The Press.
London, England, 1854-03-25 00:00:00

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The following inn tetet r
eghriettlis .or infantry to be
placed under Lord Raglan's command in the -East!--
The 3rd battalion of Grenadier Guards, the Ist of
the ColdstreaMsOind the Ist of the SocitcbFustliert ;
the 2nd battalion of the Rifle lirigade;,the Ist batta-
lion of the Ist rbot ; the 4th, Ith, 19(1 23rd, 28th,
30th, 034, *lib, 11*, 42nd, 44th,' 47th, 56th,
55thp7Ttb„ 79th, 88th, 83rd, land , 95th. There will
'l'.iits.lie, ia the ,
3expeelition ery erref 22 battalions of
he line and' of •Fobt Grtirli,ln ill 23 battalions,
bleb, 4iittf 'the artillery a a '&v614,4411 make up
an effective Parte of at least 254900 men. The 20th,
21st, 84th, 03ed, and 97th Regiments have received
ortle, to hol&themselves in readiness for" a special
service."
The Royal Horse Guards (Blue) have received
orders to prepare at once for embarkation to the
East. , ,
Captain Woodford, of the ;Rifle litigssio, son or
Sir, Alexauder Woodford, has loten appointed ideptity
assistant quartermaster-general, to the expeditionary
force.
Colonel Sir Colin Campbell, of the 38th Regiment,
has been appointed brigadier. Sir Colin served ill
the Burftiese'Wmi from 1821 till its conclusion iti
1N26. ' Coking I•Penntifsittier has also been *-
pointed brigadier err the British i contingent. This
officer commanded the 22nd Regiment at the battle
of Meeanee, where he was shot through the lungs.
Captain Harding, of the 220 Regiment, who was
also present at Meeanee, is to be aide de-camp to
Colonel Peenefather,..
~, .
A Treasury mint* gives directions to the Com•
missariet department for supplying the troop with
malt liquors, preserved potatoes, chocolate, coffee,
tea, sugar, rice, and geOtch barley for broth. These
articles of diet are iti'lidcht4ini to the Ordinary rations
of bread and meat, anti .tt be supplied in detail at
their nearest wholesale eon, without payment of
duty, and excluding inconvenient fractions, thus
leaving the public to bear the expense which will be
incurred for freight, packing, and other incidental
charges. The regulations under whieh the different
articles are to be delivered in bulk by, the Commis-
sariat to each regiment, and then distributed in de-
tail, will probably be lert, to Lord Raglan to de-
termine.
It is said that Lord Raglan iii/ to take with
him to the East an experienced photographer.
Throfigh the Sotlety of Arts i reference has been
made to thelPhotoirephic Society on the subjeot, the
stiggestion loriginating with Prince Albert. To all
who knot/ the importance of accurate observations
in campaigning it. it unnecessary to point out that
Sun pictures taken at once of objects, occurrences
and scenes, the details of which cannot otherwise la;
fully and faithfully preserved". Any in ,p. iypri,,atii of
ways possess very great. value.. ,
•
Sir C. Napier and his first division of the North Sea
fleet arrived at Wingo Sound on the 16th. The
eammander afterwards proceeded to Copenhagen,
where be arrived on the ....)Otli in ;the steam-frigate
Valorous. The gallant admiral, having.coutrouni-
cated with the British envoy and the highest national
authorities at Copenhagen, returned to his fleet
in Wingo Sound on the 21st instant, where it *ill
remain until the forrnet dectirtition of war is tarried
into effect by the actual entry of this fleet into the
Baltic:
..- • Thafleet in the Baltic iiTapidly being augmented.
fir C. Napier took out from Spithesd on the 11th
inst. 15 sail, bat that number has since beenmade tip
t9'46 sail, 12 of which are ,ships-of-tke-line. The total
fprce now comprises.l,3o3 gime, 141915 men, and an
gregate of 9,810 horse-power distributed among
.i: e steam ships-of war. 'this fine fleet Will in a few
eye be further augmented by the following ships,
lrres eCtive of the riietiefi f'd&O; Part of 'Which is al-
-1
iead -On its way ..--Lat. C 3 ergs, 'l2l ; "Waterkio; 120;
sarisereW, 91; Nile titre*, 91; James Watt screw,
91 ; Algiers Sere*, 91 t Hatinihal, 91 ; Prince Regent,
90 ; Majestic screw, 80 ; Archer screw, 14 ;:Despe-
rate screw, n ; Gorgon paddle, 6 ; Driver peddle, 6 ;
llosamond, 0 ; Prometheus, 0 ; Alban peddle, 3;
Lightning paddle, 3 ; Conflict screw, -8; Heels pad.
die, surveying-vesseL
The naval rendezvoas ,on Tower-hill has been
literally besieged by seamen, isnxious to volunteer
for service in the Cultic fleet, under the regulations
recently issued by the Lords of the Admiralty, which
provide that sailors Volunteering expressly for this
service may.receive theitdischarge at the impiratlon
'Of the present gear, shoftld Stith be their &Sire, or,
at their option, may ccnitintre in the service, and that
While. enitilhfed they will in esety respect be entitled
0 the saute pi,teileges as those who are entered for
'longer' potiodi.- .• 1
The Royal. Albek,l2o guns, new screwsteam-ship,
now ready for being launched at Woolwich, is or-
dered to be sent down to Sheerness immediately she
is launched, her rigging, sails, Ste., being already
there for her on arrival. Si* is to be commis-
sioned as soon as she can be reported ready for the
pendant. •

