Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/194

 168 BATTLE OF THE ALMA. CHAP, remembers it, and sees how the issue was oov- I • , erned by taking the path which he chose, he may suffer himself to trace the gain of a battle, with all its progeny of events, to his few hurried words. The brown bay Lord Eaglan rode was of course well broken to fire, and he had been quiet enough during the earlier part of the action ; but now, suddenly, his blood rose, and for all the rest of the day he was so eager that he would hardly suffer his rider to use a field - glass from the saddle. The truth is, that in other times he had been ridden to hounds in England,. and al- though he had long stood careless of all that was done by the Causeway batteries, yet when he and his rider and the horsemen around him cantered down into the valley, when they plunged into the river, when they briskly dashed through it, and began to gallop up the steep broken ground on the liussian side, the old hunter seemed to think of the chase and great days in the Glouces- tershire country. But it was not ' Shadrach ' * alone who felt the onward impulse. They say that there lurks in the men of these isles a vestige of Man the Hunter and Man the Savage, and that this, after all, is the subtle leaven which, in spite of the dangerous inroads of luxury, still keeps alive the warlike spirit of the people and the freedom which goes along with it. It was not right — nay, if it were not that success brings justification, it
 * The name of the horse.