leaves of a forest, numbered at least 60,000

men.

"To put an end to such an alarming invasion and save Constantinople, was a paramount object with the British ambassador, Sir Robert Gordon, more particularly as considerable anxiety was felt lest there should be an out-break in the capital, for the restoration of the janissaries. A treaty of peace was signed in consequence at Adrianople on the 28th of August, 1829.

"It is said, that Sultan Mahmoud's usual firmness deserted him on this occasion, and that he shed bitter tears on aflixing his signature to what he so justly considered a disadvantageous, and even humiliating treaty. It is pretty certain he would have continued the war at all hazards, had he been aware that at that moment the Russian commander, now Marshal Diebitsch Zabalkanski had not more than from 15,000 to 17,000 bayonets. A defective commissariat, and a still worse medical department, caused disease to commence its work as soon as the invaders reached Adrianople. At a grand review which took place on the 8th of November, 1820, and at which the author was present, there were scarcely 13,000 men of all arms in the field."-pp.245-6.

In Asia the campaign of 1829, though by no means decisive, was yet in favour of the Russians, owing to the skill of Paskievitch, and the want of it in the Turks, and the Pashalick of Akhaltsikh remained as a permanent addition to the Russian empire, together with another portion of the Black Sea coast. These and the fortress of Brailow in Europe, with a right of controul over the entrance of the Danube and 11,500,000 Dutch ducats, were the immediate material advantages gained by Russia by the treaty of Adrianople, in addition to which she acquired rights of interference in the affairs of Wallachia and Moldavia, which have become the proximate and obvious causes of the present war.

Still, on the whole, though the entire advantage was on the side of the Russians, we can now see in how precarious and hazardous a way that advantage was obtained, as well as at how great a loss of men and materials of war; and our cheering reflection is, if the Russians did so little then against the Turks single-handed, and embarrassed, and at the lowest ebb of their fortunes, how much less would they be able to effect now.

After summing up the results of this

He

war, Colonel Chesney gives a brief account of the subsequent aggressions of Russia upon Turkey down to the present time, and then places before us an abstract of the events, with which we are all familiar, that have occurred during the past year. shows the never-ceasing covetousness of the Czar for the possession of Turkey, as evidenced by all his acts, and the utter falsehood, deceit, and faithlessness which have characterised all his words. It would, indeed, be to insult the good sense of our readers if we endeavoured to prove to them how utterly the Emperor Nicholas has broken the faith of a sovereign and the word of honour of a gentleman, No man acting in private life in England as he has done in European politics, but would be branded with the same mark of disgrace that clings to a sharper or a blackleg.

Colonel Chesney then examines the question of the military defence of Turkey, contrasting the advantages of its present position, its well-organised army, and the united and enthusiastic spirit of the people, with its condition in 1828 and 29. He avows his belief, that had not the Sultan been encumbered with the help of European diplomacy in 1853, he might have met the Russians on the banks of the Pruth, and either have prevented the occupation of the Principalities, or, at least, have deprived the enemy of great part of the advantages they derived from it. He explains moreover, clearly, the difficulties the Russians have to contend against in any advance, and shows that the Turks have three great lines of defence-first, the Danube and its fortresses; secondly, the Balkan, with the strong places of Shumla and Varna; and lastly, the lines of Buyuk Tchekmedge, west of Constantinople; and points out to us that the difficulties of the Russians must increase with their advance, since an overwhelming force and an enormous expenditure would be necessary to keep up their communications with their base, and make sure of receiving supplies of provisions and munitions of war. Without the mastery of the Black Sea, indeed, any great and permanent advance of the Russians beyond their present line appears to us almost impossible, except in consequence of an amount of treachery or weakness on the part of the Turks which we cannot suppose them

capable of, or an amount of power and resources on the part of Russia which are equally unlooked for. Still remains the question, supposing the Russians to stand on the defensive on their present lines, how are they to be driven out of the Principalities, and the Sultan's dominions restored to him unbroken and unincumbered by the presence of an enemy. Constantinople may be safe, but is he to remain content with that?—or are we, as his allies, to be so? Such a supposition is absurd.

On the means of driving the Russians beyond the Pruth, Colonel Chesney is silent; perhaps advisedly so. We thank him heartily for his book, however, which needs no praise of ours to insure its wide circulation and popularity. The single fault we have to find with it is, the very rough and incomplete nature of his maps, as we think he might have given us some containing more full information, both geographical and strategetical.

