affected by religious fanaticism; or that there exist internal causes of pressure within his domestic government, of which at present we know little, but which may unfold themselves in the progress of events. Russia is altogether a mystery, but a very dangerous one, which requires to be as closely watched as the course of an epidemic disease, or the track of a comet.

The behaviour of the two armies of occupation in the frontier provinces, furnishes a contrast greatly in favour of the troops of the Sultan. The Turks respect property, pay for what they receive, and even afford the hospitality which forms a principle of their religion, to the families with whom they live. The Russian soldiers on the contrary, maltreat and rob their involuntary hosts, and being badly paid, worse fed, and plundered by their own officers, their ill conduct is encouraged by the latter, while the respectable demeanour of the Osmanlis is promoted by the example and instruction of their superiors. The author of these volumes saw the contingents of both armies at Bucharest, and the impressions they respectively made on him are well conveyed in the subjoined passages.

"The best hospital that I saw at Bucharest, was that of the Turkish army of occupation. In cleanliness and ventilation it surpassed anything of the kind that has as yet come under my notice; and it was so well ordered in every respect, that there are few regimental surgeons of my acquaintance in Her Majesty's Service, who would not derive advantage from the study of its arrangements."

This is a high encomium of a very important department of military organization, and for which we were not prepared. The same opinion is expressed again when speaking of the camp of Omir Pasha at Travnik, in Bosnia.

"The soldiers' tents were most comfortable; there were ten men in each, and in spite of the constant rain their health was good, as out of 8,000 men, only 200 were in hospital, and many of these were wounded. The officers, however, thought this a large number, so careful are they of their soldiers, and there had been even a court of inquiry to ascertain whether the sickness arose from want of comfort. One man in forty would not be a cause of alarm in our hospitals on active service, and I doubt very much if they are ever kept so well as the one I saw at Travnik."

To return to the two armies.

guns.

"I had also an opportunity of seeing the Turkish troops reviewed. There was a regiment of dragoons, six battalions of infantry, and a field battery of six The cavalry was of the lightest description, and the horses seemed to be too highly fed, and too spirited, to admit of great regularity in their movements. But to counterbalance these defects, they displayed a degree of quickness of evolution, which would astonish our lancers with their tall chargers. The infantry was steady and manoeuvred well, but the men were most remarkably young; their average age could hardly exceed twenty-three, and their height about five-feet eight; they formed line three deep, and were rather oldfashioned in their manual exercise; but their file-firing of blank cartridge was excellent; and in general their greatest merit seemed to be rapidity rather than precision. The artillery are beyond all praise. A better matériel could not exist, and it would be impossible to handle it more perfectly. I went to see the barracks. The men, as well as the horses, are too-well fed; their dinner was as tempting-as the sort of overgrown gentleman's stables in which I saw the cavalry chargers and artillery horses, were neat and airy. The soldiers'

rooms had neither tables nor benches, and the beds being arranged along the floors, they looked very different from our barracks, but they were quite as comfortable, according to the Oriental ideas of comfort. The officers with the greatest urbanity showed me everything, and took me into their rooms to smoke long pipes and drink thimblefuls of coffee."

Assuredly our Turkish friends have not been asleep, or entirely occupied in smoking opium during the last twenty years. Amongst their military improvements our author should not have forgotten a light compact costume, not very unlike that of the Western armies. Let us now see what he says of the Russians.

“The Russian troops had frequent field-days on the plain of Colintina. I was present on several occasions when their regiment of lancers, eight battalions of infantry, and a park of artillery, were brigaded. They went admirably through that most difficult of all manœuvres, advancing in line; but they were all old soldiers; their cavalry horses were lean, large, and heavy-looking brutes. The lancers made a poor show, the artillery better, but wretchedly slow; the infantry pleased me very much until they commenced their light drill, when I could hardly believe my eyes. No one seemed to be aware of the first principles of skirmishing, from the general down to the private, for battalion after battalion was allowed to go on in the same way, without a single remark; the two ranks of each file made no attempts to cover each other in advancing and retreating; in fact, they generally moved together; they fired, and stood to be fired at, instead of discharging their shot when they were about to move; and then they halted to load, and that anywhere. Our Rifle Brigade would make short work of such skirmishers; every one of them would be picked off as soon as extended."

We guess too, as brother Jonathan says, the Chasseurs de Vincennes with their Minié rifles, would astonish them not a little.

