The Press. — London, England, 1856-08-30 00:00:00

834 yard and the barrack wall, only 400 yards in the rear, which would have swept the place—in nautical phraseology—en tirely, fore and aft. - - - - - The Russians were completely at fault when they inclosed the rear of the Malakoff, instead of leaving it open, as in the case of the Redan. It is singularthat their skilful engineers should have made so great a mistake. The " T. G." resolved to see how the High land Brigade fared in the hills ; paid them a visit ; and was hospitably entertained : We dined in the tent of a captain of the regiment who possessed a table sufficiently large to accommodate half a dozen. We sat down to this impromptu dinner with appe• tites far from quarrelling with the viands. There were soups of every description ; mulligatawny soup, oyster soup, gravy soup, a dozen red herrings, bottles of champagne, pale sherry, and pale ale, with a finale of currant pudding. At a London clubhouse this might, perhaps, have been considered a plebeian mixture, but I am prepared strongly to assert that the veriest gourmande, under similar circumstances, would have pronounced the spread most excellent. I slept that night in my friend's tent. I slept on a board—a piece of board laid upon the bare earth. He kept up a capital fire, over which we smoked our pipes, and chatted until rather late. Blankets were at a discount ; mine came in very useful ; but although the snow continued to fall the whole night, I cannot say I felt the slightest cold, for I slept in all my clothes, excepting my coat ; and besides this, had piled up on the top of me a singular mass, comprising rugs, forage sacks, anal all the coats that could be found. When I awoke in the morning, my face was in contact with the circular wall of loose earth, forming the hole that had been dug out after the tent had been fixed. The in- mate is thus buried four feet under the ground during the night, and greater warmth is thereby obtained, as the cold blasts pass over the tent without penetrating below. It hul been snowing the whole night on the outside, and our tent was a foot deep in snow. The covennst was thrown open by the entrance of the servant, and I observed the op pisite side of the valley, with the boughs of the forest trees laden with white flakes ; and turning round upon my couch, I prosecuted my geological researches, by picking out specimens of stones and loose pebbles from the wall of my apartment. The following is an amusing specimen of the routine machinery, of pen ani ink work, occa sioned by the smallest requisition. An officer required a pair of gloves from the Government stores : The requisition was duly drawn up and signed according to the necessary form, and then this requisition commenced its somewhat long and erratical journey. The order for the gloves of the value of two shillings and eleven pence was first forwarded to the regimental quartermaster, it was then sent to the colonel of the regiment, for his endorse ment, from him it went to the brigade-major, who trans mitted it to the assistant quartermaster-general, and theme it reached the quartermaster general, at head quarters. From him the order came back to the quarter master-general of division, then through the brigade-major to the colonel of the regiment, who directed the quarter master of the regiment to send it to the quartermaster general at Balaklava, when the gloves were issued, and at length they came back to the officer who made the applica tion ! the order having thus travelled the distance of thirty miles and four-fifths, all for the value of two shillings and eleven pence. Now, did any one ever hear of such a perfect piece of absurdity and useless expenditure of time and labour, just to keep up that silly old routine of signatures and counter-signatures, which even the wild Africans in Timbuctoo would have long since abolished had they been taught the severe lesson of misfortune aid suffering that we had learned during the preceding winter ? The author, like most other of the T. G.'s, formed an unfavorable opinion of the Turkish character As I watch the movements of an allied army like this, with all its machinery of action, I cannot but reflect on the motives of this colossal war. It seems apparent to me that its purpose is to work out far higher and nobler ends than the mere curtailment of Russian power, for in its train follow all the arts of the civilisation and commerce of Western Europe, and the poor indolent Turks, and passive tribes bordering upon the Black Sea, are completely ridden over by the restless energy of the Briton and the Gaul. Oar steamships, railways, and roadways, even now sur prise and awe these lazy disciples of Mahomet ; and the refinement of our manners and habits presents a striking oontrast to their degraded state. Turkey, indeed, would be a poor object aloce to fight for. Her existence upon the map of Europe cannot be for long, for it must be ac knowledged teat that nation which has no