The Sun.
London, England, 1856-05-05 00:00:00

precaution might so readily have been avoided,
thereby sparing a handful of brave men the anguish
of a series of appalling, and doubly appalling, be-
cause entirely futile sufferings : saving the heroic
Williams from the heart-breaking anxieties of a
siege destined, after all, to end so very deplorably
with a capitulation. Kars—there is the " vanish-
ing point" in the historic and tragic picture drawn
with a masterly hand, in a few bold touches by
that Minasi of travelled litterateurs, Mr. Laurence
Oliphant. The pen-and-ink sketches comprised
within the fifteen chapters constituting our author's
latest production, are further embellished, it may be
remarked, than by the vivid light and the sombre
shade thrown upon them alternately by the poig-
nancy of his regrets, and the liveliness of his ima-
gination. Illustrated as the really pictorial letter.
press is by the graphic peucillings of Omer Pasha's
own Artist-Companion, Llerr Zuther—partly wood-
cuts, partly tinted lithographs. 'Woodcuts com-
prising a vignette profile of the great Turkish
Generalissimo, an accurate limning of an Abkhasian
Buffalo Cart, an outline view of Capt. Dymock's
(grave, and a characteristic portraiture of Mr.
Oliphant's Circassian servant, Hadji Mustapha.
Lithographs numbering amongst them the
frontispiece delineative of the Battle of Ingour,
a representation of the Head-quarters of Omer
Pasha near the Skeniscal, a full page like-
DO i 3 of HAIM(' Bey, otherwise Prince Michael
of Abkhasia, and the picturesque commemoration
of au interview which took place between Omar
Paella and a Circassian Lady at the Choloni Head-
quarters. Besides all which, there are useful adddi-
tions to these same artistic adornments of the volume
under review, in the form of a plan of the action on,
and of the Passage of, the Ingour by the Turks,
under Omer Pacha, on the Gth November, 1855 ;
as well as a comprehensive Map of the Trans-
caucasian Provinces—from Kars to Kertch, and
from Derbend to Sinope. Starting from Sebasto-
pol, our author-traveller sets forth with his reader
in the first of these fifteen chapters of animated de-
scription, by way of Kertch and Yenikale. There
they—writer and reader—wend their way to
Anipa, and SO onward by way of Circassia
further and further into those memorable and pic-
turesque regions of the Caucasus. Arrived at
Soukhoum Kaleh, we are introduced to Hahmid
Bey. Arrived at Trebizoud, we renew our ac-
quaintance with Omer Pacha. Thence it was that

the Turkish Csnimander-in-Chief proceeded to
Bstourn, there to await the arrival of his troops
according'to the plait duly organised with a view
to their ultimate, but alas ! tardy concentration.
Reading Mr. Oliphant's narrative we come in no
way surprised upon the record by him of Omer
Pasha's bitterly expressed complaints against Mar-
shal (then General) Pelissier, for refusing to comply
with his (Omer Pacha's) proposal to conduct a Turk-
ish army into Asia as early as the 15th July instead
of two months later, namely, the middle of Sep-
tember ! Not his, not Omer Pacha's was the
fault of the Turkish expedition being rendered nu-
gatory by its dilatoriness Not his, not Lord Strat-
ford's the crime exclusively of leaving Kars then,
and so far, indeed, consistently to the last, un-
aided till the fatal hour had struck for its inevitable
capitulation. The fault of the delay as to the ad-
vance of the Turkish army across the Euxine was
(in truth be it said) not Omer Pasha's, BUT Mar-
shal Pelissier's ! The crime of reserving all assist-
ance from the devoted garrison of Kars was (in
simple justice be it added) not so much Lord Strat-
ford de Reicliffe's As ---t hat of Her Britannic Ma-
jesty's Government. Reflection only helps to
convince us of this more and more implicitly and
c nfidently. A shameless Cabinet at home is willing
enough we perceive to make a stalking horse of a petu-
laut and irritable, but until nova hardworking and
fur the most part an eminently successful ambassador.
