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(Previous
Page) to protrude was to expose the gun
to injury, and would have required so large a port-hole that a shell might
easily have been thrown in by an experienced gunner. To obviate these
difficulties,
Mr. Ericsson invented a machine, of which, for obvious reasons, we
give no description. The following account of the experiment from the Herald
will be read with interest:
On arriving at a point opposite
Fort Washington the Passaic was headed in toward the western shore of the river,
under the towering cliffs of the Palisades, when, selecting an uninhabited spot,
it was determined to see the effect against the rocky bulwarks of the noble
Hudson. The steamer was stopped, and the 15-inch gun was loaded with twenty
pounds of powder and a hollow shot. After the gun was run out to the side of the
turret and all was ready, it was fired, the ball ricochetting along the water a
few times, then striking the rocks, causing them to fly like so much chaff,
followed by a terrible echo, which in its force resembled the explosion of a
powder-mill. The noise outside of the turret was terrible, while inside there
was no concussion of any account, and the noise certainly did not exceed that
which would have been produced by the firing of an ordinary pistol.
Every one was surprised and
unwilling at the first trial to say much; all were anxious to see the effect of
a full service charge of thirty-four pounds of powder. The gun only recoiled
seventeen inches.
Second Firing.—The second time
the gun was loaded with thirty-five pounds of powder and a hollow shot. It was
fired, recoiling three feet ten inches, producing no unpleasant concussion, and,
as before, there was scarcely any smoke in the turret. Several of the spectators
who were in the turret at the first firing were outside this time to see the
working of the shot, which had been spoken of by those who were outside at the
time; but the noise outside was so unpleasant that they preferred to be inside
the next time the gun was fired, and accordingly they went in and remained there
through the remainder of the firing.
Third Firing—The third time the
gun was fired it was charged with thirty-five pounds of powder and a hollow
shot. The recoil was only two feet eight inches. The same results were obtained
without trouble; in fact it was mach pleasanter inside than outside of the
turret. No noise was perceptible tending to discomfort either on the berth-deck
or in the engine-room.
Fourth Firing.—The fourth and
last time the gun was fired it was charged with thirty-five pounds of powder and
a solid shot, the first one fired from a gun of this size with a full service
charge. The result was precisely the same, the recoil being only two feet eight
inches, and no smoke or noise in the turret.
Thus ended the experiment with
the gun, which in every respect was satisfactory. We refrain from giving our
foreign friends or the rebels the slightest clew as to how this matter has been
accomplished; but suffice it to say that it is the plan of Captain Ericsson, and
it now is believed to be as near perfect as any thing mortal man can make.
We will, however, give some of
the general points in the workings of these new
Monitors, showing their most
prominent features.
In the first place, their speed
will be sufficient for the purposes for which they were designed. There is no
doubt that they will go at the very least nine knots. Secondly, at no time will
the guns of the vessel be liable to any damage from the projectiles of the
enemy; for the muzzles will not protrude outside of their shield. Thirdly, the
number of men to work one of these enormous guns is less than to work an
ordinary 11-inch gun on a Marsilly carriage. Three men wilt run out the 15-inch
gun, weighing 42,000 pounds (nearly twenty-one tons), as easily as nineteen men
work an 11-inch pivot. The English intended to put a fourteen-ton gun in a
cupola, but Sir Howard Douglass strenuously opposed such a step, as he believed
that they would not be able to get men enough inside to work it. Therefore it
never was attempted. One strong person can run out the 15-inch gun while he runs
out the 11-inch one, with perfect ease.
In these new Monitor batteries we
give not only protection to the men, but to the guns, which, when the vessel has
but two, it is very desirable should be protected. The appliance to carry off
the concussion and smoke is simple and ingenious, and the Government should take
care not to let this secret get out, so as to be used by other Powers. It is a
success only second to the conception of the original Monitor.
