The war now happily concluded was characterized by some very remarkable features. It was on the part of Britain the war of a highly civilised country, in a pre-eminently mechanical, and, with all its faults, singularly humane age,––in an age, too, remarkable for the diffusion of its literature; and hence certain conspicuous traits which belonged to none of the other wars in which our country had been previously engaged. Never before did such completely equipped fleets and armies quit our shores. The navies with which we covered the Black Sea and the Baltic were not at all what they would have been had the war lasted for one other campaign, but they mightily exceeded anything of the kind that Britain or the world had ever seen before. The fleets of Copenhagen, Trafalgar, and the Nile would have cut but a sorry figure beside them, and there was more of the materiel of war concentrated on that one siege of Sebastopol than on any half-dozen other sieges recorded in British history. In all that mechanical art could accomplish, the late war with Russia was by far the most considerable in which our country was ever engaged. It was, in respect of materiel, a war of the world’s pre-eminently mechanical people in the world’s pre-eminently mechanical age. With this strong leading feature, however, there mingled another, equally marked, in which the element was weakness, not strength. The men who beat all the world in heading pins are unable often to do anything else; for usually, in proportion as 294 mechanical skill becomes intense, does it also become narrow; and the history of the two campaigns before Sebastopol brought out very strikingly a certain helplessness on the part of the British army, part of which at least must be attributed to this cause. It is surely a remarkable fact, that in an army never more than seven miles removed from the base line of its operations, the distress suffered was so great, that nearly five times the number of men sank under it that perished in battle. There was no want among them of pinheading and pinheaded martinets. The errors of officers such as Lucan and Cardigan are understood to be all on the side of severity; but in heading their pin, they wholly exhaust their art; and under their surveillance and direction a great army became a small one, with the sea covered by a British fleet only a few miles away. So far as the statistics of the British portion of this greatest of sieges have yet been ascertained, rather more than three thousand men perished in battle by the shot or steel of the enemy, or afterwards of their wounds, and rather more than fifteen thousand men of privation and disease. As for the poor soldiers themselves, they could do but little in even more favourable circumstances under the pinheading martinets; and yet at least such of them as were drawn from the more thoroughly artificial districts of the country must, we suspect, have fared all the worse in consequence of that subdivision of labour which has so mightily improved the mechanical standing of Britain in the aggregate, and so restricted and lowered the general ability in individuals. We cannot help thinking that an army of backwoodsmen of the present day, or of Scotch Highlanders marked by the prevailing traits of the last century, would have fared better and suffered less.

Another remarkable feature of the war arose out of the singularly ready and wonderfully diffused literature of the day. Like those self-registering machines that keep a strict 295 account of their own workings, it seemed to be engaged, as it went on, in writing, stage after stage, its own history. The acting never got a single day ahead of the writing, and never a single week ahead of the publishing; and, in consequence, the whole civilised world became the interested witnesses of what was going on. The war became a great game at chess, with a critical public looking over the shoulders of the players. It was a peculiar feature, too, that the public should have been so critical. As the literature of a people becomes old, it weakens in the power of originating, and strengthens in the power of criticising. Reviews and critiques become the master efforts of a learned and ingenious people, whose literature has passed its full blow; and the criticism extends always, in countries in which the press is free from the productions of men who write in their closets, to the actings of men who conduct the political business of the country, or who direct its fleets and armies. And with regard to them also it may be safely affirmed, that the critical ability overshoots and excels the originating ability. There seems to have been no remarkably good generalship manifested by Britain in the Crimea: all the leading generalship appears, on the contrary, to have been very mediocre generalship indeed. The common men and subordinate officers did their duty nobly; and there have been such splendid examples of skilful generalship in fourth and fifth-rate commands––commands such as that of Sir Colin Campbell and Sir George Brown––that it has been not unfrequently asked, whether we had in reality the ‘right men in the right places,’ and whether there might not, after all, have been generalship enough in the Crimea had it been but rightly arranged. But the leading generalship was certainly not brilliant. The criticism upon it, on the other hand, has been singularly so. The ages of Marlborough and Wellington did not produce a tithe of the brilliant military criticism which has appeared in England in newspapers, 296 magazines, and reviews during the last two years. And yet it is possible that, had the very cleverest of these critics been appointed to the chief command, he would have got on as ill as any of his predecessors. In truth, the power of originating and the power of criticising are essentially different powers in the worlds both of thought and of action. Talent accumulates the materials of criticism from the experience of the past; and thus, as the world gets older, the critical ability grows, and becomes at length formidably complete;––whereas the power of originating, or, what is the same thing, of acting wisely, and on the spur of the moment, in new and untried circumstances, is an incommunicable faculty, which genius, and genius only, can possess. And genius is as rare now as it ever was. Any man of talent can be converted, by dint of study and painstaking, into a good military critic; but a Wellington or a Napoleon had as certainly to be born what they were, as a Dante or a Milton.

