Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/156

 130 BATTLE OF THE AI.MA. CHAP, their sake, a subject of interest in circles which • commonly yield only a languid attention to events beyond the seas. Grief for the death of line ofii- cers is dispersed among the counties of the three kingdoms ; and when they fall in battle, it is the once merry country-house, the vicarage, or the wayside cottage of some old Peninsular olhccr, that becomes the house of mourning. But by the loss of olTicers of the household regiments the central body of l^iglish society is toiched, is shocked, is almost angered ; and a connnander who has to sit in his saddle and see a heavy slaughter of the Guards, may be almost forced to think ruefully of fathers, of mothers, of wives, of sisters, who are amongst his own friends. There was nothing in the history or traditions of the famous corps of the Guards to justify the notion that they were to be more often kept out of the brunt of the battle than the troops of the line ; and in this very ^var they were destined to encounter the hardest trials of soldiers, and to go on iigliting and enduring until the glory of past achievements, the strange ascendancy which those achievements had won, and a few score of wan men with hardly the garb of soldiers, .should l)e all that remained of 'the Guards.' Still it is certain that the household Ixittalions were more or less regarded as a cherished body of troops, and that the loss of the brigade of Guards would be looked upon as a loss more signal, and in that sense more disastrous, than the loss of three other battalions of equal strength.