BOOKS.

SIR CHARLES NAPIER'S CAMPAIGN IN THE BALTIC!'

AFTER Admiral Napier's speeches at taverns, public meetings, aid in Parliament, together with his own lucubrations and there of his friends, and his correspondence with Princes and Prime' Ministers, one might have thought the subject of his grievances exhausted. If it were necessary to publish a volume upon -the, matter, care should have been taken to have the case plainly' stated, supported by such evidence as the Admiral thought himself at liberty to use, (in which he allows himself a wide latitude,! as convincingly argued as might be, and. avoiding above all -thing; needless encumbrances and proving or at least saying too much. There was no objection to the story of how Admiral Sir Charles Napier volunteered his opinion to the Prime Minister in the summer of 1853 on the best mode of managing public matters in general and the Navy in particular ; how, failing to impress" Lord Aberdeen, he tackled other Cabinet Ministers' with no better success ; and how in November he addressed Sir ,Tames Graham with advice and Cassandra-like prophecies. The condition of the fleet as regards paucity of officers and men and, the utter incapacity of the men if not of the officers as well, was a fit subject for notice. It might, however, have been done with better taste, and. with a kinder feeling towards men who, according to his own account, though completely ignorant and utterly incapable' somehow contrived to go through a service very arduous for the risks of its navigation, and to become within some six months thorough seamen,—or, in the Admiral's own words when he had struck his flag, and was using his men as balls to fiia at the Admiralty, "I brought back a fleet really magnificent, not in vessels only, but in the crews, (without which vessels are nothing,) perfect in gunnery, in seamanship, and discipline." In a personal subject, limited to grievances, and those amply stated already, the ease should have been confined to the points at issue' and not expanded by speculations on Northern and German diplomacy, or spun out by tedious accounts of a naval campaign in which nothing very warlike was accomplished beyond the capture of Bomarsund. Still less should it have been eked out to six hundred pages by such routine performances as these. "Captain Hall, in the Heck, was despatched to the North end of Gottland ; where he arrived on the 8th of April ; and, finding Captain Sulivan engaged in examining the anchorages, Captain Hall went on to Gottakg Sande, an island to the Northward of Gottiand, and lying in the track of the fleet.

"On landing, Captain Hall commenced digging for water, which he found everywhere at the depth of a few feet, replenishing his own vowel from this source. There was also an abundance of fire-wood, the island

being covered with firs and the beach with drift-wood. * * *

"On the 16th, Captain Foote, in the Conflict, captured a Russian barque belonging to Riga, and sent her into Memel. On the following day he captured three more prizes, and on the 18th landed at Memel to make arrangements for sending the prizes to England. On the evening of the same day Captain Foote was unfortunately drowned, together with four mon, in going off to the Conflict. Captain Foote had been cautioned not to cross the bar with his own boat, but had neglected the warning. The Tribune, which had been sent on ahead to examine the ice, had also captured six prizes, with which she proceeded to England, and was afterwards sent to the Black Sea."

In selecting a writer for the task of delivering to posterity, not the battle, but the cruise of the Baltic, it would have beeti well to have chosen a person who walks -upon the ground, and is not continually upon stilts like Mr. Earp ; as witness his dedication to William Napier " This volume, forming an additional record of injury to a race of warriors which has effected much for the gratitude of their country, and suffered more from official injustice than any other race whose world-wide achievements rank amongst the proud pages of English history, is inscribed," Ece.

Nor is the editor's logic much better than his style. Among his various digressions, is one on the misdoings of the Admiralty some sixty years ago, in which he thus confounds the order of time

" Let us take the instance of Lord Nelson after the battle of the Nile. Notwithstanding the honours showered upon him by a grateful country, he was not allowed the clan of smaller vessels which he wanted to complete the destruction of the French force in the harbour of Alexandria."

