisition would be i.ninediately altered, and sanction given for the reduced quantity. If the state of the supplies were such that the requisi tion could not he complied with to any extent, the sanction of the department would, of course, be altogether withheld. The whole process, whether of approving, reducing, or disapproving the requisition, would occupy much less time that it has taken me to describe it. The question, we should remember, is not whether the established system was the best possible, but whether, such as it was, it was administered to the best advantage It cer tainly seems to us that the power of granting requisitions might very well reside in the same department which superintends the issue of the articles required. But all that Sir Richard had to do was to make the best of the system ; and he and Lord Raglan together stripped it of as much formality, and rendered it as little circuitous, as was compatible with its existence at all : I had perceived that if the duties of this sub-department were performed with strictness, it would, from its very nature, have a tendency to check the issue of the supplies in question. I knew, also, that my vocations constantly drawing me to distant parts of the camp, it might often be i epos/1.61e to obtain my immediate decision upon a doubt ill question, and that thus a requisition, substantially right, !night be so baffled and delayed as to occasion unne sasary difficulties. I knew also that in the then overworked state of every soldier, the mere labour of going down from camp to snake a fruitless requisition was in itself a great evil. In these circumstances, I took upon myself to act thus:—l authorised the officer in charge of the sub•de• part:nent to approve all the requisitions upon his own Judgment, but I directed that no requisitions should ever be refused without a personal reference to me. I am not aware of any instance in which this, my direc tion, was disobeyed; and, indeed, the Report does not state that any particular requisition was ever refused. • • • • The War-office form of requisition for obtaining a new great-coat is of a must elaborate description. It has two scheaule; or returns annexed to it, and it must be filled up and signed iu duplicate. Altogether the blanks to be filled up amount to no less than twenty-four, which must be all tilled up before one great-coat can be drawn. I produce a copy of the War-office form. Lord Raglan dispensed with this at once, and substi tuted a form containing only these words— " Required for Regiment. " Quartermaster• General's Office." People are marvellously apt to forget the patent fact that it is the abuse of routine, and not the thing itself, which is pernicious. What great undertaking could go on without it? If rules were laid aside whenever they did not suit a particular case, there would shortly be a general scramble. Had there been no routine in the Crimea, some com panies would have got three coats per back, and others have gone literally naked. But it is useless to dwell on such a glaring truism as this. People sat h ere at h ome w i th two id eas HI their minds--Ahivering soldiers and warm clothing. But the nature of the copula they totally left out of consiaeration,—they posi tively refused to take cognisance of anything between them. Whether the soldier was to THE PRESS. come to the coat, or the coat was to go to the soldier, was a petty question of detail about which these longheaded patriots could not be expected to trouble themselves. A good instance of the precipitancy with which the British public pronounced their opinion on matters of which they knew nothing was the case of Lord Raglan and the knapsacks. When the troops lauded in the Crimea they were too weak from previous sickness to carry great coats, knapsacks, and blankets all at once. Lord Raglan therefore determined that as they were going for the first time to bivouac in the open air the great coat and blanket would be more needed than the knapsack : Accordingly, a direction was given to the effect that the men might leave their knapsacks on board ship ; but thy were to land both with their great•coats and blankets, and in the latter they were, to roll up a change of thingN— a spare shirt, a pair of socks, and a pair of boots. The knapsacks were sent round to Balaklava, and Lord Raglan and the generals of division have all been severely blamed because they did not allow the men to get them back at the earliest opportunity. But the fact was that these said knapsacks contained nothing which would compensate for the labour of bringing them to the camp. The truth of the matter, says Sir Richard, is this : The third shirt, the third pair of socks, the second towel, and the shell-jacket, would be in the " squad•bag." Then the soldier had been directed to take with him in his blanket a spare shirt, a pair of socks, and a pair of boots. He also carried his forage-cap, and no doubt (though that was n:-it specially ordered) he would take with him also his first towel, his soap and his comb ; and supposing that he did so, the sole contents of his knapsack would be the following articles:— One pair of trousers, if not worn out, which was the case in the light division, and probably in the other divi sicns—one pair of mitts—one small hook—one " hold all," containing razor and other shaving materials—one blacking-brush—one bottle of blacking—one button brush—one button-stick. Among these articles the first—the pair of trousers (if it then existed in any of the knapsacks)—is the one likely to be of use ; but with respect to the rest, the generals of division may be pardoned for thinking that then, at the opening of the siege, the razors, the blacking-brushes, the blacking-bottles, the button•brushes, and the button sticks, were all of less account than the precious time and the precious labour of the men. We have still left a great number of par ticulars unnoticed, but