Chapter II: Part 2

“And give him the fruits of all my reading,” Arthur muttered angrily, “of all I learned at the Hartz; tell him how to proceed, and leave myself a beggar. No!” he said, “I will never see him. As to this miserable little weed,” he continued, tearing the broom to pieces, and casting the fragments contemptuously into the fire; “it is nothing; you are mad to have given up your butterflies to betake yourself to such a ridiculous pursuit as this. Don’t go there any more--there!” (here he stamped on it with his foot) “How damp it is! the fire has little power.”

“You never take any interest, Arthur, in anything I do. I don’t know, I’m sure, how I’ve offended you. As to the broom, I know it’s a poor common thing, but I thought the way its roots were loaded rather odd. Ellen will perhaps be disappointed, for we intended to plant it in her garden, and I only asked her to let me show it to you, it struck me as being so very curious. Come, give up your books and learning for a day. We must leave this for Oxford in a week, and I wish you to know more of the Warleighs before we go.”

“I am not going back to Oxford,” said Arthur, “I shall take my name off the books.”

Winnington was astonished. He was also displeased. “We promised to visit my aunt,” he said, “on our way back to college--Lucy will be grieved and disappointed.”

“I will send a letter by you--I shall explain it all--I owe her a letter already.”

“Have you not answered that letter yet? it came a month ago,” said Winnington. “Oh! if Ellen Warleigh would write a note to me, and let me write to her, how I would wait for her letters! how I would answer them from morn to night.”

“She would find you a rather troublesome correspondent,” said Arthur, watching the disappearance of the last particle of the broom as it leaped merrily in sparkles up the chimney. “Lucy knows that I am better employed than telling her ten times over, that I love her better than anything else-- and that I long for wealth principally that it may enable me to call her mine. I shall have it soon. Tell her to be sure of that. I shall be of age in three days, then the wretched driblet my guardian now has charge of comes into my hands; I will multiply it a thousand-fold--and then--”

“The palace will be built,” said Winnington, who could not keep anger long, “and the place at your right hand will be got ready for the resident physician--who in the meantime recommends you to go quietly to bed, for you have overstrung your mind with work, and your health, dear Arthur, is not at all secure.”

For a moment, a touch of the old kindness came to Arthur’s heart. He shook Winnington’s hand. “Thank you, thank you,” he said, “I will do as you advise. Your voice is very like Lucy’s, and so are your eyes--good night, dear Winnington.” And Winnington left the room, so did Arthur, but not for bed. A short time before this, a package had arrived from Hawsleigh, and had been placed away in a dark closet under the stairs. He looked for a moment out into the night. The moon was in a cloud, and the wind was howling with a desolate sound over the bare moor. He took down the package, and from it extracted a spade and a pickaxe; and, gently opening the front door, went out. He walked quickly till he came to the waterfall; he looked carefully round and saw a clump of broom. The ground from the rectory to this place formed a gentle declivity; where the river flowed there were high banks, for the stream had not yet been swelled by the rains, and he first descended into the bed, and examined the denuded cliffs. He then hurried towards the broom, and began to dig. He dug and struck with the pickaxe, and shovelled up the soil--weighing, smelling, tasting it, as he descended foot by foot. He dug to the depth of a yard; he jumped into the hole and pursued his work--breathless, hot, untiring. The moon for a moment came out from the clouds that obscured her. He availed himself of her light and held up a particle of soil and stone; it glittered for an instant in the moonbeam. With an almost audible cry he threw it to the bottom of the excavation, and was scrambling out when he heard a voice. It was the drunken shoemaker returning from some distant merrymaking. He lay down at the bottom of the hole, watching for the approaching footsteps. At a little distance from the waterfall the singer changed his path, and diverged towards the village. The song died off in the distance.

“That danger’s past,” said Arthur, “both for him and me. I would have killed him if he had come nearer. Back, back,” he continued, while he filled up the hole he had made, carefully shovelling in the soil--“No eye shall detect that you have been moved.” He replaced the straggling turf where it had been disturbed; stampt it down with his feet, and beat it smooth with his spade. And then went home.

“Hallo! who’s there?” cried Winnington, hearing the door open and shut. “Is that you, Arthur?”

“Yes; are you not asleep yet?”

“I’ve been asleep for hours. How late you are. Weren’t you out of the house just now?”

“I felt hot, and went out for a minute to see the moon.”

“Hot?” said Winnington. “I wish I had another blanket--good night.” Arthur passed on to his own room.

“If he had opened his door,” he said, “and seen my dirty clothes, these yellow stains on my knees, these dabbled hands, what could I have done?” He saw himself in the glass as he said this; there was something in the expression of his face that alarmed him. He drew back.

“He is very like Lucy,” he muttered to himself, “and I’m glad he didn’t get out of bed.”

