had a major of his own selection in this | capacity, and Wool had a captain. Scott could have neither. And they have the impertinence to put their refusal on the false ground of their delicate regard for the rights of rank in the army-they who have nearly broken the spirit of the whole army by their repeated and shameful violation of the rights of rank in behalf of pets and favorites-they who regretted and lamented that they could not send a junior Major-general to the field with rank over all his seniors!* When General Scott, at an early period, preferred charges against a General, and a subaltern officer, "for conduct endangering in a high degree the success of the impending campaign," no notice was taken of his charges either then or ever-except finally to trump up the absurd apology for this neglect and insult, that officers could not, at the time, be spared from the field of Buena Vista, to form a court; when that battle was not fought for a month after the charges were received in Washington, and was no more anticipated or dreamed of at the time, than a battle in the regions of the moon! But this General, and subaltern, were favorites at Washington, we believe; and the Government was not at that time particularly "interested" in enabling or assisting General Scott to maintain the necessary discipline of his army. They were then pushing the Lieutenant-general. Very much in the same way, and about the same time, they manifested their "sympathy and support" of General Scott, by an impertinent intermeddling with one of the most sacred rights of a commander in the field, conducting a critical campaign that of selecting his own commanders of particular corps. This particular case-that of Colonel Harneyshowed that while General Scott could perform a stern duty where he believed the good of the service required it, it was not in his generous nature to do the smallest injustice to any meritorious officer. Yet the case was seized on as a fit occasion *The Secretary says, evasively, there was no vacancy" with the rank of Major." An Act passed in the summer of 1846, authorizing four additional Assistant Adjutants-general. It was perfectly competent to the President, and proper, to nominate any one of these, or all, if the good of the service required, to the rank of Major by brevet. 66 for an elaborate rebuke, conceived in utter ignorance of all military usage, just by way of showing how the " feelings" of the Government harmonized with the full and fair discharge of their duty" towards the General they had sent to the field with every protestation of confidence and support. We have spoken already of the utter failure of the Government to furnish General Scott with transport vessels of proper size, with surf boats, and with a siege train, according to promise. The fact of the failure is not denied, and the main excuse for it is, that the requisitions were too large. Mr. Polk and Governor Marcy draw on their great military experience, to determine the question of supplies for the siege and reduction of the second most formidable fortress on the Continent of America, in opposition to General Scott's requisitions, and as an excuse for having forfeited the promise they made him in this regard! But how much too large were his requisitions? Only one-fifth of the siege train had arrived when the enemy capitulated! They had not to be made, they had only to be sent. From the time General Scott left Washington to the capitulation of Vera Cruz, was more than four months! yet out of forty or fifty mortars of ten-inch calibre promised, only ten or twelve of the number had arrived and were in position at the capitulation. More came straggling along after the affair was all over. General Scott demanded and was promised one hundred and forty surf boats, to cost $200 each, or $28,000; the Department furnished about 70, at a cost of $950 each, or $66,500. For this, there does not remain the slightest excuse or apology. We have the best authority for saying that General Scott's estimate for the cost of such surf boats as he wanted, was over rather than under the mark, and that they could all have been furnished in one month, without the slightest difficulty. As for the ten large transport vessels from the north required and promised, they had been tardily ordered by the Department, and then, without the knowledge of General Scott, the order was countermanded from Washington. They were expected and waited for more than a month. Writing from Lobos, February 28th, General Scott said:-"Perhaps no expedition was ever so unaccountably delayed, * * * In this contemptible idea, and the accusand under circumstances the most critical tomed infirmity of purpose produced by to this entire army; for everybody relied it, all effort towards sustaining Gen. Scott upon knew, from the first, as well as I in his critical position, or towards furnishknew, it would be fatal to attempt military ing him with the necessary men and supoperations on this coast, after, probably, plies to enable him to retreat from the the first week in April, and here we are at destructive vomito on the coast, and push the end of February!" And for this the forward his conquering column in the dionly excuse the Department has to offer rection of the Mexican Capital, seems to is, first, that General Scott must have have been, for a time, wholly given up. known of the order countermanding the The new regulars, as fast as they were transports, and therefore