ations had an indisputable weight which, the surrender of Sedan, when he broke did not escape the Emperor, who, however, through the rule to set the example of a did not wish to leave the army till it had surrender which did more probably to recrossed the Moselle to its left bank." break the spirit of France than the most Then the Ministers persuade the Empress- terrible slaughter in a hand-to-hand fight Regent to overpass the restricted authority would have done. entrusted to her by summoning the Cham- But the crowning imbecility was yet to bers, and the Emperor looks helplessly on. come. "The Emperor being convinced,” The Ministers "appeared afraid to pro- we are told, "according to the assertions nounce the name of the Emperor; and he of the Press, that the King [of Prussia] who had quitted the army and had only re- had declared that he had made war not linquished the command in order to re- against France, but against her Sovereign, sume the reins of Government, soon did not hesitate to constitute himself a discovered that it would be impossible prisoner, hoping that the object of the war to play out the part which belonged to being attained by the sacrifice of his liberhim." So he made no effort either to rule ty, the conqueror would be less exacting the army or the country, but wandered towards France and the army." No doubt about a forlorn imperial ghost between a generous conception, but how carried Châlons and Rhiems. Then MacMahon out? In his interview with Count Bisproposed retreating upon Paris, the Em- marck, the Emperor having appealed to peror agreeing that this was what ought the generosity of the King for the Army to be done. But "the language of reason was not known in Paris. It was wished at all hazards to give public opinion the empty hope that Marshal Bazaine could still be succoured." MacMahon, though it was acting against his own judgment, was too gallant to refuse the hopeless duty. "As for the Emperor, he made no opposition. It did not enter into his views to oppose the advice of the Government and of the Empress-Regent who had shown so much intelligence and energy in the midst of the greatest difficulties, although he perceived that his own influence was being completely nullified, since he was acting neither as head of the Government nor as head of the Army." Surely fatalism never before took so pallid and meaningless a hue. The Emperor was abdicating his functions and consenting to be nobody, not to save his country, but in his own belief, apparently confirmed by The mistake of his policy, argues the facts, in order to assist in its destruction. Emperor, in conclusion, was his ever givEverybody being weak, vacillating, and ing liberty to the anarchical powers of the confused, the Emperor gave way to all tribune and the press. No, the mistake this weakness, vacillation, and confusion of his policy was the attempt to rule withagainst his own judgment, lest any one out the moral power. He had not indusshould suppose he was playing for his own try enough to know the real condition of hand. When MacMahon, seeing he was his army, nor the firmness to keep at too late, ordered a retreat, and, neverthe- peace when he was unfit for war. He had less, formal injunctions came by telegraph not sagacity enough either to trust his during the night to continue his march, people or to distrust them. He gave a "unquestionably," says the defence, "the little liberty, just enough to shake his Emperor could have countermanded this throne, but not enough to confirm it. He order, but he was resolved not to oppose held fast to a parliament which France the decision of the Regency, and had re- scorned and distrusted, while allowing it signed himself to submit to the conse- to hear language which increased that quences of the fatality which attached scorn and distrust. He kept up tyranny itself to all the resolutions of the Govern- enough to justify the people in calling him ment." And this grand resolve he carried a tyrant, and granted liberty enough to out up to the moment when he ordered make the accusation easy and safe. He and for France, "added that the war having been unfortunate, he would not altogether throw off the responsibility which lay upon him, but that he was bound to state that he had only obeyed a violently excited national feeling." "Bound to state," who bound him? True or false, when he was proposing so magnanimously to buy peace for France by the sacrifice of himself, what on earth bound him to put ready primed into Count Bismarck's hand the great argument which that able stat sman has always known how to use against the new Government which repudiates the responsibility of the war? It was only another piece of helpless vacillation. The Emperor first thought he would sacrifice himself to excuse France, and then thought he would excuse himself a little at the expense of France, and, as usual, cancelled all the meaning of his own actions. aimed at doing "something great" in the | cannot believe that a man without birth, little spirit of conscious trepidation. His or wealth, or long experience can be a fitonly hope for the campaign required swift- ting ruler for a great nation even in the ness and decision at a time when every throes of a Revolution. Add to his want branch of the military service was dis- of "blood," of position, and of years, the organized and corrupt. At the first blow he lapsed into fatalism and threw up his hand. He lacked energy to claim his legal authority either in the Army or in the State. He threw cold water on every plan that was adopted, but did not prevent its adoption. He stood by to paralyze his Generals, and when he surrendered his sword to save France, could not refrain from teaching Count Bismarck how to point a sword at the heart of the France he was trying to save. Truly may the French say of their late Emperor, after reading this marvellous confession, "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." The logical corollary of such a document as the Emperor's de-men. If M. Gambetta were an English fence is a formal abdication. From The Spectator. It is