VIOLET.
Is a color that has often been worn by martyrs; formed of a union of red and blue, it signifies love and truth, and their passion and suffering. It is the court mourning color all over Europe, with the exception of England. It is the softest of the prismatic colors, and its very name carries us in thought to the modest sweet flower which is Flora's emblem of humility.
Of one of the colors of the spectrum I have failed to speak, because there was so little to say. Orange is a bright, warm color, not quite as intense as red, still one which the eye does not readily seek. Its suitableness in dress is confined mainly to children. Upon them our eye naturally seeks for bright, warm colors, and rests with a kind of pleasure upon rich hues. There is nothing upon which the public taste requires more education than upon the arrangement and modification of colors. Gardeners need it in setting their plants and putting in their seeds; florists, in the arrangement of their bouquets; furnishers, in the decoration of apartments; and especially the fashion leaders, who decide what colors or shades must or must not be worn together. Sometimes hues are conjoined by them, that, no matter how loudly proclaimed au fait, the height of style, or à la mode, are never artistic, and no dicta can make them so. A fashion framer should needs be a natural philosopher, and hold the rudiments of all science in her grasp. Botany, mineralogy, conchology should walk as handmaidens to philosophy; optics should steer the rudder of color's bark when launched upon the sea of taste.
If, when dressed, the aim is to present a light and graceful toilet, light and delicate shades of color must be worn; no crimson, dark green, purple, or indigo, but rose, light green, azure, or lavender, with a due admixture of white, must be the hues chosen. White serves as an admirable break, and prevents the appearance of violent transition. It is none the less requisite in bouquets, where no two shades of the same color should be allowed without either white or green as a separator. Very handsome self-colored bouquets can be arranged by giving a finish of the complementary shade. One of the most beautiful I ever remember to have seen was scarlet verbenas with a base of rose-geranium leaves, the whole set in a small antique green-and-gold vase.
Although the mature fall of the year clothes itself in gay colors, it is deemed an evidence of immaturity for women in the fall time of life to sport crimson and scarlet and orange. Sober grays (which mean old, mature), quiet brown, and even sombre blacks, are rather what are looked for. To dress young when people are old, deceives no one. There is a beauty of age as well as a beauty of youth. Those who live to be old have had their share of the former: why should they seek to deprive themselves of the latter? Aside from the appropriateness of color as to age, there are yet others as to size and complexion. Light-haired men should always wear very dark cravats, in order to give tone and expression to the face. Large women should wear warm colors, if they wish to create a pleasant impression. They cannot attain grace by any aid of color, while they will lose the dignity they might naturally claim if they confined themselves to warm, grave shades.
An unartistic arrangement of light or drapery in an apartment will totally destroy the harmony of the most carefully prepared toilet. Rooms can be toned warm or cold, but, unless some especial object is sought, neutral tints should predominate, and violent contrasts should be avoided.
Who has failed to notice the fantastic tricks played at times upon some body of worshippers, where light to the church is admitted through stained glass windows? A lambent red flame lighting up the hair of a man's head, while at the same moment his beard is blue and luminous. Over the shoulders of another, the purple mantle of royalty seems about falling, investing him for a moment with regal splendors, while perhaps the cadaverous hue of his next neighbor's face well fits him to be some imagined victim of his new majesty's anger.
Color ranks as one of the earliest arts. No nation is so low but it makes some attempt at decorative color, and we may be well assured it was one of the earliest, if not the earliest method employed in transmitting intelligence. When this country was first discovered, the Peruvians were making use of small knotted cords of various colors, termed quippu, as mediums of records and messages. Our own North American savages employed wampum, made from various colored shells, for a similar purpose. Color played its part in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. It speaks to the eye sooner than form. A black flag hoisted upon the battle field proclaims louder than words the demoniac cruelty that reigns, while a white signifies that submission has been decided upon. Joseph's coat of many colors proclaimed the father's favoritism to his brothers, and worked a mighty change in the history of the race to which he belonged. This very instance, if we possessed no other, would prove to us the high estimation in which color was held, and its symbolic meaning, in the most ancient times.
The ermine is an animal of such spotless purity it will tolerate no stain on its fur, and by this symbolic name we designate the judge, who should be stainless, unbiassed, and incorruptible.
The highest art of the florist is put forth to procure change of color. Self tulips are valueless beside sports, and to induce this breaking various methods are put in requisition, as there is no sporting of colors from natural causes among flowers. A green rose, a blue verbena, are hailed as triumphs, and secure the propagator an enviable name either as an amateur or professional florist.
Perhaps the most curious thing connected with color is that some stars give colored light; and in one instance, in a northern constellation, a double star gives forth blue rays from one and red from the other. How our fancy might be permitted to soar away beyond the stars themselves in wondering fancies as to the meaning of this—truth and love united in a star, not as a compound color, but each retaining its own hue of blue and red! What a happy abode of truthful, loving spirits we can imagine this the dwelling place! And may there not here be a symbol of such a union?
The art of color is yet in its infancy, and although Tyrian purple was magnificent and famous, and the highly prized Turkey red unfading, yet modern chemical discovery has opened a wide variety of hues unknown to the ancients.
Colors obtained from vegetable substances have been the most numerous, those from the animal kingdom the most brilliant, and from the mineral the greatest variety from the same substance. A buff, a blue, and a black, and again a red, a blue, a purple, and a violet, are produced from the same metal.
The recent discovery of aniline colors, to be extracted from coal refuse, has given art new, beautiful, and durable shades of red, blue, purple, and violet. We know but by description what the lauded Tyrian purple was, for monopoly caused the art to be lost; but for softness, richness, and beauty of purple we have none to approach that extracted from this refuse. Nature means nothing to be lost, and waste arises from ignorance. She is a royal mistress when royally represented.
To the mineral kingdom we are indebted for most of the mordants which fix the hues derived from other sources. That in union is strength is taught by the most common art.
Much is yet to be learned in regard to color. Men have understood its correspondence sufficiently to associate red and cruelty as its lowest expression, so that the men of the bloody French Revolution received an undying name from the red cap of the Carmagnole costume—and yellow with shame, for a ruff of this color on the neck of a woman hanged drove this fashion out of England—and white with purity, as the ermine of the judge shows; although, thousands of years ago, the men of Tartary and Thibet prized the wool of the Crimean sheep stained of a peculiar gray by its feeding upon the centarina myriocephala, and although modern gardeners deepen the hues of plants by feeding them judiciously, yet few attach the requisite importance to color as history. Writers for the most part pass silently by this great aid to a correct understanding of past events. Color in costume is no less essential to a true description or representation than form; in some instances it is more so.
The color of the silken sails of Cleopatra's vessel, as she sailed down the Cydnus, proclaimed her royalty as no other could have done.
A fairy could not be depicted without her green robe, or young Aurora unless tinted with the hues of morn.
Here lies the great fault of all sun pictures. The distinctive hues of complexion, hair, and eyes are not preserved. The flaxen, the auburn, the brown hair alike take black. Light eyes and dark are undistinguishable; the clearest complexion becomes muddy and full of lines if the color of the dress is such as to throw the shade upon it.
A mixture of colors in dress in which either two of the primitives predominate, is a token of barbarism, even if occurring among so-called enlightened people.
Color is an exponent of the degree of civilization.
Red finds its fitness among savage races, and with undeveloped natures.
Yellow indicates transition from barbarism to civilization.
Green, advanced civilization.
Purple, monarchical enlightenment, which is will individualized in but one.
Modification and harmony are only with people free to follow taste and select for themselves. Among the most enlightened nations these five states are all found. The highest type, shown by culture, discovery, art, literature, science, equity, and government, exists with but a few. The mass are civilized, and continue 'the mass.' It is the natural tendency of enlightenment to individualize. In proportion to genius, culture, and perseverance, is one set apart, becomes a leader of the masses, and should be a teacher of the harmony and correspondence of color, both by precept and example.
Strong contrasts are admissible in what is designed to illustrate particular things, and especially if to be viewed from a distance. To me no sight is ever more beautiful than the American flag, red, white, and blue, as the breeze opens every fold and waves it abroad for the gaze of men; the blue signifying a league and covenant against oppression, to be maintained in truth, by valor and purity; the very color proclaiming to despots and tyrannized man that in one land on the broad face of the earth liberty of conscience prevails, and freedom of speech exists. We shall not want to change it when this war is over. It is the symbol of an idea which has never yet found its full utterance. When Liberty and Union become one and indivisible, it will be the harmonious exponent of those grand ideas rooted, budded, blossomed, and bearing fruit forevermore.
BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS.
Oh, how our pulses leaped and thrilled, when, at the dead of night,
We saw our legions mustering, and marching forth to fight!
Line after line comes surging on with martial pomp and pride,
And all the pageantries that gild the battle's crimson tide.
A forest of bright bayonets, like stars at midnight, gleam;
A hundred glittering standards flash above the silver stream.
We plunged into the Wilderness, and morning's early dawn
Disclosed our gallant army in line of battle drawn.
An early zephyr fresh and sweet breathed through the forest shade;
A thousand happy warblers, too, a pleasant music made;
And modest blossoms bathed in dew the morning light revealed:
Oh, who could deem those pleasant shades a savage foe concealed?
With lagging pace the morning hours dragged heavily away,
And yet we wait the coming strife, in battle's stern array.
A solemn stillness reigns around—but hark! a savage yell,
As if ten thousand angry fiends had burst the gates of hell,
Now thrills upon our startled ears. By heaven! the traitors come!
We see their gleaming banners, we hear the throbbing drum.
In solid ranks, their countless hordes from the dense woods emerge,
And roll upon our serried lines like ocean's angry surge.
Our ranks are silent—on each face the light of battle glows:
'Ready!' At once our polished tubes are levelled on our foes.
Now leaps a livid lightning up—from rank to rank it flies—
A fearful diapason rends the arches of the skies.
The wooded hills seem reeling before that fierce recoil;
With fire and smoke the valleys like Etna's craters boil:
From red volcanoes bursting, hissing, hurtling in the sky,
A thousand death-winged messengers like fiery meteors fly:
Within that seething vortex their shattered cohorts reel.
'Fix bayonets!' At once our lines bristle with burnished steel.
'Charge!' And our gallant regiments burst through the feu d'enfer.
Before their furious onset the rebel hosts give way;
And, surging backward, hide again within the forest's shade,
Whose mazes dark and intricate our charging columns stayed.
Now sinks the fiery orb of day, half hidden from our sight
Amid the sulphurous clouds of war dyed red in lurid light;
And soon the smoking Wilderness with gloom and darkness fills;
The dense, damp foliage on the sod a bloody dew distils.
Sleepless we rest upon our arms. Dim lights flit through the shade:
We hear the groans of dying men, the rattle of the spade.
And when the morning dawns at last, resounding from afar
We hear the crash of musketry, the rising din of war.
O comrades, comrades, rally round, close up your ranks again;
Weep not our brethren fallen upon the crimson plain;
For unborn ages shall their tombs with freshest laurels twine;
Their names in characters of light on history's page shall shine:
We all must die; but few may win a deathless prize of life—
Close up your ranks—again the foe renews the bloody strife.
Two days we struggled fiercely against our stubborn foes—
Two days from out the Wilderness the din of conflict rose.
But when the third aurora bathed the eastern sky in gold,
And to our soldiers' anxious gaze the field of death unrolled,
Lo! all was silent in our front. The rebel hosts had fled,
Abandoning in hasty flight their wounded and their dead.
Come, friends of freedom, gather round, loud shouts of triumph give:
The field of blood is won at last—let the republic live!
Our country, O our country, our hearts throb wild and high;
Your cause has triumphed. God be praised! Freedom shall never die.
Our eagle proudly soars to-day, his talons bathed in gore,
For treason's hydra head is crushed—its reign of terror o'er.
Wake, wake your shouts of triumph all through our mighty land,
From California's golden hills to proud Potomac's strand.
Atlantic's waves exulting Pacific's billows call,
And great Niagara's cataracts in louder thunders fall.
We've stayed the tempest black as night that on our country lowers,
And backward dashed its waves of blood. The victory is ours!
A light shines from the Wilderness—far up time's pathway streams—
Through death, and blood, and agony, on Calvary's cross it gleams;
It lights with radiance divine Mount Vernon's humble tomb,
And sparkles on Harmodius' sword bright flashing through the gloom.
Ho! slaves of yesterday, arise, now will your chains be riven.
Ho! tyrants, tremble, for behold a day of vengeance given.
Gaze on our banners stained with blood—think of your brethren slain;
Say, has not freedom, crushed to earth, sprung forth to life again?
Freedom, high freedom, friend of man, sheath not thy crimson steel;
Still let thy cannon thunder loud, still let thy trumpet peal;
Stay not the justice of thy wrath, stay not thy vengeful hand,
Till slavery and treason have been blotted from our land.
TARDY TRUTHS.