literature of its own, which is ignorant of most of the arts and sciences, which does not reeoguise the influence of woman in so ciety, curbing the growth of her intellect, and hiding her away in solitude, in which no progress has been made for two or three centuries, and whose whole existence is passed with a pipe in its mouth, and fanaticism and fatalism in its temper and its religion—it must be acknowledged that this nation is not yet fitted to assist in European councils, when its own exclusive and bigoted customs entirely abne gate those social amenities that mark the intercourse of other States. A valuable appendix closes the volume, giving exact particulars as to the strength and losses of the allied armies during the whole of the great siege. The total loss by battle, disease, and famine is set down at : THE PRESS. Russians .. .. 280,000 French .. 56,000 English .. 32.000 Turks .. 60,000 The total number of men sent by the allies to the Crimea seems to have fallen little short of a quarter of a million : English .. .. 105,000 French 170.000 Turks .. .. 40,000 Sardinians .. .. 18,000 The account given of the strength of the British army and fleet is reassuring:— England commands 119,900 infantry. 13,600 cavalry, 15,122 artillery, 2,460 genie troops, 80,000 militia : total, 230,200 men. England's maritime power consists of 94 line-of•battle ships, 92 frigates, and 400 smaller vessels : total, 586 ships, with 16,234 guns and 60,354 horse•power. The volume is instructive, and not un amusing. though encumbered by those " deadly lively" attempts at smartness which disfigure so much of our fugitive literature. CONTEMPORARY POETRY. A LARGE collection of poetry we were unable to notice in detail, has accumulated on our hands for some months past. We propose, therefore, at this time, when we have more space at our disposal, to offer some observations on the character of this spe cies of composition, of which we have annually so large a crop. When critics assure us that the progress of civili sation is fatal to poetry, they usually fail to crnvince, because th.-y attribute undue weight to the influence of mechanical inventions. It is true that life is less pregnant than of old with adventures of a particular kind—that it is less romantic and less picturesque— that its virtues, perhaps, are less splendid, while its vices are more ignoble. It is true that both heroism and villany are removed a step furthEr back from the popular gaze, and that the influence they once e 'ter cised on the imagination of mankind is weakened by the intervention of secondary agencies. These are positions which, perhaps, cannot be impugned, not withstanding both the fervour of benevolence and the audacity of wickedness which individuals among us have recently displayed. Flora M'Donald will always be a more poetical character than Florence Nightingale, though there can be no comparison between the greatness of their actions ; and Claude Duval than William Palmer, though in nerve and skill the latter was probably the superior. Those persons who endeavour to persuade us into a conviction of the poetry of a steam engine and a diving-bell, fall into a graver error than those who see in these discoveries the sole cause of its decline. It is not on this account alone, or even primarily, that civilisation is injurious to poetry. Were this so, we should at the present day have no poetry at all. There still are, and will continue to be while the world lasts, inexhaustible materials for poetry. External nature, the human passions, and the vicissi tudes of fortune, are still the same. But the truth seems to be that high intellectual cultivation, com bined with a general diffusion of material conve niences, is not favorable to the formation of a healthy school of poetry. It stimulates the growth of sentiment, while it checks the expansion of energy. Men's minds are turned in upon them selves, a process by which few are gainers ; their own sensations and fancies become magnified in their own eyes. The perception of poetical beauty is mistaken for the presence of poetical genius. The constant study of the subjective writers supplies them with a copious vocabulary. Their own pleas ing " self•communings" are committed to paper. Friends applaud, and the result is the annual publi cation of some thousands of verses, which sometimes please by their metrical smoothness, but much oftener weary us by the obscurity or absence of meaning, by the triteness of their metaphors, and, worse than all, by the eternal self•importance of the writer. Poets of course there are of high and fine genius, from whom this proc e ss of self-analysis has drawn forth streams of the most exquisite sweetness and purity. But the small fry of poetasters who copy them are worse than the copyists of any other school. The first volume on our list—Vestigia (1), by One of the Million—is of a very mixed character. The author no doubt possesses a considerable share of that taste for poetry which we