"If I were to die this moment, want of frigates would be found. stamped upon my heart," applied not to the French fleet when found, but to the difficulty of finding it. The complaint of Nelson was, that he could not get intelligence—he had not sufficient " eyes " for the fleet. How, after a grateful country had rewarded Nelson for fighting the battle of the Nile, could the Admiralty do anything to influence that battle ? The real gist of the Napier question was touched by Lord Palmerston in his friendly and frank letter to the Admiral—that he had brought his troubles upon himself. Notwithstanding all that has been spoken and written, the case lies in the merest nutshell. Sir Charles Napier entertained the idea that Cronstadt and Sweaberg were impregnable the Admiralty were of the same opinion ; and both parties considered that the main thing was to blockade the Russian fleet, and prevent it from ravaging the coasts of England. Up to the battle of Alma, all VMS honied compliments ; on the arrival of the Crimean news the Admiral had a real grievance for the space of five days. On the 4th October, after the false report of the capture of Sebastopol had reached London, the Admiralty sent out an ill-advised despatch, rash • The ilistory of the Baltic Campaign of 1S54, Prom Documents and other Mate ials furnished by Vice-Admiral Sir C. .Aapter, K.C.B. Edited by G. Butler Earl,. formerly Member of the Legislative Council of New Zealand. Published by Bentley. U 45 suggestions, still rasher in its tone and style, the sugns being founded on reports from two officers of Eners, which had been deliberately put aside by the French eral and the Admirals of both fleets, and which reports the A iralty had perhaps rather wilfully misread, in their eagerness to balance Sweaborg against Sebastopol. When the hoax about the Crimean stronghold was discovered, the ambition of "My Lords" was contracted to its original span, and on the 9th October another despatch was sent rather folliug back to the status ante. llad the Admiral been less impatient and less lueubrative, there guild have been no occasion to answer the first despatch at all. gad he been less of a furious controvertist, he would have replied fathe ill-judged, possibly provoking despatch, in a different tone ; r he was digressive, "fending and proving," and offensive. 'rom that time a paper-war arose, which has continued to this y; and was doubtless, as Sir Charles Napier was told at the time, the true cause of his dismissal—" it was not what he had done,..[Ieft undone,] but what he had written." It is possible that iie might have been superseded without the provocation of his correspondence, because the State, like a private individual, has a right to change its functionaries and agents if it thinks it can better itself by the change. However, the dismissal has been far less disgraceful to the Admiral than his own subsequent conduct. Fancy Nelson or St. Vincent haranguing at public-houses against constituted employers—or publishing despatches and private letters in low newspapers—or blessing their stars that the enemy had not attacked them—or appealing to the dictum of foreign sailors and a French soldier to justify their alleged backwardness, and doing it all in a bad spirit. And the scandal to the service is but the smallest part of the mischief. Such displays as those which Sir Charles Napier has been making for the last two years impede the cause of naval improvement. It is very likely that the naval service had been reduced dangerously low before the late war; it is equally possible that the Ministry, too hopeful in their expectations of peace, were tardy in their preparations for war, and displayed an ill-judged economy when they first began to prepare. It 18 also possible that popular and Parliamentary clamour may in future force down our navy below the point of safety. But who will give a due attention to historical criticism or practical suggestions when put forward in a very bad spirit, and connected with a cause whose mode of advocacy sets all well-conditioned persons against it?