quite natural that M. Leon Gambetta, stoutish Marseillaise advocate of thirty-five, with the look of a traffic-manager, and Dictator of France outside Paris, should have some difficulty in obtaining recognition even from those Englishmen who are favourable to the French cause. He is an offence to all their instincts. That a man, not being a Prince by birth, should bear rule without "legal title, without patent from any King, or election by any Assembly, or sanction from any plébiscite, is to most Englishmen an annoyance; and that he should be a lawyer and, according to English precedents, a young man, is almost an affront. Englishmen groan, it is true, under the sway of the old, denounce the electoral system as fatal to young ability, and, whenever they have anything to do outside political or military business, select men under forty to do it; but nevertheless old men govern opinion in England as elsewhere, and the rise of a man not yet worn out to the highest position is to them an offence requiring to be excused. They follow a middle-class Premier with enthusiasm, and are delighted because he has transferred to the sons of the professionals a monopoly of administrative work; but still in their hearts they fact that he belongs to the race which gave Napoleon to France, and that he is still essentially a Southerner, a man of superficially impulsive emotion and lyrical utterance and fiery temper, who, if he thinks a General a traitor, says so without inquiry, and it is easy to understand why Englishmen cannot appreciate or even endure M. Leon Gambetta, are inclined to defend Marshal Bazaine because he has been denounced by that "young despot," and are half pleased at reverses they yet dislike because they prove that his Southern sanguineness of speech is so little justified by events. We have nothing to say, of course, against their impression, based as it is on a perfectly honest ignorance that there can be men, and considerable men, who are not in the least like English man, and yet wrote and spoke as he does, the chances that he would be a fool in action would be overwhelming; but being what he is, an energetic Southener, trained to write and speak for a Southern multitude, it may be expedient, despite English impressions, to look a little deeper than his words to find him. And so looking, we see, or think we see, a personage who is not the English idea of M. Gambetta at all, but one entirely different. Judging by visible facts alone, we discern in M. Gambetta a man of a type common among Italian politicians and men of business, men who are superficially fussy and oratorical, or even vulgar, with nothing about them indicating power except steady eyes and square brows; but who have nevertheless a faculty of succeeding, of choosing men, and of impressing themselves upon other men. That M. Gambetta possesses this last faculty in an unusual degree is selfevident. Of legal title to rule France he has in the English sense of legality not a shadow. Of moral title to take his special position as Minister both of War and of the Interior he had only this, that General Trochu considered him, on the whole, the fittest man for those offices. His colleagues in Tours might fairly have been jealous of him as a recruit who had superseded veterans, his subordinates in the War Department might reasonably have distrusted him as a civilian who never saw a field-piece. He had immediately and directly to rule the most exacting, self opinionated, and independent body of ably the last spurt of a resistance which, men in the world, the General officers since the tide of victory seems to turn, has of the old French Army, - men who throughout France become impossible. disliked him as a Republican, dreaded him The mutineers were treated as mutineers, as a Red, and detested him as a Pékin. enveloped by more faithful troops, comYet from the moment when he dropped, pelled to produce their ringleaders, to see tired out with a journey by balloon, them shot, and to march on, in their hearts into his chair in the old Archiepiscopal recognizing that the State was in France Palace of Tours, and announced that he supreme once more. The second task was was invested with full powers to de- still more difficult,- to re-affirm once for fend the country, no one throughout all the vital principle forgotten for twenty France has seriously disputed his author- years in France, that a General is a serity. His colleagues have become his vant of the State, as much bound to obey clerks, and have as his clerks reorganized orders as the humblest gendarme. That the Army Intendance till complaints of task involved in the midst of a war a quardeficient supplies have all but disap- rel with the men of the sword. Under the peared. The Treasury was empty, but he Emperor every French General has felt refilled it. The arsenals were half empty, himself an entity, a personage, a man with but one great army, perhaps two, have a separate position in the great Club which now artillery, horses, gunners, and breech- kept the Emperor on his throne, and has loaders. The loan in England, the im- repudiated almost in words the notion of mense contract for arms with America, obedience to any civil authority whatever. the still greater contracts in France itself The future historian of France will be able for artillery, provisions, carts, and clothes, to show that many of the disasters of this were all arranged by himself, and are all great war had no other cause than the "drawing," the actual cash, goods, tran- bickerings and jealousies of the Generals, port, munitions, which were not in being their intense sense of their individual two months ago, being there to-day at rights and privileges. So ineradicable was General D'Aurelles' disposal. These were this evil spirit, the very root of insubordinacts within the competence of any ener- ation, that even within the fortnight a getic business man; but M. Gambetta had French General, General Cambriels, has three questions to decide of infinitely ventured to have and to act on a private greater importance to the future of France opinion that