Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, A man"s a man for a" that."
There is another advice which we would fain give you, though it may be regarded as of a somewhat equivocal kind: Rely upon yourselves. The man who sets his hopes upon patronage, or the exertions of others in his behalf, is never so respectable a man, and, save in very occasional instances, rarely so _lucky_ a man, as he who bends his exertions to compel fortune in his behalf, by making himself worthy of her favours. Some of the greatest wrecks we have seen in life have been those of waiters on patronage; and the greatest discontents which we have seen in corporations, churches, and states, have arisen from the exercise of patronage. Shakespeare tells us, in his exquisite vein, of a virtue that is twice blessed,--blessed in those who give, and blessed in those who receive. Patronage is twice cursed,--cursed in the incompetency which it places where merit ought to be, and in the incompetency which it creates among the cla.s.s who make it their trust. But the curse which you have mainly to avoid is that which so often falls on those who waste their time and suffer their energies to evaporate in weakly and obsequiously waiting upon it. We therefore say, Rely upon yourselves. But there is One other on whom you must rely; and implicit reliance on Him, instead of inducing weakness, infinitely increases strength. Bacon has well said, that a dog is brave and generous when he believes himself backed by his master, but timid and crouching, especially in a strange place, when he is alone and his master away. And a human master, says the philosopher, is as a G.o.d to the dog. It certainly does inspire a man with strength to believe that his great Master is behind him, invigorating him in his struggles, and protecting him against every danger. We knew in early life a few smart infidels--smart but shallow; but not one of them ever found their way into notice; and though we have not yet lived out our half century, they have in that s.p.a.ce all disappeared. There are various causes which conspire to write it down as fate, that the humble infidel should be unsuccessful in life. In the first place, infidelity is not a mark of good sense, but very much the reverse. We have been much struck by a pa.s.sage which occurs in the autobiography of a great general of the early part of the last century. In relating the disasters and defeats experienced in a certain campaign by two subordinate general officers, chiefly through misconduct, and a lack of the necessary shrewdness, he adds, "I ever suspected the judgment of these men since I found that they professed themselves infidels."
The sagacious general had inferred that their profession of infidelity augured a lack of sense; and that, when they got into command, the same lack of sense which led them to glory in their shame would be productive, as its necessary results, of misfortune and disaster.
There is a shrewd lesson here to the cla.s.s who doubt and cavil simply to show their parts. In the second place, infidelity, on the principle of Bacon, is a weak, tottering thing, unb.u.t.tressed by that support which gives to poor human nature half its strength and all its dignity. But, above all, in the third and last place, the humble infidel, unballasted by right principle, sets out on the perilous voyage of life without chart or compa.s.s, and, drifting from off the safe course, gets among rocks and breakers, and there perishes. But we must not trespa.s.s on your time. With regard to the conduct of your studies, we simply say, Strive to be catholic in your tastes. Some of you will have a leaning to science; some to literature. To the one cla.s.s we would say, Your literature will be all the more solid if you can get a vein of true science to run through it; and to the other, Your science will be all the more fascinating if you temper and garnish it with literature. In truth, almost all the greater subjects of man"s contemplation belong to both fields. Of subjects such as astronomy and geology, for instance, the poetry is as sublime as the science is profound. As a pretty general rule, you will perhaps find literature most engaging in youth, and science as you grow in years.
But faculties for both have been given you by the great Taskmaster, and it is your bounden duty that these be exercised aright. And so let us urge you, in conclusion, in the words of Coleridge:
"Therefore to go and join head, heart, and hand, Active and firm to fight the bloodless fight Of science, freedom, and the truth in Christ."
DISRUPTION PRINCIPLES.
One of the many dangers to which the members of a disestablished Church just escaped from State control and the turmoil of an exciting struggle are liable, is the danger of getting just a little wild on minute semi-metaphysical points, and of either quarrelling regarding them with their neighbours, or of falling out among themselves. Great controversies, involving broad principles, have in the history of the Church not unfrequently broken into small controversies, involving narrow principles; just as in the history of the world mighty empires like that of Alexander the Great have broken up into petty provinces, headed by mere satraps and captains, when the master-mind that formed their uniting bond has been removed. Independently of that stability which the legalized framework of a rightly-const.i.tuted Establishment is almost sure to impart to its distinctive doctrines, the influence of its temporalities has in one special direction a sobering and wholesome effect. Men carefully weigh principles for the a.s.sertion of which they may be called on to sacrifice or to suffer, and are usually little in danger, in such circ.u.mstances, of becoming martyrs to a mere crotchet. The first beginnings of notions that, if suffered to grow in the mind, may at length tyrannize over it, and lead even the moral sense captive, are often exceedingly minute.
