The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-01-08 00:00:00

NEW YEAR'S SONG,

A HAPPY new year ! Oh, the faces that beam
In memory's people land,
As again, in the spring of my youth I seem
The wildest of home's sweet band !
The Christmas log, and the ruddy blaze,
And the smiles by that warm hearth shining;
Recollection hath nothing, in after days,
Round its ruins more firmly twining.
Breathe it once more—for I love the strain,
But whisper, " A happy new year ;"
For the echo is fraught with tones that again
In our world I shall never hear.
To dream of crushed flowers—of broken chords—
Of kindness long passed from earth—
Of silvery laughter—of gentle words—
Doth that simple wish give birth.

Though the woodman's axe may have rent the tree,
Yet summer'sventle rain
Will summon to life and radiancy,
From the seared trunk, leaves again ;
So those sweet sounds come in freshness back,
And fall upon sorrow's ear,
Till Memory's flowers spring on Time's worn track,
As ye wish me " A happy new year."
I feel that trial and pain for me
Round the untried months must coil,
But I know there's a haven on life's rough sea,
Where the billows in tumult boil.
Yes, Bethlehem's star, when the skies are dark,
With its Christmas light will appear;
So away—l boldly launch my bark
On the depths of the untried year !

LITERATURE.

Journal kept during the Russian War : from the
Departure of the Arm from England in April,
1854, to the Fall of Sebastopol. By Mrs. Henry
Duberly. London : Longman and Co.
The volume of her experiences and reflections which
Mrs. Duberly has given to the world, relative to her
observations of scenes, incidents, and events connected
with the war, from its commencement to the comple-
tion of the irst act of the great and tragic drama,
will be read with interest by all, but with very dif-
ferent feelings by many. Differing from most, if not
from all, the narratives which have yet been pub-
lished, this journal is chiefly valuable from the cir-
cumstance that it consists entirely of memoranda
jotted down on the instant at which the occurrence
was noted. It is consequently more thoroughly the
reflex of feeling instantly excited than can be found
in those more laboured narratives, in which the ex-
pression of sentiment is cautiously evoked, and the
indication of feeling is sedulously built up. The
authoress, Mrs. Duberly, seems to have been ad-
mirably fitted to enact, with becoming spirit, the
arduous character of a soldier's wife, in a hard and
harrowing campaign. Active, light-hearted, and un-
repining, she shared the anxieties and viscissitudes,
dared many of the dangers, and experienced many of
the hardships of the army. She accompanied her
husband from England, and with him encountered
the perils of the camp at Varna, endured the yet
greater perils of the winter of 1854-5 before Sebas-
topol, continuing her spirited narrative through the
dreadful storm of battle and conflict which preceded the
crowning glory of the strife, and which enabled the gal-
lant victors to plant the standards of the Allies over
the ruined citadel of Sebastopol. Under all the vary-
ing circumstances which accompanied these harrow-
ing and often disheartening scenes, and bearing up
against the privations by which they were so fatally
marked, she pursued the tenor of her journal, which is
always lively, and frequently freighted with matter of
suggestive interest ; its chief characteristic being the
fidelity with which it reflects the predominating feel-
ing of the camp. It is often sad and sorrowful,
though never desponding; and it is obviously con-
structed more con amore when the authoress was
contemplating the bright than when studying the
sombre side of camp life. Undismayed by the perils,
and unsubdued by the sufferings which surround her
at every interval of actual danger, and at the slightest
relaxation from the physical miseries which they
endured, Mrs. Duberly was ready to enjoy the pas-
times and chronicle the sports of the soldiery. An
enthusiastic equestrian and a passionate admirer of
horses, the steeple-chases by which, in the spring, the
officers of the light cavalry sought, in some degree, to
relieve the horrors of the winter, were to her a source
of satisfaction and delight. More serious matters
than the " events "of a steeple-chase form the general
material of her diversified narrative. Caught in the
dreadful storm of the 14th of November, in the har-
bour of Balaklava, she scrambled with desperate forti-
tude, from ship to ship, until she gained the cliff,
where she witnessed, and thus describes
A SCENE OP SHIPWRECK.
At the moment after my arrival, the devoted and most
beautiful little clipper-ship Wild Wave " was riding to her
death. Her captain and crew—all but three small boys—had
deserted her at nine o'clock; and she was now, with all her
masts standing, and helpless freight on board, drifting, with
her graceful outlines and her heart of oak, straightway to her
doom. She is under our feet. God have mercy on those
children now ! Captain Frain, Captain Liddell, and some
seamen heave a rope downwards, at which one boy springs,