. DONALDSON'S CHRISTIAN ORTHODOXY.* , DR. Dorreraisorr has, by the publication of this volume, forced into prominence a question of more immediate practical interest than any of the special critical and speculative questions he has hitherto applied his learning and his vigorous intellect to settle. It is a notorious fact, that learned men, who have devoted themselves especially to Biblical criticism, and who have applied to the Writings which are bound up together in one book called "the (Bible," the modes of procedure in use for determining the genuineess and authenticity of ancient writings generally, have found bundant reason for assigning the composition of many of the Old estament books to a later date, and consequently to other authors, an those assigned by the current tradition and the ordinary, itles of the books. The authorship of the books of the New Testaent, and the dates at which they were composed, though by no cans free from uncertainty, rest, as might naturally be expected, n much clearer and stronger evidence ; and the main difficulty bout the Gospels is not when and by whom they were written, so ueh as their relation to one another, and to the common sources f information about the life of Jesus, open to the first members of e Christian community ; while the authorship and approximate tea of composition of the larger number of the Apostolic Epistles are still less matters of dispute .at the present .day. That this is are Almost as great a difference of opinion, and almost as great asperity arenrotrittetici'i!t t one ofthe statementsin telliliels the ction, made and supported by one or more sets of competent oholars, but has been denied with at least equal vehemence by other set of scholars, whose pretensions to competent achearship it would be presumptuous in us to call in question. Indeed, if the question were merely of literary interest, experience would lead us not to expect anything like unanimity of opinion.

of controversy, have been displayed on questions of Greek and Roman literary and constitutional history, by the scholars even of our own generation; and the theological odium is scarcely more bitter than the critical. When the two meet together, and club their forces on the same question, what wonder that the dispute becomes irreconcilable, and the layman is obliged at once to suspend his judgment on the points at issue, and, out of mere regard to his peace and respectability, to leave the combatants to their own devices. In spite, therefore, of our knowledge of Dr. Donaldson's learning and talent, and of the essential interest of the questions that have been raised about the character of large portions of the Old and some portions of the New Testament, we should have nothing to say on the subject in these columns, but for the practical bearing of the publication of this volume on the question of the liberty allowed to a clergyman of the Established Church of England to entertain and to print the conclusions to which his intellect is forced, when they are in conflict with what • Christian Ortkodozy Reconciled with the Conclusions of Modern Biblical Learning : a Theological Essay, with Critical and Controversial Supplements. By Sohn William Donaldson, D.D., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Published by Williguns and Norgate. in popular opinion are essential dogmas of the Christian religion as established in the realm by act of Parliament. Whatever other

motives Dr. Donaldson may have had in publishing this book, we can scarcely be wrong in supposing that the desire of testing this liberty was among them. The direct purpose of the book is to assert and to prove that the theory of an infallible Bible is no part of orthodox Christianity, as it was preached by the first teachers of the religion, or as it is established in this kingdom; that it is not a doctrine contained in the Bible itself, or in the Articles and authoritative formu laries of the Church of England. The main attack is directed against BibliolatrY k and the batteries of learning, argument, and invective, are all vigorously employed in demolishing the facts, the hypotheses, and the moral necessities alleged in defence of that idolatry of the letter. In the matter of invective Dr. Donaldson has whatever excuse may be found in the fact that he has himself been for years an object of gross personalities and abuse from the religious press, and has been attacked by name, by clergymen, in pamphlets and the pulpit. Moreover, the abomi nable practices of certain so-called religious newspapers have excited the indignation of all but the violent partisans of the opinions which they advocate and it is not without its use

that such practices should be from time to time denounced in the terms they deserve. Nor is it an unimportant part of the argument against Bibliolatry, that it seems to force its principal supporters into a frenzy of rage and malignity singularly at variance with the temper of Christian morality.

A newspaper notice of a volume like this must content itself with the merest indication of the general line of argument; and any deviation from this limit is the less necessary, because the importance of Dr. Donaldson's volume does not consist in the absolute novelty of the views maintained, but in the fact that a doctor of divinity and a clergyman of the English Church pro mulgates those views without concealment or reserve. We may say, then that Dr. Donaldson, having gone over the whole ground for himself, armed with a learning as generally competent to the task as that of any other living Englishman, comes to the conclusion that the canonical books of the Jews were collected, com

piled, and edited, subsequently to the Exile; and that though

fragments of an earlier date are to be found in the text as we have it, yet to this period must be referred the composition of the Pentateuch and the other Historical records as a whole ; some of the Prophecies, the Psalms, and the Proverbs, being, as we understand him genuine remains of the period between Samuel the

founder of kingdom and the date of the Captivity. Of course

there is little in this conclusion to alarm rational orthodoxy: though it does throw a formidable difficulty in the way of the

