than most professional soldiers, an adept in military science; had sate in the centre of the campaign as its general’s guest and comrade; was intrusted, above all, by Lady Raglan with the entire collection of her husband’s papers:  her wish, implied though not expressed, that they should be utilized for the vindication of the great field-marshal’s fame, he accepted as a sacred charge; her confidence not only governed his decision to become the historian of the war, but imparted a personal character to the narrative.

In order, therefore, rightly to appreciate “The Invasion of the Crimea,” we must look upon it as a great prose epic; its argument, machinery, actors, episodes, subordinate to a predominant ever present hero.  In its fine preamble Lord Raglan sits enthroned high above generals, armies, spectators, conflicts; on the quality of his mind the fate of two great hosts and the fame of two great nations hang.  He checks St. Arnaud’s wild ambition; overrules the waverings of the Allies; against his own judgment, but in dutiful obedience to home instruction carries out the descent upon the Old Fort coast.  The successful achievement of the perilous flank march is ascribed to the undivided command which, during forty-eight hours, accident had conferred upon him.  From his presence in council French and English come away convinced and strengthened; his calm in action imparts itself to anxious generals and panic-stricken aides-de-camp.  Through Alma fight, from the high knoll to which happy audacity had carried him he rides the whirlwind and directs the storm.  In the terrible crisis which sees the Russians breaking over the crest of Inkerman, in the ill-fated attack on the Great Redan where Lacy Yea is killed, his apparent freedom from anxiety infects all around him and achieves redemption from disaster. {16} We see him in his moments of vexation and discomfiture; dissembling pain and anger under the stress of the French alliance, galled by Cathcart’s disobedience, by the loss of the Light Brigade, by Lord Panmure’s insulting, querulous, unfounded blame.  We read his last despatch, framed with wonted grace and clearness; then—­on the same day—­we see the outworn frame break down, and follow mournfully two days later the afflicting details of his death.  As the generals and admirals of the allied forces stand round the dead hero’s form, as the palled bier, draped in the flag of England, is carried from headquarters to the port, as the “Caradoc,” steaming away with her honoured freight, flies out her “Farewell” signal, the narrative abruptly ends.  The months of the siege which still remained might be left to other hands or lapse untold.  Troy had still to be taken when Hector died; but with his funeral dirge the Iliad closed, the blind bard’s task was over: 

“Such honours Ilion to her hero paid,
And peaceful slept the mighty Hector’s shade.”