BOOKS.

"PET" CRUISES WITH THE BALTIC FLEET.* A YACHT suggests to persons familiar with Cowes and the waters of the Solent, visions of aristocratic grandeur and luxury ; Mayfair and Melton taking their pleasure in fast-sailing boudoirs instead of in morocco-lined carriages or on thoroughbred hunters ; beauties and dandies in elaborately naval masquerade, with champagne for grog and Gunter's cuisine for salt-junk and biscuit; sailors as trim as Guardsmen on parade, sails white as swansdown, and ships that inside and out look as if they had just been unpacked from a first-rate upholsterer's warehouse, bright with burnished metal and polished wood, roomy, elegant, and cost- ly. With all this factitious splendour and unsailor-like lux- ury, the real enjoyment of a sea life must form but a small portion of a rich yaehtman's compensation for his outlay ; and the man who really enjoys amateur sailing, the man who has the true spirit of a sailor, will rather regard all this as an encumbrance. Mr. Hughes has perhaps gone to the opposite extreme. Few pro- fessional sailors would choose to cross the German Ocean and cruise in the Baltic, even in summer, in a Thames cutter of eight tons measurement; and fewer amateurs could handle such a craft smartly enough to have even a chance of escaping the manifold perils of winds, waves, rocks, and shores. The owner and captain of the "Pet" is a clergyman, a scholar, and a Fellow of a College at Cambridge. However admirably he may discharge himself of these several functions, there is one other for which he would be, in our opinion, and we should think in his own, much better suited, and that is the command of the most dashing frigate in her Majesty Queen 'Victoria's service. The Church is none the worse for such men as he is, and Cambridge -University is much the better for them ; but the higher ranks of the British Navy seem just now very decidedly to want them,—unless the Admiralty, as we suspect, has more to do with the naval disappointments of the last two years than either captains or even admirals. As a_ narrative of personal adventure, Mr. Hughes's Log would at any time be interesting ; for what gives interest to adventure is the manhood displayed in meeting and conquering difficulties, the cheerfulness of spirit, the physical endurance, the readiness of wit and inventiveness of resource, as much as the novelty or striking character of the scenes witnessed. And the man who twice performs the voyage to the Baltic in a mere cockle- shell of a boat must have all these qualities in abund- ance. But Mr. Hughes was attracted to the Baltic by the stirring scenes he expected to witness there, and the disap- pointment of the first naval campaign did not prevent him from sharing the hopes of the nation in regard to the second. He went with his mind full of the old achievements of the British Navy, with an imagination that had revelled in its deeds of daring courage and skilful seamanship, to a combination of which we owe our renown and our power. How in both cases he failed to see what he went for, is a tale we all know too well. But such a witness is worth all the newspaper professional correspondents. He has no party to serve, no motives of speech or reservation but what are patent and honourable; the stamp of veracity is on every sentence of his book—not only the intention to speak the truth and nothing but the truth, but the capacity of perceiving facts and of not perceiving falsehoods. He mixed too with the officers of the beet—so that he is enabled to reflect in his journal the real feelings of this class on the events of the last two years in the Baltic, and their own share in them.

We have beard much of the service the Swedish fleet of gun- boats, numbering 256, might render -us in the Baltic operations. Mr. Hughes, who saw them maneuvering at Slitehamn in Gott- laud, thus records his experience.

"As regards their gem-boats, I must speak with very faint praise. It is the custom in newspapers to write at random about the very important ser- vices they might render ire in the present war : I must beg leave to differ from this opinion in tote. The Swedish gun-boat for defensive purposes in a sheltered harbour might be of some little service, but for general warfare they are entirely out of date. They are about fifty feet long by perhaps six- teen in width. At either end they carry a 32-pound Paixhan gun. The di- rection of the gun could only be altered by Blueing the craft round, and un- less she should unhappily be between two enemieashe can only use one gun at St time. Neither gun is available unless the boat is end-on her enemy, and consequently exposed to a raking fire. They mil miserably ; and the heavy ordnance fore and aft make them so laboursome in a sea-way, that they are

unfit to be trusted outside ; the bow and stern, moreover, are necessa-

cut away to make room for the guns, and they form complete water- traps. Three or four such craft, with a force of six or eight guns, require as many men as would man a steam frigate; and, however formidable they -may have been formerly to a sailing-vessel in a calm, an active steam gun- boat or sloop would now give them the stem one after the other with impunity. "The Swedish officers are perfectly aware of the inefficiency of these an- tiquated machines, and probably a few years will see the last of them. Such as they are we found them in admirable order, as neat and smart as hands -could make them.

