The Press.
London, England, 1855-09-08 00:00:00

862

growled a few words which, ominous for himself, sounded
like ill-temper. No retort ; but a moment later the quiet
one, with a sudden jerk of his leg, and a twist of the body
to the left. threw the other off his balance, and down went
the bear, his shoulder indenting the turf. A burst of ac-
clamation followed, interrupted by denials from the discom-
fited ; but " a fair fall!"—" a fair fall!" was the cry all
round the ring ; whereupon the vanquished gave up his
jacket—equivalent to striking the Sag—and acknowledged
himself beaten.

Cornwall is a land of mines and speculation.
Every man, rich and poor, all alike, " go in for
" the good thing," and find to their cost that
mining is about as uncertain as horseracing,
and that the inevitable good thing as inevitably
fails. The author is no geologist, but well
describes some natural features of the coast.
It is curious to read an account of the evident
inroads of the sea upon parts of the southern
shore. Within the memory of man the sea
has covered much that in their youth was
good fallow land, and the tradition in Cornwall
is that a vast champagne county spread out
and reached to the Scilly Islands in early
times :

" Where is the Cornish champaign which conjoined the
coast and Scilly?" is a question often askedby antiquaries,
and speculated on by geologists. Here, so runs the fable,
lay far outspread a region of unwonted beauty and fertility,
strewn with villages, and hallowed by one hundred and
fortychurches, known to the Cornish as Lethowsow, or
Lyouesse. And romances of the olden time tell us of
great and gallant deeds wrought in that fair land, the me-
mory of which had been kept alive for ages by wandering
minstrels. Here fell the monarch whose fame made
British hearts beat quick for ages, as sings the poet:—

So all day long the noise of battle roll'd
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's table, man by man,
Had tarn in I,yonness about their lord.
The chroniclers, however, tell us that Arthur's last battle
was fought near Camelford.

But shaken by some mighty convulsion, the lovely region
sank down into the depths, the sea rushed in and com-
pleted the destruction, leaving no trace of what had been,
except the Seven Stones, the Wolf Rock, and a grim like-
ness between the cliffs of the Land's End, and of St.
Martin's Head, the nearest of the isles. The Seven Stones
are still called " The City," and among them, it is said,
the fishermen once hooked some small broken casements
and pieces of stone mouldings, and no other vestiges of
the Lyounesso have ever been discovered. The Trevilian
family bear a white horse as crest, to commemorate the
escape of one of their ancestors by swimming to the main-
land on horseback at the time of the flood.

In Mounts Bay the encroachments of the
sea are so marked that in heavy gales it has
now become quite an expected event, sooner
or later, that the sea will break through to St.
Ives Bay on the opposite side, and cut off the
Land's End as it has done Scilly. The oscil-
lations of the sea in Mounts Bay are remark-
able ; frequently and without warning a heavy
ground swell will roll in on the beach sweep
ing everything before it ; and ten timee in the
present century has the sea suddenly come
roaring in with sudden and terrific force,
shaking the very cliffs to their foundations.
This singular phenomenon is supposed to be
caused by the volcanic action of tho earth
going on under the bottom of the Atlantic, and
upheaving some portions of the bed.

The "Londoner's Walk" is entirely without
pretence ; a plain narrative which almost any
one might write of ajourney any one may make,
and of things which every one may see. It
shows how much pleasure may be derived
from an ordinary pedestrian tour, and how
rich our southern coast is in pleasant land.
stapes and magnificent sea views.

Scott, in one of his novels, says that a young
man never feels more free and buoyant, more
full of elastic vigour, than when indepen•
dently walking through a country, relying on
himself, and proud that he can exclaim, with
the poet of old, " Mecum mea sunt juncta."
How bravely do his heroes get over the
ground on foot ! Frank Osbaldestone making
for bed and supper at Aberfoil, with " his
" pulse of existence beating higher as he felt
" confidence in his own strength, courage and
" resources ;" and Brown stepping freely
through the wilds of Cumberland, exhilarated
by the frosty air, to visit the old Roman wall.
In these days of railroads one must almost
perforce pedestrianise to see anything of the
country, and we hope Mr. White's book may
have the good effect of bringing this manly
mode of pleasure-travel once more into fashion.
We can by experience answer for it, that such
journeys arc remembered with pleasure far in
life's day, that they are equally conducive

THE PRESS.

to health and reflection, and furnish truer
knowledge of life and nature than can be
gained by any other mode of journeying.