Meantime Winnington had a dream. He was on board a beautiful boat on the Isis. It seemed to move by its own force, as if it were a silver swan; and the ripple as it went on took the form of music, and he thought it was an old tune that he had listened to in his youth. He sat beside Ellen Warleigh, with his hand locked in hers, and they watched the beautiful scenery through which the boat was gliding--past the pretty Cherwell, past the level meadows, past the Newnham woods,--and still the melody went on. Then they were in a country he did not know; there were tents of gaudy colours on the shore; and wild-eyed men in turbans and loose tunics looked out upon them. One came on board; he was a tall dark Emir, with golden-sheathed scimitar, which clanked as he stept on the seat. Winnington stood up and asked what the stranger wanted: the chief answered in Arabic, but Winnington understood him perfectly. He said he had come to put him to death for having dared to look upon his bride. He laid his grasp on him as he spoke, and tore him from Ellen’s side. In the struggle Winnington fell over, and found himself many feet in front of the fairy boat. The Arab sat down beside Ellen, and put his arm round her waist, and then he suddenly took the shape of Arthur Hayning. The boat seemed to flutter its wings, and come faster on. Winnington tried to swim to one side, but could not. On came the boat, its glittering bows flashed before his eyes--they touched him--pressed him down; he felt the keel pass over his head; and down, down, still downward he went, and, on looking up, saw nothing but the boat above him; all was dark where he was, for the keel seemed constantly between him and the surface, and yet he heard the old tune still going on. It was a tune his cousin Lucy used to play; but at last, in his descent through the darkened water, he got out of hearing, and all was silent. The music had died away--and suddenly he heard a scream, and saw Ellen struggling in the water. He made a dart towards her with arms stretched out--and overturned the candle he had left on the table at the side of his bed.

SORROW AND MY HEART.

To the field where I was lying
Once Sorrow came a-flying,
And bade me bring my heart to mould at her goodwill.
Shudd’ring, I turn’d aside;
“Avaunt! O fiend!” I cried,
“My heart is dear to me, and none shall work it ill!”

“But if thou must!” said she.
“Nay,” said I, “let it be!
’Tis yet so young and tender, and so slight of make,
Ungentle touch would crush it,
Hard word for aye would hush it!”
She smiled, and said, “Hearts sooner turn to stone than break!”

“Yet stay awhile!” I pray’d;
And, frowning, she obey’d;
While I to cast about my sentence to evade.

Then came she near again,
And hover’d o’er the plain
Where I sat listening to my darling’s long love-story.
“Art ready now?” she cried:
“O, no! no!” I replied,
“My heart is now in all its fullest prime and glory!”

A third time came she near:
“Now!” said she, “now prepare!
For I must have thy heart to mould at my good pleasure!”
“Here, take it!” I replied,
And pluck’d it from my side
(For I in sooth was half a-weary of my treasure).

“But what is this?” says she,
And flung it back to me;
“A stone! O traitor! thou shalt rue this jesting turn!”
She wing’d her flight away,
And I to shriek and pray
For that dear angel, who would never more return.

FRENCH AND ENGLISH STAFF OFFICERS.

Louis de Bonfils is a captain in the corps of état-major, or the staff corps of France. I have known him for several years, and always found him an honourable upright soldier; in every sense of the word, a gentleman. According to our insular ideas of decorum, the captain is, perhaps, rather too much given to swaggering about with his hands in the far-down pockets of his red trousers, and is slightly addicted to swearing when ladies are not by. An English cavalry captain might think Louis awfully slow, because he does not know or care anything about racing, is proud of, and wears, his uniform at all times and on all occasions, and has but one suit of plain clothes to his name. Moreover, since he commenced his career in the army, the captain has thought of, and worked for, nothing but his profession, and has, consequently, succeeded in making himself what the state pays him to be--a useful active wheel in the great mass of French military machinery. Not but that my friend has his failings and shortcomings like other men; but he knows full well that unless he keeps pace with--and, to do so, he must strive to outrun--his comrades on the staff in the race for professional pre-eminence, he will be cast aside as a useless encumbrance on the army list of France. Besides his rank of captain in the staff corps, Louis de Bonfils is attached to the depôt général de la guerre at Paris; where he is assisting, together with several others of his own rank and regiment, in completing a magnificent series of military maps of France, on a larger scale than any that have yet been published. The captain lately returned from the Crimea, where he was attached as aide-de-camp to the staff of a general of division; but, being sent to Paris in charge of some valuable topographical papers relating to Russia--which he had compiled when in camp by order of his superiors--the minister of war attached him, for the present, to the aforesaid depôt de la guerre.

I met Captain de Bonfils the other day in Paris, and asked him to tell me what were the qualifications required for a staff officer in his service, and how he had been fortunate enough to obtain employment in so distinguished a corps. This request he complied with at once; assuring me that the career of one officer in the corps d’état-major may be taken as an exact sample of all, and that the same qualifications are required from every one who aspires to the honour of holding a commission in that regiment.

