" OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT."

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 426, 22 November 1861, Page 3

" OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT."

CURRENT HISTORY.

The 'Press,' is held now a-days to be the great instrument for the advancement of human well being. Among all things which are printed, the 'Press' almost always means newspapers—hardly ever books. Of newspapers we are bound to suppose that it specially means the great head of the order—' the grand Napoleon of the realms of type. If one number of the Times contains more wisdom than 'all the works of Thucydides,' the Times can hardly fail most conspicuously to surpass Thucydides in the ouly particular in which tlie two can be compared—namely, in their several ways of treating contemporary history. Just now, indeed, there is really no small analogy between the functions of the two. As the business of Thucydides was to chronicle the struggles of the contending Republics of Greece, the main business of the Times at the present moment is to chronicle the struggles of the contending Republics of North America. If Mitylene and Chios seceded, so have Virginia and Carolina. If a faithful remnant held out at Methymna, a faithful remnant still holds out in Western Virginia. If the helots took refuge in the Athenian quarters at Pylos, so have the negroes ' contraband of war,' taken refuge in the quarters of the Federal army.

There is, indeed, a considerable likeness in the events to be recorded, but unluckily we can discern no likeness at all in the ways in which the rival chroniclers record them. Thucydides wrote a book which should be 'a possession for all time.' For how long a time does ' Our Special Correspondent ' txpect his productions will be a possession ? 'Our Special Correspondent' has more than once before now emerged from his ephemereal shape. He has appeared between two covers in the fullblown form of a book, not smaller, we should think, than 'all the works of Thucydides.' His first book was lettered ' The War.* That was quite enough. The eyes of a Special Correspondent could not be expected to look so far either forward or backward, as to realise that any war ever had been, or ever could be, except the one of which he himself wrote the history. * The War' is probably by this time forgotten. Generations have grown up to whom 'The War* would not suggest Inkermann and Balaklava, but, it may be, Delhi and Lucknow—it may be, Magenta and Solferino. This fact, indeed, is practically recognised. ' The War'—the true chronicle of the only possible war—has been succeeded by the ' War in India' by the same hand. Here is a difference. Thucydides wrote the history of one war —a ' Doric War '—and incidentally showed that he thought it not unlikely that there might, some time or another, be another war, aud even another' Doric War.'

Our Special Correspondent wrote the history of ' The War' thinking there never could be another; butlo! he has been called upon to write the history of at least two other wars since. The elder record, in short, lives for ever. The other only lives, at the outside, till another war comes to make the last one forgotten—if, indeed, it can strictly be said to survive longer than till candlelight on the day whereon it is printed. We say 4 till candlelight' on the authority of the infallible oracle itself. When Jupiter—Maximus, at least, ifuot Optimus—appeared on Friday week, with the boast that he was bigger than anything that the daily press had ever sent out before, lie hoped he was not too big to be read through on the longest day in the year. Now, the 21st of June docs not contain more hours and minutes than the 21st of December. Tlie only difference is that the June day has more daylight than the December day. By the help of artificial light, the Btudent may see as much on the shortest day as on the longest. The inference is that the limes dies when the candles are lighted, and cn'y lives longer in June than in December, because tlie twilight of the gods takes place early in the afternoon of one season, and is put off till late at night in the other.

There is another very remarkable difference between the two historians. Thucydides was not only a spectator, but an actor, in the Peloponnesian war, yet he only mentions himself once or twice, when he could not help it. ' Our Special Correspondent' is a mere spectator ; he strikes no blow, he gives no counsel; yet it is wonderful to see how much he contrives to tell us about himself. The doings of North and South, the counsels of President and Anti-President, the feelings and sentiments of the two great communities arrayed against each other, may indeed come in for some little incidental mention, but it is evident that the great object for which a Special Correspondent is sent out is to report to admiring readers at home the thoughts, the actions, the comforts and discomforts, the honors and tlie slights of the Special Correspondent himself.

