THE WAR IN NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume I, Issue 133, 16 April 1864, Page 3

THE WAR IN NEW ZEALAND.

[From tho '• Sydney Morning HerHlil."M:irch 31]. If General Cameron completes tho present campaign according to his proposal, by dislodging the natives from Maungatatauri, the coloni.-ts will have no cause to complain of his want of success. He will not only have achieved a great deal, but what he will have done will be complete as far as it goea. The war will net be over, simply because the natives have still indefinite power of retreat, and they prefer that to submission. The General can beat them in an open fight, or outmanoeuvre then when they take up a position, but he cannot bring them to a reasonable state of mind. They have heen lead astray hy teachers who, for a succession of years, have fed the false notion of a seperate Maori Government, and the process of nnteaching them is a slow one. But though the compaign does not close the war, it has advanced matters very materially towards that consummation, and has secured substantial rasults which lire well worth the expense it has cost to get them. The metropolis of the colony is placed net only out of danger," but out of the danger even of a panic ; and those who remember the real terror that at one time prevailed in Auckland with reference to a Maori invasion will not consider this a trifle. The Southern frontier of the province has been pushed back lor a long distance. The country has not been absolutely cleared of hostilo natives, and prowling parties may still lurk undes the cover of the uncultivated country. But that is a minor difficulty, which will only require a little temporary vigilance to deal with, and which will be completely overcome whin the eonqured land comes to be cleard and settled.

The army has not only moved the scat of war many miles away trim Auckland, but as eonqured the whole belt of available land which lies between two tributaries of the Waikato, and which was the home of the natives, whose descent upon the city was dreaded. The hostile tribes who have drawn this war upon themselves, if not reduced to submission, are at least disinherited. The " mana" of the land has passed away effectually now. Tho evacuation has been something more than a strategic retreat ; it has been a final abandonment. They return no more except by the consent of the conquerors, when, if they take the oath of allegiance, they will have a portion allotted to them as a freehold. All the commanding positions are now in the hands of the Europeans, as also are the cultivated grounds; and it will be impossible for the Maoris ever again to be able to occupy in fo,rcc any point which would interfere with the European control over the territory. They can sneak in and out and roam about in detached parties, but they will be hunted fugitives, and they cannot take up any permanent position with a chance of holding it. Forajs aid raids thev mav still for a time make, but that is all. The confiscated land is the property of the Government. Ibis is a substantial fruit of the campaign, and one that helps materially to lighten the financial responsibilities that have been incurred. The scheme of military colonisation presumed the conquest of a sufficiency of good land. It is by thesettlunent and sale of this land that the heavy cost of the war is to be partly repaid. Hypothesis has been in this matter reduced to certainly. A large aieaof land has been secured, and is available tor survey. A long price bus been given tor it, no doubt, but not more perhaps than it will repay. Halt the cost of the war given to the natives for" the purchase of the, same tiuanlity of land would leave them rich bejond the drcanis'of their avarice. But they would not have it so; and ihe transfer has been elicited in a less desirable way. The Government can now mark on themap the available hind they have for sale, in addition to what is wanted for military settlers. They can begin to amakc something like an approximate estimate of thu moncv value of t' e territory already conquered, and balance it against the cost of the war.

An immigrant population is now becoming more and more of u necessity. The land will be of no value unless it is occupied, and the sooner it is occupied the better. Efficient steps ought to be taken to bring out from England fresh emigrants, as it clearly will be insufficient to trust to arrivals that may bo decoyed from other colonics. If will not do to give the land away for the fake of attracting emigrants, because the fund revenue is essential to the payment of the national debt; but it will probably be neccessarv to sell it on lease, with a right of purchase, so as io give the occupiers time to pay the high upset price that is fixed. Immediate returns to some extent may be secured by the sale of selected blocks to capitalists. Though active operations in the field may be over for the season, the Government has plenty on its hands. There are not only preparations to be made for opening the campaign next spring, and for settling the conquered country, but there is the more immediate task of furnishing suitable winter quarters for the troops. According to all accounts, there ia a great deal to be done before the colonial Volunteers are properly accommodated on the march, and when arapid advance hastobe made a scant)- supply of comfort s can be cheerfully put up with. But when it comes to mouting guard all the winter at a fixed spot, adquatu lood and shelter are essential. The Government having enlisted the Volunteer force, and made use of it, is bound to do all that is possible to provide adequste winter accommodation. There are, no doubt, great difficulties in the way, although those difficulties are less than would be the case if it were neecessary to depend altogether upon land transport. It has been an oversight not to have more little river steamers in readiness. The Government is now trying to supply the deficiency by buying and building suitable vessels. Some have been already furnished to order form Sydney. It would not have been amiss if private enterprise had antieipatid the wants of the Government in this respect. Steamboats of a suitable character built in Sydney, and sent down here, would have found a ready sale, but at the moment they are wanted they cannot be improvised; and the Government, unable apparently to do better, is reduced to the necessity of buying steamboats for the sake of their boilers and machinery.

