RENUNCIATION.
Could I recall thee from that silent shore Whence never word may reach our longing ears, To gaze upon thee thro' my happy tears, And call thee back to life and joy once more, Could I refrain? If at my touch Death's door Would open for thee, and thy glad eyes shine With swift surprise of life, straight into mine, And we might dwell with love for evermore, Could I forbear? God knows, who still denies. Yet being dead, thou art all mine again: No fear of change can break that perfect rest, Nor can I be where thou art not; thine eyes Smile at me out of heaven, and still my pain, And the whole pitying earth is at thy breast.
Kate Hillard.
THE EASTERN QUESTION.
"The last word in the Eastern Question," said Lord Derby, "is Constantinople." If for Constantinople we read not merely the city itself, but that half of Turkey in Europe bordering upon the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora, and understand the real point to be, Shall or shall not Russia have it? we have the whole Eastern Question in a nutshell. Russia is bound by every consideration of policy and interest to get it if she can. Great Britain is bound by every consideration of interest, and even of self-preservation, to prevent it if she can. Germany, Austria, and France are bound to prevent it, if possible, unless they can at the same time gain equivalent advantages which shall leave them relatively to each other, and especially to Russia, not less powerful than they now are. The other nations of Europe may be left out of view in considering the question; for their interest in it is less vital, and they could do little toward the result, except as allies to one side or the other, in case of a general European war in which the great Powers should be quite evenly balanced, when their comparatively small weight might turn the scale.
A glance at the map will show the paramount importance to Russia of the acquisition of this territory. Comprising more than half of all Europe, she is practically cut off from the navigable seas. She has, indeed, a long coast-line upon the Arctic ocean, but she has there only the inconsiderable port of Archangel, and this can be reached only by rounding the North Cape and sailing far within the Arctic Circle, while the port itself is blocked up by ice seven months of the year. She also borders for seven hundred miles upon the Baltic and the Gulf of Bothnia; but here, in the northwestern corner of her territory, she has only two tolerable ports, Cronstadt and Riga, and these are frozen up for nearly half the year; but from these ports is carried on three-fourths of her foreign commerce. She next touches salt water in the Black Sea, almost 1,500 miles from St. Petersburg, on the extreme south of her territory. This sea, half of whose shores belongs to Russia, is 720 miles long, and 380 miles wide at its broadest point, covering an area, including the connected Sea of Azof, of nearly 200,000 square miles—more than twice that of all the great lakes of North America. Russia wishes to be a great maritime power. The Black Sea has good harbors and abundant facilities for building ships and exercising fleets. Into it fall all the great rivers of the southern half of Russia, except the Volga, whose mouth is in the Caspian; and the Volga may properly be considered a Black Sea river, for a railway, or perhaps even a canal of a few leagues, would connect it with the Don and the other rivers of the Black Sea system. The Black Sea is emphatically a Russian sea; but Russia enjoys the valuable use of it only by the sufferance of whomsoever holds Constantinople. By the treaty of Paris, concluded in 1856, after the reverses of the Crimean war, Russia agreed not to maintain a fleet there; and it was not till 1870 that taking advantage of the critical position of the other great Powers, she declared that this article of the treaty was abrogated. She has now a strong fleet of iron-clads and other steamers in the sea, but the actual strength of this fleet is unknown except to herself. It was certainly powerful three years ago, and is doubtless much more powerful now. A vessel and crew which has navigated the "Bad Black Sea." as the Turks call it, has nothing to fear from the broadest ocean. But this sea is liable at any moment to be a closed one to Russia. No Russian man-of-war has, we believe, ever sailed into or out of it; no merchantman can enter or leave it except by the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, which are its gates, and of these gates Turkey holds the keys.
The Black Sea is joined to the deep, narrow Sea of Marmora by the straits of the Bosporus, twenty miles long and from three-quarters of a mile to two and a half miles wide. Just where the straits open out into the Sea of Marmora stands Constantinople, a spot marked out by nature as the one on the whole globe best fitted for the site of a great metropolis. At its western extremity the Sea of Marmora—about one hundred miles long, with a maximum breadth of forty-three miles—contracts into the straits usually called the Dardanelles, which is properly the name of four castles, which, two on each side, command the passage, here less than a mile wide. Both straits could easily be so fortified as to be impassable by the combined navies of the world; and even now we suppose that only the best armored iron-clads could safely undertake to force the passage, in or out, of the Dardanelles.
Let us now consider the fearful preponderance which Russia would gain by the possession of these straits, including of course that half of European Turkey bordering upon them. We have seen that the shores of the Black Sea furnish every facility for the construction of a navy of any required strength, and its waters afford ample space for its training. With these approaches in her grasp, Russia might in ten years construct and discipline her fleet there, perfectly safe from molestation by the navies of Europe. Fleets built and equipped at Sebastopol, Kherson, and Nicolaief, could sweep through the Dardanelles, closed to all except themselves, enter the Archipelago and the Mediterranean, and dominate over their shores and over the commerce of every nation which has to use these waters as a highway. In case of its happening at any time to find itself overmatched, the Russian fleet could repass the gates of the Dardanelles, and be as safe from pursuit as an army would be if sheltered behind the rocks of Gibraltar.