The Sun.
London, England, 1856-02-19 00:00:00

settled.

THE CONFERENCES.

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In the Vienna correspondence of the Independ-
ance Beige we read :—A. few hours before his de-
parture, Count Buol had the honour of a private
reception by the Emperor. It is stated that the
Sovereign, at this final interview, gave to his
Minister new proofs of confidence as honourable to
the one as to the other. "My dear Count," be
said, "you know better than any one else the
policy which I have followed in the present ques-
tion, and the intentions by which I have all
through been actuated. In replying then to one
and to all, do not adhere to the strict letter of
your instructions ; all that you do will be well done
if you contribute, as I hope, to re-establish peace
upon a solid basis, and which will therefore be
honourable to all parties."
The Paris correspondent of the same journal
says :—Russia concedes the non-reconstruction of
Bomarsund, but she desires the neutralisation of
the Isle of Heligoland, and wishes, in order to
avoid their destruction, that the works on the
north side of Sebastopol be considered as a land
fort, the complete ruin of the south side of the city
having removed all that affect its maritime cha-
racter. As to Nicolaieff, Russia, it is said, does
not expect that the suppression of this important
dockyard (which can be devoted the more exclu-
sively to merchant vessels, since it was at Sebasto-
pol that the vessels hitherto were armed) will be
insisted upon. Nicolaieff can no more be consi-
dered as belonging to the coast of the Black Sea
than Rouen, in France, to that of the Ocean.
Besides, the consuls of the Maritime Powers would
be able to insure a rigorous observance of the
treaty.

THE BRITISH ARMY IN THE CRIMEA.
(From the Times Correspondent.)
CAMP BEFORE SEBASTOPOL, FRB. 4.
A bright sun rose this morning upon the camp
before Sebastopol, and the snow was crisp with
frost. My earliest observation of the thermometer
gave 8 deg. Fahrenheit below freezing point, but
the sun had then been up an hour and shining on
the back of the wooden wall against which the
thermometer hung, so that the quicksilver had
probably been some degrees lower before daybreak.
As the morning advanced the frost surface every-
where gave, and the camp and roads around it be-
came deep and muddy. Nevertheless, soon after
noon a great number of officers were seen riding
and walking in the direction of Sebastopol. At
about half-past 12 o'clock Marshal Pelissier, in his
carriage, drawn by four greys, attended by his
staff and followed by his escort of Chasseurs' drove
through the Light Division camp along the Wo-
ronzoff-road. Just about the same time up came
General Codrington and his Staff, and a group of
Sardinian officers of rank. General Codrington
went on to the Redan ; Marshal Pelissier paused
in fr4nt of Picket-house-hill, on a slope which com-
mands an excellent view of the town. Here were
assembled a large number of officers, English,
French,- and Sardinian, and to the right and left;
on every elevated point, numerous groups wore
seen, while Cathcart's-hill was crowded with spec-
tators too busy or toolazy to go further from camp.
The cause of this unusual muster was an expected
explosion. Fort Nicholas was to be blown up at 1
p.m. The French engineers were punctual to their
time. Marshal Pelissier had been little more than
a quarter of an hour chatting and pacing about on
a bank he had selected for his station, and General
Codrington could have been but a few minutes in
the Redan, when a double burst of smoke fixed
%very body's eyes upon the fort. This is (I should
now say, was) of a *curved shape, forming nearly a
quarter of a circle, one extremity of the arc point-
ing south and the other east. The two extremities
were first blown up, and the principal explosion
seemed to be that of the eastern end, which was
in the form of a round tower. The effect of the
rising smoke was very striking and peculiar. The
day was extremely fine, the sky nearly cloudless ;
the white masonry of Sebastopol, beautiful even in
those ruins with which the well-preserved but
doomed fort conspicuously contrasted, lay silent
and seemingly abandoned in the embrace of the
bright green sea. Suddenly, forth gushed the
smoke, net rapidly, but in heavy billows, rising
and rolling one above the other, as if the vapour
were so dense that it had a struggle to ascend.
Slowly it rose ; so slowly that it was easy to imagine
fantastical forms, melting away but gradually.
Immediately over the eastern explosion there hung
for some seconds what seemed a mighty gray lion,
with head, mane, and body perfectly defined in
shadowy delineation. Others besides myself re-
cognized the fanciful image, acceptable as the
emblem of dissolving Russian strength, and pre-
sently replaced by other vague shapes. Upwards
of 20 seconds elapsed before the explosions were
audible in front of Picket-house-hill. There was
so little wind that the smoke rose to a considerable
height before it began to drift off in a south-
westerly direction, and it rose, not in columns,
but rather in heaps or domes such as are sometimes
seen in the sky when clouds are piled on each
other. The lower parts of these heaps of vapour
joined, and the scattered summits dispersed and
mingled before the light north-easterly current,
sooner than the centres blended, and so there re-
mained a sort of loophole in the smoke, through
Which was seen a patch of the emerald water glit-
tering in the brilliant sunbeams. The effect, of
course very transient, was extremely beautiful. The
whole mass of smoke then began to clear off, and
the spectators impatiently awaited the moment
when the windward extremity of the fort should be
disclosed to their gaze. A sort of low gray spit was
presently seen, but was almost immediately again
overclouded by other explosions which now rapidly
succeeded each ether. There wore seven in all,
none of them much louder than the report of a very
heavy piece of ordnance. When the explosions in
the docks took place, on various occasions within
the last two months, there was always great alarm,
commotion, and plungingamong the horses tethered
in the rear, of the dockyard wall, and, notwith-
standing the great difference of distance, some-
thing of the kind was anticipated among the nume-
rous chargers and ponies assembled this morning
on the hill in rear of our old trenches. Few of them,
however, appeared to notice the explosions, and
those showed but slight uneasiness. When all
the mines had been fired and the smoke cleared off,
we saw how completely the French engineers had
done their work.

The long, massive, stone fort—certainly the most
prominent object in a bird's-eye view of Southern
&bast 3pol—had totally disappeared, and in its place
was a low flat bank of gray ruins, as nearly as might
be of the same colour as the smoke that had just
been blown away from it, and of which some lin-
gering remains still oozed and ourled out from the
rubbish. So important a feature was this fort, that
its removal has made quite a change in the physiog-
nomy of the town. Before the explosion the Rus-
sians had been firing; from the north batteries—not
heavily, perhaps at the rate of a shot per minute ;
and we fully expected that, ou witnessing the de-
struction of ono of their finest forts, they would

open an angry fire, as they have done on many
former occasions, in hopes of damaging the troops
and engineers they supposed to be in the town. But
they did not do,so, and fired less after than before
the explosion. One shell burst high over the Mala-
khoff, and another from the battery east of Fort
Constantine over the town, and ono or two of the
Inkorman batteries sent a shot or two in the direc-
tion of our lines, but that was nearly all, and, after
waiting awhile in hopes that they were mute only
from astonishment and would presently make up
for the delay, most of the spectators, whose feet
were by this time getting benumbed in their stir-
rups, turned their horses' heads homewards. I
have not yet ascertained with certainty the quan-
tity of powder used to blow up the fort, but, judg
ing from the extent and great solidity of the build-
ing, and from the completeness of the destruction,
it must have been very large. I was told to-day
that it exceeded the quantity destroyed in the un-
fortunate explosion of the French left siege train.
The destruction of the Western and last remaining
clock was completed last week, without noteworthy
incident. A great deal of the ruin has been