we have, at least, said enough to show that Sir Richard Airry is not a man to be accused lightly, or to be made an unresisting scapegoat. At the outbreak of the war the people were carried away by an irrational democratic impulse, and the Go vernment, instead of controlling and directing it, were hurried down the stream. Every thing was done with a degree of childlike im patience which cannot wait another day for a new pleasure. The flower of our troops was shipped off at once. It was time enough to consider their destination afterwards. It was felt that striking results must be produced immediately, or else the people would be dis satisfied, and the Government in danger. Alma, Inkermann, and Sebastopol were thus political rather than military necessities, and were attended accordingly by the violation of military prudence. The army was obliged to leave Eupatoria without tents, and to march on Sebastopol without transports, all for fear the newspapers should say they were doing nothing. Government, in the meantime, acted like weak persons often do, and in curred blame justly through the fear of in curring it falsely— Multos in summa pericula misit Venturi timor ipse The very means which they took to avoid sus picion turned out eventually the source of their disgrace. And, as we ponder over the pages of Sir Richard Airey's Addresses," we gradually come to see in them something far beyond the vindication of particular characters. We read there the Nemesis which awaits those rulers who violate their own consciences in obedience to popular passions. Their hands were palsied and their counsels were dis tracted. And it was reserved for those men who claimed to be the ablest administrators in the United Kingdom to consummate the great est national disaster since the loss of the Ame rican colonies. SATURDAY, The Angel in the House. Book li. " The Es pousals." London : J. W. Parker and Son. OF all writers we are most bound to take poets as they are. It is vain to think that we can mould them to our desires, or that they will be obedient to rules of criticism. Their merit consists in their originality. Their verse, of whatever kind it be, must come from them selves. Their culture, it is true, must, like the culture of other minds, be moulded by the times in which they live. They do nut exist apart from the intellectual atmosphere of their age ; but beyond that broad and general in fluence which they unconsciously receive, and the colouring and habitudes of thought which equally unconsciously they derive from exter nal circumstances, they are Nature's children, born not made ; and as profitably might we at tempt to direct the winds or change the colour of the sky, as amend what we take to be their defects. Usually their peculiar characteristics, of whatever kind they be, strengthen with the maturity of their mind. We could wish that Mr. Coventry Patmore were less fantastical, and that his notions of poetical beauty were different from what they are. But, such as he is, we must take or rtject him. This is the only question to be deter mined,—is he a poet worth listening to ? We think that he is. In his new poem, "The Es pousals," as in his " Angel in the House," there is much exquisite verse. The first part of Vaughan's wooing was told us before ; here we have narrated its continuation to the mar riage-day. The hopes, fears, and raptures of the lover constitute the staple of the verse, and often we are puzzled whether to deride as puerility, or receive as touches of nature, pas sages descriptive of the trivialities which after all enter largely into domestic life, as for ex ample the following, purporting to be a con versation between Vaughan and his be trothed : " What's this ?" " Miss Gussett's Fashion-Book. Ito you like flounc'd or plain skirts best''" "0, flounc'd, like yours. These—" " gathers " " look Too straight: I like them thus, recess'd." " That fashion's old." "You've c harming taste In colours : dim grey with a dash Of gayest azure at the waist ! How I should like to have that sash! Oh, thanks. What narrow boundaries hold My world ! You are so fair—but, Dear, You must be tired of being told ?" "Oh no, Love !" " Are you pleased to hear ?" " I would, of course, seem fair to you." " But, Sweetest, you in it promise me To think my praises simply true ! Come to the mirror. Why not ? See, Are you not beautiful? Confess I Nay, till you do you must not go I There, while you're blushing, tell me !" " Yes.' " You can't see with your head turn'd so." The taste of this is very questionable. The following is better. The wedded pair have just reached the seaside. The earnest moods of the lover are described in bursts of rapture clear and thrilling as the song of the nightingale : Feasts satiate ; stars distress with height ; Friendship means well, but misses reach, And wearies in it's best delight, Vex'd with the vanities of speech; Too long regarded, roses even Afflict the mind with fund unrest; And to converse direct with Heaven Is a great trouble in the breast: Whate'er the up-looking soul admires, Whate'er the senses' banquet be, Fatigues at last with vain desires, Or sickens by satiety : But truly my delight was more In her to whom i any bound for aye Yesterday than the day before And more to•day than yesterday. The volume concludes with Vaughan's de scription of the eve of his wedding-day : As souls ambitious, but low-born, If greatly raised by luck or wit, All pride of place will proudly scorn, And live as they'd been used to it, So we two wore our strange estate: Familiar, unaffected ; free, We talk'd, until the dusk grew late, Of this and that; but, after tea, As doubtful if a lot so sweet As ours was ours in very sooth, Like children, to promote conceit, We feign'd that it was not the truth; And she assumed the maiden coy, And I adored remorseless charms, And then we clapp'd our hands fur joy, And ran into each other's arms.