Chapter XXII: , and Last (8)

The fact is, we do not anticipate from the educational plan, the happy results which seem to be generally looked for, the reasons for which have been given fully in the well-considered article “On the State of the British Army,” in our last Number. We fear that the best of the candidates might still be a poor creature or a prig, perfectly inoffensive, but no more capable of infusing confidence into an army than his grandmother. The spell which is to evoke the coming leader has not yet been framed—he will appear, as heretofore, when time and the hour shall bring him. While we are seeking him with spectacles and lantern, now in this corner, now in that, grasping what we think to be him, but which turns out to be a post, we shall hear in the distance his strong clear voice, dispelling doubt. And O that he were come! What order out of chaos, what confidence out of confusion, what reverential silence out of senseless clamour, what strength, hope, and trust, would attend his victorious steps! Now we know what gratitude is due to him who can wield firmly and gloriously the might of England,—now we know that dukedoms, Strathfieldsayes, garters, and uncounted honours, are all too little to acknowledge our debt to the bold sagacious spirit which can animate and direct our powers, else blind, diffused, and enervate.

We choose this juncture to attempt to instil into the public mind some doubt of its own cherished convictions, because those convictions may at present lead to consequences we would gladly avert. There is an idea abroad that the past campaign leaves us failures to be retrieved, glory to be recovered, and influence to be restored, and that another is necessary to set us once more on our accustomed pinnacle. In vain have we written, if it be not clear that we cannot share the popular feeling of discontent, either at the course of the war, or the prospects of peace. While Russia was stubborn, haughty, and repellant, none raised their voices more loudly than we, for prompt, vigorous, and sustained efforts against the foe. Now that she is willing to treat on bases which will insure to the Allies all the objects they took up arms to attain, we should be false to our own policy and convictions did we desire to continue the war upon the new ground, that fresh victory is necessary to our reputation. There is a vile savour of defeat about the sentiment, ill becoming a nation which has just borne its share in a great and successful feat of arms; and we repudiate it the more scornfully, because we can trace so clearly any loss of prestige we may have sustained, to the false and self-depreciatory outcries of our own ill-informed and ill-judging countrymen.

The plans of that coming campaign, if haply it is still to be, are now being settled by the council sitting in Paris. On the alternatives which present themselves to that council we have cast many an attentive and eager glance. First, with regard to the present theatre of operations, we have long considered an advance from our present position before Sebastopol impossible, partly for reasons already given in speaking of the expectations raised after the capture of the town. To advance from Eupatoria in great force is also probably impracticable, from the want of water in supply sufficiently frequent and copious to satisfy the requirements of a large army. There remains, then, only the Kertch peninsula as a base of operations, to which we must shift the mass of our army. That a campaign from thence would result in the conquest of the Crimean peninsula, we do not doubt. But two considerations arise: First, supposing the Crimea in the hands of the Allies, will not its disposal be a source of embarrassment, far from compensated for by the advantage of possessing it? Secondly, with Sebastopol wrested from her, her fleet destroyed, and her coasts blockaded, is not the Crimea already virtually lost to Russia? As to the first question, often discussed as we have heard it, we have never yet caught even a glimpse of a satisfactory solution. Joint occupation, possession granted to any one of the different powers, all expedients that present themselves, contain difficulties which would render any advantage accruing to us from its being so held, small in the balance. And what would that advantage be, beyond what the footing we have there already gives us? We can maintain a force as easily at Kamiesch as at Perekop, thus preventing Russia from re-occupying the great prize of the campaign, the “standing menace to Turkey;” and as to the loss to our enemy in being deprived of the Crimea, we have frequently expressed our opinion that, in holding territory so distant and difficult of access, she incurs loss far heavier than that of the prestige or dominion which would fall from her with the peninsula. The vast and ruinous efforts which she made before the fall of the city were indeed justified rather by the importance which the possession of Sebastopol had obtained in the negotiations than by its real value; those efforts may have had no small effect in inducing her present concessions; and to continue them would, in our view, be a draining and exhaustive policy.

