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CHAPTER XI.

THE WAR, AND AFTER.

THAT summer of 1854 was a long and dreary time. We were waiting for something to be done, and nothing was done. Good Heavens! were our generals stupid, or incapable, or were they dreaming away the time? Who does not remember the cholera at Varna, after the long and unnecessary delay, the sickness of the troops before a blow had been struck, and at last the embarkation for the Crimea? So great and terrible was the spectre of Russian greatness that even the three great powers of France, Turkey, and England, hesitated before attacking this monstrous Frankenstein in his den. They went at last, greatly daring, and their reward was-Alma.

And then followed the splendid months of barren victory-Inkerman, the soldier's battle, the foolish braggadocio of the Light Cavalry charge, followed by the cruel winter and the unmerited sufferings of the troops, for which a dozen commissariat officers ought to have been shot.

noses,

About this time I saw my compatriots, the Russians, for the first time. Some prisoners were brought to us; they wore flat caps and long coats; they had good-natured faces, not at all foolish; they had wide like Tartars, and they made themselves quite happy and comfortable with us, carving all sorts of toys, and showing a power of laughter and humor quite incompatible with the devilry which we had learned to attach to the Muscovite character. They were only devils, I suppose, by order of the czar, and in the ranks. Outside the ranks as peaceable, docile, and quiet a set of fellows as ever wanted to grow an honest crop in peace.

But how we received the news in those days! | With cheers, with illuminations, with feastings, with receptions of captains, generals, and admirals. Still the exodus of our juventus went on. The juvenes were younger, smaller, and more rustic in appearance. They all, however, had the same gallant bearing, these brave country lads, fresh from the plough and stable, redolent of Mother Earth. A few weeks before, and they were leaning against posts in the village street, feeding pigs, driving calves, striding with a sideward lurch after cows, sitting almost mute on a bench in the village alehouse. Now they were well set up, drilled, inspired with warlike ardor, filled with new ideas of duty, responsibility, and a career, ready to do and to die. Let us confess that the readiness to die was qualified by that belief which every soldier has, that he, if no one else, will be the one person to escape. If it were not for that saving clause I fear that, even in the times of greatest danger to the country, service in the ranks would not be popular. Men did not volunteer for those charming fights in the arena before Nero, when all had to die on the ground. Quite the contrary; they disliked that kind of fight, and I have often thought how greatly the vivacity and ardor of the combat would have been increased if the combatants had been told

beforehand that one-say the bravest-would have his life spared, with a pension of a shilling a day ever afterward. Vos morituri salutant might have been said by those fresh-cheeked young English lads on their way to club muskets at Inkerman, and to fall in the storming of the Redan.

And after a while they began to send the wounded home.

To receive them a hospital was built in one of the meadows under the Ramparts, and a portion of the wall was railed off for the convalescents to walk upon. This made Celia's Arbor still more quiet and secluded.

In 1856 the sick and wounded were brought home by every ship that arrived from the East, and week by week, sometimes daily, might be seen filing up the long and narrow street a long and dismal procession. It consisted of sailors carrying stretchers, four to every stretcher. There was no band now, nor would be any more for most of the poor men upon the stretchers, till the drums and fifes marched before the coffin and played "The Dead March." The townsfolk who had turned out to wave their handkerchiefs when the soldiers went away came out now to greet them back. But what a greeting! and what a return! Some, sitting half upright, waved feeble hands in response to those who lined the way and cheered their return. Their faces were pale and worn with suffering; sometimes a sheet covered the lower limbs, which were mutilated and crushed, some, a little stronger than their comrades, sat up, laughed, and nodded. Some, worn out by the rolling of the ship, the pain of their wounds, and the long sufferings of the campaign, lay back with closed eyes, patient and sad to see, and made no sign. And here and there one was borne along ghastly, the pallor of death upon his cheeks, life done for him; not even vitality enough left to think about the future world; his eyes half open, with a fixed glare which observed nothing. This, with the row of tombs in the Crimea and at Scutari, was the end of all that pride and pomp of war. What was it Tennyson said?—

"The long, long canker of peace is over and done." We were to wake to nobler aims, leave the sordid and base, give up cheating and strike home, were it with the cheating yard-measure.

