and is it not a privilege to communicate it to the world-to bring mankind more face to face with their Creator, and to show to the weak, the faithless, and the grovelling, what a noble thing is the human soul? That Wilson was a far greater man than author, we need hardly say. A mere fraction of his noble nature remains to us embodied in his works. He did not live to write. He made no deliberate attempt to set his mind in its entireness before the world-probably, as we have said, from the very feeling that life was too short for such an undertaking. He seems rather to have used literature as a mere means of cultivating his general nature. Now as a poet, now as a critic, now as a fervid politician, now as a tale-writer, now as an eloquent lecturer, now, and most frequently of all, as the broad sunny man, with a heart for all things, he appears in his writings to be merely disporting himself to be simply giving that airing and exercise to his mental faculties, which they crave not less strongly than those of the body. Now, to build up one's Inner-self is a nobler thing than to become a giant in print; and as the latter of these tasks may often conflict with the former, we ought not to be over-ready to judge of men merely by their literary monuments, or to charge as a fault an abstention from systematic work which may have been the result of a wise instinct or of a self-denying reflection. We do not say that such was the case with Wilson; but we do say, that the more he is examined and understood, the greater does he appear before us in that highest of all aspects, as a man. A very Alcibiades among modern intellects, the man was always greater than his works. He was not the artist, interesting for his work's sake, though the private life be not worth a thought: but his works were seen to be but an episode of his many-sided life-a fragment splintered off from the noble whole of his being. Is not the death of such a man suggestive of high and solemn thought? Is it not a text, from which one might discourse most eloquently to those most forlorn of human beings, who, lost in the mazes of a miscalled science, delight to prove to themselves that man is but dust, and that the soul perishes with its ephemeral tenement. For if there, indeed, be no future life for man, must it not be deepest anguish to a noble nature like Wilson's, to feel the icy hand of death upon him, when his faculties are still but half developed, and when he feels within him powers that only await fitting opportunities to burst forth in unrivalled splendour? But the Christian sage, be he young or old-be he cut off early and "without his fame," or live on honoured to a good old age, has ever this consolatory reflection, that life and progress do not end at the He looks within, and beholds his spirit-himself-still fresh, even amid the decay of the body; ever waxing wiser, holier, nobler. "It grows"-ay, and he knows that it will continue to grow in other worlds even as here. And whatever may have been the dowry of high thoughts which his Maker has given him, and however much too short life may have been to set these forth to the world, he at least knows, that though he has not had time here, he will have time in Eternity! grave. In 1852, advancing years induced Professor Wilson to retire from the chair in the University which he had so long and ably filled; and this he did, as beseemed the man, without asking for the retiring allowance, which, in such circumstances, is usual. At this time no symptoms of ill-health had appeared. The man was still unbroken. Immediately afterwards, however, he experienced a stroke of paralysis; and, as is not seldom observed in those who have been blessed with long unbroken health, his iron frame suddenly gave way, attended by a slight impairment of his intellectual faculties, which showed itself chiefly in a loss of memory; a state of matters which, broken with favourable gleams, continued up to the day of his death, on the third of last month. It is a curious and sad remark, that in the case of almost all the great poets of the past generation-certainly of all of them who reached old age. it was the over-fasked brain that chiefly gave way. The very delicacy and exquisite sensibility of a poet's nature renders the cerebral system in his case peculiarly susceptible to the mental shocks and physical wear-and-tear of life; and in his even more than in other men's, experience vouches to the truth of Bulwer's that "though we live longer than our forefathers, we suffer more." We too-a more ceaseless tide of thought rolls through the brain-we as our ancestors prized hours, and, whether for mind or body, there are now-a-days but few holidays. No wonder, then, that ever and anon the over-worked nervous system should rise in sudden revolt, and mysterious disease invade the precincts of life. For long the soul, throned in the brain, rules like an autocrat every part of the system, and lashes on our flagging powers like Phaeton driving the chariot of the sun. But suddenly there comes a tremor, a concussion, a shudder of the brain, and lo! the charioteer is tossed from his seat order is subverted in the capital, and a paralysis pervades the extremities. Strange and fell disease! which seems to grow with our civilisation, and loves to mark the "foremost men of all the age" as its victims. How it has played havoc among the galaxy of poets that adorned the last age - now taking from us a Scott, and now a Southey, now a Moore, now a Wordsworth, and now a "WILSON!" And, now, that stately figure is gone from the streets of the Scottish