The Press.
London, England, 1856-10-11 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

When the capture of Sebastopol had proved
the soundness of Lord Raglan's determination
to persevere with the siege, not a word of com-
mendation is given to his sagacity and firm-
nest. We now, through the publication of the
Baron do Bazancourt's " Memoir," know the
difficulties with which he had to contend, and
the amount of responsibility thrown upon him.
But for his resolution, the siege would have
been raised shortly previous to his death, and
an entirely new plan of operations been de-
cided on. Even in the moment of success
Mr. Russell can think of nothing but mis-
management :
It is melancholy, amid all these sounds of rejoicing and
victory, to think that an army has been all but lost and
swallowed up in these narrow dykes, and that it was " done
by mistake."

He finally comes to the conclusion that " we
" have been saved by the imbecility of our
" leaders " :

But, after all, we may have been saved by the very im-
becility of our leaders. When the conflict before Sebas-
topol assumed such gigantic proportions it became the
war itself. The armies of Russia were absorbed into it,
and perished in detail. Had we taken Sebastopol at the
outset, we must have been prepared with our small
army to meet those corps•d'armee which lost tens of
thousands in their hasty march to relieve the place, but
who, in the event of its capture, would have closed slowly
round us; and the same incapacity which prevented our
reaping the fruits of our coup-de-main, iu attempting the
Crimean expedition, might have led to more serious evils
in a protracted campaign in the open field against a nume-
rous and well-handled, if not a daring, enemy. Success
has indeed been obtained, but ita cost has been great.

This will hardly satisfy the most casual class
of readers, " Imbecility" will not produce
such great results. The invasion of the
Crimea in the first instance was, we are
inclined to think, a military error, considering
the insufficiency of the allied forces ; but that
error was not converted into glorious success
by imbecility, but by heroic fortitude, and a
clear perception of the great end to be attained
on the part of commanders, officers, and men
of the allied army, almost without a parallel
in the history of war. To talk of the imbecility
which won Sebastopol, is really too absurd to
be swallowed by even the most fanatic of those
haters of " Horseguardism " whom Mr.
Russell delights to tickle.
He calls the movement decided on after Alma,
by which it was determined to make the
heights of Balaklava a base of operations,
" a chance march," and he supposes that
" fate," not the sagacity which foresaw the im-
portance of that position. made the issue of
the campaign " so successful and prosperous."
Mismanagement and cowardice are the cries
of Mr. Russell, when the allied armies made
no grand movement after the fall of Sebas-
topol. Our success, he says, was not foreseen,
and therefore we " lose the fruits of our
" labour." Just three weeks after the assault
of' the Bth of September, he sympathises with
the " people at home " on the disappointment
of their expectations :
It is quite evident that the expectations of the people
at home have not been gratified to the full extent, and that
we are not in undisputed possession of maritime Sebas-
topol, that the Russians are not utterly defeated, and that
the campaign will have to be renewed next year by doing
what might have been done three weeks ago.

Even the French Marshal is not spared an
imputation of timidity
Even Pelissier seems inclined to rest upon his baton
for the time. His gaze is fixed, no doubt, upon the
Mackenzie plateau, but his courage fails him; nor does he
care to repeat his little proverb, which was in his mouth
when slaughter and bloodshed were spoken of in his pre•
sence in reference to oar grand assaults—" On ne pent
pas faire der omelettes sans easier des cenfs." The mar•
shat appears to have given up the manufacture of omelettes
for the present; he has plenty of eggs if he likes to break
them.

Ought not Mr. Russell to have been a little
more distrustful of his own conclusions, and
a little more guarded in his language ? He
might reasonably have supposed that there
were reasons against that rapid advance which
he recommended, though he did not happen
to be cognisant of them.
The gallant General Brown is frequently
the object of his censures (vide pages 222,
223, and 236). The charge that he might have
carried off the stores of wheat destroyed
at Kertch merely shows the perverse in-
genuity of the writer in suggesting tories of
blame. Mr. Russell is often singularly incon-
sistent in his fault-finding. At page 236 there
is a groan at the want of rum :

SATURDAY,

Our stock of rum is exhausted. The rum ships have
not come in, and at present the whole army is drawing its
supplies from tho commissariat stores of the fourth divi•
lion.