The war in Asia offers a more alluring field of enterprise and achievement. None of those difficulties beset us at the outset which render the Crimean campaign such an uphill game. To recover Kars, to match our troops against the enemy in the open field, and to force them struggling back upon the Caucasus, forms a brilliant and attractive programme. But has France a sufficient interest in a campaign in Asia to induce her to join in it? Will she not say that British interests are mainly at stake here, and that, to her, Russian progress in Asia is comparatively a matter of indifference? And, if she takes this view, will it suit her to sit idly by, while the British army engrosses all the interest and glory which have such powerful allurements for the soldiers and people of France? But, whether our allies join us in such a campaign, or permit us to prosecute it alone, it is worth while to consider whether the advantages to be gained, either in the shape of positive successes or losses suffered by our adversary, are such as to compensate for the drain our army will suffer in a year of the most favourable and triumphant warfare in Asia.

The third important point open to attack is the fortress of Nicolaieff, the great naval arsenal and dockyard of Russia in the Black Sea. And if we had a voice in the Allied councils, on no point should we speak with more confidence and decision than in positively objecting to another great siege, jointly undertaken. In the first place, the French will always so far outnumber us as to be able to lay claim, and to establish their claim, to a far greater share of the weight, the conduct, and the glory of the enterprise. Then, as before, the English people, growing impatient, probably, at the necessarily slow progress of siege operations, filled, with the wildest expectations, and often doomed to find them disappointed, will once more give vent to their chagrin, by depreciating the exertions of their army; and they will again be suicidally successful in lowering their own military prestige, which this second campaign was to restore.

Having thus reviewed the possible theatres of operation, and weighed the successes to be gained against the sacrifices in achieving them, we have acquired the conviction that there is a method by which we shall more damage our adversary with less injury to ourselves than by any of these enterprises. Leaving an Allied garrison within the lines of Kamiesch, watching and harassing the coasts of the Euxine and the Sea of Azoff with a squadron of light vessels, and aiding the Turks with a large contingent, we would gladly see the Allied powers agreeing to withdraw their forces simultaneously from that distant and now unsatisfactory scene of operations, and to convert the war into a blockade. Deprived of all exercise for her military strength, which would then become to her an encumbrance, debarred from commerce, and incapable of injuring her adversaries, Russia would lie like a huge corpse rotting on the face of Europe—or a Titan chained to a rock, unable to scare away the assailant that rent his vitals.

Already we are beginning to lose sight of the objects with which we commenced the war: not for territorial aggrandisement, not for glory, not for augmentation of influence or prestige, not even for that which seems now to be so generally regarded as desirable, the ruin or deep injury of Russia, but for the security of Turkey against an act of oppression. Surely a war may be carried on fully in earnest without desiring the utter destruction of the foe; and there has been nothing in the course of hostilities to justify such deadly exasperation. Our object, always plain and direct, is not to destroy, but to coerce Russia. If she is now ready to make the required concessions, we can see no just or politic reason for continuing the war; if she be not ready to do so, we think the course we have pointed out the best and safest for obliging her to submit. In either case, we should welcome with joy the gallant army of the Crimea. With such a force ready in these islands for defence or aggression, what power would then dare to act on the presumption that England’s prestige has diminished? Come what come may, though fear of change should perplex the monarchs of Europe, and the elements of discord be loosed, our power would be founded as the rock. Girt by such a fleet as never before floated, and guarded by the best appointed army we ever possessed, we might bid defiance to the world in arms.

