"I loved to walk where none had walked before mand of verse, enable Crabbe to draw the | the characters of his fiction, and the gensketch in a much briefer and more effective uineness of his feeling and the nicety of his way; and a command of verse, and an observation are attested by the confession apprehension of the purposes it may serve, of humiliation which he underwent under are part of the poet's art, if not a very high the unconcern of the wild birds around part. But it would be unfair to say that him: Crabbe was only in this sense a poet. He often gives vent to feelings that every one would call poetical. More especially the poetical sentiment was awakened in him by the contrast between man and natureby the indifference with which nature regards the feelings of the heart, and by the changes which man sees in nature accord. ing to his own state. For example, the following lines, describing Henry's feelings as he looks on.the scenes where at the beginning of his visit he used to see Cecilia in everything, and where he now sees-the record of his loss, are full of pathos and of a quaint poetical observation: "That evening all in fond discourse was spent, Early he rose, and looked with many a sigh Lost to the tie, grow negligent and cold- And near the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done, The notion of a lover finding things more About the rocks that ran along the shore; "And take my pleasure when I lost my way," is an instance of that almost childish love of little turns of language and plays upon words which was so happily ridiculed in Rejected Addresses. It was not much of an exaggeration when the sham Crabbe of the Addresses was made to say, of the lamps lit in the evening, that they "Start into light, and make the lighter start." when describing the characters he introduces to us. Ordinarily prose narration breaks down here, and the description of heroes and heroines, and even, of comic characters, is proverbially tedious. But verse, with its superior liveliness and brevThere are many excellent sketches of charity, can succeed, although prose fails. acter which Crabbe manages to give in a few lines, and he is especially successful where he is intentionally comic. A lover described in "The Sisters" may serve as an example: Crabbe was seldom more successful than "Thus, thinking much, but hiding what he The prudent lover Lucy's favor sought, trace. "But Lucy found him to his mother kind, And saw the Christian meekness of his mind; His voice was soft, his temper mild and sweet, His mind was easy, and his person neat. Jane said he wanted courage; Lucy drew No ill from that, though she believed it too; 'It is religious, Jane, be not severe;' 'Well, Lucy, then it is religious fear.' Nor could the sister, great as was her love, A man so lifeless and so cool approve." This is a picture of a young man which immediately commends itself to us as consistent and complete; and yet his inveterate snobbishness, and the different feelings he awakens in the tamer and the more romantic sister respectively, are touched off in a very short space. But perhaps the best sketch in the Tales is drawn from still humbler life, and it is hard to believe that any one except an incumbent of an agri cultural parish could have painted the village swell so graphically as Crabbe paints his William Bailey: "But with our village hero to proceed— He read as learned clerks are wont to read; Solemn he was in tone, and slow in pace, By nature gifted both with strength and grace. "Black parted locks his polished forehead pressed; His placid looks an easy mind confessed: "The lighter damsels called his manner prim, The picture, however, is not complete without the addition of the lines in which the young woman with whom he keeps company describes him. She is rather inclined to be smart and vain, for which he rebukes her, on which she fires up and replies: For you were ever to yourself a rule, This is amusing, and, indeed, Crabbe is hardly ever dull. He seldom interests us profoundly, but he tells tales in verse which are readable as tales, and very few writers of tales in verse have done this. He entertains, interests, and diverts us, and sometime thrills us with a touch of unexpected power or poetry. But he is not widely read, and it is not likely that he ever will be. Fiction in verse, as fiction, is not equal to fiction in prose, and he is not great enough as a poet to make his tales read for their poetry. The Excursion is dreary and prolix, but it breathes the spirit of a great mind, and is full of flashes of high and unquestionable poetry. We cannot know what Wordsworth was unless we read and study it. But then it was worth while to go through much trouble and pain to understand Wordsworth, whereas reading or not reading Crabbe is only like reading or not reading an excellent but forgotten novel. It is pleasant and admirable if we take it up, but it remains almost an accident whether we take it up or not. London Quarterly. THE CIRCASSIAN EXQDUS.* A GRIEVOUS calamity has befallen a brave nation little known to the British public, but invested with that romantic interest which always attaches to deeds of daring, to an unstained cause, and to an unequal struggle, maintained by a nation in defence of its liberty and independence. "It is apparent," Lord Napier writes on the 23d of May last, "that the Russian government have long taken an absolute resolution at any risk to remove the whole of the (Circassian) mountainThe system pursued has been for two eers still in arms from their native places. years past to move the troops and the Cossack forts and the settlements slowly *The Trans-Caucasian Campaign of the Turkish "And what is proud," said Frances, "but to Army under Omer Pasha. By LAWRENCE OLIPHANT. stand London. 