September 6.

The English fleet have now nearly all left. They form a long serpentine line, about six miles long, and on an average one mile deep. They have kept time beautifully, maintaining ship with ship nearly the precise distances from each other as when they started. The French fleetdoes not appear to have been so quick in embarking, owing, perhaps, to a want of aptitude in the trade of transporting human beings, which is familiar to us.

Noon. We have weighed anchor, and have been taken in tow, with several other small craft, by a steamer.

Nine P.M.-We have cast anchor out of sight of land. In every direction, far as the eye in the fading light can see, nothing but ships. It seems the same scene as in Varna Bay, only we have no shore boundary.

September 10.

Four P.M.-We have been sailing since the 6th along with the fleet without any incident occurring worthy of being mentioned. We saw land yesterday near about Odessa. We have had on the whole fine weather, with a light breeze. We have just been signalled to anchor.

September 13.

We are now off Kalamita Bay. A town is visible on the land, apparently of considerable size. It is Eupatoria. The coast seems covered with windmills, so that I suppose it is a good corn country, otherwise it is not very promising, as it looks low and swampy. We are at present at anchor with the rest of the fleet, except the Spitfire steamer, which has run in nearer the shore, and seems engaged sounding the bay, so that I suppose they are contemplating landing here. The Spitfire must be near enough to see the good people of Eupatoria, who are, no doubt, considerably interested in watching her proceedings.

The Spitfire has been signalling for some time, and now we notice five other war steamers approaching her; one we recognise as the Caradoc, in which, I understand, Lord Raglan is. The Caradoc has a flag of truce flying. We are in expectation of signals to land, but as the day is now drawing on, we suppose it will be deferred till to-morrow. steamers have returned.

The

Seven P.M.-We are signalled to be under weigh at two A.M. to-morrow, and to steer S.S.E. for eight miles.

September 14.

At two o'clock this morning rockets were sent up from the French admiral's ship as a signal to move. Accordingly, we proceeded slowly on. At daybreak the fleet offered the most imposing spectacle, moving deliberately as if one motive power impelled the entire armada. We cast anchor at seven o'clock, and the disenibarkation immediately commenced. If our division, that is the French, were rather laggard at the embarkation, we have made up for it by our alacrity in landing. The first boatload reached the shore by seven exactly, and the men in it immediately landed and hoisted the French flag. After eight o'clock the general disembarkation commenced, and I think in about half an hour the French must have landed eight thousand men. It was interesting to observe them deploying as they landed, and spreading over the beach, which, at first quite solitary, has gradually become black with men.

September 15. The English must have passed a most miserable night, as they are only now landing their tents, which, as the rain is over, must rather increase their murmurs than abate them. Even the Turks have managed better, as we see their tents covering several square miles to the north. Many an ague must have been caught last night in the English army, and the cholera, which had been disappearing, will have got another chance, of which no doubt he will avail himself.

I thought the disembarking had been over yesterday, but it is still going on, and the beach is swarming like a wasp's nest, or rather like an ant colony, since every one, though running about in apparent disorder, nevertheless assists the general operation. The spirit of order and discipline reigns throughout, and gradually the different regiments are grouping themselves together. As yet, however, all are at ease," and in general engaged in the welcome task of cooking or eating breakfast. The tents are rising here and there in the English camp, specks of white canvas amidst the dense masses of the troops. We can make out sentries pacing at the entrance of some of them.

The horrible music of Scotland is beginning to be heard, mingled with the réveil of the bugle and the more measured performance of some regimental bands trying to beat their drums dry and blow some heat into their damp bodies.

Our troops are as gay as crickets, for, although the rain must have penetrated most of the tents, as it did those of the English, the sun is already hot enough to dry them, and the French are adepts in that philosophy which makes the best of circumstances.

A fine set of fellows they are in our mess, utterly reckless of the past, the present, or the future; model food for powder, with sharp, halfdeveloped features, like English faces, salted and smoked, but the expression is one of alacrity and confidence, of hope and ambition; for, unlike our troops, who fight under the cold shade of aristocracy, every French soldier now, as in the time of the first Napoleon, carries a possible marshal's bâton in his havresack.

