The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1859-06-28

combatants are numbered by hundreds of thou
sands, that not only profoundly impresses the
imagination, but renders the discussion of tn
ordinary affairs of nations tame, spiritess and
interesting. Christian clergymen and the advo-
Gates of the doctrine of resistance may depict
the horrors of the battle feld-the torn carcasses;
the shrieks of the wounded; the groans of the
dying; the piteous appeals for mercy; and all those
awful concomitants of agony and despair which
succeed the shock of armies; yet by common
consent the victors in such scenes of horror
and of carnage will, nevertheless, be recognized
as heroes and poets will find their most soul
stirring themes in 'the pomp and circumstance
''of glorious war; We will not undertake
the useless task of attempting to reconcile the
apparent contradiction which exists between the
Christian code of ethics and the practice of
Christian nations. 1t is enough to know that
war, like many other evils is ineradicable, and
that so long as nations have rights to assert or
wrongs to avenge, and men suffer themselves
to be governed by their natural impulses and
PASSIONS by their instincts rather than by their
religious convictions; they will continue to resort
on momentous occasions to the arbitrament of the
sword, though all the apostles of peace were 10
unite together to preach the snfulness of shedding
human blood. The wisest philosopher, therefore,
must for the most part take the world as he finds it;
with its warp and wool of sunshine and of storm;
its gracious amenities and its sharp asperites; its
flowers andits ruggedness. There are many elements
of the barbaric age still mixed up and nextricably
blended with our boosted civilization; the chief
difference between ourselves and our progenitors
being that we have improved upon their social
comforts, that we entertain a more general respect
for the rights of others, and that we have infused
more of the soul of goodness into things that we
acknowledge to be evil. But if war has its bar
bartes, it has also its humanties, and the finest
displays of chivaric feeling are oftenest exhibited
in the treatment of a conquered foe. Meagre and
unpicturesque the details of the battles in Italy
for the most part have been-the correspondence
and the official reports dealing with matters of fact
rather than with the incidents which give color
and vitality to the tremendous struggle-we yet
occasionally catch vivid glimpse of the scene of
the marching and countermarching of the opposing
armies, and of portion of the men of which those
armies are composed. We saw, for instance at
Pal stro the Tyrolean rfemen dressed in green and
with metal cockades shiningn their hats, firing from
rise in the midst of the standing wheat at the Sar
dinans under CIALDIN. We can picture on the
same occasion the irresistible charge of the Third
Zouaves, swarthy and bearded men, in oriental
costume, and 1.-THE and sinewy as leopards who,
punging into the canal which separated them from
their enemies, carried, at the point of the
bayonet, five guns of a battery of eight,
and put hors du combat five hundred of the best
sharp-Shooters in the Austrian service We have
seen also for a moment rush by us that mixed
Algerian torce-the demi-savage Turcos-in bat
taIons, composed Unfortunately of Kabyes,
Arabs, Moors and negroes decked out fancifuly
"A Moor passing with a red shawl wound about
his loins, and next jet black negro with yellow
'urban of silk, coquettishly arranged so that the
1rInges shall hang over his forehead while in
the background are dimly seen between whites
dark-eyed Italian women and half-terri6ed chill
dren staring at the strange men from the shadows
OF corridors. These are pictures which man
might paint; but yet they have been too few
10 give more than vague idea of that mighty
host which, after having defeated the Austrans in
every previous engagement, crossed the Ticino and
Is now swarmng over the fertile plains of Lombar-
dy. But not one of the many correspondents who
nave been permitted to chronicle the achievements
OF the respective armies in Italy, has been found
capable of so describing the great battle of Magen
Ia as to give us clear view of that terrible con-
1lct, or of the fuctuating fortunes of the comba-
tants during those hours when the fight was most
molly contested. We learnt is true-by the tele-
gram despatched by NAPOLEON III. to the Empress
EUGENE, that MCMAHON and CANRoBERT covered
themselves with glory" and we know also that
the former was created Marshal of the Empire
and Duke of Magenta on the field of battle, but
we know almost nothing of the feat of arms by
which he won this double distinction. 1t is herein
that we miss the graphic talent of the Crimean
correspondent of the London Times. 1t is to his
vivid delineations of the scene of conflict and Of
Tie heroism there displayed, that we owe nearly
all our knowledge of the topography of that por-
ton of the Tauric Chersonesus and of the heroic
achievements ofindivdual soldiers. Without such
record war loses half of its terrible fascination
and the reputation of gallant deeds dies with
those who witnessed them. a.r..... 90 ..a.