At page 317 a directly contrary complaint is
made :

We are a little too free and easy. Ruin is too plentiful
and money to abundant. In one small regimental can.
teen, on the sth of November, the anniversary of Inker-
mann, not less than 1401. was received in ready money for
articles of consumption, mostly of a liquid nature, and
about 501. more was debited to good customers.

Four pages further on we read that money
was unjustly withheld from the men to their
great discontent :
If the men grumbled, it would not be surprising, for
they are not paid for their labour. Each man was promised
eightpence a day for his work, and by the rules of the
service the British soldier is always paid when doing duty
of the kind, bat he has not yet received a penny.
The italics are the author's own. At the
end of his long grumble on account of tho
men not having been promptly paid, though
before he had grumbled that " money was too
abundant," we read that " by a general order,
" the men will be paid out of the commissariat
" chest."

Mr. Russell seems to have conceived that
it was his peculiar mission to roam about the
camp, and find out pretexts for clamour against
every one in authority. It is this disposition
which makes his letters wholly untrustworthy,
and to a great extent spoils the pleasure wo
should otherwise tako in his lively descrip-
tions. He has shown himself an active effi-
cient newspaper correspondent, but he cer-
tainly has not proved himself a candid and
discriminating commentator on the events of
the war. Its true history must be sought in
other and very different pages from those of
the vivacious Mr. Russell.

Tender and True. A Colonial Tale. By tho
Author of " Clara Morrison." Two Vols.
London : Smith and Elder.
Is the short preface to this tale we are told
that the subject is married life, and that an
attempt has been made to depict faithfully
some of the lights and shades of that state.
This is only partly true. The main interest
of the story does not depend on married life,
but on the wooing of the sisters Mary and
Rose, and particularly on that of the latter,
who is the heroine of the story, and with
whose happy marriage it naturally closes.
Nor, though the fiction is called a " Colonial
Tale," is there much in it having special re-
ference to Adelaide, where the scene chiefly
lies. The characters and action would with
very little change suit England as well as
Australia ; but the novelty is agreeable, and
the authoress, from experience of domestic
life in Australia, is well qualified to describe
its social habitudes and peculiarities. Her
sketches give us, on the whole, a favorable
idea of it. Her tints are sober, but they show
that materials for the novelist are not wanting
in our colonies, and that life in them is not too
purely industrial to exclude that play of the
affections, with all their hopes and fears,
which so largely enters into the composition
of social romance.
The opening chapters of the tale, laid in
England, remind us of the style of Mrs.
Gaskell. Robert North is one of her heroes,
a Radical in politics, and Independent in re-
ligion,—a broad-shouldered, hard-faced young
fellow, cut out by nature for a successful
manufacturer, and only prevented from making
a fortune in England by a paper-mill through
his unfortunate speculation with the Banner
of Liberty. He wooes Mary Lancaster, a
quiet, pure, deephearted girl, who after mar-
riage is long tried by his coldness, and at
length, in a moment of irrepressible indigna-
tion, reproaches him for his want of affection,
and tells him that he is neither Tender nor
True. This takes place some years after they
have been settled in Australia, when North is
a successful merchant. Most persons will
think that Mary had sufficient provocation for
her anger. North, though meant to be the
hero of the book, is a very unloveable sort of
person ; and it strikes us that the frenzied
feeling he is made to exhibit at times is out of
keeping with his character. His wooing of
Mary (vol. i. 90-1) is very unreal ; and the
same may be said of his sudden departure