To apply the term regiment to the French staff is perhaps not quite appropriate, as the corps consists entirely of officers. Belonging to this body are thirty colonels, thirty lieutenant-colonels, one hundred chefs d’escadron (who would be termed majors in the English service), three hundred captains, and one hundred lieutenants. No one can join the regiment unless he passes through the special school instituted in eighteen hundred and eighteen for that purpose, and now called L’École Impériale d’Application d’État-Major. This my friend, Captain Louis de Bonfils, of course, did. There are sixty pupils in the establishment, one-half of whom leave it every year; thus creating thirty annual vacancies. Of these thirty, three are selected from the École Polytechnique; the remaining twenty-seven places in the staff-school are filled by competition from amongst fifty-seven candidates, thirty of whom must be sub-lieutenants who have been at least one year in the service, and must be under twenty-five years of age; and twenty-seven from the pupils of the military school of St. Cyr. Captain de Bonfils was one of the latter class. He had already spent his regulated time of three years at St. Cyr; and having passed the required examination for a commission in the line, might have joined a regiment without delay. Being one of the twenty-seven pupils at the head of the list amongst the hundred who had passed in his term, he entered his name as a candidate for admittance into the École d’État-Major, and, as he was successful, joined that institution. Here he remained two years, going through the regular course of instruction in military science; and--although, like the rest of the pupils, he held the rank of a commissioned officer--under almost as strict military and collegiate discipline as any school-boy. Winter and summer, the young men in this college rise at six o’clock, and, with the exception of an hour for breakfast, half-an-hour for recreation in the middle of the day, and the same in the afternoon, work at one or other branch of their studies until five in the afternoon; at which hour they dine, and are then at liberty to go where they like, until ten in the evening. When they want to be out of college later, leave must be asked and obtained from the governor of the establishment. During the two years they remain at the staff-school, their time is divided regularly every day, each hour bringing its allotted task. The course of studies includes all the higher branches of mathematics, topography, geography, and fortification, together with statistics, military history, the English, German, and Italian languages, drawing, and the theory of military manœuvres--artillery, cavalry, and infantry--on a grand scale, and separate as well as combined. One hour every day is devoted to lessons in equitation in the riding-school; and every pupil is provided with an excellent charger at the cost of the state. The young men have each their own room, which is large enough to form, with comfort, a sleeping apartment and a study. They breakfast and dine together in the refectory, the former meal being served at nine, and the latter at five o’clock.

Out of the year, eight months are passed at Paris, and are devoted to hard work at the desk; three are spent in military surveying in various parts of France; and one entire month is required for the annual examinations. On entering the institution, and for twelve months afterwards, the pupils are attached to the second division, or lower school. After a year has elapsed they pass an examination, and, if found qualified, move into the higher, or first class. Any young man who cannot pass this examination is forthwith remanded to one of the regiments of the line. Serious sickness for any length of time is considered the only allowable excuse for any want of proficiency in their studies. At the end of the second year another examination has to be gone through, and is considered the final test of qualification. If passed, the pupil leaves the school with the rank of lieutenant in the staff corps. But, although enrolled as one of that distinguished body, he has yet to go through another and a longer ordeal of learning in practice that which, as yet, he has only been taught in theory. For two years he is attached to a regiment of infantry; after that, for a like time, to a cavalry corps, and then, for one year, to a battery of artillery. With each of these branches of the service he has to do duty as a troop or company-officer for half the period; during the other half he is employed as a supernumerary-adjutant, under the orders of the colonel.

During the five years that he is attached to various regiments, the staff-lieutenant has to prepare and transmit regularly to his own corps, maps, papers, drawings, and surveys, which he is ordered to employ his time upon. My friend, Louis de Bonfils, after leaving the staff-college, was attached for two years to a regiment of infantry in Algiers, after which, he passed a like term with a cavalry corps in France, and then was ordered again to Algiers with a battery of artillery. Having completed his ten years’ military education--viz., three at the College of St. Cyr, two at the staff school, and five attached to regiments of the three arms of the service, Captain de Bonfils commenced his career as a full-blown staff-officer: that is to say, he joined his corps with the rank of captain, and was then eligible for such appointments as officers of his grade can hold. It is from this class--and from this only--that the aides-de-camp of French general officers are selected, and it is amongst the captains of the corps d’état-major, that my friend de Bonfils takes his place. The French staff is not divided, like that of England, into two separate departments of adjutant-general and quarter-master-general. With our neighbours, these form one and the same staff, and every officer belonging to the staff corps is perfectly qualified to fulfil all duties relating to both departments. Nothing whatever is left to chance, or to the hazard of personal selection. The marshals of France alone, have the right to nominate their own aides-de-camp--each having two, one a colonel, the other a lieutenant-colonel of the corps d’état-major. All other officers who are entitled to aides-de-camp must take such as are nominated to their staff by the minister of war; and to ask for a friend or relative being appointed, would in France be thought an unsoldierlike and unpardonable liberty. Louis de Bonfils tells me that in about a year’s time he expects to be promoted to the rank of chef d’escadron in the staff corps, and that he will then probably be sent either to one of the bureaux d’État-Major, which are attached to the various military divisions of France, or to the staff of some general in the Crimea. As I mentioned before, the Corps d’État-Major consists of one hundred lieutenants (who are attached to various regiments of infantry, cavalry, and artillery), three hundred captains, one hundred chefs d’escadron (or majors), thirty lieutenant-colonels, and thirty colonels; so that, without counting the junior rank, here is always in France an effective body of four hundred and sixty officers who have received the most finished military education it is possible to attain in the world, and who are always ready to fill up vacancies in the higher departments, or to form a staff for an army taking the field.

