Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI.

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On the evening of the 8th of September, the Russians blew up their
magazines, fired the buildings, and evacuated the town. So fell
Sebastopol, after a siege of three hundred and forty-five days. It has
been considered by the English a bit of very choice pleasantry to
allude to our oft-recurring statement, that "the decisive blow had been
struck," and that "the backbone of the Rebellion was broken." It may
not be impertinent to remind them, that the report, first circulated in
France and England in the latter part of September, 1854, and fortified
by minute details, that Sebastopol--the backbone of Russian resistance
to the allied arms--had fallen, was repeated and reiterated from time to
time during the war, until the phrase, "_Sebastopol est pris_," passed
into a by-word, and did good service in relieving the cruelly overworked
Greek Kalends.

And now we come naturally to the consideration of another and an
important inquiry. Did the beginning of the war find, or did its
progress develop or create, a single English general of commanding
military capacity, competent to handle in the field even so small an
army as the British contingent in the Crimea? Of Lord Raglan Mr. Russell
says, and without doubt says truly,--"That he was a great chief, or even
a moderately able general, I have every reason to doubt, and I look in
vain for any proof of it, whilst he commanded the English army in the
Crimea." Another authority says,--"The conviction that he was not a
great general is universal and uncontradicted. He could perform the
ordinary duties of a general satisfactorily, but he was lamentably
deficient in those qualities which constitute military genius. He
possessed considerable professional experience, great application, and
remarkable powers of endurance; but he lacked the energy, vehemence,
and decision of character which are essential to the constitution of a
successful military chieftain." To his hesitation in council, and his
want of energy and promptness in action, have always been attributed, in
large measure, the ruinous delays and the fearful suffering in the army
which he commanded. Lord Raglan died in June, 1855, in his sixty-seventh
year. General Simpson succeeded him. "It was believed at the time,"
writes Mr. Russell, "and now is almost notorious, that he opposed his
own appointment, and bore testimony to his own incapacity." "He was slow
and cautious in council, and it is no wonder that where Lord Raglan
failed, General Simpson did not meet with success." The English press
and people demanded his recall. His incompetency was everywhere
acknowledged, and indeed he himself would have been the last man to
deny it. In about three months from the date of General Simpson's
appointment, "the Queen was graciously pleased to permit him to resign
the command of the army." As we have already seen, his place was filled
by General Codrington. This officer was as signally rewarded, because
he had failed, as he could have been, if he had succeeded. Mr.
Russell quotes approvingly the comment of a French officer upon this
appointment:--"If General Codrington had taken the Redan, what more
could you have done for him than to make him General, and to give him
command of the army? But he did not take it, and he is made General and
Commander-in-Chief." With equal discrimination, Sir James Simpson was
created Field-Marshal! The remainder of the campaign gave General
Codrington no further opportunity of displaying his qualities for
command. No other important action occurred before the termination of
hostilities.

Great credit is certainly due to Mr. Russell for fearlessly exposing the
errors and incompetency of the three officers successively at the head
of the English army, in spite of "much obloquy, vituperation, and
injustice," and for bearing his invariable and eloquent testimony to the
bravery, endurance, and patience of the British private soldier.

In this brief recital of English blunders during the Crimean War, we
have made no mention of the desperate and disastrous "charge of the
Light Brigade," the gross and culpable inefficiency of the Baltic fleet
under Admiral Sir Charles Napier, and other instances of military
incapacity no less monstrous. Enough, however, has been told to more
than justify the very mild summing-up of Mr. Russell, that the "war
had exposed the weakness of our military organization in the grave
emergencies of a winter campaign, and the canker of a long peace
was unmistakably manifested in our desolated camps and decimated
battalions."

Why should we add to this dismal recital the appalling sufferings of
the soldiers,--helpless victims to bad management at home and shameful
neglect in the field,--the long, freezing nights of trench-work under a
driving rain, "without warm or water-proof clothing,--the trenches two
and three feet deep with mud, snow, and half-frozen slush, so that many,
when they took off their shoes, were unable to get their swollen feet
into them again, and might be seen barefooted about the camp, the snow
half a foot deep on the ground,"--creeping for shelter into "miserable
tents pitched as it were at the bottom of a marsh, where twelve or
fourteen unhappy creatures lay soaking without change of clothing" until
they were called out again to their worse than slave-labor,--disease,
brought on by exhaustion, exposure, overwork, and deficient food,
sweeping the men off by thousands, and yet no sufficient supply of
medical stores and no adequate number of medical attendants, not a soul
seeming to care for their comfort or even for their lives,--so neglected
and ill-treated that "the wretched beggar who wandered about the streets
of London led the life of a prince compared with the British soldiers
who were fighting for their country, and who were complacently assured
by the home authorities that they were the best-appointed army in
Europe." The world knows the whole sad story by heart. And is it not
written in the volumes of evidence sworn to before the Commission
appointed by Parliament to inquire into the condition of the army?