The Passaic will be ready for sea
within a week, and five or six of the other iron-clad Monitors about the same
time. It may be taken for granted that the Department will lose no time in
putting their merits to the test.
Charleston, Savannah, and Mobile will probably
hear of them before Christmas.
McCLELLAN'S PARTING FROM
HIS ARMY.
ON
pages 760 and 761 we publish a
large picture of McCLELLAN'S PARTING FROM HIS ARMY. The following, from the
Herald correspondence, will explain the scene:
This morning it was arranged that
he should visit the troops near by, and proceed to
Washington by special train
in the evening. When just about to go he said, "I can hardly bear to see my
soldiers again." Then accompanied by his officers and escort, a magnificent
cavalcade, he rode off to take a last farewell of his troops. The infantry and
cavalry attached to his head-quarters were tastefully disposed on an adjacent
hill. They presented a very soldierly appearance.
McClellan rode along the
lines, and as he passed enthusiastic cheers spontaneously arose from the ranks.
The soldiers could not restrain their controlling admiration for their General.
After he had passed along the lines, and was returning toward the hill, General
Patrick, commanding the Provost guard at head-quarters, dashed up the crest,
and, with cap in hand, led the whole command in three additional tumultuous
cheers for General McClellan. The Sturgis Rifles, which have been with him from
the time of his first campaign in Western Virginia, gave an extra complimentary
cheer, and all the men turned their heads around, and gave one long, last
lingering look, while he rode away to bid a similar adieu to other commands.
He then passed through the camps
of the reserve artillery. The batteries were all arranged in convenient
positions, the cannoneers standing by their guns. The men presented sabres,
while the music mingled with their cheers as he passed. The magnificent
artillery reserve of the army of the Potomac, which McClellan had organized with
so much care, he seemed reluctant to leave it now, when there was an immediate
prospect of its efficiency being fully displayed on the field.
It was while riding from here
that Burnside, accompanied by a brilliant staff, came dashing across the field
and joined him. They shook each other cordially by the hand, and rode together
during the remainder of the day. When we reached the turnpike, on either side of
which troops are encamped, we witnessed one of the grandest and most effective
demonstrations it has over been my fortune to behold. The troops in
General Fitz
John Porter's corps were marshaled in magnificent array on the right of the
road, and those in
General Couch's corps on the left. Butterfield's, Sykes's,
and Humphrey's divisions, in Porter's corps, were disposed in order, the banners
of each command appearing in the centre, close on the road. Hancock's, Howard's,
and French's divisions, in Couch's corps, were arranged in a somewhat similar
manner, with the artillery of both commands planted on prominent positions. As
had been done in the other instances, McClellan's farewell address to his
soldiers was read to them just before he passed to personally bid them farewell.
As he rode along the turnpike, with head uncovered, between the lines of troops,
and followed by the glittering array of officers, fifty thousand of his devoted
soldiers, with hearts and voices in perfect unison, and all with one accord,
burst forth into the most tumultuous cheering. Along the lines be rode, amidst
the continued acclamations of the fifty thousand, while from the distance we
would occasionally catch, as though
it were an echo, the sound from
the troops we had left behind, and who were cheering yet, long after the General
had gone away from the immediate vicinity of his head-quarters. The banners
borne by the various regiments were held near the road on either side, and their
tattered fragments were fully exposed to view when the General and party passed
through the lines of troops. Some of the standards had little but the gold and
silver trimmings and the silken fringes left. A greater portion of many of the
flags had been shot away in battle under the gallant leadership of General
McClellan. Those tattered banners, having inscribed upon them the names of the
battles in which the troops had fought victoriously beneath their silken folds,
were mute yet most eloquent memorials of the mighty struggles which McClellan's
soldiers have passed through. While he rode along the batteries fired salutes,
the bands played, and the soldiers cheered; the smoke from the artillery floated
in among the perforated banners, and the acclamations of the troops mingled with
the martial music of the bands and guns. I can not recall from my experience any
occasion on which the enthusiasm manifested by these soldiers has been
surpassed.