wantonly delayed raised and organized, were dispatched, not his own expedition! and, next, that the to Gen. Scott, but to the line of the Rio whole Quartermaster's Department, with Grande-not to the point where they were the Chief at its head, was under his imme- wanted, and had been promised, but where diate orders, without any control, or inter- they were not wanted at all. This policy ference, from Washington, and therefore, was obstinately continued long, long after it was his own fault if the expedition was every apology for it had been taken away delayed; and this assertion is seriously by the knowledge at Washington of the made by the Secretary in the face of his utter annihilation of the enemy on the line own admission, that he had himself coun- of the Rio Grande consequent on the grand termanded the order for transports from victory of Buena Vista.* Instead of reinthe north! The order for these trans-forcements coming to General Scott in April ports had been given by the Secretary, and May to give him his promised army through General Scott; the countermand of 20,000 men, it was not till the 6th of was given by him direct to the Quarter- August that recruits reached him at Puebla master General, then in the field, profess- in sufficient numbers to give him a force edly under General Scott's orders, and of 10,000 men, to begin his march on the without notification or warning to General Capital. In the mean time, having been Scott!* A great part of the transports compelled, both from necessity and humanfinally used, were small trading craft, ity, to send home seven regiments of picked up as they could be found on and old volunteers, as early as the month of near the spot, extremely hazardous and May, he was obliged to cut himself off wholly unfit for the purpose-twenty or from Vera Cruz, and make his army a thirty of which were at one time actually driven ashore in a norther. Very soon after the contemplated treachery of "heading off" Gen. Scott by a Lieutenant-general, had been defeated, the Executive Government had the news of the fall of Vera Cruz, and the Castle of St. Juan-a most brilliant operation, conducted with infinite skill and judgment, and for which little thanks were due to them. But immediately that same hope, with which they had so often cheated themselves before-that of having an offer of submission from the enemy since a new success had been achieved-was revived. * Captain Hetzel, A. Q. M, in a memorandum for the Commanding General, dated February 9, states that these ten transports, as he supposed, by a note from the Adjutant-general, Jones, to General Scott, had then actually sailed, and might soon be expected. So General Scott understood from the same note, or report; vide his letter to the Department of 28th February. This is said with his accustomed candor. No *The Secretary, in his defence, insists that the original understanding was that all the troops from the north were to be sent to the Brazos. troops from the north, destined for Vera Cruz, were to be landed at the Brazos, as the Secretary ade to do. Besides, he had notice from Genhad ordered General Cadwallader and his brigeral Scott, before he left New Orleans, that he should probably require all troops from the north, as they came to New Orleans, to rendezvous at Lobos, and not off the Brazos at all. After the troops drawn from the Rio Grande had all actually left the Brazos for rendezvous at Lobos, it is absurd to say that any troops from the north, destined for Vera Cruz, ought first to go to the Brazos. But after Vera Cruz and its Castle had fallen, and Scott was on his march for the Capital, troops which ought to have gone to him, were sent to the Rio Grande! † After every effort to induce these troops to re-engage, General Scott said in public orders that he could not "in humanity and good faith cause regiments, entitled, in a few weeks, to an honorable discharge, to advance further from the coast in the pursuit of the enemy, and thereby throw them upon the necessity of returning to embark at Vera Cruz, at the season known to be, at that place, the most fatal to life." For this act the humane Secretary of War reproaches him! "self-sustaining machine" in the heart of | have been utterly unwilling to understand the enemy's country. He was as ill-sup- and acknowledge, what sort of authority it plied for the road, as he had been for is which belongs necessarily to a commantransportation by water. The chief Com-der-in-chief in the field, conducting a cammissary had not received a dollar of money paign in the heart of an enemy's country. since they landed at Vera Cruz. Four The Head of Discipline, he has found it months' pay was due the soldiers. The impossible to maintain discipline on acarmy was destitute of necessary clothing, count of the ignorant, partial, and maliand even the new troops arrived as desti- cious interference of the political governtute as the rest. A thousand hands had ment at home. They have abetted and to be employed on the spot in making justified, against the Commander, the outshoes and pantaloons, out of the worst rageous conduct of a fighting General, a materials, to cover the nakedness of the gallant soldier enough, but notoriously the troops! most factious and impatiently ambitious man of the army. Arrested by his Commander, the Executive interposes to restore this new political favorite to his command, without a trial, and even without inquiry; and not content with this, he