Nor is it necessary to dwell upon the extent to which the home
administration was responsible for the general mismanagement of the war,
in its main features and its minute details,--nor the thoroughly English
stolidity with which all complaints were received by every member of the
Government, from the cabinet minister who dictated pompous and unmeaning
despatches, down to the meanest official who measured red tape,--nor the
intense and universal popular indignation which, after a year "full of
horrors," compelled the resignation of the Aberdeen Ministry. Lord Derby
did not, perhaps, overstate the verdict of the nation, when he said in
the House of Lords,--"From the very first to the very last, there has
been apparent in the course pursued by Her Majesty's Government a want
of previous preparation,--a total want of prescience; and they have
appeared to live from day to day providing for each successive exigency
_after it arose, and not before it arose_. TOO LATE have been the fatal
words applicable to the whole conduct of Her Majesty's Government in the
course of the war." The change in the Ministry, however, by no means
cured all the evils which had existed; for, although the sufferings of
the soldiers--thanks in large part to the providential appearance and
heroic conduct of Florence Nightingale--were greatly diminished, still,
as we have seen, the military blunders continued to the close of the
war.

Now, if we do not greatly mistake, the lesson which this country should
learn from the mortifying experience of the English army in the Crimea
is not one of exultation over its lamentable and unnecessary errors, but
rather of indifference to the insulting criticism of a nation which can
so ill afford to be critical, and of determination to profit in every
possible way by those blunders which might have been avoided. The
history of all wars, moreover, should teach us that now and then there
comes a time when to hold the olive-branch in one hand and the sword in
the other, especially if the olive-branch is kept in the foreground and
the sword in the background, involves not only a sad waste of energy,
but is mistaken kindness to our enemies.

Those who have read--and who has not?--the charming story of "Rab and
his Friends" will remember the incident which, for the sake of brevity,
we reluctantly condense. A small, thorough-bred terrier, after being
rudely interrupted in his encounter with a large shepherd's-dog, darts
off, fatally bent on mischief, to seek a new canine antagonist. He
discovers him in the person of a huge mastiff, quietly sauntering along
in a peaceful frame of mind, all unsuspicious of danger. The angry
terrier makes straight at him, and fastens on his throat. The rest of
the story shall be told in the graphic language of the author. "To our
astonishment, the great creature does nothing but stand still, hold
himself up, and roar,--yes, roar: a long, serious, remonstrative roar.
How is this? _He is muzzled_! The bailies had proclaimed a general
muzzling, and his master, studying strength and economy mainly, had
encompassed his huge jaws in a home-made apparatus, constructed out of
the leather of some ancient _breeching_. His mouth was open as far as it
could; his lips curled up in rage,--a sort of terrible grin; his teeth
gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap across his mouth tense
as a bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation and surprise; his
roar asking us all round, 'Did you ever see the like of this?' He looked
a statue of anger and astonishment, done in Aberdeen granite. We soon
had a crowd; the chicken held on. 'A knife!' cried Bob; and a cobbler
gave him his knife: you know the kind of knife, worn away obliquely to
a point, and always keen. I put its edge to the tense leather; it ran
before it; and then!--one sudden jerk of that enormous head, a sort of
dirty mist about his mouth, no noise,--and the bright and fierce little
fellow is dropped, limp and dead."

