The Press. — London, England, 1856-07-19 00:00:00

JULY 19, 185 g. sanded floor with his stick. When he died I hi s house was found full of all k inds of un finished models. He was one of the world's great failures. Another brother, Humphry, was scarcely less inventive, but more prudent. it is supposed here that he had good claims to be considered the author of that main principle of the steam-vessel which consisted in condensing the steam in a separate vessel. We cannot think there is the slightest reason to suppose that Watt did not invent this prin ciple himself, yet it is probable that two minds might have struck out the same idea at nearly the same periods. Mr. Thicknesse says : Mr. Gaineborough (the painter) gave me, after the death of his clergyman brother, the model of his steam engine : that engine alone would have furnished a fortune to all .:he Gainahoroughs and their descendants, had not that unsuspicious, good-hearted man, let a cunning de signing artist see it, and who surreptitiously carried it off in his mind's eye. Watt obtained his first patent for per forming condensation in a separate vessel from the cylinder in 1769; it was renewed in 1775. Humphry Gainsborough died in 1776. The story of Gainsborough's life, not withstanding the scantiness of the mate rials, is well and agreeably brought out. No man's mind and works were more plainly stamped with the impress of native genius. Nature was almost his only master. The marvellous part of his career is, that he should so readily have penetrated the secrets of his art, and have so easily formed a man ner of his own, eminently remarkable for freedom, grace, and facility. A Voice from Within the Walls of Sebastopol. By Captain R. Hodasevich, late of the Taroutine Regiment of Chasseurs in the Russian Service. London : Murray. Ir is not for the sake of any novel informa tion on the subject of the Crimean campaign that we should recommend our readers to glance at the contents of the work before us. Its interest is of a different character. It is from the pen of a Polish officer in the Russian service who, in the spring of 1855, deserted with one of his brother officers to the English lines. It contains therefore, as might be sup posed, a good deal of new and curious matter on the internal organisation of the Russian army ; and were not the animus of the writer so conspicuous in every page, we should wel come it as a valuable addition to our limited stock of knowledge upon a subject which has hitherto been enveloped in secrecy. If we are to believe Captain Hodasevich, whose narrative extends from the 13th of September, 1854, to the sth of March, 1855. the Russian army is characterised by almost every fault which it is possible for an army to exhibit. There is not, he tells us, a single Russian general, except Liprandi, who is fit for any thing on the field of battle. Of the battle of the Alma, he says : During the five hours that the battle went on we neither saw nor heard of our general of division, or brigadier, or colonel : we did not during the whole time receive any orders from them either to advance or to retire ; and when we retired, nobody knew whether we ought to go to the right or left. In the centre of the line it was the same ; and if the men fought, it was solely on the responsibility of the colonels of regiments, but certainly not from any orders of Prince Gortschakoff I. ; for who would have thought of sending a regiment to the charge without its being supported by artillery, when there were pleuty of guns in reserve? The same was the case, according to this author, at Inkerman, where officers were left without generals, and regiments without officers, and every one did that which was right in his own eyes. His story of the battle is, however, too long to be extracted, and an adequate idea of the scene he describes can only be gained by reading the whole of it. In his accounts of both these actions, it is to be observed that Captain Hodasevich states the force of the Russians to have been consider ably smaller than we have been in the habit of supposing. At the Alma, he gives 36,000 men instead of between 45,000 and 50,000; and at Inkerman 40,000 instead of 47,000 or 49,000. A very ill-feeling, he informs us, exists oe tw•een the officers and men, owing to which the former are afraid to use any severity towards the soldiers when engaged ou active service even for the most heinous breaches of discipline THE PRESS. The most unbounded licence existed then in the Russian army, as the officers were afraid to curb the men in the field. An incident that serves as an illustration to this occurred while we were on the Katcha. Ono of my men, during the plundering of a village, insulted an old woman who had remained to defend her property, and would not allow him to take it. This was brought to my notice, and I informed the commander of the battalion of it, and asked his permission to punish the man. He answered that, as we were in the field, any punishment in flicted might create an ill-feeling among the men that would eventually prove dangerous. What he meant by this will be seen in the account of the battle of Inkerman. At Inkerman, Captain Hodasevich tried to prevent one regiment from firing into another by mistake:— On my asking them what they were firing at, they said they were firing over our heads. " How can you be firing over our heads when you are killing our men?" I tried to reason with them, and persuade them, if they would not advance, at least to cease firing, when a man stepped out and fired close to me. I could contain myself no longer, but began to belabour him with the flat of my sword, when I saw a major coming up to me, and I rushed to meet him. " What on earth are you about? Why don't you look to your men? Why don't you advance? If you won't ad. wince, at least order your men to cease firing, for they are killing us !" The major said in a plaintive voice, What can I do when they have killed more than half of us ?" Thinking he meant the enemy, I said, " And is that a reason why you should now kill your own people ?" "No," said he, "it is they," pointing to the men, who have shot us ; I am the only field officer left, and what can I do with such ruffians?" "Itis a shame, Mr. Major," said I, "to fear your own men." A large proportion of the Russian officers, he leads us to suppose, are cowards : slight wounds were frequently made an excuse for shirking duty, and certificates of illness could be purchased for 400 roubles : There were some, however, who did recover, but they were for the most part those who merely pretended to be wounded that they might be out of harm's way. After the battle of the Alma we bad some instances of this prac tice, and Captain Volkhoff. who then reported himself. did the same now, saying, " Why should I remain to be killed, when I have a wife and children ?" But it must not be forgotten, as I said before, that he was the son of the colo nel, who, when there were any rewards to be distributed, found no