judices, cannot fail to be struck with admiration. The first impression, indeed, is that of high culture, and great intellectual superiority. Escaping from hotel life, or from the serious atmosphere of the study, we enter with delight into circles, where rules brought to the highest perfection, and enforced by good taste and a general sense of propriety, keep everybody in his right place, and yet produce an appearance of perfect liberty and ease. Nothing of the kind can surpass a Parisian soiree. An hour or two after dinner people begin to collect, or rather to drop in. The valet announces them at the door of the salon, and then all ceremony apparently ends. The new-comers go up and salute the mistress, perhaps chat a moment or two with her, and then form or join groups here and there. If any topic be stirred that interests them, they remain an hour or so, and then depart, without saluting either the host or hostess, unless they happen to be near the doors a formal good-night might suggest to others the necessity of retiring. Sometimes a visitor remains only a few moments; there is often an entire change of persons once or twice in the course of the evening. The conversation is seldom loud, and there is more pleasantry than discussion. It is curious to observe the remarkable change in fashions and taste that has taken place since the Empire. Nearly all the exquisite simplicity which was the characteristic of female dress in France has disappeared. Gorgeous ornaments and vivid colours are the order of the day. I saw on one occasion a lady, noted for the elegance of her costume, appear at a soiree in a toilette very much resembling that of a savage queen. gown was of light red, her bracelets and necklace of coral beads, larger than hazel nuts, and her head was decorated with pieces of coral and feathers. Had she been even beautiful, she would have appeared ridiculous. The ladies say they are compelled to this sacrifice of taste by the adoption of brilliant uniforms laden with gold and silver embroidery by the courtiers and all public functionaries. The change is curious, because Frenchmen have long struggled successfully against the national taste, which is all for show and gorgeousness, as is evinced, says one of their writers, by the immense popularity of the dahlia flower. The Empire has not yet had much influence on male costume, except by the re-introduction of frock-coats with long skirts. But it was once seriously contemplated to make an entire revolution in this respect--to suppress moustaches, and enforce tight breeches and a sort of top-boots. The Emperor, however, did not think it would be expedient, on reconsideration, to make Paris picturesque in this fashion, and contents himself with setting a good example at Compeigne, where, with a true appreciation of elegance, he resorts sometimes to the costume of the last century, and shames his court into magnificence by

Her

wearing fine frills and pendant wristbands of Malines lace. To return to the soiree, it is the custom, even in the smallest, for every man to carry his hat all in his hand,' a most uncomfortable practice, it is true, but founded partly on economy, partly on the desire to avoid appearing to have come with the determination to remain a long time. I know a man who maintains that the distinctive sign of a gentleman is never to abandon his hat under any but the most pressing circumstances. He must never set it down on a chair, or in a corner, unless he be required to dance; and then he must lay it on the chair his partner has vacated, and take it up when he hands her back. In taking tea the hat must never be laid aside. once at a dinner party, and obstinately kept hold of my weapon of gentility until the soup was on the table. My friend gave me an approving glance, and said I had all the instincts of a gentleman."

I was

As a specimen of the author's light manner, we must make room for one more extract, in which he remarks on the unfavourable impression too often made on the French by English travellers :

"A regular green Cockney, who has, perhaps, made his last meal off that indescribable mess called beefsteak and oyster-sauce, in some villa overlooking Battersea Fields, when he first sits down to a table d'hote, thinks it necessary to grumble at everything set before him partly, it is true, to 'overhawe' those rascally crapeaus. That he may be perfectly understood, he expresses himself by pantomimic display, pretends to be very sick, calls for a glass of 'ho' to wash his mouth after some infernal mess, and so contrives to convince himself that he is a very humorous fellow, and the company that he and his countrymen are all brutes. Of course, this is not the conduct of all English travellers; but the mild and gentlemanly pass unperceived, whilst all the others attract attention, and are taken as types of our character. The French are only too much inclined to despise us; they seize on these examples with delight. It is a common saying amongst them that, in manners and everything that constitutes civilisation, we are the most backward nation in Europe.

