The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE "LONDON REVIEW" ON DENMARK'S
DREAM.—Last week, the chiefs of the last Polish
National Government wore hanged on the glacis
of 'Warsaw, and the preliminaries of the partition
of Denmark were signed at Vienna. An ominous co.
incidence ! Is it to be reckoned as simply fortuitous,
or is it such a coincidence as natural philosophers
seek to explain dreams to be—those fatal dreams in
which the unconscious soul receives the in press of
events which yet lie in the womb of time, but are
too surely brought forth at last ? Is Poland Den.
mark's dream ? Is the consummation of the fate
of the earlier victim only by accident simultaneous
with the commencement of the later eignny, cc is it
the foreboding shadow of that which in the ripe-
ness of time the world shall yet see a second time
realised ? At least, by such coincidences—whether
we call them the result of natural law, or glimpses
of the unknown vouchsafed by Providence—we are
sometimes usefully startled into recognition of the
influences that beneath the visible current of daily
events are hurry tog on. And Europe has had mote
than one such ill dream of hate. More than once
she has plainly seen that—
., An eagle, towering in his pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed."
Her the models of the highest deyee
pn form or intellect humanity
seems
reaching, have been strangely
a
hordes of misshapen savages or
offsprings of a false civilisation. The
siotstruck
no
k e nnoblestctdown
capable
pt owa bn
whichleraces,
byot
i
fantastic Frenchman, well described by a poet of
ajesthic holds in ain
bondagehis own nation as a mixture of the tiger and the
ape, has his foot on the neck of the still
haughty
the ill-featured and
the superb
Hungarian ; the Russian serf is the slave-driver and
executioner of the graceful and polished Pole; the
murderous
gross Saxon boor seizes the inheritance of the large-
souled descendants of the Vikings. Most striking,
a"
Croat majestic
perhaps, if least apparently important, is that this,
very year has seen the root and type of our race, the
beautiful and pliant Cireassians, driven from their
prediluvian home by the Tartar and the Calmuck to
perish in an alien land. Ugly
petnightmares, these,
to haunt us in the sleep of overfed prosperity. A
new irruption of barbarians presses the life out of
Europe. If its progress is lees distinctly perceived
than that which,
it is
Roman civilisation in
blood and ruin, is because it is more general, and
therefore more sure. Prom the Euxine to the
North Sea it spreads steadily onwards, and irresis-
tibly absorbs its successive opponents. It is one,
while we are ma.
many, and it turns with savage cur.
ning our disunion into
our defeat. It carries off
the conquered Pole to aid in conquering the Circas-
sian; it transplants the . subjugated Hungarian to
hold Venice and Denmarkin subjugation; it mixes
Italian and Finlander in the armies that desolate
Poland; and soon it will have absorbed the Miles:
wig-Dane in the. ranks that hold all Europe east-
ward of the Rhine
.in bodndage, and that still are
pressing on. We, Indee. , the heart of civilisation,
still escape, But how long after the extremities
are enchained will the heart
be able to keep its
healthy action P There is, indeed, something at
once unnatural and appalling in the means by
which this new tide of barbarism gains ground ore
freedom and intellectual refiuement. It is effected
by turning the arms of Science and pro-
gress against itself, and making
those dis-
coveries whose natural action tends to raise
mankind the very .
instrument by Which growth is
stopped and mankind brutalised. The latest
inventions in firearms, in ships of war, in the
defence of fortresses, are instantly taken advantage
of by the despots whose bittalions overrun Europe.
With all our own energy
and
_ manefecturing skill
we are laggards in the race of military improvement
beside the Russian, the Austrian, or the Prussian
Powers. No wonder, then, that the smaller and less
active States, such as Denmark, Switzerland, or
Holland, though the very nurses of freedom and
all peaceful arts, should find themselves
far outstripped, and forced, when driven to bay,
to combat with weapons and systems whiea
a few years of rapid modern progress have
rendered as antiquated as chain armour or
the science of the bansta.
.But even more cruel and
deadly is the method by which the mass of inert or
even repugnant humanity which has been already
enslaved is forced to work its master's will in fur-
thering the enslavement of others. The conscript
serfs knows nothing of the merits of the quarrel in
which he is driven on to fight; the conscript Pole,
or Hungarian, or Italian, knows well that it is
against his own country he combats when he charges
the foes of his tyrant sovereign. Yet such is the
new power of modern discipline that indifference
and disaffection are alike stifled and made to
fulfil the purpose designed as thoroughly as if
they were replaced by patriotism and devoted
loyalty. With demoniac knowledge of human
nature, the tyrants count on the natural pugnacity
of the human race to make man fight with man
like bulldogs in a ring when once brought face to
face ; and they are able, by the modern military
system of strategy, to wield them so that, till
brought into the field, they hay.e. no knowledge of
the work they have to do. Lite those singular
bands of musicians whom the Czars love to main•
tain, in which each performer utters only a single
note, but by the skill of the teacher and the con-
ductor the combination is made to execute the most
difficult pieces ; so the single soldier who knows no
more than to march and halt at word of command,
and to strike one blow when placed opposite his
pretended enemy, is the unit in a vast system of
which the result is the overthrow of ancient king•
dome, And the crushing of freedom throughout the