Well. The war came, ran its course, and ended. What nobler ends followed? How much was abolished of the old cheating, the sordid aims, and the general baseness of a world at peace? How much less wicked and selfish were we when the fighting was finished, and the soldiers came back to us?

And, after all, we return to Celia's question, "What had they done to each other, the Russians and the English, that they should stand face to face and fight?"

"Take me away, Laddy," Celia said, one day, after seeing one of the gloomy processions of the wounded partly file past. "Take me away. I cannot bear to see any more. Oh, the poor soldiers, the poor soldiers! What punishment can be great

enough for the men who have brought all this misery evil passions, the letting loose of so many devils, upon the earth?"

"What, indeed? But Nicholas was dead. General Février killed him. Perhaps, after all, he was not the guiltiest. But he gave the word. It is to be hoped, for their own sakes, that autocrats do not know what war means, else surely the word never

must fall upon the head of Russia. First to excite revolt among the Christian subjects of the Turk; then to make difficulties for the Turks in putting down the miserable victims of the Russian plot; then to call on Europe to mark how Turkey treated her subjects; then to proclaim herself the protector

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| of Christians-this was Russia's game in 1828, in 1853, and, lastly, in 1876. And the glory of the poor soldiers? They died for their country, and have such glory as belongs to one of a nameless fifty thousand fallen on the field.

The fight was just and the victory righteous. We pay the penalty now of not having carried the war

"The fiddle of old Wassielewski, I know, was in constant request."-Page 497.

to its legitimate end. We should have restored Poland, driven Russia back to the Caucasus and the Caspian, given Finland again to Sweden, and taken away her southern ports. All this we could have done; it was possible to England and France, twenty years ago. Will the chance ever come again?

Through the whole of the war there was no man in the town who took a keener interest in it, who was oftener in the streets, who hung more about the harbor, or talked more with soldiers and sailors, than Herr Räumer.

was broken, and there were occasions when some young mariner, ashore after a three years' cruise, was fain out of the plethora of his joy to find relief in smashing them all. But the smell of that room was venerable by age and respectable by association, though more awful than it is permitted to me to describe. Jack and Jill did not mind it, they liked it. There was rum in it, plenty of beer, a very large quantity of tobacco, onions, beefsteaks, mutton-chops, boiled pork and cabbage, pea-soup, more tobacco, more rum, more beer. That smell, my friends, is gone, the public-house is gone, Jill is almost gone, Jack is an earnest Methodist by religion, and he spends his time ashore at the Sailors' Home.

And there, then, was the Dockyard, with all its extra hands, and the work going on day and night, so that the solemn silence of the darkness was unknown. Victory Row must have lost one of its chief charms. For the whole twenty-four hours there was the incessant " tap-tap" of the calkers, the heavy thud of the steam-hammer, the melodious banging of the rivets, followed by countless echoes from the many-cornered yard, and the r-r-r-r of the machinery. No rest at all, except on Sunday. That emergency must be great indeed when the British Government would ask its workmen to give up their Sabbath rest!

As for the sailors, there seemed no diminution in their numbers or in the number of the ships which crowded the harbor, and were perpetually coming and going with their thunder of salutes. Jack only had two stages: he was either just paid off, and therefore ostentatiously happy with his friends around him, his fiddlers, and his public-house, or he was just embarking again on a newly-commissioned ship, going off for another cruise with empty pockets, coppers terribly hot, and perhaps, if he was Jack in his youth, with the faint and dimly-seen ghost of a possible repentance somewhere lurking about his brain, a spectral umbra pointing heavenward which faded as the shore receded, and vanished about six bells in the morning.