Is there any difference, O my countrymen, and what difference, between this system and the system of the English service! Amongst my friends on this side the Channel, I can also number a staff officer, whom I have known some years. A better fellow, or more honorable man than Charley Benson does not exist; but what there is in him to make a staff officer out of I never could imagine. He entered the service about five years ago, and, having an uncle a general officer in command of an Irish district, was made aide-de-camp to that relative when he had done two years’ duty with his regiment. The war in the Crimea broke out, and his uncle having good interest at the Horse Guards, got Charley named a deputy-assistant quartermaster-general with the army. What the duties of the appointment may be, I don’t exactly know, and I am very certain Charley himself does not. He writes me that he has a lot of paper-work and returns to make out; but that with a good sergeant for a clerk, he manages to make it all serene.

Poor Charley! I can imagine how sorely puzzled he would be if left to his own resources with pen, ink, and paper. He can write a reasonably sensible letter when he likes, (it is not often that he does like,) but is decidedly eccentric in his orthography. As to the higher branches of mathematics, he knows nothing whatever of them. He can add up the various sums of money set down in the fly-leaves of his cheque-book, and so tell whether he has overdrawn his account with Messrs. Cox, the army agents; but beyond this his capabilities for figures does not extend. Topography, fortification, military drawing, military history, and military statistics, he denounces--when they are mentioned in his presence--by the energetic monosyllable--rot! As to military manœuvres on a grand scale, Charley says he got through his drill under the adjutant of his regiment, and what more would you have? Moreover, he is now on the staff, and having good interest, intends to remain there for some time; so what use, to him, would be any further drilling? When the war is over he is to join his uncle, an elderly gentleman, who, after having been thirty years on half-pay, was appointed not long ago to the command of an Irish district, and is now about to proceed out to India as commander-in-chief of an Indian Presidency, where he will reign supreme over a native army, of whose language he does not understand one word, in a country he has never so much as read of. In Bombay or Madras he will enjoy a salary of twelve hundred pounds a-year.

Of what use, therefore, can military education be to my friend Charley Benson? He is one of the fortunate men of this world, who, having good interest, need not trouble his head with the why or the wherefore of this or that science. As aide-de-camp, his chief duties are to dress well, carve well, dance well, ride well, help to do the honors of his uncle’s house, and occasionally attend that relative to the review or inspection of a regiment. His training for the staff consisted in going through a couple of years’ regimental duty with his corps; and, although whilst there he learnt nothing which could be of the slightest advantage to him either as an aide-de-camp or a deputy quartermaster-general, he now finds himself quite on a par with his brother staff-officers as regards any knowledge of his duties.

Nor is he altogether a bad specimen of the English staff-officer. There are some few holding such appointments who have in a certain degree qualified themselves for the post by a couple of years’ study at the senior department of the Military College at Sandhurst; but the certificates obtained by these gentlemen never got them on the staff. Their nominations were coincidences, and would have been equally certain had they no qualification whatever. In a work lately published by an officer of the English army, whose character and accomplishments guarantee the truth of what he asserts, the writer states: “I have reason to believe that from eighteen hundred and fifteen to eighteen hundred and fifty-four--a period of thirty-nine years--not one single appointment on the staff of the army has been made in consequence of the officer having graduated at Sandhurst.”[2] And further, the same author informs us that, according to the Army List for May last, twenty-five officers of the Guards hold staff appointments, of whom only five ever studied at Sandhurst, and not one of whom received a first-class certificate.

[Footnote 2: Notes on Military Education. By Captain J. Morton Spearman, R.A. London, Parker, 1853.]

From another little work on military education,[3] which was published just before the present war commenced, we learn that out of ninety-one officers employed in the general staff of the army in eighteen hundred and fifty-two, seven only had graduated at the senior department of Sandhurst, and that out of one hundred and seventeen staff-officers of pensioners in the same year, three only had obtained certificates. But a stronger instance of the utter inutility of English officers studying to qualify themselves for the staff has yet to be told. According to a parliamentary return called for during the last session, and published early in the month of May, there were then one hundred and thirty-five officers serving on the staff of the army in the Crimea. Of these only nine had obtained certificates at Sandhurst. Not a single assistant quartermaster-general, nor brigade-major, nor aide-de-camp, had ever graduated at that college; whilst of eleven assistant adjutant-generals, one only had passed through that ordeal,--and amongst twenty-nine deputies of the two staff departments (of the adjutant and quartermaster-general), but five had ever obtained certificates of qualification at the senior department of the military college.

[Footnote 3: The Use and Application of Cavalry in War. By Colonel Beamish, late Royal Irish Dragoon Guards. London, T. and W. Boone, 1855. Page 437.]