Verbal Inspiration party ; from which, however, that party—

which must assume the transmission of the sacred text from generation to generation, unaltered, to have demanded and obtained

miraculous interposition—would not shrink. The real question is what were the principles of the editorial revision: and it is in discussing this question that Dr. Donaldson will find himself opposed to the rooted belief of the vast majority of his order, however advanced may be their opinions on many points, and however liberal their tolerance. Thus, among other statements, Dr. Donaldson agrees in the theory that the compilers of the Pentateuch combined with the older narrative a later addition of Babylonish origin. "It may be shown that the older Jehovistie portions are imbedded in a continuous fabric of Elohistic compilation.

The spirit of the revelation, of which Moses was the minister, undoubtedly finds its most original and accurate manifestation in

the last book, that of Deuteronomy., which alone professes to have

been written by him." "There is abundant evidence that the provisions of the Levitical law did not emanate from Moses, but were subsequently invented by the priestly caste." "The cosmogony and history of the fall of man are a pragmatical translation of deep philosophical or religious symbolism —" the lists of patriarchs are poetical or ethnographic statements, personified by an arbitrary rationalism "—and so on.

But how does Dr. Donaldson reconcile his results with orthodoxy ? Why, he limits orthodoxy somewhat. He says:-." The advocate

of Christianity is engaged to maintain the historical fact that God did personally and at a given epoch reveal himself to man. It is clear that the establishment of this fact does not depend on any dogma or opinion respecting the documents in which it is recorded. and preserved, but that it stands or falls with our belief or disbelief of the witnesses, with our conviction respecting their com petency and veracity." And again he says, speaking of the true Christian—" To him the Bible is a human composition, or rather a compilation from literary fragments ; but its theme and substance are divine ; for it tells how God manifested himself, and declared his will to the beings into whom he had breathed a particle of his own spirit." "This," he adds "is the only doctrine of inspiration which is sincerely entertained by religious and reasonable men."

As opposed, then, to the truths of physical science and the results of learned investigation, as rendered absurd by the circumstances under which the books were originally composed and have been handed down to us, and as perfectly unnecessary to the support of religious truth and the maintenance of a religious life, Dr. Donaldson rejects the theory of an infallible Scripture, and declares it to be one of the greatest obstacles to the general belief of Christianity among the educated classes of Europe. But there is one especial result of this theory which he denounces apart from the theory itself, and to expose which is the second main par pose of his book. He does not believe in the existence of good and bad angels; attributing the belief in them to a literalistic interpretation of the figurative language of the early Hebrew writers by the Jews of the Captivity, who had learned in Babylon a Medo-Persian philosophy, and had seen those pictures of winged monstrosities which are now gazed at by thousands weekly at Sydenham and in the British Museum. Now, the religious Englishman will fight for his Devil, as if he were himself a sworn friend and ally of that aerial potentate ; and we suspect Dr. Donaldson will find that the Devil's supporters have claws, whatever be the category to which their principal is henceforth to be referred. There are very few among our " serious " classes who will take the annihilation of the Devil as coolly as the late Lord Alvanley, who one Sunday morning, walking up St. James's Street, saw a hearse standing at the door of a " hell, ' and, going up to the mutes, took off his hat and said, with a polite bow, Is the Devil really dead, gentlemen ? for if he is, I shall not toke the trouble to go to church this morning." The purpose answered by the Devil in the theological system is not, indeed, very clearly comprehended. It plainly offers no solution of the mystery of the origin of Evil, but only throws back the difficulty a stage farther. On the other hand, as evil exists, and proves itself by every man's experience to be most real, neither is the mystery helped by supposing him nonexistent. If he is a figure of speech, Evil is certainly no figure of speech. And we do not in the least understand how a man of Dr. Donaldson's acuteness can suppose that the Manichean difficulty is any way lessened by supposing evil to originate in one of the creatures of an infinitely good Creator, rather than in another. As far as philosophy is called in to the dispute, we believe it would pronounce a verdict of "Not proven." But it seems a suggestion fraught with danger to the substantial truth of the New Testament, to suppose that Our Lord represented his temptation in the wilderness under a form of speech leading to an untrue belief, without any apparent necessity for using such a figurative form. The case of the dazmoniacs, standing alone, might posssibly be got over by the theory of treating lunatics according to their own impressions of the origin of their disease, and also by a general adoption of Jewish conception and phraseology. The other presents a difficulty far higher in degree, and, unless we mistake, different in kind. A solution is hinted by Dr. Donaldson, indeed, in the idea that Our Lord, in taking humanity, took not only its sufferings but its limitation of knowledge. This is too mysterious a subject for us to enlarge upon ; though we may say, in passing, that Jesus is represented in the Gospel as "growing in grace," which would seem to imply a limitation.