The War in the East, from 1853 to July, 1855.
A Sketch of the Campaigns on the Danube,
in Asia, and in the Crimea. By General
George Klapka. London : Chapman and
Hall.
AMONG the piles of books and pamphlets upon
the war passing through our hands, it is sin-
gular how few have been written by military
men, who are the best qualified, one would
suppose, to judge correctly of the events
of a campaign. Every day we have am-
bitious tradesmen writing to the Times
for the guidance of our engineer officers,
laying down rules upon parabolas and the
flight of projectiles, deduced from their
Cockney practice of bow and arrow at the straw
man in the Rosherville-gardens ; or we
have learned divines, whose business one
would think it was to preach peace and " good
" will to all men," propounding plans for the
advance of " corps,' the firing of the enemy's
towns and stores, and the annihilation of his
armies ; in a word, we have men of all classes,
ranks, and denominations, criticising, praising,
complaining, and proposing, as much upon
practical and professional points as upon
general views of the war. But a book like
General Klapka's demands more attention
than the ephemeral trash which crowds the
columns of the daily newspapers or loads the
table of the reviewer.
General Klapka is a soldier of no little repu-
tation ; he is one of that cluster of emi-
nent soldiers evoked by the Hungarian
war of '4B and scattered by the treachery of
'49. His heroic defence of Komorn placed him
at once in the leading rank of able generals ;
and, after a period of comparative obscurity,
the war in the East appears once more to have
roused him. He first offered his services to
the Sultan, who declined to employ them, and
then set himself to observe the conduct of the
war, upon which in this volume he freely ex-
presses his opinion.
The book is divided into four chapters, each
treating of the following subjects :—The cam
paigns on the Danube, in Asia, in the Crimea,
and the question of the war in its full extent.
At the present crisis the earlier operations
of the war possess little interest for us. At this
moment the world is turned with one mind
upon Sebastopol—so great, so terrible will be
the renewal of the struggle upon the earth-
works of that redoubtable intrenchment, that
Oltenitza, Kalafat, Turtukai, and even Sinope,
have lost alike their interest and their horror.
We may observe, however, that throughout
the whole of the early part of the war General
Klapka considers that the meddling interference
of the Western Powers—who thought their time
had not then arrived—was fatal to the success
of the Turks. Austria, who was rather afraid
of the war approaching her frontiers too
closely, in 1853 successfully impressed upon
the Western Powers the danger to the peace of
Europe of allowing the Turks, after their rapid
and brilliant advance upon Bucharest, to follow
up their successes, and deal blows right and
left against the isolated corps of the Russians ;
and the Sultan yielding to their• representa-
tions, Omer Pacha was ordered into winter
quarters, and thus lost the opportunity of the
campaign. That of '54 was in the same manner
a repetition of '53. At the moment of the re-
treat of the Russians, after the attempt on Si-
listria, Austria obtained the protection of the
Principalities, liberated the Russian army for
ulterior service in the Crimea, and effectually
stopped all further advance of the Turks. The
operations of these campaigns, as well as those
in Asia, are fully criticised, while details are
avoided. But the opinion of the General upon
the allied expedition is the one we wish to
arrive at, and it coincides generally with
that held by military men. It was a huge
blunder ; and in delivering this opinion Klapka
disputes with considerable success the most
prominent points in the famous Moniteur letter
upon the war. The prime error he considers
to have been a want of unity in command :
Unity in the supreme command and in the direction of
operations is an acknowledged as well as an indisputable

