BOOKS.

INSIDE SEBASTOPOL AND EXPERIENCES IN CAMP.* A VOYAGE to Constantinople and BalaIdava, albeit in a screw- steamer with no other passengers than self and friend, is no very striking subject; a return-passage from Constantinople to Mar- seilles by the French line of steamers is hacknied enough ; the inside of Sebastopol, the appearances of the camp, and the anonymous gossip of officers noncommissioned officers, and privates, have got somewhat stale from frequent repetition by newspaper cor- respondents. An account would indeed be welcome from a military man of judgment and spirit, who could give a critical resume of the whole affair—not partial truth from the " graphic " dogmatic, or canting civilian point of view, which we have had already ; but the whole, truth, which the occurrences of war should be judged by the .general practice of war and the special circumstances of the !siege of Sebastopol.

There is no knowledge of war in this book. The writer has less apparent notion of the inevitable hardships of a campaign than the most dolorous of newspaper-reporters, troubled in mind at the absence of porters, "boots,' and other conveniences of urban and hotel life. He lands at Balaklava expecting inns, horses, or railway-trains to the camp, and a tent for hire ; and is told in form of inuendo, by a sea-captain he falls in with, that he is a "T. G." that is a "travelling gent,"—the number of which species out there has given rise to the abbreviation.

But though the author of Inside Sebastopol is not a competent military critic or a well-prepared traveller for rough countries, he is a very smart and flashy writer ; as dogmatic as "our own correspondent," quite as much disposed as he to listen to any one with an abuse or a blunder to tell of; more unscrupulous, from a profounder anonymous; perhaps less qualified to form a judgment on what is told him, from want of practice. But, whatever opin- ion may be formed of the man or his matter, his manner is good according to the taste of the day. The way of putting things is pointed and trenchant ; there is no mistake about the meaning. The writer's model seems to be Eutben ; and in some of the better parts a sort of superficial approach may be made to that book ; only there is less ease, less reticence, and less soundness of judgment. There is also less matter, and more effort to supply the place of it by quotations from the classics, historical allusions, and dint of writing. In fact, the greater part of the passage out and. home is trite or flat in spite of its vi- vacious period-turning. The points of greatest interest in the matter of the volume, and of greatest force as regards the writing, concern the alleged mis- management of transport business, the misbehaviour of the Eng- lish troops at the capture of Sebastopol, and the unisoldierlike character of the officers in general ; some of whom adopt a sort of fashionable nonchalance in estimating the war as a vulgar thing, nearly the whole of whom dislike the life which duty and their commission compel them to lead in the Crimea, and would gladly come home if they were allowed,—in which feeling they have the hearty sympathy of this writer. In a country where the press was fettered such a book as the Inside Sebastopol would never have appeared. In America, or in France with the most unlettered press,ei.,ther the instinct or the prejudice of national pride would have nmvented such a publication. As no particular purpose can be ankeied now by the most " telling " parts of the book, it might Si W0,1 not have appeared even if true. We, how- ever, believe the addiasint of the attack upon the Redan to be false ; we trust that the picture of the feeling among the officers is false too ; but as the book is so smartly written, and comes forth from a respectable firm in a very respectable form, it challenges more examination than would a volume which carried " catchpenny " upon the face of it.

The writer arrived at Balaldava a day or two after the capture of Sebastopb1. ' He went up to the camp as the guest of a military friend, and viewed the ruins in company with various officers. This is the most important part of the account of the Redan ; thrown' it will be seen, into the form of dialogue. " Thenit was not the difficulty of getting into the Redan which caused the failure ? '

" ' All that was over. Where Wyndham had got in, ten thousand others might have followed. The simple and disgraceful fact, which all Europe knows is this. The supports would not move up, and the men in the Re- dan dodged about, and would not form the charge. When Wyndham cried, "Now men, form round me and charge none came round him but the commissioned and noncommissioned officers.'

"'John Bull will never believe this : he will rather lap himself in a fool's paradise, and abuse any one who ventures to tell him the truth.' dent for a despatchbeginning, " Sir, I have the honour to inform you, that " ' Of course the generals cannottell him so. There is no form or prece- dent attacked the Redan with my raw recruits and least trustworthy sol- diers, and found to my astonishment that they would not fight." Such a despatch could not be written.'

