The Sun.
London, England, 1855-12-25 00:00:00

THE MEMORY OP THE BRAVE.

( From the Manchester Examiner.)
There will by this time be few men in Manchester
who can afford a shilling at noonday, or a sixpence at
eventide, who will not have visited that seat of war at
the Exchange Rooms, which has been created by the
belligerent qualitie3 of Mr. Roger Fenton and Messrs.
I Agnew and Son. After having read about the Crimea
for the last 1S months, and had it served up in &l sorts
of ways by all sorts of writer=, from the dashing plume
of Mr. Russell to the little drnnimer-boy writing un•
grammatically to his mother ; after having beheld it in
the gros3 4,11 every description of map, from the exact
scale of Mr. Wyld, who for some time seems to have
been poised in the air like an intelligent roc, and sent
ofF slips of the peninsula, like copy for the press—to
those extemporised productions which have left it du-
bious which was the land and which wag the sea ; which
have made a scrawl of the land and a spraw of the ocean,
and put in the corner a make-pretence scale, like an in-
fant piece of music—after all these efforts, praiseworthy
some of them, let us hope remunerative all of them, is it
not a relief to turn to pictures which no eloquent Rus-
sell can gild or distort, but which recommend them-
selves at once as the true delineations of nature, aided
by the delicate attentions of art ? The winter of our dis-
content—and who will ever forget that last fearful wins
ter, when " England's dear boys" were all supposed t'a
be decaying on those deathly hill sides—has now been
replaced by more genial times. Sunshine has come
again, and whilst it has gladdened the hearts, f the heroes
themselves, it has been enlisted by Mr. Fenton and Mr.
Agnew to give the scenes of the great drama, and to
picture for England and France some groups of ineniwhose
memory shall be green when artist, and heroes, and
writers are gone, and only the great orb himself remains
shining over our graves. It is a wonderful exhibition. Toe
pictures, notwithstanding their unerring exactness, are
to us, at least, far more suggestive than those which, com-
ing from the simple imagining of ordinary artists, would
seem to draw more largely on the conception. That " Val-
ley of the Shadow of Death," for instance, with its grim
outlines of hills, and interlying pavement of iron missiles
what an angry, vengeful, remorseless, and yet tranquil'
picture is that ! Those cannon balls lying there in all sorts
of ugly heaps, were they all harmless, or, after hissing and
chirping with merry and bloody intent down the valley,
did they beat a victim fat, and so have lived not in vain t
Several of those dead rotundities wore to us the B.M•
blance of disappointed messengers. They seemed huddled
together, like men in disgrace as faithless servants.
Others looked more hopeful, as much as to say, "Give
us another chance, seud us back home, we are hirelings
that love not home— but give us another chance, and
we'll go with a smash. This valley is cold—oh for a
rush at stone walls." Then the dim light between the
hills ; it looks as if the wing of death had caused the
dimness, and was brooding and flapping there still. This
valley, with its marvellous suggestiveness, seems to us
far mere gloomy than that memorable Cathcart's Hill,
on which are groped the tumuli of the unfortunate brave,
with their eloquent columns and sacred symbols, solemn,
but cheerful, in their noble repose. We think of him
whose name has made a history of that hill, and who fell
amongst the brushwood of Inkernian. sve rejoice that
this scene is one of the best in the collection, and that
when, in after times, the great fight of the sth of No-
vember is talked ever, Mr. Fenton will have the honour
of illuminating and vivifying the narrative. We antici-
pate the still unbosomed years, and the time when the
boy, whose bright face was turned up but yesterday to
the rows of Crimean photographs, will have donned con-
siderable spectacles, and become the oracle of his circle.
For did he not participate in the primal grief and subse-
quent triumphs of the Crimean struggle ? Does he not
remember hearing the guns fired when Sebastopol fell !
Can he not recall his feelings when he road in the Times
of the cool courage of General Windham, who walked
about unscathed at the Redan amidst a storm of shot 1
His head is bent over a portefeuille of prints—and such
a nosegay of a girl is bending over both, with other
boys and girls around listening to the story of the
great Russian war. Then will the illustrated lecture
commence ; and as the prints are turned up, papa will
become an enthusiastic Tacitus. And will tke audience
be simply listeners ? Will that nosegay of a girl fail to
observe what a dear good old man Lord Raglan looks ?
and wont she think how she should like to have worked
him a pair of slippers, which is the young lady's tribute
to aged worth ? Is it quite impossible that an inquisitive
urchin may ask whether Marshal Pelissier was in the
habit of biting anybody, or why he allowed his barber
to cut his hair so short ? Can we quite ensure ourselves
that the same urchin will not confound the Zouaves
with warlike females, until his ideas bo properly sup-
pressed and classified by Tacitus ! We may coneeive of
groups of this sort many a Christmas hence, and we
think in Exchange-street at present we could pick out
the preci-e pictures which will form the centre of those
groups. For these are things which men feel inclined
to have for themselves, that they may be looked at often,
and talked about frequently. It was formerly difficult to
enter a licensed victualler's establishment without being
"entreated" to a representation of the battle of Water-
loo, a representation which had arisen from the teeming
brain of some spirited artist, to whom, given guns,
ground, ani cannons, and a dead private in the fore-
ground, and the Duke on horseback, apparently sitting
for a statue, forthwith sprung up Waterloo—•a fine work
of imagination truly, but as much like Waterloo, as
Peterloo, or hullabaloo, or any other of that class of
events. It will be a delightful reform in the interior of
village inns to find Mr. Fenton usurping the functions of
imaginative artists, and giving to all who travel by land
or by water a true presentment of the persona or places
designed. There are some faces in the collection that it
would do a man good to look at, even were they not
associated with deeds of high emprise. We have men-
tioned Lord Raglan, who,
in
itiis
group of the "Council
in the society of
of War," looks like a
foreigners whom he delightskind to honour.
Let everyone
note well the portrait of Gen. Estcourt, as that of a well
descended British chief. We stopped for some moments
before Gen. Sir De Lacy Evans, who looks as if he meant
mischief, and if mischief were to be done it must be
dune, and lie would see that it was done well. Close by
Sir Richard England, with a martial moustache and
handsome face, confronts the visitor, and says, physiog-
nomiea Hy, "Am I the man the Times would make me
out, or do you think I shall white-feather it in the hour
of danger ?" Then there are the groups of minor cele-
brities, and yet scarcely minor, for some of the colonels,
with their attendant boys, have names already high in
the roll of fame—some of them too already on that black
list which terminates all earthly endeavour. As to the
pith and manliness of Englishmen being on the wane,
look at them, gentlemen, as they are grouped before
you, and tell the maligning theorist who writes such
stuff that he is—well, then, a theorist. Why there are
shoulder and limb and muscle, all strong and active, and
piloted by a w as strong and muscular, which leaves
doubt to the newspapers, and has no doubt before the
enemy. What man may dare, they will dare—they eat
and drink round that jovial camp table, and to-morrow
they die. To-morrow, in that group, one drinking born
the less will he held up for Queen and country, and the
girl he left behind him. A few months hence, in that
pretty village church, in that dear old English shire, a
little tablet will appear—and so requieseat I