Modern Economy of Time.—The Sciottifr. American says:—One man can spin more cotton-yam now than four hundred men cotdd have done in tho same time in 1769, when Arkwright, the best cottonspinner, took out his first patent. One man can make as much tlour in a day new as a hundred and fifty could a century ago. One womau can make now as much lace in a day as a hundred women coidd a hundred years ago. It now requires only aa many days to refine sugar as it did months thirty years ago. It once required six months to put quicksilver on a glass; now it needs only forty minutes. The engine of a first-rate-iron-clad frigate will perform as much work in a day as forty -two thousand horses.

REVIEW. Talcs of a Wayside Inn. By Hejtrt Wamwobth Longfellow. London, 1864. • It was with anticipations of no common pleasure that we opened this little volume. Its predecessors have charmed us from our boyhood. On our schoolboy ears tell with a delicious familiarity the classic roil of the Hexameters of Evangetine. Through the graver and more earnest toil of adolescence sounded with cheering diapason the Poet's song of patience and of sustained indomitable perseverance. To our later experience, the Catholic Christianity of his humble worship, his boundless sympathy with all sorrowing humanity—the genial contempt of the bigotry of creed or of race which has bound his slightest utterances together with a golden thread, has come amid the roar and struggle of the world cooling our heated passions as with tho waving of an angel's wings. Nor has our love for the spirit of has writings outrun our admiration of their style. Years ago we reverenced his faithful imitation of the great classic models; to-day we mark with deserved re.-pect his loyalty to principles of art truer than ever breathed in a chorus of Euripides, or laid dpwn in the Epistle to the Pisos.

It is now well nigh six years since tho musical cadences of Mr. Longfellow last reached us in the cisAtlantic shore. Since the story of the sturdy Captain of Plymouth was told, domestic sorrow and public misfortune have sorely tried tho man whom we know best in his love of home and love of country. As the first feeble utterances of a friend slowly recovering from a long illneuss will be prized more highly than the clearest ringing of the same voire in its trumphs of health and vigour, so we greeted these fugitive tales with a welcome warmer than that vouchsafed to the Golden Legend, or to the Song of Hiawatha. We hailed them as an evidence that an old and dear friend walked among us once more—as a guarantee that a distracted nation had not, at its utmost need, lost the charming counsel of the most distinguished of her sons.

Atid reading the pages through with no thought of criticism we were more than gratified. We.found in each the same soul that had gjeamed its calm pale radiance on us of old. Wo found the same elabortion of detail, the same scrupulous adherence to the minutire of construction with which, like the builders in those elder days of art of which he himself had told us, he loves to fill in the obscurer corners of the work which he roars. We found the same divine pity and compassion for all petty human dissensions, the same yo rnings after an age of perfect peace and perfect freedom, the same unobtrusive adoration of the beautiful in Ail or Nature, and with all these familiar attributes we found perhaps a greater dramatic force, and a heartier conception of the trivialities of character than we had ever known before. But we failed to find what we have ever looked for and have ever missed—a hearty American spirit breathing a national poetry in the poorest forms of a national diction. Mr. Longfellow is never " racy of the soil." Indeed he has no\ er been more so than we find him hore. And yet for a dozen pagos, which must have come from a New Englander, we have a hundred which might have been penned b}- a scholar who had never been west of meridian. And upon this point turns the still our gravest cause of dissatisfaction with the American poet. The federation of our old colonies, which has long since swelled into a mighty Empire, should surely boast a grand nation's literature. While the kingdoms of Europe have to seek the memoirs of the founders of their might amid the haze of fable that doubtfully tells us of the violence and rapacity of the Middle Age, a citizen of the new world may find the names of the fathers of his State on the bravest roll of the bravesi epoch of the braves nation of civilisation .While British historians and British genealogists make faltering reference to tho Conquest of the Norman; a Virginim may point with prido to the valour and the wit of Riileigh, and may call