Under the heading of 'Tardy Truths' The New Nation, of May 7th, republished a compendium of matter some time back given to the world by M. Emile de Girardin, in his paper La Presse, and in pamphlet form. This matter purports to have been written by a so-called ex-commandant in the late Polish insurrection, a certain M. Fouquet, of Marseilles.
Poland has no reason to fear truth. On the contrary, the difficulty has been to find means to set it forth, avenues to the public intelligence and sense of justice, whereby those might be reached who forget the Latin saying: Audi et alteram partem. The Poles are willing to hear reproaches, if such as may be profited by, or if the self-constituted judges be conscientious and unprejudiced.
But, may we not ask why it is that many of these so-called truths, professedly founded upon personal acquaintance with Polish localities, men, and institutions, spring from sources in many respects similar to that of the recent publication in La Presse, from individuals who never were in Poland beyond a few hours spent in Warsaw—who have seen nothing of the country, except as passing in a passenger car from Kracow to Mohilew, a distance of about seven hundred miles, traversed in about twenty-four hours—who never understood one word of Polish, of Rossian, or of any of the cognate tongues—who have never conversed freely with the inhabitants—who may have been entertained during a few hours by Government employés or by cautious and distrustful patriots—who were in a hurry to see St. Petersburg and its elephant, and who learned Polish history in the Kremlin, in the saloons of some former prince from the Altay or the Caucasus, or, at best, in the work of M. Koydanoff?
La Presse, in Paris, undertook the charge of saying things which her franker sisters, Le Nord and La Nation, the avowed organs of Rossian czarism, did not venture to propound. M. de Girardin, whose paper has, since a certain period, taken a liberalistic, even socialistic, infection, is a living example of sundry anomalous eccentricities, such as Alcibiades, Gracchus, Mirabeau, etc., who speak most liberally, and act in a contrary manner. He seems to have been adopted by Rossian diplomatists, and those sanguine of Rossian destiny, as a most convenient defender of czarish ambition—the more so that they found in him a revealer of things never thought of by the czar; as for instance, liberality and even democracy in Great Rossia, on the plains of Okka and Petschora.
We might compare M. Fouquet's account of Poland with Neumann's account of Kosciusko, or Freneau's of Washington, but will content ourselves with referring the reader to better European sources of knowledge, as the Breslau Zeitung, Ost Deutsche Zeitung, Czas, Wiek, La Pologne, etc.
Indeed, it would not be worth our while to pay any attention to M. Fouquet's allegations, had not the Paris letter of April 4th appeared in the above-mentioned paper, and were it not likely to mislead many ignorant of the facts.
The writer tells us that he has 'experienced a great temptation to tell what he has seen,' and to 'expose the result of experience acquired at his own cost, with all attendant risk and danger.' Probably we do not understand the fear of the author of 'Tardy Truths,' and wish to give no extended explanation to his conclusion: 'A rare opportunity occurs at present, and he profits by it.' We have been taught that we must always have courage to speak the truth. Surely no great amount of that noble quality is required to make accusations in a paper far from the scene of action, and pronounce a verdict where there can be no adequate defence, no judges, only the advantage of the fashion of the day, and the craving for problematical benefits and friendship, to which we must apply Moore's comparison:
'Like Dead Sea fruits, that tempt the eye,
But turn to ashes on the lips.'
Let us never be deceived: a free nation in the embrace of absolutism must, sooner or later, fall a prey to the cajoler's hypocrisy and greed.
The correspondent reports that the Polish Committee in Paris declined to give him information or furnish means, and even said that they did not wish volunteers. All this may readily be explained by the consideration that a man who thereafter proved to be so bitter an enemy was not sufficiently diplomatic to deceive even the obtuse perceptions of so undeserving a body as the author describes said committee. On the other hand, it would have been more prudent for the writer to have said less on this topic, as such hesitation in accepting his services might induce the reader to think that the Poles were not so anxious for external aid as he seemed to fancy. We also know that not only at present in Poland, but in former ages, and in our own days, in the happiest of countries, there can be no revolution, no war, which will not attract a host of men covetous of rank or fortune. Lately, in Poland, by certain judicious arrangements, this calamity has been prevented, to the great dissatisfaction of many.
No one can doubt or deny that the interest of various Governments, and the sense of justice among nations, gave the Poles a right to expect foreign aid. The assurances of certain politicians and statesmen even gave reasonable expectation of such a result. Such aid would of course neither be rejected nor treated with indifference. But the assertion that the Poles relied solely on such aid is (in the face of the manifesto of January 22d and July 31st, 1863) either a proof of ill will, or of entire ignorance of the resources upon which Poland was bound to rely, and which could not be intrusted to the discretion of every volunteer or pretended well-wisher to the Polish nation.
Continuing his imputations, the accuser says he only learned afterward why seven thousand Parisian workmen, registered at M. d'Harcourt's committee, 'were not sent forth.' The probable purport of this reproach is: 'They were not sent for fear of the introduction of liberal elements—and the proletariat—into Poland.' As to the latter, we may at once confidently answer that, were Poland free to-day, the condition of the laboring class in Western Europe need not be dreaded for a hundred years to come. As to the liberal element, does the author indeed think that Poland has had no Liberalists similar to Voltaire, La Mennais, Victor Hugo, L. Blanc, Mazzini, or Hertzen? Does he fancy that Modzewski (in the sixteenth century), Skarga (a Catholic preacher in the seventeenth), Morsztyn, Jezierski, Andrew Zamoyski, Hugo Kollontay, Loyko (in the eighteenth), Staszye, Lelewel, Mochnacki, Ostrowski, Czynski, Mieroslawski, and a host of others, contented with the private good they did, and forced to shun the jealous watchfulness of suspicious rulers—does he, we say, fancy that all these needed to be inspired by the liberality of Parisian workmen, or even that all the aforesaid workmen would apply themselves to the dissemination of liberal opinions? It is indeed a great disadvantage to Polish Liberalists, philosophers, and poets, that they speak and write in a tongue unknown to the noble philanthropists of the West. A greater amount of knowledge would have saved hasty tourists, veracious lecturers, and all-knowing diplomatists many errors in statement and conception, and much aversion toward a noble people, who, if vanquished, will not be crushed, and will always reserve the right of protest.
At all events, this last conclusion of our correspondent leads us to suspect that he may perchance never have been in Poland—perhaps never even in Paris—since this non-sending forth of seven thousand Parisians was better understood by every gamin du faubourg than apparently by the sincere narrator of 'Tardy Truths.'
The writer says further, that he expected to find in Kracow 'activity and infinite means.' Now, the author and the confidence of the Poles must have been quite strangers to one another, or his imagination must have misled him farther than was becoming in a man of knowledge and reflection. He does not mention the date of his journey, but we know about the period referred to. It is true that at that time Kracow had not yet been declared in a state of siege by M. Pouilly de Mensdorf, but, as a personal friend of the Czar, he had then held Galicia and Kracow during the past year under a more uncertain condition than even the declaration of a state of siege would have produced. Twenty thousand chosen officers and soldiers, with discretionary and greatly enlarged powers, and almost as many policemen and spies, with early fed and increasing covetousness for rewards, promotions, and orders, kept constant watch over the ancient capital of Poland, the last remnant of Polish nationality which had been engulfed in the European peace of 1846.
We may then safely assert that our author has given us sketches from his whims and fancies, rather than the mature results of his judgment, and that he has also neglected to direct his researches into the history of the past. It is doubtless true that he was not desired as a volunteer, and that he found danger only, and not fortune, which, indeed, we think his own sagacity might have taught him from the first.
We would be forced to doubt that any one understood the policy of the Polish Committee in Warsaw who should apply the epithet 'mercenary' to the Polish soldiers. We would not ask our author how much he gave per diem to those under his own command: we have no wish to rival the wit of a Russian proclamation which appeared last winter in Warsaw, in which the Poles in general, including those who fought at Orsza, Wielikie Luki, Kirchholm, Chocim, Smolensk, Vienna, Zurich, Hohenlinden, Samocierros, Pultusk, Grochow, Iganie, Zyzyny, Opatow, etc., etc., were stigmatized as poltroons and cowards!
It is certainly true that the battles of late have not represented a file of twenty thousand men, but to call them on that account frontier demonstrations, is to add subtle calumny to ungenerous irony; it is a deviation even from the very 'tardy truths.' It is an assertion not made in an impartial spirit, but calculated in favor of, and determinately stated with the intention of sustaining those who are exerting themselves to prove that Minsk, Grodno, Mohilew, Wolhynia, Podole, Plock, Augustow, Lithuania, Samogitia, Liefland, etc., were ancient dependencies of Russia, before she had herself an existence either in name or fact! If the originator of the term frontier demonstrations would take the trouble to study the map, he would not be able to cherish the delusion that his intelligent readers could believe that battles fought near Kowno, Oszmiana, Upita, Poniewiez, Lida, Ihumen, Dubno, Pinsk, Mscislaw, etc., were really frontier demonstrations!
This declaration of the letter from Paris to America would not be of much service to The Journal of St. Petersburg or The Invalid, of Moscow, or increase their exhilaration over the extermination of the Polish race, the destruction of Polish principles. There is nothing more natural than that a rebuke to the Siècle, Opinion Nationale, Patrie, and perhaps even others, should follow such statements—their views undoubtedly stand in complete opposition to those held by M. de Girardin, and advocated in La Presse.
The assertion that the Polish National Government had no object in view but to excite and await the intervention of France; that Galicia was the principal focus of the rebellion, and that the unknown Government had no actual existence, is, on the one hand, an unskilful attempt to justify the Governments of Russia and Austria, and, on the other, by the ignoring of all the reports of the Polish National Government—all its obvious facts, its printed documents, its acts everywhere known and seen, its seizures of papers and documents—and to portray it as a fraud, a myth, a dream of the imagination, a wild hallucination of a disordered brain, it suggests to us the thought that the tardy and present truths here given us of Poland may perhaps have the same origin as that famous description in one of the St. Petersburg papers, of 'the at last truly discovered leader of the Polish insurrection,' which was but a portraiture of a certain, not mentioned but easily guessed, personage in Paris.
We have no reply to make to this reproach (we can only wonder that under the circumstances they should ever have been made) that the Polish volunteers were badly armed and illy managed—possibly they might have been better even in a partisan war. But as to the want of skill in the officers, including such as Skarzynski, Bosak, Padlewski, we wonder that the writer or his friend F. could not succeed in making their talents known and valued, and become at least leaders among the blind. Of course he had to contend with cross-eyed jealousy. Yet if, as a foreigner, and a learned one too, he was, as he himself informs us, intimately admitted into various chateaux, it seems almost impossible he should have had no opportunity to become major, colonel, or even general, since it is well known, and every foreigner will bear witness to the fact, that in these chateaux there has always been too much attention and too great preference shown to foreigners—a preference, however, in which the lower classes do not participate.
As to the easy chateau life led in Galicia, as in Russia, we have a remark to offer. In a country exposed during five or six centuries to incessant struggle against Asiatic craving for European allurements, or, to speak more definitely, after ninety-four Mongolian incursions, in which twenty millions of Polish people were carried off, and thousands of towns, bourgs, and villages were destroyed; after numberless wars, plunders, and devastations by Jazygs, Turks, Muscovites, Crusaders, Wallachians, Transylvanians, Swedes, Brandenburgians, etc., etc.; after a hundred years of the so-called paternal spoliation of Russia, Prussia, and Austria—there could have been no opportunity, even under Graff Pouilly de Mensdorf, to build comfortable chateaux on the mouldering ruins, or for the accumulation of means for an easy life under the oppressions of an Austrian tariff, which exacted that goods manufactured in Lemberg should be sent for inspection to the Vienna custom house before being exposed to sale. There are, however, a few very splendid chateaux, like oases in the Desert of Sahara; they can be counted readily on one's fingers; among them few patriots; no conspirator, much less an insurgent or crippled invalid, ever called to ask hospitality.
The calumny so often repeated, so urgently insisted upon, that the aim of the Polish insurrection was inconsistent, foolish, and wicked, might not perhaps astonish the reader more than the report of the want of zeal and faith in the convictions of the Poles, a fact first revealed to the world in 'Tardy Truths.' This warning with regard to the true character of the struggle on the shores of the Vistula might prove of service in aiding the discrimination of the American people, and be useful in confusing the judgment of the liberal men and newspapers, which, whether in Germany, Belgium, France, or England, are not too much inclined to favor the cause of Polish independence; nay, it would spare France the useless demonstration in the Chambers, made in consequence of the speech of November 5th. The late efforts of the Poles are also shown to have been inspired and incited by, and carried on for the benefit of, the Catholic clergy, stimulated by fanaticism against the liberal, civilizing, enlightened, Rosso-Greek Church, a view which might and has proved very useful to modern lecturers and letter writers. The warning therein given might also serve to degrade the Polish revolution to the level of some of the slave-holders' rebellion. Let us reflect but for one single moment on the parallel attempted to be drawn, particularly in the New York papers, after the unfortunate Mexican imbroglio and subsequent visit of the Russian fleet, between things so utterly unlike. The Poles fought for everything most dear to the heart of man, for every right which he can justly claim, for independence, national existence, the right to use his own language, for the integrity of his country;—the States of the South had all these in full possession, nay, even the right to pass the law binding the North. These things might be shown to be essentially dissimilar in every respect, but this short statement is deemed sufficient to show the futility of the comparison.