affects to consider the very act of this officer, which was the ground of his arrest-an act of gross insult and outrage to his Commander, and of insubordination hardly short of mutiny-as a rightful and proper and formal exhibition of charges and specifications against his superior; and thereupon he proceeds, first, to dismiss General Scott from his high command, and thenthe punishment having first been inflicted But if the Executive Government did not send to General Scott troops, and money, and necessary supplies, there was one thing they did send him-they sent him Mr. Trist. On the 12th of April they received the intelligence of the fall of Vera Cruz and the Castle, and on the 14th Mr. Trist was dispatched with a missive to General Scott, declaring their expectation that Mexico would now "be disposed to offer fair terms of accommodation," and that Mr. Trist was sent forward to "be in readiness to receive any proposals which the enemy may see fit to make for the restoration of peace." Instead of reinforcements, they sent an agent to receive the submission of the enemy-and such an agent! It was not a national Commission, composed of such men as Crittenden and Benton, or Mangum and Calhoun, but it was Mr. Nicholas P. Trist, a clerk in the State Department, and selected seemingly because he was known to entertain at that time a petty spite and enmity to General Scott, who was sent on this errand, as a "confidential agent" of the Government, to the head-quarters of that Commander. General Scott could not be intrusted with this authority, to receive proposals from the enemy, and make a preliminary treaty of peace, under instructions, though this very power was to have been conferred on Mr. Benton, if he had taken the field as LieuIt was too important a tenant-general. service to be intrusted to General Scott, though not too important to be committed to Mr. Nicholas P. Trist. The sequel of the infamous treatment of General Scott by the Executive Government has been answerable to its beginning and its progress. They have been utterly incapable of understanding, or rather, they places him before a Court, picked and packed by the Executive,* for inquiry into the pretended charges against him! It should excite no surprise when we find the Executive, through his Secretary of War, intimating, what he dared not directly assert, that this dismissal of General Scott was only relieving him from command at his own request. Marlborough, after some successful battles, including that of Blenheim, was created a Duke, received vast estates as gifts from the nation, and had a magnificent palace built for him at the public expense. Wellington, at the close of his campaigns in Spain, *When charges were preferred against Colonel Harney, and it became the duty and the right of General Scott to detail a Court Martial for his trial, with characteristic delicacy and generosity, because there had been previously some personal difference between them, the General requested and directed Colonel Harney to select or name his own Court. Not to be outdone in generosity, the gallant Colonel declined to do so. They have been, we believe, the best of friends ever since. The President and Secretary, in their generosity, assign General Towson, and General Caleb Cushing, to be the triers of GenPillow, is the trial of General Scott, and so intenderal Scott! Even the trial, in form, of General ed, before such a Court. was created a Duke, and the nation made him a present, in a single gift, of two millions of dollars. Scott, at the close of his campaign in Mexico, had, in his whole military career, rendered as much signal service, and gained as much glory for his country, by his mighty achievements in war, as Marlborough or Wellington had done for theirs, when they received the rewards we have mentioned; and he receives from his Government, as his reward, a contemptuous dismissal from his command, and an arraignment before two tribunals-the one military and packed for the occasion, and the other popular-in both cases on charges equally false and frivolous, and also in both cases sought to be pushed against him with whatever vigor, ability, and influence the Executive Government can command for the purpose. But our space is exhausted, and we must conclude. D. D. B. WUTHERING HEIGHTS.* RESPECTING a book so original as this, and written with so much power of imagination, it is natural that there should be many opinions. Indeed, its power is so predominant that it is not easy after a hasty reading to analyze one's impressions so as to speak of its merits and demerits with confidence. We have been taken and carried through a new region, a melancholy waste, with here and there patches of beauty; have been brought in contact with fierce passions, with extremes of love and hate, and with sorrow that none but those who have suffered can understand. This has not been accomplished with ease, but with an ill-mannered contempt for the decencies of language, and in a style which might resemble that of a Yorkshire farmer who should have endeavored to eradicate his provincialism by taking lessons of a London footman. We have had many sad bruises and tumbles in our journey, yet it was interesting, and at length we are safely arrived at a happy conclusion. The first feeling with which we turn back 1846. to recall the incidents passed through, is one of uneasiness and gloom; even the air of summer, so reviving to city dwellers, does not dispel it. To