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

SPIRIT OF TEE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE " LONDON REVIEW" ON DENMARK'S
DREAM.—L sat week, the chiefs of the last Poiish
National Government were 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 I),:ni,
mark's dream ? Is the consummation of the fate
of the earlier victim only by accident simultaneous
with the commencement of the later agony, or 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 hurrying on. And Europe has had mole
than one such ill dream of late. 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 noblest races, the models of the highest dove
[opulent to which in form or intellect humanity
seems capable of reaching, have been strangely
struck down by hordes of misshapen savages or
the puny offsprings of a false civilisation. The
fantastic Frenchman, well described by a poet of
his own nation as a mixture of the tiger and the
ape, has his foot on the neck of the still
haughty and majestic Roman ; the ill-featured and
murderous Croat holds in bondage the superb
Hungarian ; the Russian serf is the slave-driver and
executioner of the graceful and polished Pole; the
gross Saxon boor seizes the in hcritance of the large-
souled descendants of the Vikings. Most striking,
perhaps, if least apparently important, is that this
very year has seen the root and type of our race, the
beautiful and gallant Cireaseians, driven from their
prediluvian home by the •
fartar and the Calmuck to
Perish in ten alien land
• Ugly nightmares, 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 less distinctly perceived
than that which quenched Roman civilisation in
blood and ruin, it is because it is more general, and
therefore more sure. From 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, ll
and it turns with savage cu,
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 Denmark in subjugation ; it mixes
Italian and Finlander in the armies that desolate
Poland; and soon it will have absorbed the Schles-
wig-Dane in the ranks that hold all Europe east-
ward of the Rhine
.in bondage, and that still are
pressing on. We, indeed, the heart of civilisation,
still escape, But how long after the extremities
are enchained will the heart be able to keep its
healthy action ? There is, indeed, something at
once unnatural and appalling in the means by
which this new tide of barbarism gains ground on
freedom and intellectual refinement. It is effected
Science b turning the arms of ;
-- and pro-
gress against itself, and
.making those dis-
coveries whose natural action tends to raise
mankind the very instrumenti by which growth is
stopped and mankind s brutalised. The latest
inventions in firearms, in ships of war, in the
defence of fortresses, are instantly taken advantage
of by the despots whose battalions overrun Europe.
With all our own energy and manufacturing 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 which
a few years of rapid modern progress have
rendered as antiquated as chain
armour or
the science of the batiste. But even more cruel and
deadly is the method by whi▪
ch the mass of inert or
even repugnant humanity which has been already
enslaved is forced to work i▪ ts 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
now 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 have no knowledge of
the work they have to do.
iLike 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
snore than to march and haft 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 frceaom throughout the