Let us now proceed to say a few words with regard to the plausible arguments so generally set forth for the glorification of the Czar, in respect to the emancipation of the Polish serfs. The Czar gave in 1864 what had already been given by the Poles themselves in 1863; less the soil, which indeed never belonged to him, but for which he exacts payment. Besides, he has confiscated, without regulations or laws, the income from forests, rents, fields, and fisheries, belonging to old men, women, and children, whose only crime was that they had been born Poles, or whom it pleased the hungry throng of unscrupulous, greedy, and fanatical officials, unbounded in their zeal as in their power, to denounce, accuse, or dislike. We could fully prove the fact that the greater part of the peasants are now forced by bayonets to work for the exacted pay, and most of them venture to doubt entirely the propriety of the pretended Russian gift. This one circumstance makes this gift in the greater part of Poland and even, of Russia more burdensome than the old state of regulated labor; for how is a peasant to procure money in provinces distant from markets, rivers, and towns? Under what conditions would it be possible to obtain it? And even in cases where the peasant may be able to make a sale, the value received for eight bushels of potatoes will not be sufficient to buy him a common axe. How many calves, cows, sheep, horses, and hogs are brought back from market from the impossibility of finding purchasers, even at the lowest prices? Now, by the decree of January 22d, the Polish National Government gave freedom, and land relieved from all claims, thus executing what was in accordance with the spirit and wishes of the Poles, without losing sight of the difficulties to be encountered. It was their imperative duty to satisfy and adjust the exigencies of the national political economy. Fortunately, it was found possible to harmonize the requirements of the country with the personal interests of the proprietors. The amount of land held by them was in general so large, that even after endowing the peasant with the allotted portion, considerable would still remain in their hands. Diminished in extent and value during the transitional phase, the remaining land would necessarily rise rapidly in value, because the emancipated peasant would now have the right to own and buy land. The calculation might be sustained that it would quintuple in value in the course of fifty years. Small farms from their possessions would soon be in the market, farms within the range of small purses and limited means, and the proprietors did not fail to see the advantage which would accrue to them in the almost unlimited increase of purchasers which would soon be found among the enfranchised laborers. The peasants gained freedom, land, and many advantages, nor were the proprietors ruined in their advancement. Hence the National Government effected what the Rossian never intended to do or ever will achieve: gain and loss were equalized in the national duty of sustaining the country in its progressive course, stimulating all to labor simultaneously to support its public burdens, to aid in the general advancement. The real freedom thus gained, in accordance with the far-sighted policy of the Polish National Government, opened wide the door to liberty, trade, commerce, and exchange; a policy which czarism, even in its most liberal mood, can never admit, because it would condemn itself, and give the death blow to its own existence. There is another specialty peculiar to the Rossian Government, never forgotten by those who live under its rule, viz.: the late emancipation was begun about three years ago by an ukase of no very decided purport, which was followed by many others of like uncertain character, according with the varying views of those by whom they were dictated, by the partisans of emancipation or by those standing in opposition to it. These ukases are ranged in their appropriate numerical titles, and there are at least five hundred thousand of them—whether imperial or senatorial, all legally binding. What memory could stand such a burden, or what might legal cavil not find therein?
It is an easy thing to 'speak for Buncombe,' as we say in America; it is an easy thing to proclaim measures when we take no thought of how they may be carried out; it is easy to excite the enthusiasm of the popular lecturer, always in search of novelty with which to feed his hearers; it may be pleasant to furnish venom to wounded self-esteem or disappointed and petty ambition—but it will be found an exceedingly difficult task to reconcile absolutism with freedom, czarism with liberalism, the division of men into appointed castes and classes with the existence of liberty and political equality. We are assured, not only by the writer of the letter in question, but by the sages of New York, that the Polish peasants were not willing to fight for Poland, that they called their countrymen now in arms against Rossia 'dogs of nobles,' and 'that it was really their duty to rise against and denounce their former masters to Rossia and Austria!'
If these assertions are true, who then filled the ranks of the Polish insurgents? Who furnished food to those who lived for months in the depths of forests, the haunts of mountain gorges? How was it possible that without the connivance of the peasants the insurgents should pass to and fro, or lie hidden in woods and fields? It was stated authoritatively that the insurgents, were composed principally of Hungarian refugees, about ten Frenchmen, a few strangers from other nations, but of the number of the lesser nobility, men, in short, in search of shelter and fortune. A strange fortune, a marvellous shelter indeed to reward the greed of the ambitious—exile, death, and torture! Were the testimony of such witnesses to be relied upon, we might well exclaim: 'Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.' Yet how is it that we find among the seven hundred patriots who were hung so many Poles, less than a half of whom were Catholics, many of whom were Jews, Protestants, and even Rosso-Greeks of various classes? Among the forty thousand known deported, torn ruthlessly away from their native homes for centuries, we find nearly five thousand Israelites, ten thousand peasants (known), and from four to six thousand of Greek and other creeds. The two villages near Lida, two in the government of Grodno, the hundreds of villages and thousands of huts near Dwina, Rzezyca, Mohilew, Witebsk, burned, razed to the ground by an excited and hired rabble of Muscovite Muziks, who had sought and found hospitality in Poland for hundreds of years—certainly all these villages and huts were not inhabited even by the 'lesser nobility.' And it is also certain that the dwellers were not so cruelly punished for denouncing the 'dogs of nobles'—an expression, if we are not mistaken, taken from the vocabulary of the corporal or subaltern officials, and which has never reached the fourteenth class—from which the Rossian begins to reckon humanity.
The allegation of the existence of unrooted feudalism in Poland, because such a system was known to the whole of Middle Europe, must be accounted for by the evident ignorance of Polish history; and we assure both teachers and readers, notwithstanding the evident wish to find it in Poland, that it was unknown to her, nor could it subsist in the presence of Polish institutions, habits, customs, and geography.
We can scarcely suppose it possible that our author means to insinuate that thousands of noble families bought and transported arms for the purpose of speculation. Notwithstanding the evidence he had of one such bad business transaction for the purpose of sustaining and upholding the insurrection, his frequent intimations of the incorrigible and unruly character of the few Poles left, would almost authorize us in believing that such was the intention of the writer when speaking of the aforesaid arms.
Oh, in the name of common sense, for the sake of the men whose country has been torn from them, who may not speak their mothers' tongue in the land of their fathers, who are forbidden to worship in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, whose sacred homes are desecrated by the presence of privileged spies, who cannot sit down in peace in the holy quiet of evening, because they know that the morrow may see them dragged off to unknown and inaccessible dungeons, or summoned before brutal judges without defenders, where they will find accusers, but will be allowed to cite no witnesses; subjected to witness the horrible anxiety endured every spring and fall by Polish fathers and mothers lest the sons of their love should be unexpectedly seized in the night and hurried off over the Caucasus, the Ural, or to the mouth of the Amour, to serve in the army of the oppressor for life, or longer than home memories in such young bosoms could be expected to last, with no prospect of reward save such as may be reckoned in the number of palkis and pletnis (whips and lashes); sons, whether rich or poor, to be exposed to cavil, cunning, and vindictiveness, to the practices of gambling judges and a profligate soldiery, to a venal police, to fraudulent employés, themselves badly paid for service, but whose extortions and abuses always meet with approval, a single complaint against whom would expose the complainant to be sent through that hopeless gate always open on the route to Siberia;—oh, for the sake of common humanity, say not that men placed in such situations have, in spite of their glorious history, no rights, no claims on human sympathy, no cause to sacrifice life even when it has become a haunting horror!
Believe not that such complaints are inventions: the facts are known to everybody who will look upon them. They are no slanderous stories, but occurrences renewed with every morning, taking place under all circumstances and with every transaction patent to the world. They were appreciated and described in Prussia, and even in Austria verified, not long before the last campaign. Under such circumstances, what must be thought of the discoveries and conclusions of writers who assert that 'the Polish nation is a mere chimera'? As no individual, mighty as he may be, can by a blasphemous word suppress the existence of the Eternal Father, so neither passion nor love, favor nor animosity, interest nor purpose of the most talented or ambitious, can erase at pleasure a nationality which has a history of over a thousand years of existence, a nationality proved by the last hundred years of incessant struggle for independence with three giants. This nation has marked its boundaries with graveyards toward the Dniester, Dnieper, Niemen, and Dwina, where rest the beaten hordes of Batu or Nogays. Can the record be erased of the power that broke the sword of the Osmanlis, and was it a chimera that preserved Western Europe from such sights as Polowce and Pietschiniegs, etc.? You may perhaps to-day designate as a chimera the Vienna saved in 1683, that very Vienna which in 1815 first conceived the idea of sowing the seeds of distrust between Galicians and Lodomerians—an idea soon after adopted, perfected, and publicly propagated by Rossians, who applied the practice to Lithuanians, Volhynians, Podolans, Polans, Radymicians, etc.—an idea now held in the fierce grasp of Muraview, Anienkow, and probably at no very distant period to be recalled to the mind of the originator.
The gentleman's knowledge of Russians (the true name is Rossians, the other being assumed to effect a certain purpose in Western Europe), Prussians, and Austrians, to the exclusion of Poles, proves only that his geographic and ethnographic researches in Poland went no farther than those of the 'reliable gentleman' who described the Bunker Hill monument under President Lafayette.
In addition to the above, let us consult simply the sound of the names of places, and we can form some idea of the extent of races and nationalities. Nowgorod, Kaluga, Pskow—are Rossian; Telsze, Szawle, Rosienie—Lithuanian; Winszpilis, Gielgawa, Libosie—Courland; Lublin, Ostrolenka, Plock—Polish; Wlodrimirz, Zytomirz, Berdyczev—Volhynian. In Austria, are the inhabitants of Venice, Prague, and Buda, Austrian? The name of Prussia is an old one of Slavonians living at the mouth of the Vistula, and has no etymology in the Teutonic language. Those of Galicia and Lodomeria are unskilfully disfigured from Halitsh (Halicz) and Wlodzimir. The name of Prussia was assumed by Frederic II., margrave of Brandenburg, when he took the title of king, at the same time giving solemn oaths never to pretend to the sovereignty of Dantzick (Gdansk), Thorn (Torun), etc.
The present empire of Alexander is not of Russia, but of Rossia, and the name of Russia is imposed on Polans near Kiow, on Radymicians near Nowogrodek, on Drewlans south of the river Pripec, etc.; and we must remember that Catharine II., in 1764, had solemnly declared by her ambassadors, Kayserling and Repnin, that she had no right to Russias or Ruthenias in Poland: 'Declaramus suam Imperatoriam Majestatem Dominam nostram clementissimam ex usu tituli totius Rossiæ, nec sibi, nec successoribus suis neque Imperio suo jus ullum in ditiones et terræ quæ sub nomine Russiæ a Regno Poloniæ magnoque ducatu Lithuaniæ possiduntur,' etc.
The prediction of the reëstablishment of serfdom as a result aimed at in the present Polish struggle, is not only rash but preposterous, and has no foundation except in a fixed purpose to direct all sympathy toward Rossia.
The true bondage that tied man in Poland to the soil, began with the introduction of police, passports, censors or skaski, recruiting, conscription, and taxation, introduced by Prussia, Austria, and Rossia, as so-called improvements. Poland had more free peasants, called Ziemianin, Kmiec, Kozak, than there were in France during the régime of the Gabeles or Leibeigenschaft in Germany. That they entirely disappeared after the fall of Poland was surely not her fault. The peasants on the estates attached to the clergy of all denominations, to public schools, to the crown, and to the nation, were in a much better condition, materially and morally, than are at present those in some parts of Hainault and Thuringen. Individual abuses by an unconscientious lord were to be seen as well in Connaught as near Debretschyn, near the Saone as on the Necker. Times—contemporary with independent Poland, and hence not very far back—beheld these sins against humanity committed on a larger scale, and in lands in otherwise happier conditions. The phrase bonded labor is known under the best institutions. But this excuses no one. Poland, without any compulsive cause, in 1764 and 1768, took these questions into consideration; in 1791, was even more explicit; and in 1792, Kosciuszko distinctly settled the condition of the Polish peasant, and that without opposition from the Polish nobility—a measure immediately overruled and suppressed by Prussia and Rossia, both accusing Poland of being a dangerous nest of Jacobinism. In 1807, in the grand duchy of Warsaw, after it was retaken from Prussia, the condition of the peasantry was far more clear and protected than even now promised by the Czar Alexander II., and was probably better preserved than it can be under the crowd of employés and magistrates, nominally elected by the peasants, but in fact imported from Saratow, Kazan, Penza, etc., for the purpose of teaching liberty and Siberian civilization in Warsaw and Wilna.