I have accustomed myself to the lieutenant's French, or rather he adapts it to my comprehension, but his brother officers speak so volubly that I can only catch occasionally their meaning, but find it impossible to carry on conversation. So I sat silently and mused on the strange chance which has landed me in a camp tent, in the midst of French officers, with whom I am already hail fellow well met.

Not one of them, not even my friend the lieutenant, knows my name nor cares to know it, and not one individual in the whole French army has the smallest interest in my welfare; nay, not one solitary Frenchman in the wide domains of Louis Napoleon ever heard, or in all probability ever will hear, anything about me. Now, of the twenty-three million who thus ignore my existence, each individual is as full of his own importance as I am of mine, and, indeed, the greater number never having realised their real isolation amidst the whole body of the lessees of the earth, must have a much greater idea of their importance than I have. Few, like me, have sailed two months in a bum-boat, and after having had their reflective powers morbidly developed, been suddenly flung, friendless and alone, into the multitude of strangers.

Therefore, no doubt fully twenty million fret and fume their petty hour on the stage of France, fully convinced that they are something, and thanking God, openly or tacitly, that they are not as other men. And why not? Let them enjoy their self-importance; let them fancy the cage in which they dwell to be the world, and the some dozen or two who know them by name, and who would eat, and drink, and sleep not the less though they were gone,-let them think these represent its inhabitants: their delusion is as good as any other; far better than any I have to offer in exchange.

Knowledge," says Solomon, "is more precious than rubies, and more to be desired than fine gold." But Solomon is not very consistent, and his own authority may often be quoted against him. He has also said that knowledge increaseth sorrow. For my own part, if there were any magazine or warehouse in which good comfortable delusions could be purchased, I would offer in barter all my rubies, which are none, and even a portion of my gold, though altogether it consists only of thirty sovereigns, and a credit for as many at Vienna. Ah, Solomon, if you had not been so completely désillusionné-if you could but have built a few castles in the air, like the temple of Jerusalem-if you could but have imagined a finer and brighter being than any of your six hundred wives and infinite concubines, you would have been a happier man, and not have written that first chapter in Ecclesiastes, nor gone after the gods of the heathen.

But delusions once dissipated are not to be reproduced. We get cold, and difficult to please; the pleasures of imagination are put aside with the toys of our childhood. We clothe ourselves with the homespun of convention and common sense, and buy our pleasures with the current coin of the realm, even though cheated twenty per cent. in the name of agio, as we are in the Crimea.

September 18.

Thanks to my civilian's dress, I am allowed to wander at will over the vast encampment, so that I am in all its localities, and can find my way from one part of the canvas city to another as easily as I do in Gloucester, which contains about half the population.

Shakspeare, with his happy choice of epithets, speaks of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war. The pomp needs no unfolding. Every one can imagine flags and trumpets, plumed Highlanders and glittering cavalry. They may see it at Astley's much grander than the reality; (!) but only they who have served a campaign will recognise the aptness of the other epithet, as describing the obtrusiveness and palpability of military importance. The circumstance of rich men and of men of rank, and in general of the whole class of dons, is in part ideal, and requires filling up by the imagination; but the circumstance of a colonel at the head of his regiment is a real fact, while generals and commanders seem to be Fates charged with the destiny of man. Nor is the circumstance, like the pomp, adventitious-a thing which may be dispensed with; it is involved in the very idea of an army, which could not exist without the chasms which military rank interposes between the different grades, making the highest somewhat awful and mysterious to the dazzled eyes of subalterns and soldiers.

