In involuntary admiration, the Captain gazed into his bold, handsome face, disfigured by many passions, but lit up at the moment by an expression of determination which approached the sublime.

"Leave the brigantine," continued Holmes, waving him off. "Unless my decks are clear in five minutes, every soul on board goes to judgment. You have a lady on board, and passengers; I give you a choice. Choose now!"

The tone and mien of the man were irresistible, and the stern despair of the pirate carried the conviction of his readiness to perform the fearful act, regardless of consequences. Captain Wilder thought for an instant, and decided.

"We will go," he said.

"In five minutes," returned Holmes, as he drew a heavy gold watch from his pocket and held it in his hand, while his pistol pointed steadily downwards.

In less than five minutes, the crew of the 'Greyhound,' in obedience to the Captain's order, had left the brigantine, taking with them their wounded comrades, and the bodies of those who had fallen. The pirate crew, of whom scarcely one seemed unwounded, watched them with wondering, almost stupified, glances, as they leant on the bulwarks and guns trying to staunch the blood from their wounds, in many cases of a very ghastly character, and looking round on the horrible scene on their small deck, which was strewn thickly with dead and wounded men in every attitude of pain and horror. With some difficulty the brig got clear of the rigging of the pirate's brigantine, and was allowed by the Captain to drift slowly away while the wounded men were attended to.

Not until then did they see the form of Holmes upon the deck. He looked round him and laughed a loud and savage laugh as he shook his fist at the retiring vessel. Suddenly the idea seemed to strike him that perhaps he could not be heard at the distance at which he was, for seizing a speaking trumpet, he shouted, in a tone of triumph

"Tell the merchants of Boston to keep good watch over their ships while the 'Flying Dolphin' skims the seas."

All eyes were turned on the bold villain; but even as the last accent fell on their ear, a long low muttering sound like distant thunder startled them; and the next moment, with a roar that was almost deafening, the Flying Dolphin' was seen to rise as though about to spring from the water, and then all was blotted out in smoke and flame.

The smoke-cloud rose from the deep-not a sign of the rover or his ship was visible on the glassy sea. His prize, too, was unconscious; but she lay in the arms of her father, and it was her husband who bent over her.

REVIEW S.

THE INVASION OF THE CRIMEA by ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE. London :-William Blackwood and Sons.

1863.

THE Invasion of the Crimea has at length found an historian. One, too, who is in every respect what could be desired for a task of such extreme difficulty as it undoubtedly was. The powers and qualifications which the historian of any period must bring with him to his task, if he would execute it in a worthy manner, are many and rare; but the task of writing the history now in question was one of peculiar difficulty. This difficulty has been fully recognised, and, perhaps, we should say therefore, fully overcome by Mr. Kinglake. That he did so recognise the difficulty needs, we imagine, but little proof beyond the fact of his nine years' labour in the attempt to master it. That he has overcome the difficulty fully and once for all needs no further proof than an attentive study of the volumes before us. It will be at once apparent wherein the peculiar difficulty of this subject consisted. A history of the Crimean war, which merely detailed the operations conducted by the respective Commanders, and chronicled their success or failure, would in no degree have fulfilled the expectations or satisfied the just requirements of the literary world of the day. Mr. Kinglake's two volumes do, so far as they go, fulfil these expectations, and satisfy these requirements in the most complete manner. One disadvantage, however, it must be confessed Mr. Kinglake brings with him to the task of writing the history of the Crimean war. That disadvantage lies in the accident of his mental constitution, which has, among other things, made him an uncommonly good hater. This hatred-a less strong word would be inappropriate we feel sure he has lavished in a remarkable degree upon the present Emperor of the French. This defect in the writer has, however, taken no one by surprise. The literary world was well aware of this when it tacitly assigned to Mr. Kinglake the task of writing the history of this very important epoch in our military annals. Nor do we think it can fairly be said that Mr. Kinglake has allowed his feelings to carry him even so far as might have been anticipated. It is true that a large part of the first of the two volumes before us is devoted by him to the consideration of the career of the French Emperor; but if we consider the confessedly large share which France, that is, Louis Napoleon, took in bringing about the war, we shall see that he could scarcely have avoided devoting a very large space to the consideration of the course which had led to the position of the man, who, in following out the same career, was forced into a war in the East by the necessities of his position. Still, whilst so exonerating Mr. Kinglake from any intention of going beyond the line of strict historical justice, we cannot deny that in this searching examination, which might itself be most necessary, the historian's feelings have led him to conduct the inquiry in a way which must be characterized as unnecessarily hostile to the Emperor personally. This is the more