" The next day we had our first taste of a Baltic breeze : it blew hard and rained heavily, and a nasty chopping sea tumbled into the bay and broke against the rocks. We lay quietly in safety and smooth water, and amused ourselves by watching the manoeuvres of the gun-boats, which were knock- ing about inside. They were miserably wet, and worked and sailed under their three lugs so unsatisfactorily that we were entirely confirmed in our opinion that, except in the finest weather, they never could have been formidable ; and now, under all circumstances, they are entirely bowled out by steam." Here is part of a description of the defences of Sweaborg, which • Two Summer Cruises with the Baltic Fleet, in 1854-'5; being the Log of the " Pet" Yacht, 8 cons, R.T.Y.C. By the Rev. Robert Edgar Hughes, M.A., Fellow of Magdalen College, -Cambridge. Published by Smith and Elder.

curiously illustrates the fabulous character of those works of pic- torial and literary art which the interest of the public in the scenes

of the war has produced. • • "Upon Bakholm two large sloping turf forts were placed, distinguished by flagstaffs, and mounting guns of great range. Facing the N.W. point of this island there is, I believe, upon Gustasfvaerd a stone fort, guarding the pas- sage, which mounts three tiers of guns. It is entirely invisible from the sea; but it has so completely got hold of the imagination of newspaper-writers and print-sellers' artists that I have never seen a sketch or a description of Sveaborg which does not place a great granite three-decker upon almost every island; and we have been dinned and deafened by the cry about stone walls and huge granite three-tiered forte at Sveaborg, in the absence of which the real strength of the place consists. Ships may hammer away at a great granite fort, and, at moderate range, eventually hammer it down by force of the enormous weight of metal which they can hurl against it; but these sloping works, and small stone batteries, dotted about wherever nature offers a crevice or a slope to protect them, show no face to the front for horizontal fire ; and the only way to deal with them is, to pour in such a blaze of shells and rockets as to burn, bruise, and stifle everything alive out of the place.

" Between Bakholm and dustadvaerd lay the three-decked ship Russia, a large but apparently old vessel. Gustasfvaerd, Vargii, and West Swart?), may possibly each have a casemated fortification of great extent and regular form, like those represented in the fashionable lithographs ; but if so, they are at all events perfectly invisible, and the appearance of the islands lethal j which I have just described. There was a little waspish battery on Gustaafvaerd, facing N.W., which particularly distinguished itself by firing at every ship's gig or cutter which came within range, and by the singular and absurd inaccuracy of its practice.

"There is one English sketch which I have seen in the shop-windows of London, Gottenburg, and Stockholm, bearing the suspicious name of Walker, which portrays a huge precipitous island; the idea borrowed, I fancy, from the Bass Bock or Ailsa Craig, covered with flocks of sea-fowl and lashed by ocean billows. Tremendous granite batteries frown downward upon the awe- struck spectator, and a line-of-battle ship, dwindled to her cock, sails under- neath, her royal mast reaching as far as the knees or the garters of this Pelion upon Ossa! All this is sheer imagination. We had a good gauge for the height of the island : just behind the highest ground lay a dis- mantled line-of-battle ship. stripped to her lower masts, and her white mast- heads and the fore and main-tops just showed above the roofs of the build- ings. This was not the Russia nor the Ezekiel, but a third ship, which never showed in front."

Newspaper-readers may remember that Mr. Hughes got into a serape with his little boat at Sweaborg. Here is the story ; time, immediately after the bombardment.

