we do not know that any one has a right to
object to American ladies and gentlemen
consuming their gas after so harmless and urbane a
fashion.

A SOUVENIR OF SOLFERINO.

1. THE TRAVELLING AMATEUR.

A CITIZEN of Geneva, Monsieur J. HENRY
DUNANT, has lately given to the world a startling
book, Un Souvenir de Solferino, in which he
details what he saw and did in the Lombard
campaign, and what he would fain do now. The
work, not originally intended to be published,
was printed for private circulation only; but in
consequence of numerous applications, and as a
means of serving its purpose better, it was
offered for sale, and is now in its third edition.
As the author waited three years before
committing his recollections to paper, the horrors he
relates are both softened and abridged by the
delay; the reader, however, will allow that
enough remain to justify M. Dunant in pressing
the question both of the Aid to be given to
Wounded Soldiers in Time of War, and of the
Nursing to be bestowed upon them Immediately
After an Engagement.

M. Dunant evidently thinks that he has done,
and is doing, nothing extraordinary. There is
not a particle of self-glorification in his book.
He writes simply, touchingly, and heartily; and
it will be strange if multitudes of benevolent
hearts do not answer to his appeal. He witnessed
the battle of Solferino; he also witnessed its
results. A simple tourist, entirely stranger to
and disinterested in the mighty struggle, he
had the privilege, through a concourse of
particular circumstances, of being present at the
stirring scenes he describes. Moreover, when
the drama was played out, he did not quit the
theatre at the fall of the curtain—the closing in of
night. He remained on the spot with a heroism far
greater than that of the fiercest combatant, tending
and consoling, to the utmost of his strength,
the disabled actors in the bloody tragedy.

He went from bed to bed, from room to
room, from hospital to hospital, unappalled by
heartrending sufferings and loathsome stenches,
doing his duty to all, irrespective of nation, as
nurse of the wounded and comforter of the
dying. Being clad all in white (the heat at that
time was overpowering), he was known to the
patients as Le Monsieur Blanc. When he
passed through the thick ranks of prostrate
soldiers, after the surgeon's visit and the
distribution of soup, which produced a temporary
calm of their nervous system, all eyes followed
him. And no wonder. If he went to the right,
every head was turned to the right; to the left,
if he went to the left. They knew neither his
name nor his nation; but, being a Genevese
Swiss, French was his native tongue. "You
see plainly enough that he is a Parisian," said
some. "No," replied others; "he looks to me
as if he came from the south." "You belong
to Bordeaux, don't you, sir?" inquired a third.
Everybody would have it that he was of his
own province, or his own town. In the course
of the following year he had the satisfaction of
meeting, in Paris, and notably in the Rue de
Rivoli, amputated and invalid soldiers who
stopped him to express their gratitude for the
care he had bestowed on them at Castiglione. All
this is told without the slightest pretension, and
with the only view of putting the question home,
"Cannot you also go and do likewise?"

II. THE ORGIE OF BLOOD.

THE combined French and Sardinian forces
amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand
men, with about four hundred pieces of artillery.
The Emperor of Austria had at his disposal, in
Lombardy, nine corps d'armée, amounting in all
to two hundred and fifty thousand men; but
only seven corps were to enter into the engagement
—that is, one hundred and seventy thousand
men, supported by five hundred pieces of artillery.
More than three hundred thousand men were,
therefore, assembled for mutual destruction,
according to rule, "with humanity and civilisation." *
The numbers thus met for human
butchery can only be realised to the imagination
by thinking of towns with populations of
twenty or thirty thousand souls, and then
multiplying them mentally. The line of battle
occupied twelve miles of ground, and they fought
for more than fifteen hours, that memorable Friday,
the 24th of June.

The two contending armies had not expected
to come to blows quite so soon. Each was in
error respecting the movements of the adversary.
The shock of meeting was a surprise to both.
The Austrian army, after sustaining the fatigue
of a difficult march during the whole night of
the 23rd, had to support, at break of day of the
24th, the violent onslaught of the allied army,
and to suffer excessive heat, as well as hunger
and thirst; for, with the exception of a double
ration of brandy, the greater part of the troops
took no nourishment whatever during the whole
of Friday. The French army, which began to
move with the dawn, had nothing but their morning coffee.
The exhaustion of the combatants,
and especially of the unhappy wounded, was
extreme at the close of that terrible battle.

The first blows were struck amidst the
difficulties of a ground entirely unknown to the
allies. The French army had to thread their
way through plantations of mulberry-trees
interlaced with vines. The soil was cut up by large
dry ditches, and long walls of no great height, but
very broad at their base. The horses had to
climb over the walls and to leap the ditches.

To check their advance, the Austrian artillery
pours down upon them an incessant hail of bombs,
balls,and bullets. The smoke from the cannon and
the guns is intermingled with the dust and earth
thrown up by such a multitude of projectiles striking
the ground. The French brave the thunders
of the batteries, in order to storm the positions,
which they are resolved to take at any price.

* "Nous ferons la guerre avec humanité, avec
civilisation."—General Trochu's Proclamation, May
4, 1859.