THE DANES IN CAMP.* [SEcosin Noncx.]

"I HAVE been in Arcadia," says Mr. Herbert in the book before us, and I have seen a patriot army." A sad interest gathers round the words when read by the light of subsequent events. A few weeks ago it was in the power of any chance English traveller, with an introduction or two from friends at home, to place himself at the cost of four or five days' travel in the midst of a band of men fighting for their country to the death. Some forty-eight hours of railway, a couple of steamers, and a few miles' walk or ride, and one started to find oneself a spectator at a crisis of a nation's history. It was centuries that were rolled back, and one was standing among the slopes of the hills where one great charge through a mile of pelting arrows drove back the armies of the East at Marathon. It was the gathering of the Cantons at Sempach, it was the massing of the brigades at Valmy. Half a week, and one had passed from the world of books to the world of deeds, from history written to history acted ; one vast step had been taken, and the common-place had passed into the sublime. Au army of brave gentle soldiers, fighting with one gallant spirit and in the holiest of all good causes, was to be seen last Easter time at Dybb51. The scene has sadly changed since then. The Arcadia is there, though the hands that till it are fewer ; but what has become of the stout hearts that stood, as it were but yesterday, to defend it ?

"I have been to Arcadia, and have seen a patriot army."

This is the siinarnary of Mr. Herbert's book. The author did well in confining himself almost entirely to what he saw and felt. The pictures are more vivid and the sentiments come more freshly from their being unmixed with further matter. We feel that we are listening to a narrator whose own interest in what he tells is real and must be contagious. The writer of the book has many good qualities for his task. He writes easily and pleasantly, he is never prolix, he is not pedantic, and he is not facetious. His enthusiasm is not pushed to extravagance, and he can yield to sentiment without being unmanly. The only defect that we have noticed is one which is perhaps after all but the absence of a certain trick of trade—the inadequacy of his topographical sketches. It may be questioned whether a reader, who had never been to the scene of war or had access to places and pictures would be able thoroughly to follow him in his description of the localities. A careful plan, however, accompanies the volume, and a sketch of the little town, which, by the way, makes it appear somewhat smaller than it in reality is, forms the frontispiece.

The easiest way of getting to Copenhagen from Hamburg is

by the quick postal steamers from Liibeck. On the days when these do not run there will probably be one from Wismar, a little town in Itlecklenburgh, either to Copenhagen or to Malmo, in Sweden, which is just opposite. The capital itself is a stupid town, the grand Thorwaldsen Museum only excepted, and the traveller bound for the war will not be anxious to spend too much of his time upon works of peaceful art. From Copenhagen (Danis& Kiohenhavn, pronounced Kyuhnhaown, or thereabouts) there is a slow railway to Korai., on the west coast of the island ; and on most days a steamer leaves Komar for Ale. Thus, if trains and steamers happen to suit one another, it is easy enough to get landed at the seat of war.

It was on the 21st of March that our author arrived at &Soder- Wog, and presented his letters of introduction at head-quarters. He describes somewhat amusingly his feelings, halleatisfaction, half-disappointment, at finding in the room which he shared with the companions of his visit a very different lot from that which he had beforehand pictured to himself. He had come with a

• The Dana in Camp. Letters from flanderborg. By Auberon Herbert. London: Saunders and Otley. 104.

campaigners' tools, and ready for all hardships, and.he found him- self in a very Capua. The leathern suit—which we were mistaken

on a previous occasion in 'declaring that he does not mention.—

was useless, and even slightly in the way. The English society at the seat of war was limited to about three individuals, not

including the correspondents of three English journals ; but the " club " embraced also about as many Danish acquaintances, who met together and talked a quaint polyglot at the frugal dinner in the evening. Mr. Herbert is very circumstantial in his account

of the attendance, and we may add that his pictures are through- out most faithful. The journal of which the book professes to be more or less a transcript may have received many touches since it left the solitary tabre at the Capua at Reimuth's Hotel ; but there is nothing, from a narrative of a battle to a description of Pauline, which does not bear upon it the marks of strict fidelity to fact.

It is pleasant for a reader to have the views of his author distinctly stated, and on the subject of the Dybbol position Mr. Herbert does not disguise his sentiments. "In respect of shelter, I consider the forts as one and all of the most flimsy character." He speaks as a man who has been a soldier, and he gives his reasons for his opinion, the unfavourable character of which extends not only to the individual forts but to the whole posi- tion. In the first place he points out bow the heights in ques- tion, opposing a narrow front to a broad one of the enemy, stood,. as it were, in the midst of a semicircle of fire ; the Broager batteries enfilading the whole line of Danish forts, and the approach even by land being possible for an enemy over an area embracing at least a quadrant of a circle. The earthworks were never, of course, constructed with a view to sustain the artillery of modern days ; the blockhouses were simply shell-traps, the curtain between the forts was a mere straight and undefended breastwork, and the slope of the glacis was, as Mr. Herbert remarks, either much too steep or not nearly steep enough. In one respect we venture to submit that he is mistaken. He declares that the second line of defence never ex- isted at all but in the depths of German consciousness. It was

certainly not a formidable line of works, and there was no regular series of entrenchments, but batteries there certainly were in the rear of the left of the position, armed chiefly with light field- guns, and the strength of the tete-du-pont was latterly very con-

siderable. But, as he says, the spade never did its duty. When- ever a new battery was being constructed there might be seen on an average ten men working and ten men looking on. But that there are no available means of finding out, we should un- commonly like to be informed whether that Penelope's web of a defence, the Garden Battery, as it was called, which was so long in process of erection at Sonderborg, has ever been finished yet, or is ever likely to be ?