But what is this Senior Department of the Military College? The establishment of the Military College at Sandhurst is divided into two departments; the junior, intended for the education of lads, from thirteen to sixteen years of age, as preparatory to entering the army. What the military college of St. Cyr is to the French service, the junior department at Sandhurst is to the English, with this slight exception,--that whereas the former institution sends forth annually at least a hundred young men fully qualified for commissions in the line, our British establishment turns out about a dozen or fifteen in the same period. At the last half-yearly Sandhurst examinations--in October or November of the year just ended--the number of cadets who passed for commissions was less than half-a-dozen. The reason for this vast difference is, that in France there are but two doors whereby a candidate can enter the commissioned ranks of the army. The one is by enlisting as a private soldier, and rising through all the various subordinate grades to the distinction of wearing the epaulette; the other by commencing and going through the regular course of studies at the military college of St. Cyr. In order to qualify in the latter method, it is necessary to enter that establishment between the ages of twelve and fourteen, and to remain three years learning the duties of the profession, before the candidate can be admitted to the examination.

But I have gone astray from my intention, which was to point out in what consists the senior department of the Military College at Sandhurst. The pupils of this division are all commissioned officers, and by the rules they must, before entering the establishment, have served with their regiment three years abroad, or four years at home. The number is limited to fifteen, which--considering there are in times of peace upwards of ninety officers employed on the staff of the army, and during the present war there are no less than two hundred and fifty--is rather a small proportion; but even so very short a list is seldom full, and but few officers avail themselves of the privilege. Nor can we wonder at it. The English military man is like his fellow-countrymen who follow other pursuits and employment. If he saw that study or application would advance him in his profession, he would work like a horse. If staff appointments were given to those who had qualified themselves in the senior department of Sandhurst, and if a certificate from that establishment were a sure and certain means of obtaining professional distinction and subsequent promotion, we should in England have in a very few years the best educated staff in the world. When he has an object in view, there is nothing that the Anglo-Saxon will not attempt, and few things he cannot accomplish. Let us not then blame such men as my friend Benson, but rather try all we can to reform a system which is at once a curse to the army and a disgrace to the nation. And here let me relate an anecdote.

Some years ago, the regiment in which I then held a commission, formed part of a very large force, assembled on the North-West frontier of India. For several months this army was together, saw much service, and went through several general actions. Besides a great number of the East India Company’s regiments, there were with us two dragoon corps, and eight or ten battalions of the Queen’s army. There was also a very numerous staff, belonging to which were a dozen or fourteen officers of her Majesty’s service. Of these latter gentlemen, not one had ever been at the senior department of Sandhurst, whilst there were no less than ten officers doing regimental duty with their respective corps in this very force, who had gone through the regular course of study at that establishment, and of these three had taken first-class certificates. Again, I say, let us not blame officers who don’t avail themselves of the senior department at Sandhurst to study, but let us insist upon a reformation of the present system.

We all know how elderly officers cry up, and Young England cries down, the heroes, habits, manners, and customs of our army during the Peninsula war. But in the matter of staff officers and their qualifications, the force under Wellesley in Spain was certainly in advance of that commanded by Codrington in the Crimea. According to a military authority I have already quoted,[4] there was during the Peninsula war “only one officer employed on the quartermaster-general’s staff who was not a graduate of the senior department of the Royal Military College.” And the same gentleman, writing about a year before the war with Russia broke out, says, “It is by many doubted whether, in the event of a new war, there exists in the British army the necessary materials for the construction of an efficient état-major, or corps of staff officers, such as accompanied the troops under Sir John Abercrombie to Egypt and Sir Arthur Wellesley to Portugal.”

[Footnote 4: Notes on Military Education, by Captain Spearman, page 35, note.]

Still stronger evidence against the existing system is afforded us a little farther on in the same pamphlet, where Captain Spearman states that, “as an introduction to staff employment, the officers of the army have long since abandoned the senior department at Sandhurst in hopeless despair.” The writer then asks “to what is the disinclination, not to say repugnance, so generally evinced by British officers to devote themselves to the study of war as a science to be attributed? Clearly to the want of due encouragement--to the practical denial of the usual reward of such devotion and toil.”

“Staff appointments” (in the English army), says Colonel Beamish in his work mentioned above, “are made without any reference to scientific qualification--because the wish of a lord is more potent than the judgment of a professor; and the most distinguished Sandhurst students have been left to look in vain for congenial professional employment, and some reward for their many hours of labour and anxious preparation.... How different,” continues the same writer, “is the practice with our enlightened neighbours! Staff employment in France is the reward of merit alone. It is sought for by the élite of the army, and obtained only by the severest study, and the most indisputable proofs of the possession of the highest degree of professional excellence and general intelligence. Thus are formed those well-instructed officers who constitute the état-major of the French army, and afterwards become their most distinguished generals of division and brigade.”