MARCH 25, 1854.

Yittraturt.

History of the French Protestant Refugees. By
Charles Weiss, Professor of History at the
Lycee Buonsparte. London : Blackwood.
THE story of the Huguenots, expelled from
France on the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, abounds in the romantic episodes, and
suggests the deep principles, which to a com-
petent historian afford the grand realities on
which he may exercise his art. Rather than
bend their knees to what they looked on as a
false god, hundreds of thousands of the most
virtuous of French citizens abandoned a
sunny clime, with all the endearing recollec-
tions of home, and transplanted themselves
to lands with cloudy skies and grosser forms
of society. From Languedoc with its genial
temperature and its spreading landscapes, and
from the picturesque banks of the Garonne,
they sailed fur the gloomy Irish province
where the Banu and Slaney roll their dismal
waves. From Bordeaux with its brilliant
society, and from the Touraine with its histo-
ric memories and its joyous presence of a po-
pulation living amidst scenes of beauty, they
departed to seek for resting-places in murky
Bristol or in reeking Norwich. From the
very finest parts of France, from the .poetical
vicinage of the Rhine, and from the beautiful
Gironde, they went forth with their untamed
and unsuperstitious souls, and exchanging, not
without emotion, the banks of the Rhone or
the Loire for those of the Avon or the Lee,
they carried their arts, their valour, their vir-
tues, and their rational spirit of liberty to
cheer and to vivify the societies of strange
lands, to improve English manufactures by
a subtler spirit of invention and a more
graceful variety of design, or, by their cul
tured natures and refined manners, to elevate
by their examples the coarseness and stolid
vulgarity of those Cromwellian colonists, who
with the exaggeration of Puritanism caries.
tured the spirit and marred the progress of
Protestantism in Ireland. Never did nation
lose more material and moral wealth than
France when, on that dark day in her history
(the 18th of October, 1685), her bigoted
Sovereign revoked the edict which the gene-
rosity of the greatest of her Kings had dic-
tated, and which the policy of her greatest
Minister (Richelieu) had not disallowed.
Then was England enriched, and France en
foebled, by an exodus of virtue, genius, and
trained talents. Cowley, in his lines on the
death of Cromwell, enumerates the races
whose tributary streams have swelled the so-
cial progress of our island :
Rattier let Roman come again,
Or Saxon, Norman, or the Dane,
]n all the bonds we ever bore,
We grieved, we sighed, we wept, we never blushed before.
But the "race " of the Huguenots, as dis-
tinct in ethnological idiosyncrasy as the
Jew, or the Saxon, or the Norman, came
into these islands to help in civilisation, and
the story of their blending with British influ-
ences, without the extinction of their identity,
is one of the most curious social facts of which
we are aware. The number of celebrities, who
trace their pedigree and derive their genius
from Huguenot sources, is quite extraor-
dinary, and would be worthy of detailed illus-
tration.
It is now fifteen or sixteen years since we
had the pleasure of listening to an eloquent
speech at a forensic debating society at Lyon's
Inn-hall. The subject was Russian aggres-
sion in the East, and the youthful speaker
was completely master of his subject. His
manner was genial, his style fervid, and his
deportment manly without undue self-asser-
tion. An ethnologist might have seen in his
beaming countenance, his sparkling eyes, and
his olive. complexion the traces of a more
fervid conformation than is common to our
sturdy Anglo-Saxon type; and the charac-
teristic enthusiasm of the speaker might tell
Dot only of his own genius, but of the warmth
of his hereditary temperament. It was the
honourable member for Nineveh, Mr. Layard,
a descendant of the Huguenots. The Church,
the Senate, and the Bar--Literature, Com-
merce, and the Stage—all point in their an-

