The Press.
London, England, 1854-07-15 00:00:00

JULY 15, 1854.

suicides, triple duels, and crying ladies in
white satin. If the boor of Anglo-Saxon race,
the countryman of Bacon and Newton, and
the subject of Queen Victoria, experience
difficulties in rising to a perception of the
beauties of the most popular of our poets,
what shadows must there be before the simple
pagan mind before it can be brought to adore
a Reedemer whose kingdom is not of this
world? At this point the sceptical and the
lukewarm stop, flippantly pronouncing that
missionary toils must be as fruitless as giving
Schlegel on Othello. or Coleridge on Hamlet, to
rustics. They forget, however, that, if a
labourer has been accustomed to a Sunday
school, and habituated to hearing the Bible
read by an aged parent or his lisping children,
its words of power and love go home to his
heart, purifying and refreshing his simple
soul. If he grow up in infidelity and vice he
might, as a practical pagan, have as much diffi-
culty in perceiving the truth and beauty of
the Bible as a cannibal of New Zealand. It
is, therefore, we contend, of great importance
and of practical utility to habituate the heathen
to Christian influences, to accustom him to
the sight of his conquerors humbling them-
selves before the Invisible, and in tempting
him to inquire how they worship their " Great
Spirit." There are parables in the Gospel
which, if adequately translated, will go home
to universal man. Nor should we forget, on
this point, that the words of those divine dis-
courses have been preserved, while the sub-
stance of the reasonings with the worldly-wise
doctors in the Temple have been omitted.
We conclude these remarks by observing
that our modern facilities of communication,
our multiplied physical discoveries and me-
chanical inventions, must have as great result
on the missionary influence as the mariner's
compass and the printing-press had on dis-
pelling the night of the dark arges, and rescu-
ing the Bible from the clutch of the Church
of Rome. There exists no reason for doubting
that our intellectual advancement must ao
celerate the progress of Christianity amongst
the nations ; and it is because the work before
us is defective in the profound consideration
of this greatest of all subjects that we can
give it but qualified praise.

The Rusinans in Bulgaria and Rumelia, in 1828
and 1829. From the German of Baron von
Moltke. London : Murray.
THIS memoir was published by the author in
German in 1845, and, as ample use has been
made of it in the various works which have
since been issued on the war between Russia
and Turkey in 1828-9, its substance was
tolerably well known before this translation
appeared. The author served with the Turk-
ish army through the campaigns he described,
and his narrative is marked throughout, not
only by exact knowledge, but by the most
scrupulous good faith. With such trustworthy
information spread through Europe, it is easy
to understand how last summer and autumn
general opinion (and especially among com-
petent military authorities) formed strongly
against the success of the Russians in the im-
pending war. That notion of the weakness of
Turkey and of the invincibility of her
antagonist, which a Ministerial paper—the
most influential of our journals—so indus-
triously propagated, must be attributed to
complicity, as it could scarcely have proceeded
from ignorance. The reader is here presented
with a military view of all the chief events of
the campaigns of 1828-9, illustrated by well-
drawn plans of fortresses and battles, and
instructed in the accidents which led to that
treaty of Adrianople on which Lord Aberdeen
wrote so gloomy a commentary.
In every case a writer's judgment is likely
to be greatly biassed by the result of the
events he narrates. Our author possesses
great penetration, yet, overlooking the vigorous
defence made by the Turks in their Danubian
fortresses, he hazards an opinion that
the more it has become necessary for the Porte since its
repeated disasters to concentrate its forces, the more
certain is it that the defence of Turkey in Europe,
in the event of any future war, can only begin at the
Balkan.

In the campaigns of 1853-4 the defence has
not only begun but has been successfully ter-

THE PRESS.

minated on the Danube. Moltke must have
received his impression in this instance from
the treaty which concluded the war, not from
its actual incidents. This opinion, however,
when contrasted with recent facts, is a strong
proof of the great progress made by Turkey
during the last eight or nine years.
The closing chapters of the work are those
which possess just now most interest. The
march of Diebitsch on Adrianople was one of
the most hazardous operations on record.
After his entrance into the city, he found
himself
with 20,000 men in a hostile town of 80,000 inhabi-
tants, half-way between 30,000 Turks at Constantinople
and 30,000 Albanians at Sophia, while his own corps was
exhausted by desertion and disease.

Add that Shumla, with a powerful garrison,
was in his rear, and that several of the Turkish
fortresses on the Danube were unsubdued, and
it will be acknowledged that Diebitsch was in
no enviable position.

The military events of the campaign are
before us, but the secret history of the period,
and particularly of the intrigues which in
duced the Sultan to suspend hostilities and to
sign the treaty of Adrianople, has yet to be
written. The statements of our author—who
had access to good sources of information—
may now be referred to on this point with
profit. He writes :
-

The diplomatists, on their part, while Diebitsch rested
on his arms, were diligently working in his behalf. As
representatives of their several Courts, they of course had
to support interests altogether foreign to those of Turkey, and
were anxious in the first place to put an end to a war which
for two years had threatened the peace of Europe.
Again :
Sultan Mahmoud for a long time resisted the pusillani-
mous advice of his ministers, who trembled for their heads,
and the pressure of foreign powers, not one of whom had as-
sisted him in the war or was in a condition to support him in
his extremity. He shed bitter tears when on the 14th of
September he was compelled to bow his iron will to the
still harder force of necessity, and for weeks he shut himself
up in his palace at Therapia crushed in spirit. For on
signing that treaty he acknowledged that he had failed in
the object for which he had striven all his life.