it was beneath his position to and of the war, and he has, to all appear- act with another French General, named ance, decided all successfully. First of all, Garibaldi,- that, in fact, he had, as a he had to determine by action, and not by "regular" soldier, a right to settle whom words, whether the Republicans or the the State should and should not accept as Reds were to conduct the war, whether he its allies. M. Gambetta met this spirit in would employ organization or anarchy as the only way in which it can be met anyhis grand weapon. Red in his energy and where,-by an inflexible assertion of the his impulsiveness, M. Gambetta is Repub- supremacy of the civil authority, by relican by brain, by virtue of that common- moving General after General without exsense which never in the highest whirl-planation or apology, by reducing officers, wind of his passion quite leaves an Italian; promoting officers and even-in defiance and he decided for the Republic. Lyons, of all traditions since Louis Philippe in Marseilles, Toulouse were in insurrection a moment of subserviency destroyed for the Red flag; to quarrel with it was, France by accepting the Law which feeble men said, to introduce civil war; abolished the right of the State to disbut M. Gambetta faced the danger, told miss an officer, and so made of the Army the Lyonnese Reds in so many words that a self-dependent Club-making officers, they were wicked fools, risked actual war until he had found the men who were at Marseilles, where a well-meaning Pre- prepared to obey the State, and who fect, weakened by English ideas about therefore, have for the first time stemmed bloodshed, had made himself agent of the the tide of French disaster. The Generals Ultras; and within two months from his reduced to reason, there still remained the arrival compelled every free city in greater task of reducing their soldiers to France, Lions and Marseilles included, to obedience. The difficulties in the way submit quietly to his agents. The respect- were enormous. Under the Empire the ables everywhere rose at his summons, officers had gradually become accustomed the anarchists have everywhere been to tolerate laxity, and found refuge from beaten, and the revolt of the Lyons Gardes resistance in isolation,- had, to use an exMobiles on their march westward is prob-pressive, though unjust phrase, become "afraid of the men," till they hardly dared issue an unpleasant command, till the tradition of obedience had disappeared, while the proclamation of the Republic had of itself destroyed the tradition of mere deference. Deference, at no time strong in a French Army, where the private may be the social superior of his officer, could not be restored; but obedience might be, and it was. Rising fully to the height of the situation, the stoutish Italian advocate who for the hour represented France decreed that in this supreme hour of danger every soldier guilty of disobedience, insubordination, or pillage should be treated as he would be in the Prussian Army, tried by court-martial of officers only and executed there and then. A stern hint was, at the same time, given to all general officers that this order had no limits, and was meant to be executed as Iwell as real, if they intended to remain in command. The new power, which exists as an ultimate power in every army in the world, was, therefore, relentlessly but justly applied, and executions, said to have exceeded 100 in number, completely restored discipline in the Army of the Loire, -discipline of the old and true kind, under which a soldier dare no more plunder the peasantry without orders than he dare retreat before the enemy without a signal. Correspondents raged and talked of discontent, and the certainty that D'Aurelles would be shot-as if that mattered but no army ever mutinied against discipline yet; the officers recovered their places and their confidence, the men found once more that they were led, and once again, for the first time since Wörth, it became possible to execute manoeuvres, and to move men swiftly without leaving onehalf of them behind. It had come to this with the French Army, that a march of ten miles a day reduced it to a disorganized crowd. The instrument of which the Prussians make such use, the field telegraph, has been organized; and finally, by the appointment of civil Commissaries, with absolute power of making requisitions, to accompany the Army, M. Gambetta has removed the last and most serious difficulty in the way of the Intendance, has enabled it to levy supplies from the country, without demoralizing the Army by employing soldiers in a task which, if left to them, degenerates into unauthorized plunder. As a result of all these decrees,' France has again an army which can fight a battle in the field. We have taken every fact in this article from the letters of men who are bitterly hostile to M. Gambetta; who consider him a foe of the army, an upstart, and a lunatic; who are never tired of shrieking for a military dictator, and consider that France is lost because her representative "looks like a bourgeois," a remark, by the way, which is only true, so far as it is true, of so many French and Italian statesmen, who are apt to want the impassiveness most Englishmen and all Germans of rank are accustomed to affect. And we ask our readers deliberately whether the man who has done all this for his country, who in two months has re-established order in the great cities and discipline in the armies of France; who, amidst unheard-of-disasters, has struggled against national despair, with one hand beating down anarchists, and with the other building up armies, and who, in the very midst of a work which he believed to be on the edge of success, halted to accept an armistice he detested because his beleaguered colleagues had approved it—a man, that is, who has displayed the energy of a Jacobin and the self-restraint of an English Cabinet Minister - is a man to be so utterly despised? Our prayer is that when England's hour of danger shall arrive, we also may find such a man, with the one additional quality of silence. WE