Tlio spacious times of great Elizabeth, to witness, that the old plantation was settled by no ignoble adventurers. While the noblesse of Fiance dream over their records of Charlemogne and Clovis, the Louisianian of the Breton Sound or Eaton Rouge, may accept as his own, the giandett memories of the Imperial People, and may add the boast that his province was founded on the most glorious days of their most glorious iing, proving by tho namo it bears its estimation as no unworthy clenichia of the grand metropolis. And, above all, while the citizen of tho TJniUd States may fairly arogato to himself the reveis-ion of the virtues of the inteimingling blood of the first of Old World peoples at the climax of their power, the Kcw Yoikcr—claiming descent firm the sturdiest bvugher princes of the low countries, whose lineage has not been sullied at hands of his, and whose might has not faded in his keeping — may more tiuly triumph in his country's baptism of lrctdom, in her name and power won by his lathers' stem resistance to oppiession, challenging any Eastern dominion to match the cloudless splendour of her dawn of story. To a land with such grandeur of tradition, gilding such profuse munificence of nature, national poets, and inspired national historians should surely not be wanting. And yet what has America given us ? Hawthorne, Cooper, and Longfellow are almost the only names in her literature which have reached us across tho seas. From the last and greatest of these names the song of the Puritan Soldier is (it" wo except Evangeline) her only gift of fame. We Englishmen often wonder in perplexed amaze how it is that the sole distinguishing characteristics of our Western brothers are not such as we would willingly see introduced among ourselves. But when the" shepherds of the people stand aloof who need marvel at the extravagancies of the crowd!' Had Kestor and Achilles remained inactiyo in his tent Thersitcs might have ruled omnipotent in the camp of the Argives. Let any of our readers.turn over tho first eighteen pages of the volume we review. In the Prelude and Landlord's Tale he will find foreshadowings of a grand epic yet to bo written, and to which the desultory character of our poet's genius forbids him to aspire. And even hero break out the ingrained Eastern sympathies. In the first page of all there is a yearning alter the manners of the olden time, when the Sovereign State of Massachusetts was but a neglected dependency, but when, we are told, " Men in that old colonial day, -■ —lived in an ampler way, lVitb grander hospitalty." From whence is contentment to accrue? In tie stirring davs to come of which our patriots dream, who can say that wo shall find among us the kindliest, gentlest hearts, recalling with regret the rule of Governor Gipps, the merits of the chain-gang, the dailv example upon Gallows Hill 'f And not one hundred lines further on we have a blazon of the Landlord's Arms, given with an heraldic precision curious enough in a citizen of a country where hereditary rank has been proscribed. The " Squire," whose grandfather had fought as colonel of volunteers, at Lexington and Concord, in the first skirmifh in which the rebellious colonists had undisguisedly defied the coercion of the Sovereign, boasts the name and descent from the loyal stock of Howe. Sir. Longfellow blazons tho arms of the General with an inaccuracy which is tho only modern American touch in tho picture. He gleefully quits, however, the solid footing of homo for

The border land of old romance:" for old Italy, old Palestine, old Northland. But this at least one notable reservation. Wo aro with introduced to his ideal theologian

" From tho school Of Cambridge on the Charles, Who preached to nil men everywhere The new commandment given to men. Thinking the deed and not the creed Would help us at our utmost need. Who studied still with deep research To build the universal Church Lofty as is the lovo of God, And ample as the wants or man." It is glimpses such as this of what we might have had given us that make us less greateful than is just for the lesser beauties that are spread before us. The ideal scholar and the ideal travelled are dwarfed into insignificance by the present majesty of the real Christian, and he an "American. Surely Mr. Longfellow has falsely estimated his powers hero. At hand of his, what a grand lesson might Combridge on the Charles have taught to Cambridge on the Cam! In the very first tale of the series we have a brave episode of a lay of more than Homeric grandeur glanced at and dismissed with a careless touch of all but indifference. There are, we imagine, few politicians living who do not regard the struggle of our North American colonies for their liberties as one of the most stirring acts of the great drama of Anglo-Saxon action upon which the curtain first roso to the call of the later Plantagenets. Even in the bigoted days of old, when the blind fury of the King—the last king, thank God, to whom England shall ever apply the title in the sense then current—aiding the narrow obstinacy of the Minister, drove into disloyalty and rebellion the sturdiest of our- sons, there was a strong and respectable party at home who recognised the justice of the colonial cause. Now-a-days, when it is the fashion to grant to every potty prince beyond the limit* of the kingdom the orthodox machinery of self-

