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A WEEKLY JOURNAL OF POLITICS, LITERATURE AND NEWS.

EDWARD WHELAN]

a Tn ne

Literature,

IMPLORA PACE.

Up to the silent Heaven the ery ascendeth, ** Bid war and tumult cease !"’

Solemnly with the midnight winds it blendeth, ++ On earth let there be peace !"’

Too long have yonder holy moonbeams glistened O'er fields of strife below ;

Too long have yonder starry watchers listened To sounds of war and wo.

Too long in waiting at Bethesda’s portais, The Spirit's troubling wing

To heal earth’s turbid waters, hapless mortals Have lingered, wearying.

Bid that six thousand years of bloody story Saffice life’s mighty book ;

Unfold one pitying page of peaceful glory, Where seraph eyes may look!

One snowy leaf whereon ree rding angel, With trath’s own ray, may write

Deeds sympathetic with the great Evangel, All pure and kind and bright.

©, dove of peace! as once in record oMeP, Brood o’er the surge’s breast ;

Spread wide thy “ silvery wings and feathers golden,’ Till all be hushed co rest !

’

© printless footsteps! once at midnight stealing O’er stormy seas at will,

Walk on the billowy waves of human feeling, And bid them, ** Peace, be still !”’

(From the Edinburgh Review.) THE TAURIC CHERSONESE.

1. The Crimea and Odessa: Journal of a Tour, with an account of the Climate and Vegetation. By Dr. Cu artes Kocn : trans- lated by JOANNA B. Horner. ovo. Londop : 1855.

2. An Historical Sketch ef the Cronea. By ANTHONY GRANT,

D.C. L., Archdeacon of St. Albans, &c. 1l2mo. Landon:

1855.

It is almost impossible to cast one’s eyes upon the map of Europe, without heing struck hy the remarkable geographical position of the Crimean peninsula, Projecting, like an advanced hastion, into the midst of the Black Sea, completely commanding the mouths of two of the greatest rivers of Eastern Europe, the Don and the Dnieper, and lying opposite to the Danube and the Bosphorus, it seems destined to secure the dominion of the Euxine and to exert the most important influence over all the surrounding countries, both of Asia and Europe. At the pre- sent moment, when the eyes of the whole civilised world are bent on this remote corner of the Russian Empire, and the question of ascendancy between the East and the Wrest appears about to be decided within the narrow limits of the Crimea, an inquiry naturally suggests itself as to the past fortunes of a region destined to play so importont @ part in the present contest. Has the Crimea never before assumed that position in history, for which its geographical advantages so eminently qualified it? or has it first emerged from obscurity sinee it be- came annexed to the Russian Empire? Probably all our read- ers are aware that before the reign of Catherine I], it was governed by its own Tartar princes, as a dependency of the ‘Turkish Empire ; and many of them will remember the com- bination of fraud and foree, intrigue and injustice, by which its transfer to the Kussian Crown was effected. But we sus- pect that there are few among ther: who have any acquaint- ance with its history in earlier ages. And yet indications are not wanting that it has a past history, and that it has not always been the abode of wandering tribes of Tartars, like those whe have swept over the plains of the Ukraine and the Steppes of the Volga, without leaving any permanent traces ef their occupation or record of their existence.

In Pr. Koch’s pleasant, bat somewhat superficial, little volume, and more fully im the older and more satisfactory works of Clarke and Pallas,—to which we recur for informa- tion concerning the Crimea, net to he found in more recent books of travels—it will be remarked, perhaps not without surprise, that numerous relics of Greek civilization are still reserved on the shores ef the Tauric peninsula ; and it may tr inferred, that the high-sounding Greek names ef Eupatoria and Theodosia are not mere modern fictions, but really pre- serve the memory of that highly gifted race, which has left the indelible marks of its presence wherever it established its widely disseminated colonies. On the other hand, the Genoese eastles, whose mouldering towers still crown the rocks of Balaklava as well as the Straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, re- mind us of a period-much more recent indeed, yet now al- most equally forgotten, when that active and enterprisin ‘commercial people were the undisputed masters of the Kuxine, and the trade with Persia and India was almost wholly cen- tered in the Genoese colony of Kaffa. Even in the midst of the absorbing interests of the present, some of our readers may

be glad for a moment to reeur to the past, while we endeavour

to present them with a brief review ef the historical assecia~ tions of the Crimea.