They start up in the form of, mayhap, solitary ideas, chance-derived from some unexpected a.s.sociation, or picked up in conversation or reading; the attention gradually concentrates upon them; auxiliary ideas, in consequence, spring up around them; they a.s.sume a logical form--connect themselves, on the one hand, with certain revealed injunctions of wide meaning--lay hold, on the other, on a previously developed devotional spirit or well-trained conscientiousness; and, in the end, if the minds in which they have arisen be influential ones, they alter the aspects and names of religious bodies, and place in a state of insulation and schism churches and congregations.
Their rise somewhat resembles that of the waves, as described by Franklin in his paper on the effects of oil in inducing a calm, or in preserving one. "The first-raised waves," he says, "are mere wrinkles; but being continually acted upon by the wind, they are, though the gale does not increase in strength, continually increased in magnitude, rising higher, and extending their bases so as to include in each wave vast ma.s.ses, and to act with great momentum. The wind, however," continues the philosopher, "blowing over water covered with oil, cannot _catch_ upon it so as to raise the first or elementary wrinkles, but slides over it, and leaves it smooth as it finds it; and being thus prevented from producing these first elements of waves, it of course cannot produce the waves themselves." In applying the ill.u.s.tration just a little further, we would remark, that within a wholesomely-const.i.tuted religious Establishment, the influence of the temporalities acts in preventing the rise of new notions, like the smoothing oil. If it does not wholly prevent the formation of the first wrinkles of novel opinion, it at least prevents their heightening into wavelets or seas. If the billows rise within so as to disrupt the framework of the Establishment, and make wreck of its temporalities, it may be fairly premised that they have risen not from any impulsion of the light winds of uncertain doctrine, but, as in the Canton de Vaud and the Church of Scotland, in obedience to the strong ground-swell of sterling principle.
Now we deem it a mighty advantage, and one which should not be wilfully neutralized by any after act of the body, that the distinctive principles of the Free Church bear the stamp and pressure of sacrifice. The temporalities resigned for their sake do not adequately measure their value; but they at least demonstrate that, in the estimate of those who resigned them, the principles did of a certainty possess value up to the amount resigned. The Disruption forms a guarantee for the stamina of our Church"s peculiar tenets, and impresses upon them, in relation to the conscience of the Church, the stamp of reality and genuineness. And that influence of the temporalities to which we refer, and under which the controversy grew, had yet another wholesome influence. It prevented the wrinklings of new, untried notions from gathering momentum, and rising into waves. The great billows, influential in producing so much, were the result of ancient, well-tested realities: they had rolled downwards, fully formed, as a portion of the great ground-swell of the Reformation. The Headship of the adorable Redeemer--the spiritual independence of the Church--the rights of the Christian people: these were not crotchets based on foundations of bad metaphysics; they were vital, all-important principles, worthy of being maintained and a.s.serted at any cost. It is indeed wonderful how entirely, immediately previous to the Disruption, the Church of Scotland a.s.sumed all the lineaments of her former self, as she existed in the days of Knox and his brethren. Once more, after the lapse of many years, she stood on broad anti-patronage ground. Once more, after having been swaddled up for an age in the narrow exclusiveness of the Act of 1799, that had placed her in a state of non-communion with the whole Christian world, she occupied, through its repeal, the truly liberal position with regard to the other evangelistic churches of her early fathers.
Once more her discipline, awakened from its long slumber, had become efficient, as in her best days, for every purpose of purity. She had become, on the eve of her disestablishment, after many an intervening metamorphosis, exactly, in character and lineament, the Church which had been established by the State nearly three centuries before. She went out as she had come in. There was a peculiar sobriety, too, in all her actings. Her sufferings and sacrifices were direct consequents of the invasion of her province by the civil magistrate.
But she did not on that account cease to recognise the magistrate in his own proper walk as the minister of G.o.d.
Her aggrieved members never once forgot that they were Scotchmen and Britons as certainly as Presbyterians, and that they had a country as certainly as a Church to which they owed service, and which it was unequivocally their duty to defend.
They retreated from the Establishment, and gave up all its advantages when the post had become so untenable that these could be no longer retained with honour--or we should perhaps rather say, retained compatibly with right principle; but they did not in wholesale desperation give up other posts which could still be conscientiously maintained.