"The Russian soldiers are not nearly so well clothed as those of the Turkish regular army; their heavy green coats are so much more cumbersome than the light jacket; their cross-belts are longer, and not so well put on, the pouch being thus apt to rattle about when they are at double time; and the helmets, though better for defence, are clumsy, and much more fatiguing to wear than the fez. . . . . . I saw the barracks of a Russian regiment too, but it was when I expected it the least, for I thought I was visiting the Wallachian university. The fact was, that the College of Sant Sava, library, museum, and all, had been converted into a receptacle for a portion of the unwelcome army of occupation, instead of continuing to be the temple of learning; and the students and professors had given place to the soldier-slaves of the Czar. Such a den of filth I never saw; an offensive odour of melted tallow candles, used as sauce for sour black bread, in the absence of their much-loved train-oil; and damp straw strewn about for the miserable-looking, cowed, half-famished animals to sleep upon. No wonder that the mortality among them was so great."

The true place to see a Russian soldier is in his barrack-room or bivouac, when divested of his accoutrements and external panoply of war. Buttoned up, padded on the breast and shoulders, and pinched in in the waist, as he stands on parade, he looks smart and formidable enough; but follow him to his quarters, as Sir William Napier says, and when he steps out of his case, you look on an emaciated individual without thews or muscles, with whom a British grenadier would rather divide his ration, than think him worthy to be spitted on his bayonet. The average are as here described, although of course there are picked corps as in other services, and tall regiments of guards. There is, even in Madame Tussaud's exhibition, a fac-simile of a Russian drummajor, eight feet high at the least, compared to whom, Shaw the

220

THE PEACE OF EUROPE AND

life-guardsman was a mere pigmy, and whose skeleton when he dies, would be an excellent companion for that of O'Brien, the celebrated Irish giant, at the College of Surgeons.

Without including the corn and cattle, which are already abundant, and might be indefinitely increased by industry, multiplied population, and a better-defined political condition, the frontier provinces abound in natural and mineral wealth, far beyond what is generally known or supposed. The salt mines of the Carpathian mountains are worked with intervals from Poland to the Danube. Those of Okna in little Wallachia, which the author visited, have long been celebrated, and produce a revenue of fifteen millions of piastres. These mines are reached by shafts, with staircases, 240 feet in depth. When at the bottom, you may walk several miles underground through streets of rock salt, whose only population consists of convicts by whom they are worked, and their escort of militia, by whom the labourers are watched. At the corners, the names of the streets are painted on wooden sign-posts; a long line of lamps gives a glittering appearance to the crystallized walls, and conveys a delusion that you are in a town by night, with rows of shop-windows on either side. In Wallachia, and more especially in the adjoining states of Servia and Bosnia, the author traversed many primæval forests of the finest timber, available for the purposes of ship-building to an incalculable extent, and unsurpassed in the world either for size, quality, or abundance. The Danube, one of the most important rivers in the world, flows through these fertile lands, offering to their produce unequalled means of transit; but Russia frowns at the mouth with undivided influence, with quarantine restrictions, and expensive custom-house impediments, which are fast tending to throw the whole trade under her immediate and indisputable management. The clearing of the bar at Sulina would be a mighty advantage to other nations. The convention between Austria and Russia has expired, and the subject should be taken into serious consideration by Great Britain in particular, to whom it is of paramount importance. Of Servia and Bosnia, much interesting information is given in these volumes, as also of the late insurrections and military movements by which they were suppressed. The wild plan of forming an Illyrian kingdom, which some agitators have conceived, comprising these provinces with many others, is not likely ever to be carried into effect; and less from mere political obstacles than from the heterogeneous elements of which they are compounded, which are little likely ever to come to an understanding or agree on a single united system of government. Again, the absence of nationality is not to be remedied.

In Turkey, many ancient prejudices and customs are giving way before the advance of knowledge, and the spread of intercourse with the people of the Western world; but they still muffle up their females as tenaciously as ever, and consider it utter profanation that they should be gazed on by the eyes of male strangers. A little episode of this nature happened accidentally to the author at a Khan in Bosnia, and with his observations thereupon we must close our extracts.

"In the morning I sat at my window while our horses were being prepared. Long lines of horses and mules, laden with cotton, grain, and other commodities were passing, as there is a great deal of traffic on this road. I heard the sound of horses' feet in the court, and pitied the travellers, who must have been out in so rainy a night. My door was suddenly opened, and a young Turkish lady of great beauty made her appearance with her veil removed, and looking at her dress as she entered, which was evidently wet through. Behind her came the khandji (inn-keeper), carrying a very pretty little boy, about two years old, richly dressed, and crying piteously-from cold in all probability. I got up immediately and motioned to the fire, while I moved towards the door. She looked up, blushed deeply when she saw a man, and retreated, covering her face with her veil; leaving me just time enough to remark that her eyes were black, and as fine as her features and complexion. The Khandji was much disconcerted by her having opened my door by mistake, and hurried her along the passage, and down a back stair to the harem, while a well-armed servant who followed them, showed his teeth, as he looked into my room with the aggravating grin of a lion rampant, because his master's wife had involuntarily shown me her face forsooth!