evident from the perfection of the execution so conspicuous throughout these delightful volumes. If ever a public man was subjected to a literary gibbetting, the Emperor of the French has suffered that fate. Perhaps we shall better express our impression by calling it a literary crucifixion. The painful effect of the process is almost inconceivably heightened by the bitter calmness and pitiless deliberation of the operator. The following description of the state of Louis Napoleon during the terrible scenes of the Coup d' Etat, which were conducted for him, according to Kinglake, by braver men, whilst he himself cowered in the recesses of the palace, at whose gates he kept a travelling carriage ready to start at a moment's notice in case of failure, together with a guard, fully bribed to his service, to act as escort, is a good example:-"The state of the President seems to have been very like what it had been in former times at Strasbourg and at Boulogne, and what it was years afterwards at Magenta and Solferino. He did not on any of these five occasions so give way to fear as to prove that he had less self-control in moments of danger than the common run of peaceful citizens; but on all of them he showed that, though he had chosen to set himself heroic tasks, his temperament was ill fitted for the hour of battle and for the crisis of an adventure. For, besides that (in common with the bulk of mankind), he was without resources and presence of mind when he imagined that danger was really quite close upon him; his complexion, and the dismal looks he wore in times of trial, were always against him. From some defect, perhaps, in the structure of the heart or the arterial system, his skin, when he was in a state of alarm, was liable to be suffused with a greenish hue. This discolouration might be a sign of high moral courage, because it would tend to show that the spirit was warring with the flesh; but still it does not indicate that condition of body and soul which belongs to a true King of men in the hour of danger, and enables him to give heart and impulsion to those around him. It is obvious, too, that an appearance of this sort would be damping to the ardour of the bystanders." Our meaning will, we hope, be made clear by this extract. It is tolerably evident that however interesting as a study for the physician, the colour of the skin of Louis Napoleon was by no means requisite to the right comprehension of the state of Europe. To this, and many passages of like animus, the historian has undoubtedly been led by his own strong antipathies towards the Emperor. The mistake was an easy one, between what historical justice required and what personal dislike permitted. This then, we admit, is a defect. It is, however, the one defect of the book so far as yet laid before the public.

It is scarcely possible to speak too highly of the unwearied labour, the untiring research, and the brilliant writing which the work displays. The same genius which was so apparent in Eöthen is to be discovered in every page of the "Invasion of the Crimea." Whether the historian is describing a view in the Crimea, searching into the hidden cause of some important movement in the great drama, or sketching the character of one of the great actors in that drama, the impression of genius meets us. The brilliant colouring of the description is not more striking than the calm judicial power of analysis, sometimes tinged by a keen sense of the ludicrous nor does that, again, exceed the wonderful fulness and clearness of the medallion-like portraits which he strikes off of the great statesmen and warriors of his picture.