gain some notion, says the Gardener's Chronicle, of what a siege means when we learn from Paris that the veteran director of the Jardin des Plantes, the well-known chemist, Chevreul- aptly called, from his researches into the nature of fatty substances," the king of the fatty acids," has placed himself at the head of a brigade composed of employés of the Museum, and betaken himself to the fortifications. M. Delaunay, the Director of the Observatory, and M. Milne-Edwards, have marched to the scene of action at the head of nearly the whole of the officers and servants of the Academy of Sciences and the Muscum. What should we think here in London if the chief librarian of the British Museum, with Professor Owen and Mr. J. J. Bennett as his aides, took the field with their subordinates and occupied Shooter's Hill, or if the director at Kew, with his staff, took upon themselves the defence of Richmond Hill? And yet this is what it has come to in Paris. 1 and wept for more than two hours. I had spent IN A CELLAR AT STRASBURG.-A French paper gives the following account of the experiences of one of the inhabitants of Strasburg during the siege:-"I had been established in Strasburg for many years, and my affairs had never been so prosperous as they were when the war broke out. On the approach of the enemy I sent away my wife and family, but could not leave my warehouses and shops, lest when the town was taken they should be given up to pillage. The first eight days all went well, the quarter I inhabited seemed to be spared; but on the ninth day a shell exploded in front of my house and broke all the windows on the ground floor. I thought it prudent from that time to take refuge in my cellar. I had some provis- FLUID LENSES. AN invention has been pitions there, so that I seldom went out of it. I ented by Mr. Woodward, of Baltimore, C.S., spent my days and evenings in reading, little which consists in bending circular discs of glass thinking what was about to befall me. On Sat- to any curvature, either spherical or paraboli urday, the 10th, about mid-day, while I was cal, and afterwards cementing and firmly secur taking a meal, I heard a tremendous noise over- ing them together by means of rings or bands head. I ran to the stairs to ascertain the of metal, or other suitable material, thus formamount of damage doubtless caused by a shell ing cells for holding fluids, whereby a fluid lens, falling into my house. I drew back terrified. or any combination of fluid lenses, may be made The entrance of the cellar was stopped up by of any required focus, and of a size much larger portions of the wall. The house had fallen in, than can be made of solid glass; and, by means and I was buried alive. What passed through of the spherical or parabolically curved glasses, my mind in the first hour of my captivity I can- the metallic rebated rings, and system of cenot adequately describe. I had fits of dumb an-menting which are employed, a combina ion of ger, to which general exhaustion succeeded. By degrees I came to myself, for I must confess I completely lost my head; I collected my ideas, and thought I remembered having during the day brought down a petroleum lamp. I felt my way to the piece of furniture on which I believed I had placed it, and by good fortune there it was. I lighted it instantly. It was then that I realized my true situation; all round me there were ruins; the staircase no longer existed; I could no longer deceive myself; the house had fallen in and this cellar was to be my tomb. To clear the rubbish on that side was THE result of the experiments at Woolwich in my only hope, and I began it with the fury of reference to war balloons is that it has been despair. Every brick I took away made others found that a height of 100 fathoms at horizontal fall; the walls crumbled continually, and I was distance of 600 fathoms from the enemy would from one moment to another threatened with enable observers to secure the widest expanse destruction by the ruins. Then my lamp went of view. It is ascertained that captive balout for want of oil, and for a time I gave up all loons attain stability. The balloon having taken hope; but the instinct of self-preservation pre- a statonary position, eight cameras and lenses vailed, and I set to work again in a sort of rage. spread round the country at equal distances enI al been working, as it seemed to me, more able the country to be photographed. The inthan two days, when the ceiling suddenly fell in; clination and length of the cord to keep the a brick struck me on the heal, and I fainted. balloon in the same stratum of air was found to How long I remained insensible I cannot tell. be easily calculable. By the new system of milWhen I reopened ny eyes I perceived an open-itary telegraphy for field service telegraph wires ing above my head; the stars were shining; it can be carried through the air from terrafirma was night. I suffered horribly, and dared not to a balloon, and the wire can be paid out as move for fear of producing a fresh fall of masonry. I waited for day in mortal anxiety. As soon as I could realize my position hope returned. I made a heap of the rubbish all round me, and clinging to a beam of the ceiling, I raised myself out of this cellar which had so nearly been my grave. Once out of it, I again gave way. When I came to myself once more, I crouched down among the ruins of my abode cells may be formed for holding fluids of differ ent indices of refraction, thus forming a fluid lens which will overcome both spherical and chromatic aberration in its own construction, and also whereby reflectors can be made of any of the precise and exact curvatures mentioned, the shells of glass being silvered like ordinary mirrors. fast as the balloon sails; and two or more bal loons can be kept in communication with each other, so that telegraphic operations can be made from the balloon to head-quarters and thence to the base of operations. It is believed that war balloons will be manufactured at the Royal Arsenal, and that officers of Royal Engineers will be trained in their use. Nature. |