The educational establishment of the country, for instance, was not abandoned, though the ecclesiastical one was.
The Princ.i.p.al of the United College of Saint Salvador and Saint Leonard"s signed the Deed of Demission in his capacity as an elder of the Church, but in his capacity of Princ.i.p.al he returned to his College, and in that post fought what was virtually the battle of his country, and fought it so bravely and well that he is Princ.i.p.al of the College still. And the parish schoolmasters who adhered to the Free Church fought an exactly similar battle, though unfortunately with a less happy issue; but that issue gives at least prominence to the fact that they did not resign their charges, but were thrust from them.
The other functionaries of the a.s.sembly, uninfluenced by any wild Cameronian notion, held by their various secular offices, civil and military. Soldiers retained their commissions--magistrates their seats on the bench--members of Parliament their representative status. Nor did a single member of the Protesting Church possessed of the franchise resign, in consequence of the Disruption, a single political right or privilege. The entire transaction bore, we repeat, the stamp of perfect sobriety. It was in all its details the act of men in their right minds.
Now the principles held by the Church at the Disruption, and none other, whether Voluntary or Cameronian, are the principles of the Free Church. A powerful majority in a Presbyterian body, or in a country possessed of a representative government, are vested in at least the _power_ of making whatever laws they will to make, for not only themselves, but for the minority also. But _power_ is not _right_; and we would at once question the _right_ of even a preponderating majority in a Church such as ours to introduce new principles into her framework, and to impose them on the minority. We question, on this principle, the _right_ of that act of discipline which was exercised in the present century by a preponderating majority of the Antiburgher body in Scotland, when they deposed and excommunicated the late Dr.
M"Crie for the ecclesiastical offence of holding in every particular by the original tenets of the fathers of the Secession.
The overt act in the case manifested their _power_, but the various attempts made to manifest their _right_ we regard as mere abortions.
They had no _right_ to do what they did. The questions on which the majority differed from their fathers ought in justice, instead of being made a subject of legislation, to be left an open question. And we hold, on a similar principle, that whatever questions of conduct or polity may arise in the Free Church, which, though new to it, yet come to be adopted by a majority, should be left open questions also.
Of course, of novelties in doctrine we do not speak,--we trust that within the Free Church none such will ever arise; we refer rather to those semi-metaphysical points of casuistry, and nice questions of conduct, in which the differences that perplex non-established Churches are most liable to originate,--matters in which one man sees after one way, and another man after another,--and which, until heaped up into importance, wave-like, as if by the wind, pertain not to the province of solid demonstrable truth, but to the province of loose fluctuating opinion. And be it remarked, that non-established Churches are very apt to be disturbed by such questions.
They are in circ.u.mstances in which the ripple pa.s.ses into the wavelet, and the wavelet into the billow. On this head, as on all others, there is great value in the teachings of history; and the Free Church might be worse employed than in occasionally conning the lesson. Each fifty years of the last century and half has been marked by its own special questions of the kind among the non-established Churches of Scotland.
The question of the last fifty years has been that Voluntary one which virtually led to the striking off the roll of the Antiburgher Secession Church, those protesting ministers who formed the nucleus of the Original Secession, and to the excommunication and deposition of Dr. M"Crie. The question of the preceding fifty years was that connected with the burghal oath, which had the effect of splitting into two antagonist sections the religious body of which the Burgher Secession formed but one of the fragments,--a body fast rising at the time into a position of importance, which the split prevented it from ever fully realizing. The question of the fifty years with which the period began was that which fixed the Cameronian body, not merely in a condition of unsocial seclusion in its relation with all other churches, but even detached it from its allegiance to the State, and placed it in circ.u.mstances of positive rebellion. Perhaps the history of this latter body, as embodied in its older testimony, and the controversial writings of its Fairlys and Thorburns, is that from the study of which the Free Church might derive most profit at the present time. We live in so late an age of the world, that we have little chance of finding much which is positively new in the writings or speeches of our casuists. When we detect, in consequence, some of our ministers or office-bearers sporting principles that do not distinctively belong to the Church of the Disruption, we may be pretty sure, if we but search well, of discovering these principles existing as the distinctive tenets of some other Church; and the present tendency of a most small but most respectable minority in our body is decidedly Cameronian.
