International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 9, August 26, 1850

Mr. Webster is properly selected as the representative of the best sense, and highest wisdom, and most consummate dignity, of the politics and oratory of the present times, because his great intelligence has continued to be so finely sensitive to all the influences that stir the action and speculation of the country.

With elements of reason, definite, absolute, and emphatic; with principles settled, strenuous, deep and unchangeable as his being; his wisdom is yet exquisitely practical: with subtlest sagacity it apprehends every change in the circumstances in which it is to act, and can accommodate its action without loss of vigor, or alteration of its general purpose. Its theories always "lean and hearken" to the actual. By a sympathy of the mind, almost transcendental in its delicacy, its speculations are attracted into a parallelism with the logic of life and nature. In most men, that intellectual susceptibility by which they are capable of being reacted upon by the outer world, and having their principles and views expanded, modified or quickened, does not outlast the first period of life; from that time they remain fixed and rigid in their policy, temper and characteristics; if a new phase of society is developed, it must find its exponent in other men. But in Webster this fresh suggestive sensibility of the judgment has been carried on into the matured and determined wisdom of manhood. His perceptions, feelings, reasonings, tone, are always up to the level of the hour, or in advance of it; sometimes far, very far in advance, as in the views thrown out in his speech at Baltimore, on an international commercial system, in which he showed that he then foresaw both the fate of the tariff and the fallacy of free-trade. No man has ever been able to say, or now can say, that he is before Webster. The youngest men in the nation look to him, not as representing the past, but as leading in the future.

This practicalness and readiness of adaptation are instinctive, not voluntary and designed. They are united with the most decided preference for certain opinions and the most earnest averseness to others. Nothing can be less like Talleyrand's system of waiting for events. He has never, in view of a change which he saw to be inevitable, held himself in reserve and uncommitted. What Webster is at any time, that he is strenuously, entirely, openly. He has first opposed, with every energy of his mind and temper, that which, when it has actually come, he is ready to accept, and make the best of. He never surrenders in advance a position which knows will be carried; he takes his place, and delivers battle; he fights as one who is fighting the last battle of his country's hopes; he fires the last shot. When the smoke and tumult are cleared off, where is Webster! Look around for the nearest rallying point which the view presents; there he stands, with his hand upon his heart, in grim composure; calm, dignified, resolute; neither disheartened nor surprised by defeat. "Leaving the things that are behind," is now the trumpet-sound by which he rallies his friends to a new confidence, and stimulates them to fresh efforts. It is obvious that Webster, when contending with all his force for or against some particular measure, has not been contemplating the probability of being compelled to oppose or defend a different policy, and, so, choosing his words warily, in reference to future possibilities of a personal kind: yet when the time has come that he has been obliged to fight with his face in another direction, it has always been found that no one principle had been asserted, no one sentiment displayed, incompatible with his new positions. This union of consistency with practicability has arisen naturally from the extent and comprehensiveness of his views, from the breadth and generality with which the analytical power of his understanding has always led him to state his principles and define his position. From the particular scheme or special maxim which his party was insisting upon, his mind rose to a higher and more general formula of truth.

Owing to the same superior penetration and reach of thought, the gloom of successive repulses has never been able to paralyze the power which it has saddened. The constitution has been so often invaded and trampled upon, that to a common eye it might well seem to have lost all the resentments of vitality. But Webster has distinguished between the constitution and its administration. He has seen that the constitution, though in bondage, is not killed; that the channels of its life-giving wisdom are stuffed up with rubbish, but not obliterated. He has been determined that if the rulers of the country will deny the truth, they shall not debauch it; if they depart from the constitution, they shall not deprave it. He has been resolved, that when this tyranny of corruption shall be overpast, and the constitution draws again its own free breath of virtue, truth and wisdom, it shall be found perfect of limb and feature, prepared to rise like a giant refreshed by sleep.