The war, in any case, did good to our own people at the Dockyard town. There had never been such times since the good old long war, when a man who had a shop near the Hard had but to open it and stand all day taking the sailors' money as fast as they poured it out over the counter. Every ship that came home brought her sailors to be paid off, the money to be all spent in the town; every ship that sailed for the East carried away stores for the soldiers, chiefly bought in the town. Those who were in the way of all this money-making made fortunes out of it, and retired to suburban villas, with gardens, for the rest of their lives. I do not think that the green coffee-berries, the putrid preserved meat, the mouldy, compressed hay, or the biscuits that walked about animated by a multitudinous hive of lively creatures, were supplied by any of our people. We were too patriotic; we had friends on board the ships if not in the regiments-could we send them out rotten provisions or brown-paper boots? Then there was the revelry. Out of all the millions spent in the Crimean War, think how many went in the drink-shops and the dancing-kens! The fiddle of old Wassielewski, I know, was in constant request; often and often I heard the well-known sound-I knew his style, which was distinct from that of any other of the sailors' musicians-from behind the red curtains of a sailors' public-house, behind which Jack and Jill were dancing, drinking, and singing. The China War, by-the-way, was long since played out, and the picture had given way to another in which Russians were playing an ignominious but dramatic For soldiers, we fell back upon the militia. We part. A side-picture represented French sailors and have never yet grasped the truth that England may soldiers, very tight of waist, mustachioed, and black have to defend what she has got; that she is not of hair, fraternizing merrily with our own men-with only the admiration, but also the envy, of all other drink, hand-shaking, and song, they were celebrating nations; that Russia would like Constantinople and the entente cordiale. Listen! It is the sailors' horn- India; Germany, Australia—good Heavens, think of pipe; within is one who, grave of face and agile of the shame and ignominy of letting any un-Englishfoot, treads that mazy measure alone, while around are speaking country have Australia!—the States, Cana-grouped the crowd of sympathetic rivals, who drink, da; France, Egypt and Syria; Italy, Cyprus; Greece, applaud, and presently emulate. The dancer is fac- Crete, and so on. When these facts have become. ing old Wassielewski, who sits with outstretched left convictions, when we fairly understand how great is leg, his deep-set eyes fixed on the opposite wall, his our position in the world; what a tremendous stake. thoughts far away in the dreadful past or the revenge- we have in it; how much of unselfish humanity deful future, while the fingers, obedient to his will, play pends on the maintenance of English hegemony— the tune that he orders, but does not listen to. It is, then will England arm every man between fifteen I know, because I do not look in, but feel all this, and fifty, and make all from twenty to thirty liable a low room, and it is redolent of a thousand com- to foreign service. Patriotism sleeps, but it may be pound smells, ancient, fish-like, capable of knocking awakened. If it continues to sleep, farewell to Enga stranger down and stunning him with a single land's greatness. A century of ignoble wealth, a blow. The windows have never been open for twen-generation or two of commerce diverted, trade ruined, ty or thirty years; of course, once in a way, a pane industries forgotten, and the brave old country would

VOL. III. 32

become worse than Holland, because the English are more sensitive than the Dutch, and the memories of old glory combined with present degradation would madden the people and drive them to the usual British remedy-drink.

ly employed in the Russian, German, and Austrian services. These young fellows came up to barracks, with their country lurch upon them, their good-natured country grin, and their insatiable thirst for beer. They retained the last, but in a very short time got rid of the first. One whole regiment volunteered for foreign service-I forget what it wasand went to Corfu, the island which a late primeminister, more careful of a theory than of a country's prestige, tossed contemptuously to Greece, so that all the world sneered, and even the gods wondered. Well, these rustics of militiamen, I declare, after a few weeks were as well set up, pipe-clayed, and drilled, as any regiment of the line, and as trustworthy in case their services should be required.

In one thing, one must needs confess, they were inferior to the regulars. It was not in perpendicularity, which they easily acquired. We were still in the pipe-clay days, when the white belt and the cross shoulder-straps were stiffened by that abominable stuff; the white trousers of summer had also to be kept in a whited-sepulchre semblance of purity by the same means; a man who is pipe-clayed cannot stoop; the black-leather collar kept the head at an unbending line with the body; and the yellow tufts on the shoulder, with the swallow-tails of the absurd regimental coat and the tiny ball of red stuff on the regimental hat-all combined to necessitate a carriage ten times stiffer and more rigidly upright than in these degenerate days. The most lop-sided and lurcher-like of rustics was bound to become perpendicular. But their failing was in the way they took their beer. The old regular got drunk as often as the militiaman, but the drunker he got the stiffer he grew, so that when he was quite helpless he fell like a lamp-post, with uncompromising legs. And we, who knew by experience how a soldier should fall, re