SATURDAY,

fact. Unity, as the expression of a single will, can alone
insure singleness of purpose, quick decision, and as quick
an execution thereof. Yet at the seat of war we find three
commanders-in-chief and as many admirals, all following
their own course of action. The commanders-in•chiof
were instructed by their Governments to deliberate con-
jointly upon every undertaking ; and, if we bear in mind
that the advicea fiom London and Paris had also their
weight in the balance of their respective decisions, we
have a fair estimate as to the results of such pro-
ceedings.
The next error was the inexcusable and in-
considerate boast of St. Arnaud to his army—
" that they would capture Sebastopol'—a month
before the expedition sailed. Klapka might
have added, that a similar boast was made
by the Times at a still earlier period. Speaking
on this point his remarks carry weight :

One of the very first conditions of success in such cases
is the strictest secrecy ; in this instance, particularly, it was
doubly necessary, as by giving too rapid publicity to the
plan the enemy had time to provide fur his defence, and
thus frustrate the enterprise. Had one of the marshal's
staff committed such a piece of indiscretion, he would
have been summoned before a court-martial and punished
as a spy and traitor. The bravados of St. Arnaud, how-
ever, fared better ; they were quietly set down to the ori•
ginality of his character. the Russians, thus forewarned,
despatched reinforcements to their menaced province, and
immediately set to work fortifying Sebastopol on the land
side.
After the expedition had embarked and
landed, he remarks that the great mistake of
the allied generals was in not landing a small
corps at Kertch and Yenikale, to cut off the
communications of the Russians with Cir.
cassia and the Sea of Azoff. This was an error
no doubt, but the probability is that the allied
generals and admirals knew so little of the
coast and country, that neither liked to be
far away from the other. The battle of the
Alma is criticised, and full justice done to
the dispositions of Lord Raglan, but. Boa.
quet's flank movement General Klapka holds
should have been supported by three di-
visions instead of one; and a simultaneous
assault upon the whole line would have cut off
Menschikoffs retreat upon Sebastopol, and,
if followed up, would have utterly destroyed
him, or driven him into the mountains. Of the
advantages of the flank march, and of the
possible success of an assault, he admits that—

The flank march of the allies succeeded marvellously.
Had they but taken advantage of the surprise of the
enemy, and attempted atilmilibdiate assault upon the city,
which at that moment was weakly garrisoned, they might
possibly have succeeded in carrying both the town and the
arsenal ere the Russians had time to erect regular works
of defence. But, instead of this, they took to protracted
reconnoitrings, in this case overdoing what had been
utterly disregarded on the Alma. where a more accurate
reconnaissance would have assisted them in a better ar-
rangement of the plan of battle. Here, on the contrary,
protracted reconnoitrings led to perpetual indecision and
preparation, and finally to a formal siege, which had never
entered the calculation of the allies in the original plan of
the expedition. One daring and rapid blow, even at a
heavy sacrifice, might still in the present state of affairs
have led to a favorable issue, and if the Allies had not had
determination enough at once to have recourse to such an
extreme expedient, they ought immediately to have re-
turned to their vessels. Pelissier, the present French
commander-in-chief, would in all probability have been the
very man for such a contingency ; both Canrobert and
Lord Raglan were wanting in energy. They thought such
an act of daring did not tally with their conscience and
the responsibility devolving upon them. How incomparably
more victims has the winter campaign cost the allies than
a bold assault under the protection of some easily
constructed batteries at the end of September !
At length, after having given the enemy sufficient time
to recover from its surprise and strengthen its position, it
was decided to lay siege to the town and to begin with the
trenches. The same mistake which led to the repulse of
the Russians at Silistria was here committed by the allies,
only in an aggravated form. They commenced the siege
cperationa without completely investing the place, which
frustrated their efforts to reduce the strength and courage
of the garrison, and imparted to the struggle the character
of a cannonade between two armies, in which the adver-
sary had no difficulty in concentrating on the most ex-
posed points such defences as continually counteracted the
strenuous exertions of the assailants.
This is hard criticism upon the generals.
Though a soldier, General Klapka should re-
member that generals depend upon their
home Governments for support and for sup-
plies, as well for the efficiency and sufficiency
of force which should enable them to success-
fully carry out their designs. How far the
generals in this case were supported by the
Governments time will show ; at present we
can speak only and but partially of the
trials, dangers, difficulties, anti meagre home
support which Lord Raglan knew too well
surrounded him.
After reviewing the progress of the siege and
its first failure Or' Klapka arrives at the

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