"On Sunday evening, my friend Mr. Lodge, of the Indian Army, a_ great enthusiast in military matters, was most anxious to see what damage we had really done, and what progress the enemy had really made in raising and arming new works of defence. "Accordingly, an hour before dark, I got the Pet under way, and, we went in ; there was a nice evening breeze blowing towards the shore, and we carried our largest sails. "Leaving Ronskiir and its group of rocky isles on the left, we stood straight in for Vargo, passed a little low black rock in two fathoms, and reached distance of about a thousand yards, or rather less, from the citadel. As wewere in the act of hauling our wind, a light puff of smoke leaped from the heights of Bakholm, quickly followed by the report and the roar of the shot as it came nearer and nearer, and plunged sullenly into the sea. "Another and another followed ; the citadel took up the fun ; the ship Ezekiel,* not to be outdone in courage, joined in the riot; and the greatSt, Nicholas battery, on Stora Beaten, chimed in. Hot shot, cold shot, solid shot, hollow shot and shell, the whole evil generation of iron projectiles, were hurled by three batteries of a first-class Russian fortress and a liue-of- battle ship, at an unarmed and defenceless yacht. At Hange they showed us how Russian soldiers could fight, and here they showed us how Russian gunners and seamen could shoot : and preciously they did shoot ! their round shot went roaring dismally overhead and fell far beyond us in the sea; the shell came curvetting towards us, their lighted fuzes sparkling in the dusk, and fell harmlessly fizzing, far away under our lee; one only burst near us, and two at the very muzzles of their own guns. " We could not help laughing with delight to see their abortive and ungenerous missiles plunged stupidly, one after the other, into the hissing waves. " We held our course without alteration for perhaps ten minutes. Mr. Lodge kindly kept the lead going, and I look care of the helm : our high topsail, shining white as fairies' petticoatain the sunset, was a capital decently near. but they never succeeded in hitting us, or even throwing a h near. As we approached Laghara, the last shot from Bakholm, thrown by a gun of enormous range, flew far over us, and this noisy display of puerile and unmanly rage came to an end. " On Sunday evening, an English yacht, the Pandora, with a party of amateurs, amongst whom was a lady on board, happened to get within range of the enemy's guns, which fired eighteen shots at her, but fortunately they all missed.'

" On the evening of the 12th, the Wee Pet yacht, with some officers of the Cossack on board, and Prince Leiningen among them, much to the an- noyance of the Admiral, stood in towards the forts about nine, and had &re- gular brisk fire opened upon her with red-hot shot and shell and bursting and hitting near her without any results.' " The former of these paragraphs is by the ingenious little gentleman in the Daily _Yews, who has already afforded us some diversion. I must do him the justice to say that there is not one word of sober truth in his whole letter from beginning to end. " The latter paragraph is by another various correspondent' of the same paper, who mistakes the Bolus for a collier, and the Tourville for a tram- port. " If the officers, the amateurs, the Prince, and the young lady, were as ambitious of appearing without good reason in the newspapers as some peoN.e seem to be, they would doubtless feel greatly obliged to these gentlemen Ter their condescending notice. " The Pandora yacht, however, was not in any way concerned in this trifling affair. No officer of the Cossack, or of any other ship, was present Prince Ernest was not on board ; and moat decidedly we were not bled with the presence of a young lady. " It will be seen that these gentlemen have made one or two mistakes; the worst mistake, however, consists in writing long letters to the 'public papers without taking the precaution to know anything of the facts they have attempted to record."

This is Mr. Hughes's comment on the affair at Sweaborg.

" Of Nelson's three great victories, two are distinctly opposed to the theories of modern tacticians ; and yet one of those victories prevented a hostile eons- bination, the other extinguished an invasion.

• Probably the 74 of that name which fought with us at Navarino.

" The naval service is and must be essentially &service of enterprise and daring, and to such a service two cautious victories are more prejudicial than a glorious defeat. At preeent it seems a maxim that no enterprise should be undertaken which• incurs a chance of lees or a probability of failure: those principles may be well enough in commercial eyes, but it is not thus that Cochrane, and Hamilton, and Willoughby, and Nelson, and Exmouth, fought. " As regards this particular enterprise, there can be no diffioulty in ad- raiding, that if the ships had gone in, men, and perhaps ships, would have been sacrificed.

" If they had gone crawling in, salon Is regle., at about two knots an hour, in broad daylight, it is not difficult to perceive that the loss would have been heavy, though perhaps not out of proportion to the stake for which we were playing ; for conceive the value to this country of a British victory in the Baltic, now that we have subsided into the second rank at Sebastopol.

