We bow to this decision of one of that brilliant nation : we cannot be indifferent. We cannot rest in tranquillity when other nations re-arrange the boundaries of Europe. Were we only to oppose gentleness to our aggressive neighbours, we know from an old fable what the result would be, The proposition of one enthusiastic Quaker, that we should let an army of fifty thousand men land and march on to London, and welcome, but not oppose them, and so shame them out of their outrage, will not hold water. We sigh, therefore, but buckle on our armour.

Man is a splendid animal, and, following his animal propensities, cannot get on without war; nor will he do so till all the kingdoms of all ages, and all the armies that ever were mustered, all that Cæsar led or Nero oppressed, all that Xerxes assembled, the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies enrolled, the Consuls, Alaric, Attila, Mahomet, Genghis Khan, the Crusaders, and the Kings of the East and West and their generals, from Narses and Belisarius to Turenne, Marlborough, Napoleon, and Wellington, enlisted and led to battle-till all these rise again from those graves into which ambition or oppression hath hurried them, till then man will still, with periodic madness, indulge in war.

THE BARBARITIES OF WAR.

M

ANY months have now elapsed since the Federals, with a determination and persistency we cannot but admire, commenced the siege of Charleston

a siege henceforward to be celebrated for the amazing obstinacy and bravery of the defenders-and that the Federal general experimented with a new engine, Greek fire. The purport of this "Greek fire” is to set in flames houses, hospitals, churches, and the city generally, and to act upon the combatants by injuring the non-combatants (by the way, we did not hear that Mr. Cobden, Mr. Bright, or any of the peace party, sent word to their friends in America that they had better not employ such barbarous means of fighting); and in pure self-defence the Confederates have been fain to go to their own inventors for the same or a like combustible. Here is something which, ten years ago, we should have read with horror :-" On

near the

Bay Road, Captain Travis made two distinct experiments of his fire or composition, using on each occasion less than half a pint of the preparation—a fluid. were eminently successful. Instantaneously, on being exposed

Both

to the air, the fluid becomes a blaze of fire, with heat intense, resembling that of a liquid metal in the smelting process. A pile of green wood, into which it was thrown, ignited immediately, like tinder. Without delay, within ten seconds, a number of buckets full of water were thrown upon the flames, a dense volume of smoke ascended, the hissing and singing sound of a quenched fire was heard; but lo! the burning fluid licked up the water, destroying its oxygen; the fluid seemingly added to the flame, and the wood cracked and hummed, and the flames arose again defiantly unquenchable. On the occasion of these experiments 'Travis's Greek fire' burned for something over a quarter of an hour in full vigour and force. Its heat is intense, and flies at once into the body of the substance it touches."

From another quarter of the globe we read, about the same time, that a British admiral, with an exceedingly Dutch name, had demanded from the Japanese compensation for the murder of Mr. Richardson, an English subject. Now this demand was fair enough, and so far so clear. The Japanese paid the compensation, but, on their refusing to complete the transaction by a punishment of the murderers, the admiral, as a guarantee, seized three steamers. Upon this the Japanese, being previously prepared, fired upon the British ships, killed two excellent officers and several men, and knocked our war vessels about very seriously. Of course Jack Tar replied, silenced the forts, and in the course of events, although it is evident that there was no direct attempt to do so, he set fire to the town. Thereon Mr. Cobden wrote a most bitter letter,

asserting that Englishmen are disgracefully savage, and comparing and contrasting also the American and English methods of making war.

Now we are merely debating the question. We are on neither side. The art of war is of course a murderous art; and as all arts are excellent or futile merely in the measure that they are efficient, the more murderous the agents he employs, the better the warrior-that seems to be the gist of the popular argument. “We do not want a little war; we do not want an ineffective war: we want," cry the Americans, "the Union to be restored, at all costs. We cannot restore it by peace; we resort to war : that war must be effective, if we kill out all the rebels. We must hold the place." This is evidently the more general feeling of the North. Their best preacher, their most scholarly novelist, and their highest poet, have all spoken and written for Union at any price—nothing else, but Union. In one of his recent poems, on the sinking of the Cumberland by the Merrimac, Longfellow wrote

"Ho! brave hearts that went down in the seas,

Ye are at peace in the troubled stream!
Ho! brave land! with hearts like these,

Thy flag, that is rent in twain,

Shall be one again,

And without a seam !"

These are fine lines; but the spirit which would cement a fictitious union with so much blood is hardly to be praised. The comparison of the Stars and Stripes with the Saviour's coat is in bad taste.

As we have seen, America is not alone in her barbarities. In Poland lately war was carried on with so much brutality, that her chief city, Warsaw, was sore of war indeed. Not only are little girls of ten, twelve, and fifteen years of age imprisoned, but they are put to the torture (that is, they are whipped severely), until they tell the names of the guests whom their fathers entertain. It does not matter whether you rack their bones, pinch their thumbs, or whip their bodies; you force confession out of them by torture. Formerly, in our good old times, we in some cases tortured people by the mere sight of the rack. When Felton declared, nobly and boldly, that he alone had plotted against the Duke of Buckingham, whom he slew, he was taken into a darkened chamber, and shown the rack. "Men, when they are tortured, Mr. Secretary," he said to Lord Dorset, "sometimes reveal strange things. If you put me to the rack, I will accuse you, my Lord of Dorset, and nobody else." It is to be wished that some of the young Polish ladies would imitate Felton, and thus escape torture.

When Mr. Cobden denounced the chance shell which set fire to the Japanese houses, and passed in dumb silence the Greek fire of the more educated barbarians; when our friendly allies the Russians returned the most diplomatic, polite, and yet insulting replies, to our suggestions of amendment, and declared that theirs was a paternal government (under which, by the way, defenceless peasants were found in the woods with about eighteen bayonet-wounds in each, and an indefinite number of stabs and bruises), we may be sure