1856. coast." but surely up the valleys which pour their waters northwards to the basin of the Kouban, dispossessing the indigenous inhabitants at every step until at last the highest fastnesses have been reached, and the people inhabiting the watershed have been pushed over into the valleys sloping southward to the Black Sea, and have carried the savage* and sequestered people of those regions in masses to the From the coast, as we know, they are flying by tens of thousands across the sea, to perish by famine and disease under the well-meant but clumsy and inadequate protection of the Turkish government. But, although attention has now been for the first time generally called to what is passing in the Caucasus, it would be a mistake to suppose that the depopulation by Russia of the regions lying about those venerable mountains has only now begun. After the allies left Sebastopol, the Tatar population of the Crimea found their condition unendurable, and they were the first to fly from the Russian yoke, and to seek refuge on the hospitable soil of Turkey. They did not come in very large numbers, so that this emigration was comparatively manageable, and a number of them were located in the Dobroja, in a new town or settlement called Mejidieh, where, on the whole, they have prospered. Next came the emigration of the Tatars of the Kouban in 1861-62, caused by an order given by the Russian government. This order was one of unexampled and needless severity. A large population was compelled to leave the Russian territory at a fixed date. These unfortunate people were compelled to abandon their homes, to travel with their wives and children, and to land in a new country in mid-winter. The fixing of a term at the expiration of which they were obliged to depart had the effect of depriving them of all their property, for they could obtain no price, or but a vile price, for their cattle and such things as their neighbors saw that they must abandon, since they could not transport them. They landed at Constantinople and other parts of Turkey in the midst of snow, sleet, and rain, and the mortality among them was excessive. At that time it was not possible to take a walk in the afternoon at Constantinople without meeting numerous coffins of little children. Those Turks who were familiar with the exaggerated statements of the Russian organ Le Nord, and with the humanitarian cry so sedulously fostered by Russian diplomacy, for edicts giving equality to the Rayahs, made bitter remarks upon the reciprocity shown by Russia, and upon the indifference of Europe, and asked if the humanity of which they had heard so much ought not to have interfered here. This expulsion. of the Tatars was unnecessary, for they were a harmless and pacific people. The pretext assigned by Russia for the measure was, that they maintained communication with the mountaineers, and assisted them in defying the imperial power; for these Tatars occupied the country to the north of the Caucasus, between it and the River Kouban, and their expulsion was a strategic measure taken with a view of circumscribing and hemming in the mountaineers of the Caucasus. Other Tatars, however, besides those of the Kouban, have been driven away or have followed their brethren, and the Muscovite proprietors of the southern provinces of Russia complain of the loss of a sober and industrious agricultural population whom it is not easy to replace. These wholesale expulsions are traditionary with the Russian government. In the last century, during the reign of the Empress Catharine, the Kalmuks were driven by the tyranny and petty persecutions of Russian officials to migrate from the shores of the Volga, and to seek refuge in the Chinese dominions. When they set out they filled twenty-eight thousand tents, but only half their number reached the Chinese territory. In considering these acts of systematic barbarity perpetrated by the Russian government, it is impossible not to remember the expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1610. History has already condemned the severity and impolicy of that measure. According to the most trustworthy calculations, of more than a million of Moors who were expelled, only a fourth survived. The Jews were driven from Spain in 1492, by a decree of Ferdinand and Isabella; many of them found shelter at Constantinople, and to this day half the Israelites in that capital and in Smyrna speak the Spanish language; the other half, who also fled from persecution, are of a later immigration, and speak Polish. But with the severity of these measures the parallel ends: the Russian government cannot plead in excuse the fierce fanaticism which animated the Inquisition before whose mandates the Spanish monarch found it necessary to bow. Spain, moreover, was ejecting those whom she considered as intruders in spite of eight hundred years of occupation of the soil; but Russia is herself the intruder into the Tatar steppes and Circassian mountains, and if there is any teaching in the progress of time, the Muscovite government, at the end of two centuries and a half, is far less excusable than that of Spain. It may not be too much to say that the indifference of Europe to the expulsion of the Kouban Tatars emboldened Russia to proceed to the conscription at Warsaw, by which she forced the Poles into insurrection, and thereby furnished herself with a pretext for the extensive deportations of Poles to Siberia to be followed, shortly, perhaps, by the expulsion of the population from whole provinces, if it should appear that there is no limit to the apathy and endurance of Europe. Lesghis, the Tchetchenes, and the Daghestanlys in a confederation against Russia; the proper name for the region of his exploits is Daghestan, which is a general expression for the eastern part of the Caucasus, and there is little communication between Daghestan and Circassia or. the western part of the Caucasus running from Anapa to Batum, so that during the war it would have been very difficult for one from the West to reach Sheikh Shamyl. The name Circassian is derived from Tcherkess, and designates the people dwelling in the mountains overhanging the Black Sea, and Mingrelia, or the country watered by the Phasis. These are the tribes whose unfortunate fate we have now to deplore. The Circassians proper are Mussulmans, as are also the Lesghis and Daghestanlys; there are some Christians among the Ossetes, and some of the mountaineers are said to be in a primitive state of ignorance, but it would perhaps be more correct to say of those whose creed is doubtful, as of the Arnauts, that their national sentiments weigh more with them than those of religion. The chief characteristic of the Caucasians is personal courage, From ignorance of the ethnography of and indifference to enormous odds against the Caucasus, much misapprehension ex- them in a fight. It happened some years ists with regard to the Circassians, and ago that nine or ten Circassians in the consequently blame was unfairly cast Russian service escaped into Prussia, upon them at the time of the Crimean where