If we draw a useful moral from this homely incident, it will not be the
first time that the unerring sagacity of animals has been serviceable
to man. A stealthy, cunning, unscrupulous, desperate, devilish foe has
seized the nation by the throat and threatens its life. The Government
is strong, courageous, determined, abundantly able to make a successful
resistance, and even to kill the insolent enemy; but--_it is
muzzled_: muzzled here by conservative counsels, and there by radical
complaints,--by the over-cautious policy of one general, and the
headlong haste of another,--by a too tender regard for slavery in
some States, and by a too zealous anxiety for instant emancipation in
others,--by fear of provoking opposition in one quarter, and by a blind
defiance of all obstacles in another. Now what shall be done? Shall we
hesitate, despond, despair? Never! _For Heaven's sake, take off the
muzzle._ Use every weapon which the God of Battles has placed in our
hands. Put forth all the power of the nation. Encourage and promote all
fighting generals; cashier all officers who are determined to make war
on peace principles; arm, equip, and discipline negroes, not to burn,
plunder, and massacre, but to meet their and our enemies in fair and
open fight.[B] Demonstrate to the world that we are terribly in earnest.
Waste no time in discussing the chance of foreign intervention. Postpone
Pacific railroads, international telegraphs, polygamy in Utah, African
colonization, everything, to the engrossing and emergent crisis which
now confronts the Government. Make the contest sharp, short, and
decisive. Put down the Rebellion, vindicate the majesty of the Law, the
sacredness of the Union, and the integrity of the Constitution. There
will be time enough, after this is done, to discuss all minor questions
and all collateral issues. One paramount duty lies directly before us.
Let us perform this duty fearlessly, and leave the future with God.

[Footnote B: The opposition to the employment of negro regiments, if
made by traitors North or South, can be easily comprehended,--if made by
loyal men, is wholly inexplicable. Your neighbor's house takes fire at
night. The flames, long smouldering, make rapid progress, and threaten
the comfort, certainly, if not the lives of his household, and the
total destruction of his property. The alarm is given. An engine comes
promptly to the rescue. It is just in season to save his dwelling.
The firemen spring with ready alacrity to their places. But stop! He
suddenly discovers the appalling fact that they are negroes! True,
there is not a moment to be lost. No other engine is, or can be, within
helping distance. The least delay means poverty and a houseless family.
And yet he rudely dismisses the dusky firemen, folds his arms with
Spartan stoicism, and, looking complacently on the burning building,
says, _"Better this than to rely on the assistance of niggers!"_ _Is it_
Spartan stoicism? Is it not rather stark lunacy? And would you not take
immediate measures to provide such a man with permanent quarters in a
mad-house?]

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Roba di Roma_. By WILLIAM W. STORY. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 355, 369. London:
Chapman & Hall. 1863.

The father of the celebrated Mr. Jonathan Wild was in the habit of
saying, that "travelling was travelling in one part of the world as
well as another; it consisted in being such a time from home, and in
traversing so many leagues; and he appealed to experience whether most
of our travellers in France and Italy did not prove at their return
that they might have been sent as profitably to Norway and Greenland."
Fielding himself, the author of this sarcasm, was a very different kind
of traveller, as his Lisbon journal shows; but we think he told no more
than the truth in regard to the far greater part of those idle people
who powder themselves with dust from the highways and blur their
memories with a whirl through the galleries of Europe. They go out
empty, to come home unprofitably full. They go abroad to escape
themselves, and fail, as Goethe says they always must, in the attempt to
jump away from their own shadows. And yet even the dullest man, if he
went honestly about it, might bring home something worth having from the
dullest place. If Ovid, instead of sentimentalizing in the "Tristia,"
had left behind him a treatise on the language of the Getae which he
learned, we should have thanked him for something more truly valuable
than all his poems. Could men only learn how comfortably the world can
get along without the various information which they bring home about
themselves! Honest observation and report will long continue, we fear,
to be one of the rarest of human things, so much more easily are
spectacles to be had than eyes, so much cheaper is fine writing than
exactness. Let any one who has sincerely endeavored to get anything like
facts with regard to the battles of our civil war only consider how much
more he has learned concerning the splendid emotions of the reporter
than the events of the fight, (unless he has had the good luck of a peep
into the correspondence of some pricelessly uncultivated private,) and
he will feel that narrative, simple as it seems, can be well done by two
kinds of men only,--those of the highest genius and culture, and those
wholly without either.

It gradually becomes clear to us that the easiest things can be done
with ease only by the very fewest people, and those specially endowed to
that end. The English language, for instance, can show but one sincere
diarist, Pepys; and yet it would seem a simple matter enough to jot
down the events of every day for one's self without thinking of Mrs.
Posterity Grundy, who has a perverse way, as if she were a testatrix and
not an heir, of forgetting precisely those who pay most assiduous court
to her. One would think, too, that to travel and tell what you have seen
should be tolerably easy; but in ninety-nine books out of a hundred does
not the tourist bore us with the sensations he thinks he ought to have
experienced, instead of letting us know what he saw and felt? If authors
would only consider that the way to write an enlivening book is not by
seeing and saying just what would be expected of them, but precisely the
reverse, the public would be gainers. What tortures have we not seen the
worthiest people go through in endeavoring to get up the appropriate
emotion before some famous work in a foreign gallery, when the only
sincere feeling they had was a praiseworthy desire to escape! If one
does not like the Venus of Milo, let him not fret about it, for he may
be sure she never will.

