The Press.
London, England, 1855-05-26 00:00:00

••••1.1.4•4

w

502

an impossibility to bring down ammunition from the camp
under the enemy's fire, which swept the road.
Lieutenant Pearl makes use of one expres-
sion which is singular as coming from a mili-
tary man. He observes, page 143, that—
It was now pretty clear that our batteries were at too
great a distance from the enemy's works, but I believe
they were placed here for humanity's sake, instead of at
800 yards, as was first contemplated.

"Humanity's sake " is a reason which wo have
not yet heard offered as influencing a general
in the disposition of his batteries. The
following little incident of getting a gun into
position tells with very good effect:—
At eleven p.m. in the evening of the 30th of October I
was ordered on a working party, with forty men, to the
Three-Gun Battery, on the extreme left of the Greenhill
trenches, across the ravine above the picket-house, and we
were engaged in placing a furnace in position for heating
red-hot shot, as a gun was being brought up (24-pounder ),
to replace one that had been disabled. It was to throw
red-hot shot into a ship which was moored across the
inner harbour, and which gave this battery considerable
annoyance. The gun had to be brought round in front of
the battery by a winding road through the picket-house
yard, and behind the battery there was a most precipitous
rock, at the foot of which was a valley, through which the
gun had to pass.
We could plainly hear persuasive language and whips
cracking down below us, and shortly after an artillery
officer came to me to make a request that I would allow
my men to go down and assist them, as the horses were
unable to bring the gun up. We went down and found
eight horses at work. They were fairly worn out, and
would not move an inch. We hitched the drag-ropes to
the axles of the gun-carriage, and the men endeavoured,
with the assistance of the horses, to get it up this little
rising ground, but were unable to accomplish it..
It was of the greatest importance that the gun should
be in position when the morning dawned, and now it
was fast advancing. I requested that the horses should be
taken out, and that the men should be allowed to try it by
themselves, which was agreed on, and borrowing a few
hands from the picket-house, they gave three cheers, and
ran it up in no time. The horses were again placed in,
and we escorted the gun to its next sticking-place, which
was in front of the battery which it was to occupy, and the
dawn of morning had now come, and we could plainly see
the harbour below and the Russian butteries. This was
no place to leave it to be practised on all day, and all
praise is due to our fellows for their exertions in moving
tt from this perilous position into the battery. Great
proof of skill and presence of mind was there shown.
The horses had been taken out, and the gun was just
being put into position, when all on a sudden it got too
much way, the men at the drag-ropes were. capsized, and a
corporal of artillery, being in the shafts, showed great
presence of mind, by sticking to the shafts, and guiding
this heavy piece of ordnance into its position ; whereas
the slightest hesitation on his part would have precipitated
the gun over the cliff, and in all probability have killed a
dozen of my men. He received the greatest praise from
all around.
After the battle of Inkermann the men
began to show signs of knocking up entirely.
Without clothing, covering, or wholesome
food, overworked and underfed, could it be
wondered at? The Turk who remarked that
such splendid men as ours ought to be care-
fully preserved from labour and brought up in
carriages to the actual field of battle to tight
only, would have been marvellously surprised
at the sight of the British camp after the
storm of the 14th November :
The men were worn out, and it was difficult to get them
to work with any rapidity or energy ; but it was naturally
to be accounted for, from being overworked and not having
proper food. I have seen men in the trenches by my side
eating raw salt pork and beef like cannibals ; and, when
asked why they aid it, their reply was, " We have no time
to cook it, sir." Could we expect anything but disease
from the effects of such diet? The coffee was also a great
part of the time in an unroasted state; sad how was it
possible that this could be used by those who had not time
to fry it, even if they had materials for so doing ? Up to
this time we had received our rations pretty regularly,
until the bad weather set in, and the rain rendered the
roads almost impassable. The Commissariat used every
means in their power ; but when the provisions did fall
short it was evident that they had not sufficient stores, if
any, in camp, and nothing was to be obtained by them
nearer than lialaklava.
Shortly after Lieutenant Peard fell ill, and,
being fortunate enough to get invalided out
of camp, he started on board a sick trans
port for Constantinople, en route to England.
His description of the accommodation for the
poor unfortunate wounded men fully bears
out all that has been told upon the subject:—
We proceeded very steadily on our course ; but there
was a light breeze, which at night died away, and the ship,
being without ballast, rolled in a way I had never expe-
rienced before : chairs, tables, crockery, being unlashed,
rolled from side to side, and the noise was dreadful. We
could plainly hear the poor fellows between decks moaning
away after every great lurch, and crying out for the order-
lies, who, by the bye, were as much like patients as many
others on board. Some of the sufferers had broken legs
and jaws, which of course gave them frightful pain as
they rolled from side to side on the deck. They had