If more evidence were wanting to show what are considered the necessary qualifications for a staff-officer in the English service, a perusal of the list of lords, honourables, baronets, and sons of wealthy influential commoners, who form the staff of the Crimean army, would be quite enough to set the question at rest. With us interest--as with the French merit--is what the authorities make the sine quâ non for those who aspire to the staff. The consequence to England has been but too visible since the struggle with Russia commenced. With as brave regimental officers and soldiers as ever were sent forth by this or any other country, our army has never been able to effect half what it would have effected with proper organisation and efficient leaders. In France, what the École Impériale d’Application d’État-Major effects in training for the staff, regimental service does in preparing for the command of brigades, divisions, and armies. With a highly-educated staff it is impossible either to want competent generals, or to have every department of the service in that state of utter confusion which has so sadly distinguished our army since it first embarked for the East. Our general officers, commanders of division, brigadiers, adjutants-general, quartermasters-general, aides-de-camp, and others, are only now commencing to learn their various military duties with the army. Should peace be proclaimed to-morrow, and Europe enjoy twenty or thirty years respite from bloodshed, those officers who may then hold commissions in the service will, in the event of war, (our system remaining unchanged: which God forbid!) have in like manner to learn all their duties. In France, on the contrary, the government maintains its officers as we do our muskets or big guns--fit for immediate service in any part of the world.

CHIPS.

THE RUSSIAN BUDGET.

We feel the cost of war, and know that it must be absolutely more expensive to the Russian than it is to our own. How long is the Russian pocket? how strong is the Russian arm? are very natural questions. A German gentleman in the United States, long resident in Russia, has published a report upon the subject not altogether tallying with some other reports that come to us from the Old World by way of the New. The account Mr. Donai gives is nearly to the following effect:

Fifty millions of Russian subjects yield to their Czar not more than a revenue of twenty millions sterling. More cannot be extracted from the people; and, out of this, a large army of soldiers is not, it stands to reason, too liberally paid. Every member of the Russian population, taking one with another, pays eight shillings a year for being ruled imperially, with little or nothing more to pay for local government of any kind. In the same way, every Austrian pays twelve shillings; every Prussian eighteen shillings; every Frenchman forty-four shillings; and every Englishman forty-eight shillings to the resources of the nation, besides considerable sums towards local expenditure. Public expenses suggest, roughly, a nation’s wealth, and Russia, judged by this test, is inhabited by a people manifestly poor. Whenever war arises, therefore, the Czar goes abroad to borrow, and there is, every year, a deficiency in the imperial budget. If all the European money-lenders buttoned up their pockets closely, Russian war must cease. How these loan contractors will ever get back more than interest on capital, it is not easy to see; for, if borrowing continues, even the receipt of interest by them may become precarious.

The only direct tax in Russia is the poll tax, yielding less than three-and-a-half millions sterling; add to it the license-duty paid by merchants and tradesmen, and the sum becomes five millions. We speak only of pounds sterling, because the value of sums stated in silver roubles (the national denomination in which Russian accounts are computed) is less clearly perceived. The customs’ duties yield five millions more to the revenue; and these duties fall entirely on the upper classes; as the Russian peasant does not make any appreciable use of foreign goods. Crown estates yield less than three millions and a half; and under the head crown estates are included mines, forests, and gold-washings, with nearly half the estates in the empire, the real annual profit obtained from each crown peasant being not more than three shillings and fourpence. The rest of the imperial revenue is extracted from the sale of brandy.

The Czar is the great brandy-merchant to his people. The brandy trade is his monopoly, and his chief means of livelihood as a potentate. Before he took to the spirit-trade, licenses for the distillation and retailing of brandy used to be always sold to the same persons, who acquired enormous wealth by their transactions. Government, aware of this, reduced their profits by conditions and changes which at last drove out of the market all but those persons who carried on a wholesale business on the largest scale. A few hundred wholesale distilling firms, too deeply concerned in their trade to bring it to a stand-still, carried on their business at the mercy of the emperor; who soon ordered that all brandy produced by the distillers should be sold to the government, which then doubled its quantity with water, and supplied it to licensed dealers for retail sale--of course, after more dilution--at fixed prices to the public. Licenses are sold by auction, and their prices are often run up by agents of the government; so that speculators in them are almost as likely to be ruined as to thrive.

Much has been said of a mysterious treasure belonging to the crown, yearly augmented by a procession of millions of roubles to the vaults of the fortress of Saint Petersburg. Mr. Donai does not believe in this problematical deposit of wealth; because its sources, being such as have been here detailed including borrowed money, cannot accumulate. Borrowers are not usually people whose coffers overflow with millions. The real truth is that the Russian government gets money as savages get fruit, by cutting down the tree; and lives upon capital as well as interest. The loan of last year may have covered the interest of former loans, and perhaps the cost of arms purchased in Belgium; but even that is not certain, for six issues of paper money have already been forced into currency; private contributions have been claimed and urged upon the people from the pulpit with no very great result; and this reminds us that one source of money to the Czar has not been named in the preceding summary. It is the Russian church. There remains the bag of money in the pocket of the church. When, in eighteen hundred and forty-five, the empress was to go to Italy, the clergy paid a contribution of two millions--the price of the forcible conversion of the peasants in the Baltic provinces. The present war is set forth as a holy war, and the church may be asked fairly to assist in paying for it, and no doubt is asked very perseveringly, and for no small sums. But how heavy is the purse of the Russian church? Its contents used to be valued at twenty-six millions sterling; and, although the holy fathers may contribute even to the last farthing, we unfortunately know that twenty-six millions are soon swallowed up when a great war is being waged.