Montaigne felt obliged to separate himself from travelling-companions
whose only notion of their function was that of putting so many leagues
a day behind them. His theory was that of Ulysses, who was not content
with seeing the cities of many men, but would learn their minds
also. And this way of taking time enough, while we think it the best
everywhere, is especially excellent in a country so much the reverse of
_ fast_ as Italy, where impressions need to steep themselves in the sun
and ripen slowly as peaches, and where _carpe diem_ should be translated
_take your own time_. But is there any particular reason why everybody
should go to Italy, or, having done so, should tell everybody else what
he supposes he ought to have seen there? Surely, there must be some
adequate cause for so constant an effect.

Boswell, in a letter to Sir Andrew Mitchell, says, that, if he could
only _see Rome_, "it would give him talk for a lifetime." The utmost
stretch of his longing is to pass "four months on classic ground," after
which he will come back to Auchinleck _uti conciva satur_,--a condition
in which we fear the poor fellow returned thither only too often, though
unhappily in no metaphorical sense. We rather think, that, apart from
the pleasure of saying he had been there, Boswell was really drawn to
Italy by the fact that it was classic ground, and this not so much by
its association with great events as with great men, for whom, with
all his weaknesses, he had an invincible predilection. But Italy has a
magnetic virtue quite peculiar to her, which compels alike steel and
straw, finding something in men of the most diverse temperaments by
which to draw them to herself. Like the Siren, she sings to every
voyager a different song, that lays hold on the special weakness of his
nature. The German goes thither because Winckelmann and Goethe went,
and because he can find there a sausage stronger than his own; the
Frenchman, that he may flavor his infidelity with a bitter dash of
Ultramontanism, or find fresher zest in his chattering boulevard
after the sombre loneliness of Rome; the Englishman, because the same
Providence that hears the young ravens when they cry is careful to
furnish prey to the courier also, and because his money will make him
a _Milor in partibus_. But to the American, especially if he be of an
imaginative temper, Italy has a deeper charm. She gives him cheaply what
gold cannot buy for him at home, a Past at once legendary and authentic,
and in which he has an equal claim with every other foreigner. In
England he is a poor relation whose right in the entail of home
traditions has been docked by revolution; of France his notions are
purely English, and he can scarce help feeling something like contempt
for a people who habitually conceal their meaning in French; but Rome is
the mother-country of every boy who has devoured Plutarch or taken his
daily doses of Florus. Italy gives us antiquity with good roads, cheap
living, and, above all, a sense of freedom from responsibility. For
him who has escaped thither there is no longer any tyranny of public
opinion; its fetters drop from his limbs when he touches that
consecrated shore, and he rejoices in the recovery of his own
individuality. He is no longer met at every turn with "Under which king,
bezonian? Speak, or die!" He is not forced to take one side or the
other about table-tipping, or the merits of General Blank, or the
constitutionality of anarchy. He has found an Eden where he need not
hide his natural self in the livery of any opinion, and may be as happy
as Adam, if he be wise enough to keep clear of the apple of High
Art. This may be very weak, but it is also very agreeable to certain
temperaments; and to be weak is to be miserable only where it is a duty
to be strong.

Coming from a country where everything seems shifting like a quicksand,
where men shed their homes as snakes their skins, where you may meet
a three-story house, or even a church, on the highway, bitten by the
universal gad-fly of bettering its position, where we have known a tree
to be cut down merely because "it had got to be so old," the sense
of permanence, unchangeableness, and repose which Italy gives us is
delightful. The oft-repeated _non e piu come era prima_ may be true
enough of Rome politically, but it is not true of it in most other
respects. To be sure, gas and railroads have got in at last; but one may
still read by a _lucerna_ and travel by _vettura_, if he like, using
Alberti as a guide-book, and putting up at the Bearas a certain
keen-eyed Gascon did three centuries ago.