Common sense and the ordinary rules of logic force upon us the conviction that writings of the above stamp are gotten up to produce certain effects. Can any be found simple enough to believe that a whole people would be aroused, armed, and taught to what end and how to use the given arms, as was done by the manifesto of the Polish National Government, January 22d, 1863, only to be deceived and in the end deprived of that for which they had fought? By what right can bad faith be imputed to land owners whom experience, a sense of justice, and even interest, had already impelled to get rid of a useless and burdensome relation? These land owners, even under the Rossian Government (in 1818), had solemnly begged the uncle of the present czar, Alexander I., to allow them to be freed from the onerous responsibilities caused by serfdom under Rossian surveillance and severity.
The letter from Paris further states, on what authority we know not, that the condition of the peasant or serf in Poland was dreadful until the seventeenth century. This is going very far back, and probably at that period, if facts could be found to sustain the writer's allegation, the condition of bondmen—vilains regardants—boors, Lebeigenschaft, manans, etc., was not better elsewhere. But here again we must differ in opinion, and beg leave to state, not only to the author of the letter, but to all other self-constituted authorities, whose knowledge of Poland is derived from The London Times, Chambers's Magazine, M. Hilperding, Kattow, or M. Morny, etc., that, with all due respect to their social positions, we must deny them the title of well-informed historians and profound judges of Poland and the Slavonic races. Up to the seventeenth century, the peasantry (Kmiec, Ziemiamin) had its representatives in the diet, and could find entrance into the ranks of the nobility, which had no divisions into classes or titular distinctions. Said nobility had the right to serve their country during war, and a peasant providing himself with a horse and suitable arms, was not excluded from that class. They could also take orders among the clergy, and hence rise to high dignities in the church. Public schools in Poland were never shut to the peasants, nor were any distinctions therein authorized in favor of one or other class of pupils. In schools then they enjoyed all privileges in common, and these were great—a separate jurisdiction, and the facilities of reaching higher ranks. Kromer, Janicki, Poniatowski, great names in Polish history, can show no other origin than one nearer to the Ziemianin than to any other class.
If the current of fashion did not warp all judgments in favor of Rossia, the writers of 'Tardy Truths' from Paris and elsewhere would have reflected a little longer, and would soon have discovered that the ignorance and poverty of the Polish peasantry were not due solely to the Poles themselves. Polish schools were formerly all completely free, and each school even had funds for the poor, called purses, foundations, etc. Rossia, in the last fifty years, charged as high as $625 for inscription alone in the higher classes, and about $25 for elementary beginners. How could a poor family rise in prosperity if this school was often the first cause of losing the favorite son; if they did send the child to school they might lose him as a recruit for the army or navy, as designated by the whim of the treacherous teacher and recruiting officer; and this did not exempt from public burdens, as they were still obliged to pay taxes for him during ten years, and contribute to all public services, as stations (stoyki), wagons and teams (rozgony), repairing and making public and private roads, extra post service, besides innumerable services imposed for his own personal benefit by a spravnik, straptschy, zasiedatel, sotnik, etc. Add to this the thwarting of intercourse and commerce by every imaginable means under the system of the famous M. Kankrin.
Could the peasant or the master become wealthy when a measure called a ton, weighing about eight hundred and forty pounds, of wheat brought the enormous sum of $4.25? a load of hay, drawn by one horse, seventy-five cents when well paid, and nothing when wanted by ulans or hussars garrisoned in the neighborhood? A hen, with a dozen and a half well-grown chickens, hardly brought enough to pay the value of the commonest apron.
Such things as these were never known in ancient Poland, now so unanimously accused and condemned by fashionable philanthropy. Even eighty years ago such abuses would have been vainly looked for. We remember, in our younger days, when conversing with an old sowietnik (counsellor), to have heard him relate his bewildered astonishment at the comfort and well-being in Poland when sent under an escort of Cossacks to introduce Rossian improvements. 'What has become of them?' we asked innocently. 'Ha!' was his naïve reply; 'St. Petersburg has since then grown into a splendid city!'
Let us call the attention of Russo-maniacs to the fact that eighty years ago, soon after the second partition of Poland, flax in Riga brought eight hundred and seventy florins, while in 1845 it hardly brought two hundred and forty florins; and the famous wheat of Sandomir sold, at the first-named period, at sixty, while in 1856 it brought barely thirty-five. Yet money now is cheaper than before 1800.
Did the Polish nobleman, selfish and wicked as now seems the fashion to describe him, force the peasant of Samogitia to servile work, when the latter had an opportunity of drawing a good profit from the results of his labor in the neighboring marts of Memel, Liban, Riga, Mittau, Venden, etc.? No, must we answer to our readers. There might have been seen a boor's wife dressed in sky blue lined with fox fur, and drawn to church in a comfortable kolaska, by two excellent, plump, Samogitian ponies; and neither did the father of the family exhaust his strength in night watches or day labor, as he had twenty teams to dispose of, and could offer to an unexpected visitor a broiled chicken with milk sauce, and a couple of bottles of brown stout from Barclay, Perkins & Co., of London. Such prosperity, although then declining, was still to be found in 1830. Why does it not exist to-day? Let this question be answered by civilizers and democrats from Tambow, Saratow, or Penza, and their jealous apologists.
Our writer seems to think he has made a wonderful discovery when he exultingly exclaims: 'How surprised these pretended liberals would be to see that their efforts only tend toward reconstituting a monarchical Poland (was Poland really monarchical?—we may doubt) under the protection of a feudal and Catholic Church!' Such charges were also made in the eighteenth century, and were suggested by similar motives. I do not feel called upon to defend the Catholics of Poland. I would simply retort upon the authors of such suggestions, by referring to certain distinguished rabbis, as Heilprin, Meintzel, Jastrow, etc.; to Protestants, as Konarski, Potworowski, Kasaius, Krolikowski, Czynski, and hosts of others; and also to Mohammedans, as Baranowski, Mucha, Bielak, etc. I cannot condemn a man because he is a Catholic, because I have everywhere, and in every religious community, found both patriots and traitors to their country, to their origin, to principle, and to their religion. But this I must say, that of whatever denomination or sect be the minister or priest, he has a right to be a faithful son to his fatherland and race. It happened that in Poland the Catholic priest stood opposed to the Rossian pope. If the latter can be a Rossian patriot, why should a like sentiment render guilty a Polish priest? This animosity in certain circles proceeds from a partiality to the Rosso-Greek Church, which, some years ago, during the visit of the emperor Nicholas to England, certain ignorant or du. By way of parenthesis, we may add that the Rosso-Greek Church separated long ago from the Eastern Greek Church, preserving, however, all its outward forms. Peter I. abolished the patriarchate, introduced his own classes and reforms, and made himself head of the church. He gave the name of synod to a permanent council, nominated, appointed, dismissed, controlled, rewarded, and punished by himself, according to his own judgment, passion, or will. The Græco-Rossian Church is kept under the same discipline as the army, and an offending pope is sent, with the rank of private, to some remote regiment.
The author of the letter from Paris somewhat contradictorily asserts that the women, being superior in Poland, govern the men, but are themselves governed entirely by the priests. This scarcely tallies with strict logic; but, for the sake of truth and of a just respect for our mothers, who taught us to love our country and freedom, who gave us strength in exile, and faith through persecution, and who instructed us how to think, and inspired us with those noble sentiments, seemingly denied to the mothers of the 'fashionable civilization' (of St. Petersburg), among whom there is not one lady writer—we will thank this writer for the refutation offered by him to an impudent slander, emanating from a contributor to Chambers' Magazine, of January last. We repeat that we thank him for his just tribute to Polish women, however inimical he may be to the Polish cause, and however much he may depreciate our sex. Yet it seems strange that, while accusing Polish women of being entirely under the control of the priests, and hence to have been chiefly instrumental in fomenting the last insurrection, the author did not notice, or is purposely silent regarding, a fact which, as he appears to have been longer in a Galician chateau than elsewhere, must have fallen under his notice, namely, that in Galicia, the Polish priest was the most decided opponent to any insurrection. How, then, could the active Polish women-patriots be instruments of the action condemned by the apologists of the absolute government of Rossia?
The admonition to France, on the ground that, after the revolution of 1789, she is committing a contradictory error by showing sympathy toward a revolution gotten up by priests, is but a consequence of the first judgment, and we may leave to France and her sense of her own interests to do what she may think right and profitable. We will simply mention that, for French glory, and for this error, as the author calls it, two hundred thousand Poles were slain in Egypt, Italy, San Domingo, Spain, Germany, Holland, and on the plains of Mozajsk, Kraslaw, Boryssow, Eylau, Friedland, etc. The monument seen from the balcony of the Tuileries has the names upon it, which we scarcely can suppose to have been inscribed for the sole purpose of filling space.
The friends of Poland believe that they serve the cause of progress by aiding in the reëstablishment of the Polish nation. We presume there are plenty of men in France who know that during the last thirty years Rossia has spread her dominion in Asia over twice the area of Germany and France together, that she is only eighty miles from Peking, and as far from India as Vienna is from the Black Sea. Moreover, Asiatic people, always dreaming of plunder in Europe, once armed with European Minié rifles and rifled cannon, may repeat anew the incursions of Attila, Tamerlane, Battu, etc. The end to be gained and the booty will create the temptation, and offer superior inducements.
The effort to palliate Rossian cruelty, skilful as it is, by the alleged necessities of war, by denials, or by asserting it to be mere revenge for similar atrocities committed by Poles, must be appreciated according to the sources whence it emanates. What the letter writer or similar twelve-hour visitors saw in Poland, particularly in Kracow, of people sharpening knives or preparing deadly poisons, need here be merely referred to by saying that in times of general confusion we have no means to foresee or to control personal revenge, and also that we will not here cite the reports of Polish papers or accounts of Germans. We will take our data from the Moscow Invalid, the czar's Universal Journal at Warsaw, and the Journal de Petersbourg. From these we find it stated that the number of men hanged in three hundred and sixty-five days of insurrection was eight hundred and fifty, besides many others whose names were not given because it was simpler and more profitable to ignore their origin, class, and religion.
From Kiow alone Anienkow sent away fourteen thousand men, chiefly of Greek or other non-Roman-Catholic religion, over whom the Catholic priest had neither control or influence. From Warsaw, every Saturday during fifty-two weeks, an average of four hundred men, women, and children were deported, all separated from their natural guides and protectors. From Liefland, north of the Dwina, were sent off, in one month, thirty-five hundred of the better educated and comfortable class of people. A Government paper rejoices that Polish and Catholic principles, growing there during five centuries, were in a fair way of extinction, since, as it itself admits, forty-five thousand men had been transferred to the governments of Samara, Orenburg, Kazan, and similar localities. To burn the villages of Ibanie, Szarki, Hrodki, Smoloy, Zabolocie, etc., to destroy the furniture, horses, cattle, and all other property, to send the inhabitants on foot, only allowing for the aged and young children a few small wagons, far away into a cold, strange, savage country, without tools, means, etc.—was all this done merely as a military necessity, and was it excusable, or, at most, merely blamable?
Now, certain correspondents and lecturers, with other gentlemen, deny the use of the lash or whip on the backs of women and ladies, because the American people cannot countenance such barbarism. To say the least of such a denial—it is gratuitous. Austria daily publishes similar judgments as the result of police court trials. In Rossia, they are not published, because the administration of lash, whip, and scourge is left to the paternal discretion of every sergeant, lieutenant, police commissary, and district constable, and is enjoyed by them to their hearts' content. It is the method employed for ages by Rossia, and considered as an indispensable appendage to patriarchal czarism and its lieutenants. We cannot wonder at such denials, for their authors have ordinarily been brought up under a better state of things, and never learned in their youth the possibility of resort to such practices: the less also can we wonder when we know that they met only similar denials in the higher Rossian society, and when we consider that such denials came from a source one is naturally inclined to respect, when the man denying seems respectable. How can we fancy a lie told by a gentleman in golden uniform, or a lady in a lace dress? But if the defenders of the civilization of Rossia and of the noble manners of its aristocracy knew all the cruel judgments of Rossian masters, the lewdness, recklessness, indecency, and shallowness often concealed beneath their artificial good breeding and apparent courtesy, they would learn that laces may cover coarse tissues, and gold hide corroded brass. The gaudy dress and uniform serve but to permit more daring deeds; the more they glitter, the more impunity they confer. Under every Government, and more especially under a despotism, subaltern officers may be sure of impunity to abuse, provided it is done under the guise of zeal and devotion.