" But tell me,' I asked of one of our company, whom I knew to have been in a position to see the whale affair, what 18 the history of this at- tack ? Every one says the same thing in general terms, yet I cannot under- stand it. Our men got into the Redan, were driven out again, and sustained enormous loss; and yet you all say they would not fight. How can this

be 7'

"The officer to whom I thus appealed, and who had hitherto taken no part in our desultory discussion, now said—' The story is a very short and a very sad one. The storming party consisted of five hundred men ; the an were to move into the trenches in bodies of about a thousand each, • Inside Sebastopol and Experiences in Camp : being the Narratke of a Journey to the Ruins of Sebastopol, accomplished in the Autumn and Winter of 1855. Pub- Lobed by Chapman and Hall. and to move out of the trenches in the same divisions, to support the stem. big party. iiAt the moment of the assault there were not above thirty Russians in the Redan ; the fire was very feeble, and the storming party ran along the open apace, and were over the works with no great loss. " Two divisions of the supports were now marched out of the trenches. There was nothing to oppose them : except a few dropping shots inside, all was as silent as the grave. When, however, they got half-way between the trenches and the Russian works, a panic seemed to seize them. They did not run away, but they stood still. We saw their officers trying to excite them by voice and gesture to advance. Some even took hold of their coats and tried to start them, as you would try to start a jibbing horse. it was all in vain ; they would not move. The men who were inside called to them to come on and told them there was no one there : but it was of no use ; they stood Ain.

" The moment of victory passed away. The Ruesian supports came up in vast numbers : instead of finding five thousand Englishmen on the top of the hill, protected by the Russian guns now turned upon their former own- ers, the Russians found only the five hundred men who had first got in, and these engaged in desultory sharpshooting with the scanty garrison which lurked among.the traverses. "'The fresh army of enemies did what we ought to have done -, they charged with the bayonet, drove the remnant of our five hundred men towards the parapet, and recovered the guns.

"'And now these guns were turned with murderous effect upon the poor panic-stricken devils who were standing irresolute between the trenches and the fart. They were mowed down by scores. They turned round and ran back into the trenches, which were already full of the men who were to have supported them. After this the confusion was hopeless.' "

There is no mistake here : all is plain and specific. There is no defect in the arrangements beyond the choice of troops. It is not a chaag,e of hesitation or of a disposition to fire from cover, (which is said often to characterize soldiers,) but of sheer cowardice where there was no danger. The fire over the two hundred yards of plateau between our trenches wad. the Redan is described as. being "very feeble," and. only directed agaillst the storming party. The supports stood there untouched, not even fired at. Now let us turn to other authorities ; and first to Colonel Ham- ley, an artillery-officer - of rank and position, who had served throughout the-siege who was present at the attack, and whose statement is guaranteed by his name and position.

"In ten minutes from the commencement of the attack, the signal-flag, anxiously looked for from the English trenches, was hoisted, and the storm- ing party of 800 men of the 6.2d, 41st, 90th, and 97th regiments, with a detach, meat or the ad Buffe, carrying ladders, and another of Itifies, to keep down the fire from the ramparts, issued from the trenches. First went the Rifle', and, closely following them, the ladder-party, who had been posted in the most advanced trench, an unfinished one, about 150 yards from the Redan. While crossing the intervening space, -a number of men were wounded by grape from the flanks, where several guns opened fiercely, and a great many la-aers were dropt ad the bearers fell ; but about six reached the dash, into which they were let down, and four were transferred to the opposite side. Though an assistance in descending and mounting, they were not absolutely essential, as many officers and men passed over the work without their ai4 so ruined was the slope by the artillery fire. The stormers advanced with- out a mire, thought-Is grape thinned them as they went, and part of them entered at once; when the Russians within, seemingly surprised, fled without resistance. Had the whole of the storming party now pushed on, followed by efficient support, it is probable that we might have secured possession of the work. But an opinion which I had previously heard from our engineers, that the long period of duty in the trenches would be found, without di- minishing the intrepidity of the troops, to impair their dash, and make them unduly careful of obtaining cover, was now confirmed. Most of those who reached the parapet lay down there and began to fire, while those officers and men who had entered extended over a space reaching to the third or fourth gun on each side. Recovering from their first panic, the Russians began to return, and large reinforcements constantly arrived, emerging, probably, from the subterranean chambers of the work. These began a hot fire, standing partly across the open space thirty or forty yards from the salient, partly behind the traverses and embrasures. This desultory combat lasted about a quarter of an hour, during which many officers and men distinguished themselves by gallant attempts to head a rush against the enemy, ending in the immediate fall of the leaders ; then our supports advanced in a large square column, and the former scene was renewed. Small parties of men led by their officers got over the parapet ; but the num- ber actually within the work was never sufficient for its capture, while the enemy received constant reinforcements from the rear. "All this time the rattle of small-arms was incessant, and showed a great number of men to be engaged in and about the Redan ; but the duration of the struggle created unpleasant doubts in the minds of those lathe Wenches. We saw the stormers first, then the supports, advance, disappear in the ditch, and reappear on the parapet; then all became smoke and confusion. The guns in the faces of the Reda', n were almost silenced, but those in the flanks continued to,fire, while several other Russian batteries suddenly opened, and sent shot thickly over all parts of our trenches. After a time we could see Russian soldiers standing in the embrasures of the faces of the Redan' load- ing and firing into the interior of the work. At the end of an hour, the number of men seen hastening back proved that we had suffered a repulse."