Passing the end of Porter's and
Couch's lines, General McClellan and party proceeded four or five miles further
to the place where
Franklin's corps was encamped. On the way soldiers followed
and cheered him. He was soon near Franklin's corps. His arrival was not expected
quite so soon, and the troops were not formed to receive him. But when the
soldiers saw him approaching their encampment the color-bearers of the various
regiments grasped the
Stars and Stripes and the regimental standards, and came
dashing down the hills and across the fields, the members of the regiments,
without arms, dashing wildly after them. McClellan passed through this mass of
soldiers to General Franklin's head-quarters, where he, Burnside, and Franklin,
while the latter's troops were being collected and disposed, had a protracted
interview.
This ended, the company mounted
their horses again, and rode among the troops of Franklin's corps. Smith's
division, part formed in line of battle and part in column, greeted McClellan
with great enthusiasm. Brooks's division came rushing across the valley in one
grand, solid column, with flags floating in the breeze, to meet the retiring
General. They flocked around him, discarding entirely every thing concerning the
rules of military formation, and, in the most feeling manner, bade him an
affectionate farewell. The troops in Newton's division, formed further on, were
no less decided and enthusiastic in their demonstrations. It was really
wonderful to see how deep was the expression of feeling by the soldiers on this
occasion.
Having passed through the lines
of all the troops in the vicinity, General McClellan turned his horse's head to
go back to his head-quarters, whence he intended proceeding to the train which
was waiting to convey him to Washington. Now we witnessed the most affecting
scene of all. Until this moment it hardly seemed that their favorite general
could leave them. But now he was going from among them—he had already gone. The
moment that they fully realized it, all those soldiers, animated by one
universal impulse, ran after him, some weeping aloud, and shouted in the most
touching and appealing manner, "Fetch him back, fetch him back!" and "Oh, come
back to us, come back to us, McClellan!"
As he rode along the turnpike on
his return from Franklin's corps, troops under Couch and Porter, which he had
passed in regular formation a few hours before, now rushed out from their camp
ground, and thronged the roadside anxious to take another last look at their
beloved General. Many of them were melted to tears, and after cheering him again
and again, joined in the universal supplication, "Come back to us, come back to
us, M'Clellan!"
THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.
WE publish on
page 756 a series
of pictures, illustrating the recent march of the army of the Potomac, from
sketches by Mr. Theodore R. Davis. The centre picture represents the famous
THOROUGHFARE GAP in the
Bull Run Mountains, which has figured so largely in the
recent campaign. Many a regiment and brigade, loyal and rebel, has tramped
through that dark, gloomy cleft in the mountains.
On
page 757 we give a picture of
the little town of WARRENTON, VIRGINIA, now occupied by our troops. Though, in
the course of the present war, Warrenton has frequently changed masters, the
little place has not suffered at the hands of either conquerors, and presents
many pretty points of view. The LEAVE-TAKING OF McCLELLAN on the stoop of the
Warren Green House at Warrenton will naturally attract attention. The
ex-Commander of the Army of the Potomac spent a few moments here in shaking
hands with some of his officers, and addressed them kindly words of farewell.
Another picture on page 764, by
Mr. A. R. Waud, illustrates one of those cavalry skirmishes which are so often
reported in the papers. Both the rebels and ourselves constantly keep flying
squadrons of cavalry scouring the country, and every now and then they meet, and
then comes "the tug of war." It is one of these scenes which Mr. Waud has
depicted.