THE

ES S..

mils to a variety of
to their Huguenotic race.
The subject has often had for ourselves a
special interest, and we were deeply disap-
pointed in finding the present work so de-
fective in indicating the extraordinary number
of persons' names associated with the French
Protestants who settled in Britain. The
greatest actor of any age, Garrick, was the
grandson of a Huguenot (Carrique) ; and even
iu Goldsmith's characterisation of him in
" Retaliation " it is amusing to observe the
fidelity with which the French points of his
nature are seized upon. The brilliant parlia-
mentary orator of the last century, Colonel
Barre, was the son of a Huguenot refugee.
In that part of the empire where most of the
Huguenots settled—lreland—their social pro-
gress was extraordinary. Even at the present
day a fourth of the Irish Bench is of Huguenotie
extraction—Chief Justice Lefroy,* Judge Per-
rin, and Baron Richards (Richard), being
Huguenots by race ; and, in defending
O'Connell, that late accomplished rhetorician,
Mr. Shell, dextrously alluded to the descent
of Judge Perrin :—" In the land of the Dra-
" gonades and the St. Bartholomews—the land
" from whence the forefathers of one of the
" judicial functionaries of this court, and the
" first ministerial officer of this tribunal, were
" barbarously driven, &c. &c." So also, in
past times, the most statesmanlike of Irish
lawyers, Saurin, and one of the most bril-
liant advocates of the Irish Bar, Duquery,
were Huguenots ; and in commerce, fur gene-
rations, the Huguenot Latouchis have held
the first rank as bankers ; while other fami-
lies, like that of Lefanu, have been eminent
for a century in literature and eloquence.
The work before us records that the first
newspaper established in Ireland was by the
Pastor Droz ; and we have not space to enume-
rate the fertile proofs of Huguenotic supe-
riority which the annals of Irish society record.
The characteristics of the Huguenotic de-
scendants, even of the seventh generation, in
whatever lands they settled, are truly de-
scribed by the writer of the work before
us :
To this day it is still easy to trace the decendants of the
Huguenots in all the provinces of the United States
Republic, and particularly in New York, Maryland, Vir-
ginia, and the two Carolinas. ThPy are distinguished from
the English colonists by their greater sociability and
frankness of manner, and by a certain vivacity of character
and language that contrasts with British stiffness. It is
less easy to recognise them by their names, which have
been translated into English, or altered by a vicious pro-
nunciation. As in England, Holland, and Germany, and
from the same causes, the descendants of the refugees
gradually blended with the society that had welcomed their
fathers. Their congregations successively attached them-
selves either to the Presbyterian, the Episcopalian, or the
I)utch Reformed Church. In its turn, the French tongue
disappeared, and with it one of the last reminiscences of
the country of their ancestors. Nevertheless, in towns
where they were sufficiently numerous to possess distinct
churches, they adhered longer to the use of their national
language. At Roston there still was French preaching at
the end of the eighteenth century. At New York, in
divine service was celebrated both in French and in
English, although this congregation bad long previously
joined the Anglican communion. In a letter addressed
in that year by the deacons and elders to the French Church
iu London, which the American Huguenots regarded as a
mother church, they particularly asked for a pastor who
could expound the gospel to them in both languages. The
colony of Charlestown has alone retained, to the present
day, the Calvinist liturgy in its primitive purity, and the
exclusive exercise of public worship in the tongue that its
first founders spoke.
To these instances we could add of our own
knowledge Bristol, and some other cities of Eng-
land. It is held by ethnologists that races which
are not intermixed have a tendency to decline,
from the same physical causes that produce
stunted growths from " breeding in and in."
But the history of the Jews (humanly con-
sidered) seems to refute the unqualified state-
ment about the decline of self-supporting
races; and though supernatural reasons can
with truth be alleged for the marvellous con-
tinuance of the Jewish type, yet the long
continued existence of the Huguenotic ele-
ments amidst the various nations amongst
which they have been scattered is one of the
most interesting ethnological facts with which
we are conversant. From our own personal
observation of many of their descendants in
several countries, we would say that no race

• It to said, however, that the Lefroya are of Flewii4 Hague.
notic extraction, and that they fled from the persecutions of the
Duke of Alva..