And in either case, also, we trust the sharp and heavy lessons of the war will not be lost upon us. To speak at present with due contempt of those advocates of peace and utility, once so loud and confident, now so downcast and bedraggled, would be like painting the lily, or heaping ridicule on Pantaloon. Yet let the present fever once pass, and we fear, unless stimulants are applied, the old lethargy will return. And therefore we say, whether there be peace, or war to obtain peace, let our military power be not only maintained, but augmented. Let us not again be caught asleep, and with our quiver empty. Let those who so strongly insist on placing our army in depreciatory comparison with that of France, study the comparative circumstances of the two armies before the war began. They will find among our neighbours no skeleton of an army, no weak sketch or outline of what should be a cavalry, no neglected or half-equipped artillery, no insufficient medical staff, and no defunct commissariat. Let men who cheerfully pay the premium of fire insurance, to secure themselves against the chance of conflagration, learn to regard as equally thrifty the maintenance of a safeguard against the explosive elements so rife in Europe. Let our army be so modelled and provided in peace, that it may readily assume the proportions of war. And, above all, let us devise some means, more efficient than any we now possess, for recruiting our regiments, and rendering military service more alluring to our population.

Let us also, when peace returns, think and speak of our national achievements during the war, in a tone equally removed from the vainglorious outcry which heralded imaginary successes, and the sullen whimperings which are now heard for a presumed discomfiture. “We may find in these achievements ample reason for congratulation. That the army was few and ill-provided, only augments the glories of Alma and Inkermann. At three thousand miles from home we landed that army on the territory of the greatest military power in Europe, and laid siege to his naval stronghold. Amid the snows of winter and the heats of summer the siege advanced: not for a day, since the army landed, have our guns been silent; not for a day have the waters of the enemy’s coasts been unfurrowed by our keels, bearing ammunition to the batteries and supplies to our troops. On a spot separated from us by the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Euxine, we have maintained our army, more than supplied its losses, poured into the country the largest ordnance and projectiles in steady and enormous profusion. And when these had done their work, when the town for which the Czar disputed with desperate and exhaustive efforts was abandoned in ruins and ashes, a larger force than England ever before possessed, rested for the winter amid those distant regions in comfort and plenty. Such, broadly stated, are among the marvellous exploits which England has achieved in the war.

RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE.[17]

There are few things more difficult to understand and acknowledge than the essentially one and indivisible nature of that puzzling personage, Man, with all his diverse occupations. An ingenious process of mental anatomy, carefully distributing to every pursuit its little bundle of faculties—his head to his business, his heart to his home, and to his religion a vague ethereal principle, which, for want of a better title, we call his soul—seems always to have been a more agreeable idea to the philosophic and speculative, than that bolder presentment of one whole indivisible being, which calls the man to love his Maker “with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his strength, and with all his mind.” We prefer, with instinctive subtilty—for human nature has wiles in its weakness—the easier morality of division; and a hundred distinctions straightway start up for the confusion of the one poor individual creature, who indeed is little able to bear, in any of his occupations, the subtraction of any of his powers. But the issue is that we cheat the world when we only mean to cheat God, and lose the genial and joyous privilege to “do all things heartily,” while we calculate with trembling how much belongs to Religion, and how much to Common Life.

Not to say that Common Life has always borne somewhat of a contemptible aspect to the philosophy of men: asceticism is more than a Romish error—it is a natural delusion as universal as the race; and however dubious we may be about the hermit’s cell and its mortifications, a dainty oratory, calm and secluded, a little world of Thought or of Art, commends itself much to the imagination of the “superior classes” even in these progressive times. Our modern prophets appeal to a select and refined audience, and have nothing to say to the crowd. We have abundant missions to the _poor_, but few loving assaults upon the _common_. Strange enough, we are all best satisfied to go out of our way in the service of God and our neighbour—and tasks _outré_ and self-imposed are more pleasant to our perversity at all times than those that lie direct in our path.