write or think about the tale, without being conscious of a phase of sadness, is impossible; which mood of the mind, if it appear to the reader, let him not attribute to an over susceptibility, unless he has read the book with no such impression himself. We shall take for granted that a novel which has excited so unusual an attention, has been or will soon be in the hands of most of our readers of light literature, and shall therefore write rather from than upon it. We will not attempt an outline of the story; it is so void of events that an outline would be of small assistance to any who have not read it, and would only be tedious to those who have. It is a history of two families during two generations, and all transpires under their two roofs. The genealogy is a little perplexing, and as an assistance to the reader's recollection we give it in a note.t If we did not know that this book has Wuthering Heights. A Novel. By the Author of "Jane Eyre." New York: Harper & Brothers. Old Mr. Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights has two children, Hindley and Catherine. He finds Heathcliff, a gipsy boy, in Liverpool streets, and brings him home. When he dies, Hindley brings home a foreign wife, Frances. Old Mr. and Mrs. Linton, of Thrushcross Grange, have two children, Edgar and Isabella. In 1778 Hindley's wife gives birth to a son, Hareton, and dies. Old Mr. and Mrs. Linton die, and Edgar Linton marries Catherine Earnshaw. Heathcliff marries Isabella. Mrs. Linton (Catherine) gives birth to a daughter, and dies; the daughter takes her name. Heathcliff's wife dies, leaving a son, Linton. Hindley Earnshaw dies. Heathcliff's son, Linton, marries Edgar Linton's daughter Catherine. Edgar Linton dies. Heathcliff's son dies. Heathcliff himself dies; and finally Hareton Earnshaw and the widow of Heathcliff's son are left with a fair prospect of a happy marriage. been read by thousands of young ladies in express the deepest thoughts, the most ardent passions, the strongest emotions, without in the least offending propriety. We are not called upon to affect surliness or bluntness of speech; and where a whole book is in this style, whatever may be its merits, this is a simple obvious defect, the first to impress itself upon the reader, and by no means the least serious. Suppose this book were not written with so much power and subtlety, and with so large an infusion of genuine truth and beauty, the judgment of the public would at once condemn it on account of its coarseness of style. It would then be seen how much of the coarseness was affected and how much natural. But ought the other qualities of the book, which render us almost insensible, while we are reading it, to a language which, to say the least, was never that of well-bred ladies and gentlemen, to excuse this language-even considering the coarseness wholly unaffected and unavoidable—a part of the substance of the writer's very self? We need not inform young ladies that in the process of love-making, one of the surest tests by which they can distinguish a gentleman and man of sincerity, is in his style of speaking. He will not be very fluent We think not. The book is original; -at least not without some encouragement it is powerful; full of suggestiveness. But --some betrayal to him of a consciousness still it is coarse. The narrative talks on that he is attentive, and that his attentions in a way that if an attempt to imitate it are not wholly displeasing; but the little be ever made in a parlor, the experihe does say will be in the selectest words. menter should be speedily ejected. It If he is allowed to entertain a reasonable ought to be banished from refined society, expectation, he will grow eloquent in pri- because it does not converse in a proper vate, and perhaps his idol will hear the manner. Setting aside the profanity, which most poetic expressions leaping from his if a writer introduces into a book, he oflips unconsciously. The secret opinion fends against both politeness and good which such a man entertains of his mis- morals, there is such a general roughness tress is, that she is all that is pure and and savageness in the soliloquies and dialovely; and his great wish is to be wor-logues here given as never should be found thy of her goodness, and to protect her from all the roughness and badness of the common world. Now, we may suppose a case where a young lady appreciates this feeling on the part of her admirer, looks up to him with a correspondent lofty opinion of his worth, and desires to secure his heart. If she has read Wuthering Heights, let her be extremely careful not to let its style affect her conversation. A little bad grammar even, is not so sure a quencher of the rising flame, as slang expressions or brutal unrefinement. There is a certain decorum in language as well as in manners or modes. We may in a work of art. The whole tone of the style of the book smacks of lowness. It would indicate that the writer was not accustomed to the society of gentlemen, and was not afraid, indeed, rather gloried, in showing it. Suppose a rough sailor of a powerful imagination-an eloquent narrator, in his way, of forecastle "yarns," (there are many such to be met with ;) we may enjoy his intellectual power at times, but we do not wish to make too free with him. Not because he is worse than we are in the sight of Heaven, but because we have been educated differently, we should prefer our landlady not to ask him to tea. |