Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/135

 WHEN ABANDONED BY THE ARMY. 105 From the traces we have of this chief it can chap, liardly be shown that he was gifted with original. geuins, still less with a piercing intellect; and the soundness of his judgment in the business of war may well be denied, or, at all events, brought into question ; but it is not from the mere tenor of his words, nor even, indeed, altogether from his acts, that the quality of his soul is to be gathered, but rather from the visible effect of its impact upon the souls of other men. As one man to whom many look may be passing through a distant assemblage unseen and unheard liimself by those who gaze from afar, and yet his course can be tracked by the movement and the cries of devotion which his presence arouses, so, in part, our knowledge of Koi'nilotf must rest upon the perception of what people did when they felt the impulsion he gave. At a time wdien there seemed to be no room but for despair and confusion, he took that ascendant which enabled him to bring the wliole people in the place — inhabitants, soldiers, sailors — to liis own heroic resolve. In a garrison town of the empire which had carried the mania of military organisa- tion to the most preposterous lengths, all those straitened notions of rank and seniority, and, in short, the whole network of the formalisms which might have been expected to hinder his command, Hew away like chaff at the winnowing. By the tire of liis spirit there was roused so great an energy on the part of thousands of men as has hardly been known in these times ; and lie so put