Mr. Griswold, we suppose, is quite right in suggesting that the only name in modern times to which reference can with any fitness be made for purposes of analogy or comparison with Webster is that of Burke. In many respects there is a correspondence between their characters; in some others they differ widely. As a prophet of the truth of political morals, as a revealer of those essential elements in the constitution of life, upon which, or of which, society is constructed and government evolved, Burke had no peer. In that department he rises into the distance and grandeur of inspiration; nil mortote sonans. Nor do we doubt that the Providence of God had raised him up for the purposes of public safety and guidance, any more than we doubt the mission of Jeremiah or Elisha, or any other of the school of the Lord's prophets. But leaving Burke unapproached in this region of the nature and philosophy of government, and looking at him, in his general career, as a man of intellect and action, we might indicate an analogy of this kind, that the character, temper and reason of Burke seem to be almost an image of the English constitution, and Webster's of the American. To get the key to Burke's somewhat irregular and startling career, it is necessary, to study the idea of the old whig constitution of the English monarchy: viewing his course from that point of view, we comprehend his almost countenancing and encouraging rebellion in the case of the American colonies; his intense hostility to Warren Hastings' imperial system; his unchastised earnestness in opposition to French maxims in the decline of his life. The constitution of the United States, that most wonderful of the emanations of providential wisdom, seems to be not only the home of Webster's affections and seat of his proudest hopes, but the very type of his understanding and fountain of his intellectual strength:

——"hic illius arma;——
Hic currus."

The genius of Burke, like the one, was inexhaustible in resources, so composite and so averse from theory as to appear incongruous, but justified in the result; not formal, not always entirely perspicuous. Webster's mind, like the other, is eminently logical, reduced into principles, orderly, distinct, reconciling abstraction with convenience, various in manifestation, yet pervaded by an unity of character.

Mr. Webster has not merely illustrated a great range of mental powers and accomplishments, but has filled, in the eye of the nation, on a great scale, and to the farthest reach of their exigency, a diversity of intellectual characters; while the manner in which Burke's wisdom displayed itself was usually the same. We cannot suppose that Burke could have been a great lawyer. Webster possesses a consummate legal judgment and prodigious powers of legal logic, and is felt to be the highest authority on a great question of law in this country. The demonstrative faculty; the capacity to analyze and open any proposition so as to identify its separate elements with the very consciousness of the reader's or hearer's mind; this, which is the lawyer's peculiar power, had not been particularly developed in Burke, but exists in Webster in greater expansion and force than in any one since Doctor Johnson, who, it always appeared to us, had he been educated for the bar, would have made the greatest lawyer that ever led the decisions of Westminster-Hall. We should hardly be justified in saying that Burke would have made a great First Lord of the Treasury. Mr. Webster, as Secretary of State, proved himself to be a practical statesman of the highest; finest, promptest sagacity and foresight that this or any nation ever witnessed. Who now doubts the surpassing wisdom, who now but reverences the exalted patriotism, of the advice and the example which he gave, but gave in vain, to the Whig party at the beginning of Mr. Tyler's administration? His official correspondence would be lowered by a comparison with any state papers since the secretaryship of John Marshall. Does the public generally know what has become of that portentous difficulty about the Right of Search, upon which England and America, five years ago, were on the point of being "lento collisæ duello." Mr. Webster settled it by mere force of mind: he dissipated the Question, by seeing through it, and by compelling others to see a fallacy in its terms which before had imposed upon the understanding of two nations. In the essential and universal philosophy of politics, Webster is second only to Burke. After Burke, there is no statesman whose writings might be read with greater advantage by foreign nations, or would have been studied with so much respect by antiquity, as Webster's.