Mr. Story has taken Italy with due deliberation, having lived there now
some fifteen years. He has thus been enabled to let things come to him,
instead of running after them; and his sensations have had time to ripen
slowly toward the true moment of projection, without being shaken and
hurried, or huddled one atop of the other. We doubt if the picturesque
can be profitably done by the job, for in aesthetics the proverb that
half a loaf is better than no bread does not hold. An Italian _festa_,
we suspect, if you make it a matter of business, will turn its
business-side to you, and you will go away without having been admitted
to the delightful confidence of its innocent gayety and unpremeditated
charm. Tourists must often have remarked, in making an excursion to a
ruin or bit of picturesque scenery, that what chance threw in to boot
was by far the best part of their bargain, for the most beautiful
experiences come not by observation. The crumbling temple lured them
forth, but it was only to see a sunset or to hear a nightingale.

What between winters in Rome and summers in one or the other
mountain-town, with intervals of absence now at Florence and now at
Siena, Mr. Story has had such opportunities as fall to the lot of very
few foreigners. For, in studying the ways of a people, it is as with
wild animals,--you must be long enough among them to get them _wonted_,
so that you may catch them at unawares. His book is on the whole a
delightful one, and would have been so without qualification, had he
confined it to a relation of his own experiences. Where he narrates or
describes, he is always lively and interesting; where he disserts or
grows learned, he gives up his vantage-ground, and must consent to be
dull like everybody else. Anybody can be learned, anybody except Dr.
Holmes dull; but not everybody can be a poet and artist. The chapter on
the Evil Eye is a marvel of misplaced erudition. The author has hunted
all antiquity like a policeman, and arrested high and low on the least
suspicion of a squint. Horace and Jodocus Damhouder, (to whose harmless
Dam our impatience tempts us to add an _n_,) Tibullus and Johannes
Wouwerus, St. Augustine and Turnebus, with a motley mob of Jews,
Christians, Greeks, Romans, Arabians, and Lord-knows-whats, are all
thrust into the dock cheek by jowl. For ourselves, we would have taken
Mr. Story's word for it, without the attestation of these long-winded
old monsters, who wrote about charms and enchantments in a style
as potent in disenchantment as holy-water, and who bored their own
generation too thoroughly to have any claim upon the button of ours.
Every age is sure of its own fleas without poking over the rag-bag
of the past; and of all things, a superstition has the least need of
proving the antiquity of its pedigree, since its very etymology is
better than the certificate of all the Heralds' Colleges put together.
We are surprised that so clever and lively a man as Mr. Story, should
not have seen that in such matters one live fact is better than fifty
dead ones, and that even in history it is not so much the facts as what
the historian has contrived to see in them that gives life to his work.

But learning makes a small part of Mr. Story's book; only, as the
concluding chapter happens to bristle with quotations and references,
thickly as the nave of St. Peter's on a festival with bayonets, this is
the last taste left in the mouth. The really valuable parts of the book
(and they make much the larger part of it) are those in which the author
relates his own experiences. After so many volumes stuffed like a
_chiffonnier's_ basket with the shreds of ancient Rome, it is really
refreshing to come upon a book which makes us feel that Italy is still
inhabited by very human beings, and contains something more than the
tombs of the Scipios, and inscriptions interesting only to people
who think a dead Roman donkey better than a living Italian lion. The
chapters on Street-Music in Rome, on Games, on Gaffes and Theatres, on
Villeggiatura and the Vintage, on the Ghetto, the Markets, and Summer
in the City, are all of them delightful and new. They really teach us
something, while the learning, we are sorry to say, does nothing of the
kind. Several of these chapters our readers will remember enjoying in
the "Atlantic." They are good for those who have been in Italy, for
those who are going thither, and, above all, for those who must stay at
home. They contain the most cheerful and picturesque descriptions of
Italian life and scenery we have ever met with. And we cannot be too
thankful to Mr. Story that he leaves a theme so poetical in itself to
_be_ poetical, without any officious help from himself, and that, though
an artist, he does not enter on any of those disquisitions which would
have made Sir Joshua shift his trumpet. On the whole, we are inclined
to forgive him the polyglot lumber of his chapter on the Evil Eye in
consideration of the scenery and galleries which he has spared us. We
think we see symptoms that the Nature-mania which began with Rousseau
is on the decline, and that men and their ways are getting into fashion
again as worth study. The good time is perhaps coming when some gallant
fellow will out with it that he hates mountains, and will be greeted
with a shout of delight from his emancipated brethren.

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