Mr. Woods, who, like the writer of the Inside Sebastopol, was not present at the attack, speaks also from second-hand authority. He however, had sources of information which were doubtless as good as this anonymous tourist's, and he mentions the plateau being swept by grape. "During this time the English had advanced to cope with the Roden. As they crossed the open space between it and our works, twelve large guns opened on them with grape, and caused us fearful loos. Nevertheless, they pressed on, crossed the ditch, climbed the parapet, and entered the work. But here the Garden Battery, which had been utterly silent during the previous day, opened on them with tremendous vigour. It is useless and painful to dwell upon what followed : our troops were mowed down by scores and, having no cause for feeling the confidence which is always de- rived from numbers, they remained on the parapet of the work, firing at, instead of charging the enemy, who had retreated to the rear of the Redan, and fought under cover of their traverses."

The correspondents of the journals write, him this tourist, ano- nymously, except Mr. Russell ; but there is some guarantee in the character of the newspaper they belong to ; and a similar re- mark applies to the letters from officers or soldiers. We believe they all, certainly the vast majority, agree in describing the fire sweeping across the plateau as fearful ; some say that the traverses

inside the Redan were regularly manned with infantry as well as artillery, and kept up a terrible fire against the angle which our troops bail entered. Authorities differ as to the time the Redan was in our possession. Woods and a correspondent of the Times speak of an hour and a half; Colonel 1Tsmley, who is the best authority, mentions an hour. But to suppose that "two thou- sand" men should stand " still " on the exposed plateau for even half an hour amid such a scene, seems to be adding ab- surdity to misrepresentation. These remarks are meant as an exposure, not a defence. It is probable that the troops were not well chosen for the assault ' • that the arrangements were badly made or carried out ; and that the soldiers, affected, like some of the French troops by a panic-terror of mines, were not so forward as they ought to have been. Fail- ure, however, is a very different thing from the disgraceful account just quoted from this volume.

This story refers to the men—though the tourist, by the by, does tell a story about an officer who would not march out of the trenches. The following sketch of the British officer going out is from Constantinople on the writer's return.

"I would return to the hotel and hear the talk of the breakfast-table, remarking much the difference between the officers going out to join and those going home invalided. In the officers going out to Join there was the absence of education, reading, and thought, which are but too evident in all our very smart regiments, redeemed of course by not unfrequent and re- markable individual exceptions and there was also a depreciatory tone about the war, which looked rod; an exaggerated and distorted reflection of something they had heard in especially 'good society,' where the war against Russia is sometimes thought lobe a crusade by Democracy against the prin- ciple of Conservatism in Europe."

The following, according to our writer, is the all but universal feeling of the officers when out.

"1 England wants to be well served, she must have some bowels of com- passion: Fightingis not such a pleasant, exciting, well-paid profession, as elderly bankers and young apprentices fancy. The monotonous tedium of a camp is, after the first three days' novelty has worn off, something to drive a man crazy if he have no duties • and if he have duties they can only mitigate the ennui, they cannot kill the monster. Nothing could exceed the frankness with which every one who chose to communicate his secret thoughts to me upon the subject declared that it was nothing but the fear of a dishonourable construction, or the inability to give up his commission, which kept him in the Crimea. Oh, how they all sigh for home home, if it were but for a fortnight ! If the whole population of the Russian empire, serried and in arms' could be drawn up between Balaklava and the plateau, and a steamer with her steam up, bound for London, were fizzing at the Ordnance Wharf, I'd back the officers of the British army to cut their way through all that mass, even if they were convinced that only ten could sur- vive to leap upon her deck. "The men, as a body, do not feel this so much as the officers; they have not so much to tempt them at home ; but still they do feel it. dampaigning in the Crimea is not like India or country quarters."

Having. finished his book, the smart man arrives at this con- clusion—in his preface. "If that shrewd and fortunate man, Napoleon the Third, should succeed in making peace without another act of warfare—if the 8th of September is to be the date of the last conflict of this war—then the Emperor of the French has added another to his many surprising achievements—he has revenged Waterloo."

If the representations of this writer are true it is not the failure before the Reatui that will revenge Waterloo, but the de- generation of the country—the cowardice of the men, the in- disposition of the gentlemen to discharge the duties they have undertaken. Yet there is a possibility that the smart man mar be mistaken in reporting on very complicated facts, or forming a true estimate on so fugitive a. thing as opinion ; because he can scarcely be trusted in a common matter of schoolboy's chro- nology. He eloses the Redan business with a good story.

"When George the Third was told that Wolfe was quite unfit to com- mand, and was in fact a madman, the Monarch replied, Mad—mad—mad ! Wolfe mad! Wish he'd bite some of my other generals.' "

Unluckily., Wolfe was dead before George the Third had any generals to be bitten. The battle of the Heights of Abraham was fought in September 1759: George the Third did not ascend the throne till October 1760.