The pa.s.sages of Scripture on which the Cameronians chiefly dwelt in their testimony and controversial writings, were those discussed by the Free Presbytery of Edinburgh on Wednesday last. As condemnatory of what is designated the great national sin of the Union, for instance, the testimony adduces, among other texts, Isa. viii. 12, "Say ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy;" Hos. vii. 8, 9, "Ephraim hath mixed himself among the people; Ephraim is a cake not turned. Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not; yea, grey hairs are here and there upon him, and he knoweth it not;" and above all, 2 Cor. vi. 14, 15, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness, and what communion hath light with darkness, and what concord hath Christ with Belial, or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?" And let the reader mark how logically these Scriptures are applied. "All a.s.sociations and confederacies with the enemies of true religion and G.o.dliness,"
says the Testimony, "are thus expressly condemned in Scripture, and represented as dangerous to the true Israel of G.o.d. And if simple confederacies with malignants and enemies to the cause of Christ are condemned, much more is an incorporation with them, which is an embodying of two into one, and therefore a straiter conjunction. And, taking the definition of malignants given by the declarations of both kingdoms, joined in arms _anno_ 1643, to be just, which says, "Such as would not take the Covenant were to be declared to be public enemies to religion and their country, and that they are to be censured and punished as professed adversaries and malignants," it cannot be refused but that the prelatic party in England now joined with are such. Further, by this incorporating union this nation is obliged to support the _idolatrous_ Church of England." And thus the argument runs on irrefragable in its logic, if we but grant the premises. But to what, we ask, did it lead, a.s.sisted, of course, by other arguments of a similar character, in the body with whom it originated? To their withdrawal, from the times of the Revolution till now, from every national movement in the cause of Christ and His gospel; nay, most consistently, we must add--for we have ever failed to see the sense or logic of acting a public and political part in our own or our neighbour"s behalf, and declining on principle to act it in behalf of Christianity or its inst.i.tutions--not only have they withdrawn themselves from all political exertion in behalf of religion, but in behalf of their country also. A Cameronian holding firm by his principles of non-incorporation with _idolaters_, cannot be a magistrate nor a member of Parliament; he cannot vote in an election, nor serve in the army.
It is one of the grand evils of questions of casuistry of this kind, that men, instead of looking at things and estimating them as they really exist, are contented to play games at logic--chopping with but the imperfect signs of things--mere verbal counters, twisted from their original meanings by the influence of delusive metaphors and false a.s.sociations.
Let us just see, in reference not to mere words, but to things, what can be truly meant by the terms "apostate or apostatizing Government,"
as applied to the Government of Great Britain. The words can have of course no just application, in a personal bearing, to present members of Government, as distinguished from the members of previous Governments, seeing that the functionaries now in office are just as much, or rather as little religious, as any other functionaries in office since the times of the Revolution or before. In a _personal_ sense, England"s last religious government was that of Cromwell. The term apostate, or apostatizing, can have only an _official_ meaning.
What, then, in its official meaning, does it in reality express? The government of the United Kingdom is representative; and it is one of the great blessings which we enjoy as citizens that it is so,--one of those blessings for which we may now, as when we were younger, express ourselves thankful in the words of honest Isaac Watts, "that we were born on British ground." At any rate, this fact of representation _is_ a _fact_--a _thing_, not a mere _word_. There is another fact in the case equally solid and certain. This representation of the empire is based on a population of about twenty-six millions of people; twelve millions of whom are Episcopalian, eight millions Roman Catholic, three millions Presbyterian, and three millions more divided among the various other Protestant sects of the country. And this also is a _fact_--a _thing_, not a mere _word_.
In the good providence of G.o.d we were born the citizens of an empire thus representative in its government, and thus ecclesiastically const.i.tuted in its population.
And it would be a further fact consequent on the other two, that the aggregate character of the Government would represent the aggregate moral and ecclesiastical character of the people, were every distinct portion into which the people are parcelled to exert itself in proportion to its share of political influence. But from the yet further fact, that the portions have _not_ always exerted themselves in equal ratios, and from other causes, political and providential, the character of the Government has considerably fluctuated--now representing one portion more in proportion to its amount than its mere bulk warranted, anon another. Thus, in the days of the Commonwealth, what are now the six million Presbyterians and Independents, etc., had a British Government wholly representative of themselves; while what are now the twelve million Episcopalians and the eight million Papists had none.