from home, when stricken by Mary's reproaches.
In fact, if the book had not better, or at least
more attractive, points i than the lights and
shades of married life, it would fail to engage
attention. It is impossible to feel much
interest for either Mary or her husband.
Shortly after their settlement in Australia,
they are joined by the whole of Mary's family,
who, though always used to the quiet life of a
sleepy English village, have been induced to
emigrate through the favorable accounts sent
home by North. Mary gets her sister, Rose
Lancaster, to reside with her. This girl is
a very charming personage, with a mind,
naturally of a high cast, improved by intellec-
tual culture; but gifted at the same time with
the warm feminine sensibility which enables a
woman to adapt herself to the trifles of domes-
t'', life, and to merge herself and her desires
in such home things as the sports of children
and the household cares of relatives and
friends. The beauty, good sense, and warm-
heartedness of Rose secure her many lovers,
and it is in the trial of her heart and principle,
caused by the unworthiness of the man she
favours, that the chief interest of the book
lies. All this part of it is pleasingly tinged by
romance ; and the sad story of Lizzie Newton,
like that of Crabbe's Phcebe Dawson, is of a
nature—old as the tale is—to moisten the
eyes of young and old. Her seducer, Dava-
nent, is all but the accepted lover of Rose.
She discovers the blot of his life, and when,
after an absence of some weeks, he returns to
Adelaide, he pours out his soul to Rose, and
implores her to return his devoted love :

Silence is generally thought to be encouraging, but
Rose's silence was peculiar. He fancied that she hesitated
about going to the bush with him; be had never hinted at
having a town establishment, and be knew how passion-
ately she loved her sister.
" Do not think, my beloved, my idolised Rose, that I am
so selfish as to think of tearing you away from all those
you love. I would not have you banished to my distant
station ; you shall remain in town or near it, and I can
come and go. Your sister would miss you."

" That is all very well for you and me, I dare ray," said
Rose slowly. "I suppose you would not like to take me
to the same place that you took poor Liu), Newton to—
but what is to become of her ?"
Davanent started to his feet in the suddenness of his
surprise. " Good God! what of her ?" He could not
deny anything•—he had not time.
" I thought you planned very well for yourself, but you
left her and your child out of the question altogether."
" She is provided for, Rose, dearest Rose; I have parted
from her for ever, or I would not have dared to speak to
you ; she made no objections."
" She dared not object. Davanent, was this the busi-
ness you had to do before you could speak to me, and ask
my hand when you had already won my heart ? Was that
floor girl to be the sacrifice? Was I to tread upon her bleed-
lig heart to the position of your wife ?"

Forgive me: Rose, Miss Lancaster, forgive me," and
the drops stood on his forehead. He would have taken
her hand, but she shook it off as if there was contagion in
the touch.

" Yes," said she deliberately, " I will forgive you,
Davanent. What harm have you done to me, compara-
tively speaking? (His face brightened.) I will forgive
you from my heart, if you will marry her—do her the poor
justice that remains in your power."
" Marry her, and I love you! You! And oh, hiw in.
finitely more and better than ever I did her! Vow love to
one woman while every pulse is beating for another !
Place an insuperable, an e•ernal bar between you and me I"
" You have done that already, Davanent. You loved her
once ; you can revive your love."
" Have the whole world laugh at and despise me and
my wife?"

" I will honour you," said Rose, with the old inspiring
cleam in her eyes ; " and God will bless you, and your own
.uscienee will approve. Oh, Davanent, you would have
tried hard to gain my love, will you not do that to re-
gain my esteem ? " He seemed to hesitate ; she took
the hands she had shrunk from before, and clasped
them in the earnestness of her entreaty. He looked on
the thin white baud, the wasted arm, with a curious
mixture of compassion, pride, and seltreproach. "
have suffered, you see; I have mourned over your un-
worthiness with a bitterness which I never felt before;
but do as I beseech you—marry her. She is young, and
beautiful, and innocent, but for you. I cannot believe
that the daughter of so good a mother can have a bad
heart- Davanent, suppose she is ignorant, you can in-
struct her ; if she is petulant, you can instruct her; if she
has faults that you cannot conquer, you ought to bear with
them, for you know that you are far from perfect yourself.
Ltt me not think that Rose Lancaster has come across
Your path to lead you to greater sin, and that poor young
gui to greater misery. Marry her, restore her to re-
spectability, and her poor broken-hearted mother to ber
r ght—to a mother's pride ; claim your little boy, and
thrust him not forth into the wide world nameless and un-
regsrded—marry her, and I shall think my own sufferings
well repaid. I know what you can do with &woman whom
You love, and wbo loves you. Yon can make her happy,
and
_yourself with her."
" Rose," said Davanent, with a quivering lip, and
almost inarticulately, " I could scarce refuse you anything

