[ 64 J PJAn. 
NOTES OF THE MONTH ON AFFAIRS IN GENERAL. 
Tue Russian campaign has closed—as all men wished, but none 
expected—in extraordinary discomfiture. So much for boasting! The 
pomposity of the Russian government, and its diplomatic meddling on 
all kinds of occasions, had actually succeeded to the extent of making 
grave men fear that the Scythians were again likely to disturb the 
world. The French journals, to do them justice, led the way in this 
foolery ; and, as French journals then dared not say that the sun shone 
without the order of M. Villele to that purport, we had the high autho- 
rity of the lord of the cabinet, the slave of the Jesuits, and the lucky 
possessor of twenty-five millions of francs, or one million sterling, per 
annum, gathered by hands that came to Paris with half-a-crown in 
them, for the fact—that Russia was the genuine arbiter of Europe, the 
terror that was to keep Austria in check,-the scourge that was to punish 
the maritime ambition of England, and the magnanimous ally that was 
to place Joseph Villele at the head of all thriving politicians, past, pre- 
sent, and to come. 
We had our Russian enthusiasts, too, on this side of the Channel ; and 
those who are in the wise habit of pinning their faith on the Opposition 
papers, trembled at night to lay their heads on their pillows, through 
fear of a Russian invasion before morning. Calmucs and Bahkirs rose 
in clouds on their poetic fancies; and the Kentish coast was already ~ 
seen waving with the flags of Our Lady of Kasan. The Russian cabinet, 
too, finding that the world was inclined to play the fool on the subject, 
was by no means reluctant to minister to the indulgence ; and armies by 
the half-million were paraded on paper with a facility worthy of the 
finest gasconade of France in her days of glory and the guillotine. 
Every thing silly that could be done by fright, ignorance, or the love of 
the marvellous for its own sake, was done—except Sir Robert Wilson’s 
writing a book ; a catastrophe from which, however, we were saved 
only by the knight’s having written on both sides of the question with equal 
energy before, and being also a little aware of the unproductiveness of 
volunteering in royal quarrels. But Colonel De Lacy Evans was a 
capital substitute ; and the vigorous alarm that supplied his pen with 
projected conquests, and the Russians with capacity to compass them, 
was more than enough to throw Sir Robert into utter eclipse. Led by 
the colonel’s hand, the Russian emperor had only to come, see, and con- 
quer. The chief difficulty of this tremendous wielder of human potency 
was, where he should first condescend to triumph ; on what fair portion 
of the earth he should stoop: whether he should first deluge India or 
Austria ; settle the quarrel between the Cham of Tartary and the Chinese 
Emperor, by tying both their tails to his horse’s, or order his guard to 
cross the Rhine, and tranquilly take his bottle in the Tuilleries. 
Men are easily deceived in matters so near the North Pole, and, for a 
month, the gallant Colonel passed for a man who saw deeper into Siberia 
than his fellows ; but Nicholas soon robbed him of the honours of his arctic 
sagacity. Alexander would have been more dextrous. His natural craft 
would have suffered the vapourers and sciolists of the earth to fight his 
battle for him ; and while he conquered in the coffee-houses, would never 
have forced the cabinets to be wiser. If Alexander had lived for a cen- 
tury to come, he would never have soiled a Russian boot with Moldavian 
mire; the Pacha of Bulgaria would have been left to smoke his pipe and 
a 
