It is as a
reporter that he has had his training, and it is as a reporter that he
is valuable. Quick to catch impressions, and from among them to single
out the _taking_ parts, his sketches of what he saw and heard, if
without any high artistic merit, have a coarse truth that will make them
of worth to the future student of these times. They are all the better
that Mr. Russell was unable, from the nature of the case, to elaborate
and _Timesify_ them.
The first half of the book is both the most interesting and the most
valuable,--the second half being so largely made up of personal
grievances (which, if Mr. Russell had not the dignity to despise them,
he might at least have been wise enough to be silent about) as to be
tedious in comparison. We regret that Mr. Russell should have been
subjected to so many personal indignities for having written what we
believe to have been as impartial an account of what he saw of the
panic-rout which followed the Battle of Manassas as any one could have
written under the same conditions,--though we doubt if the correspondent
of a French newspaper would come off much better, under like
circumstances, in England. It is not beyond the memory of man that the
Duke of Wellington himself was pelted in London. But we are surprised
that Mr. Russell should have so far misapprehended his position, should
have so readily learned to look upon himself as an ambassador, (we
believe the "Times" is not yet recognized by our Government as anything
more than a belligerent power,) as to consider it a hardship that he was
not allowed to accompany General McClellan's army to the Peninsula.
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