have remarked so often leads a man to mistake himself for a poet. There is a great deal of good sense in one of his prose essays, called " Taste and Critique of the Million," in which he advocates the adoption of a manly and lucid style in poetry, and comments with severity on the extravagancies of "Anglo-German ism." But he can scarcely be said to carry out his own precepts. Witness the following : (1) rank*. By One of the Million. Saundeze and Otley. SATURDAY, BEAUTY BELOVED BY DEATH. The young birds are wild with mirth When the sun is high; But wilder notes hail the birth Of the storm from the sky. The joylighted heart, through glee, Must share with the eye its light; But brighter that glance would be, Were the heart then sunk in night. Lovely are groves when Spring Wakes from her sleep ; But lovelier far when birds take wing, And the blasts of Autumn sweep. Deep is the crimson glow On the brow of yet cradled Day; But deeper at eve her blushes grow, Ere in darkness she dies away. And so on through several more stanzas. Now, the very title of this poem is a misnomer. If it is any thing, the burden of it is Death beloved by Beauty, and not Beauty by Death. But did anything ever read more like a parody of Mr. Bunn? The writer is labouring with some idea of his own which his mind cannot grasp with distinctness, and which is accordingly enunciated in these crude and shapeless words. There cannot, perhaps, be a better test of a true poet than the clearness of his imagery. The absence of this is a pretty sure sign that an author is trying to be what Nature never meant him for; and that he is entirely wanting in the special ccn stitution of a poet. The Shadow of the Yew (2), and d Summer Day dream (3), are both volumes which contain passages of considerable merit. Yet both, we must add, belong to the same species of poetry as the last. The first is rather egotistic, and is, moreover, too servile an imitation of Mr. Tennyson. Stilt the ines on Lord Raglan's funeral are pretty, and " Woodland Reveries " and " Spring Flowers " show some obser vation of nature which Mr. Yonge might cultivate to advantage. " A Summer Day-dream " we like best. It is thoroughly unws‘uming and unaffected, the versification is always musical and sometimes vigo rous, and the turn of thought and the rhythm occa sionally remind us of Mrs. Hennans. The longest poem in the volume, from which it derives its name, is not the most favorable example of the author's powers—it is somewhat obscure ; nor is the moral of the story striking in proportion to the machinery employed. But of the shorter pieces, " The Tower on the Rocks," "The Work of War," and " Wild Flowers," will be agreeable to all admirers of soft and fluent rhymes. We quote a portion of the last. After a pleasant description of the flowers themselves, and the spot where they grew, the writer continues:— I wondered why in that lonely place Those beautiful flowers grew, Flourishing far from the human race, And hidden from mortal view, And I cried, " why bloom ye, flowers fair, And why do ye smile, oh why? Why waste your sweets on the desert air, Unseen by mortal eye?" And the lily raised her drooping head, And the wild bird stopt his song; And the modest woodbine softly said, " Do flowers to man belong ? " " What boots it to us, through the forest glade That never a mortal trod That ye never come to the greenwood shade,' To behold the works of God? We have no time for thoughts of gloom That oppress the soul of man ; Our only thought is now to bloom As sweetly as we can. For he who gives us all things good, The rain and the sun to cheer, Planted us in this lonely wood, And bade us blossom here I " Of the Mystic (4) we can only say that we have tried in vain to understand Mr. Bailey's design, and experience very little inclination to renew the attempt. Such an effort would awaken in us sensations very much akin to those of the charity boy when he bad got to the end of the alphabet. Who and what is the Mystic ? God or man ? What is it that he is represented as doing ? These are questions in limine, and till they are answered all criticism would be idle. In the meantime we can only express our disapprobation of Mr. Bailey's treatment of the English language, and his employment of such terms as " godlings," " aselline starlets," " glode," " penumbral," " bever," and plenty more, which, without the context, would be unintelligible. His imitations of Milton are 80 palpable that we presume they are intentional. They are exhibitions of cumbrous pedantry, without the great poet's vigour which enabled him to walk upright with his burden. We subjoin some choice specimens from the " Mystic :" Alms gave he, as an alchemist, whose gold Flows inexhaustless, or whose pearly draught The potable perpetuity of life (2) The Shadow of the Yew. By Norm►n Yonge. Saunders and Otley. (9) A §aostoser Day-dream By Theta. Saunders and Otlev. (4) The Mystic, and other Poem. By Philip Jamas Bailey, Author of " Pastas." Chapaim awl