that you ask with that white face, and those earnest eyes.
I would give my life and my happiness to recover your
esteem ; but what you ask is not in my power. Lizzy is
married !"

Rose sank back in her chair, and burst into a torrent of
tears. He dared not approach her. " Yes, that was your
arrangement, and she agreed to it willingly—very willingly,
no doubt ! This is the greatest sin of all. I thought I
might have prevented it, but I am too late—too late!"

This is beautiful writing, and there is much
more quite equal to it. Rose saciifices her
affection to her principle. She is not one of
Mr. Moore's heroines :
I know not, I sok if guilt'. in that heart ;
I but know that I love thee whatever thou art.
The sober tone of the book does not require
great suffering to sustain it. Rose blooms
again, and is cured of that tendency to ex-
pect very high intellectual qualities in a
husband, which the authoress indicates as a
fault in her character.

" Tender and True," though in parts a little
prosaic, is a great advance on the authoress's
previous tale of " Clara Morison." It is in the
best style of the sensible novel—a class which
Miss Austen brought into vogue, and which
must always command great popularity. We
always thought Miss Austen's novels were too
deficient in the imaginative element. That
defect is less noticeable here. The story is
skilfully managed, the tone is very pure, and
altogether the fiction is marked by sense,
and spirit, and by readers who love to find
instruction mingled with amusement will be
universally considered very improving.

On Truth and Error. Thoughts in Prose and
Verse. By John Hamilton, of St. Ernan's.
Mn. HAMILTON seems to possess a freedom
from prejudice, and a philosophic turn of
thought, which, if united with a rather more
popular method than he has here employed,
would enable him, we think, in time to gain a
good position as a moral essayist. Wherever
he indulges in pure dissertation, his style is
clear, his ideas original, and his aim useful
and practical. But as soon as he plunges into
verse, or endeavours to throw his arguments
into a dramatic form, our approbation of
truth is overpowered by our sense of incon-
gruity and dislike of unimpressive oddities.
We shall quote some average specimens of
each, and our readers will judge fur them-
selves. The following style of verse would ap-
pear to be meant for an imitation of the
choruses in " Samson Agonistes ":
HELL.
Hell ! where God is hated,
Who can know thy depths?
Where destruction livetb,
Where existence is death ;
And where false joys are proved false—
False beyond deception's power,
To make it's victim fancy he has joy.
1' Perdition !" "damnation !"
Words at which men quail,
Who can know your depths?
Your awful burning black realities?
He, and only he, who knows
The opposite;
He, and only he, who has believed
In lure that ,ever fails,
Who has the bliss experienced
Of loving Him who loveth with that love;
He only by a dread comparison,
Can estimate the fire and the worm
Which the lost find
In Hell !
When. God (the God he loves)
Is hated;
Where bliss (the bliss he tastes
In loving God)
Is destroyed ;
Where existence (which to him
Is precious, full of joys,
Because the presence of the God he loves
Is ever with him) is pure misery—
In the game glorious presence,
Misery and destruction !
Because they hate the very God he loves.
Now, these lines are not absolutely destitute
of vigour, nor without one or two fine
thoughts. But what end can Mr. Hamilton
hope to gain by throwing them into verse?
It does not seem to us that the following
thoughts gain anything by being put in the
form of a dialogue. It is from a death-bed
scene :
Then with a ghastly look he said slowly : " Did you
never help a soul to hell? If you did not NOll must have
been always good. And if you did, do you expect to be
harpy in heaven, while they are in bell,eh?"
had often and long considered the subject, tho' not
exactly in this view of it ; su that, altho' much moved by
his hopeless agony, I aaw the error that caused it. But

never did the dreadfulness of that error force itself so
upon me. . . .