England at the time produced one of those men, of a type surpa.s.singly great, that the world fails to see once in centuries; and, like Brennus of old, he flung his sword into the lighter scale, and it straightway outweighed the other. There then ensued a period of twenty-eight years, in which Government represented only the Episcopalians and Papists: and then a period of a hundred and forty years more, in which it represented only the Episcopalians and Presbyterians. And now--for Popery, growing strong in the interval, had been using all appliances in its own behalf, and had not been met in the proper spiritual field--it represents Episcopacy, Roman Catholicism, and a minute, uninfluential portion of the Presbyterian and other evangelistic bodies. But how, it may be asked, has this result taken place?
How is it only a moiety of these bodies that is represented? Mainly, we unhesitatingly reply, through the influence exerted by certain crotchets entertained by the bodies themselves on their political standing. When Government at the Revolution, instead of being as formerly representative of Episcopacy and Popery, became representative of Episcopacy and Presbytery, Cameronianism broke off, on the plea that the governing power ought to be representative of Presbytery only, and that it was apostate because it was not; and the political influence of the body has been ever since lost to the Protestant cause.
Voluntaryism, on the other hand, neutralized _its_ influence, by holding that, though quite at freedom to exert itself in the political walk in attaining secular objects, religious objects are in that walk unattainable, or at least not to be attained; and so _it_ also has been virtually lost to the Protestant cause. And now a cloud like a man"s hand arises in our own Church, to threaten a further secession from the ranks of the remaining cla.s.s, who strive to stamp upon the Government, through the operation of the representative principle, at least a modic.u.m of the evangelistic character. And all this is taking place in an age in which the battle for the integrity of the Sabbath as a national inst.i.tute, and other similar battles, shall soon have to be decided on political ground. If "apostate" or "apostatizing" be at all proper words in reference to the _things_ which we have here described, what, we ask, save the want either of weight or of exertion on the part of the _represented_ bodies who complain of it, can be properly regarded as the _cause_ of that apostasy? A representative Government, if the represented be Episcopalian, will itself be officially Episcopalian; if the represented be Papist, it will itself be officially Papist; if the represented be Presbyterian, it will itself be officially Presbyterian; if composed of all three together, the Government will bear an aggregate average character; but if, on some crotchet, the Presbyterians withdraw from the political field, while the others exert themselves in that field to the utmost, it will be Popish and Episcopalian exclusively. But for a result so undesirable--a result which, if Presbytery had been formerly in the ascendant, might of course be called official apostasy--it would be the Presbyterian const.i.tuency that would be to blame, not the Government.
It will be seen that this view of the real state of _things_ was that of Knox and Chalmers, and that they acted in due accordance with it.
We are told by the younger M"Crie, in his admirable _Sketches of Scottish Church History_, "that Knox and his brethren, perceiving that the whole ecclesiastical property of the kingdom bade fair to be soon swallowed up by the rapacity of the n.o.bles, insisted that a considerable portion of it should be reserved for the support of the poor, the founding of universities and schools, and the maintenance of an efficient ministry throughout the country. At last," continues the historian, "after great difficulty, the Privy Council came to the determination that the ecclesiastical revenues should be divided into three parts,--that two of them should be given to the ejected prelates during their lives, which afterwards reverted to the n.o.bility, and that the third part should be divided between the Court and the Protestant ministry."
"Well," exclaimed Knox on hearing of this arrangement, "if the end of this order be happy, my judgment fails me. I see two parts freely given to the devil, and the third must be divided between G.o.d and the devil." Strong words these. Here is a Government, according to Knox"s own statement of the case, giving five-sixths to the devil, and but a remaining sixth to G.o.d. But does Knox on that account refuse G.o.d"s moiety? Does he set himself to reason metaphysically regarding _his_ degree of responsibility for either what the devil got, or what the Government gave the devil. Not he. He received G.o.d"s part, and in applying it wisely and honestly to G.o.d"s service, wished it more; but as for the rest, like a man of broad strong sense as he a.s.suredly was, he left the devil and the Privy Council to divide the responsibility between them. And the large-minded Chalmers entertained exactly the same views,--views which, if not in thorough harmony with the idle fictions which dialecticians employ when they treat of Governments, at least entirely accord with the real condition of things. The official character of a representative Legislature must, as we have shown, resemble that of the const.i.tuency which it represents. In order to alter it permanently for the better, it is essentially necessary, as a first step in the process, that the worse parts of the const.i.tuencies on which it rests be so altered.