In 1855 we-I do not speak as a Pole-were rather better off in the matter of regiments and recruits than we should be in 1877, were the occasion to arise. In all these years we have learned nothing, taken to heart nothing, done nothing, prepared for nothing. We have no larger army, we have no better organization, we have no more intelligent system, we have not made our officers more responsible. Twenty years ago we threw away twenty thousand men-with a light heart sent out twenty thousand men to die because we had no system of control, transport, and commissariat. All these poor lads died of preventable disease. What have we done since to make that impossible again? Nothing. Talk. At the very autumn manoeuvres, when we have weeks to prepare and a paltry ten thousand men to provide for, we break down. Continental nations see it, and laugh at us. What have we done to make our children learn that they must fight pro patria, if occasion arise? Nothing. Board schools teach the Kings of Israel; the very atmosphere of the country teaches desire of success and the good | things which success brings with it; no school teaches, as the Germans teach, that every man is owed to his country. That may come; if it does not come soon, farewell to England's greatness. Again: that the empire was created and grew great, not by truckling to the pretensions of modern diplomatists, but by saying, “Thus far and no farther." Do this wrong or that, and you will have to fight England. That the most glorious country that the world has ever seen, the finest, the richest, the most splendid, the most religious, the least priest-ridden and king-rid-marked with sorrow rather than anger that the miliden, was made what it is by its children being willing and able to fight—all these things were not taught in 1855, and are not yet taught in 1877. Good Heavens! I am a Pole, and yet more than half an Englishman: and it makes me sick and sorry to feel how great is the patrimony of an Englishman, how noble are his annals, how profound a gap would be made in the world by the collapse of England, and how little English people seem to understand their greatness. I have been waiting for twenty years to see the fruits of the Crimean War-and, behold! they are dust and ashes in the mouth.

tiaman fell in a heap like a plough-boy, and so betrayed his customary pursuits.

CHAPTER XII.

PEACE.

THIS was an especially good time for Ferdinand Brambler, the journalist, and consequently the children. Such years of fatness had never before been known to them. Not, it is true, that Fortune beRevenons à nos moutons. Our garrison, then, friended Augustus. Quite the contrary. War might consisted of a couple of militia regiments. They be made and peace signed without affecting his posicame to us, raw country lads, like the recruits whom tion in the slightest. Nothing ever happened to betwe sent to the East; but, being without the presence ter his position. On one occasion, even-I think it of the veterans to control and influence them, they was in 1856-he received an intimation from Mr. took longer to improve. And yet it is wonderful to Tyrrell's head-clerk, who had vainly trusted him notice how an English lad takes to his drill, and with some real work, that his resignation would be tackles his gun from the very first, with an intelli- accepted if he sent it in. Therefore, with enthusiasm gence that is almost instinct. He is, to be sure, al- ever equal to the occasion, he hastened to desert the most too fond of fighting. There is no other coun- Legal, and once more returned to the Scholastic, taktry besides England, except France, where the re-ing the post of writing and arithmetic master in a secruits can be taught to march, to skirmish, and the lect commercial academy. rest of it, without the aid of Sergeant Stick, so large

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'After all," he said to me, "the Scholastic is my

real vocation. I feel it most when I go back to it. To teach the rising generation-what can be nobler? I influence one mind, we will say. Through him I influence his six children; through them their thirtysix children; through them again their two hundred and sixteen-there is no end to the influence of a schoolmaster. I shall be remembered, Mr. Pulaski -I shall be remembered by a grateful posterity."

Perhaps he will be remembered, but his chances of exercising permanent influence were scanty on this occasion, because, although he taught with extraordinary zeal and activity, the principal actually complained, after three months, that his boys were learning nothing, and gave him notice in the friendliest and kindest manner.