metropolis. We shall no more encounter his lion-like port when we revisit the Athens of the North. We shall no more recognise in the distance the well-known broad. rimmed hat, shadowing those bold bright eyes-the ever-fresh complexion, the sandy-coloured hair streaming dishevelled over his shoulders; the shaggy whiskers, handsome throat, and broad turned-over collar; the buttoned coat or surtout, and the firm limbs that seemed to grasp the very earth as he trode along. We shall no more see the venerable man-"the Professor "-seated at the round table in the saloon at Blackwood's, sitting silently over a book—with the portraits of his old friends, Lockhart, and Hogg, and Delta, and Alison, and Hamilton, and his own around him ;-and in the social circles which so long delighted in the genial company of "the old man eloquent," his place shall know him no more. Some able pen-it may be that of one of his own gifted sons-inlaw-will, doubtless, ere long do justice to his memory, and show to the country the man as he lived. For ourselves, we hardly venture to contribute even a stone to his cairn; but we feel of a truth that he has left a void which can never be filled up, and that in him Scotland has lost "a glorious figure, a stately and heroic Life, and a beloved Presence from the midst of her." THE EASTERN QUESTION.* THE present generation has been reared and nursed in the lap of peace. Born with the dying murmurs of our last great war just falling on our ears, we have passed our lives amid the soothing pleasures, and the elevatingperhaps, in some respects the enervating-influences of the cultivation of the arts and the spread of the sciences. Our quiet has not been disturbed by more than the distant rumours of war in faroff and half-savage dependencies, where victory or defeat had little influence on our permanent condition, and were looked upon by us at home rather as interesting adventures than as serious Occurrences. The peace thus happy, thus marked by progress, by the increase of civilisation and prosperity throughout almost the whole world, has come to an end at last. It endured for nearly forty years, but has now passed away, and left the world as a heritage to its successor, war. Brazen-throated, stern-fronted, thunder-voiced, and lionhearted war again strides upon the earth; and though he comes not at our invitation, nor by our wish, yet far be from our hearts any craven fear of his approach; far from our cheeks, or from our voices, any paleness, or any tremor, as we meet him front to front, and bid him "Welcome!" "The Russo-Turkish Campaigns of 1828 and 1829, with a View of the Present State of Affairs in the East." By Colonel Chesney, R.A., D.C.L., F.R.S. Second Edition. Smith, Elder, and Co., London. 1 vol. "A Year with the Turks; or, Sketches of Travel in the European and Asiatic Dominions of the Sultan." By Warington W. Smyth, M.A. 1 vol. London: W. Parker and Son. "Russia and the Russians; Comprising an Account of the Czar Nicholas and the House of Romanoff." By J. W. Cole, H.P., 21st Fusileers. London: Richard Bentley. 1 vol. "Welcome to war," say we, since he comes not at our call. "Welcome to war" not in any mere passing excitement-not because we are dazzled by his gew-gaw trappings, or moved by the sound of his trumpet, or by the majesty and pomp of his approachnot because we have not present to our mind all the evil, all the misery, and wretchedness, and crime, that lackey his steps, and linger on his track long after he has passed by- but because there are far worse evils than war, and because, sooner or later, in our time, or in that of our children, WAR MUST COME. Had events so happened that war had been deferred, we had been content to train up our children so that they should have borne themselves worthily in his presence; since, however, he has come in our own time, who among us will be the coward not to meet him like a man, to brave his dangers and endure his evils, in order to conquer peace, and leave that quiet heritage to our children? We claim no monopoly of foresight when we say, that we have long seen one great European war to be inevitable. The idea has occurred to almost every reflective man who chose to form any speculations on the future. We have heard it uttered, we have seen it printed; it is a notion familar to the mind of almost all of us. And yet, in spite of that, it has come upon us as it were by surprise; and even now we can hardly assure ourselves whether this war now broken out is the war that we have all so long foreseen. We believe that it is. We do not believe that the present war is chargeable solely on the Emperor Nicholas, or the Sultan Abdul Mejid, or Lord Aberdeen, or Louis Napoleon, or upon any one man or set of men. Neither is it a war on behalf of the Turks, or against the Russians, or for or against Mahometanism, or the Greek form of Christianity Neither would it have been altogether avoided, though it might, perhaps, have been postponed, had Lord Palmerston been Prime Minister, and told the Emperor Nicholas, in so many words, that if he crossed the Pruth, he would send fleets to the Black Sea and the Baltic; nor if this man had done that, or left it undone, and the other man had done the other thing. It is THE WAR between two Powers, whose names have scarcely yet been menioned in the matter, and those powers -FREEDOM and DESPOTISM. FREEDOM fights on the one side, although her armies are those of aristocratic England, imperialised France, and absolute Turkey. DESPOTIC SLAVERY, on the other side, heads the Russian armies now, and her possible or probable allies