But by far the most pleasing feature of the war––of at least the part taken in it by Britain––is to be found in that humanity, the best evidence of a civilisation truly Christian, which has characterized it in all its stages. Generous regard for the safety and respect for the feelings of a brave enemy, when conquered, have marked our countrymen for centuries. But we owe it to the peculiar philanthropy of the time, that, in the midst of much official neglect, our own sick and wounded soldiers have been cared for after a fashion in which British soldiers were never cared for before. The ‘lady nurses,’ with Miss Nightingale at their head, imparted its most distinctive character to the war. We have now before us a deeply interesting volume,[1] the production of one of these devoted females, a native of the north country, or, as she was introduced by an old French officer to some Zouaves, 297 her fellow-passengers to the East, whom she had wished to see, a true ‘Montagnarde de Ecossaise.’ The name of the authoress is not given; but it will, we daresay, be recognised in the neighbourhood of the ‘capital of the Highlands’ as that of a delicately nurtured lady, the daughter of a late distinguished physician, well known to the north of the Grampians as an able and upright man, who, had he not so sedulously devoted himself to the profession which he adorned, might have excelled in almost any department of science. And in strong sound sense and genial feeling, we find the daughter worthy of such a father. Some of our more zealous Protestants professed at one time not a little alarm lest the lady nurses might be Papists in disguise; and certainly their ‘regulation dresses,’ all cut after one fashion, and of one sombre hue, did seem a little nun-like, and perhaps rather alarming. But the following passage––which, from the amusing mixture which it exhibits of strong good sense and half-indignant womanly feeling, our readers will, we are sure, relish––may serve to show that some of the ladies who wore the questionable dress, liked it quite as ill as the most zealous member of the Reformation Society could have done, and were very excellent Protestants under its cover. The authoress of the volume before us is a Presbyterian; and the occasion of the following remarks was the meeting of the British Consul at Marseilles, and the necessity that herself and her companions felt of getting head-dresses for themselves, that could be looked at ere entertaining him at dinner. ‘Perhaps it may be thought,’ says our authoress, ‘that all this solicitude about our caps was unsuitable in persons going out as what is called “Sisters of Mercy;” but I must once for all say that, as far as I was concerned, I neither professed to be a “Sister of Charity,” a “Sister of Mercy,” nor anything of the kind. I was, as I told a poissarde of Boulogne, a British woman who had little to do at home, 298 and wished to help our poor soldiers, if I could, abroad. The reason given to me for the peculiarity and uniformity of our dress was, that the soldiers might know and respect their nurses. It seems a sensible reason, and one which I could not object to, even disliking, as I did, all peculiarity of attire that seemed to advertise the nurses only as serving God, or serving Him pre-eminently, and thus conveying a tacit reproach to the rest of the world; for the obligation lies on all the same. I did not feel then, nor do I now, that we were doing anything better or more praiseworthy than is done in a quiet, unostentatious way at home every day. On the contrary, to many temperaments, my own among the number, it is far less difficult to engage in a new and exciting work like the one we were then entering on there, than to pursue the uneventful monotony of daily doing good at home. As for the dress itself, I have nothing to say against it. Although not perhaps of the material or texture I should have preferred, still the colour, grey, was one I generally wore from choice. But I must confess, that when I found myself restricted to it, without what seemed a good reason, an intense desire for blue, green, red, and yellow, with all their combinations, took possession of me; though, now that I may wear what I please, I find my former favour for grey has returned in full force. However, allowing that it was desirable we should have had some uniform costume, it certainly was unnecessary that ladies, nurses, and washerwomen should have been dressed alike, as we were. That was part of the mistake I have already adverted to, and was productive of confusion and bad feeling.’