In a merely literary point of view, this perhaps may be said of Mr. Webster, that he is the only powerful and fervid orator, since the glorious days of Greece, whose style is so disciplined that any of his great public harangues might be used as models of composition. His language is beautifully pure, and his combinations of it exhibit more knowledge of the genius, spirit, and classic vigor of the English tongue, than it has entered the mind of any professor of rhetoric to apprehend. As the most impetuous sweeps of passion in him are pervaded and informed and guided by intellect, so the most earnest struggles of intellect seem to be calmed and made gentle in their vehemence, by a more essential rationality of taste. That imperious mind, which seems fit to defy the universe, is ever subordinate, by a kind of fascination, to the perfect law of grace. In the highest of his intellectual flights—and who can follow the winged rush of that eagle mind?—in the widest of his mental ranges-and who shall measure their extent?—he is ever moving within the severest line of beauty. No one would think of saying that Mr. Webster's speeches are thrown off with ease, and cost him but little effort; they are clearly the result of the intensest stress of mental energy; yet the manner is never discomposed; the decency and propriety of the display never interfered with; he is always greater than his genius; you see "the depth out not the tumult" of the mind. Whether, with extended arm, he strangles the "reluctantes dracones" of democracy, or with every faculty called home, concentrates the light and heat of his being in developing into principles those great sentiments and great instincts which are his inspiration; in all, the orator stands forth with the majesty and chastened grace of Pericles himself. In the fiercest of encounters with the deadliest of foes, the mind, which is enraged, is never perturbed; the style, which leaps like the fire of heaven, is never disordered. As in Guido's picture of St. Michael piercing the dragon, while the gnarled muscles of the arms and hands attest the utmost strain of the strength, the countenance remains placid, serene, and undisturbed. In this great quality of mental dignity, Mr. Webster's speeches have become more and more eminent. The glow and luster which set his earlier speeches a-blaze with splendor, is in his later discourses rarely let forth; but they have gained more, in the increase of dignity, than they have parted with in the diminution of brilliancy. We regard his speech before the shop-keepers, calling themselves merchants, of Philadelphia, as one of the most weighty and admirable of the intellectual efforts of his life. The range of profound and piercing wisdom; the exquisite and faultless taste; but above all, the august and indefectible dignity, that are illustrated from the beginning to the end of that great display of matured and finished strength, leave us in mingled wonder and reverence. There is one sentence there which seems to us almost to reach the intellectual sublime; and while it stirs within us the depths of sympathy and admiration, we could heartily wish that the young men of America would inhale the almost supra-mortal spirit which it breathes: "I would not with any idolatrous admiration regard the Constitution of the United States, nor any other work of man; but this side of idolatry, I hold it in profound respect. I believe that no human working on such a subject, no human ability exerted for such an end, has ever produced so much happiness, or holds out now to so many millions of people the prospect, through such a succession of ages and ages, of so much happiness, as the Constitution of the United States. We who are here for one generation, for a single life, and yet in our several stations and relations in society intrusted in some degree with its protection and support, what duty does it devolve, what duty does it not devolve, upon us!" In the name of distant ages, and a remote posterity, we hail the author of this and similar orations, as Webster the Olympian.

But we leave a subject which we have incidentally touched, sincerely disclaiming any attempt to estimate the character or define the greatness of Webster. In reference to him we feel, as Cicero said to Cæsar, "Nil vulgare te dignum videri possit."

[From the Athenæum.]

THE NEW PROPHET IN THE EAST.[5 - The people of the Caucasus, and their Struggle for Liberty with the Russians—(Die Volker des Caucasus, &c.) By Friedrich Bodenstedt. Second Edition. Frankfurt am Main, Lizius; London, Nutt.]

The vicissitudes of the war in the Caucasus of late have been surprising enough to awaken the interest of Western Europe, even amidst her own nearer anxieties. Last year it was said that the conquest of Achulgo, the stronghold of the redoubtable Schamyl, had effectually broken the power of that daring leader. In direct contradiction to such reports, later accounts from Daghestan tell of the reappearance of the notable partisan amidst the lines of the Russians, and of a defeat of the latter, the most severe, if the details of the event be true, that they have yet suffered in the Caucasus. In any case, these exciting changes of fortune would be in favor of a book professing to describe this interesting region, and to add to our knowledge of its brave inhabitants. The main interest of Herr Bodenstedt's work will now be enhanced by its undertaking to give a more precise account than had previously appeared of the priest-warrior of Daghestan. and of the new sect as the prophet of which he succeeded in arraying the independent mountain clans against their common enemy with a kind of combination unknown in earlier periods of the struggle.

The author has evidently lived for some time in the region which he describes, or in the bordering districts along the Caspian, both in Georgia and in North Daghestan, His acquaintance with Asiatic and Russian languages and customs appears to have been gained both by study and from intercourse with the natives of the south-eastern frontier. He is not ignorant of Oriental writings that refer to his subject; and his Russian statistics prove an access to official authorities which are not to be found in print. These, however obtained, can scarcely have been imparted to him as one of those writers whom the Court of St. Petersburg hires to promote its views through the press of Western Europe. His sympathies are declared against Russian usurpation; and the tendency of his essay is to prove how little real progress it has yet made in subduing the Caucasus, the enormous waste of money and life with which its fluctuating successes have been bought, and the fallacy of expecting a better result hereafter.