Now, for altering const.i.tuencies for the better, schools and churches were the machinery of Knox and of Chalmers; and if the funds for the support of either came honestly to them, unclogged with conditions unworthy of the object, they at once received them as given on G.o.d"s behalf, however idolatrously the givers--whether individuals or Governments--might be employing money drawn from the same purse in other directions. "Ought I," said Chalmers in reference to the Educational question, "ought I not to use, on teetotal principles, the water of the public pump, because another man mixes it with his toddy?" It was not because Popery was established in the colonies, or seemed in danger of being established in Ireland, that the Free Church resigned its hold of the temporalities of the Scottish Establishment.
Such endowment, instead of forming an argument for resignation, would form, on the contrary, an argument for keeping faster hold, in behalf of Protestantism, of the fortalice of the Establishment; just as if an invading army had possessed itself of the Castle of Dumbarton, with the strongholds of Fort-Augustus and Fort-William, the argument would be all the stronger for the national forces defending with renewed determination the Castles of Stirling and of Edinburgh, and the magnificent defences of Fort-George.
_February 9, 1848._
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CRIMEAN WAR.
The war now happily concluded was characterized by some very remarkable features. It was on the part of Britain the war of a highly civilised country, in a pre-eminently mechanical, and, with all its faults, singularly humane age,--in an age, too, remarkable for the diffusion of its literature; and hence certain conspicuous traits which belonged to none of the other wars in which our country had been previously engaged. Never before did such completely equipped fleets and armies quit our sh.o.r.es. The navies with which we covered the Black Sea and the Baltic were not at all what they would have been had the war lasted for one other campaign, but they mightily exceeded anything of the kind that Britain or the world had ever seen before. The fleets of Copenhagen, Trafalgar, and the Nile would have cut but a sorry figure beside them, and there was more of the _materiel_ of war concentrated on that one siege of Sebastopol than on any half-dozen other sieges recorded in British history. In all that mechanical art could accomplish, the late war with Russia was by far the most considerable in which our country was ever engaged. It was, in respect of _materiel_, a war of the world"s pre-eminently mechanical people in the world"s pre-eminently mechanical age. With this strong leading feature, however, there mingled another, equally marked, in which the element was weakness, not strength. The men who beat all the world in heading pins are unable often to do anything else; for usually, in proportion as mechanical skill becomes intense, does it also become narrow; and the history of the two campaigns before Sebastopol brought out very strikingly a certain helplessness on the part of the British army, part of which at least must be attributed to this cause. It is surely a remarkable fact, that in an army never more than seven miles removed from the base line of its operations, the distress suffered was so great, that nearly _five_ times the number of men sank under it that perished in battle. There was no want among them of pinheading and pinheaded martinets. The errors of officers such as Lucan and Cardigan are understood to be all on the side of severity; but in heading their pin, they wholly exhaust their art; and under their surveillance and direction a great army became a small one, with the sea covered by a British fleet only a few miles away. So far as the statistics of the British portion of this greatest of sieges have yet been ascertained, rather more than _three_ thousand men perished in battle by the shot or steel of the enemy, or afterwards of their wounds, and rather more than _fifteen_ thousand men of privation and disease. As for the poor soldiers themselves, they could do but little in even more favourable circ.u.mstances under the pinheading martinets; and yet at least such of them as were drawn from the more thoroughly artificial districts of the country must, we suspect, have fared all the worse in consequence of that subdivision of labour which has so mightily improved the mechanical standing of Britain in the aggregate, and so restricted and lowered the general ability in individuals. We cannot help thinking that an army of backwoodsmen of the present day, or of Scotch Highlanders marked by the prevailing traits of the last century, would have fared better and suffered less.
Another remarkable feature of the war arose out of the singularly ready and wonderfully diffused literature of the day. Like those self-registering machines that keep a strict account of their own workings, it seemed to be engaged, as it went on, in writing, stage after stage, its own history. The acting never got a single day ahead of the writing, and never a single week ahead of the publishing; and, in consequence, the whole civilised world became the interested witnesses of what was going on. The war became a great game at chess, with a critical public looking over the shoulders of the players. It was a peculiar feature, too, that the public _should_ have been so critical. As the literature of a people becomes old, it weakens in the power of originating, and strengthens in the power of criticising.