The establishment of the first Greek colonies en the shores of the Euxine belongs to a period before the commencement of authentic history. The greater part of those colonies were sent forth by the [lonian city of Miletus; and of the history of Miletus itself we know nothing, beyond the general fact, that it was in very early times one of the wealthiest and most tlourishing cities of the Greek world, and that it was indebted fur this prosperity to its extensive trade, and the commercial energy and activity of its peeple. It was, in fact, the Venice or Genoa of its day. But the greatness of Miletus had as completely passed away, asthatof Venice or Genoa has now, before the oon of Greek history with which we are most familiar. vem in the days of Aristophanes it had become a byword and a prover {or something altogether gone by. Hence we ean searcely expect any very accurate historical ac- count for the foundation of its nuimereus colonies. But we know from the concurrent testimony of antiquity that it was to Miletus the Greeks were indebted for first opening to them the navigation of the long-dreaded waters of the Black’Séa. Tradition had preserved the memory of the day, when that sea was still the terror of mariners and when we remember. the kind of mysterious apprehensiou with which it was regarded eyen at the outbreak of the present war, we certainly cannot wonder at the fears it inspired in the infancy of navigation. We are rather struck, with admiration at the boldness and energy of the people who could, with such imperfect resources, explore its unknown extent, and penetrate te its inmost re- cesses. ‘The legend of the-veyage of the Argenauts, in the form that it has been trait us, is evidently founded upon traditionary tales of the dangers encountered by the first Vvowigers in the Baxine. ra aa A errreNe

t the perils of the were not, the only, rs these early colonists had to fear. Vague and mysterious stories were current of the fierce character and savage habits of the bar-~ barians who bordered the shores of the Black Sea. The Taari

especially, from whom the Crimea derived its aneient name of |

the Tauric Chersonese, were represented as sacrificing human victims to their deities, and offering up without aiken Aen un- happy stranger who wae unfortunate enough te be cast upon

This is true Liberty, when Free-born fMlen, having to advise the Public, man speak free——EURIPIDES. CHARLOTTETOWN, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1855.

| : R : | their shores. Herodotus speaks of this barbarous custom as if with thus commanding the entrance of the Sea of Azoff; and_

it still subsisted in his time ; and there seems no doubt that it with the view of extending still further their commercial re- was really prevalent at the period when the Crimea was first lations with the wild tribes of the interior, they at a very visited by ‘h | known legend of Iphigenia in Tauris, to which the Greeks eer- mouth of the river Don or Tanais, which ultimately’ beeame itainly gave a local habitation”? in the Crimea. The temple itself a thriving town, and in the davs of Strabo was inferior

1¢ Greeks. It thus became the basis df the well- early period established a commercial station or factory at the»

of the virgin goddess, in which the daughter of Agamemnon was believed to have offieiated as priestess, was still shown in the days of Strabo ; but the image of the deity was no longer

to be found on its pedestal, according to the legend that it was |

carried off, together with Iphigenia herself, by Orestes and Pylades. The temple itself was situated within a few miles of | the city of Chersonesus, on a lofty promontory commanding an |

only to Panticapezeum as an emporium of trade. The position thus selected was marked hy nature as one of the chief points of communication between the East and the West. Tana,

which in the middle ages sueceeded to the Greek colony of

Tanais, was still one of the chief centres of the trade with Asia when the Black Sea was frequented by the Venetians and Genoese : and after an interval of some centuries, Taganrog,