THE PRESS.

no cots or partitions to lay hold of, and their sufferings
must have been intense ; over this calamity, however, we
had no control, and they rolled with the ship from side
to side, which of course prevented their bones uniting.
Several men died daily, and constantly bodies were
launched into the deep, over whom Captain M-,
Bt4th Regiment, read prayers.
Between the master and mate of the vessel
there seemed to be some difference of opinion
as to whether they could get into the Boa-
phorus or not, and for two days they tacked
about oft the entrance. At last they got in and
anchored under Beicos. While there that
magnificent ship the Royal Albert passed in
the full pride and pomp of war, crowded with
troops. What a contrast the two ships pre-
sented—the one full of eager hearts and
robust, healthy frames, longing for " glory" ;
the other, crowded with poor, wan, emaciated,
dying spectres! With how much or how little
•f this bubble " reputation "
To conclude, Lieutenant Peard's little book,
as an authentic compilation of the facts of
positive personal experience, will be found
attractive, and beyond that it has no preten-
sions.

Olympus. London: Simpkin, Marshall,

and Co.

CHARLES LAMB tells us in one of his essays
that he never thinks ; that he hates thinking ;
that his books think for him. What dear Elia
so quaintly and jestingly said of himself is true
of at least one half of what are called our
educated classes. We seldom meet a man
now-a-days, especially in print, who does not
have his thinking done for him by books or
by the public journals; and when by chance
we do encounter such a person, we are often
disposed to wish he had been content to do as
his neighbours, and echo the thoughts of
better men than himself, remembering that
singularity is not originality, nor pretentiou
philosophy.
Occasionally, however, we stumble on a man
—and more rarely on an author—to whom
cannot be applied the severe and well-known
rebuke administered by a celebrated critic to a
pseudo-philosopher, " that there was much
" that was new and much that was true in
Mr —'s work, but that unfortunately the
" new was not true and the true was not new."
No such caustic or epigrammatic judgment is
likely to be passed upon the book before us,
"Olympus," which is evidently written by a man
who can and does think, and who having thought
a thought hammers it out on the hard anvil of
reason, till what was at first only an unformed
idea becomes a reality and a thing. Whatever
faults we may have to find in the book before
us, a want of originality or a servile adoption
of conventional cant cannot be included
among the number. We are far from invaria-
bly agreeing to the author's postulates ; and
some of his opinions shock our prejudices if
not our reason ; but if we were uniformly of
one mind with him on all questions, where
would be the originality which we have said
he so eminently possesses?
Let him now speak for himself. Behold
the confident air with which he slings his
pebblestone at two of the world's giants,
whose dimensions he laughs at:

Yes, thought I, the poor fellow is most certainly dead,
and he left me two books : one was an old copy of " Ovid's
Metamorphoses, embellished with sculptures," which I
always had a fancy for; and the other, " Milton's Paradise
Lost," which I never shall have a fancy for, holding as I
do that " immortal work " to contain more serious tom•
foolery and solemn nonsense than hath entered into the
heart even of a Wordsworth to conceive.
•

Our author, however, is not quite alone in
his depreciation of Milton. Hutchinson, the
founder of the Hutchinsonian philosophy, calls
" Paradise Lost " " that cursed farce of Milton
" where he makes the devil his hero."

Hear the satirist on satirists :

No proceeding is more unfair or more common than to
judge a man out of his own mouth ; for we learn and
speak by alternation, and generally praise those qualities
in which we are most wanting. The idle and irresolute
pay homage to energy and decision, the extravagant man
commends highly prudence and economy, and many a
tender heart talks savagely and in scorn. Satire is mag-
nanimity run mad—kinder feelings outraged and driven
wild, throwing themselves for protection upon the sarcastic
and severe. You may always trust a satirist—poor fellow,
he is the most harmless of men ! Again, the greater
sinner the greater saint. No one so ardent for the faith
as blaspheming Paul. No one so ready to offer resolute
defence as the irresolute Peter.