Reviews and critiques become the master efforts of a learned and ingenious people, whose literature has pa.s.sed its full blow; and the criticism extends always, in countries in which the press is free from the productions of men who write in their closets, to the actings of men who conduct the political business of the country, or who direct its fleets and armies. And with regard to them also it may be safely affirmed, that the critical ability overshoots and excels the originating ability. There seems to have been no remarkably good generalship manifested by Britain in the Crimea: all the leading generalship appears, on the contrary, to have been very mediocre generalship indeed. The common men and subordinate officers did their duty n.o.bly; and there have been such splendid examples of skilful generalship in fourth and fifth-rate commands--commands such as that of Sir Colin Campbell and Sir George Brown--that it has been not unfrequently asked, whether we had in reality the "right men in the right places," and whether there might not, after all, have been generalship enough in the Crimea had it been but rightly arranged. But the leading generalship was certainly _not_ brilliant. The criticism upon it, on the other hand, has been singularly so. The ages of Marlborough and Wellington did not produce a t.i.the of the brilliant military criticism which has appeared in England in newspapers, magazines, and reviews during the last two years. And yet it is possible that, had the very cleverest of these critics been appointed to the chief command, he would have got on as ill as any of his predecessors. In truth, the power of originating and the power of criticising are essentially different powers in the worlds both of thought and of action. Talent acc.u.mulates the materials of criticism from the experience of the past; and thus, as the world gets older, the critical ability grows, and becomes at length formidably complete;--whereas the power of originating, or, what is the same thing, of acting wisely, and on the spur of the moment, in new and untried circ.u.mstances, is an incommunicable faculty, which genius, and genius only, can possess. And genius is as rare now as it ever was.
Any man of talent can be converted, by dint of study and painstaking, into a good military critic; but a Wellington or a Napoleon had as certainly to be born what they were, as a Dante or a Milton.
But by far the most pleasing feature of the war--of at least the part taken in it by Britain--is to be found in that humanity, the best evidence of a civilisation truly Christian, which has characterized it in all its stages. Generous regard for the safety and respect for the feelings of a brave enemy, when conquered, have marked our countrymen for centuries. But we owe it to the peculiar philanthropy of the time, that, in the midst of much official neglect, our own sick and wounded soldiers have been cared for after a fashion in which British soldiers were never cared for before. The "lady nurses," with Miss Nightingale at their head, imparted its most distinctive character to the war. We have now before us a deeply interesting volume,{1} the production of one of these devoted females, a native of the north country, or, as she was introduced by an old French officer to some Zouaves, her fellow-pa.s.sengers to the East, whom she had wished to see, a true "_Montagnarde de Ecossaise_." The name of the auth.o.r.ess is not given; but it will, we daresay, be recognised in the neighbourhood of the "capital of the Highlands" as that of a delicately nurtured lady, the daughter of a late distinguished physician, well known to the north of the Grampians as an able and upright man, who, had he not so sedulously devoted himself to the profession which he adorned, might have excelled in almost any department of science. And in strong sound sense and genial feeling, we find the daughter worthy of such a father. Some of our more zealous Protestants professed at one time not a little alarm lest the lady nurses might be Papists in disguise; and certainly their "regulation dresses," all cut after one fashion, and of one sombre hue, did seem a little nun-like, and perhaps rather alarming. But the following pa.s.sage--which, from the amusing mixture which it exhibits of strong good sense and half-indignant womanly feeling, our readers will, we are sure, relish--may serve to show that some of the ladies who wore the questionable dress, liked it quite as ill as the most zealous member of the Reformation Society could have done, and were very excellent Protestants under its cover. The auth.o.r.ess of the volume before us is a Presbyterian; and the occasion of the following remarks was the meeting of the British Consul at Ma.r.s.eilles, and the necessity that herself and her companions felt of getting head-dresses for themselves, that could be looked at ere entertaining him at dinner. "Perhaps it may be thought," says our auth.o.r.ess, "that all this solicitude about our caps was unsuitable in persons going out as what is called "Sisters of Mercy;" but I must once for all say that, as far as I was concerned, I neither professed to be a "Sister of Charity," a "Sister of Mercy," nor anything of the kind. I was, as I told a _poissarde_ of Boulogne, a British woman who had little to do at home, and wished to help our poor soldiers, if I could, abroad. The reason given to me for the peculiarity and uniformity of our dress was, that the soldiers might know and respect their nurses. It seems a sensible reason, and one which I could not object to, even disliking, as I did, all peculiarity of attire that seemed to advertise the nurses only as serving G.o.d, or serving Him pre-eminently, and thus conveying a tacit reproach to the rest of the world; for the obligation lies on all the same. I did not feel then, nor do I now, that we were doing anything better or more praiseworthy than is done in a quiet, unostentatious way at home every day. On the contrary, to many temperaments, my own among the number, it is far less difficult to engage in a new and exciting work like the one we were then entering on there, than to pursue the uneventful monotony of daily doing good at home. As for the dress itself, I have nothing to say against it. Although not perhaps of the material or texture I should have preferred, still the colour, grey, was one I generally wore from choice. But I must confess, that when I found myself restricted to it, without what seemed a good reason, an intense desire for blue, green, red, and yellow, with all their combinations, took possession of me; though, now that I may wear what I please, I find my former favour for grey has returned in full force. However, allowing that it was desirable we should have had some uniform costume, it certainly was unnecessary that ladies, nurses, and washerwomen should have been dressed alike, as we were. That was part of the mistake I have already adverted to, and was productive of confusion and bad feeling."