In the course of dinner, Cockney will probably refer to his pocket vocabulary; and, guided by the hints it gives him of Parisian pronunciation, will playfully call the waiter a 'patty conchon.' When he has got a little merry, he wants to take wine with the ladies according to our regular custom. They understand that he means to be polite, and decline with a smile that puts all sort of fantastical fopperies into his head. He calls them 'jolly fams,' and gets into better repute by sending champagne glasses all round the

6

เ

table to the tune of ' the expense.' At dessert he volunteers a song, and deliberately gives 'Rule Britannia,' to which some commercial traveller retorts by Jamais en France, l'Anglais ne regnera"— meanwhile, Cockney grunts painfully as he fumbles with his book. Having caught the word Anglais, he thinks he is listening to a compliment; but not finding words to express his delight, like an insane animal that he is, he starts up, and seizing the singer in his arms, shouts Vive la France.' The company with great tact respond, Vive l'Angleterre'; and Cockney sits down wiping his brow with his napkin, and thinking he has effected a lasting reconciliation between the two countries. It is worth observing, that our most staid countrymen even prudent and pious Presbyterians, who would shun Cremorne Gardens as a sort of antechamber to the infernal regions, and who are clamorous for the observance of the Sabbath-hasten in Paris to inquire after those famous dancing-places they have heard of, and mix in all their boisterous merriment. As they are to be seen in their greatest glory on Sunday, that day is generally chosen ; so that the same men who charitably excommunicate their fellow-creatures for endeavouring to give the working classes the opportunity of seeing the Crystal Palace, without an improper sacrifice of time, trusting to the incognito of distance, promenade their portly forms through crowds of half mad students at Mobile, or the Chateau des Fleurs, on the mellow Sabbath evenings of summer. I may here remark, that if, among the dancers at those places, you observe any more indecent than is consistent with the rules of the place, who imitate all the coarse gestures of the Brindejoncs, without being able to catch one atom of their grace, he is sure to be an Englishman. 'I am not a virtue,' said Mademoiselle Papillon, pushing away a fat, red-faced Cockney, but I am a woman.'"

The chapter upon education is one of the best in Mr. St. John's book. His observations, as, indeed, in all cases where he discusses a subject with which he has made himself thoroughly familiar, are full of interest. The education of the boys is conducted partly in the government colleges and partly in institutions and reunions- two dif ferent kinds of boarding-schools. The pupils are chiefly taught in classes by special lectures a fact which may serve in some degree to account for the superficial nature of a Frenchman's knowledge on almost every subject. Every collegian wears a handsome uniform, consisting of a cap, a military

frock-coat bound with red, and trousers similarly decorated. The pupils, although boys in appearance, it would appear are mentally as well as physically precocious. They decide magisterially on everything-have opinions on morals as well as politics; judge of what is good and what is bad; pronounce on the beauty of women, on the value of books, on the styles of actors; dance with careless indifference; boast of being already weary of the number of their successes; and to give a final touch to this ridiculous picture, they sometimes commit suicide. This opinion our author illustrates by a fact which has come within his own knowledge. A young girl, we presume of the grisette class, is unhappy. She is likely to become a mother for the second time, when her labour is scarcely sufficient for her own support; but her friend has promised to assist her, and do what is honourable as soon as he escapes from school, and is established in an independent position as a student. So much for the results of the French system of education. As to the tone of the literature of the day, upon which, we should have thought, there could be but one opinion, Mr. St. John seems to think that its immoral tendencies are exaggerated; but he adduces no shadow of reasoning in support of his views, except, perhaps, the suggestion which we will not attempt to deny, that nothing could be so bad as the abominations of Voltaire. With reference to the fair sex, about whose position in France so much has been said, our author is more than usually discursive; but as he tells us nothing which our readers did not probably know before, we shall not follow him in his disquisitions upon this interesting subject. His description of the mode in which a French marriage is brought about is a very amusing and by no means a highly-coloured sketch of that important negotiation. We cannot, however, make room for any further extracts, and must now draw our notice to a close. The objection

which we have taken in limine is a palpable one; but with that exception, a more amusing collection of essays, sketches, and opinions, it would be difficult to find than those which are furnished for our entertainment in the Purple Tints of Paris."

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VOL. XLIV.-NO. CCLX,

P

WHEN the late Sultan Mahmoud, in 1828, ventured to brave the gigantic power of Russia, without a single ally on his side, and with rebellion raging in his own empire, he had fearful odds against him, and scarcely a chance left in his favour. Good reason had he for