Second-class Staff-
Surgeon Daniel J. Doherty, on
being relieved from duty, will proceed to Portsmouth to
embark on board the Thames on Wednesday, in medical
charge of detachments.
TUE COAL T
TRADE._SIIIELDS, Thursday Afternoon.
—A large fleet of light colliers, several hundred sail,
have arrived in the northern coal ports during the past
two days. Many of them have been five and six weeks
on their passage down, and the arrival in port of so large
a number of seamen will materially add to the comfurt
of many a home during Christmas time. In consequence
of the heavy sea breaking on the coast several disasters
have occurred to the vessels attempting to run for the
harbour.
Five vessels, two brigs, and three schooners,
are ashore at the mouth of the Tyne. The crews were
rescued without any great difficulty, and at Sunderland
the Lovely Nelly, of Lyme, the Exchange al° op, of Yar-
mouth, the brig Edward and Sarah, from London, the
brig Ford, of London, the brig Bolt, from
drove northward of the harbour and came—
. London all
ashore. It is
reported that four lives have been lost. Several light
vessels, seeing the heavy sea on the coast and the crowd-
ing in of the fleet, ran to the north, where they Rill? seeks
shelter in some of the bays. A
been experienced to the southward oefrythe heavy
Humber,has
been
and
Offend vessels have been telegraphed as ashore.