There are two points upon which every one who has seen the Danish army at Ala will agree. One is the bravery of the men, the other is the inadequacy of the means of defence. We have spoken of the weakness of the forts, but it was strength itself compared with the weakness of the guns. It is a remarkable and unaccountable fact that Danish officers in conversation in the camp were in the habit of stating, with perfect confidence in the truth of what they said, that the practice of their artillery was rather good than otherwise. It would have been uncivil to appear to doubt the proposition, but yonder were the Prussian shells falling with cruel accuracy, now full on the parapet of No. 2, now ten yards from the counterscarp of No. 6, while the poor Danish fuses kept pitifully exploding about once in a quarter of an hour, it might be high over the heads of the gunners on Broager, it might be half a mile short of them in the sea. The contrast would almost have been ludicrous if it were not at the same time so sad. But the army—why add more to the praises which have already been so loudly sung? Perhaps, if for no other reason, because the expression of feeling is all that it is possible to give. Let us once more repeat, then,—may every Englishman exposed to such a trial bear it as bravely and as patiently as the Danish soldiers did. Deliberately, and with open eyes, this army went to destruction.

"It is not the hardship of bearing the enemy's fire in silence, or of seeing his earthworks growing round us, while we must remain in our trenches, without exposing him to sally or to skirmish ; or of seeing those fall whom we cannot replace—for already military necessities have drained the strength and the manhood out of Denmark; or of guarding the long range of the Ala Sund; or of ceaseless repairs in the night-time ; or the nervous irritation of false alarms ; it is not any one of these things which, in itself, is the trial of our position. But it is the feeling, which is well known to the army, that we are placed here in a hopeless, desperate position, to fill a gap and to complete a sacrifice."

How was it, then, the question is naturally asked,—how was it that when the supreme hour came—when the web drew closer round the fated works—when the parallels crept silently up— when the last rush was made, and forty thousand men leapt at last upon the ramparts which had so 1 mg and stoutly defied them, these same defenders fell back powerless, the bayonet dropped from their hands, the limbs refused to struggle against the overwhelming tide of conquest ? "I do not wish," says Mr. Herbert, "to look away from the face of any fact ; I know that the resistance on the 18th of March was not stubborn." At the very crisis of their fate, the courage which had borne up so long, the courage which had lasted through days and nights of pain and weariness and danger, did not shrink, but sank. We must quote our author once more, and we have but little to add to his vivid words. "The army," ha says, "which I knew, and with which I lived at the beginning of last month in Alsen, and the army which was shot down on the morning of the 18th of April, are not the same."

"It was not the' trial which the garrison of a besieged place has ordi- narily to go through, but it was of a different kind. From the 5th of April up to the 18th this little army had, day after day and night after night, to be exposed without shelter to shells often falling at the rate of twenty-five and thirty and upwards in the minute. To stand un- sheltered through this withering and pitiless storm in momentary ex- pectation of an attack through the hours of the day and the hours of the night ; to be powerless and forbidden to attempt to answer with their guns the crushing discharge poured upon thorn; to be powerless and forbidden to chock by a single sortie their enemy, as fold by fold he closed in upon the doomed forts ; to see the destruction swooping down upon them and raise no hand to prevent it ; this, —without the defence of science, without the resource of war, without the meanest shelter, at the last even without a commander, and always without hope, —this was the fiery affliction through which this army passed. . . . For two weeks this same handful of men stood with a full understanding of the sheer hopelessness of their position, with despair staring them sullenly in the face."

The result was what it must have been. Human nature was overtaxed. The enemy came and conquered, and hardly found men to fight. Few bayonets were crossed on the morning of the fatal 18th.

In the hours that followed the attack of Easter Monday, when the Prussian prisoners were brought in over the bridge, there arose a slight cheering among the crowd. Some one, an officer or some soldier, said a few words—how these were men who were suffering now what it might be thelr captors' turn to suffer some

other day,--and the rest of the march was made in dead and respectful silence. How such a trifling incident as this shows the character of the men ! We can hardly think of it—and it was in the same brave temperate spirit that all their hard part

was played—without a feeling of passionate regret. Those men were not made to be shot down like pheasants in a bate ue. There may be better elements still for civilization to, use and develop, but the simple chivalry of the Northmen is an element which the world can ill afford to lose. We feel the truth of all that may be Urged of the resistless tide of German influence setting northwards. We recoguizo the fact that possibly in giving our sympathies to the Danes we are fighting all the while against destiny. Be it so.

" Victrix causa Deis placuit, Bed victa Catoni."

Whether they hold or lose the territory they have so gallantly defended, whether Scandinavia falls back broken from the unequal contest with Germany or not, it will be no disgrace to have thrown all the weight of our hopes and wishes into the scale of such an army as we saw—as the writer of this article saw—two months ago at Siinderborg.