The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1870-07-27

There Is silver lining to every cloud,
although, by the way, we have had no oppor-
tunity of testing the truth of that aphorism
lately, since the clouds seem to have fed away
from before the blazing face Of the sun for
ever, andeven our anticipations of horrible
war In Europe have something to relieve
them In the faceti@ Of tho telegraphic and
special dispatches now ticking in from
tho Old World to our press. The
''Tartar horseman" of the Crimean strug-
gle and ''the reliable contraband" Of our
own civil war have both become splendidly
historic, and will be recollected and chuckled
over long after the memory of many q noted
warrior shall have '.gone gllmmering through
the mist Of things that were;" but even their
high fame Is likely to be eclipsed by the Mum
chausenisms and platltudes that attend the
opening Of the French campaign along the
Rhine. Not far from the quaint old town of
Oberwcsel, on that lyric river, there is re-
markable echo between the environing hills,
and as the steamer speeds by the spot some
roguish student on the upper deck will fire.
quently shout, ''Who is the Burgomaster
Of Oberwesel?" The answer comes rat
thing back in three or four successive vol
leys :-'Esel! esell esell" which, being
pure German for the title Of that useful but
much derided quadruped. the donkey. is more
amusing to the passengers than complimentary
to the burgomaster. From what we are re-
called with daily In some of the telegraphic
items offered us for mental digestion we should
conclude that the informants either lived near
this Rhenish echo and got their news from 1t
or were entitled to the real honors Of Oberwe-
sci as the echo understands them.
One day the French are over the Rhine and
far away; on the next they are a long, long
journey on this side of it. They survey noun
tains where there are wide plains, and man
tremendous fortresses which are not yet con-
structed, But The battles that they fight are
Observation-Disclosures sharp engagement"
says an extra, "and two men killed" ''We have
million of men between Thionville and Metz"
one of Napoleons officers is made to boast,
and in the next line we read the refreshing in
teligence that "the French have thus far taken
forty prisoners" at which rate they will as
suredly catch the whole Prussian army in less
than thirty thousand years. The Emperor,
too, never ''came out" 80 "strong" as he
does just now. On one and the same
day he Is i'll at st. Cloud and
addressing and dining the Senate at Paris. He
has been going down to the headquarters of
the army Tin two or three days" for nearly
that many weeks, and the astonishing manner
in which he Is made, in one and the same
breath, to ''extend his empire to the Rhine"
and consolidate his imperial dynasty" yet
''declare all Europe republic" carries us
away with enthusiasm. The French army,
too, has its headquarters in the most numer-
GUS and impossible places, and In any number
of them at a time-at Thionvllle, at Metz,
at Strasburg, and, most appropriately Of all
for the itemizer, at Nancy, and no miss this
time by any means. Here the fable of the
hydra Is utterly surpassed, for these heads
keep growing In size and number without one
of them having yet been cut off. r.
But ali! those :.'Prooshians," those terrible
'Prooshians. The prestidigitation of the
Fakir of Ava, the amusing illusions" of Hell
Ter and the Wizard of the North, and the
agility Of the Manly become nero weak i'm
positions when contrasted for moment with
their bewildering performances. Wore their
horses all winged steeds and their ponderous
Hessian boots the pinions of Mercury and
delicate Ariel they could not skip
about at more amazing rate than
they now do. From Switzerland to the
Belgian frontier, and from the ''banks
of the blue Moselle" to the borders of Bohe-
mia, they whisk over mountains, ''pour
through" forests and bestride rivers in style
that would reduce Gulliver's Brobdingnagians
to the most pitiable pigmies, and take the wind
out of Pegasus and the shine from the Colossus
of Rhodes
But there are favorites of transformation, as
of oil other things-grave, solemn, pompous
fellows, who get all the tit-bits and throw all
the scraps to the little shoo-1ies Gas they would
have it) Of the press-portentous humbugs
who are always right, of course, and who,
therefore, are scarcely ever right at all. They
give us delicious jumbles of hashed geography,
broken grammar and the stale parings of for
gotten tactics, with an olla-podrida Of princes
and generals with unpronounceable names and
of impossible exploits, until, suddenly, they
burst upon US in plans Of maneuvres and maps
of localities of "a form that is arts despair
and face that no pen could paint"
How shall we settle the matter in our minds
Have the French Emperor and King William
I.-R
sweltering hour that tries us oil and made half
the papers published more comical than Punch
or Chari1ari, KIadderadatscA or the Fiscasetto
by the maneuvres Of their troops, or are we
to wait and gnasll our teeth in advance over