IT does not follow because a man
relieves a misfortune that he sympathizes with the sufferer. The stoics, indeed,
while they enjoined beneficence, forbade sympathy: according to them, in putting
your hand into your pockets you must take care not to disturb the folds of your
heart. Rochefoucauld—who certainly was not a stoic, and may rather be considered
the most brilliant of the modern followers of Epicurus—appears in this respect
to be in agreement with Zeno. In the portrait of himself which he has sketched
with the clear broad strokes of a master's hand, he says that "he is little
sensible to pity;" that there is nothing he would not do for a sufferer, even to
the show of compassion, for the wretched are such fools that the very show of
compassion does them all the good in the world. But," adds this polite
philosopher, "I hold that one should be contented to show, and guard one's self
carefully from feeling, pity: it is a passion good for nothing in a
well-constituted mind (au dedans d'une ame bienfaite), which only serves to
weaken the heart, and which one ought to leave to the common people, who, doing
nothing by reason, have need of passion to induce them to do any thing."
Certainly most of us have known
in life persons who are ever ready to perform a charitable action, but from
whose lips there never falls the balm of a sympathizing word. They do not even,
like Rochefoucauld, simulate the pity which they do not feel. Are you ill, and
can not afford a doctor? they will pay for him; are you pining for the anodyne
of a tender look? you shrink back more sick at heart than before from the chill
of their hard brows.
On the other hand, there are
persons whose nervous system is tremulously alive to the aspect of pain; they
will give you sigh for sigh, and groan for groan; they sympathize with you
sincerely for the moment: as soon as you are out of sight they forget that you
exist. Put yourself in their way, and rely upon their sympathy; when out of
their way never count upon their aid. Benevolence is not always beneficence. To
wish you may be benefited is one thing; to benefit you is another. A man who is
beneficent without sympathy, though he may not be a pleasant acquaintance, must
be a good man. But a man who is sympathizing without beneficence may be a very
bad man. For there is a readiness of sympathy which comes from the
impressionability of the physical system—a vibration of the nerves reacting on
no chord of duty, and awakening no response in a generous impulse of the heart.
And a man may not be the less profoundly wicked because he possesses an
excitable nervous temperament.
Alexander Pheraeus, the most
ruthless of tyrants, so entered into the sorrows enacted on the stage, that a
tragedy moved him to tears. It is to him that Pope alludes in his Prologue to
Addison's "Cato:"
"Tyrants no more their savage
nature kept,
And foes to virtue wondered why
they wept."
Unfortunately Alexander Pheraeus,
in spite of his weeping, kept his "nature," which was probably not
constitutionally "savage." A man of a temperament readily impressionable, if
accompanied, as it generally is, with a lively fancy, brings home to himself the
sorrows or the dangers which are represented to his senses, and for the moment
realized by his fancy. And thus it may be from fear for himself that a tyrant
may weep at the representation of sufferings which, on the stage, depicts the
power of Fate over even the crowned head and the sceptred hand. Now the same
nervous temperament which is effeminately susceptible to this egotistical kind
of sympathy may be very subject to fear; and fear is akin to cruelty. For fear
is in the conviction of some weakness in him who feels it compared with the
power from which he apprehends an injury; and no saying is more true than that
aphorism of Seneca—"Omnis enim ex infirmitate feritas est"—"All cruelty springs
from weakness." I think we have a striking example of these propositions in
Nero, when his character is metaphysically analyzed. His was the excitable,
impulsive, nervous organization—tremulously alive to the effects of music,
poetry, the drama, spectacle—emotionally plastic to whatsoever influence
appealed for the moment to his senses. Thus, in early youth, a cultivator of the
softest arts, and no cause of suspicion and terror yet maddening his restless
imagination, he was doubtless sincere when, the sentence on a criminal being
brought to him to sign, he exclaimed, piteously, "Vellem nescire literas!"—"Would
to Heaven that I had not learned to write?" But the same susceptibility to
immediate influences which, when fresh from the contemplation of serene and
harmless images, made him impulsively merciful, subjugated him first to sensual
pleasures, rendered monstrous in proportion as his imagination, on brooding over
them, became itself diseased: and, when the whole character was unmanned by the