279

-of any kind is mere strongly marked than the
descendants of that Huguenotic " exodus."
Dark eyes, large eyebrows, olive complexions,
a certain fervour of temperament, high intel-
lectuality, and a love of pleasure and socia-
bility of disposition, characterise, even to
this day, nearly all of their authenticated ex-
traction. It is not impossible that a history
of the Huguenots in England and Ireland may
one day be given to the world. Materials
exist for the purpose ; and in one of our public
offices there is a most curious manuscript
narrative of their leading families, compiled in
the last century by one of their descendants.
In the volume before us we are compelled
to record that there is much bookmaking, and
that the author is not sufficiently original in
his matter. M. Weiss goes over the old and
well-known story of the persecution of the
French Protestants before and subsequent to
the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The
greater part of the work is taken up with a
detail of the lives and actions of the most
celebrated Huguenots, such as Schomberg,
'lapin, Bayle, and others. The Biograpioal
Dictionary has been called in too often for the
supply of matter, and the contents might with
advantage be published in half the space. On
the other hand, while we note the absence of
curious original matter, we must observe that
the author does not rise to a level with his
theme. He is an essayist and a compiler
rather than a historian, and his talents are
more suited for the didactic than the descrip-
tive. We are no friends to historical colourists ;
and word-painting, in consequence of the
popularity of Mr. Macaulay and M. de Lamar-
tine, has been carried by their imitators to a
faulty excess. But the episodical character
and the romantic vicissitudes of the story of
the Huguenots would demand more eloquence
of style than is displayed by M. Weiss.
The services rendered by the French Pro-
testants to the Revolution of 1688 have scarcely
been sufficiently noticed in the historical page.
But we have no doubt that their brilliant ex-
ploits will receive the tribute of some of Mr.
Macaulay's glowing passages in the next
volumes of his history. While M. Weiss re-
cords the advantages gained by England from
the skill and industry of the refugees, ho truly
observes:—
Of all the services rendered to England by the refugee,
the most important was the energetic support they gee
to William of Orange against James IL When the
prince embarked at the port of Naerden, anti sailed to de-
throne his father-in law, his little army consisted but of
eleven thousand infantry and four thousand horse. But
these troops comprised a chosen body of three regiments
of infantry and one squadron of cavalry, composed entirely
of refugees. Each regiment numbered seven hundred and
fifty fighting men. Moreover, seven hundred and thirty-
six French officers, for the most part veterans, accustomed
to conquer under Turenue and Conde, were dispersed
through the battalions of the prince's army. Left in in-
ferior grades, notwithstanding the most brilliant merit, a
great number of them had found themselves compelled, in
Itiri.s, to become nominally Catholics, in order to avoid
the shame of being declared unworthy to serve under the
flag of France, in whose shadow they had so long fought.
Reconciled with the Protestant religion in the French
churches in Holland, their resentment was bitter, and
they burned to wash out their dishonour in the blood of
their persecutors. William of Orange had no partisans
more resolute and devoted. He had placed fifty-four in
his regiment of horse guards, and thirty-four in his Ludy-
guard-
Of the influence exercised by the refugees
upon our commerce the author records:—
The war over, their influence ceased, or assumed a new
character. That exercised by the refugee manufacturers
and traders was more durable. They imparted to Englishtrade and manufactures an immense impulse, whose
ellbets
are felt to the present dsy.
It appears certain that the revocation of the edict of
Nantes sent into the three kingdoms about 70,1100 manu-
facturers and workmen, most of whom proceeded from
Normandy, Picardy, the maritime provinces of the west,
the Lyonnais, and Touraine. A great number settled In
London, in the districts of Soho and St. Giles, thee
suburbs, and in lonely Spitalfiekls, which they entirely
peopled, and which their descendants still inhabit.
'f he English were indebted to them for the introduction
of several new manufactures, which soon contra
the public wealth, and for the improvement of
in their infancy. Before that period the paper '
England was of common description and greyish
and the better qualities of glass-ware, hats, and a n
of other articles of every-day consumption, were im
from the Continent, and especially from Frans*
refngees taught the English to manufacture these
qualities for themselves, and, moreover, showed
to produce silks, brocades, satins, velvets, light ties
linen and wool, clocks and watches, glass-ware, Cucu
hardware, French locks, surgical instruments. The
of Rights, which, in 1680, consecrated the liberties el

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