extensive view over the sea; and its site has been fixed with founded by the Russians in the same neighbourhood, rose ‘much probability in the immediate neighbourhood of the mon- | rapidly to great commercial prosperity, and has only been re- astery of St. George. It is a curious coincidence between the | cently rivalled by the increasing trade of Kertch. ‘very earliest and the very latest records of this region, that the| There can, indeed, bo no doubt that the commercial relations rocky headland from which the temple of the sanguinary god-' of the Greeks with the semi-barharous tribes of the interior, | dess frowned upon the Greek mariner, should be the very same’ differed but little from those ef the Venetians and Genoese | spot from which the wires of the electric telegraph have just | eighteen centuries later ; and even at the present day the trade ‘been placed in communication with our own metropolis. iof Taganrog and Kertch with the merchants of the Archipe- | Well might the Greeks give to a sea fraught with such | lago and Mediterranean, represents that of Tanais and Panti- dangers, both real and imaginary, the name of Axine, or the | capzeum in the days of Herodotus. The wants of a nomadic ** Inhospitable’’; it was not till the Milesians had in great and pastoral people, as well as their productions, will always ‘measure dissipated its terrors, and peopled its coasts with | continue very much the same. ‘ The mare-milking Scythians, | Greek colonies, that it came to be known hy that of the Euxine | dwelling in waggons,’’ described by Hesiod,* were probably

[EDITOR ax» PUBLISHER

ON

No. 10. customs*, would seem to have at length imbibed to a certain extent the habts of their more civilised neighbours, and were consolidated into a regular kingdom by a chief named Scilurus, who soon became a formidable neighbour to the Greeks of the Chersonese. It is clear that this monarch possessed more than the ordinary resources of barbarian warfare, as we are told that he hemmed in the Greeks of Chersonesus with a chain of fortresses ; against which they in their turn erected a line of wall, fortified with towers, and extending from the decp inlet of Balaklava across to the head of the bay of Sebastopol. The remains of this fortification, which was repaired and strengthen- ved long afterwards by the Byzantine Greeks, were still extant

in the days of Pallas, and may perhaps still be traced, when- ever the Russian artillery shall leave t valley from Balaklava to Inkermann open to antiquarian investigation.

| While the inhabitants of Chersonesus were thus hemmed in by Scilurus, at one extremity of the peninsula, the Sarmatians were préssing equally hard upon those of the Bosphorus at the other. Parisades, who then ruled at Panticapsaum,— probably a lineal descendant of the carlier monarch of the name,—had in vain sought to buy off the formidable invaders by offers of an increased tribute ; and at length saw no other resource open to him than to sacrifice the independence of his country, by calling in the aid of a monarch who had recently founded a powerful empire on the southern shores of the

_Euxine. It was thus that the little kingdom of the Bosphorus

‘or the ‘* Hospitable,’’ which it has ever since preserved. So | scarcely to be distinguished from the modern Tartars ; and the _ became merged in the dominions of the great Mithridates.

‘far as we can discern through the dim historical twilight of | Argippei of Herodotus are characterised in a manner in which | this period, it was as early as the seventh, if not the eighth it is impossible to mistake the ancestors of the present Kal-

That remarkable man, one of the few eastern sovereigns in ancient times who have earned for themselves an enduring

_century before the Christian era, that this process of coloni-| mucks.f The furs of the Ural mountains were brought down| place in history, had succeeded at a very early age to the ; sation took place. It is certain that before the close of the. by the caravans to the Greck ports on the Euxine; and the, throne of Pontus—the name given by the Groeks to the moun- sixth, the whole circuit of the Black Sea was surrounded with | slaye markets of Greece were supplied from the wild tribes of) tainous province, which occupies the south-eastern shores of

