Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/165

 "VII1:N AliANDONKI) liY 'J UK ARMY. lo5 enlliusiasm which flew from Uittalioii to battalion chap. along the whole line of the works, but also in L_ connecting this outburst of national sentiment with the eloquence they ascribe to the chief. His zeal spread like flame. The nnnds of men were e.xalted ; and although it is certain enough that the garrison had been grieved, if not angered, by the untimely evasion of the army,* the sense of abandonment, the sense of being men offered up, and left, as it were, for a sacrifice, was so fur from making them sullen with their cause, that rather it gave them just pride — not unlike the pride of the martyr — and filled them with admiring love of the chief whom Providence, as it seemed, had given them for their ruler. There was rapture, the hearers declare, in the sound of the bursting ' Hurrahs !' which tracked his career through the lines. And this rapture, it seems, was scarce short of worship. In the minds of a religious and unlettered people, the ascendant of a mortal exerting his power for purposes judged to lie good is more commonly traced to the special interference of Deity than to the original of the Divine scheme; and it would seem that the emotion with which the garrison looked up to their chief was much of the kind which first led people to say that the king set u}) to rub; over them was king ' by the grace giief; but they enable me to infer it by recording the joy with which, at a later time, the reappearance of the army was hailed.
 * jIy Russian accounts do not tell me, in terms, of any such