government, enhanced by the extra boon of two oS" the live famous points of the Charter, we do not suppose that even the eccentricity of Mr. Carlyle himself would question the legality—nay, the moral obligation of the resistance of the Stamp Act. But wemay perhaps bo forgiven for pausing to hazard a conjecturo as to the possiblo future of our empirahad not the measures of conciliation, which it is now universally admitted might have been successfully adopted at the first outbreak of the great rebellion, been delayed too long. What a stupendous royalty would have been that of our Crown had we but secured the allegiance of the thirteen colonies. With what glowing pride might not a Pennsylvanian or Carolinian of these later days of ours have spoken his mighty shibboleth of Civis Britannicus sum had not a King who boasts of bis British birth, and a Minister whose fathers had helped to win the Charter of Runnyznead, combined to alienate the hearts of a British people by the enforcement of exactions more odious than those of Strafford at the point o 1 bayonets more alien than those of Louis XVI. Butthedostiniosof the worldseemavewe to the concentration of such measureless power. From the day when the sun of the Attic thalissoracy sank in the Straits of yEgospotami to that morning of our own reccollection when the palmetto flag first wooed the breeze under the walla of Sumpter, empires havo rocked to the base at the culmination of their might. And whatever hope of peace and goodwill among British subjects may have come with the Christmas of 1774, such hope vanished into the clear spring air of tho April morning four months later with the fitst wreath of smoke and tho first flash of powder that greeted the march of the troops on the Lexington Road.