What it has cost in life on the Russian side to attack-hitherto with no lasting effect—the handful of Caucasian mountaineers, may be guessed from a single note, dated 1847: "The present Russian force in the Caucasus"—including of course, the armed Cossacks of the Kuban and Terek—"amounts to two hundred thousand." Taking into account the numbers yearly cut off by disease, more fatal even than the mountain war, every step of which must be won by the most reckless waste of life,—the "Russian Officer" may perhaps truly affirm that the annual expenditure of life by Russia, in her warfare with Schamyl, has for many years past exceeded the whole number of the population at any one time directly under the rule of that chieftain.

We have said that the most instructive part of Herr Bodenstedt's essay is his sketch of that politico-religious scheme which made Schamyl formidable to the Russians. This system, it is to be observed, arose and has since been fully developed only in the Eastern Caucasus, where of late the main stress of the war has been. The western tribes (our "Circassians") who took the lead at an earlier stage of the contest, were not then, nor have they since been, inspired by the fanatic zeal which united the tribes of Daghestan. They fought from a mere love of independence, each little republic by itself; and their efforts, however heroic, being without concert, gradually declined before the vast force of the invader. In the region looking westward from the Georgian frontier on the Euxine, on the one side of the Caucasian range, and along the lower Kuban on the other, the Russian posts are now seldom threatened but by small predatory bands; the natives, retired to their mountain villages, have for some time made but few more formidable incursions. The war is transferred to the region spreading eastward from the Elbrus to the Caspian; where the strife for free existence is animated not less by the hatred of Russian slavery than by a fresh outbreak of Mohammedan zeal against infidel invasion,—a revival, in fact, of that war-like fanaticism which made the Moslem name terrible from the eighth to the sixteenth century.

It dates from the years 1823-4; at which period a "new doctrine" began to be preached, secretly at first, to the select Uléma, afterward to greater numbers, in word and writing, by one Mullah Mohammed, a famous teacher and a judge (or kadi) of Jarach, in the Kurin district of Daghestan. He professed to have learnt it from Hadis-Ismail, an Alim of Kurdomir, highly famed for wisdom and sanctity. It laid bare the degradation into which his countrymen had sunk by irreligion and by the jealousy of sect; their danger, in consequence, from enemies of the true faith; and urged the necessity of reform in creed and practice, in order to regain the invincible character promised by the Prophet to believers. The theoretical part of the reformed doctrine seems to be a kind of Sufism,—the general character of which mode of Islam, long prevalent in the adjacent kingdom of Persia, has been described by our own orientalists. Disputed questions as to its origin, whether in Brahmin philosophy or in the reveries of Moslem mystics, cannot be discussed here; it must suffice to indicate those points which appear to connect it with the hieratic policy that has given a new aspect to the war in the Caucasus.

Proceeding nominally on the basis of the Koran, it inculcates or expounds a kind of spiritual transcendentalism; in which the adept is raised above the necessity of formal laws, which are only requisite for those who are not capable of rising to a full intelligence of the supreme power. To gain this height, by devout contemplation, must be the personal work and endeavor of each individual. The revelation of divine truth, once attained, supersedes specific moral injunctions; ceremonies and systems, even, of religion, become indifferent to the mind illuminated by the sacred idea. A higher degree is the perfect conception or ecstatic vision of the Deity;—the highest-reserved only for the prophetic few—a real immediate union with his essence. Here, it will be seen, are four steps or stages, each of which has its sacred manual or appropriate system of teaching. In the hieratic system, of which Schamyl is the head, the divisions seem to correspond pretty nearly with this arrangement, as follows:—

The first includes the mass of the armed people; whose zeal it promotes by strict religious and moral injunctions enjoining purity of life, exact regard to the ritual of the Koran, teaching pilgrimages, fasting, ablutions; the duty of implacable war against the Infidel, the sin of enduring his tyranny.

The second is composed of those, who, in virtue of striving upward to a higher Divine intelligence, are elevated above ceremonial religion. Of these the Murids (seekers or strugglers,) are formed: a body of religious warriors attached to the Imam, whose courage in battle, raised to a kind of frenzy, despises numbers and laughs at death. To accept quarter, or to fly from the Infidel, is forbidden to this class.