Thus the case is said to stand as regards money. It is not any better in respect of men. In time of war the Russians do not abhor military service as they do in time of peace; because they are then better treated, and have prospects of advancement. But it appears that the Russians do not make a soldier fit to be led against the enemy until after several years’ drilling. Deduct from the Czar’s million of men four hundred thousand that can form lines only on paper, and three hundred thousand destroyed in the present struggle, only three hundred thousand old soldiers remain to cover the whole frontier, north, south, east, and west. Another campaign will destroy them nearly all, and there will remain nothing but an army of recruits. Fanaticism may be infused into these by abolishing serfdom, and by other home appeals; but their fighting powers will be very low indeed at the end of another campaign. To urge on the war, therefore, without giving time for a recovery of breath, is to destroy the attacking power of the Russian empire; and all the arts and all the diplomacy at its command--and they are both numerous and skilful--ever have been and ever will be to gain time. Time is, with Russia, nearly synonymous with victory.

Its defensive power nobody is disposed to under-estimate. In this matter, its real weakness gives it, in one sense, special strength. Steppes, swamps, and vast regions almost destitute of roads, a bad climate, a thin population barely civilised that vanishes before approaching hosts and leaves only a desert for the enemy to traverse, are obstacles that exist now as they existed in the days of Pultawa and Moscow. Upon this the Czar reposes his last trust. But every condition of the empire is such as to cause its vital parts to be rather upon its western and southern borders than in its more central parts. Drive the people into the inhospitable interior, and their difficulties of subsistence will be only a little less insurmountable than those of an enemy. Indeed, of the prodigious superficies over which the empire extends--including, as it does, nearly one-seventh part of the terrestrial globe--by far the greatest proportion is uninhabitable to friend or foe. The enormous northern provinces, especially, are destined to perpetual sterility, not only on account of the extreme rigour of the climate, but because nearly all the great rivers by which they are traversed fall into the Arctic Ocean; and are therefore inaccessible for the whole or a greater part of the year. We may live to see, therefore, that the Muscovite tradition of defence is quite as vain a trust as most of the traditions blindly followed in these days, unless the peace now in course of negotiation be lasting and secure.

The interruption--nay, the paralysis--of commerce occasioned by the present war is another source of exhaustion. Except for ordinary necessaries of life, Russia draws her supplies from foreign countries in exchange for raw material produced from the estates of the nobles. She has such endless supplies of timber that to give an idea of some of her forests, it is said, as a specimen, that a squirrel might hop from Saint Petersburg to Moscow from tree to tree without touching the ground, and that she could, under a rational system, afford illimitable tallow, hemp, and oil; but these sources of wealth are impeded and crippled very naturally when nearly every port she possesses along her limited sea-board is blockaded.

A SMALL MONKISH RELIC.

No more than a few months have elapsed since the greatest Greek scholar of the day, the Reverend Doctor Gaisford, late Dean of Christchurch, Oxford, was carried to his last resting-place within the walls of the ancient cathedral over which he had presided so many years. The students of the house, clad in white surplices, preceded the remains of their venerated Dean as the procession passed along the east side of the quadrangle, from the deanery to the cathedral. Great Tom had, by tolling every minute (a thing never done except at the death of the sovereign or the dean), announced the decease; and now a small land-bell, carried in front of the procession by the dean’s verger, and tolled every half-minute, announced that the last rites were about to take place.

The cathedral clock struck four; the usual merry peal of bells for evening prayers was silent. We strolled towards the cathedral, and finding a side-door open, walked in. The dull, harsh, and grating sound of the workmen filling up the grave struck heavily on our ears, as it resounded through the body of the church. The mourners were all gone; and alone, at the head of the grave, watching vacantly the busy labourers, stood the white-headed old verger; another hour, the ground would be all levelled, and the stones replaced over the master he had served faithfully so many years.

The verger informed us that the ground now opened had not been moved for two hundred years, and that a dean had not been buried within the precincts of the church for nearly one hundred years. Bearing these facts in mind, we poked about among the earth which had been thrown out of the grave. We found among the brick-bats and rubbish a few broken portions of human bones, which had evidently been buried very many years; but fastened on to one of the brick-bats we discovered a little bone which we at once pronounced not to be human. It was a little round bone, about the size of a large shirt-stud, from the centre of which projected a longish, tooth-like spine, the end of which still remained as sharp as a needle, and the enamel which covered it still resisted a scratch from a knife. The actual body of the bone was very light and brittle, and a simple test we applied showed that it had been under ground very many years.