* We take this to be the main difference between a 'Special Correspondent' aud a mere ' Own Correspondent.' Take for instance, if so many sunsets have not extinguished it, the Times of Tuesday, June 18th. There is a letter from 'Our Own Correspondent at New York, who begins, 1 ke a sensible man, ' No great change has taken plnce in the military dispositions of the two forces rince my last letter.' This is plain, practical, and straightforward. Not so ' Our Special Correspondent,' who writes from Nsw Orleans. What are such trifles as the disposition of armies to him ? He has far more important matters to tell about. ' Yesteiday morning /left Mobile in the Steamer Florida,' and so he goes on for well nigh a column, with all that Our Special Correspondent did, and thought, and saw, and felt, in the steamer Florida, —all in the highest flights of the high polite style. ' A thin little lady uttered certain ciergetic aspirations forthe possession of port ions of Mr. Lincoln's person.' ' A logician drew a revolver and presented it at the head of the gentleman who was op posed to his peculiar views.' Tlie logician we know nothing about, but a happy accident pu 8 it in our power to give a translation of the bit about the thin little lady. At least we have heard how a Southern lady wished she had got' a bit of Aby's heart,' whicli we take to be the plain English of the fine writing we have just quoted. Finally the paragraph closes thus:—'The carriage stops at last, and rest comes gratefully after the stormy night, the mosquitoes, * the noise of the captains at the bar, and the shouting.' " Such is the taste and memory of a distinguished journalist — the Special Correspondent' of the oracle to which we all bow. We could hardly have thought that any man who could read and write could sink so low as to misquote and jest upon the noblest of all descriptions. If Our Special Correspondent owns a Bible, lie will do well to study the Book of Job a little moro carefully. The chronicler of so many wars, if he ever thought of anything but himself, might have been expected to have same fellow feeling for even a beast who 'saieh among the trumpets, ha, ha, —who smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the Captains, and the shouting.' We then go on with nearly two columns more, not so exclusively devoted to Our Special Correspondent's own doings, but completely filled up n^t with news, but with speculation, with Our Special Correspondent's opinions and criticisms upon men and things. Our Special Correspondent is a master in the art of war, and severely lectures Mr. Jefferson Davis for his military errois. He criticises the city of Montgomery in language much too tine for us :—' The accommodations which suited the modest wants of a State Legislature vanished, or were transmuted into barbarous inconveniences by the pressure of a Central Government,' What does this mean? Has Mr. Davis had anybody pressed t9 death? ?h» w our only

guess; if this fails, we are quite unable to ' transmute ' the sentence into meaning. A little way on we come to something far more intelligible. Our Special Correspondent was much less comfortable at Montgomery than so great a man ought to have been. Then follows the dignified rebuke to the offending city:—' Gentlemen in the' South complain that strangers judge of them by their hotels, but it is a very natural standard for strangers to adopt, and in respect to Montgomery it is almost the only one that a gentleman can conveniently use, for if the inhabitants of this city and its vicinity are not maligned, there is an absence of the hospitable^ spirit which the South lays claim to as oue of its animating principles, and a little bird whispered to me that from Mr. Jefferson Davis down to the least distinguished member of his government there was reason to observe that the usual attentions and civilities offered by residents to illustiious strangers had been ' conspicuous for their absence.' The fact is that the small planters who constitute the majority of the landowners are not in a position to act the Amphytrion, and that the inhabitants of the district can scarcely aspire to be considered what we would call gentry iv England, but are a frugal, simple, hog and hominy living people, fond of hard j work, aud occasionally, of hard drinking.' " | We do not know much about' hog and hominy living people,* but the description sounds so like plain English that it gives us a liking for the people described. We cannot say whether they are what *we would call gentry in England,' till we know exactly what our Special Correspondent's views as to the use of '.will' and 'shall.' We may remark in passing that; we,, never could tell why a man who gives you a dinner is called an ' Amphitryon,' but that we can still less tell why the Special Correspondent of the Jupiter should transpose the vowels of a name with which his master, at least, must be so familiar. These, however, are minor matters—the gist of the passage lies in the words 'illustrious strangers.' One ' illustrious stranger' has clearly not met at Montgomery with the reception whicli he deserved. To be sure, some time ago he seemed on very good terms with Mr. Jefferson Davis. He was ptominent at his levee—he seemed almost to be admitted to his inmost councils. But perhaps the Anti-President did not follow the old Teutonic and Persian custom of giving the * illustrious stranger' an opportunity of taking counsel after as well as before .dinner. Our Special Correspondent was invited, it seems, to a mere Barmecide repast —a mere feast of reason and flow of soul, or at best, to a bauquet on hog and hominy, which at once proved Mr. Jefferson Davis not to belong to the class which 'we would call gentry.' A Prince Regent once invited a Lord Chancellor to beans aud bacon as a special luxury, but for a Confederate President to invite a Special Correspondent to hog and hominy really passed human endurance. If' Jeff' is so little of a gentleman, what will' Aby' be ? Will he, to hit on a greater delicacy than hog and hominy, revive the favorite medieval practical joke, and cause our Special Correspondent literally to 'eat his own wOrds.' Next day comes another letter of equal sublimity, full of quotations, bits of Latin, scraps of Shakespeare, novel and eloquent talk about ' maculated lives,' 'Pariahs of American civilisation,' &c, quite enough to remind us that Our Special Correspondent has been in India and heard of Pariahs, and has learned at least Latin enough to know that' mucula' means a spot. Bui the beginning is of course the finest thing of all—a Special Correspondent always knows how to put his best foot foremost. Thus it is that he throws off: 'It is impossible to resist the conviction that the Southern Confederacy can only be conquered by means as irresistible as those by which Poland was subjugated— Tlie South will fall If at all, as a nation prostrate at the feet of a victorious enemy.' We have taken a little typographical liberty. Iv the middle ot the long Latin polysyllables there crop out five words of plain English, with rhyme to boot, which cannot possibly be our Special Correspondent's own composition. Though not marked by any sign of quotation, they are clearly a frngmeut of some ancient ditty, and we thought that it wav only doing them justice to print them as such. When one's ears have recovered from tbe roll of the big words on either side of them— when we have striven to master the grand 'introspective' picture of the Special Correspondent's mind struggling against convictions which at last he finds it impossible to resist—we have a sort of general notion that it all mean 3 that the South will never give in unless it is soundly beaten.