but the huge wave is rolling backwards, and he is never seen
again. A second time they hurl it down to the boy standing
on the stern frame, but the ship surging down upon the ruth-
less rocks, the deck parts beneath his feet, and he is torn,
mangled and helpless, but clinging still, until a wave springs
towards him eagerly, and claims him for the sea. The third
and last survivor catches at the friendly rope, and, swooning
with exhaustion and fear, he is laid upon the rock ; while in a
moment, with one single bound, the little ship springs up-
wards as though she, too, was imploring aid, and falls back a
scattered mass, covering the sea with splinters, masts, cargo,
hay, bread, and ropes.
As a delineator of battle-pieces, Mrs. Duberly pos-
sesses considerable power, and much minuteness of
description ; the following is her narrative of
THE STORMING OP THE MAMELON, AND THE UNSUCCESSPUL
ATTACH UPON THE MALAKHOPF.
What a vehement fire ! and all directed on the one spot.
Two rockets in quick succession are gone up, and a moment
after comes the third. Presently the slope of the Mamelon is
covered with men, ascending separately and rapidly ; not
marching up in line, as our infantry would have done, but
scattered like a flock of sheep. Two guns, hitherto masked,
in the Mamelon open quickly upon them ; but they rush up,
and form when they reach the entrenchment. For a time
we can see nothing but clouds of smoke. The guns are all
silent now,—nothing but the volley and file-firing of musketry.
The Russians, standing on the fort, fire down on the advancing
French ; but presently some men are seen leaving the
Mamelon and rushing towards the Malakhoff. * * * The
noise in front commences again, and I see men in hundreds
rushing from the Mamelon to the Malakhoff. Per Dio !
they are not satisfied with what they have gained, but are
going to try for the Malakhoff, with all its bristling guns.
Under what a storm of fire they advance, supported by that
impenetrable red line, which marks our own infantry ! The fire
from the Malakhoff is tremendous—terrible; but all amidst
that the steadiness of the French under it is magnificent. On
our left the sun is setting with all his glory, but looking
lurid and angry through the smoky atmosphere, that is
becoming dense and oppressive from perpetual firing. Pre-
sently the twilight deepens, and the light of rocket, mortar,
and shell falls over the beleaguered town.
All the world knows that the attacks on the nearly
impregnable fortresses of Sebastopol were, at last,
crowned with victory ; the curious sojourners in the
camp were, of course, eager to behold the captured
batteries, which it had cost so much of labour and of
life to subdue, and our heroine was an early visitor to
the scene of conflict and of triumph. Here is her
DESCRIPTION OP THE CAPTURED REDAN.
What wonderful engineering ! What ingenuity in the
thick rope-work which is woven before the guns, leaving only
a little hole, through which the man laying the gun can take
his aim, and which is thoroughly impervious to rifle shot !
The Redan is a succession of little batteries, each containing
two or three guns, with traverses behind each division ; and
bidden away under gabions, sandbags, and earth, are little
huts in which the officers and men used to live. Walkiag
down amongst these (for we were obliged to dismount),, we
found that tradesmen had lived in some of them. Henry
(her husband) picked up a pair of lady's lasts the precise size
of my own foot. Coats, caps, bayonets lay about, with black
bread and broken guns.
Thelair journalist gives a description, equally gra-
phic and interesting, of her
EXPERIENCES IN SEBASTOPOL.
Actually in Sebastopol! No longer looking at it through a
glass, or even going.dewn to it, but riding amongst its ruins
and through its streets. We had fancied the town was almost
uninjured—so calm, and white, and fair did it look from a
distance; but the ruined walls, the riddled roofs, the green
cupola of the church, split and splintered to ribands, told a
very different tale. Here were wide streets leading past one or
two large handsome detached houses built of stone ; a little
further on, standing in a handsome open space, are the bar-
racks, with large windows, a fine stone façade of great length,
several of the lower windows having carronades run out of
them, pointing their grim muzzles towards our batteries.
Whilst I am gazing at these, a sudden exclamation from Henry,
and a violent shy from the pony, nearly start me from my
saddle. It is two dead Russians lying, almost in a state of
decomposition, at an angle of the building; while in the cor-
ner a man is sitting up, with his hands in his lap, and eyes
open, looking at us. We turn to see if he is only wounded,
so life-like are his attitudes and face ; no, he has been dead
for days.
This journal is interesting and curious on many
grounds. It is full of vigorously-hit-off pictures of
camp life. It is lively in tone, and is remarkable as a
chronicle of the actual incidents of war from the pen
of an observant and courageous woman.
Dort, A