Among all the vague big utterances of the day, professing so much and profiting so little, it is pleasant to fall upon anything so manful and truth-telling as the little book whose name stands at the head of our page. And it startles us with a grateful and pleasant surprise to see those magical words of authority upon the homely brown cover of Mr Caird’s sermon, which, doubtless, despite all our independence, have given it entrance to many a house and table where sermons are not generally favoured reading. What is it which has been honoured by “Her Majesty’s Command?” It is not anything addressed by special compliment to Her Majesty; indeed—all honour to the faithful preacher and his royal auditors—one has to turn to that same brown cover before one has the least idea that such a rare and exceptional personage as a Queen was seated among the Aberdeenshire lairds and peasants while Mr Caird expounded the common way of life. A throne is the most singular and isolated of all human positions. To us low down here in life’s protected levels, there is no comprehending that strange, lonely, lofty, imperial existence, which knows no superior, nor within its reach any equal; and when the Sovereign, shut out from lesser friendships, elects into one great friend the vast crowd of her people, one cannot refuse to be moved by the noble simplicity of the expedient. Other monarchs have done it before Queen Victoria, but very few with equal, and none with greater success; and this sermon is a singular present from a Prince to a Nation. A condescending interest in our welfare, and a certain solicitude for public morality, are matter-of-course virtues pertaining to the throne, whoever may be its occupant; but a very different and far deeper sentiment lies in the heart of this distinct reference to _our_ understandings and sympathies, which is the highest testimony of satisfaction that the Queen and her royal husband can give to an address which moved and impressed themselves. We are sufficiently accustomed to the pure and dignified example of our liege lady—sufficiently acquainted with the wise exertions of the Prince for the common weal—to receive both without much demonstration; but there is something in the quiet humility and kindness of this united action which touches the heart of the country.

We honour the preacher, too much absorbed with his greater errand to take advantage of so good an opportunity of paying court to his Sovereign; and it is still more honourable to the royal pair who listened, that it was no disquisition upon their own exalted office—no enthusiastic voice of loyalty, urgent upon the honours due to the crown—nor indeed any discussion whatever of the particular relationship between monarch and people—which moved them to this marked and emphatic satisfaction. The Queen presents to us earnestly, an address in which herself is not distinguished even by a complimentary inference—a lesson unsoftened by the remotest breath of flattery, and without even a “special application.” God save the Queen! We take our princely friend at her word, acknowledging with what a noble honesty she shares with us, bearing her own full part of all the daily duties of common life.

Mr Caird’s sermon strikes at the very heart and root of all our living—it is not a recommendation of good things or good books, or any exclusive manner of existence, but a simple laying open of that great secret which is the very atmosphere and breath of religion. “Neither on this mountain nor at Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth.” This preacher is not content that anything which God has cleansed should be called common or unclean—he will not consent that a tithe of our faculties and emotions, like a tithe of our lands or our riches, should be reserved for God, making careful separation between the profane and the holy. He is willing, as Paul was, that we should have full use of all our powers, which, Heaven knows, are small enough for all that has to be borne and done in this laborious world. Strange argument to quicken those dull toils which even good men call secular and worldly!—strange charm to speed the plough, to guide the ship, to hasten every day’s triumphant labours through its full tale of animated hours! “Whatsoever you do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men.” It is on this great principle of life and labour that the author of this able exposition founds his reasonings, as he shows us how well we may reconcile diligence in business with fervour of spirit, and brighten ordinary occupations with the full force and radiance of godliness. The lesson comes with especial force in these days, when we are beguiled by the most sweet voices of the Ritualist and the Mystic on either side of us, and are much persuaded to a vulgar disparagement of the honest necessary work of this earth. How it may become holy work—and how we ourselves, surrounded by its cares, vexations, and trials, are in reality placed in the most advantageous position for proving and glorifying our Lord and Leader, who had share of all these labours before us, is the burden of this message; and we do not doubt it will show to many men, how much nearer than they suspected, even in their very hands and households, if they will but do it, lies the work of the Lord.