Despite of the uniform dresses, however, the sick and wounded soldiers soon learned to distinguish between the paid nurses and the ladies who had left their comfortable British homes to lavish upon them their gratuitous, priceless labours. 299

There is no assumption in this volume. Its authoress writes as if she had done only her duty, and as if the task had not been an exceedingly hard or difficult one; but the simple facts related show how very much was accomplished and endured. Every chapter justifies the judgment pronounced by the tall Irish sergeant. This lady nurse is a ‘real fine woman,’––a noble specimen of the class whose disinterested and self-sacrificing exertions gave to the late war its most distinctive and brilliant feature. The bravery of British men had been long established; the superadded trait is the heroism of British women. In what circumstances of peril and suffering that heroism was exerted, the following extract, with which we conclude, may serve to show. It is the funeral of one of the lady nurses, who sank under an attack of malignant fever, that the following striking passage records:––

‘The Protestant burial-ground is a dismal-looking, neglected spot. It was chosen from an idea that Drusilla’s friends at home might prefer it to the open hill where the soldiers lay; but if there had been time for consideration and inspection, it would have been otherwise arranged: for the appearance of the place struck a chill to our hearts––it looked so dark and dreary, with the grass more than a foot high, and the weeds towering above it; and from its being close to the bay, and the porous nature of the soil, the grave which had been dug on the forenoon was almost filled by water; and on the words, “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God,” we heard the coffin splash into the half-full grave. There was a general regret afterwards that this burial-ground had been chosen, but poor Drusilla will not sleep the less soundly; and we all agreed, on leaving her grave, that whoever of us was next called to die, should be buried on the hill, in the spot allotted to the poor soldiers, open and unprotected as it was. Death seemed 300 very near to us then; we had already lost two orderlies, and many of the nurses were lying at the gates of death. Miss A––– had made an almost miraculous escape, and was not yet out of danger from relapse. The first gap had been made in our immediate party, and who of us could tell whether she herself was not to be the next?

‘The evening was fast closing as we returned, some in caiques, and others walking solemnly and sadly; for, besides the feelings naturally attending such a scene, we all regretted poor Drusilla, who, although she had not been long among us, was so obliging and anxious to be of use. She was a good-looking young woman, and immediately on her arrival had become the object of attraction to one of the clerks, whose attentions, however, she most steadily declined. He still persisted in showing the most extraordinary attachment to her, and during her illness was in such a state of excitement and distress as to be utterly incapacitated for attending to his duties properly. He used to sit on the stairs leading to her room, in the hopes of seeing some one who could tell him how she was, and went perpetually to the passage outside her room, entreating of the Misses Le M–––, who generally sat up with her, to let him in to see her. This they refused till the night of her death, when she was quite insensible, and past all hope of recovery; so that his visit could do her no harm. He stayed a few minutes, and looked his last on her; for in the morning at seven o’clock she died. I shall never forget his face when he came to my store-room, in accordance with his duty, to correct some inaccuracy in the diet-roll. He seemed utterly bewildered with sorrow; and Miss S–––, who had also occasion to speak to him, said she never saw grief so strongly marked in a human face. He insisted on following her remains to the grave as chief mourner, and wearied himself with carrying the coffin. No one interfered with him; for all seemed to think he had acquired 301 the right, by his unmistakeable affection, to perform these sad offices; and the lady superintendent, moved by his sorrow, allowed him to retain a ring of some small value which the deceased had been accustomed to wear.’

June 14, 1856.