form,
Than wave, or flash, or stormy heaven!

* * * * *

We now come to one of the most remarkable lyric productions of our
Poet's genius, the "General;" and in order that our readers may be
enabled to understand and appreciate this exquisite little poem, we
shall preface it with a few remarks of an explanatory character; as the
_details_, at least, of the events upon which it is founded may not be
so generally known in England as they are in Russia. Our English
readers, however, are doubtless sufficiently familiar with the history
of the great campaign of the year 1812, which led to the burning of
Moscow, and to the consequent annihilation of the mighty army which
Napoleon led to perish in the snows of Russia, to remember one
remarkable episode connected with that most important campaign. They
remember that one of the Russian armies was placed under the command of
Field-marshal Barclay de Tolly, a general descended from an ancient
Scottish family which had been settled for some generations in Russia,
but who was in every respect to be considered as a native Russian, being
born a subject of the Tsar, and having, during a long life of service in
the Russian army, gradually reached the highest military rank, and
acquired a well-earned and universal reputation as an able strategist
and a brave man. The mode of operations determined on at the beginning
of this most momentous struggle, and persevered in throughout by the
Russians, with a patience and steadiness no less admirable than the
wisdom of the combinations on which they were founded, was a purely
defensive system of tactics. The event amply demonstrated the soundness
of the principles upon which those operations were based; for while
Napoleon was gradually attracted into the interior of the country by
armies which perpetually retired before him without giving him the
opportunity of coming to a general action, the autumn was gradually
passing away, and the flames of Moscow only served to light up, for the
French army, the beginning of their hopeless retreat through a country
now totally laid waste, and covered with the snows of a Russian winter.
This mode of operations, however, was by no means likely to please the
population of Russia, infuriated by the long unaccustomed presence of a
hostile army within their sacred frontier, and worked up by all the
circumstances of the invasion to the highest pitch of patriotic
enthusiasm. Unabl