Some secret influence was probably brought to bear upon Mr. Tyrrell at this juncture, when the Brambler household threatened to lose the income derived from the labor of its chief, because Augustus went back to his old office and his old pay, sitting once more cheerfully among the boys, mending the pens with enthusiastic alacrity, serving writs with zeal, copying out bills of costs with ardor, and actively inspecting old books in an eager search for nothing.

“I do think,” he said, in a burst of enthusiasm, "that there is nothing after all like the Legal. When you have deserted it for a time, and go back to it, you feel it most. Law brings out the argumentative side-the intellectual side-of a man. It makes him critical. Law keeps his brain on the stretch. Often on Saturday night I wonder how I have managed to worry through the work of the week. But, you see, they could not get on without

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Perhaps not; but yet if Augustus had known by whose fair pleading he was received back to become a permanent incubus on the weekly expenses of that office

In the Scholastic, in the Clerical, or in the Legal, Augustus Brambler never changed, never lost heart, never failed in zeal, never ceased to take the same lively and personal interest in the well-being of the house. He had his punctual habits and his maxims. He was a model among employés. Fortune, when she gave Augustus a sanguine temperament and a lively imagination, thought she had done enough for the man, and handed him over to the Three Sisters as sufficiently endowed to meet any fate. And they condemned him to the unceasing and contented exercise of illusion and imagination, so that he never saw things as they really were, or understood their proportion.

But during the years of war the children, in spite of their helpless father, waxed fat and strong; and even little Forty-six looked satisfied and well fed.

ceremony, whether it was the embarkation of a regiment or the arrival of the invalided, or a military funeral, or an inspection of troops upon the Common, or a launch, Ferdinand was in attendance and to the front, wearing a face of indescribable importance, and carrying a note-book. This in hand, he surveyed the crowd on arrival, and made a note; cast a weather-eye upward to the sky, and made a note; drew out his watch, and made a note; then, as soon as the function began, he continued steadily making notes until the end. I did not at first, being innocent of literary matters, connect these notes with certain descriptions of events which regularly appeared on the following Saturday in the local Mercury. They were written with fidelity and vigor; they did justice to the subject; they were poetical in feeling and flowery in expression. A fine day was rendered as "a bright and balmy atmosphere warmed by the beams of benevolent Sol;" a crowded gathering gave an opportunity for the admirer of beauty to congratulate his fellow-townsmen on the beauty and tasteful dress of their daughters; when a ship was launched, she was made by a bold and strikingly original figure to float swan-like on the bosom of the ocean; when a public dinner was held, the tables groaned under the viands provided by mine eminent host of the George; the choicest wines sparkled in the goblet; animation and enthusiasm reigned in every heart; and each successive flow of oratory was an occasion for a greater and more enthusiastic outburst of cheering. The writer was not critical; he was descriptive. That is the more popular form of journalism. Froissart was the inventor of the uncritical historian. And Ferdinand was born either too early or too late.

For all these beautiful and gushing columns, invaluable to some antiquary of the future, were due to the pen of Ferdinand Brambler; and it was by the frequency of the occasions on which his powers were called for that the prosperity of the Bramblers depended. And Ferdinand, an excellent brother and the most self-denying creature in the world, worked cheerfully for his nephews and nieces. Beneath that solemn exterior, and behind those pretensions to genius, there beat the most simple and unselfish of hearts.

Ferdinand did not report: first, because he could not write short-hand; and, secondly, because he thought it—and said so-beneath the dignity of genius to become the 'mere copying-clerk of vestry twaddle." He lived on his communiqués, for which, as he was the only man in the place who wrote them, and therefore had the field all to himself, he received fairly good pay. During the Crimean War he had a never-ending succession of subjects for his pen, which was as facile as it was commonplace. It was the history of the regiment; it was a note on the next ros

It was through the exertions of their uncle Fer-ter; it was the service-roll of a ship; it was the bidinand.

I had long observed that whenever anything was going on-and something in these days was constantly going on—Ferdinand, besides Herr Räumer, was always on the spot. Whatever the nature of the

ography of a general-nothing came amiss to the encyclopedic Ferdinand; and whatever he treated, it must be owned, was treated with the same hackneyed similes, the same well-worn metaphors, and the same pleasantries; for, while Augustus looked

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