. ‘ . | * . a complete girdle of Greek towns, several of which were al-| the Caucasus. Salt fish and corn were then, as now, the staple

ready engaged in an extensive trade with the interior, and had | productions of the southern provinces of the Russian Empire. risen to a condition of opulence and porsperity ; while theyall | The fisheries of the Palus Maotis were already turned to | had carried with them their language, their civilisation, their account by the natives of its shores, under the direction of the religious legends, and their republican institutions. Other Greek colonists, in whose hands they became the objects of a 'cities had followed the example of Miletus; and the Greeks lucrative trade ; and the pickled sturgeon and caviar of the | had made themselves at home on the shores of Scythia, as well Don and the Dnieper were among the favourite dainties of ;as on those of Gaul and Afriea. Athenian epicures. There can be little doubt that the colonies along the westetn | But far more important than these was the trade of the same and southern shores of the Euxine preeeded those on its north-' provinces in corn. From the earliest period at which we have jern coast. Ata very early period a range of flourishing Greek any information concerning them, the countries north of the cities already extended along the southern coast of the Euxine Black Sea were known as among the richest wheat-growing from Heraclen to Trebizond. The most considerable of those regions in Europe. Even in the days of Herodotus,f the was Sinope, a name so familiar to us all from the recent catas-| peasants of the Ukraine were engaged in growing corn, not trophe of the Turkish fleet, but equally well known to Hero- | for their own consumption, hut for exportation from the Greek dotus and Xenophon as one of the most important commercial | port of Olbiopolis. The Athenians especially, whose scanty cities in the Black Sea. Eastward of this were Amisus (Sam-_ and barren territory was altogether inadequate to the support soun), Cerasus, and Trapezus or Trébizond itself: all of them | of its numerous population, derived a large part of their sapply either colonies of Sinope or founded directly from the parent | from the shores of the Euxine. In the time of Demosthenes city of Miletus. The cities on the west coast were of inferior this trade was almost wholly absorbed hy the two ports of

_ the Black Sea, and extends from the waters of the Euxine to the cold and dreary highlands of Armenia. Here, after the dissolution of the empire of Alexander, a petty kingdom had ‘arisen, governed by a race of native princes, who had already ruled the same territory as satraps under the Persian Empiro. They claimed to be descended frum the royal House of the Achzemenides, to which the kings of Persia had belonged, and asserted their lineal descent from one of the seven Persian nobles, who had conspired with Darivs Hystaspes against the Magi. But for a considerable period their eadiless were limited and their names obscure. Pharnaces, the grand- father of Mithridates the Great, was the first who annexed to his dominions the city of Sinope, at that time the most flour- | ishing and important of all the Greek colonies on the southern ‘coast of the Euxine, and which became theneeforth the capital of the kings of Pontus. Mithridates the Fifth, father of the more celebrated monarch of the name, had still further extend- ed his power by entering into an alliance with the Romans, and assisting them in their war against Aristonicus, the last of the kings of Pergamus. ‘The all-powerful republic had al-

importance and never rose to any great prosperity ; but two Panticapeum and Theod sia, both of them at that time sub- ready begun to dispose of the kingdoms and provinces of Asia of them may deserve a passing notice :-——Odessus, which seems | ject to a raler named Loucon, who scems to have been fally according to its sovereign will and pleasure ; and the consul to have occupied the same site as Varna, while its name has alive to the yalue of thes commereial relations with Athens, Manius Aguilius rewarded the = rvicos of the king of Pontus been transferred by Russian eaprice to the now eclebrated city | and gave a great stimulus to them by remitting all export with the extensive districtof Phrygia. But the senate refused of Odessa ; and Tomi, so well known to every schoolboy, as the | duties on the corn destined for that city. » According to statis- | to ratify his acts ; and though they did not distur) the elder