The third includes the more perfect acolytes, who are presumed to have risen to the ecstatic view of the Deity. These are the elect, whom the Imam makes Naibs or vice-regents,—invested with nearly absolute power in his absence.

The fourth, or highest, implying entire union with the Divine essence, is held by Schamyl alone. In virtue of this elevation and spiritual endowment, the Imam, as an immediate organ of the Supreme Will, is himself the source of all law to his followers, unerring, impeccable; to question or disobey his behests is a sin against religion, as well as a political crime. It may be seen what advantage this system must have given to Schamyl in his conflict with the Russians. The doctrine of the indifference of sects and forms enabled him to unite the divided followers of Omar and of Ali, in a region where both abound, and where the schism had formerly been one of the most effectual instruments of the enemy. The belief in a Divine mission and spiritual powers sustains his adherents in all reverses; while it invites to defection from the Russian side those of the Mohammedan tribes who have submitted to the invader. Among these, however, Schamyl, like his predecessors in the same priestly office, by no means confides the progress of his sect to spiritual influences only. The work of conversion, where exhortation fails, is carried on remorselessly by fire and sword; and the Imam is as terrible to those of his countrymen whom fear or interest retains in alliance with Russia, as to the soldiers of the Czar. With a character in which extreme daring is allied with coolness, cunning, and military genius, with a good fortune which has hitherto preserved his life in many circumstances where escape seemed impossible,—it may be seen that the belief in his supernatural gifts and privileges, once created, must always tend to increase in intensity and effect among the imaginative and credulous Mohammedans of the Caucasus; and that this apt combination of the warrior with the politician and prophet accounts for his success in combining against the Russians a force of the once discordant tribes of Daghestan, possessing more of the character of a national resistance than had been ever known before in the Caucasus,—and compelling the invaders to purchase every one of their few, trifling, and dubious advances by the terrible sacrifice of life already noticed.

In this formidable movement the highlander's natural freedom is fanned into a blaze by a religious zeal like that which once led the armies of Islam over one half of Asia and Europe. Although it reached its highest energy and a more consummate development under Schamyl, it was begun by his predecessors. Of the Mullah Mohammed, who first preached the duty of casting off the yoke of the Giaour, and the necessity of a religious reform and union of rival sects, as a means to that end, we have already spoken. This founder of the new system, an aged man, untrained in arms, never himself drew the sword in the cause; but was active in diffusing its principles and preparing a warlike rising by exhortations and letters circulated through all Daghestan. Suspected of these designs, he was seized, in 1826, by the orders of Jermoloff; and although be escaped,—by the connivance, it is said, of the native prince employed to capture him,—he afterward lived, in a kind of concealment, for some years. The post of Imam was thereupon assumed by a priest who was able to fight for the new doctrine as well as to preach it. The first armed outbreak took place under Kasi-Mullah, about the year 1829; from which time, until his death in a battle at Himry, in 1831, he waged a terrible, and, although often defeated, a virtually successful warfare, against the Russians, while he prosecuted the work of conversion among the tribes of Islam who delayed to acknowledge his mission, and to join in his enmity to the Russians, by the extremities of bloodshed and rapine. His death, after an heroic resistance, was hailed as a triumph by the Russians. They counted on the extinction of the new sect in the defeat of its leader, whose dead body they carried about the country to prove the imposture of his pretensions. This piece of barbarism produced an effect the reverse of what they expected. The venerable face of the Imam, the attitude in which he had expired, with one hand pointed as if to heaven, was more impressive to those who crowded round the body than his fearless enthusiasm had been,—and thousands who till then had held aloof, now joined his followers in venerating him as a prophet. Of this first warrior-priest of Daghestan, Schamyl was the favorite disciple and the most trusted soldier. Kasi-Mullah was not killed until Schamyl had already fallen as it seemed, under several deadly wounds:—his reappearance after this bloody scene was but the first of many similar escapes, the report of which sounds like a fable. He did not, however, at once succeed to the dignity of Imam: the office was usurped for more than a year by Hamsad Beg (Bey), whose rapacious and savage treatment of some of the princely families of Daghestan nearly caused a fatal reaction against the new sect, and the destruction of its main support, the Murids. Hamsad Beg performed no action of consequence against the Russians; but expended his rage upon the natives allied with them, or reluctant to obey his mandates. He was assassinated in 1834, by some kinsmen of a princely house whose territories he had usurped after a massacre of its princes. In the affray which took place on this occasion, there perished with him many of the fanatic Murids, who had become odious as instruments of the cruelties of their Imam. On his death, Schamyl was raised to the dignity,—but it was some time before the mischief done by his predecessor was so far repaired as to allow him to act with energy as the prophet of the new doctrine. One of the ill effects of Hamsad Beg's iniquities had been the defection to the Russians of n notable partisan—Hadjii Murad—for many years a fatal thorn in the side of the independent party.[6 - It is worth noting—as a characteristic of Russian misrule and of its consequences—that this chieftain, after having been a devoted soldier of the Emperor for seven years, was goaded by the ill treatment of his officers into abjuring the service; make the offer of his sword to Schamyl, against whom he had fought with the utmost animosity; was heartily welcomed by that prudent leader, and became one of his principal lieutenants.] This and other difficulties, among which was the unpopularity of the Murids under Hamsad Beg, were removed by new alliances and precautions, while all that eloquence and skill could perform was applied to restore the credit of the religious system, before Schamyl could hazard a direct attack of the Russian enemy, who meanwhile had taken advantage of the delay and disunion to gain ground in many parts of Daghestan. From the year 1839, however, the tide rapidly turned; and the result, from that date until the period at which the account closes (1845)—when Woronzow was appointed to command in the Caucasus, with nearly unlimited powers,—has been, that the Russians, in spite of tremendous sacrifices, were constantly losing ground and influence, while Schamyl gained both in equal proportion. The details of the campaigns during this interval are highly interesting; and we regret that conditions of space forbid us to translate some of the exciting episodes recorded by Herr Bodenstedt. We may, however, extract the following account of the Caucasian hero,—whose portrait, we believe, has never before been so fully exhibited to European readers;—

