Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/142

 112 HEROIC RESISTANCE OF SEBASTOrOL. CHAP. (lcii''iiLrul exertion of natural strength, he had VI ... ' joyous, kind-looking e3"es, almost ready to melt with good-hunioui', and a bearing and speech so iVank and genial, that people were instantly in- clined to like, and, very soon after, to trust in him. From his looks and demeanour it could not at all be inferred that he was a man Avho had devoted his mind to a science ; and, for this very reason perhaps, he had the less difficulty in making people yield to his judgment. Ko one who had so much as seen him could imagine that his power of doing the right thing at the right time had been at all warped by long study of the engin- eering art. No one who had once conversed with him could doubt that, body and soul, he was a man of action; nothing more, nothing less. A race, corrupted by luxury and the arts of peace, knows instinctively that it must succumb to a nature of this kind. I imagine that few men of great intellect have ever attained so closely as he did to that which the English describe when they speak of a man as being ' })racticai.' It was supposed at one time in Europe that Todleben had made discoveries which altered and expanded the old science of fortification. This is hardly true. It was in applying his science — in applying it to novel and changeful circumstances — that his excellence lay. He had the power of instantly recognising, and at once understanding, all the material conditions upon which from time to time he had to found his resolves. If these conditions were new and startliuLf. he did not (he