lace of exile of Ovid, from whence he poured forth his queru- | tical returns quoted by the great orater, the quantity imported as elegies. We cease to wonder at the lamentations of the | into Athens from this quarter alone, amounted, one year with unfortunate poet when we learn that the place of his banish- | another, to 400,000 inedimni, or nearly 75,000 quartors.§, But ment was situated within a few miles of Kustendji, on the | in the year of scarcity it greately exceeded this amount, and if coast of the barren and insalubrious Dobrudscha, | we may credit the numbers given by Stra’vo,||—whose satistics, But it is with the colonies established along the northern | however, are far less trustworthy than those of Demosthenes shores of the Kuxine that we are now more immediately con-| —Leucon on one oceasion say plied the Athenians with no less cerned. One of the most important of these — apparently in than 2,200,000 1medimni (415,000 quarters), within a single early times the most considerable of them all— was Olbia or year. Olbigpolis ** the wealthy city,”’ as it was called by its inhabi-; This Leucon was one of a dynasty of rulers, who governed tants, though better known to the Grecks in general by the the Greek colonies on the Cimmerian Bosphorus during a name of Borysthenes, from the great river (now called the period of more than a century. The existence in these se- Dnieper), near the mouth of which it was situated. Its po- cluded colonies of hereditary monarchy, in general so opposed sition on the estuary of the Dnieper, just where it receives to all the feelings and prejudices of the Greeks, is an anomaly, the river Bug (the Hypanis of the Greeks), secured to it very which we have no means of explaining. We learn, indeed, much the same commercial advantages. with the modern city that, like the: despots or tyrants of so many other Greek of Odessa, about fifty miles further west; and the rapidity states, they retained the semblance of republican forms, and with which this Russian port, which scarcely counts more than ruled over the cities of Panticapawum and Phanagoria, under sixty years of existence, has risen into a great and opulent the title of their chief magistrates, while they assumed the city, will serve to illustrate the manner in which the Milesian regal title only over the neighbouring barbarians. Bat one colony of Olbia attained to the prosperity from which it de- cause which undoubtedly contributed to the permanence of rived its name. It was ¥isited by Herodotus in his travels, their authority, was to be found in their personal character. and it was there he collected the curious and valuable infor- All accounts represent them as a series of enlightened ralers, mation eoncerning the Scythian tribes of the interior, which distmguished for the mild and equitable spirit of their govern- _he has left us in the fourth book of his history. The extent ment. Besides fostering their commercial connexion with and accuracy of his knowledge sufficiently shows how widely Athens,—a poliey which seems to, haye been a hereditary tra- spread were the relations which the Greeks had already es- dition among them, having been commenced by Satyrus, the

tablished with the barbarian nations from the banks of the father of Leucon, and continued by his son Parisadés — they '

Dnieper to the sources of the Don and the Ural mountains. _ became the patrons of men of léttcrs, and lived in habitual in-

Next to Olbia, bat inferior to it in importance, was the city tereourse with the philosophers of their time. Some of these

of Chersonesus, or Cherson, as it was called in later times even took up their residence at the court of the kings of the

which was placed near the western extremity,of the Tauric . Bosphorus, and were taunted by their adversaries with display-

| peninsula, in the immediate neighhourhood of Sebastopol, and | ing a very unphilosophical eagerness for the wealth and favours

on the very ground now the scene of contentidin between the which it was m the power of those monarchs to bestow. The | French and the Russian.armies. Its ruins were still visilile, | speeches of Demosthenes, as well as those of his comtemporary |

on the west side of the Quarantine Bay ,* wlien the Crimea ‘orators, contain numerous references to the little kingdom of

was visited at the beginning of this cintury by Pallas and) the Bosphorus, and sufficiently show us how completely the! Neg by the last English sail.

Clarke, but they have now almost entirely disappeared. Dr. | Greek colonies in the Crimea, notwithstanding their secluded Koch complains that he could find but little of what had been | position, were regarded as constituent members of the Hellenic

described even much more recently by Dubois de Montpereux ¢: | world.