In reality he was conquered, after all, by
the diplomatists, not by the foe. We have
Lord Aberdeen's commentary on the treaty,
why have we not the papers which would
show the part which Sir Robert Gordon
took in negotiating it, and in urging
the Sultan to submit to the hard conditions
imposed on him? When Diebitsch had sent
forward a corps of 7,000 or 8,000 men on the
road to Constantinople, which he represented
as his advance, it is shown in this memoir
that his main army amounted to,
in all, deducting the numerous sick, about 4,000 or
5,000 men. Such was the army which was to make head
against 30,000 Arnauts, to keep in subjection a town of
80,000 inhabitants, and finally to conquer another city con-
taining 500,000 souls.
Well may the work conclude with the sen-
tence that the campaign

would have led to far different results if the Sultan and
the European diplomatists had been at all aware of the
real state of things.
Insignificant as the force of Diebitsch was,
it was daily dwindling through the ravages of
disease :
The hospital filled fast. By the time the army had-been
in Adrianople a week 1,618 sick were taken there; bl the
Ist of September it contained 3,686, and by the middle
of the month 4,641—0ne-fourth of the whole remaining
disposable force.

The frightful mortality in the Russian armies
shows both the iron will which urges them
forward and the check imposed on its power.
The details given here of the deaths from
diarrhoea (cholera ?) and fever or plague are
sickening. In the five months from March to
July, 1829, 81,000 sick were received into hos-
pitals, and 28,000 died. The mortality in
proportion to the number of sick was after-
wards much greater. The loss of the Rus-
sians in this campaign, mainly through disease,
is estimated at 60,000 men ; and it is supposed
that, of the whole number of effective soldiers
in the Russian army, not more than 10,000 or
15,000 ever returned home across the Pruth.
It would he a curious subject of inquiry how
northern hordes in ancient times poured to
ward the south with so much more ease and
so much less waste of life.
It is, on the whole, surprising that the Rus-
sian commanders did not, early in the late
campaign, imitate the daring example of Die-

665

bitach. Had they neglected the frontier for-
tresses and advanced into the heart of the
empire they might have forced the Turks to
fight a great battle, which, had Russian tactics
proved successful, mighthave led to that result
which, at the commencement of the war, our
Premier seems confidently to have anticipated
—a treaty of Constantinople. One great ob-
stacle to such a course must have been the
entrance of the allied fleets into the Black Sea;
for, throughout the campaign of 1829, it is
apparent that the success of the Russians was
in great part due to their naval superiority ;
and another obstacle might be the cautious dis-
position of Nicholas. In his mind inordinate
ambition seems singularly tempered with fear
of loss. He certainly has none of the fierce,
reckless ardour which we attribute to the
northinen of old, or which has distinguished
the career of great conque►ors. The caution
of Machiavel does not accord with the genius
of Attila. That the campaign of 1854 has
thus far been in every respect the reverse of
1829 must immediately, no doubt, be attri-
buted to the increased efficiency of the Turkish
forces and the great generalship of Omer
Pacha. But, on a wider survey, the defeat of
Russia must be ascribed to that union of
France and England which it was the
fortune of Lord Derby's Government to found
and of Lord Aberdeen's to discredit, until
circumstances proved not only its policy but
its necessity. Whatever course future events
may take, that fact, at least, is established
beyond dispute.

Katharine Ashton. By the Author of " Amy

Herbert." Longmans.
IN this new work, by the author of " Amy
Herbert," we have presented to us the interior
life of a small country town, with its dwarfish
ambition. The minuteness of the details, and
the literal closeness to nature of the copy,
produce merits and faults incidental to the
subject. We fancy that the clever writer has
designed to imitate Miss Austin, but she
wants the English humour and the subtlety
with which commonplace people were painted
in " Pride and Prejudice " and " Emma." In
" Katharine Ashton " there is rather too much
of the moralising lecturer; but there is no
vulgar cant, and there is great sweetness of
tone, that occasionally rises into the pathetic.
One of the most lifelike figures in the social
picture of Rilworth is Colonel Forbes, a pro-
vincial fashionable of first-rate pretensions
and subordinate consequence. Katharine
Ashton herself is the daughter of the keeper
of a circulating library ; and class feelings of
various kinds are portrayed by the author
with great nicety of observation. She has a
keen perception of the dissatisfaction some-
times produced by education. There is a
large portion of truth in the following remarks
from Mrs. Reeves, a clergyman's wife :

" But what people sayto me sometimes," said Katharine,
" is, that education makes all the differenoe, and that if
persons are well educated they are equal to the Queen, or
any one. I don't mean that that applies to me," she added,
blushing, "because I have not been well educated."—" I
think I see where the difficulty lies," replied Mrs. Reeves;
" highlreducated persons in the professional classes meet
with society among themselves to satisfy them. Clergy-
men's families associate with clergymen's families, for
instance, and find themselves very pleasant companions,
and so they are not tempted to wish for anything beyond ;
but this is not the case with the generality of persons in
trade, in this generation at least; perhaps things may be
different in the next. In former days education was but
little thought of amongst them, and so parents who were
ignorant allowed their children to be ignorant also; and
now, when young people begin to read and think, they do
not find sympathy and companionship in their own set, and
then they seek it in those above them." And find it,"
said Katharine, gratefully ; "at leant if they are like me."
—" But all are not like you, Katharine," replied Mrs.
Reeves ; " a great many have their heads turned at the
same time that they have them filled, and so they think
that because they are equal in one point they are equal in
all ; wh.ch is just as if, because I can play and sing, like
the Duchess of Lowther, therefore 1 must be a duchess
myself."

It is very possible that the educated families
of shopkeepers may find it more difficult to
obtain agreeable society than professional
classes. But education must not be blamed
for that. On the contrary, it gives some
chance of bridging over the gulfs between
different ranks ; and it would be difficult to
show that vulgar pretensions are necessarily
fostered by the intellect being enlarged.

‘S,