During the past year we have heard and read in lectures, newspapers, correspondences, etc., many flattering statements of the beauty of the Rossian Government, and the czar's liberality—and as many accusations and imputations detrimental to the Polish cause. Why the same views were not held and advocated during the Crimean war we will not ask, but merely hint at. These statements come from organs whose purpose is readily divined. If we turn to the paper that has opened its columns to the Paris letter, we find close at hand the advertisement and recommendation of a programme for our own great country, and the pointing out of a new Garibaldi for the American Union. Now, neither said platform nor Garibaldi would be consistent with the condemnation, irony, and ridicule flung upon the champions for one thousand years of the growing progress, prosperity, and Christianity of Western Europe.
We of this generation are grown fixedly into our ancient habits of thought, and now can make no change; but our successors, perchance, may possibly be reduced to undersign the manifesto of Rossian Liberalism, published about a year ago in Moscow, and, in return for false promises and deceptions, consent to make common cause against Germany and the whole of Western Europe. What American liberties would gain by such an eventuality, is not for us, nor for to-day, to say.
APHORISMS.—NO. XI.
'A man who has no wants has attained great freedom, and firmness, and even dignity.'—Burke.
'Mad wants and mean endeavors,' as Carlyle expresses it, 'are among the signal characteristics and great follies of our nature.'
But how can we attain to the freedom, firmness, and dignity of having no wants? Answer: By learning what our real necessities are, and limiting our sense of want by such knowledge. Otherwise there is little hope for us; for, as soon as we admit imaginary and factitious needs, we become the slaves of mere fancy, the sport of mere human opinion, and devoid of all true dignity.
How sublime, as compared with the ordinary condition of men, is the possibility suggested by Burke! Freedom, instead of such slavery as the love of pleasure occasions, or such as ambition entails upon men! Firmness, such as he has who does not feel compelled to ask how his conduct may affect the supply of his wants from day to day! Dignity, such as we see in every man who studies the great interests of his being, regardless of any harm that may thereby accrue to his earthly estate! So free, and firm, and dignified may each be that will.
But no such good is possible for men who allow their sense of want to be ruled by the common opinions of men. If the good at which we aim can be secured only by the possession of this world's favors, as they are dispensed by the wealthy or the powerful, or the suffrages of the multitude (votes for office, and the like), then each one becomes the servant of his fellow men—a servant just as really as if he were hired to perform any menial office. The party politician, for example, is just as fully bound by the will of others as a coachman or foot servant. For him neither freedom, firmness, or dignity is possible. He can do only as others bid him: he can resist no solicitations to evil on the part of those whom he would make his constituents: he has no dignity above that of a tool, in the hands, it may be, of a very unworthy master.
So in all cases where we allow ourselves to be dependent in such form and measure that in order to compass our own ends we must look to the will and behests of others.
AN ARMY: ITS ORGANIZATION AND MOVEMENTS.
THIRD PAPER.
Cavalry! At this word whose mind does not involuntarily recall pictures of mailed knights rushing upon each other with levelled lances, and of the charging squadrons of Austerlitz, of Jena, of Marengo, of the Peninsula, and of Waterloo? Whose blood is not stirred with a throng of memories connected with the noble achievements of the war horse and his rider? Who does not imagine a panorama of all that is gay and glorious in warfare—prancing coursers, gilded trappings, burnished sabres, waving pennons, and glittering helmets—rank after rank of gallant riders—anon the blast of bugles, the drawing of sabres, the mighty rushing of a thousand steeds, the clash of steel, the shout, the victory? The chief romance of war attaches itself to the deeds accomplished by the assistance of the power and endurance of man's noblest servant. Every one has read so much poetry about valiant youths, mounted on fiery yet docile steeds, doing deeds of miraculous prowess in the ranks of their enemies—our literature is so full of tapestried representations of knightly retinues and charging squadrons—the towering form of Murat is so conspicuous in the narratives of the Napoleonic wars—and history has so often repeated the deeds of those horsemen who performed such illustrious feats in the combats of half a century ago, that we associate with the cavalry only ideas of splendor and glory, of wild freedom and dashing gallantry. But the cavalry service is far different from such vague and fanciful imaginations. Instead of ease, there is constant labor; instead of freedom, there is a difficult system of discipline and tactics; and instead of frequent opportunities for glorious charges, there is a constant routine of toilsome duty in scouting and picketing, with rarely an opportunity for assisting prominently in the decision of a great battle, or of winning renown in overthrowing the ranks of an enemy by the impetuous rush of a mass of horses against serried bayonets.
In many respects cavalry is the most difficult branch of military service to maintain and to operate. It is exceedingly costly, on account of the great loss of horses by the carelessness of the men, by overwork, by disease, and by the fatalities of battle. The report of General Halleck, for the year 1863, stated that from May to October there were from ten thousand to fourteen thousand cavalry in the Army of the Potomac, while the number of horses furnished them for the same period was thirty-five thousand; adding to these the horses taken by capture and used for mounting men, the number would be sufficient to give each man a horse every two months. There were two hundred and twenty-three regiments of cavalry in the service, which, at the same rate, would require four hundred and thirty-five thousand horses. This is an immense expenditure of animals, and is attributable in part to the peculiarities of the volunteer service—such as the lack of care and knowledge on the part of the officers, and the disposition of the men to break down their horses by improper riding, and sometimes out of mere wantonness, for the purpose of getting rid of animals they do not like, for the chance of obtaining better. A measure has recently been adopted to remedy these evils, by putting into the infantry cavalry officers and men who show themselves incompetent to take proper care of their animals, and who neglect other essentials of cavalry service. The provision and transportation of forage for cavalry horses also constitute items of great cost.
To attain proficiency and effectiveness, cavalry soldiers require much longer instruction than those of any other arm. They must become expert swordsmen, and acquire such skill in equitation that horse and rider shall resemble the mythical centaurs of the ancients—shall be only one individual in will. The horses should be as thoroughly trained as the riders. In European armies this is accomplished in training schools. The Governments keep constantly on hand large supplies of animals, partly purchased and partly produced in public stables, and capable instructors are continually employed in fitting both men and horses for their duties.
To insure the provision of proper horses and to recuperate those which are sent from the army disabled or sick, an immense cavalry depot has been established at Giesboro', near Washington. Thousands of horses are kept there ready for service, and as fast as men in the army are dismounted by the loss of their animals, they are sent to this depot. It is one of the most useful and best-arranged affairs connected with our service, and has greatly assisted in diminishing the expense attending the provision of animals, and in increasing the efficiency of our cavalry.
We have had all the difficulties to contend with resulting from inexperienced riders and untrained horses. No one who has not beheld the scene, can imagine the awkward appearance of a troop of recruits mounted on horses unaccustomed to the saddle. The sight is one of the most laughable that can be witnessed. We have seen the attempt made to put such a troop into a gallop across a field. Fifty horses and fifty men instantly became actuated by a hundred different wills, and dispersed in all directions—some of the riders hanging on to the pommels, with their feet out of the stirrups, others tugging away at the bridles, and not a few sprawling on the ground. After a few months' drills, however, a different scene is presented, and an old troop horse becomes so habituated to his exercises that not only will he perform all the evolutions without guidance, but will even refuse to leave the ranks, though under the most vigorous incitements of whip and spur. An officer friend was once acting as cavalier to a party of ladies on horseback at a review, when, unfortunately, the troop in which his horse belonged happening to pass by, the animal bolted from the group of ladies, and took his accustomed place in the ranks, nor could all the efforts of his rider disengage him. Finally, our friend was obliged to dismount, and, holding the horse by the bit, back him out of the troop to his station with the party of ladies—a feat performed amid much provoking laughter.
Cavalry can operate in masses only when circumstances are favorable—the country open, and the ground free from obstructions. Yet it is in masses alone that it can be effective, and it can triumph against infantry only by a shock—from the precipitation of its weight upon the lines, crushing them by the onset. Before the time of Frederic the Great, the Prussian horsemen resembled those to be seen at a militia review—they were a sort of picture soldiers, incapable of a vigorous charge. He revolutionized the service by teaching that cavalry must achieve success by a rapid onset, not stopping to fire themselves, and not regarding the fire of their opponents. By practising these lessons, they were able to overthrow the Austrian infantry. But if the force of a charge is dissipated by obstructions on the ground, or is broken by the fire of the assailed, the effectiveness of cavalry, as a participant in the manœuvres of a battle field, is entirely destroyed.
The question of the future of cavalry is at present one of great interest among military investigators; for notwithstanding its brilliant achievements during our civil war, the fact is apparent that its sphere has been entirely changed, its old system has become obsolete, and former possibilities no longer lie within its scope. Since Waterloo there had not been, until our war commenced, any opportunity to test the action of cavalry; for its operations in the Crimea and in Italy were insignificant. The art of warfare had, meanwhile, in many respects, become revolutionized by the introduction of rifled arms. Military men waited, therefore, with interest, the experience of the war in this country, to judge from it as to the part cavalry was to perform in future warfare. That experience has shown that the day in which cavalry can successfully charge squares of infantry has passed. When the smooth-bore muskets alone were used by infantry, cavalry could be formed in masses for charging at a distance of five hundred yards; now the formations must be made at the distance of nearly a mile, and that intervening space must be passed at speed under the constant fire of cannon and rifles; when the squares are reached, the horses are frightened and blown, the ranks have been disordered by the impossibility of preserving a correct front during such a length of time at rapid speed, and by the loss of men; the charge breaks weakly on the wall of bayonets, and retires baffled. Infantry, before it learns its own strength and the difficulty of forcing a horse against a bayonet—or rather to trample down a man—has an absurd and unfounded fear of cavalry. This feeling was in part the cause of the panic among our troops at Bull Run—so much had been said about the Black Horse troop of the rebels. The Waterloo achievements of the French were then thought possible of repetition. Now adays it is hardly probable that the veteran infantry of either army would take the trouble to form squares to resist cavalry, but would expect to rout it by firing in line. Neither party in our war has been able to make its mounted forces effective in a general battle. Nothing has occurred to parallel, upon the battle field, those exploits of the cavalry—French, Prussian, and English—in the great wars of the last century, extending to Waterloo.
The enthusiastic admirers of cavalry still maintain that it is possible to repeat those exploits, even in face of the improved firearms now in use. All that is necessary, they say, is to have the cavalry sufficiently drilled. The ground to be crossed under a positively dangerous fire is only five hundred or six hundred yards, and once taught to continue the charge through the bullets for this distance, and then to throw themselves on the bayonets, horsemen will now, as heretofore, break the lines of infantry. All very true, if cavalry to fulfil the conditions named can be obtained; but in them lies the difficulty. Occasional instances of splendid charges will undoubtedly occur in future warfare; but it seems to be an established fact that the day for the glory of cavalry has passed. Once the mailed knight, mounted on his mailed charger, could overthrow by scores the poor, pusillanimous pikemen and crossbow men who composed the infantry; he was invulnerable in his iron armor, and could ride them down like reeds. But gunpowder and the bayonet have changed this; and now the most confident and domineering cavalryman will put spurs to his horse and fly at a gallop, if he sees the muzzle of an infantryman's rifle, with its glittering bayonet, pointed at him from the thicket.
Another revolution effected in the mounted service by the improvements in arms and the consequent changes of tactics, is the diminution of heavy and the increase of light cavalry—that is, the transfer of the former into the latter. These two denominations really include all kinds of cavalry, although the non-military reader may have been puzzled by the numerous subordinate denominations to be found in the accounts of European warfare—such as dragoons, cuirassiers, hussars, lancers, chasseurs, hulans, etc.
Heavy cavalry is composed of the heavier men and horses, and is usually divided into dragoons and cuirassiers. It is designed to act in masses, and to break the lines of an enemy by the weight of its charge. Usually, also, it has had some defensive armor, and is a direct descendant from the knights of the Middle Ages. But the cuirasses, which were sufficient to resist the balls from smooth-bore muskets, are easily penetrated by rifles. Consequently the occupation of this kind of cavalry is gone, and it is likely to disappear gradually from the service. In this country we have never had anything except light cavalry—the only kind adapted for use in our Indian warfare. This kind of cavalry is intended to accomplish results by the celerity of its movements, and all its equipments should therefore be as light as possible. The chief difficulty is to prevent the cavalry soldier from overloading his horse, as he has a propensity not only to carry a large wardrobe and a full supply of kitchen utensils, but also to 'convey,' in the language of Pistol, or, in army language, 'gobble up,' or, in plain English, steal anything that is capable of being fastened to his saddle.
It is evident that the efficiency of a cavalry soldier depends as much upon his horse as upon himself; and it is requisite, therefore, that the weight upon the horse should be as light as possible. The limit has been fixed at about two hundred pounds for light, and two hundred and fifty for heavy cavalry; but both of these are too much. A cavalry soldier ought not to weigh over one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty pounds, and his accoutrements not over thirty pounds additional; but in practice, scarcely any horse—except where the rider is a very light weight—carries less than two hundred and twenty or two hundred and thirty pounds. One great cause of the evils incident to our cavalry service is the excessive weight imposed on the horses. The French take particular pains in this respect; while in England the cavalry is almost entirely 'heavy,' and, though well drilled, is clumsy. John Bull, with his roast beef and plum pudding, makes a poor specimen of a light cavalryman. English officers are now endeavoring to revolutionize their mounted service, so as to diminish its weight and increase its celerity.