and the last remains of this long flourishing and powerful city | This was probably the period of their greatest prosperity. | have been carried away piecemeai to furnish materials for the Shortly after one of those unfortunate gaps occurs which so} modern buildings of Sehastopol. An imperial ukase has, it ap-_ often mterrupt our researches in ancient history ; for owing | pears, been recently issued—when the mischief was already in to the loss of the later books of Diodorus, we lose sight almost great part done—to prohibit such Vandalism ; but it hasbeen entirely of the Greeks on the Bosphorus for a period of nearly Stietpaal an such decrees usually are when no ene in authority ‘two centuries. When they reappear in history we find them is in terested in enforcing them, 'straggling hard with the northern barbarians, and on the point Chersonesus, which was not, like its neighbours, of Milesian of being overwhelmned hy hordes of Scythian invaders, who origin, but a colony from Heraclea in Bithynia, was probably threatened to extinguish all traces of Greek civilisation north one of the later Greek settlements, of these coasts ; but it cer- of the Euxine. Up to this period it is remarkable how little tainly hecame one of the most flourishing of them all. It was, they appear to haye suffered from their barharian neighbours. however, unable—in carly times at least—to vie with the rival We hear, indeed, of Parisades, the son of Leucon, being en- city of Panticapzeum, at the other extremity of the peninsula, | gaged in a war with the Seythians in the time of Demosthenes : a Milesian colony, situated immediately on the Cimmerian and it is impossthle to'suppose that such hostilities should not Bosphorus and ¢lose. te the modern town ot Kertch. Here yast have occurred from time to time; bat the great prosperity ranges of sepulchral mounds still attest the long duration of attained hy the Greek cities,,as well as the extentof their com-— this powerful and epulent city, and have afforded te the re- mercial relations with the interior, prove that such a state of searches of successive excavators an inexhaustible store of coins, things was not of very frequent occurrence. The tribes imme- _gold ornaments, painted vases, and’ other objects of art — the diately bordering on the Black Seaand the Sea of Azoff nearly unfailing accompaniment of Greek civilisation. From its acquired the first clements of civilisation, and occupied them- sition on the Cimmerian Bosphorus—the narrow strait which selves with hushandry or with the productive fisheries at the forms the entrance tothe Sea of Azoff—Panticapzeun naturally mouths of the great rivers.. The wilder race of the interior, commanded the whole commerce of that inland sea, and be- who preserved their primitive wandering habits, were content came almost the sole channel of communication with the bar~ to leave these agricultural settlers and the Greck colonists barian tribes which surrounded its shores. Phanagoria, also themselves in the undisturbed possession of the more fertile a Greek cobery from the Ionian city of Teos, was situated on districts, so long as they paid them a moderate tribute. the opposite side of the straits, in the peninsala of Taman ; but _ But this stato of things appears to have undergone a great seems to have early given way to the preponderanee of Panti- change at the period to which we have just referred ; and it capeum, which was commonly known to the Gréeks as ‘+ the would seem as # in the interval during which we lose sight of

ity of the Besphorus.’? Theodosia, on the southern cdast of the little kingdom of Bosphorus, some considerable movements the Crimea, about fifty miles west of Pantieapeum, and like had taken place among the wild tribes of Scythia. The Sar-

i ilesian colony, was a cit ubordinate import- matians, a people who in the time of Herodotus dwelt exclu- a — rose to be a Somme “lac of trade after it sively teabs east of Oni Tanais, _ enema ar river and ‘ha passed under ominio1 its more erful spread themselves over the broad plains of southern Russia,

nee pee 3 7 i He? Poites: Bi from the Don to the Doiepens and with them we find associat- ut the Greeks of the Northern Bosphorus were not content ed the name of the Roxolani, a people who now appear for

Hou ia _» » the first time in history, but who have a special claim upon

# Somé'remaine are also to be found, or were:ad till very lately, on the our attention as being in all probability the ancestors of the south side of the Bay of Kamiesch, These, which are marked on several modern Russians, Contemporancously with the pressure ex- Miaps as the ruins of fh are evidently the remains of the old city ercised upon the Greek colonies by these new hordes of north- of that name, which ady in ruins in the duys of Strabo, the in- 61) invaders, there had arisen within the Crimea itself a power

pn having quitted the site furthat nearer Sebastopol. (Strabo, 1. fy rmidable than any previously existing. The Tauri, a

. t¢ This author, who, in 1832, devoted two months to an elaborate ex- tribe long remarkable only for their ferocity and barbarous amination of the ruins of Chersonesus, of which he has given us a com- ———~ , ' . and description, himself remarks that their destruction was, * Hesiod. Fr. 131, 132, ed. Didot.