saying to his vizier, "Keep your wits together, for, Allah knows, the danger is great." That he was badly prepared for the war, which he could not avoid, is less surprising than that he was prepared at all, while the efforts of the Turks, during the two years of the struggle which terminated by the treaty of Adrianople, were worthy of their early days of energy when in the full tide of conquest. The finances of the Ottoman Government were sadly embarrassed; their commerce was paralysed; the Russian armies stood ready for invasion on the frontiers both of Europe and Asia; the French held the Morea; the Greek flag was free; the subjects of the Sultan were partly in open revolt-and all were discontented. The Turkish fleet had been annihilated at Navarino, the old army of Janissaries had been destroyed at Constantinople, and the new levies, disciplined after the European fashion, were still in their noviciate, and could scarcely be relied on as effective soldiers. Turkey was then in reality the "sick man," apparently stricken with a mortal illness, which the Emperor Nicholas supposed that enigmatical country to be more than twenty years later, when he proposed his Machiavelian partition treaty to the British Government; yet, notwithstanding all these accumulated disadvantages, the Turks fought bravely for two years, closed the first campaign at least on equal terms, and submitted, under pernicious advice, to a crippling peace, at the exact crisis when the desperate advance of Diebitsch had so compromised his army that retreat was impossible, and he lay completely at their mercy. The French military aphorism, "dans la guere l'audace est presque toujours prudence," was never more thoroughly illustrated than in the operations of the "Balkan-passer," and their consequences, His passage of the mountain

barrier, and still more hazardous advance to Adrianople, deserved success from the bold decision with which they were planned and executed; while the Turkish authorities merited discomfiture for not seeing and profiting by the unhoped-for advantage which the rashness of the enemy offered to their acceptance. But Paskievitch was pressing rapidly on the Asiatic side; the Sultan dreaded an outbreak at Constantinople; his mind and temperament, usually so firm, gave way under the pressure of increasing difficulties; the foreign ambassadors chimed in to add to his terror; and, in an evil hour, he consented to receive terms, when a week or two more of stout resistance would have enabled him to dictate them. All this was imperfectly known, or utterly misrepresented at the time, but has since become as clear as the sun on a cloudless day, from many historical documents which have successively appeared. Diebitsch finished the war well, at the precise moment when it was imperative for the interests of his master that it should end at any price. He played a desperate game for high stakes, and won them, with the reputation of an able diplomatist as well as a successful general. Emperor Nicholas foresaw the coming storm in Poland, and wanted all his forces disengaged for that emergency. Moreover he desired to close the Turkish quarrel with an outward semblance of moderation, before the other European powers were roused to take part in it. His long-cherished dream of

The

the subversion of the Ottoman Empire in Europe was not abandoned, but only postponed to a more convenient opportunity.

Two leading points are particularly remarkable, as regards the conduct of the Russians in the war of 1828-9, when compared with that in which they are at present engaged. Paskievitch seems to have been disposed to follow the line of operations adopted by Diebitsch, although under very different circumstances, and with much less chance of a successful issue; and both in the last contest and the present the means employed by the Russians are as totally

inadequate to the result as they are incompatible with the supposed resources of this overgrown empire, which has so long terrified its neighbours with the dark shadow of irre

sistible power. The plain fact is, Russia has not, and never had, the vast military means imputed to her, which have been outrageously exagge rated by weak governments, who see everything through a false medium, and have no far-reaching depth of capacity to penetrate beyond the surface. Not a French or English soldier as yet has drawn a trigger, while during an entire year, the Turks, single-handed, have held the enemy at bay, proved their own renovated strength, and demonstrated to the world the weakness of the tyranny that aims at universal conquest. Baron Von Moltke's work, which has lately been translated into English,* is a most valuable contribution, published by the author (who died lately) in 1845. He was a major in the Prussian engineers, and was despatched by order of his own sovereign, at the express request of Sultan Mahmoud, to the Turkish army, with which he served throughout the campaigns he has described. He possessed the technical knowledge to analyse all the operations of war accurately, and does ample justice to the extraordinary and obstinate valour with which the Moslemites have always defended themselves behind stone walls and intrenchments. His account of the two sieges of Silistria, in 1828 and 1829, will be found doubly interesting at present, from the glorious defence which that frontier fortress has lately made with such marked success against the utmost efforts of the Russian army, although the battering cannon of the assailants appear to have been (after their usual custom) alternately loaded with iron balls and gold. The treachery which sold Varna, in 1828, was a miserable episode; but there is little danger of its being emulated at Silistria, or elsewhere, in 1854.

The Russians forced the Danube at Satunovo on the 8th June, 1828, in presence of the Emperor, who arrived

in time to witness the passage. It was a brilliant and daring movement, effected by means of a temporary bridge, not unlike that thrown by Napoleon across the same river from the Island of Lobau, near Vienna, in 1809, and by means of which he extricated his army, and placed it on the flank of the Austrians, previous to the great day of Wagram-thus completely retrieving the heavy check he had received at Essling and Asperne. But there was this difference between the two operations that in the case of Napoleon, his was absolutely necessary; while the Russian general selected an extremely hazardous point, in preference to others much more eligible, and succeeded in consequence of a resistance so feeble that it amounted to nothing. The construction of the bridge ought to have been rendered impossible, had the Turks directed an effective fire upon the spot, which they had the means of doing, but did not; and that 10,000 men, chiefly cavalry, should be seized with a panic, and run away at the approach of a handful of newly-landed Cossacks and chasseurs, was hardly a thing to be reckoned upon.

