United States or Sri Lanka ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If this came easy to an Englishman like Kinglake, it came, of course, still easier to a German like Queen Victoria's husband and even to Queen Victoria herself, who was naturally influenced by him. But in so far as the sensible masses of the English nation took any interest in the matter, it is probable that they sympathised with Palmerston, who was as popular as the Prince Consort was unpopular.
The "partial deployment" of which Kinglake speaks, consisting of "wings or forearms" devised to cover the flanks or fold inwards on the front, did not make itself apparent to any observer of "C" Troop; and indeed the present writer never knew a Russian who had heard of it, the species of formation adumbrated, so far as he is aware, being confined to Zulu impis.
To a boy of fourteen thus reared, the Disraeli of 1867 was an astonishment and a revelation as the modern world would say, an eye-opener. The House of Commons was full of distinguished men Lord Cranborne, afterwards Lord Salisbury; John Bright and Robert Lowe, Gathorne Hardy, Bernal-Osborne, Goschen, Mill, Kinglake, Renley, Horsman, Coleridge.
Kinglake once declared that 'Lord John Russell wrote so naturally that it recalled the very sound of his voice; and half the charm of his 'Recollections and Suggestions' consists in the artlessness of a record which will always rank with the original materials of history, between the year in which Wellington fought the battle of Vittoria and that in which, just sixty years later, Napoleon III. died in exile at Chislehurst.
"I looked yet farther and higher, and saw in the heavens a silvery cloud that stood fast, and still against the breeze; and so it was as a sign and a testimony almost as a call from the neglected gods, that I now saw and acknowledged the snowy crown of the Mysian Olympus!" Kinglake. Brousa, July 9, 1852.
The rays fell from a thick green funnel in a plateful of strong light upon a table deep in books. I noticed several volumes of the "Invasion of the Crimea." "That's where I rest the body and exercise the brain," said Raffles. "I have long wanted to read my Kinglake from A to Z, and I manage about a volume a night. There's a style for you, Bunny!
Kinglake says that the Russian Grand-Duke Constantine, contemplating his beautiful toy-regiments, said that he dreaded war, for he knew that it would spoil the troops. The simple fact is, that a soldier is like the weapon he carries; service implies soiling, but you must have it clean in advance, that when soiled it may be of some use.
The rise of this enigmatical people affords a striking example of the power of national feeling to uplift the downtrodden. Until the year 1876, the very name Bulgarian was scarcely known except as a geographical term. Kinglake, in his charming work, Eothen, does not mention the Bulgarians, though he travelled on horseback from Belgrade to Sofia and thence to Adrianople.
"In relation to this," says Kinglake, "the prophetess told me a story rather against herself, and inconsistent with the notion of her being perfect in her science; but I think that she mentioned the facts as having happened before she attained to the great spiritual authority which she now arrogated.
Kinglake shows that the Times was the potent influence which induced England to invade the Crimea; Bismarck said in 1877 that the press "was the cause of the last three wars"; Lord Cromer writes, "The people of England as represented by the press insisted on sending General Gordon to the Soudan, and accordingly to the Soudan he was sent;" and it is current talk that the yellow journals brought on the Spanish-American War.
Word Of The Day