'odor Antonio : A Tale. By the Author of " Lorenzo
Benoni." Edinburgh : T. Constable and Co.
This is a story
constructed on the same sort of model
as that by which its author won his way cleverly and
securely into the good graces and affections of the
reading public. The story, which is domestic in its
commencement, and pleasingly sweet and touching—
so long as it retains that form—towards its conclusion
becomes burdened with the heavy air of political
speculation, and is rendered in no small degree repul-
sive by the introduction of an official report of the


oppressive events resulting from the political tragedy
which opened rather than terminated, in Sicily,
on the 15th of May, 1848. This is a sort of doctrinal
engraftment which we look on as reprehensible, on
many accounts. It is a mixing up of truth and fiction
in a way bewildering to common notions. It is, to
some extent, equivalent to the proceeding of a man
who obtains entrance to your domicile by presenting
the credentials of another. When established, he may
turn out a very proper and estimable 'man, but we can
never get rid of the idea that however candid and well-
behaved Mr. Tompkins may prove to be upon
acquaintance, he is not the Mr. Smith he represented
himself to be, and must, therefore, continue to labour
under the odium of having been introduced into the
family under false pretences. This is a great pity.
The author of " Doctor Antonio" requires no such
artifice. If he wants to tell a story of political wrong,
suffering, and cruelty, he is obviously quite competent
to the task of efficiently and persuasively telling it.
His tale of fiction is well and beautifully conveyed,
artistically contrived, and ingeniously worked out.
The language, too, is nervously expressive and un-
encum beredly pure.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
.Empire. By Edward Gibbon. With variorum
Notes. Edited, with further illustrations from the
most recent sources, by an English Churchman.
Vol. VII. London : Henry G. Bohn.

The seventh volume of this work completes it, and
adorns with a handsome and cheap copy of Gibbon's
great historical work, the admirable series of British
classics which Mr. Bohn has for so many months past
been spiritedly carrying on. A criticism on Gibbon
at this time of day would be as much out of place as it
would be superfluous, and might be deemed presump-
tuous ; but it cannot be open to the same objection to
offer gratulation to the book-buyers of the middle
classes on the completed publication of so important a
work, at a rate which places it readily within reach
of their purchase. It is complete in all respects, is
amply illustrated by notes of reference and explanation,
is furnished with a copious index, and consists of an
unmutilated text. These advantages, combined with
its cheapness, form the best recommendation of this
edition, and an enumeration of them constitutes its
highest eulogy.
CALVIN'S CORRESPONDENCE.—In a letter written
by Dr. d'Aubigne, which has appeared in the Record,
the learned historian says :

A few days before he expired, in 1564, Calvin was in his
library with Theodore de Beza, and, showing him the immense
correspondence he had kept up, for above a quarter of a cen-
tury, with the most Evangelical Christians and the highest
personages of Europe, proposed to him to publish it for the
Church's instruction. This wish of the dying Reformer was
but tardily and partially accomplished in the sixteenth cen-
tury ; but a literary man and a Christian of our days, M. Jules
Bonnet, Docteures-Lettres, has undertaken, after the lapse of
three hundred years, to fulfil Calvin's wish ; and five years
spent in travelling in Switzerland, in France, and in Ger-
many, careful studies and researches in the libraries of these
different countries, have enabled him to form a collection
which will throw a fresh light on the history of the Reforma-
tion. This correspondence, which terminates only on Calvin's
death-bed, embraces every period of his life, and contains at
the same time the familiar effusions of friendship, grave theo-
logical statements, and elevated views of the politics of Pro-
testantism. We see in it the Reformer reproving, with all
respect and dignity, the Queen of Navarre, Marguerite de
Valois, sister of Francis 1., exhorting the young King of Eng-
land, Edward VI., as a Chiristian Mentor speaking to his
Telemachus, conversing with Melanchthon, Bullinger, Knox,
Conde, Coligny, the Duchess of Ferrara, daughter of Louis
XII., Jeanne d'Albret, mother of Henry IV., we see him with-
standing libertines, strengthening martyrs, upholding all the
Churches. This correspondence is published in Paris in the
original languages. An English edition is published by
Thomas Constable and Co., of Edinburgh, and the first volume
has just appeared. The English publication is, in some re-
spects, superior to the French.