one among the officers so deserving as his son. While we were in the town we lost twelve officers out of fifty, not by the shot or shell of the allies, for I do not in clude those in the twelve, but by Rickness. These were all sent to Simphempol. If the proportion was equal in all the regiments, and I see no reason why it should not be so, the loss in officers must have been very considerable. If to these are added those who were actually killed or wounded, the number would he very large indeed. I am really ashamed to write such things of the men with whom I previously served ; but, if I have undertaken to make the British public acquainted with what took place in the Russian army at the beginning of the Crimean cam paign, I cannot, in justice to myself, omit so important a fact. And much more to the same effect is to be found scattered through the volume. The peculation practised among the higher officers is, he asserts, boundless. The regimental allowances for transport horses and waggons are more than half pocketed by the colonels. These net considerable sums for the repair of tools, which, upon trial, are usually found worthless. Their gunpowder is dyed millet-seed, and their cartridges often filled up with sand. The cruel treatment and neglect of the wounded is also a constant theme of declama tion with our author I afterwards went into the assembly-rooms that served as the principal field hospital for the western part of the town. The filth in this place was disgusting. While I was here a soldier of the regiment of Ekatherinenburg came up to me, and, pointing to a surgeon, said, "Is possible they do such things in your regiment ?" I aske him what was the matter. Why," said he, " you see, w had brought in a poor wounded comrade ; he was wounded in the knee by a splinter from a shell; the doctor, having examined the wound, began to cut the leg of the wounded man, who cried out, when the doctor struck him in the face for making a noise. It must have hurt him, having his leg cut. I only wish I had my firelock here, I'd pay the doctor out; but he may fall into my hands yet." Our readers will now be able to judge for themselves of Captain Hodasevich's narrative We have, of course, no means at hand of checking his statements. We have nothing to guide us in estimating his veracity but the knowledge that he deserted his colours. If his facts be true, they at once demolish the theory lately so prevalent among us that a despotism invariably puts the " right man in " the right place," and that English mis management is unknown in the continental armies. If false, what are we to think of the Polish patriots who vamp up such stories to justify desertion? The Poles, says the editor : I'ar from attaching any idea of disgrace to desertion from the Russian ranks, looked upon their escape from the hated yoke as nothing more than a continuation of that emigration which will never cease as long as the tyranny which now oppresses Poland continues to weigh upon the country. This raises a question which, independent of all incidental considerations, is not so easy to determine. On the one hand, it does not perhaps seem unreasonable that a man should prefer exile to what he believes to be slavery. Omne whoa forti patria est is a maxim which found favour with ancient writers; and the conduct of the Phocceans, who fled from their city in a body rather than submit to the dominion of Cyrus, is often mentioned with approbation. Yet such was not the conduct of the Romans themselves, who, ever at the worst of times, spite of Gaul, Etruscan, or Carthaginian, stood manfully by the old country, and preserved it to be mistress of them all. In modern times there are even stronger instances in favour of the same determination. The Saxons clung to their soil, bided their time, and by the in. domitable energy of their character at length reconquered the conquerers, and imposed their laws, language, and institutions, on the victorious Normans. Had the vanquished Cava liers emigrated in a body, she would have lost that free aristocratic constitution which has made her what she now is. Had those brave Irish gentlemen who fled from the yoke of a foreigner but exercised in the service of their own country one half of those brilliant qualities which adorned the Courts anti camps of the Bourbons and Hapsburgs, Ireland had perhaps been spared half a century of degra dation, and a century and a half of mis government. Had the French noblesse boldly confronted the revolution, it is at least probable that much blood would have been spared, many ancient and useful institutions been reformed instead of being destroyed, and the continuity of the national life been pre• served and strengthened instead of being vio lently broken asunder. The question is, whether in the ease cf Po land it is not the truest patriotism to forward the work of amalgamation. We cannot agree with the editor that this volume affords im portant proof that the Polish nationality is not destroyed, or that the proof is of any value, even if it does. Is that nationality strong enough to reconstitute the nation? Doubt less, round the watch-fires of Fontenoy, among Clare's "wild geese," was to be heard sufficient evidence of Irish nationality. But did this enable the exiles to resuscitate an Ireland of their own ? On the whole, we think the doc trine which turns so many men into soldiers of fortune, rather than submit to a regime they hate in their own country, is pernicious to society, and, in the words of Lord Chat ham, writing to his nephew on this very sub ject, " Lig with fatal casuistry." We believe that the truest patriotism is, in sailors' phrase, to " stand by the ship," or, at all events, if that be impracticable, to migrate, and found a new country elsewhere, like the Pilgrim Fathers in America, but not to cling to the phantom of nationality when the substance has departed, and to invoke the names of liberty and patriotism in aid of an agitation which must retard internal progress, while it cannot bring nearer by a single moment the day of independence. What will this poor Captain Hodasevich be in England hereafter? Those who have known as many poor Poles as ourselves,and have experienced the inevitable result of the acquaintanceship, will have little difficulty in answering the question. F,Jusir. HER MAJESTY'S THEATRE. "How is it," said an ex conductor of English opera, on Saturday night, after the representation of Lu crexia Borgia, " that when we were performing the works of so many composers, the day after, such severe notices appeared in the papers, and here, after a massacre such as was rarely witnessed, even on our boards, the criticisms will pronounce the execu tion to be perfection itself!" Such was the observa tion made to a bevy of critics collected in the passage behind one of the box-tiers. No distinct reply was given to the indignant burst of the very clever pro fessor ; only one writer muttered, " Well, I did not make the engagements." Certainly Saturday was one