Despite of the uniform dresses, however, the sick and wounded soldiers soon learned to distinguish between the paid nurses and the ladies who had left their comfortable British homes to lavish upon them their gratuitous, priceless labours.
There is no a.s.sumption in this volume. Its auth.o.r.ess writes as if she had done only her duty, and as if the task had not been an exceedingly hard or difficult one; but the simple facts related show how very much was accomplished and endured. Every chapter justifies the judgment p.r.o.nounced by the tall Irish sergeant. This lady nurse is a "real fine woman,"--a n.o.ble specimen of the cla.s.s whose disinterested and self-sacrificing exertions gave to the late war its most distinctive and brilliant feature. The bravery of British men had been long established; the superadded trait is the heroism of British women. In what circ.u.mstances of peril and suffering that heroism was exerted, the following extract, with which we conclude, may serve to show. It is the funeral of one of the lady nurses, who sank under an attack of malignant fever, that the following striking pa.s.sage records:--
"The Protestant burial-ground is a dismal-looking, neglected spot. It was chosen from an idea that Drusilla"s friends at home might prefer it to the open hill where the soldiers lay; but if there had been time for consideration and inspection, it would have been otherwise arranged: for the appearance of the place struck a chill to our hearts--it looked so dark and dreary, with the gra.s.s more than a foot high, and the weeds towering above it; and from its being close to the bay, and the porous nature of the soil, the grave which had been dug on the forenoon was almost filled by water; and on the words, "Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty G.o.d," we heard the coffin splash into the half-full grave. There was a general regret afterwards that this burial-ground had been chosen, but poor Drusilla will not sleep the less soundly; and we all agreed, on leaving her grave, that whoever of us was next called to die, should be buried on the hill, in the spot allotted to the poor soldiers, open and unprotected as it was. Death seemed very near to us then; we had already lost two orderlies, and many of the nurses were lying at the gates of death.
Miss A---- had made an almost miraculous escape, and was not yet out of danger from relapse. The first gap had been made in our immediate party, and who of us could tell whether she herself was not to be the next?
"The evening was fast closing as we returned, some in caiques, and others walking solemnly and sadly; for, besides the feelings naturally attending such a scene, we all regretted poor Drusilla, who, although she had not been long among us, was so obliging and anxious to be of use. She was a good-looking young woman, and immediately on her arrival had become the object of attraction to one of the clerks, whose attentions, however, she most steadily declined. He still persisted in showing the most extraordinary attachment to her, and during her illness was in such a state of excitement and distress as to be utterly incapacitated for attending to his duties properly. He used to sit on the stairs leading to her room, in the hopes of seeing some one who could tell him how she was, and went perpetually to the pa.s.sage outside her room, entreating of the Misses Le M----, who generally sat up with her, to let him in to see her. This they refused till the night of her death, when she was quite insensible, and past all hope of recovery; so that his visit could do her no harm. He stayed a few minutes, and looked his last on her; for in the morning at seven o"clock she died. I shall never forget his face when he came to my store-room, in accordance with his duty, to correct some inaccuracy in the diet-roll. He seemed utterly bewildered with sorrow; and Miss S----, who had also occasion to speak to him, said she never saw grief so strongly marked in a human face. He insisted on following her remains to the grave as chief mourner, and wearied himself with carrying the coffin. No one interfered with him; for all seemed to think he had acquired the right, by his unmistakeable affection, to perform these sad offices; and the lady superintendent, moved by his sorrow, allowed him to retain a ring of some small value which the deceased had been accustomed to wear."
_June 14, 1856._