SATURDAY,

And again :--
They will rave like Timon, or sneer like Swift, or sham
the laugh of Rabelais, like the most expert courtier ; they
inspire a J uvenal and a Persius in every community, and
in almost every company. These are looked upon as bitter
and morose men, or if they write as authors are supposed
to have good intention in the main, and an inmost wish to
chastise the vices of their day. They have no such wish.
Theirs is the voice of anguish and distress, but they are
spirits too high to indicate that they suffer, save through
badinage and abuse. Nevertheless, the spirit prompting
such satires seems uncourtly and discrepant. Men iu
general avoid them. There is au unpleasant arrogance,
too, in this sardonic tone scarcely allowable. It is assu-
ming too much in auy one to sneer down institutions and
practices sanctioned by the whole race of mankind. And
why should this biting scorner assume such authority, and
persuade us that ho knows more than others? Censure is
seldom liked, and no man is justified in beginning his
career by offending.
There is much truth and much sadness as
well as eloquence in the passages we have just
quoted. Yet there is a balm for fools to be
found in them. Tu the shallow-brained there
must be some consolation in the knowledge
that the raving Timons, and sneering Swifts,
and laughing ltabelaises, are more miserable at
heart and greater objects of pity than the
dreariest blockheads they jibe at.
The ghost of " Our own Correspondent"
speaks thus lightly of the craft which in life
he followed :

Men on the press are men always above the press, they
have to write down to the liberal, radical, evangelical class,
whose opinions, being the opinion of the many, rule the
Parliament and the Throne. " The public " governs the
press—not the press the public. The public is what Locke
would call, had he ever heard of it, a complex idea, the
components of which are false and crude ideas, scraps and
facts of all kinds gleaned from debating societies and lec-
ture-rooms, miscellaneous readings of all the newspapers
and three-halfpenny magazines, whose object of course is
to get a sale, in order to do which they must please tl*i
vulgar taste, and inform it just so much as it will allow it-
self to be informed—anti a spice of the lowest form of reli-
gion, or rather of irreligion proper. And such is the
potency of this phalanx that, the leading paper of the world
pays it adoration—a paper above a bribe, but bowing down
to the innumerable livepences of the many.
•

In the subjoined passage the writer evinces
a right philosophical appreciation of great men
and of the true elements of greatness :

One day at Logos, while crossing the Grand Square, on
that side nearest the Columns of the Sun, 1 saw four
famous men in company, one of whom, by his massive
head and well known features, 1 at once recognised as
Napoleon; the others were 11allenstein, Caesar, and Ale:-
ander the Great. These mighty desolator% of the earth
were in earnest conversation together. 1 regretted that
no man of my win country could be found worthy to rank
with these heroes, and make a iiith in this august company.
Their discourse was not of legions, or the
strategies of war, or the past career of glory
and crime which they had run :
These were the mere weapons with which each had
striven to work out the shadowy conceptions of his own
taciturn soul, and to these no allusion was made. But
they were questioning the wills of the fates in which they
had all been believers during life. One had called himself
the child of destiny, another had studied many a dark ha
roscope, and looked upwards ut the dim Cassiopeia for
counsel and sanction in every hazardous struggle. He had
said—

There's no such thing as chance;
And what to us seems merest accident,
Springs from the deepest source of destiny.
Another had said to the faint-hearted pilot, " Fear not,
coward, thou earnest Closer!" They all believed in dreams
and divinations, in aspects and signs of the heavens, pre-
saging human events. However barbarous such acts ap-
pear, and however great their ignorance, these men
nevertheless, excelled in the greatest element of greatness.
They took their vantage•ground from inward intuition
always, from rule and measure never, and they used war
and havoc as mere means to some accomplishment which
they deemed themselves called upon to perform. With all
of them the spiritualist was always above the soldier, and
it was this which gave them such terrible influence over
men's minds.
The influence of fear as a moral agent is
wittily, if not very reverently, pointed out in
the following passage ; but we would caution
the author against too free an indulgence iu
tone of levity on such solemn subjects :
" And Burton tells us," I continued, " that ' the dimen-
sions of this abode are, according to Lessius, one Dutch
mile in diameter, all filed with fire and brimstone, because
as he demonstrates that space, cubically multiplied, will
make a sphere able to hold eight hundred thousand millions
of damned bodies—allowing each body six feet square—
which will abundantly suffice.' "
As a general rule, you find that all the timorous and
stupid of this class hold together vt ith surprising unanimity
upon the point of everlasting damnation. Origen believed
that the devil himself would eventually come within the
pale of salvation, and be saved; but if that respectable
father were now alive he would need all his pluck and
martyr spirit to support his opinion, for in the present
day it is held as a sign of revolutionary tendency to tamper
with the old cheerful notion of a very deep pit, filled with