"Schamyl is of middle stature; he has light hair, gray eyes, shaded by bushy and well-arched eyebrows,—a nose finely moulded, and a small mouth. His features are distinguished from those of his race by a peculiar fairness of complexion and delicacy of skin: the elegant form of his hands and feet is not less remarkable. The apparent stiffness of his arms, when he walks, is a sign of his stern and impenetrable character. His address is thoroughly noble and dignified. Of himself he is completely master; and he exerts a tacit supremacy over all who approach him. An immovable stony calmness, which never forsakes him, even in moments of the utmost danger, broods over his countenance. He passes a sentence of death with the same composure with which he distributes "the sabre of honor" to his bravest Murids, after a bloody encounter. With traitors or criminals whom he has resolved to destroy, he will converse without betraying the least sign of anger or vengeance. He regards himself as a mere instrument in the hands of a higher Being; and holds, according to the Sufi doctrine, that all his thoughts and determinations are immediate inspirations from God. The flow of his speech is as animating and irresistible as his outward appearance is awful and commanding. "He shoots flames from his eyes, and scatters flowers from his lips,"—said Bersek Bey, who sheltered him for some days after the fall of Achulgo,—when Schamyl dwelt for some time among the princes of the Djighetes and Ubiches, for the purpose of inciting the tribes on the Black Sea to rise against the Russians. Schamyl is now (circa 1847?) fifty years old, but still full of vigor and strength: it is however said, that he has for some years past suffered from an obstinate disease of the eyes, which is constantly growing worse. He fills the intervals of leisure which his public charges allow him, in reading the Koran, fasting, and prayer. Of late years he has but seldom, and then only on critical occasions, taken a personal share in warlike encounters. In spite of his almost supernatural activity, Schamyl is excessively severe and temperate in his habits. A few hours of sleep are enough for him: at times he will watch for the whole night, without Showing the least trace of fatigue on the following day. He eats little, and water is his only beverage. According to Mohammedan custom, he keeps several wives—[this contradicts Wagner, who affirms that Schamyl always confined himself to one]; in 1844 he had three, of which his favorite, Dur Heremen, (Pearl of the Harem) as she was called, was an Armenian, of exquisite beauty."