The Russians entered on the campaign very slowly, and with numbers far inferior to what the Turks had expected. In cavalry, the latter exceeded them. The Turkish declaration of war had appeared before the end of 1827; and yet the Russian operations up to the end of May, 1828, had been limited to taking possession of the Danubian Principalities-a preliminary measure, in the execution of which no opposition was to be expected. From the date of passing the Danube at Satunovo, they could only reckon on five months during which the weather would allow them to keep the field; and yet the advance to Constantinople must have been the object in view, and the end contemplated for the campaign, before it commenced. The distance exceeds 480 miles, and the time was hardly sufficient for the march of an army, with the necessary artillery, stores, and ammunition, even in the absence of effective opposition. The speculating theorists, who discourse eloquently on

The

paper, and write long articles on the dilatoriness of commanders, should see a little of actual war, and learn "to set a squadron in the field;" they would then find that moving large armies across uninhabited mountain ranges, and along impracticable roads, is a more complicated matter than taking pen in hand to indite a critical notice. Russians in 1828, as in 1854, advanced by the Dobrudscha, a country (if that can be called a country which is in effect a desert) wherein little is to be found except fever and ague, which appear to be its only indigenous productions. They thus multiplied their own difficulties; but they preserved a communication with the fleet, from which, as they proceeded onwards, their commissariat stores were to be derived. If they could take Varna and Silistria, their left and rear were secured, and a base of operations established, near at hand, and safe to retreat upon, in case of reverse or check. These two fortresses were of much more importance than Shumla, as the course of events subsequently demonstrated.

No supplies of any kind were to be looked for in the Dobrudscha-a barren waste of great extent, and such as could scarcely be supposed to exist in populous and cultivated Europe. The inhabitants are thinly scattered, the towns are few, and villages there are none. The soil, in summer, is nothing but fine grey sand, which instantly absorbs all moisture; nor is it stopped by the limestone-rock beneath. The valleys are entirely without springs or streams, so that there is no water even to drink, save the scanty supply which is drawn with ropes of bast, out of wells one hundred feet deep, and at widely-scattered intervals. There is a total absence of cultivation, for the grass is completely withered by the middle of the summer, and nothing is to be seen but a boundless expanse, covered with tall dry stalks waving in the wind. The numerous flocks of sheep and oxen are driven to pasture on the marsh lands by the side of the Danube, and on the islands in the river. Not a single tree or shrub is to be found, even in the close vicinity of human habitations. Troops passing through this district have to struggle with the total want of all the necessaries of life, during a march of about 120 miles. The Turkish plan of ope

rations, or rather the course which the Porte was compelled by circumstances to pursue, was exclusively defensive. The Sultan Mahmoud seems to have been impressed with the idea, that the Russians, taking advantage of their absolute command of the Black Sea, might land close to Constantinople. For this reason he kept the bulk of his forces in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital until late in the summer, while the Balkan, Varna, and Shumla were almost undefended, and only the fortresses on the Danube were supplied with adequate garrisons. Had the Russians moved more rapidly on the line they selected, they might have struck heavy blows at the very commencement of the campaign: and why they did not at once pour down on Constantinople from the sea, is as unaccountable as their not doing so last year, before the French and English fleets could hasten to the rescue, or from any quarter receive orders to act in time. Again, the only obvious answer is, they were not ready with the available means, as most certainly the inclination was not wanting. As long as Russia holds the Crimea, with the great depôt of Sebastopol, the Sultan's capital is not safe for eight-and-forty hours, and no treaty of peace can be a sufficient guarantee for his independent sovereignty. This is a case of Delenda est Curthago, which the allied powers should never lose sight of for a moment, until the end is accomplished. When the present war began, Sebastopol was open and defenceless on the land side, and there was no body of troops in the Tauric peninsula equal to resist a strong army, well supplied with battering cannon. What they have effected since, in anticipation of attack, it is difficult to ascertain exactly; but we have no reason to suppose they have been idle and if their engineers are but moderately skilled in their business, with the heavy guns that might be spared from their now useless ships, and the crews to work at the fortifications, enough may have been done to prevent that great arsenal from falling an easy prey. But we know what French and English soldiers can effect, and the prize is worth the toil and danger which must be encountered before it can be won. Badajos and Sebastian cost many valuable lives; but the advantages were greater than the inevitable sacrifice.