hereafter. We are quite ready to credit the Emperor Nicholas with as much lust of conquest and greed of territory as any one may demand for him. He coveted Constantinople, and he thought the time had come when he might make one great stride towards its possession, and, perhaps, seize it altogether; but that lust and greed was stimulated and urged to immediate and present action by the fear and the hate of the spirit of freedom that was rising and gaining ground in Turkey. That Turkey should dare to harbour and protect those that had fought for freedom elsewhere; that she should show herself ready and willing to break the links that bound human thought and human action; that she should not only tolerate but encourage religious missionaries from the free shores of England and America; that she should herself be preparing to cast away the chains of religious bigotry, and reform the evils of absolute and arbitrary government, and give to her people social and individual independence and freedom as soon as they were fit to use them: these things formed both the crime of Turkey and the necessity for her punishment; since, if left unpunished, they would soon give her strength to defy her accuser. Despotism, looking through the eyes of the Czar and his ministers, saw her young enemy, Freedom, born and beginning to grow in Turkey, and moved, instinctively, to crush her before she gained strength to be formidable. There can, we think, hardly be one man who still believes the rubbishy pretext of the Greek Church being in any shape the cause of the war, except for the secondary reason that the Greek Church is a very convenient organ of despotism, more especially with a despot at the head of it. Not that we would absolutely deny that the Emperor Nicholas himself is, to some extent, the dupe of his own pretext, and may really be a believer in his own sincere attachment to that faith; but knowingly or unknowingly, that which is the hidden spring of his actions is the instinctive hate of the despot to freedom in all its forms. Let us take the other side of the question, and examine our own motives a little. Have we any of us any particular love for the Turks in the abstract, for the nation, for their creed, or their politics? or have we either any hatred of the Russians? Are we not, on the contrary, all of us rather puzzled to know how it is that all our old associations of fear, and hatred, and contempt for the Turks, and a kind of distant admiration and respect for the Russians, have been suddenly turned into their opposites? Is it not because we have heard that the Russians have bowed themselves down in the dust before their Emperor, and hailed him as a God upon earth; and because we have also heard that, in spite of the arbitrary government and misrule that has prevailed throughout the Turkish empire, there are yet to be found in it both men and communities who have preserved their native independence of thought and action-men who are honest, brave, and true, and are free in all but the form of their government? "Vox populi vox Dei," is an old rule, and where the "populus" is a people," and speaks spontaneously with its own voice, it is also a true one. Therefore have we all of us, involuntarily, in our hearts, taken part with the Turks, long before the red tape of diplomacy condescended to recognise the fact; because we, by a natural instinct, recognised among them the presence of some portion of that spirit of freedom, and uprightness, and independence which, thank God, we can claim as our own characteristics. "free It might, perhaps, be asked, how it comes about that the absolute and despotic Government of Turkey should be regarded as fighting in the front rank of the army of freedom, any more than that of Russia itself; but such an inquiry could only proceed from one who was content to take the external forms of things as the true representatives of their internal qualities. The despotism of Turkey is the old patriarchal, or paternal form of government, the representative of the first rude form of polity that arose among men in times when such form only was possible. The individual freedom of the masses was little affected by it-it acted only in the immediate presence of the despot or his deputies, and varied with their humours or dispositions. It had little organisation; and is an old, effete, worthless form of govern ment enough, but, even in consequence of its inefficiency, may contain much of the elements of freedom. The despotism of Russia, however, is another matter. Here we have organisation, and contrivance, and machinery in full perfection and in constant action. The despotism is carried from the despot as a centre, throughout the whole mass of the population, and is perpetually present, noting and governing every thought and every action of every individual. Every spark of freedom, whether in action, in speech, or even in thought, is carefully grappled with and trodden out. The people themselves become one huge machine, moving and acting at the will of one man. This despotism it is, that ruling throughout the Russian Empire, extends its fell influence, more or less completely, into Austria, and Prussia, and the rest of Germany. Louis Napoleon attempted to introduce something of it into France, though the instinct of the people and his resultant position now compels him to war against it. It is imitated by Naples, and in the Papal States. Spain and Portugal, on the contrary, have hitherto been under the influence of the old unorganised despotism, from which they are now feebly struggling to emancipate