But at present the circumstance of glorious war is nearly as highly

appreciated by the civilian as by the military man, for the interest attending the present contest is becoming more and more engrossing, and likely to put in the shade all other subjects. Before 1848 it was otherwise war and warriors were at a discount, and literature and science were the channels into which the impulse of the human race was thrown. But the interest directed towards war is the more intense. It is a simple subject on which every one can have some opinion, whereas while literature and science were in the ascendant the topics of interest were infinite in number, and, instead of converging towards one prominent idea, they radiated outwards to the wide circumference of knowledge. Only the philosopher of universal acquirements took any interest in the general progress. Scientific men, although interested in discovery in those sciences which they cultivated, took little account of the advance in other directions; while men of ordinary education, and the public in general, never thought of looking at the direction of the current down which they were insensibly floating. Nevertheless, the intellectual movement was worthy of attention and admiration, for never did war nor invasion so completely change the face of the world as did the progress of knowledge during the years intervening between Waterloo and 1848. If we were adequate to the task, we would like to give an analysis of this remarkable period, point out the leading lines of progress, and indicate the more important steps in advance which have been achieved. Not being able to accomplish this task, we make one general remark, namely, that the intellectual progress we have made brings into striking relief the disproportion between the length of human life and the immense apparatus of pursuits, businesses, knowledge, and relations which present themselves to man. The pomp of life is absurdly exaggerated as compared with its circumstance. The musicians are more numerous than the soldiers, and the banners and flags float so thick in the air they nearly hide the army; or, to alter the image, we seem to see the clothes of Micromegas laid out for Tom Thumb, or provisions sufficient for an army stored up for the use of a single soldier.

This disproportion was not so striking before Waterloo. Threescore years and ten seemed then a period of life well proportioned to the state of knowledge and variety of interests then in the world. And if we go still further back in history, the relation becomes inverted, and twenty years seem enough to exhaust the limited varieties of experience. Let us get still nearer the origin of man, when life becomes most simple, dwindling down to a pastoral or hunting state, and we see the duration of existence immeasurably extended, and the antediluvians, who transmitted through Noah neither sciences nor arts, enjoying an average period of life of five hundred years.

POSSIBILITIES.

BEYOND VISION.-III.

BY EDWARD P. ROWSELL,

WE wish we had the means of carrying out the following curious design. From the vilest haunt in London we should like to rescue the most degraded and depraved girl of about thirteen years of age whom we might be able to find. This miserable creature we should like to raise by slow degrees to the highest point of refinement. Tardily but completely we should remove from her every sign of her former condition, until at length we might introduce her to the world as an elegant, graceful, and accomplished young lady. It would be so strange to watch the progress of improvement. The exterior losing day by day its coarseness, the mind expanding, the heart softening, the crushed and deadened spirit rising and smiling in the new and heavenly light. How it would make us glow with pure pleasure to observe this battle between good and evil, between beauty and deformity, and watch the gradual incoming of happiness and peace where before wretchedness and vice had reigned supreme.

Now it might have been that we had had the power of gratifying this strange fancy. If we had, what a vast alteration would have occurred in the fate of some Susan Smith or Betsy Brown, revelling now in a polluted region of this great city. We will say that, roaming abroad one night, we had made a capture of Susan Smith in one of the hideous nooks about Southwark. We had found her as deplorable a specimen of misery and vice as could have been selected. And we had put her under the treatment we have sketched; and the results had been those we have imagined. Well, what then? Why, it would appear that Susan Smith might now be a virtuous, engaging, well-educated young woman. Yes, instead of what? Instead of being a blot upon the land and a curse-instead of lying at this moment, a despairing reprobate, on an hospital bed, to be quickly exchanged for a pauper's grave.

Reader, you must have heard plenty of charity sermons. And you must have remarked in sermons for penitentiaries, schools, and such institutions, the preacher has always laid immense stress upon the moral responsibility resting upon the good and the wealthy to reform and to teach the wicked and the ignorant among the poor. The pious advocate has almost gone the length of saying, that with you it will lie whether or no certain souls shall be saved. If you give so much money to a particular reformatory, a number of cases which cannot now be admitted will be instantly received, a great mercy now unavoidably withheld will be delightedly supplied, a vast blessing now of necessity kept back will be proffered with gladness, and will, most assuredly, be grasped with joy. And there is nothing extravagant in this. Doubtless it would seem that evil might be nearly uprooted from the land if the help extended to our backsliding or needy fellow-creatures were commensurate with their requirements. Vice would shrink and cower amazingly if virtue were fairly to buckle on her armour, and, girding herself with all the weapons with