We think this is very likely indeed ; but while we are trying clearly to put our thoughts in order. they are driven back again into confusion by the comparison with Poland. Why Poland? Is Poland the special example of a country falling by sheer force ? No doubt there was some hard fighting juit at the end, but had we wished to point out a moral by the fall of Poland, we should certainly have chosen it as the eximple of a nation filling not nearly so much by violence as by internal corruption and by external intrigue. Certain it is that the most warlike nation in Europe allowed large provinces to be lopped off from it without striking a blow to retain them. But the Special Correspondent does not tell us what the ' irresistible means' were by which ' Poland was subjugated'—he only tells us generally that she ' fell prostrate at the fet t of a victorious enemy.' It is theicfore quite possible that it all means something quite different, only we certainly cannot see what. And surely one marked peculiarity in the fate of Poland is, that it fell ptostrate at the feet not of' a victorious enemy,' but of three victorious enemies at once. Will the Special Correspondent tell us who are to take the parts of Puissia and Austria in the partition of tho Southern States? All this illustrates the sort of writing which the Special Correspondent thinks necessary. It would be beneath a Special Correspondent to say anything simply or straightforwardly; everything must be tricked out with some metaphor, comparison, or analogy. The Special Correspondent knew nothing whatever of Polish history. Most likely he never heard of the Three Partitions. But Poland was a familiar name; he had perhaps danced at Polish bails or bought something at Polish bazaars; he had read about bloody doings at Warsaw quite lately ; and he remembered—we wonder he did not quote—how Hope for a moment bid tlie world farewell. And freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell. Kosciusko, to be sure, did not fall, but that does not much matter either to poets or to Special Correspondents; so he jumbled it all up together, and took Poland as the proper type of a subjugated nation. Now, whom does this sort of stuff please ? We hear that there are families in whicli the letters' of our Special Correspondent are looked forward to with anxiety, are seized on greedily, aud are read out word for word to an admiring and breachJess circle. But we found, on further enquiry, that these families were very idle families, no one of the members of which had auy thing to do, so that they were glad even of a special correspondent to help them in whiling away the time which hung so heavily on their hands. Certainly we cannot fancy any man who has anything really to do of any kind, giving up so much as the shortest d.iy to studies of this kind. Yet such is our current history. Such is the account of what is really a great event in the , annals of the woild, which to many people will be I their one source of information, and which will probably form at least one source among others even to the future historian of the American civil war. Now this is a sort of current history which is utterly worthless. History written for a momentary effect must be worthless. Real contemporary records, be they private journals and letters or public despatches, are of inestimable value, provided only the authors are, as they commonly will be, men of sense enough to say straightforwardly what has happened. Or course we do not mean to include French mat glials, who beg n * The cannon of your Majesty have spoken,' aad that sort of thing, We aro talking

of rational businesslike men, of whom there ai a still many in England, and, we hope, some in America. But the inflated rodomontade of our Special Correspondent simply conceals what few facts he may really have to tell us; and though doubtless he does not think so, the Special Correspondent is of all men in the very worst position for getting at the plain truth. If a man would be content to go about everywhere, looking at everything, and talking to everybody, without challenging any particular at•ation to himself, no doubt he might find out a great deal; but if a man travels as an ' illustrious stranger,' he at once lays himself open to all the prejudices and all the baniboozlementsofwhic.il illustrious strangers are sure to be the victims. Men and the causes which they represent, will be judged, not according to their intrinsic merits, but according to the degree of reverence with which they receive the Special Correspondent of the Times. Most people will make a point of getting the ear of the illustrious stranger, of cramming him at once with the best of diet and with their own views, political or personal. The few who may stand aloof, or who may invite the great man to nothing better than hog and hominy, must expect to figure in the limes accordingly. The rhapsodical prating of a conceited egotist may delight the foolish, and may for a moment amuse the wise, but it is utterly impossible that it can ever contribute the least mite to histoiic truth. If there be any number of tie Times which contains more wisdom than all the works of Thucydides, it is certainly not to be looked for among those numbers which contain the account of the civil war iv America as reported by Our Special Correspondent.— Saturday Review.