The arms of cavalry have been various, but it is now well settled that its true weapon is the sabre, as its true form of operation is the charge. A great deal of ingenuity has been expended in devising the best form of sabre. Different countries have different patterns, but the one adopted in our army is very highly considered. It is pointed, so as to be used in thrusting; sharp on one edge for cutting; curved, so as to inflict a deeper wound; and the weight arranged, by a mathematical rule, so that the centres of percussion and of gravity are placed where the weapon may be most easily handled. The lance is a weapon very appropriate to light mounted troops, and is still used by some of the Cossacks and Arab horsemen. But to wield it effectively requires protracted training. For a long time in Europe it was the chief weapon for horsemen; with the knights it was held in exclusive honor, and continued in use for a considerable period after firearms had destroyed the prestige of the gentlemen of the golden spurs. Prince Maurice, of Orange, when he raised mounted regiments to defend the Netherlands against the Spanish, rejected it, and since his time it has become obsolete except in some regiments especially drilled to it. Such a regiment was raised in Philadelphia at the commencement of our war, but after eighteen months' experience the lances were abandoned. Besides the sabre, cavalry-men are armed with pistols or carbines—the men having the latter being employed particularly in skirmishing, sometimes on foot.
The proportion of mounted troops in an army varies according to the nature of the country which is the theatre of military operations. In a level country it should be about one fourth or one fifth, while in one that is mountainous, it should not be greater than a tenth. As a general rule, improvements in firearms have produced a decrease in the proportion of cavalry and lessened its importance. When artillery was introduced, the cavaliers, who composed the Middle Age armies exclusively, commenced to disappear; knighthood passed out of existence, being superseded by mercenary bands. Infantry gradually assumed importance, which has constantly increased, until it has now attained the vast predominance. This has not only caused a general diminution of the proportion of cavalry, but has entailed on the Governments of Europe the necessity of keeping their cavalry service always at its maximum, so that the mounted troops may be perfect in their drill; whereas infantry troops can acquire comparative proficiency in a few months.
We will give a brief description of the different classes of cavalry, and close our subject by some remarks on the operation of this arm of service in our civil war.
The regiments raised by Prince Maurice, of Orange, above referred to, were the first known as cuirassiers, on account of the cuirasses which they wore for defence. All defensive armor is now being laid aside.
Dragoons originally were a class of soldiers who operated both on foot and mounted. They are supposed to take their name from a kind of firearm called a 'dragon.' In modern practice dragoons are almost entirely used as cavalry, and rarely have recourse to any extended service on foot. The denomination 'dragoons' has recently been abolished from our service.
Carabineers were at first some Basque and Gascon horsemen in the French service, whose peculiarly distinguishing characteristic was a skilful use in the saddle of a short firearm.
Hussars originated in Hungary, taking their denomination from the word husz, which signifies twenty, and ar, pay—every twentieth man being required by the state to enter into service. From their origin they were distinguished for the celerity of their movements and their devotion to fine costumes.
The hulans were a species of Polish light cavalry, bearing lances, and taking their name from their commander—a nobleman named Huland.
Chasseurs are French regiments, designed chiefly to act as scouts and skirmishers. The chasseurs d'Afrique are cavalry which have been trained in Algeria, and have become exceedingly expert through conflicts with the Arabs. The spahis are Arab cavalry, in the French service, and are such admirable riders that they will charge over all kinds of ground, and dash upon a foe who judges himself secure amid rocks or trees or ditches.
At the commencement of the war the rebel cavalry was superior to that furnished by the North. For this there were many reasons. Southern plantation life had accustomed the aristocratic youth to the saddle, and great attention was bestowed on the training of horses. At the North the number of skilled riders was comparatively few. Gradually, however, Northern energy, endurance, and patient discipline began to tell, and the time soon arrived when the Southern cavalry were invariably driven, especially in sabre charges, to which Southerners have great aversion. At present, on account of the scarcity of horses, the difficulty of supplying forage, and the loss of so many gay youths of the chivalry, the Southern, cavalry has dwindled into such a condition as to be no longer formidable.
The service of the cavalry in both armies during the war has been exclusively as light cavalry—scouting, picketing, raiding, etc. Its combats have been with forces of its own arm. No commander has yet succeeded in assisting to determine the issue of a pitched battle by the charges of his mounted troops. Our cavalry have rendered, however, brilliant and invaluable services in protecting the rear and flanks of the armies, and by their magnificent raiding expeditions into the enemy's country, destroying his supplies, injuring his communications, diverting his forces, and liberating his slaves. No sufficient accounts of such expeditions and of the numerous cavalry conflicts have been published; yet they are very desirable. They would furnish most interesting narratives, and be a valuable contribution not only to the history of the times, but to the history of warfare; for the operations of the cavalry in this war constitute a new era in the history of this branch of military service. Unless care is exercised to procure such narratives, our posterity will never know anything of many battle fields where fought and fell brave troopers from every Northern State.
The chief duties of officers belonging to the corps of engineers, when connected with an army acting in the field, are the supervision of routes of communication, the laying of bridges, the selection of positions for fortifications, and the indication of the proper character of works to be constructed. Should a siege occur, a new and very important class of duties devolves on them, relating to the trenches, saps, batteries, etc.
Not only is there in Virginia a lack of good roads, but the numerous streams have few or no bridges. In many cases where bridges have existed, one or the other of the contending armies has destroyed them to impede the march of its opponents. Streams which have an average depth of three or four feet are, however, generally without bridges, except where crossed by some turnpike, the common country roads mostly leading to fords. The famous Bull Run is an example. There were but two or three bridges over this stream in the space of country penetrated by the roads generally pursued by our army in advancing or retreating, and these have been several times destroyed and rebuilt. The stream varies from two to six feet in depth—the fords being at places of favorable depth, and where the bottom is gravelly and the banks sloping. Often such streams as this, and indeed smaller ones, become immensely swelled in volume by storms, so that a comparatively insignificant rivulet might greatly delay the march of an army, if means for quickly crossing should not be provided. The general depth of a ford which a large force, with its appurtenances, can safely cross, is about three feet, and even then the bottom should be good and the current gentle. With a greater depth of water, the men are likely to wet their cartridge boxes, or be swept off their feet. There is a small stream about three miles from Alexandria, crossing the Little River turnpike, which has never been bridged, and which was once so suddenly swollen by rain that all the artillery and wagons of a corps were obliged to wait about twelve hours for its subsidence. The mules of some wagons driven into it were swept away. Fords, unless of the best bottom, are rendered impassable after a small portion of the wagons and artillery of an army have crossed them—the gravel being cut through into the underlying clay, and the banks converted into sloughs by the dripping of water from the animals and wheels.
A very amusing scene was presented at the crossing of Hazel River (a branch of the Rappahannock) last fall, when the Army of the Potomac first marched to Culpepper. The stream was at least three feet deep, and at various places four—the current very rapid—the bottom filled with large stones, and the banks steep, except where a narrow road had been cut for the wagons. The men adopted various expedients for crossing. Some went in boldly all accoutred; some took off shoes and stockings, and carefully rolled up their trousers; others (and they were the wisest) divested themselves of all their lower clothing. The long column struggled as best it could through the water, and occasionally, amid vociferous shouts, those who had been careful to roll up their trousers would step into a hole up to the middle; others, who had taken still more precautions, would stumble over a stone and pitch headlong into the roaring waters, dropping their guns, and splashing vainly about with their heavy knapsacks, in the endeavor to regain a footing, until some of their comrades righted them; and others, after getting over safely, would slip back from the sandy bank, and take an involuntary immersion. Some clung to the rear of the wagons, but in the middle of the stream the mules would become fractious, or the wagon would get jammed against a stone, and the unfortunate passengers were compelled to drop off and wade ashore, greeted by roars of derisive laughter. On such occasions soldiers give full play to their humor. They accept the hardships with good nature, and make the best of any ridiculous incident that may happen. At the time referred to, many conscripts had just joined the ranks, and cries resounded everywhere among the old soldiers: 'Hello, conscripts, how do you like this?' 'What d'ye think of sogering now?' 'This is nothing. You'll have to go in up to yer neck next time.'
Generally, when the exigencies of the march will permit, bridges are made over such streams, either by the engineers of the army, or detachments from the various corps which are passing upon the roads. They are simple 'corduroy bridges,' and can be laid very expeditiously. Two or three piers of stones and logs are placed in the stream, string pieces are stretched upon them, and cross pieces of small round logs laid down for the flooring. The most extensive bridges of this kind used by the Army of the Potomac were those over the Chickahominy in the Peninsular campaign. 'Sumner's bridge,' by which reinforcements crossed at the battle of Fair Oaks, was laid in this manner. Of course such bridges are liable to be carried away and to be easily destroyed. Some of the bridges over the Chickahominy were laid much more thoroughly. 'Cribs' of logs were piled in cob-house fashion, pinned together, and sunk vertically in the stream. Then string pieces and the flooring were laid, the whole covered with brush and dirt. Men worked at these bridges up to the waist in water for many days in succession.
Military art has devised many expedients for bridging streams, and use is made of any facilities that may be at hand for constructing the means of passage; but the only organized bridge trains which move with the army are those which carry the pontoons. Of these there are various kinds, made of wood, of corrugated iron, and of india rubber stretched over frames. But the wooden pontoon boats are most in use. They can be placed in a river and the flooring laid upon them with great rapidity. Several very fine bridges have been thus constructed—among them may be mentioned the one at the mouth of the Chickahominy, across which General McClellan's army marched in retreating from Harrison's Landing. It was about a mile long, and was constructed in a few hours.
To cross a river under the fire of an enemy is one of the most difficult operations in warfare. Yet it has been frequently accomplished by our armies. The crossing of the Rappahannock by General Burnside's army, previous to the great battle of Fredericksburg, in December, 1862, is one of the most remarkable instances of the kind during the war. The rebel rifle pits lined the southern bank, and the fire from them prevented our engineers from approaching—the river being only about seventy-five yards wide. For a long time our artillery failed to drive the rebels away. About noon of the day on which the crossing was made, General Burnside ordered a concentration of fire on Fredericksburg, in the houses of which place the rebels had concealed their forces. A hundred guns, hurling shot and shell into every building and street of the city, soon riddled it; but the obstinate foes hid themselves in the cellars till the storm was over, and then emerged defiantly. They were only dislodged by sending over a battalion in boats to attack them in flank, when they retreated, and the bridges were laid.
It is impossible to explain in articles of this character the mysteries of intrenchment and fortification, so that they will be comprehensible. A few notes, however, on some of the principal terms constantly employed, may be found useful and interesting.
Rifle pits—as the term is now generally used—are small embankments, made by throwing up dirt from an excavation inside. They can be erected quickly, for it will be seen that those behind them have the advantage, not only of the height of the embankment, but also of the depth of the ditch. Thus an excavation of two feet would give a protection of four feet. This is the ordinary rifle pit, but when time permits it receives many improvements.
Breastworks are any erections of logs, dirt, etc., raised breast high, to shelter the men behind them.
An abatis consists of obstructions placed in front of a work to form obstacles to a storming party. The most convenient method of forming it is to cut down trees and allow them to lie helterskelter. When there is time, the trees are laid with the butts toward the work, and the branches outward—the small limbs being removed, and the ends of the remainder sharpened.
A redan is a letter V, with the point toward the enemy, and is used generally to cover the heads of bridges, etc.
A lunette is the redan with flanking wings.
A redoubt is an enclosed parallelogram.
These works are very imperfect, because they have exposed points. The angles are not protected by the fire from the sides. To remedy this difficulty, the next most usual work is the star fort, made in the form of a regular or irregular star. It will be perceived that the fire from the sides covers the angles.
The next and still more improved form of work is the bastioned fort, which consists of projecting bastions at the corners, the fire from which enfilades the ditches.
The following is a diagram of a vertical section of the parapet and ditch used in all fully constructed field works:
A B is the slope of the banquette.
B C head of the banquette, or place where the men stand to deliver their fire.
C D the interior slope of the parapet.
D E superior slope of the same.
F G the berme, or place left to prevent the parapet from washing down into the ditch.
G H the scarp or interior wall of the ditch.
H I the bottom of the ditch.
I K the counterscarp.
L M N the glacis, which, except the abatis near the ditch, is left free and open, so as to expose the assailants to the fire from the parapet.
The proportions and angles of all the lines given are fixed according to mathematical rules.