Will Russian arms prevail in the end? The following is Herr Bodenstedt's answer; after noticing the arrival of Woronzow, and the expectations raised by his talents, by the immense resources at his command, as well as by such events as the storm of Schamyl's stronghold of Cargo:—

"He who believes that the issue of this contest hangs on the destruction of stone fortresses, on the devastation of tracts of forest, has not yet conceived the essential nature of the war in the Caucasus. This is not merely a war of men against men—it is a strife between the mountain and the steppe. The population of the Caucasus may be changed; the air of liberty wafted from its heights will ever remain the same. Invigorated by this atmosphere, even Russian hirelings would grow into men eager for freedom: and among their descendants a new race of heroes would arise, to point their weapons against that servile constitution, to extend which their fathers had once fought, as blind, unquestioning slaves."

To this answer of Herr Bodenstedt's we will add nothing of our own. We are weary with waiting for the events of history such as we would have them.

COOLING A BURNING SPIRIT

An incident which occurred soon after the accession of the present Sultan, shows that, in some respects, at least, he is not indisposed to follow up the strong traditions of his race. At the beginning of his reign, the Ulema was resolved, if possible, to prevent the new Sultan from carrying on those reforms which had ever been so distasteful to the Turks, grating at once against their religious associations and their pride of race, and which recent events had certainly proved not to be productive of those good results anticipated by Sultan Mamoud. To attain this object, the Muftis adopted the expedient of working on the religious fears of the youthful prince. One day as he was praying, according to his custom, at his father's tomb, he heard a voice from beneath reiterating, in a stifled tone, the words, "I burn." The next time that he prayed there the same words assailed his ears. "I burn" was repeated again and again, and no word beside. He applied to the chief of the Imams to know what this prodigy might mean; and was informed in reply, that his father, though a great man, had also been, unfortunately, a great reformer, and that as such it was too much to be feared that he had a terrible penance to undergo in the other world. The Sultan sent for his brother-in-law to pray at the same place, and afterward several others of his household; and on each occasion the same portentous words were heard. One day he announced his intention of going in state to his father's tomb, and was attended thither by a splendid retinue, including the chief doctors of the Mahometan law. Again, during his devotions, were heard the words, "I burn," and all except the Sultan trembled. Rising from his prayer-carpet, he called in his guards, and commanded them to dig up the pavement and remove the tomb. It was in vain that the Muftis interposed, reprobating so great a profanation, and uttering warnings as to its consequences. The Sultan persisted, the foundations of the tomb were laid bare, and in a cavity skillfully left among them was found—not a burning Sultan, but a Dervise. The young monarch regarded him for a time fixedly and in silence, and then said, without any further remark or the slightest expression of anger, "You burn?—We must cool you in the Bosphorus." In a few minutes more the dervise was in a bag, and the bag immediately after was in the Bosphorus.—De Vere's Sketches.

[From Household Words.]

AN OLD HAUNT

The rippling water, with its drowsy tone,—
The tall elms, tow 'ring in their stately pride,—
And—sorrow's type—the willow sad and lone,
Kissing in graceful woe the murmuring tide;—

The grey church-tower,—and dimly seen beyond,
The faint hills gilded by the parting sun,—
All were the same, and seem'd with greeting fond
To welcome me as they of old had done.

And for a while I stood as in a trance,
On that loved spot, forgetting toil and pain;—
Buoyant my limbs, and keen and bright my glance,
For that brief space I was a boy again!

Again with giddy mates I careless play'd,
Or plied the quiv'ring oar, on conquest bent:—
Again, beneath the tall elms' silent shade,
I woo'd the fair, and won the sweet consent.

But brief, alas! the spell,—for suddenly
Peal'd from the tower the old familiar chimes,
And with their clear, heart-thrilling melody,
Awaked the spectral forms of darker times

And I remember'd all that years had wrought—
How bow'd my care-worn frame, how dimm'd my eye,
How poor the gauds by Youth so keenly sought,
How quench'd and dull Youth's aspirations high!

And in half mournful, half upbraiding host,
Duties neglected—high resolves unkept—
And many a heart by death or falsehood lost,
In lightning current o'er my bosom swept.

Then bow'd the stubborn knees, as backward sped