The Collins steamship Atlantic brings advices to the 22d ult.
THE TURKISH WAR
In compliance with orders from the French and English Governments, the larger part of the allied fleets will remain for the present in the Bosphorus. Six steamers will be detached to convey Turkish vessels, when necessary, and four steamers will be kept in constant observation. No further operations had taken place on the Danube, but the Russian attack on Kalafat was still daily expected. The fort is now garrisoned by 30,000 troops. Omer Pasha's health is re-established. He had recently hung two Greek spies. The Turkish army generally was in good health and spirits, with an abundance of food. The Wallachian peasantry had become so hostile, that the Russian soldiers are forbidden to go more than a mile from the camp. Gen. Anrep, who commanded the Russians at Tshetate, is disgraced, and sent to the Caucasus. The young Prince of Moldavia is distinguishing himself in the Turkish service, by his military prowess and bravery. A British steamer, the Haidee, with some Turkish troops on board, went ashore near Sevastopol, and has been seized by the Russians. Six thousand men and twenty-four ships left Constantinople on the 7th February, under an escort of eleven British war-steamers. It was reported that when the French and English troops should arrive in Turkey a measure will be proposed by the Sultan to the Divan to give the Christians and Moslems equal civil rights. The rumor is however doubtful.
GREAT BRITAIN.
England is at length in a state of war. Troops are being embarked at several ports, and on all hands there is apparent the greatest activity in preparations for the approaching struggle. The British contingent of land forces for the aid of Turkey has been fixed at twenty thousand men, in consequence of the refusal of Lord Raglan to assume the command of any inferior force. The Queen's Guards, a magnificent regiment of cavalry, which the Emperor Nicholas, when he was in London, said were the finest men and horses he had ever seen, have given and received their farewell banquets, and were ordered to embark from Southampton on the 22d February. Six other regiments of cavalry had been ordered to hold themselves in readiness to embark at short notice.
GREECE.
The Greek insurrection is formidable. 6,000 insurgents in arms in Epirus, Thessaly and Macedonia. Recruits are leaving Athens. The Greek Government either cannot or will not check them.
The steamship Asia from Liverpool arrived at Halifax last night, (March 9,) bringing three days later intelligence than what brought by the Atlantic. The news is not very important, although interesting. It was rumored that France and England had issued a manifesto, having set the force of a formal declaration of war, and that England had sent a final announcement to the Czar, naming a definite time in which he must evacuate the Principalities. The accounts from the Danube represent both parties as preparing for a great battle, and the allied fleets remained on the Bosphorus.
The following from the correspondence of the N. Y. Tribune will give our readers a general idea of the condition of Europe.
AFFAIRS ON THE CONTINENT.
LONDON, Tuesday, Feb. 21, 1854.
We are reaching the end of the second act of the great Oriental drama. In the first we saw the Montenegrins defeated by Omer Pasha, and Prince Menchikoff bullying the Sultan at Constantinople in order to restore the Russian prestige; next we witnessed the occupation of the Principalities, and the negotiations transferred to Vienna, closing dramatically with the visit of the Czar to the camp of Olmutz, with the famous Vienna note, the refusal of the Porte to accept it, the Nesselrode commentary upon it, and with the Turkish declaration of war. The second act began with the battle of Oltenitza and the Turkish successes in Asia, followed by diplomatic intrigues, schemes and counter-schemes, until the destruction of the Turkish squadron at Sinope roused the indignation of England and France, and the accusing voice of the people broke through the spider's web of diplomacy. Explanations were demanded and given, and found unsatisfactory; diplomatic intercourse, between England and France on one side and Russia on the other, was broken off, and the efforts of both the parties were now directed to Vienna and Berlin, in order to enlist Austria and Prussia in the coming struggle; a few days more, and the declaration of war between the Western Powers and the Czar will close the second act. The Czar has rejected the last offer of an arrangement contained in Napoleon's famous letter; Lord John Russell has made a warlike speech; troops are embarked, and a royal proclamation has prohibited the exportation of arms, ammunition, and warlike stores.
THE WAR AT LAST.—The refusal of the Czar to listen to the suggestions of Louis Napoleon's letter seems to knock away the last prop for any hope of peace to rest on. Though neither of the parties has yet issued a formal declaration, the war at last has come. In the excitement of it, let us hope that the study of its history and philosophy may not be neglected. After a general peace of thirty-eight years, here is a war that promises to be more wasteful of life and property than any preceding war, because Europe is more populous and richer than at the outbreak of any preceding war. During these thirty-eight years, Europe has been governed by kings and diplomatists and standing armies, by the kind of men said to be born to govern the people, who are said to be not fit to govern themselves. It is not the people who have got up this war; indeed, a fear on the part of the kings that the people might take the occasion to claim some of their rights, has alone prevented its breaking out long ago.
And so at last we are on the very outer brink of a grand war—a war upon the commerce of all Europe, upon the life of the two millions of men who within a twelve-month will be murdering and preparing to murder each other, upon the welfare of their families, upon the property of every tax-payer in Europe, upon the back and stomach of every laboring man and every laboring man's wife and children, upon all material interests and upon morality. Its harsh note of preparation rings across one-half of the world, from Teheran to Dublin, from the valley of the Upper Nile to the mountains of Scandinavia. Already nearly twenty thousand men have died in battle. We need not say, what every one knows, that the deaths in battle are but the smallest part of the loss of life which an army suffers in a campaign; especially a Russian army, whose commissariat and medical staff are notoriously ill-provided and inefficient. We need not add that the existing embarrassments of trade and commerce, are already carrying suffering on its inevitable downward course to the laboring productive masses; nor speak of the peasants of Wallachia, who are first robbed of their grain and cattle, and then shot if they refuse to do the forced labors imposed upon them by their robbers. All this is only variations on the old air of God save the King and Devil take the People, which is always struck up when there is question of maintaining the 'balance' of power—not the balance of the scales of justice—in Europe.