It were a cruelty, however, for the Eugli h publie
to shut their eyes after the last fifteen years' me-
morable and honourable sojourn of Len! Stratford
de Redcliffe in the exquisitely delicate and in some
respects the wonderfully perilous post (diplomati-
c dly speaking) of Ambassador at Constantinople,
and so shutting their eyes to those five lustres of
an illustrious career, to consent hastily, and with-
out all due deliberation, to treat an eminent ser-
vant of the Crown and of the Country (such as
Lord Stratford has proved himself to be until th
date of this toretehed affair about Ears) as a bur
riedly selected scapegoat, upon which to wreak
vengeance for the aggravated sins of a most crimi-
nal Administration. As dispassionate observers of
the powers that be, and of the things that are, WC
say—Beware ! We say at least after these
last fifteen years of his diplomatic career,
as her Majesty's representative at the Ottoman
Porte—let us hear Lord Stratford's own defence
before pronouncing judgment upon him definitively!
It is his due. He has earned a right to this much
by the sagacity and the patriotism he has displayed
hitherto. As far as appearances go at present he
has unquestionably in a political sense acted most
criminally iuleaving Kars to its fate and in turning
a cleat ear so long to the earnest supplications for
aid addressed through him to the British Govern-
ment at home by the heroic General Williams.
Apparently we say Lord Stratford in regard to
Kars and its devoted garrison has acted most cri-
minally. But before judging him—let us hear at
any rate what it is he has to say in his own justifi-
cation Nine hundred and ninety-nine times he
has acted nobly—if (even supposing everything to
be proved as facts at present seem to threaten they
will be proved by an inevitable deduction) if on
the thousandth occasion lie has acted basely—must
the 1 outnumber, and outweigh, and eclipse, and
annihilate the 999 ? It is a question, this, we can-
not but think worthy at least of some brief conside-
ration ! Particularly—when in other things we all
of us know perfectly well that higher powers than
this ambassador have acted in regard to the late
war most basely, most infamously, most treacher-
ously. Therefore we say—Beware ! Be not pre-
cipitate in pronouncing condemnation I Hear what
the British Envoy to the Ottoman Porto has to say
in extenuation of his own conduct in regard to
Kars and its garrison ! Remember the grievou
shortcomings in other matters of our great
Government Depertnieuts ! Above all, con-
sider for a moineut—(and this is the crown-
ing or culminating reflection forced upon us
by recent events, anti recently published docu-
ments bearing in any way upon these recent events,
in regard to the War, and in regard to the Peace,
including ameng these same documents, writings
as widely diversified in their general character as
Mr. Oliphant's last volume, and the long-winded
Treaty of Peace concocted article by article at the
Paris Conferences !]—Above all, we say, consider,
just for one moment consider, whether a deep
game may not have been played in all these late
lamentable transactions? Whether (among other
things) Kars, after all, may not have been wilfully
and criminally abandoned to the evil destiny of
Capitulation—for the purpose of enabling Russia
thereby to have in it a loophole for escape with
apparent " honour ?" For—examining this fatal
and ignominious Treaty it is a glaringly undeniable
fact that Kars is the one " set off" for Russia to
whatever partial successes were achieved by the
Allies elsewhere. England and France, and
Turkey, and Sardinia will give up to Russia—
Sebastopol (as much at least as we have got of it)
and Kertch, and Belaklava, and Eupatoria ! Rus-
sia will give up to Turkey for the sake of these, and
in the name of England, and France, and Turkey
aforesaid, and Sardinia—what ?—Kens ! There
is the balance of the compromise ! The peculiarity
of it is at any rate most—suspicious 31119 it not
after all have been pre-arranged ! In other eveqls,
and as we have already so expressed it,
not plain yara,
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devoted and chivalrous garrison of Kars, have
been wilfully and most heinous