they thought themselves safe, but War for not supporting us more effi- on their being claimed as deserters, the ciently. When Englishmen talk of Circas-Prussians undertook to deliver them up, sia, they use that term for the Caucasus, and readers of the newspapers may rewhich they consider as one country; whereas the Eastern and Western Caucasus, which are divided by the pass of Vladi-Kavkas, are entirely distinct, and the Eastern and Western Caucasians again are subdivided into nations which are by no means homogeneous. The error of the prevailing ideas respecting the Caucasus will be understood at once if we imagine ourselves as considering the inhabitants of Chamouni, the Tyrolese, and the people about Laybach, as one nation, from whom a common and combined action was to be expected. Four distinct languages are spoken in the Alps between Geneva and Laybach, and in the greater range of the Caucasian chain the various dialects are far more numerous. Sheikh Shamyl is usually spoken of as a Circassian, whilst in reality he had no relations with the Circassians. He was himself a Tchetchen, and had united the member how they refused to surrender and were all killed, after having destroyed many times their own number of Prussian soldiers. For many years the Russian post from Georgia had to be escorted through the pass of Vladi-Kavkas by a strong detachment with artillery. The struggle between Russia and the mountaineers has, it is well known, being going on for many years, and although the stronger nation has been gradually advancing, yet except when the Russians have succeeded in taking a village, the loss has always been greater on the side of the aggressors. Last year some cannon and ammunition were introduced into Abkhasia, and though the people were not able to make much use of the artillery from want of practice, the stimulus given by this encouragement and succor was such that after receiving it they won nine successive victories over the Russians. Nevertheless, since that time murrain | ment was not much happier than the In considering the political state of the Caucasus, two questions present them selves: Why has England abandoned the Circassians, in spite of the sympathy wrung from us by their perseverance in a patriotic struggle? and why has Russia persisted so long, and at such an expenditure of men and treasure, in the attempt to extend her dominion over barren mountains, the inhabitants of which could not leave their strongholds to attack her, even had they the desire to do so? It will be remembered that shortly after the Porte declared war against Russia, in 1853, news arrived that the Turkish troops had taken Shefketil or Fort St. Nicolas, the nearest Russian military post to the Turkish frontier; after that, a British naval force, acting with the Circassians, reduced the other Russian forts along their seaboard; and, lastly, Anapa was taken, and the mountaineers came down into that place, which, however, was restored to Russia at the peace. Let us now recall what was done by the British government with regard to Circassia, either with a view to securing its independence, or for the immediate object of carrying on the war. In the spring of 1854, a military officer, a colonel in the Bolivian service, was appointed British commissioner to the Circassians, and proceeded to Constantinople. His qualifications for this appointment were summed up by a diplomatist in these words" that the Andes are very high mountains in Bolivia, and that the Caucasus is also a chain of very high mountains." Whilst at Constantinople the colonel had interviews with some of the Circassian envoys, upon whom he tried to make an impression in the following manner. He laid a dollar upon the table, and then attempted to transfix it with a Sheffield bowie-knife. The first attempt was more detrimental to the embassy mahogany than to the dollar. After these diplomatic arguments, not taken from precedents in Wicquefort, the colonel proceeded to the Crimea, where he was seized with cholera, and returned to Therapia to die. A captain in the navy was next sent out. This appoint former one-for the captain had no knowledge of the country or its people, and was physically incapacitated for the rough life in Circassia. His diplomatic education seems to have been derived from the same source as that of the colonel, for, on atriving in Circassia, he, with much pomp and circumstance, loaded a six-barrel revolving rifle before the assembled Circassians, and fired it off. All the six barrels, it is said, went off at once, and the Circassians raised a shout of derision. Now, these mistakes arose from national prejudice, and the European would be at a disadvantage in both cases; for Caucasian daggers and swords are of better temper than the Sheffield blades, Lesghi gun-barrels are famous throughout the Caucasus and in Persia, and a Circassian horseman, even at full gallop, would use his rifle with more effect than would most Europeans. Towards the end of the summer of 1854, however, a better appointment was made, and Mr. Longworth, whose character and previous career fully qualified him for the post, was sent to Anapa. As this town is at the western extremity of the Caucasus, he could have no communication with the Daghestanlys under Sheikh Shamyl at the other end of the chain. It is necessary to bear this absence of communication in mind with reference to the peace made by Sheikh Shamyl with the Russians,* for it was alleged in the House of Commons as the reason why no provision had been made for the Circassians of the Black Sea coast in the stipulations of the treaty of Paris, that they had not assisted us efficiently. Meantime, other circumstances operated so as to neutralize the advantages which might have been derived from the Circassians, and such as diminished both their energy and the sympathy felt for them in England. In the first place, no proclamation or manifesto was put forth calling upon them to coöperate with the allies, and promising to include them in the negotiations which should take place at the end of the war. Some jealousy was shown by the allies with regard to the supremacy of the Ottoman Porte, notwithstanding that this was more prominently put forward by the Circassians his son in exchange for his prisoners the Georgian * This was after he had arranged the ransom of princesses and their French governess, whose account of that transaction has been published. |