The operations of a siege present many incidents of great interest; but we can do nothing more in this article than illustrate the methods in which the approaches are made to the works the capture of which is designed. When reconnoissances have established the conclusion that the works of an enemy cannot be carried by assault, the lines of the investing army are advanced as near to them as is compatible with safety; advantage is then taken of the opportunities afforded by the ground to cover working parties, which are thrown forward to the place fixed for the first parallel; sometimes these parties can commence their work only at night. The parallel is only a deep trench with the dirt thrown toward the enemy; and after the excavation has progressed, the trench is occupied by parties of troops to resist any sorties of the enemy, and to prevent attempts against the batteries established behind the parallel.
The first parallel being completed, zigzag excavations are made toward the front to cover the passage of men who proceed to dig the second parallel. Meanwhile the batteries have commenced to play, and riflemen have been advanced in trenches at convenient places, whose fire annoys the gunners of the enemy. The second parallel being made, the batteries are moved up to it, and the third parallel is proceeded with in a manner similar to that used for the second.
We give below a rough diagram of these operations:
A B C D E is the work of the enemy to be besieged. The working parties advance by the zigzag paths M N and O to the position chosen for the first parallel, K L. At the proper time they proceed by the zigzag paths to the second parallel, H I, and then to the third, F G. When this is reached, the enemy's work can generally be carried by storm, unless already evacuated, for ceteris paribus the advantages generally lie with the besieging party. The zigzags are called boyaux, and they are dug in the form represented, so that the bank of earth thrown up may be always in front of them. Were they in straight lines this could not be.
The above refers exclusively to the siege of a field work. The principles for besieging a walled fort or a fortified town are the same, but the operations are much more complicated.]
LITERARY NOTICES.
Popular Edition. Results of Emancipation. By Augustin Cochin, Ex-Maire and Municipal Councillor of Paris. Work crowned by the Institute of France (Académie Française). Translated by Mary L. Booth, Translator of Count de Gasparin's work on America, etc. Fourth thousand. Boston: Walker, Wise & Co., 245 Washington street. 1864.
A remarkable book, indicative of a new era in the discussion of social, religious, political, and economical questions. Prejudice, misstatement, and fanaticism are apparently so opposed to the clear, candid mind of the author, that he has needed no effort to avoid them, and in their stead give us simple truth, broad views of men and things, and the highest conceptions of duty and charity, together with the nicest consideration of the rights and material interests, even the local prejudices and misconceptions, of our fellow mortals. He shows clearly that a moral wrong can never long tend to material advantage, and that the laws of society cannot be made ultimately to triumph over the laws of nature; neither, in general, can a wrong be righted without some suffering by way of expiation.
Although filled with statistical details, the work cannot fail to be intensely interesting to the general reader. Lofty, hopeful, rational, and yet progressive in its tone, it is calculated to do great good, not only through the useful information and instructive generalizations it makes known, but also as a model of right feeling, and consequent good breeding, in its peculiar sphere.
The chapters upon the sugar question are wonderfully lucid and convincing. Their bearing upon mooted points of political economy recommend them to the study of all interested in that intricate subject. The distressing relations necessarily existing between slavery and religious instruction are also plainly set forth, and the general conclusion of the book (that 'emancipation' is not only possible, but most expedient, and that, with certain care upon the part of the Government and of slave owners, an immediate and simultaneous liberation is likely to breed fewer disturbances and less evil than gradual disenthralment) seems to be rapidly gaining ground in the convictions of our own countrymen. The conscience, and prophetic dreams of priests, women, and poets, have long given assurance of such results, but the world, of course, required definite experience and practical essays before instituting any extensive course of action in that direction.
'A council held in the city of London in 1102, under the presidency of St. Anselm, interdicted trade in slaves. This was eight hundred years before the same object was debated in the same city before Parliament. In 1780, Thomas Clarkson proposed to abolish the slave trade. In 1787, Wilberforce renewed the proposition. Seven times presented from 1793 to 1799, the bill seven times failed. Successively laid over, it triumphed at length in 1806 and 1807. All the Christian nations followed this memorable example. At the Congress of Vienna, all the Powers pledged themselves to unite their efforts to obtain the entire and final abolition of a traffic so odious and so loudly reproved by the laws of religion and nature. The slave trade was abolished in 1808 by the American United States; in 1811, by Denmark, Portugal, and Chili; in 1813, by Sweden; in 1814 and 1815, by Holland; in 1815, by France; in 1822, by Spain. In this same year, 1822, Wilberforce attacked slavery after the slave trade, and won over public opinion by appeals and repeated meetings, while his friend Mr. Buxton proposed emancipation in Parliament. The Emancipation Bill was presented in 1833. On the 1st of August, 1834, slavery ceased to sully the soil of the English colonies. In 1846, Sweden, in 1847, Denmark, Uruguay, Wallachia, and Tunis, obeyed the same impulse, which France followed in 1848, Portugal in 1856, and which Holland promised to imitate in 1860. An earnest movement agitated Brazil.'
In Poland, the serfdom of the peasants was never sanctioned by law, but existed in later times by reason of exception and abuse. Stanislas Leszczynski, King of Poland, in 1720 raised his voice in favor of the peasant population; the same principles were in 1768 defended, sword in hand, by the Confederation of Bar, discussed in the diets of 1776, 1780, 1788, and finally adopted by the famous Constituent Assembly of 1791. Thadeus Kosciuszko (May 7th, 1794), then Dictator of Poland, issued a document giving entire personal liberty to all serfs; and on the 22d of January, 1863, the members of the 'National Polish Government' decreed that the peasants were not only free, but were entitled to a certain portion of land, of which they should be the sole proprietors. In 1861, Russia emancipated all serfs within her borders. In the United States, the stern 'logic of events' seems to be rapidly bringing about similar results, although indeed 'slavery' and 'serfdom' should never be mentioned together, being so essentially different; the one the possession of the man, the other merely the ownership of his labor or of a portion of its results.
We cannot better conclude than by giving the following extract from the Introduction of M. Cochin, who, by the way, is a man of good family and ample fortune, an eminent publicist, and a Catholic of the school of Lacordaire, Montalembert, Monseigneur d'Orleans, and the Prince de Broglie:
'It was once exclaimed, Perish the colonies, rather than a principle! The principle has not perished, the colonies have not perished.
'It is not correct that interests should yield to principles; between legitimate interests and true principles, harmony is infallible; this is truth. Those who look only to interests are sooner or later deceived in their calculations; those who, exclusively occupied with principles, are generous without being practical, cease to be generous, for they lead the cause which they serve to certain destruction. It is the will of God that realities should mingle with ideas, and that material obstacles should compel the purchase of progress by toil.'
The publishers tell us that, a large demand for this work having arisen, they have issued this 'popular edition,' wherein the figures in the original are given as nearly as possible in the American currencies, measures, etc.
Stumbling Blocks. By Gail Hamilton, Author of 'Country Living and Country Thinking,' 'Gala Days,' etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.
Gail Hamilton's religious position gives her vast advantages. She is thoroughly orthodox, Calvinistic, and Congregational, and being neither Unitarian nor Catholic, will not be regarded as one of the 'Suspect' by the great community of the so-called evangelical Christians. But she is a bold, independent thinker, and spurns the trammels of bigotry and prescription. No party spirit blinds her clear vision, no sectarian prejudice vitiates her statements of the creeds of others, or induces her to veil the faults and follies of those worshipping in the same church with herself. Ministers are by no means immaculate saints in her eyes. Seating herself in the pews, she preaches better sermons to them than they are in the habit of giving to their people; taking possession of their pulpits, she shows them what might and ought to be done from that throne of power. Petty vanities, subjective experiences recorded in morbid journals, religious frames of mind frequently dwelt upon until the tortured self-watcher is driven into insanity, fall under her scathing rebuke.
This volume deals chiefly with the shortcomings of the orthodox religious world. Its faults of temper, its repulsive manners, its custom of making home unlovely, its distaste of innocent amusement, its habits of censure, its self-sufficiency and pharisaical character, are touched with a caustic but healing power. Only the hand of a friend could have done this thing. No point of doctrine is questioned, no principle of faith invaded, no charity wounded. She probes in love—her object is cure. This book is fresh and vigorous, worth thousands of lifeless sermons and unprofitable religious journals. No prejudice or falsehood is spared, though it may have taken refuge in the very sanctuary. Her every shaft is well directed, every arrow powerfully sent, every shot strikes the bull's eye in its centre. Her words are hailstones rattling fell and fast, but melt into and soften the heart on which they fall. Delusions disappear, cant and want of courtesy become odious, shams grow shameful, while all lovely things bloom lovelier in the light of truth emanating from this large brain, and poured through this living heart. We bask in its sunshine, growing strong and happy as we read. Christian fervor and charity, love for Redeemer and redeemed, for saint and sinner, cheer us through all these well-deserved denunciations. Her style is clear and rapid, her matter of daily and urgent import, her characterizations of classes and types of men worthy of La Bruyère himself, her satire melts into humor, her humor into pathos. She has been attacked by some of the religious papers, and has herein taken a true Christian and magnanimous revenge. O Gail! the clergy should open wide their hearts to take you in, their gifted child, the iconoclast within the temple, the faithful disciple of Christ, the lover of purity and truth!
We quote the following brave words from this remarkable book:
'We sometimes see religious newspapers charging each other with acts which should exclude the perpetrators from the fraternity of honest men; for, through the medium of religious newspapers, one church, or one fraction of a church, or one ecclesiastical body, or one member of it, accuses another of an act, or a course of action, which, in sober truth, amounts to nothing more or less than obvious, persistent deception, dishonesty and trickery.... Can such be correct transcripts of facts? Is it true that a church, or any body corporate, whose very existence as such is professedly to cultivate and disseminate the principles of sound morality and true religion, does fall so far short of the faith delivered to the saints—does so far forget its origin, and pervert its aims, as to violate common law and common honesty, and persist in its violation, deliberately, against repeated remonstrances, by sheer force? Yet we see no convulsion in the community. Nothing intimates that a great grief is fallen upon Israel. Everybody eats, drinks, and sleeps as usual. The pulpits still stand, and the law and the gospel are appealed to from that vantage ground. The sacramental cup is still raised to devout lips. The gray heads of the culprits still go in and out among the people with no diminishing of honor—no odium is attached to their persons; no stigmas to their names. What a state of things does this argue! A whole church plunges into darkness, and the
'Majestic heaven
Shines not the less for that one vanished star.'
'Can we wonder that the world will not let itself be converted? To what should it be converted, if it were willing? Would it be an advance for a community that sends its thieves to prison when it catches them to merge itself in a community that is content to print a few columns of exposé on the subject? If the stream where you wish to drink is muddy, you will scarcely find clear waters by descending. You want to go up, not down; up on the high lands where threads of crystal cleave the gray old rocks, and gather purity from earth's deep bosom and the sky's clear blue.
'If it is not so, if the acts only appear dishonest because we are looking at one side, why do we not say so, or why do we say anything about it? Every man is to be held innocent till he is proved guilty. If there is any standpoint from which we can view our opponent's position and find it not dishonest, we ought to mention it. We have no right to look at him from a standpoint, and hold him up to view as a criminal, and ignore another, from which he may be seen as simply mistaken, or deceived, or blameless. Still less have we a right to take innocent facts and construct upon them a guilty hypothesis to suit our foregone conclusion. A right to do it? It is sin. It is more than murder. It may rob a man of what is more precious to him than his life. It attempts to take away from a man what, taken, would leave him stripped of his manhood, and a man's manhood is worth more to him and his friends than his bone and muscle.'
Ah, Gail, thy keen aim has indeed struck the pupil of the bull's eye! If false statements of varying dogmas were held 'as criminal as they undoubtedly are,' if they were never viewed from 'foregone conclusions,' sects would perish in the death of misconceptions, and warring Christians would rush into each other's arms with the joy-cry, 'Brothers!' Through the misstatements of centuries, the good Protestant minister regards the Catholic priest, ready as he may be to die for the faith of his fathers, as a wilful liar, a conscious deceiver, selling the souls of his flock for a Judas bribe; while the equally good priest, in his turn, looks upon the conscientious minister as a despiser of authority, an enemy of the Church of Christ, refusing to hear what he believes to be its undoubted teachings, a blind man, leading the blind into the pit of perdition. The men may be both right from the standpoint of their 'foregone conclusions,' both wrong from the standpoint of fact. And so it goes on, through all the lesser sectarian divisions. Everywhere misstatement, misconception, and smouldering hatred. The first step to reconciliation among the antagonistic members of Christ's torn body, would be to put into instantaneous practice the wise, sound, and just maxims of Gail Hamilton. Let us begin it, lovers of truth and justice!
The Maine Woods. By Henry D. Thoreau, Author of 'A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,' 'Walden,' 'Excursions,' etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.