" We are not, however, prepared to admit that the resources of a seaman could suggest no other expedient than this. It was ascertained that no arti- ficial obstacles prevented the ships from approaching within five hundred yards of the batteries ; and as regards natural obstacles, where Russian sail- ing-ships can go by day, British steam-ships should not fear to venture even by night.. Men who are accustomed to ply in the darkest and most tem- pestuous seasons through intricate sands, without other assistance than the lead and a simple arrangement of lights, can easily understand that, com- manding as we did all the outside islands, which surround the approaches, we might have piloted our ships in by day or by night if we thought proper. " The nights were dark enough for boats to sound every part of the chan- nel in safety ; and even in open day there was no great risk in doing so, and plenty of men ready and willing to undertake the task. " On Thursday night, the enemy, probably engaged in quelling the fire, or perhaps disheartened by the disasters of the day, did not even fire upon the rocket-boats ; and it is not difficult to imagine the panic and dismay which would have been created at that crisis by the blaze of five hundred guns and the explosion of their shells in the narrow limits of these islands, a consider- able part of which was already on fire : add to this the uninterrupted fire of the 13-inch mortars from without and a large flotilla of gun and rocket boats closer in, and we can scarcely believe that such a shower of fire falling upon buildings already dried and heated by the neighbouring conflagrations would have failed to burn the whole of them. We know from General De Berg's despatch how narrowly they escaped a still more destructive explosion than any which actually occurred; and it seems at all events probable that out of such a host of fiery projectiles some one ill-omened shell or rocket would have forced his way into the very vitals of their magazines.

" Be this as it may, everything alive must have been driven under cover revel and the fires, probably increased twofold, must have been permitted to revel ad libitum.

" As regards the other side of the question, the ships would have encoun- tered the risk of being set on fire or sunk. But men of war were not built to be looked at, and steam-vessels are not like stone batteries, compelled through weal or wo to stand fast for ever and abide the issue of the strife. A ship has in this respect immense advantages : if the fire is too hot for her she can shift her berth ; if she sees a weak position she can assail it ; if she sustain damage, she can retire out of action and allow a fresh ship to supply her place. Add to this, that the glare of the conflagration, while it afforded na a mark which we could not miss, must have rendered all distant objects black and invisible to the enemy.

" To do all these things in the dark among the rocks, requires accurate knowledge of the ground, a judicious and simple arrangement of lights, and seamanship of a very high order. If the thing had been attempted without these essential elements, the whole enterprise would have failed, ; half, per- haps all, the ships would have gone ashore, and been knocked to pieces next , morning, On the other hand, I venture to express ray belief, that, with proper precautions and by good seamanship, a great exploit might have been performed, and important results would have followed."

We quoted last week a passage by Mr. Hughes in the Cambridge Essays, recommending increased severity in our application of naval force to distress the enemy's coasts and mercantile popula- tion. Such advice may to some appear sanguinary and unchristian, and little to become the mouth of a clergyman. But the real question is, whether such means would terminate the war more quickly ; in which case, the humanitarian method may really turn out the more sanguinary and cruel of the two. We are fighting with a power which will not yield till she is forced : whatever tends to force her is justifiable on grounds of mercy as well as policy, provided the means taken are not such as to debase and degrade the men employed to execute them. Where any doubt on this point remains, certainly the means should not be employed: and it must be admitted that the morals of war are not as clearly settled as they might be. 1'he volume concludes with some pleasantly written sketches of Stockholm, where the "Wee Pet" is laid up for her next summer's cruise. We hope Mr. Hughes may then see something that will repay him for his enterprise and pluck. Meanwhile, on the result of the policy or stupidity that controls our naval proceedings, this is the record of Mr. Hughes's observations'in the countries he visited.

" Much also did we wonder what we should find going on in England : would our countrymen be aware that, even among our friends and kinsmen on the Continent, the decline of England's power, the inefficiency of Eng- land's Army, Navy, and Government, is the topic of the day ? " Would it have occurred to men's minds, that the paltry figure we have cut In the war is causing Swede and Dane and German to distrust the wooden walls, and to look to other quarters for a counterpoise to the great military power of Western Europe—that the name and fame of England, which cost so much to win, is oozing away from our ships, like Bob Acres'e courage from the tips of his fingers ?"