And how the record of that sturdy stand of the colonists can stir even stronger pulses may be learned from the Landlord's Tale ot Paul Revere's Ride- I* contains at least end fiuo dramatic ire age. Silently rowing to the Charleston shore, the messenger who was to spread the news of flame through the counties passed where Swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset British mau-of-war, A phantom ship with each mast ajtd spar Across the moon like a prison bar Why has Mr. Longfellow ever written for Ui that more telling story of the sergeant of Leo's dragoon*, who risked so much more than life in the Strang* service waich was to have saved our gallant Major Andre ; But, as we have said before, Mr. Longfellow, like many of his countrymen of wealth and taste, will not rest long upon American ground. The glamour Af . the world of Eld as too seducing to be denied. From the roll of the musketry "down there at JConoord ou the fight " to the murmurs of the fountains sparkling aronud the Val d' Amo—from the true homelj narrative of the hearty host to the stilted unreality of Boccaccio's most far fetched fancy—ia a di; appointing change, but one for which we should have been prepared. His foot is off his native heath, and one* more the poet is himself again' He imitates the Tuscan to admiration, and yet with snch an imitation as make* it clear that no Italian is speaking—a scholar who has perchance caught his accent from Sienna, but still one who is familiar with western seas, finding the " gulf stream of passion in the soul" moistening with its rolling mitts tho dark eyes of hia signora. And to on through the whole book. It is a palpable tour deforce of an author eager to oxhibit his faculty of rhyming in the idiom of every language but his own. The "Saga of King Olsaf" —a most complete Norse lyric—fills sixty pages. It ia picceded by a legend oi Sicily, and followed by a fable of Spain. It is only at the close that we take up the homely thread cncemoie. In the btllad of the Biids of Killingworth, it is impossible to avoid the ct njecture that the satire is dhectid against well-known local offenders. The friends of acclimatisation will find here some worthy pleas for the protection of their favourites, and will thank Mr. Longfellow for having strengthened their hands so opportunely in a controversy already exciting some share of attention. The remainder of the book is filled with a few light fugitive pieces, reprints of occasional publications. Of these the first (the Children's Hour) is quite in the old graceful strain,and the second (Enceladus),a poem of considerable power; but in the third (the Cumberland) will centre, with many readers, the main interest of the publication. Tho civil war of the States has at last given us a voice of song. Mr. Longfellow has wreathed his brows with the lauieate's chaplct, and, for tho first time since Victor Galbraith, chants a lay of modern American story. And there will be few of his admirers who will not regret his having done so. The verges will not flow to order. The first exploit of the Merrimacis but a poor theme for triumphant vaunt on either side, and most assuredly has in no way added fame to the brief annals of the Northern navy. And ) - et there is no other episode of the war upon which the Tyrtceus of the Federation has deigned to dwell. Has there come to pass, since our brothers first began to spill each other's blood, no chivalrous deed of or daring more woithy of remembrance than the cutting by an enemy's ironclad of a wooden ship in Hampden Roads. Or"is it that Mr. Longfellow has but given us these stanzas niomentaiily ioigetful of his art, for the sake of Xhefade prophecy of the restoration of the TJnion, with which he gilds his last few verses. _ Be this as it may, the lines aie out of place, and might have been happily omitted. And so we turn back with a het-h ze&t to take up scrr.e ot the stray gems of song we have passed unnoticed before. But how shall we discriminate here? Theroare, it is true, exquisite passages scattered through the leaves, to which we may well invite especial attention. The Spanish Jew from Alicant, who " Wi:dly tof&ed frcm cheeks and chin The trembling cataract aj' hit beard;" the gloomy Hidalgo of old Spain, whoso ■• vague presentiment of impending doom Like ohobtly Jootsteps in a vacant room Haunted hun day and niget,— the Italian' falcon that " dreamtd of the chafe, and in his slumber heard The sudden siiithelike txeeep oj icings that dare The headlong plunge through eddying flight* qfoir'" is each but a casually gathered picture ficm a raw giillery. For their ecmpanicois, cur readers must seek the text, not theccmmcntaiy. It is, however the fair piovince of tl e levitwer to lcmaik heie the studied persistence oi Sir. Longltlkw in his one fault —his prodigal ty of scriptuial cr sacied illustrations. The Don struggling with evil fancies— " As with wild beasts at Ephesus; the sun rising •• Like the lifting of the Host ;" the crucified image gleaming luminous through tho vapours " As through John's Apocalypse ;" — are not happily conceived imaginings. In better opirit is the satire otthe farmer lionbeard telling of converting arguments of Olaf, so succe>>slul is Muss* tianising the Norseman: — " Choose ye between two things, my folks! To be baptized, or given up to slaughter.' And the still more cauntic satire <f Strangbrand, the quarrelsome priest—type,*perchance, of colonial bishop or missionary of our day,—the malcontent too overbearing for the household of the king:— " 80 to Iceland he was sent. To convert the heathen there." And in better taste and in better spirit, this beautiful image in the mouth of St. John, the Beloved : — ' As torrents in summer

Half dried In their channels Suddenly rise, though tbo Sky is still cloudless, For rain has been failing Far off at their fountains. So hearts that are fainting Grow full to o'erflowing, And they that behold it parrel and know not That God at their fountains. Far off has been raining;" Or that calm, solemn reminder of the tolerant theologian who can see no exclusive redemption in any ritual, and to whose words no comment of ours can add majesty or beauty. " J>ot to one church alone but seven, The voice prophetic came from Heaven; Aud umo each the promise came, Diversifled but still the &ame; For him that ovcrcometh are The new name written on the atone, The raiment white, the crown, the throne. And I will give him the morning star."

Thb Disadvantage of Being Agreeablb.—l ■warn once what is called an agreeable man, and the consequences of enjoying such a reputation were as follows—l was asked to be a godfather forty-eight times, and my name is recorded on as many silver mugs, value each £4 103 6d. I gave away fifty-six brides, and as many dressing-cases. I paid in the course ot fourteen years, £375 2s 6d for cab-faros in exeees of what I ought to have done. I lent 264 umbrellas, and never received them back again. I have had three). hundred and odd colds, and retain a perruanet rbei*matisni from consenting to sit in draughts to oblige other people. I have accepted two hundred and four accommodation bills for friends in Government Office*. and I am now going to to declaxe myself an insolvent preparatory to my d*p«jrMK tte AustraK*.