The first of the papers contained in this book was published in 'The Union Magazine;' the second, 'Chesuncook,' came out in the 'Atlantic Monthly,' in 1858; the last is now for the first time printed. The contents of the volume are as follows: Ktaadn, Chesuncook, The Allegash and East Branch; in the Appendix we have Trees, Flowers, and Shrubs, List of Plants, List of Birds, Quadrupeds, Outfit for an Excursion, and a List of Indian Words. Henry D. Thoreau was an enthusiastic lover of nature, but no blind adorer of her loveliness. He knew her in all her moods, was familiar with all her caprices. He was a man of strong brain, and of accurate knowledge in such fields as it pleased him to study. The woods have never before had such an accurate biographer, such a true painter. He saw them with the eye of the poet as well as that of the naturalist. Scholarship and imagination roam with him in the primeval forests. After the most accurate and detailed description of a moose which had been killed by his Indian guide, this anti-sentimentalist, but true forest lover says: 'Here, just at the head of the murmuring rapids, Joe now proceeded to skin the moose with a pocket knife, while I looked on; and a tragical business it was—to see that still warm and palpitating body pierced with a knife, to see the warm milk stream from the rent udder, and the ghastly naked red carcass appearing from within its seemly robe, which was made to hide it.' There is no joy of the hunter here! The words are as 'tragical' and tender as were those of the melancholy Jaques. That 'warm milk and rent udder' seems to make the stately creature half human. He proceeds:
'But on more accounts than one, I had had enough of moose hunting. I had not come to the woods for this purpose, nor had I foreseen it, though I had been willing to learn how the Indian manœuvred; but one moose killed was as good, if not as bad, as a dozen. The afternoon's tragedy and my share in it, as it affected the innocence, destroyed the pleasure of my adventure. This hunting of the moose merely for the satisfaction of killing him—not even for the sake of his hide—without making any extraordinary exertion or running any risk yourself, is too much like going out by night to some woodside pasture and shooting your neighbor's horses. These are God's own horses, poor timid creatures, that will run fast enough as soon as they smell you, though they are nine feet high (often eleven, with the antlers).... You strip off its hide, because that is the common trophy, and moreover you have heard it may be sold for mocassons—cut a steak from its body, and leave the huge carcass 'to smell to heaven' for you. It is no better, at least, than to assist at a slaughter house. This afternoon's experience suggested to me how base or coarse are the motives which commonly carry men into the wilderness. The explorers and lumberers generally are hirelings, paid so much a day for their labor, and as such they have no more love for wild nature than wood sawyers have for forests. Other white men and Indians who come here are for the most part hunters, whose object is to slay as many moose and other wild animals as possible. But pray, could not one spend some weeks or years in the solitude of this vast wilderness with other employments than these—employments perfectly sweet, innocent, and ennobling? For one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come with an axe or rifle. What a coarse and imperfect use Indians and hunters make of nature! No wonder that their race is so soon exterminated. I already, and for weeks afterward, felt my nature the coarser for this part of my woodland experience, and was reminded that our life should be lived as tenderly and daintily as one would pluck a flower.'
Again:
'As I sat before the fire on my fir-twig seat, without walls above or around me, I remembered how far on every hand that wilderness stretched, before you came to cleared or cultivated fields, and wondered if any bear or moose was watching the light of my fire; for nature looked sternly upon me on account of the murder of the moose.
'Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its ever-green arms to the light—to see its perfect success; but most are content to behold it in the shape of many broad boards brought to market, and deem that its true success. But the pine is no more lumber than man is, and to be made into boards and houses is no more its true and highest use, than the truest use of a man is to be cut down and made into manure. There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man. Can he who has discovered only some of the values of whalebone and whale oil be said to have discovered the true use of the whale? Can he who slays the elephant for his ivory be said to have 'seen the elephant'? These are petty and accidental uses; just as if a stronger race were to kill us in order to make buttons and flageolets of our bones; for everything may serve a lower as well as a higher use. Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
'Is it the lumberman, then, who is the friend and lover of the pine, stands nearest to it, and understands its nature best? Is it the tanner who has barked it, or he who has boxed it for turpentine, whom posterity will fable to have changed into a pine at last? No! no! it is the poet; he it is who makes the truest use of the pine—who does not fondle it with an axe, nor tickle it with a saw, nor stroke it with a plane—who knows whether its heart is false without cutting into it—who has not bought the stumpage of the town on which its stands. All the pines shudder and heave a sigh when that man steps on the forest floor. No, it is the poet, who loves them as his own shadow in the air, and lets them stand. I have been into the lumber yard, the carpenter's shop, the tannery, the lamp-black factory, and the turpentine clearing; but when at length I saw the tops of the pines waving and reflecting the light at a distance over all the rest of the forest, I realized that the former were not the highest use of the pine. It is not their bones or hide or tallow that I love most. It is the living spirit of the tree, not its spirit of turpentine, with which I sympathize, and which heals my cuts. It is as immortal as I am, and, perchance, may go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still.'
Reader, was not this man a nature lover, a nature limner, worthy to take his place among our Giffords, Whittredges, McEntees, Bierstadts, and Beards? Truly original, natural, and American, who among our descriptive writers can surpass H. D. Thoreau?
Primary Lessons For Deaf Mutes. By J. A. Jacobs, A. M., Principal of the Kentucky Institution for the Education of Deaf Mutes. New York: John F. Trow, Printer & Publisher, 50 Greene street, between Broome & Grand. 1864.
An excellent little work, intended to impart some of the rudimentary branches of learning to that interesting class of our fellow beings who can neither speak nor hear. Every effort made for their instruction should be cordially welcomed, for sad indeed is their position, and very difficult the discovery of means to reach and develop their often very bright intelligence. These lessons can be used by parents, guardians, or elder brothers and sisters, before the deaf-mute child is old enough to send to a regular institution. They are divided into two parts, bound in separate little volumes, and filled with cuts illustrating the text—or rather, the text, as is proper in such a work, illustrates the cuts, which occupy the larger portion of the book. Teachers cannot but find these aids of incalculable value.
The Relations of The Industry of Canada With The Mother Country And The United States. Being a Speech by Isaac Buchanan, Esq., M. P., as delivered at the late Demonstration to the Parliamentary Opposition at Toronto; together with a series of Articles in defence of the National Sentiments contained therein, which originally appeared in the columns of the Hamilton Spectator, from the pen of Mr. Buchanan; to which is added a Speech delivered by him at the Dinner given to the Pioneers of Upper Canada, at London, Canada West, 10th December, 1863. Now first published in complete and collected form, with copious Notes and Annotations, besides an extended Introductory Explanation, and an Appendix containing various valuable Documents. Edited by Henry J. Morgan, Corresponding Member of the New York Historical Society, and Author of 'Sketches of Celebrated Canadians.' Montreal: Printed by John Lovell, St. Nicholas. 1864.
We recommend this book to such of our readers as may be interested in political economy, not as sound in theory, but as containing a vast array of facts and giving considerable information with regard to the internal affairs of our neighbor Canada. The Reciprocity Treaty comes in for its share of consideration. Mr. Buchanan is a Protectionist, and uses the arguments of his party with considerable ability. The question of annexation is also incidentally touched upon. We do not know that we can give our readers a better idea of the contents and policy of this book than by placing the dedication before them.
'To the leaders of the forthcoming Party of Order, I dedicate these pages, because I feel that the province is at the winning or the losing, and that we shall hereafter have to hail you as the honored instruments of our Political and Industrial salvation.
'In Mr. Buchanan's Letter to the Editor of the Globe, assuring him publicly that Mr. Buchanan and all his friends, as in the Past, so in the Future, would be found opponents to the death of Annexation, and not its friends, as that journal basely insinuated, he states that he is of no party, though reluctantly compelled to be in opposition to the present ministry in consequence of their acts, Executive as well as Legislative; but that he is of a class far more numerous than the 'thick and thin' adherents of either of the present soi-disant parties. Those alluded to by Mr. Buchanan will form a new party—the Party of Order, which will probably be called the 'Constitutional Party'—its platform being broad enough to hold all who value and respect the time-honored Constitution, whether they be original Reformers or Conservatives in name. The new Party of Order will comprise these elements:
'First. Conservative Liberals, or old Reformers, who have been taught by experience, and are willing now to adopt the word 'Conservative,' at least in its adjective sense.
'Secondly. Liberal Conservatives, or old Tories, or their descendants, who have also been taught by experience, and are willing to adopt the word 'Liberal,' at least in its adjective sense.
'Thirdly. Conservatives, and Conservative Liberals, who have unwittingly been mingled up with the incendiary party, composed of 'Clear Grits' and 'Rouges.'
'And that in your discussions on the great question of the Reciprocity Law, now about to agitate both Canada and the United States, these pages may be of some service, is the fond hope of your obedient servant,
'The Editor.'
Family Pride. By the Author of 'Pique.' Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 306 Chestnut street.
Family Pride is a novel of still greater interest than 'Pique.' The plot is well conceived, the characters skilfully developed, and the attention is fascinated even to the end. The moral is unexceptionable, the style fresh and pure. We must however enter an earnest protest against the manifest injustice of the closing sentence, where the talented author has gone out of his way to find a blot for his book, the only stain upon his fair pages. It reads thus: 'After a variety of vicissitudes, she had embraced the Romish faith: that religion which relieves from all personal responsibility in spiritual matters; and which teaches that earthly penance and ascetic observances will open the gates of heaven to the vilest of criminals.' We have studied Westminster, Episcopal, and Catholic catechisms, the teachings in all three of which are that faith in Christ and sorrow for and renunciation of sin alone can open the gates of heaven. We regard it as the duty of a conscientious reviewer to point out an erroneous statement wherever it occurs, whether in regard to the faith of Protestants, Catholics, Hebrews, Mohammedans, Fire Worshippers, or any other classes of men whatsoever. Misstatement has caused an immense deal of bloodshed and bitterness among Christians. The walls of Zion must be built of the stones of truth.
The Tanner Boy, and how he became Lieutenant-General. By Major Penniman. 'The boy is father to the man.' Fifth thousand. Boston: Roberts Brothers, publishers, 143 Washington street. 1864.
A lively account of the boyhood and subsequent career of one likely to be famous in American history. The nation's eyes are at this moment turned hopefully upon the result of Gen. Grant's campaign in Virginia, and all will be glad to learn that his previous life offers so fair and pleasant a record. One observation, however, we feel called upon to make to the entertaining Major: the youth of America should be taught to love, to live for, and, if need be, to die for their country; but they should also be taught to shun narrow exclusiveness and boastful vanity. A government of a whole people should in this respect set a noble example to all other nations.
The 'Tanner Boy' has already reached its 'fifth thousand,' and will no doubt be eagerly read by all the patriotic boys and girls in the land.
Wax Flowers. J. E. Tilton & Co., Boston. 1864.
This little book contains somewhat over a hundred pages, and is gotten up in the attractive style for which the publications of this firm have become noted. A prefatory chapter sets forth the object of the work, and the claims of the art. The first part treats of Wax Fruit, giving the methods of making moulds and casting therefrom, of preparing the wax, of coloring the fruit and giving it the proper outward texture. The second part describes all the articles and materials required for making even the most elaborate of Wax Flowers; gives the way of preparing the wax, including its formation into sheets of any required thickness, with all the minutiæ relating to coloring, &c. The text is clearly and simply written, and by the aid of ample illustrations everything is made plain to the learner.
It is wonderful how exquisitely flowers may be imitated—making one wish a device for the secreting of the appropriate perfumes.
The wax once gathered by bees through many a bower,
Glows again in the form of a beautiful flower.
The artist in wax enjoys the best of opportunities for learning Botany, both analytically and synthetically. A series of models in wax would make the ocular study of botany possible throughout the year. The taste for wax flowers is becoming widely extended, and high prices are brought by the finest specimens of the art. Humanity should heartily welcome an employment which enables many to escape the suicide of the needle!
Denise. By the Author of 'Mademoiselle Mori.' In two vols. New York: James G. Gregory, 540 Broadway.
There is a strange charm about this book. The story is common enough, the characters have nothing original in their conception, and yet we are fascinated by the detailed truth of the portraiture from the first page to the last. The scenes are laid in Farnoux, a town in the old Provençal districts. The ancient views and manners are still retained, and interest us by the force of contrast with our own. Mademoiselle Le Marchand, an odd old maid, with a genius for painting, is really the character of the book. Denise, the heroine, is quietly and faithfully drawn. Various picturesque phases of the Catholic faith are artistically managed, while the faith itself is not treated with much courtesy. As a general thing we do not like theological novels written from foregone conclusions. We can imagine however that such a subject might be made intensely interesting. If a master mind of perfect impartiality would give us the effect produced upon two minds of equal mental power, of equal moral worth, by Protestantism or Catholicity—such a study would both interest and instruct. All religious nicknames should be avoided, as offensive both to charity and refined taste. Episcopalians do not like to be called Anglicans; Friends, Quakers; Baptists, Hardshells; Unitarians, Pantheists; nor Catholics, Romanists. Let us use courtesy to all men, that so we may have more weight when we attack erroneous principles.
By all means read Denise; its studies of the heart are close and accurate.