predominance of the sensual and brutelike over the intellectual and moral
elements in man, all that was noblest in manhood, in exciting the internal
consciousness of his own infirmity or weakness, excited his fear; for in
silently rebuking, they seemed silently to threaten him—and thus the voluptuous
trifler was scared into the relentless butcher. Yet, impressionable to immediate
circumstance at the last as at the first, all the compassionate softness he had
once known for the sentenced criminal, whose doom he had shrunk from signing,
returns to settle on himself. When the doom which had shocked his nerves to
contemplate for another stands before him as his own, he weeps over his own
fate, his hand trembles to inflict it. Just as in his youth sympathy (being
nothing more than the vividness with which he could bring home to his fancy the
pain to be inflicted on another) made him forget the crime that was to be
punished in pity for the criminal that was to be slain, so now he wholly lost
sight of his own crimes in the anguish of contemplating his own death. And when,
in forgetfulness of empire abused and remembrance of art cultivated, he
exclaimed, "What an artist in me is about to perish!"* he explained the enigma
of his own nature. Besides the tastes which his hostile historians accord to him
in painting and sculpture, and a talent for poetry, which Suetonius is at some
pains to vindicate from the charge of plagiarism, eighteen hundred laurel crowns
had Athens bestowed on him as a musician! If his career had been a musician's
and not an emperor's, he might indeed have been a voluptuary: a musician not
unfrequently is; but a soft-tempered, vain, praise-seeking infant of art,
studying harmony, and nervously shocked by discord—as musicians generally are.
The great French Revolution
abounds with examples more familiar of the strange mixture of sentimental
tenderness with remorseless cruelty, which may be found allied in that
impressionable nervous temperament as susceptible to the rapport of the present
time as a hysterical somnambule is to the will of an electro-biologist.
Many years ago I met with a
Frenchman who had been an active, if subordinate, ministrant in the Reign of
Terror. In Petitot's Collection of Papers illustrative of that period, we find
him warmly commended to Robespierre as a young patriot, ready to
________________________
*"Qualis artifex pereo!" Artifex
means something more than musician, by which word it is rendered in our current
translations, and even something more than artist, by which it is rendered in
the text. Artifex means an artificer, a contriver; and I suspect that, in using
the word, Nero was thinking of the hydraulic musical contrivance which had
occupied his mind amidst all the terrors of the conspiracy which destroyed him—a
contrivance that really seems to have been a very ingenious application of
science to art, which we might not have lost if Nero had been only an artificer,
and not an emperor.
sacrifice on the altar of his
country as many heca-tombs of fellow-countrymen as the Goddess of Reason might
require. When I saw this ex-official of the tribunal of blood, which was in a
London drawing-room, where his antecedents were not generally known, he was a
very polite, gray-haired gentleman of the old school of manners, addicted, like
Cardinal Richelieu and Warren Hastings, to the composition of harmless verses. I
have seldom met with any one who more instantaneously charmed a social circle by
his rapid and instinctive sympathy with the humors of all around him —gay with
the gay, serious with the serious, easy with the young, caressingly respectful
to the old. Fascinated by the charm of his address, a fine lady whispered to me,
"This, indeed, is that exquisite French manner of which we have heard so much
and seen so little. Nothing nowadays like the polish of the old regime."
Marveling at the contrast between
the actions for which this amiable gentleman had been commended to Robespierre
and the manners by which he might have seduced the Furies, I could not refrain,
in the frankness of my temper at that earlier period of my life, from
insinuating the question how a man of so delicate a refinement, and so happy a
turn for innocent poems in the style of "Gentil Bernard," could ever have been
led away into a participation of what I mildly termed "the excesses of the
Revolution."
"Ah," quoth this velvet-pawed
tiger, "que voulez-vous?—I always obey my heart! I sympathize with whatever goes
on before me. Am I to-day with people who cry 'A bas les aristocrates!' ca me
monte le tete! ca m'echauffe le sang! I cry out with them, 'A bas les
aristocrates!' Am I to-morrow with people who cry 'A bas la guillotine!"—eh bien!
my eyes moisten; I embrace my enemies—I sob out, 'A bas la guillotine!' Sympathy
is the law of my nature. Ah, if you had known Monsieur Robespierre!'
