Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 65, No. 400, February, 1849 - Various

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with illustrative plates; and those plates took an immense time, and were to cost an immense sum – but that cost was the affair of the Anti-Publisher Society. But how can I settle to work by myself? No sooner have I got into my room —penitus ab orbe divisus, as I rashly think – than there is a tap at the door. Now, it is my mother, who is benevolently engaged upon making curtains to all the windows, (a trifling superfluity that Bolt had forgotten or disdained,) and who wants to know how the draperies are fashioned at Mr Trevanion's: a pretence to have me near her, and see with her own eyes that I am not fretting; – the moment she hears I have shut myself up in my room, she is sure that it is for sorrow. Now it is Bolt, who is making book-shelves for my father, and desires to consult me at every turn, especially as I have given him a Gothic design, which pleases him hugely. Now it is Blanche, whom, in an evil hour, I undertook to teach to draw, and who comes in on tiptoe, vowing she'll not disturb me, and sits so quiet that she fidgets me out of all patience. Now, and much more often, it is the Captain, who wants me to walk, to ride, to fish. And, by St Hubert! (saint of the chase,) bright August comes – and there is moor-game on those barren wolds – and my uncle has given me the gun he shot with at my age – single-barrelled, flint lock – but you would not have laughed at it if you had seen the strange feats it did in Roland's hands – while in mine, I could always lay the blame on the flint lock! Time, in short, passed rapidly; and if Roland and I had our dark hours, we chased them away before they could settle – shot them on the wing as they got up.

      Then, too, though the immediate scenery around my uncle's was so bleak and desolate, the country within a few miles was so full of objects of interest – of landscapes so poetically grand or lovely; and occasionally we coaxed my father from the Cardan, and spent whole days by the margin of some glorious lake.

      Amongst these excursions, I made one by myself to that house in which my father had known the bliss and the pangs of that stern first love that still left its scars fresh on my own memory. The house, large and imposing, was shut up – the Trevanions had not been there for years – the pleasure-grounds had been contracted into the smallest possible space. There was no positive decay or ruin – that Trevanion would never have allowed; but there was the dreary look of absenteeship everywhere. I penetrated into the house with the help of my card and half-a-crown. I saw that memorable boudoir – I could fancy the very spot in which my father had heard the sentence that had changed the current of his life. And when I returned home, I looked with new tenderness on my father's placid brow – and blessed anew that tender helpmate, who, in her patient love, had chased from it every shadow.

      I had received one letter from Vivian a few days after our arrival. It had been redirected from my father's house, at which I had given him my address. It was short, but seemed cheerful. He said, that he believed he had at last hit on the right way, and should keep to it – that he and the world were better friends than they had been – and that the only way to keep friends with the world was to treat it as a tamed tiger, and have one hand on a crow-bar while one fondled the beast with the other. He enclosed me a bank-note which somewhat more than covered his debt to me, and bade me pay him the surplus when he should claim it as a millionnaire. He gave me no address in his letter, but it bore the post-mark of Godalming. I had the impertinent curiosity to look into an old topographical work upon Surrey, and in a supplemental itinerary I found this passage, "To the left of the beech-wood, three miles from Godalming, you catch a glimpse of the elegant seat of Francis Vivian, Esq." To judge by the date of the work, the said Francis Vivian might be the grandfather of my friend, his namesake. There could no longer be any doubt as to the parentage of this prodigal son.

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      "It must be admitted that Russian officers are second to those of no other nation, in thirst for distinction, and in honourable ambition, to awaken and stimulate which, innumerable means are employed. In no other army are the rewards for those officers who distinguish themselves in the field of so many kinds, and so lavishly dealt out. There are all manner of medals and marks for good service – crosses and stars of Saints George, Stanislaus, Vladimir, Andrew, Anna, and other holy personages; some with crowns, some with diamonds, peculiar distinctions on the epaulets and uniforms, &c. &c. I was once in a distinguished society, composed almost entirely of officers of the army of the Caucasus. Not finding very much amusement, I had the patience t

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"It must be admitted that Russian officers are second to those of no other nation, in thirst for distinction, and in honourable ambition, to awaken and stimulate which, innumerable means are employed. In no other army are the rewards for those officers who distinguish themselves in the field of so many kinds, and so lavishly dealt out. There are all manner of medals and marks for good service – crosses and stars of Saints George, Stanislaus, Vladimir, Andrew, Anna, and other holy personages; some with crowns, some with diamonds, peculiar distinctions on the epaulets and uniforms, &c. &c. I was once in a distinguished society, composed almost entirely of officers of the army of the Caucasus. Not finding very much amusement, I had the patience to count all the orders and decorations in the room, and found that upon the breasts of the thirty-five military guests, there glittered more than two hundred stars, crosses, and medals; on some of the generals' coats were more orders than buttons. As it usually happens, the desire for these distinctions increases with their possession. The Russian who has obtained a medal leaves no stone unturned to get a knight's cross, and when the cross is at his button-hole, he is ravenous for the glittering star, and ready to make any sacrifice to obtain it." —Der Kaukasus, &c., vol. ii. p. 98.

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"Amongst the Caucasian tribes, the interest of Europe has attached itself especially to the Circassians, because they are regarded (in Urquhart's words) 'as the only people, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, ever ready to revenge an injury and retort a menace proceeding from the Czar of the Muscovites.' Urquhart's opinion, which is shared by the great majority of the European public, is not quite correct, the Circassians not being the only combatants against Russia. Indeed it so happens that, for the last four years, they have kept tolerably quiet in their mountains, contenting themselves with small forays into the Cossack country on the Kuban; whilst the warlike Tshetshens in the eastern Caucasus, their chief, Chamyl, at their head, have given the Russian army much more to do. But, in the absence of official intelligence, and of regular newspaper information concerning the events of the war, people in Europe have got accustomed to admire and praise the Circassians as the only defenders of Caucasian freedom against Russian aggression; and even in St Petersburg the intelligent public hold the famous Chamyl to be chief of the Circassians, with whom he has nothing whatever to do." —Der Kaukasus, &c., vol. ii. p. 22-3.

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The reference in this instance is more particularly to the land of the Ubiches and Tchigetes, two tribes that abide south of Circassia Proper, and whose language differs from those of the Circassians and Abchasians, their neighbours to the north and south. The general medium of conversation amongst the various Caucasian tribes is the Turkish-Tartar dialect, current amongst most of the dwellers on the shores of the Black and Caspian Seas.

4

Longworth's Circassia, vol. i. p. 1589.

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