-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d8988f8fa0425f1221c332efb52334d5.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=uF2OCQKTga5YO1SFITfw4%7EUiMxD9KlmsFTxdjX-ERhEjXXuACMXh7fRiySgv2toqJZJf9by%7EmDe2%7EYSf-cr-eXFUcpwdh-Q%7Eut6CykeVidbbcximp%7E31NTwaUYmCA551bgINgVUb077UDTE5hfzLwWidgPrgMXJJ76mWFO6EYyBOabdOW7gaCXQjL7aSR7dl46TphnrD56CoeNkrNRmCdlukMFiVvaXNAc0jOnDro0gVARfQlz3A-RGqBBg0q8f3RE0a-QbW2AtbZ6ak6RasfXiGLv6HJvFTX1tmAdahBXfI0A69JeJq32dYyKJzsli3Orxk8BsDJXnkY3Uk945Atg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
16595010d1c9162e9bc8a0cab0880fa6
PDF Text
Text
THE VOLUNTEER CRISIS.
By
an
Old Linesman.
URING the discussion in the
D House of Peers upon the Sus
pensory Bill, the Marquis of Salis
bury, and one or two other noble
lords, took occasion to sneer at what
they were pleased to call “the Emi
nent Foreigner’s opinion,” respecting
the Irish Church. Now, without com
mitting ourselves to one side or the
other upon the question of church disendowment and disestablishment, we
must protest against the doctrine that
the opinions of other nations are not
valuable to those of whom they are
spoken. It is quite true that no Eng
lishman cares—few of us even know
—what the regulation Mossoo, who
comes to London for a week, lives all
the time of his sojourn in Leicester
Square, and believes that Ministers
of the Crown and members of the
Legislature are to be found in the
Argyll Rooms during their hours of
relaxation—thinks about us or our in
stitutions. With all our many faults
we are not a thin-skinned nation.
We abuse others—we can afford to be
abused by others—but we abuse our
selves far better than any others can do
so for us, provided we are convinced
of our own shortcomings. There are,
however, foreigners, and more particu
larly Frenchmen, whose opinions are
worth listening to; and when such men
as the Count de Montalembert, Louis
Blanc, and more than one writer in
the Revue des Deux Mondes, speak in
unqualified praise respecting some of
our customs and institutions, surely
we ought to listen with patience when
they find fault with those of which
they cannot approve.
But there is another class of
foreigners, also chiefly Frenchmen,
who have of late years found their
way to England, whose opinions are
spoken, not written, and whose pro
fessional praise ought to go far to
wards making amends for the neverending grumbling of many amongst
our own countrymen. We allude to
the French military officers, a party of
whom visit England every year, on a
sort of semi-official mission, and who
are nearly always to be found at any
of our great Volunteer reviews. If the
sentiments of these gentlemen re
specting the Volunteer movement in
England, could be published, those
who take part in those citizen-soldier
demonstrations would have no small
reason to be proud. Praise is sweet to
every man, and we do not think that
even the Marquis of Salisbury him
self would sneer at the opinions which
these eminent foreigners entertain of
the English Volunteer force. It was
the lot of the present writer to act
as cicerone on Easter Monday, at
Portsmouth, to a party of French
officers, who came over expressly to
see the review; and, although they
found fault with much of what they
saw, and were deeply inoculated with
the true French military spirit—
which seldom allows that anything
good can ever come out of any sys
tem save their own — they were
obliged to confess that our English
Volunteer movement was a wonderful
one, and that it quite changed their
former opinions as to whether Eng
land was, or was not, a military
nation.
And this is the point to which we
would first lead our readers—this is
�1872.]
ELLE ET LUT.
“Shall we reach the New York pier at
the foot of Canal street by Saturday
noon?’’ If we do, there is for us all
long life, prosperity and happiness : if
we do not, it is desolation and misery.
For Monday is New Year’s Day. On
Sunday we may not be able to leave the
city: to be forced to stay in New York
over Sunday is a dreadful thought for
solitary contemplation. We study and
turn it over in our minds for hours as
we pace the deck. We live over and
over again the land-journey to our
hearthstones at Boston, Syracuse and
Cincinnati. We meet in thought our
long-expectant relatives, so that at last
our air-castles become stale and mo
notonous, and we fear that the reality
may be robbed of half its anticipated
pleasure from being so often lived over
in imagination.
Nine o’clock, Friday evening. The
excitement increases. Barnegat Light
is in sight. Half the cabin passengers
are up all night, indulging in unprofit
able talk and weariness, merely because
we are so near home. Four o’clock,
and the faithful engine stops, the cable
rattles overboard, and everything is still.
We are at anchor off Staten Island. By
the first laggard streak of winter’s dawn
I am on the hurricane-deck. I am curi
ous to see my native North. It comes
by degrees out of the cold blue fog on
either side of the bay. Miles of houses,
GJ
451
spotted with patches of bushy-looking
woodland—bushy in appearance to a
Californian, whose oaks grow large and
widely apart from each other, as in an
English park. There comes a shrieking
and groaning and bellowing of steam
whistles from the monster city nine miles
away. Soon we weigh anchor and move
up toward it. Tugs dart fiercely about,
or laboriously puff with heavily-laden
vessels in tow. Stately ocean steamers
surge past, outward bound. We become
a mere fragment of the mass of floating
life. We near the foot of Canal street.
There is a great deal of shouting and
bawling and counter-shouting and coun
ter-bawling, with expectant faces on the
wharf, and recognitions from shore to
steamer and from steamer to shore. The
young woman who flirted so ardently
with the young Californian turns out to
be married, and that business-looking,
middle-aged man on the pier is her hus
band. Well, I never! Why, you are
slow, my friend, says inward reflection.
You must recollect you have been nearly
out of the world these seventeen years.
At last the gangway plank is flung out.
We walk on shore. The little floating
world society, cemented by a month’s
association, scatters like the fragments
of an exploding bombshell, and Gotham
swallows us up for ever from each other’s
sight.
Prentice Mulford.
ELLE ET LUI.
ICTURE to yourself a salon of 1833,
P one of those famous gatherings of
the beauty, the fashion, the genius of
Paris that glorified the Sunday evenings
at the Arsenal. , Poets and painters chat
ted together in the quiet corners ; La
martine and Sainte-Beuve, Alfred de
Vigny and Victor Hugo, with the other
young journalists who had been setting
the Seine on fire with their revolutionary
notions in literature as well as politics,
might be seen like wandering comets
threading the mazes of the revolving
crowd: Chateaubriand and De Balzac
were there to represent sentimentalism
and realism, while M. Beyle (Stendhal)
was gathering materials for his caustic
critiques. His mission was to put down
vanity, and he seemed to be looking for
it in every one he met, that he might
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The volunteer crisis, by an old linesman
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mulford, Prentice
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: [450?]-451 p. ; 25 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Seemingly an incomplete copy.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1872]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5305
Subject
The topic of the resource
Military
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The volunteer crisis, by an old linesman), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Military Volunteers
Volunteers