Nothing is perhaps more wonderful than his power of striking out, as it were, at a blow, the entire likeness of some actor in his drama, whose name is familiar, it may be, to us all, but of whom we have no personal impression. This want Mr. Kinglake supplies in a marvellous way. As, for instance, in his sketch of the commander-in-chief of the French armies in the expedition-Marshal St. Arnaud :-"He impersonated, with singular exactness, the idea which our fathers had in their minds when they spoke of what they called 'a Frenchman; for although (by cowing the rich and filling the poor with envy) the great French Revolution had thrown a gloom on the national character, it left this one man untouched. He was bold, gay, reckless, and vain, but beneath the mere glitter of the surface there was a great capacity for administrative business, and a more than common willingness to take away human life. In Algerine warfare, he had proved himself, from the first, an active, enterprising officer, and, in later years, a brisk commander. He was skilled in the duties of a military governor, knowing how to hold tight, under martial law a conquered or a half-conquered province. The empire of his mind over his actions was so often interrupted by bodily pain and weakness, that it is hard to say whether, if he had been gifted with health, he would have been a firm, steadfast man; but he had violent energies, and a spirit so elastic, that, when for any interval the pressure of misery or of bodily pain was lifted off, he seemed as strong and as joyous as though he had never been crushed. He chose to subordinate the lives and the rights of other men to his own advancement. Therefore he was ruthless; but not in other sense cruel. No one, as he himself said, could be more good natured. In the interval between the grave deeds that he did, he danced and sung. To men in authority, no less than to women, he paid court with flattering stanzas and songs. He had extraordinary activity of body, and was highly skilled in the performance of gymnastic feats; he played the violin; and, as though he were resolved to be in all things the Frenchman of the old time, there was once at least, in his life, a time of depression, when (to the astonishment of the good priest, who fell on his knees and thanked God as for a miracle wrought,) he knelt down and confessed himself, seeking comfort and absolution from his church." From this extract our readers may, we think, form some idea of the graphic power of Mr. Kinglake's pen, when he stamps out, as it were at a blow, the sharp impression of one of the actors in his historical drama. Few writers, it must be at once acknowledged, could, in so few words, have given an idea so sharp and so complete, of a character so foreign to our ordinary ideas as that of Marshal St. Arnaud. The second volume of this remarkable work is employed upon the Invasion of the Crimea proper. The first had been taken up with the causes preliminary to the actual war. In this volume the powers of the writer, so remarkable at all times, find a new field, and one wonderfully suited for their display. As we are not military men, and have no pretensions to either practical or theoretical knowledge of military science, we are not in a position to judge Mr. Kinglake's book when it deals with such questions. As, however, the historian rather shrinks from pronouncing opinions himself on this very ground, there is not a great deal that comes strictly under the head of military science in the book. The embarkation for the great expedition; the huge fleet of the modern Argonauts on their way; the difficult but splendidly successful landing in the Crimea; the strange and

exciting march through a country, and among a people unknown to the invaders; the distant visions of uncouth-looking horsemen on the rising grounds as they approached them; and the strange and solemn pause of the hostile armies on the brow overlooking the Alma, so marked as to be broken by the casual neigh of an impatient war horse: all are told with a fidelity of description and a mastery of language which leave nothing to be desired.

The actual battle of the Alma closes the volumes before us; and never, perhaps, has such a description of a battle been penned. To military readers, Napier may be equally clear; but, to the civilian, we doubt if there has ever been afforded so just an idea of a great battle. With the description of the breaking up of the great column on the heights of Alma, before the attack of the Fusiliers, we must close this short and imperfect notice. Prince Gortschakoff had striven to make the column charge. It was in vain. He rode off:-"Portions of the column-mainly those in the centre and in the rear-became discomposed and unsettled. Numbers of men moved a little one way or another, and of these, some looked as though they stepped a pace backwards; but no man, as yet, turned round to face the rear. However, although the movement of each soldier, taken singly, was trifling and insignificant, yet even the little displacement of many men at the same time was shaking the structure. Plainly the men must be ceasing to feel that the column they stood in was solid. The ranks, that had been straight as arrows, became bent and wavy. The Russian officers well understood these signs. Presently, their gestures grew violent, and more than one was seen to go and seize a wavering soldier by the throat. But in vain; for seemingly, by some law of its own nature, rather than under any new stress of external force, the column began to dissolve. The hard mass became fluid. It still cohered; but what had been, as it were, the outlines of a wall, were becoming like the outlines of a cloud. First some, then more, then all, turned round. Moving slowly, as though discontented with its fate, the column began to fall back."

THE month of March has been unusually barren of any books of mark in the region of popular novels. There is scarcely any work of consequence in this, the most prolific, walk of modern literature, even when we take into account the re-prints from magazines.

"Tales of all Countries," by Anthony Trollope, a second series of which have just been published in one volume, is nearly the only book of its class by an author of note which does not appear as a re-publication. It is, as its name would indicate, a collection of short tales totally unconnected with one another, and therefore, of necessity, wanting much of that concentration of interest which a novel oy the same hand would undoubtedly possess. That they are products of the same mind that conceived and wrought out "Barchester Towers" and "Framley Parsonage" is, however, at once evident. The stories, though short, are excellent, and are moreover distinguished by much of that almost feminine delicacy of touch for which Trollope is already noted.

Of reprints from magazines, probably the most popular will be "Verner's Pride," by Mrs. Wood, reprinted from "Once-a-week." The story is of the mildly sensational class into which Mrs. Wood has been falling-we suspect through excessive haste-ever since her great success