) going on with/such rapidity, that he was in haste. to take an account of + Herod. iv. 23. t Herod. iv, 17. what still . uld have eptirely disappeared. § Demosth, adv. Sept. p. 467. ed. Reiske, fies WERE. [Strabo vie pS:

Mithridates in the possession of his newly acquired territory, they soon after took advantage of the minority of his son to wrest from him the province thus bestowed upon his father The young prince was in no condition to resist. Left at the age of eleven years in nominal possession of the sovereignty, he found himself surrounded by unfaithful guardians and «x- posed on all sides to the designs of treacherous foes, whoss machinations had already brought about the death of his father. But the difficulties and dangers by which he was thus beset only served to call forth the latent energies of his character, and became? the means of training him up to future greatness. Early acquiring the habit of profowad divsimula- tion, so essential to an eastern despot, he pretended to be indif- ferent to the cares of royalty and inscnsible to political am- bition. Devoting himself with ardour to the pursuits of the chase, he plunged into the wildest and most secluded mountain | districts, and frequentiy rosided there for considerable periods of time, braving all kinds of dangers, while he inured his bodily frame to hardships and privations. At the same timo in his intervals of repose he cultivated with assiduity all tho branches of a Greek education, for which his capital of Sinops afforded him ample opportunities. His piiatntel memory gave him a peculiar facility in the acquisition of languages ; so that we are told thatin the days of his greatest power he could speak the dialect of every tribe that was subject to his rule, and con- | verse with the deputies of twenty-five nations in their seyera! native languages.

+

* One of these was very peculiar. Whenever one of their kings lost a | friend or follower to whom he was much attached, he was expected to | cut off a piece of one of his own ears, or the Widle ear if the loss was ' such as to call for a very strong expression of grief. Kingz have pro-

verbially few friends ; and in a country where such a custum prevailed, they would scarcely be disposed to extend the circle of them.

(To be continued.)

—— a

PLIES LV PABA EEE Or Een

(From the London News of ihe World, September 2.) THE WAR.

If, the victory gained by the Allies at the bridge of Traktir, in the valley of the Tchernaya, on the 16th of August, has not been followed up by corresponding movements upon a large scale, with as much rapidity as we anticipated, we haye still every reason to. believe that the oporations of the besieging army, in front of Sebastopol, arc surely, though slowly, tending to the triumphant accomplishment of the great end they haye in view. It is obvious, from every account that reaches us, that the condition of the Russian garrison, on the southern side of the fortress, becomes, hour by hour, more critical and desperate. Prince Gortschakoff, in his despatches to St. Petersburgh, dees not attempt to conceal the severity of tho defeat sustained by his troops at Traktir; and, although he endeayours to make light of the ceaseless cannonade kept up by the Allies on the external line of fortifications, he is obliged to confess that their siege works steadily advance, in defiance of every resistance that the skill, of his engineers, or the bravery of his soldiers, can oppose to them, it is impossible that this state of things can he continued for any much greater length of time, witheut leading to that finalcollision by which the fate of Selastopol will, im all probability, be decided.

General Pelissier, in a despatch of the 24th of August, in- forms the French Government that, on the preceding night, » party of his troops had succeeded im carrying an ambuscade of the enemy upon the glacis of the Malakott” ; that five hun- dred Russizns sallied out to retake it, but were brilliantly re- pulsed, with the loss of about three hundred of their number ; and that the work was held by the French, and turned against the enemy. At first sight this affair may not appear so im- portant as it really is. In order to be preperly appreciated, the locality upon which the conflict took place must be rightly unders The glacis of a military work is that mass of earth which serves as a parapet to the covered way—in other words, it is the inclined plane immediately ovyerlocking the ditch, that ditch being the only obstacle te the advance of an enemy after the glacis shall have been occupied by him. The affair of the 23d, therefore, proves the immediate contiguity of the adverse armies, and affords the gratifying assurance that the Allies now stand on the yery edge of tho ditch of the Malakoff Tower, which is confessedly the key of southern Sebastopol. As we have already said, this relative on of the con- | tending armies cannot possibly be maintained for mauy days longer without leading to « fierce collision.

It must be confessed, that the Allied Generals do not appear to be in any hurry about delivering the threatened assault.

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