The question arose, what was our bone, and how did it get to the place where it was found? It was shown to the greatest authority we have in comparative anatomy, and he immediately pronounced it to be a spine from the back of a very large fish, commonly known as the skate or thornback. This creature has, fixed into the skin of his back in a row along the back of his tail, many very sharp prickles of a tooth-like character, and covered with enamel, just like our specimen. If one of these skin-teeth be cut out from a recent fish, the stud-like knob of bone into which the spine is fixed, will be found, serving to keep this formidable weapon (for such it is) in its proper position; and dreadful blows can Mr. Thornback give with his armed tail in his battles, be they submarine, or be they in the fisherman’s boat.

How did the spine of a thornback get into Christchurch Cathedral, into ground that had not been moved for two hundred years? Before the days of Henry the Eighth the precincts, where the college now stands, were occupied by monkish buildings, where monks had many fast-days, and, on these days, were probably great consumers of fish. The supply of fresh-water fish, from the Thames close by, would hardly be equal to the demand. It is therefore probable that they procured salt-water fish, and a thornback is, above all fish, the most likely to have been supplied by the fishmonger.

In an old book on fishes and serpents, we found, unexpectedly, evidence to prove that the skate--a hundred years ago--formed a favourite dish at the high tables of the colleges. The book was published in seventeen hundred and sixty-three, and the passage runs thus: “The skate, or flaire, is remarkably large, and will sometimes weigh above one hundred pounds; but what is still more extraordinary, there was one sold by a fishmonger at Cambridge to St. John’s College, which weighed two hundred pounds, and dined one hundred and twenty people. The length was forty-two inches, and the breadth thirty-one inches.”

The monkish cook--like a cook of the present day--would, probably, skin and cut off the tail of the thornback, when he cooked him for the monks’ dinner, and then he would probably throw both skin and tail, spines and all, into the rubbish-hole outside the kitchen; there they would remain till removed. And, next, when did this removal take place? A curious book--Collectanea Curiosa--published at Oxford in seventeen hundred and eighty-one, tells us. In this book there is an article entitled, “Out of the journal book of the expences of all the buildings of Christ Church College, Oxon, which I had of Mr. Pore, of Blechinton.”

The second item runs thus: “Spent about the femerell of the new kitchen and sundry gutters pertaining to the same, xviijs. viijd.”

Further on we find, “Paid to Thomas Hewister, for carriage of earth and rubble from the fayre gate, and the new stepull to fill the ditches, on the backside of the college, clvj. loads, at a peny the load by computation, xiijs.”

Again: “Paid to Mr. David Griffith, Priest, for his stipend for wages, as well for keeping of the monastery of St. Frideswide, and saying of Divine service after the suppression of the same unto the first stalling of the dean and canons in the said college, as for his labours in overseeing the workmen dayly labouring there in all by the space of thirteen months, vij £.”

From this evidence it will appear that for a considerable space of time (probably about five years) many alterations were made, and much earth removed from place to place. The cathedral, and, in fact, nearly all the quadrangle--as will appear by comparing their levels with that of the street outside--stand upon made ground. It is probable, therefore, that some of the earth from outside the monkish kitchen, or other rubbish hole, was carted to form the floor of the cathedral, and with it, of course, any rubbish that happened to be there.

This, then, was the fate of our thornback’s spine. The thornback was eaten by the monks of St. Frideswide, the spine thrown away, unheeded, unregarded, to be disinterred, after the lapse of more than three hundred years, at the funeral of a college dean, and finally to be honoured by having its history recorded in Household Words.

LITTLE SAINT ZITA.

There is a collection of horrible, though admirably executed etchings, by the “noble Jacques Callott,” extant, called Les Saincts et Sainctes de l’Année. It is a complete pictorial calendar of the Romish martyrology. No amount of indigestion, caused by suppers of underdone pork-chops; no nightmares, piled one on another; no distempered imaginings of topers in the worst state of delirium tremens; no visions of men with guilt-laden consciences; could culminate into a tenth part of the horrors that the noble Jacques has perpetuated with his immortal graver. All the refinements of torture, invented by the ruthless and cruel pagans, and inflicted by them on the early confessors, are here set down in chiaro oscuro; not a dislocated limb is omitted, not a lacerated muscle is passed over. The whole work is a vast dissecting-room--a fasciculus of scarifications, maimings, and dismemberments--of red-hot pincers, scalding oil, molten lead, gridirons, wire scourges, jagged knives, crowns of spikes, hatchets, poisoned daggers, tarred shirts, and wild beasts.

The blessed saints had a bad time of it for certain. How should we, I wonder, with our pluralities, our Easter-offerings, and regium donum, our scarlet hats and stockings, and dwellings in the gate of Flam; our Exeter Hall meetings and buttered muffins afterwards; our first-class missionary passages to the South Seas, and grants of land and fat hogs from King Wabashongo; our dean and chapter dinners, and semi-military chaplains’ uniforms (Oh, last-invented, but not least scorn-worthy of humbugs!); how should we confront the stake, the shambles, and the carnifex, the scourge, the rack, and the amphitheatre? Surely the faith must have been strong, or the legends untrue!