In closing this article, we would again press on our readers, in the same spirit as in our last number, but with even greater urgency, that this is no little war in which we are engaged. They must be prepared to make far greater sacrifices than any that have been called for yet. The Turkish campaigns, whatever may be the result of them, will be but one incident in this war. It is a war in which, before its final close, the fate of England and France will be involved. Perhaps few results are more to be deprecated by us than a hasty and patched-up peace. The instincts of our aristocratic rulers, on the one hand, have more or less sympathy with the success of despotic power; on the other is the miserable and purblind policy of the Manchester school, that would go on spinning cotton till there were no customers left to buy it from them. The union of these two spirits is an evil to be feared by all who in our islands draw the breath of freemen, and are worthy to call themselves a people.

This war, once begun, should be fought fairly out. Let us recollect

that there are whole nations and races of men-men, like ourselves, with white faces, and whose hair is not woolly-who, in all the highest faculties and attributes of men, are slaves. Let us recollect that there are fair provinces and noble lands in our own Europe that are tilled by men who are serfs almost as much slaves as are the "niggers" of the United States; that even the owners of these serfs and these lands dare not utter their own thoughts, cannot move freely about their own country, and hold their lives and fortunes at the will of one man, or at the pleasure of his subordinates. Let us recollect that we ourselves, if we visit these countries, have to speak with 'bated breath, and hide our thoughts, if we would not visit the inside of a prison; and that our every act is noted and registered in the books of the police. Let even Manchester recollect that our commerce is crippled, our trade fettered, millions of customers kept from our shops, millions of tons of "goods" debarred from our warehouses; and all this for no real good, but for the fancied security of some certain royal houses, and the support of the minions and the armies that they suppose necessary to that security.

We did right never to commence a crusade even in the cause of freedom; but once engaged, once armed and in the field, we should be alike fools and cowards should the nations rise, as rise they will to let any paltry state policy, any dynastic family entanglements, or any petty party feelings here at home, hinder our stretching out to them the right hand of fellowship, or at least securing for them a fair field to deal each with their own domestic foes, as their own arms and their own hearts shall give them strength to deal. England and France are henceforth bound, in common honesty and common justice, to oppose intervention by intervention. Should the despots band together, let our people join with their people; and then, in the bold words of Lord John, we say, "Let God defend the right!"

THE perusal of the History of any animating and important era in human affairs is apt to induce the belief that all interest must be at an end when the principal actors have disappeared from the stage, and the curtain has fallen upon the great culminating catastrophe. But in this we forget, that although History may rival Romance in the fascination which it exerts upon the reader, and may even at times have as perfect a beginning, middle, and end, yet that these two classes of composition rest upon essentially different bases. The one belongs to the ideal world, the other to the real. In the former, the characters can be selected and the events so arranged, that at the close of the tale all is definitively at an end. The old Hindoo sages fancied that the Universe, with all its manifold and varied phenomena, is but a projected dream of Bramah's,-an embodiment of the thoughts or visions of the sleeping God; and that while the "sleep of Brahma" lasts, all things continue as they are; but that the moment he awakes from his slumbrous reverie, the material Universe is no more is absorbed "leaving not a wrack behind." Even so is it with the Poet-the "maker," whether his work be in prose or rhyme; and he may so manage his story that the characters, like the Ariels of Prospero's enchanted isle, vanish at last into "thin air," and the tale itself suddenly sinks and disappears amidst the sands of time. History, on the contrary, deals with real life, where events grow in a perpetual chain, and share

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in the undying succession of the human race. No sooner are the transactions of one period brought to a close, and an apparent lull has crept over the busy scenes, than another set of ener gies come into play, at first hardly perceptible and often unobserved, but which in the end act with resistless force, and alter the whole complexion of the world. What men call an Era, in fact, is just the culminating point of a set of influences which have been long in operation, and which in turn give place to others of different hue and feature. The various great eras in the world's history are like the crested waves that roll in distant and varied succession over the blue level of ocean, each sinking into new ones, as in ceaseless series they mark the surface of the world of waters. to speak more correctly, an era is to the moral world what the flowering time is to the vegetable kingdom,wherein each order germinates, grows, and bursts into flower, then fades away before another of different shape and colour, which has been springing up unnoticed beneath the luxuriant foliage and blossoms of its predecessor.

Or,

This work of Sir Archibald Alison's, therefore, is not strictly speaking a new one, but a continuation of the "History of Europe" which has already made him celebrated. It is a continuation, however, of a peculiar kind. It is not a mere addition, -a wing tacked to an edifice already complete in itself. Like a new arch added to a bridge, this work is in exact harmony and conjunction with its statelier prede

VOL. XLIII.NO. CCLVIII.

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