I asked him : "Why do you say they are damned be.
yond all hope, beyond all salvation ?"
" Because they are dead."
" And cannot God's power reach the dead ?"
" To be sure it can, but it won't."

" Why? "
"Why! Why how can you ask? Does not every one
know that after a nun is dead all hope is gone ?"
" Nay—l do not know it."

" Yon don't know it! yet you know the Bible better far
than I do. 0 ! tell me, tell me, what possible hope can
you have for sinners that die in their sins ? "
"Just the same as fur those that lire iu their sine—
damnation is their portion !"
" Ah ! but while we live we may be rescued from the
terrible danger."
" No, my friend, no ! lie who lives in sin is in no
danger of damnation."
" No danger ? "
" No, for he is damned! lost ! "
"And no hope, then, for any one ?"
" None except one hope."
" What is that ?"
" God's love shown in Jesus Christ, who came to seek
and to save that which is lost."
" But that love ceases if we die in our sins."

" What makes it cease—ls it the great crime of dying,
or being killed, that can quench the love that our enmity
and our sin could not quench ?"

This is a point which might furnish matter for
a theological essay; but the conversation
merely takes up room without anything being
elicited which really bears upon the question.
Of the kind of essays which this volume
contains we can only afford two or three short
examples. One very brief, but very sensible
little piece is entitled "On success and failuro
in explanation ":

In order to a satisfactory resnit, when one person iraa
to explain anything to another, it is chiefly necessary that
the person to whom the explanation is offered should
really and sincerely try to understand what the other would

express.
It is very desirable that the explainer should use such
words and such manner as shall best express his mind;
but though he speak never so cleverly, if the other is
listening without that real desire to understand, language
will always afford to a disputer opportunity of raising
questions, and of misrepresenting assertions—and so of
confounding, as the disputer thinks, the other ; but really
himself is the confounded one; for the other still knows
what his own meaning is, tho' he may be grieved at his
failure to lead his friend to understand it and profit by it ;
while the disputer has missed what perhaps might have
been a real increase of wisdom or knowledge to him, and
certainly what would have been an opportunity of manly,
friendly, and wise intercourse, and exchange of ideas.
This is very, very true. We know not why
the essay, in its old legitimate shape, should
not be revived at the present day. We are
convinced that short periodical exhortations
to our daily duties, and the rights and wrongs
of social intercourse, would be really bene-
ficial to the reading public, who now see
nothing of the kind. "Notes from Life,"
" Guesses at Truth," and " Friends in Coun-
cil," are all excellent in their way, but are too
full and too inaccessible for the purpose we
speakof. A weekly periodical, in which a short
essay of this description, in the style of the
" Spectator", should form the kading feature
would, we believe, be both rifnaunerative and
useful. Mr. Hamilton's essay upon " Two
Forms of Truth " will repay attention. It con-
tains a remarkably happy illustration of the
fallacy of sensible impressions :

A blind man might hear a loud cannon-shot a minute
after it was fired ; and it would at first be bard to con-
vince him that you sato it fired at a great distance some
time before he heard it. He would think his senses the
best evidence to trust, and you would see that be was
wrong. Just so a man whose mind is not opened thinks
his sight must be correct, &c.

We must now take our leave of Mr.
Hamilton. His book contains a great deal
that is valuable ; but it is so oddly put toga-
gether, and mixed up with so much that is
wearisome, that it is to be feared few will
have patience to profit by it. It is very
suggestive, but we recommend the author to
follow our advice on the subject of essays, and
eschew poetry and dialogue.