Of the various and recondite learning displayed in the discussion of these two points we have not attempted to give an idea. The general public will be contented to know the results of such

investigation, nvestigation, and will wait with a curiosity more or less mingled with passion, with hope or fear, to see whether this expression of opinion will draw down any ecclesiastical censures on its author. The _peculiarity of the case is twofold. In the first place, Dr. Donaldson holds no heresy, in the strict acceptation of the term ; and he holds firmly that Catholic truth which the Athanasian Creed lays down as the necessary condition of salvation or church membership. He is in the fullest, most unreserved sense, a Trinitarian Christian ; he moreover believes in the divine mission of Moses, and the divine establishment of the Jewish nation under a theocracy. He does not reject miracles ; and he appears to consider even the so-called " mythical " introduction to St. Luke's Gospel as substantially true, barring its angelophany, which is poetical and figurative. Thus, all the essential truths of Christianity he holds as clearly and unreservedly as the Archbishop of Canterbury, while on questions of dogma he is probably a better Anglican Churchman than his Grace. The question is, whether there is any power in the Church to enforce upon her clergy the maintenance of opinions that are not laid down explicitly in her Articles, Canons, and Formularies ; whether there is any power to prevent the language of some of those formularies from being accepted in a figurative sense, as others—those, for instance, on the Eucharist and Baptism—are accepted by a large portion of the clergy and laity ; whether, in short, a clergyman, maintaining the substantial agreement with Catholic doctrine that Dr. Donaldson maintains, can be forced to hold his tongue on the points which he has discussed in his volume, or to teach what he does not believe ? The second peculiarity is, that Dr. Donaldson, though a clergyman, holds no cure of souls ; and we are not aware of any ecclesiastical procedure which can be taken against a clergyman simply as such. We need scarcely warn our readers against supposing that we wish to see Dr. Donaldson put upon his trial before an ecclesiastical tribunal. Without expressing any decided opinion on the truth or falsehood of his conclusions, we are very decidedly of opinion that it is a good and a brave thing on his part to have published them openly under the responsibility of his name. And with respect to the bearing of those opinions upon religion, we must confess that we cannot understand how a religion which is preeminently distinguished as a religion for the poor and ignorant can be inextricably bound up with the maintenance of theories which divide the learned and philosephic men of Europe. We are aware that this may be pushed to an awkward conclusion ; but at present we should be inclined to say that no doctrine can be essential to the wellbeing of mankind on which honest and enlightened men cannot come to any agreement. Unanimity on such points may not be essential to social worship; and it would be no misfortune if the terms of communion with the Church of England were understood as admitting all persons who in any sense agree to find in her formularies and rites a practical satisfaction of their religious wants. The fact is perhaps so at present. But the correlative to the fact would be in loosening rather than in attempting to draw tighter the bonds of conformity by which the teaching of the clergy is straitened and hampered. Towards this good end Dr. Donaldson has in his measure contributed by the publication of the volume on which we have been commenting.