"What an inconvenient prejudice it must be, for a woman to think herself disgraced by being seen; and how often in the daily course of her life must incidents arise, which become, in consequence, the sources of annoyance. It is not modesty-it is not apprehensive virtue; and if it be meant as precaution, it is, at best, unreasonable; for experience has proved that it wards off no evil from veiled youth, and old age has none to fear. The latter class, moreover, is by far the most particular in this way; perhaps from a wish to enjoy the advantage of a doubt whether the face beneath the yashmak be young or old, pretty or ugly. . . . In the lower ranks, this prejudice must be a most irksome burden; as the muffled head and enveloped figure can hardly be a comfortable condition for out-door labour. In Bosnia, however, it is modified in favour of unmarried women, and the veil and the loose green férédjé, which I often saw in the fields, are worn only by matrons. When I went out to mount my horse at the door of the Khan on the river Bosna, I saw the Turkish lady on horseback, and completely shrouded from head to foot, coming from the courtyard. When the servant mounted, the child was placed on a small pillow in front of him, and off they set at a rapid amble."

Having examined all that he desired to notice in the advanced districts, the author rapidly traversed Bulgaria and Roumelia, crossed the range of the Balkan at the Zulu pass, and taking the road through Sophia and Adrianople (at which latter ancient capital of European Turkey he paused a day to look at the bazaar of Ali Pasha and the Mosque of Sultan Selim), he reached Constantinople alone in the middle of the night, and had some difficulty in obtaining admittance at that untimely hour into the Hôtel d'Angleterre at Pera, where the remainder of his party had long expected him. He promises another narrative of a subsequent journey, which the pleasure and useful information we have derived from the first, incline us to look forward to with eager anticipation. Everything connected with Turkey and her dependencies, her present state, and probable future, are subjects of interest which recent circumstances have much enhanced, and in which, as Englishmen, we are almost as directly concerned, as if they formed integral portions of the empire of our own sovereign. Correct information is more easily obtained than it was, and there are clear heads and able pens on the spot, capable of recording facts and delivering opinions which may be safely relied on as correct, and appealed to as authority.

222

LORD CHESTERFIELD.

WITH A PORTRAIT.

THERE are different theories of greatness, and there are different standards of excellence. Judged by the one, it may be denied that Philip Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield, was a great man. Judged by the other, it is indisputable that he was, par excellence, the finest gentleman of his own or any other age. Men may question his principles, doubt his wisdom, deny his wit, but no one is hardy enough to say a word against his manners.

We have a theory-not, however, peculiarly our own-on this same subject of greatness. There are, doubtless, some qualities greater than others. Philosophy is greater than wit. Poetry is better than slaughter. But philosophers and wits, poets and soldiers, may all be great men after their kind. Whosoever in anything of good repute excels all his fellows, fairly entitles himself to be esteemed a great man. Now, there are few of our readers who have not been from their boyhood upwards familiar with the name of Chesterfield. Little boys addicted to such evil habits as biting their nails, scratching their heads, laughing at wrong times, and calling people uncomplimentary names, have been reminded for nearly a century of the living exhortations, and threatened with the posthumous anger of this incarnation of good breeding. And these little boys have, for the most part, grown up, knowing at least this much of the Earl, and inquiring nothing further about him. It has seemed incomprehensible to ordinary understandings that so very fine a gentleman could be anything but a fine gentleman, a courtier, a man of fashion, an idle lounger, lying late a-bed, sipping chocolate with an air, and rising to no higher effort of activity than a game at loo or a flirtation with a fine lady. But Lord Chesterfield was much more than a man of fashion and a man of wit—he was a diplomatist, a statesman, a parliamentary debater; he wrote well and he spoke well; he spoke so well, indeed, that Horace Walpole declared that the finest speech he ever heard was one of Lord Chesterfield's; and, more than all, he governed Ireland, as Lord Lieutenant, with so much conciliatory firmness, so much vigorous moderation, that Lord Mahon says of him, and says truthfully, that "he left nothing undone, nor for others to do."

Philip Dormer Stanhope was born in the year 1694. Neglected by his parents, but assiduously tended by his maternal grandmother, who performed their duties and filled their place, he grew up, with no great promise of after-celebrity, passed through his university career with credit, and was pushed into the House of Commons, by family interest, before he had attained the legitimate age. Pleasure, however, attracted him more than business; and it was not until the death of his father, in 1726, gave him a seat in