themselves. England and Ireland, Holland, and Scandinavia, and parts of Germany, and Switzerland, as also Piedmont, have long ago freed themselves from both kinds. Wherefore, it may be asked, is this glance at things in general paraded before us? For this reason, gentle reader. Inasmuch as our knowledge of the existence of two such opposite powers as those of the despotism of the East of Europe, and the freedom of the West, would enable any one to predict that they must eventually come into dire collision, and strive, till one obtains the mastery of the other, so the clearing away of all the attendant rubbish of extraneous circumstances, and unmasking the two great principles at strife, will enable us to see who must, ultimately or at once, directly or indirectly, be the combatants on each side, and to judge of the duration and result of the struggle. That the war has arisen about the conduct of the Emperor of Russia to the Sultan of Turkey, is a mere accident; his despotic, and, therefore, unjust and treacherous attack, was simply one of the outward manifestations of the principle or rule of conduct on which he, as the representative of despotism, must and will act. A hundred other circumstances might have arisen to produce a similar action in several other directions, which we should have been equally compelled to resist by the very instinct of selfpreservation. That his course of action has been such as to have caused the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia to hesitate before they join him as open allies, is simply another accident, which may or may not be beneficial to the cause of freedom. That they must ultimately join him, or liberate their own peoples, can be no more a matter of doubt with any reasonable man than that the sun will rise to-morrow. The only modification of the latter alternative is, whether they will liberate their peoples, or whether these peoples will not save them the trouble by doing that duty for themselves. It can be equally matter of little doubt, that that very curious piece of political cabinetwork and state-joinery, the Empire of Austria, will be entirely taken to pieces and re-constructed under a new form. This will be the case ultimately, whatever be the issue of the contest, inasmuch as if Russia should win, she will not long refrain from absorbing Hungary and Transylvania. But will she win? Can she win in the long run? Let us suppose one or two possibilities. Suppose that, in consequence of some terrible storm in the Black Sea, the Anglo-French fleet should be so far crippled as to fall a prey to that of the Russians; suppose that in a vain attack on the impregnable Cronstadt a similar misfortune should happen to our Baltic fleet; and that, in consequence of the defeat of the Turkish armies, and the capture of her fortresses, and the loss of the Black Sea fleet, the Anglo-French armies were compelled to surrender prisoners of war, Austria and Prussia immediately declaring on the side of Russia. Allow us to ask our readers, individually and collectively, just to imagine these things, and then to think (each one of them) of what his own feelings would be? Would he not, if a young man, be ready to go to the nearest military depôt and offer himself as a volunteer to serve in any capacity, by land or by sea? Would he not, if a wealthy one, be equally ready to scrape together all the cash he could spare, and place it at the disposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer? Would there be one man in all green Ireland, in all bonny Scotland, or in all merry England, of so craven, so dastard a spirit, as to sit down one instant in his own home, quiet and content with his beating? Would there not be one insurgent roar of uprising spirits, in town and county, across all our broad plains, from all our hill-slopes, from all our mountain glens, from every street, every house, every den and alley of our cities? Would not the hearts of all our young men ache, and their faces burn with impatience till they had crossed the sea and trodden the soil of Russia with the foot of an avenging enemy? Would not fleet after fleet, and army after army, be ready, like Hydra's heads, two taking the place of each one that had preceded them, to precipitate themselves against the common enemy of freedom and mankind? When the reader has answered these questions to his satisfaction he will know our idea of the chance of Russia being the ultimate victor in this war. For any calculation as to the duration of the struggle there are many elements of uncertainty. It is just possible that the Emperor of Russia, meeting with more resistance than he is now prepared for, may take advantage of some opportunity to withdraw for the present, may retire from the Principalities, and endeavour to resume, as far as possible, the status quo ante bellum; and it is possible though hardly, we hope, probable that he may be allowed to do so. Such a proceeding would be no termination of the war; it would be merely an agreement for an armed truce, during which all parties would be watching each other with ever increasing fear, hatred, and distrust, and which despotism would make use of simply to choose her time for striking some sudden and treacherous blow, to cripple her adversaries. No termination of the war can be considered as a final and satisfactory one that does not put back the hordes of Russia into their own steppes, there to work out their own future regeneration. She must be environed with a circle of flame blazing along all her European, and much of her Asiatic borders. Finland must be restored to |