"Hem!" said I; "that is an honor
I should not have coveted if I had lived in his day. But I have hitherto
supposed that Monsieur Robespierre was somewhat unsocial, reserved, frigid; was
he, nevertheless, a man whose sins against his kind are to be imputed to the
liveliness of his sympathies?"
"Sir, pardon me if I say that you
would not have asked that question if you had studied the causes of his
ascendency, or read with due attention his speeches. How can you suppose that a
man not eloquent, as compared with his contemporaries, could have mastered his
audience except by sympathizing with them? When they were for blood, he
sympathized with them; when they began to desire the reign of blood to cease, he
sympathized also. In his desk were found David's plans for academies for infancy
and asylums for age. He was just about to inaugurate the Reign of Love when the
conspiracy against him swept him down the closing abyss of the Reign of Terror.
He was only a day too late in expressing his sympathy with the change in the
public mind. Can you suppose that he who, though ambitious, threw up his
profession rather than subscribe to the punishment of death—he whose favorite
author was Jean Jacques, 'le plus aimant des hommes'—that he had any inherent
propensity to cruelty? No! Cruelty had become the spirit of the time, with which
the impressionability of his nervous temperament compelled him to sympathize.
And if he were a sterner exterminator than others it was not because he was more
cruel than they, but more exposed to danger. And as he identified himself with
his country, so self-preservation was in his mind the rigorous duty of a
patriot. Wherever you had placed him, Monsieur Robespierre would always have
been the man of his day. If he had been an Englishman, Sir, he would have been
at the head of all the philanthropical societies —come in for a large
constituency on philanthropical principles—and been the most respectable, as he
was always the most incorruptible of public men. 'Ce pauvre M. Robespierre!
comme il est meconnu!' If he had but lived a month or two longer he would have
revived the age of gold!"
Certainly, during that excitable
epoch, tenderness of sentiment and atrocity of conduct were not combined in "ce
pauvre M. Robespierre" alone. The favorite amusement of one of the deadliest of
his fellow-murderers was the rearing of doves. He said that. the contemplation
of their innocence made the charm of his existence in consoling him for the
wickedness of men. Conthon, at the commencement of the Revolution, was looked
upon as the mildest creature to be found out of a pastoral. He had a figure
d'ange, heavenly with compassionate tenderness. Even when he had attained to the
height of his homicidal celebrity he was carried to the National Assembly or the
Jacobite Club (I say carried, for, though young, he had lost the use of his
limbs) fondling little lapdogs, which he nestled in his bosom. An anecdote is
told of one of his confreres, who was as fatal to men and as loving to dogs as
himself, that when a distracted wife, who had pleaded to him in vain for her
husband's life, in retiring from his presence, chanced to tread on his favorite
spaniel's tale, he exclaimed, "Good heavens, Madame! have you then no humanity?"
In these instances of tenderness
for brutes we see the operation of that sympathy which, being diverted from men,
still must have a vent, and lavishes itself on the inferior races, to whom its
sentimental possessor shows all kindness, because from them he apprehends no
mischief. We need not, however, resort to the annals of the French Revolution
for examples of this warped direction of pity or affection. Every day we see
venerable spinsters who delight in the moral murder of scandal, and guillotine a
reputation between every cup of tea, yet full of benignant charities to parrots,
or dogs, or cats, or monkeys. Those venerable spinsters were, no doubt, once
fond-hearted little girls, and, while in their teens, were as much shocked at
the idea of assassinating the character of pretty woolen and poisoning the honor
of unsuspecting hearths as they are now at the barbarity of pinching Fidele's
delicate paw or singeing Tabitha's inoffensive whiskers.
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