Preachers and religious writers, as a general principle, are strangely timid of permitting to the Church any intercourse, more than necessity compels, with the world; and we fear our good ministers would be sadly disconcerted were they compelled to consider with Paul what it would be right to do, “if any of them that believe not, bid you to a feast, and ye be disposed to go”—a hypothesis which, however, does not much alarm the Apostle. But Mr Caird, with a singular boldness, takes the very “world itself—the coarse, profane, common world, with its cares and temptations, its rivalries and competitions,” as the true “school for learning the art” of religious living; and is no advocate for theoretical and self-secluding Christianity. “No man,” he says, “can be a thorough proficient in navigation who has never been at sea, though he may learn the theory of it at home. No man can become a soldier by studying books on military tactics in his closet; he must in actual service acquire those habits of coolness, courage, discipline, address, rapid combination, without which the most learned in the theory of strategy or engineering will be but a schoolboy soldier after all.... Tell us not, then, that the man of business, the bustling tradesman, the toil-worn labourer, has little or no time to attend to religion. As well tell us that the pilot, amid the winds and storms, has no leisure to attend to navigation—or the general on the field of battle to the art of war. When _will_ he attend to it? Religion is not a perpetual moping over good books—religion is not even prayer, praise, holy ordinances: these are necessary to religion—no man can be religious without them. But religion, I repeat, is mainly and chiefly the glorifying God amid the duties and trials of the world—the guiding our course amid the adverse winds and currents of temptation by the starlight of duty and the compass of Divine truth—the bearing us manfully, wisely, courageously, for the honour of Christ, our great Leader, in the conflict of life.”

Wise doctrine, bold as it is wise; but how strange is the popular impression which makes cowardice, by some strange magic, a Christian virtue, and holds “he who fights and runs away,” for the spiritual hero. In everything else our hearts rise and swell to trace the brave man’s progress through deaths and perils; but here we count it his best policy to retreat into a corner, to thrust ambitions, powers, and pleasures, tremulously away from him, and “to be religious.” To be religious!—the word itself speaks eloquently of its true meaning—a spirit potent, sweet, and all-pervasive, and not a thing or series of things,—yet notwithstanding how eager we are to _do_ instead of to _be_, in this most momentous matter. Mr Caird has finely discriminated this life and soul of religion, and the influence which true faith exercises upon everything around it, in his description of how the mind acts on _latent_ principles—how an unexpressed remembrance or anticipation runs through actions and thoughts which have no direct connection with it; and how hopes, of which we were not even thinking, sway and move us, invisible and silent agents in our commonest ways. We recommend this portion of his sermon to all thoughtful readers.

It is not a very usual fortune for sermons in this day—but this one has flashed into the heart of several vexed questions, and surprised many minds into involuntary unanimity—and when we are told that we must fight our battles with our religion, and not for our religion’s sake extend the conflict, it is a great cheer and encouragement to us, heavily labouring in the common road, and unable to choose a more exalted way. Surely Christianity, of all things, has least need to be timid; yet we fear that much pious and well-intentioned training has had the effect of conferring an additional charm upon the world’s blandishments—the charm of forbidden pleasure—rather than of encouraging the neophyte manfully to pass them by. We have been half saddened, half amused, many a time, by a preacher’s terrified denunciation of the irresistible attractions of some theatre or assembly, which in truth was the dullest sham of pleasure-making that ever wearied man; and it is sad to see often an incompleteness and contraction in that life of unmistakable piety which ought to be the broadest, the most genial, and the most fully furnished of all the states of man.

Yes, we are all too apt, unconsciously and by implication—despite its being impracticable under present circumstances, Popery having made it dangerous—to take the life of the eremite, self-contained and contemplative, as the true type of the religious life; and it is strange to hear that we ourselves, astray among the noise of cities, or bearing the burdens of the soil, should be more fit exemplars of God’s service than any soul secluded in church or temple, and safe from the vulgar dangers of the world. Yet no one will be bold enough to say that Mr Caird has not established his position, and few serious minds can refuse to respond to this serious and powerful call upon them.

This sermon is admirably clear and simple in its diction, as well as weighty in its matter; there is little of the passion and vehemence of oratory, but a great deal of power, subdued and held within control; and the grave plain language of the preacher is luminous and dignified, worthy of the theme. We are indebted to Mr Caird for a manly exposition of what is possible to common people in everyday existence—triumphs of faith and principle beyond the reach of those who fly from the combat and the agony,—and grateful to his Royal hearers for sending to us all a lesson which makes no distinctions among us, either of wise and unwise, or of great and small.

_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._

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Footnote 1:

_Labour: its Rights, Difficulties, Dignity, and Consolations._ An
Address delivered to the Mechanics’ Institute at Hull. By SAMUEL
WARREN, D.C.L., Q.C., Recorder of Hull.

Footnote 2:

The law of France takes a different view of such labour-contracts for
life, prohibiting them on the ground that they are in reality not
conducive to, but subversive of personal liberty.

Footnote 3:

“One of those combinations,” says Mr Warren, “was bound together by
this oath (so atrocious that were it not on record in the authentic
‘debates’ of the day, I would not cite it):—‘I, A. B., do voluntarily
swear, in the awful presence of Almighty God, and before these
witnesses, that I will execute with zeal and sincerity, as far as in
me lies, every task and injunction which the majority of my brethren
shall impose on me, in furtherance of our common welfare; as,—the
chastisement of nobs, _the assassination of oppressive and tyrannical
masters_, or the demolition of shops that shall be deemed
incorrigible: and also that I will cheerfully contribute to the
support of such of my brethren as shall lose their work in consequence
of their exertions against tyranny, or shall renounce work in
resistance to a reduction of wages.’”

Footnote 4:

“To make her clergy fit ministrants of that priestcraft which is its
certain fruit, the Romish system draws after it the enforced celibacy
of their order, and so their separation from all the purifying and
humanising influences which God’s holy ordinance of marriage sheds
over a married priesthood; and, lastly, through the ever-encroaching
presence, amidst the sanctities of family life, of one thus invested
with a character of supernatural holiness, whom all are bound to make
the official depositary of every secret, and who is cognisant of every
real or suspected infirmity of his devotee, and so (unavoidably) of
those who have shared with him in the sins he has from time to time
confessed, it dissolves the most sacred ties by which God has bound
society together,—introducing another, and how often an adverse
counsel between father and child, between the mother and her daughter,
between the husband and the wife of his bosom.”—_Bishop of Oxford’s
Sermon on the 5th of November 1855._

Footnote 5:

_Numismata Hellenica._ A Catalogue of Greek Coins, collected by
WILLIAM MARTIN LEAKE, F.R.S., one of the Vice-Presidents of the Royal
Society of Literature. With Notes, a Map, and Index. London, 1854.

Footnote 6:

A peasant, driving an ass, met Octavianus as he came out of his tent
at daybreak; and being asked his name, he replied, “Eutyches”—And your
ass’s name?—“_Nicon_.”

Footnote 7:

_Childe Harold_, ii. 45.

Footnote 8:

_Irene_, Act i. scene 1.

Footnote 9:

LEAKE’S _Northern Greece_, iv. 46.

Footnote 10:

Admiral Smyth, in his _Cabinet of Roman Imperial Medals_.

Footnote 11:

_Iliad_, ii. 739.

Footnote 12:

“An Old Contributor at the Sea-side,” Nos. CCCCLXXX. and CCCCLXXXI.

Footnote 13:

Here, by the way, let us cite in a foot-note a description of statuary
from the _Golden Ass of Apuleius_. It illustrates the mode of
regarding sculpture in a very realistic period. It is a description of
the entrance-hall to Byrrhœna’s house. “Conversing in this way, we had
proceeded but a few paces ere we arrived at Byrrhœna’s house. The hall
was most beautiful, and had statues of the Goddess of Victory, raised
on pillars which stood at the four corners. The wings of the figures
were expanded; their dewy feet seemed to brush the surface of a
rolling sphere, although it moved not; and they looked not as if they
were attached to it, but hovered in the air. A statue of Diana, in
Parian marble, occupied a level space in the middle of the enclosure.
The figure was singularly beautiful: the garments of the goddess were
blown back by the wind; she seemed in the act of running directly
towards you as you entered, and awed you by the majesty of her godlike
form. Dogs supported the goddess on either side, and these too were of
marble. Their eyes were fierce and threatening, their ears erect,
their nostrils open, their jaws agape to devour; _and had any barking
been heard in the neighbourhood, you would have thought it proceeded
from their marble throats_. A thing, also, in which the excellent
sculptor had given proof of the most consummate art, was this, that
the fore-feet of the dogs, uplifted to their chests, were in the act
of running, while the hind feet pressed the ground. At the back of the
goddess stood a rock wrought to resemble a grotto, overgrown with
moss, grass, leaves, and brushwood, with vines and shrubs here and
there; and the reflection of the statue gleamed from the polished
marble within the grotto. Over the extreme edge of the rock hung
apples and grapes, most exquisitely wrought, and in which art,
rivalling nature, _had so counterfeited their originals that you would
have thought they might be gathered for eating, when fragrant autumn
had breathed upon them the tints of maturity_. And if, leaning
forward, you had beheld the streamlets, which gently rippled as they
ran beneath the feet of the goddess, you would have thought that, like
clusters of grapes which hang from the vine, _they too resembled real
life in the faculty of motion_.

Footnote 14:

It is curious to see the amount of fun which these writers extract
from every little peculiarity of Cockney speech. There is an insane
use of the relative pronoun, which is of immense service. We cannot
remember a good quotation from the play-writers, but here is one from
Thackeray:—

“Gallant gents and lovely ladies,
List a tail vich late befel,
_Vich_ I heard it, bein on duty
At the Pleace Hoffice, Clerkenwell.
Praps you know the Fondling Chapel,
Vere the little children sings:
(Lor! I likes to hear on Sundies
Them there pooty little things!)
In the street there lived a housemaid,
If you particklarly ask me where—
Vy it vas at four-and-twenty,
Guilford Street, by Brunswick Square.
_Vich_ her name was Eliza Davis,
And she went to fetch the beer:
In the street she met a party
As was quite surprised to see her.
_Vich_ he was a British sailor
For to judge him by his look:
Tarry jacket, canvass trowsies
Ha-la Mr T. P. Cooke.”

Footnote 15:

_The Corsican Brothers_ is not an afterpiece, but to show what kind of
writing is allowed to pass in even so successful a melodrama, let me
quote a single speech: “At all events, you heard what I said to my
servants; the house _as_ well _as_ they is at your command; use it,
then, _as_ if it were your own, and consider yourself _as_ sincerely
welcomed by the mother _as_ you will be by the son _as_ soon _as_ he
comes in.”

Footnote 16:

In proof that such an impression existed, we may quote an extract from
a private letter of our correspondent, Lieutenant-Colonel Hamley, to
ourselves, dated Camp, _7th December 1854_:—“I think Liprandi’s army
might have been not merely routed, but annihilated, any time during
the last month till the bad weather set in, having placed itself in a
perilous position; and of the two attacks on the fortress the French
is, or ought to be, the true one—ours merely auxiliary; but it would
be indiscreet to say so. But the campaign once finished, all such
subjects will be open to discussion.”—ED.

Footnote 17:

_Religion in Common Life: a Sermon, preached in Crathie Church, before
Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Albert._ By the Rev. JOHN CAIRD, of
Errol. Published by Her Majesty’s Command.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. 2. Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. 4. Used a caret (^) to indicate superscripts, including single characters like M^r or entire phrases like M^{ister}.